Girl Detective

#53 in my book challenge for the year was The Explosive Child, which our pediatrician recommended at Drake’s 3-year checkup after observing his interactions with us, and noting he had an “oppositional” personality. I like our doc; his approach is very factual and scientific. He’s definitely old school, though, so I take his advice with that in mind. From other parents and my own observation, most three year olds are oppositional, with low flexibility and frustration points. They’re testing boundaries, and learning how to share and compromise. I think the book is directed at parents of older children who still exhibit the type of tantrums more typical at three. As the doc warned, the parent and child examples in the book are extreme. Nonetheless, I found the book useful for its advice and reminders. One of its themes is that children do well if they can, so if they’re not doing well, it’s likely a lack of ability to handle frustration, not an unwillingness to behave. That’s why sticker charts and timeouts are not universal solutions. It also broke down parent/child negotiations into three types: parent enforces will, parent and child collaborate on problem solving, parent decides not to pursue issue. The case studies were a good reminder that many blowups happen when both parent and child are being inflexible, or when a parent is rushing a child through a transition faster than the child can adapt. The book’s focus is for parents to learn, and teach their children, collaborative problem solving. This requires both parties to bring a concern to the discussion. While I can certainly lay the groundwork for this, getting my 3yo to articulate his concern is far beyond where we are right now, which is largely just “No” on his part. The book was quick to read, and it made some good points that I still recall a week later, so it was worth the investment in time, even if it’s not exactly suited to where our family is right now.

Our viewing group was unanimous: we were thrilled to see the delusional Vincent go. We cringed when he fawned over Catherine Malandrino. We flinched when he cursed at Jeffrey, who (for a change) wasn’t even doing anything obnoxious. We groaned when he said his design “made him hot,” and averted our eyes at the sight of him in a tank top. Laura had it right when she said he was obsessed with his pattern, and professed to want feedback, but really wanted compliments. None were forthcoming, though. Tim Gunn scolded him for his wanton use of glue. Malandrino’s response was merely “No” over and over. Michael Kors snorted that his model was effectively topless. Richard Tyler was horrified by the floral “thing” on the back of the dress. (Then again, wasn’t he the designer of one of those dreadful suits Diane Keaton wore to an awards show within the past few years?) Laura was called to task for her plain dress; it looked old and done. Kayne was taken to task for his over-the-top top. Michael was taken to task for his weird bodice details. And Uli didn’t win because while hers was good, Jeffrey’s was great. He did something bright, fun and daring. Uli’s was none of these things. Manolo the Shoe Blogger astutely notes that several of the designers design for themselves and fit it for the models.

I predict that Kayne will be next out, and Laura after him. Their designs are getting worse, while Jeffrey’s are getting sharper. I think Michael is a shoo-in to win, and that Uli and Jeffrey will join him for the final three.

Guilty Pleasures:

The Superficial
Go Fug Yourself

Guiltier Pleasures:

Perez Hilton
D Listed

If I don’t lay off the celeb gossip soon, my head may explode. Then I really wouldn’t get anything done.

Did you notice? President Bush’s summer reading list contained almost no books by, or about, women. By contrast, my summer reading list had 18 books by women and 10 by men. The books were about boys, girls, men, women, a baby, a pseudo-hermaphrodite, plus a china bunny, more than one mouse, a dog, and a tiger. Unlike me, he read non-fiction. I finished 28 books, one more than he did, though my list was about 3/4 young adult titles, so my books were likely shorter than his.

Once, I noted how fun and smiley a friend’s six-month-old baby was. My friend said her mother warned her that six months is a dangerous time. Most six-month babies are cute and interactive, they don’t cry or spit up as much, and they usually stay where you put them. They sleep longer at night, so the crazed feeling of sleep deprivation and any miseries of colic have usually passed. My friend’s mom noted that it’s at this point that a couple with their first child often feels like they’re getting it. They’re loving parenthood, and it feels a good time to try for another kid. Don’t be fooled, though, the mom cautioned. Six months is the calm before the storm: crawling, teething, stinkier diapers, and the need for discipline are just around the corner, and you don’t want to go into that with first trimester fatigue and nausea.

I don’t recall what the mom advised as a better time to try to get pregnant again, but I have never forgotten her practical advice. I think of it lately, since my husband G. Grod and I are very much enjoying baby Guppy, nearly seven months old. He smiles, he laughs, he gurgles, he coos, he rolls, but he’s not quite crawling yet. We have no plans to further expand our family, but if we were on the fence, I can see how Guppy’s current beguiling ways could push us over to the other side. I’m going to enjoy this time while it’s here, and miss it when it’s gone.

As usual, one trip to the Minnesota State Fair wasn’t enough for me. My second trip was with a friend, and without kids. I was positively giddy with freedom. We visited the craft barn to see the baking, knitting and quilts; the fine arts building to see the painting, photography, and children’s book art from the Kerlan Collection; and the agriculture building to see the orchid displays. Everything was fun to see, but perhaps nothing more than the freakish whimsy of the Sock Monkey dresses, 1 and 2.

I was pleasantly reminded that the fair is not _just_ about food. Even though we live in the city, I’m suburban in my food focus at the fair, according to this article on Slate. My friend introduced me to a new favorite: corn fritters with honey butter (outside the Food Building). I also had lemonade, fried cheese curds, Thai sausage on a stick in puff pastry, 1919 root beer, a frozen mocha on a stick, mini cinnamon rolls, and mini donuts. Going once with the family and once with a friend felt like just enough State Fair time. As with blush, I suspect “just enough” is probably the perfect amount.

At the start of the year, I gave myself a book challenge–at least 50 books, with most of them from the backlog at home, instead of new purchases or library whims. At the start of the summer, I gave myself a challenge within a challenge, since I thrive so well on these arbitrary goals. I joined the forum at Amanda’s Weekly Zen, though I was too late to join the official group on her site, fantasized about a big goal, then whittled that down to a more realistic one that centered on young adult novels, and I started to read.

Between June 1 and August 31, I read 28 books. I read the twenty books on my original list, plus eight extra. I learned a few things from this summer challenge. If I set a reasonable goal, I can stick to it and keep focused. Without it, I would have gone down different reading paths. That wouldn’t have been bad, but it wouldn’t have contributed to my dual hopes of reading some of my home library and reading a lot of YA. In the end, I read twenty children’s/YA novels, and eight adult novels. I found that good children’s and YA books differ mainly from their adult counterparts in length and vocabulary. Bad YA is poorly written, or plotted, or has a contrived or unearned ending. There’s a publishing boom in YA right now, and I think the prevalence of trashy, poorly written,or even just slightly sloppy, books contributes to the incorrect perception of YA as an inferior subcategory of novels. I also learned that while it’s fun and interesting to join in different online book discussions, it takes up time and diverts me from my goal of reading more of the unread books gathering dust on my shelves.

Post summer, I’m going to cut back on the YA, and I’m going to re-commit to reading things already on my shelf. I’m also going on some of the reading tangents I wanted to this summer, like Jane Eyre-related books. At bat: re-reading Bangkok 8 by John Burdett. On deck: Bangkok Tattoo, the sequel. In the hole: Persuasion by Jane Austen. Pinch hitter: The Last of Her Kind by Sigrid Nunez.

Here is the Summer 2006 list. All have reviews listed in the 2006 Book Challenge link at right. I have starred my favorites. The two I disliked most were The Finishing School and The Perks of Being a Wallflower.

*King Dork by Frank Portman
Sense and Sensibility by Austen
Catcher in the Rye by Salinger
Scott Pilgrim, Vols. 1-3 by Bryan O’Malley
The Abbess of Crewe, The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, and The Finishing School by Muriel Sparks
*The Prop by Pete Hautman
I Am the Cheese, and We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
Tam Lin by Pamela Dean
*Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
Because of Winn Dixie, *The Tiger Rising, The Tale of Despereaux, and The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Kate DiCamillo
*Magic or Madness, and Magic Lessons by Justine Larbalestier
Baby by Patricia Maclachlan
*Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
Intuition by Allegra Goodman
Monkey Island by Paula Fox
The Perks of Being a Wallflower by Steven Chbosky
Satellite Down by Rob Thomas
Sloppy Firsts, and Second Helpings by Megan McCafferty

#52 in my book challenge for the year, and #28, the final book of my summer reading challenge, was The Miraculous Journey of Edward Tulane by Twin Cities author Kate DiCamillo. I re-read her first three novels earlier in the summer. I am pleased to have read them in order, because I see a clear progression in her work, from the bittersweet, rather slight story of a girl and her dog in Because of Winn Dixie, to the concentrated sadness tinged with darkness of The Tiger Rising, to The Tale of Despereaux, which was longer, and true to fables in its darkness and its addresses to the reader. Despereaux had several complicated characters who were neither entirely good nor bad. It went beyond sadness to show aspects of evil. The story did not end happily ever after. But it did end much more happily than it began, and with growth and increased self-knowledge for most of the characters.

Edward Tulane is DiCamillo’s saddest, darkest book yet. Like all her books, the writing is lyrical and the ending redemptive. Edward is a china rabbit and the favorite plaything of his owner. Proud and vain, he has no idea of his good circumstances until he loses them, when he goes overboard into the sea. Edward’s fortunes rise and fall, and he is found by a series of people who give him different names, and from whom he learns different lessons. The circumstances of some of his owners are terribly sad, and even worse are some of the things done to them by others. Yet what sustained me as a reader, and Edward, through the story was hope. And both Edward and I were rewarded in the end.

I admire that with each book, DiCamillo is stretching. In Edward, she created a non-sympathetic main character, who is transformed through adversity. Just as Desperaux could be read as both a story and a fable, Edward Tulane is both a story and an allegory with religious undertones. Edward’s tale is marvelously complemented by Bagram Ibatoulline’s detailed paintings and pencils; they set a tone of depressed realism different from the calculated make-believe of Desperaux. Edward Tulane is not a story for the very young, or for someone looking for a light read. It is a book that respects its readers by showing a range of human behavior and experience. Like some of the other well-written books for children I read this past summer (like I am the Cheese and We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier, Baby by Patricia MacLachlan, and Monkey Island by Paula Fox), Edward Tulane does not pretend the world is happier or less challenging than it is. But it reminds readers that happiness and meaning often are learned, not given.

Interestingly, DiCamillo has also recently written chapter books about a pig named Mercy Watson. Mercy Watson to the Rescue and Mercy Watson Goes for a Ride are easy readers that are funny, and decidedly silly. My three-year-old son Drake loves them, and we’ve read them many times. I wonder if perhaps the humor of the Mercy Watson books helped DiCamillo to counter some of the darkness required in the writing of Edward Tulane. So if a tale of suffering redeemed doesn’t sound quite right at the moment (or ever), check out the Mercy Watson books for an entirely different reading experience.

#s 50 and 51 (woo hoo! I hit my goal of 50 books) in my reading challenge for the year, and #s 26 and 27 in my summer book challenge (so I read more than half my books for the year this summer), were Megan McCafferty’s first two Jessica Darling novels, Sloppy Firsts and Second Helpings. McCafferty is most notorious lately because several sections of these books were plagiarized by Kaavya Viswanathan. I have decidedly mixed feelings about these books. Some parts I love. But other parts nagged at me, and made me feel guilty for tearing through the books at a breakneck pace, and putting off other things. (”Mom, play with cars with me.” “In a minute, honey.”)

Jessica is a smart high school girl who is devastated when her best friend moves away. In Sloppy Firsts, she tries to come to terms with this, as well as with her growing crush on bad boy Marcus Flutie. She also navigates the typical American high school obstacles like nagging parents, friends who aren’t friends, and a demeaning summer job. Second Helpings continues the story, picking up the relationship between Jessica and Marcus that ended so abruptly in the first book, and continuing the story through high school graduation.

What doesn’t work: While the first book has a satifying story arc for Jessica and her absent friend Hope, it leaves the reader completely hanging about Marcus. This is not an ending, but an open door for the sequel. The second book is not plotted as tightly as the first. Her sister coming home for her pregnancy was not explained and seemed to be a plot device, as was the commitment of her grandmother to a retirement home, which was stereotypically full of sassy, smart seniors. Jessica and Marcus, over the course of the two books, follow a predictable relationship arc: good girl and bad, experienced, older boy meet cute, tension builds, they fight about something stupid, the separation is drawn out because of misunderstanding, and they get together in the end. And while these books are shelved with adult books in a bookstore even though they are young adult novels, when Jessica finally does have sex with Marcus, the details are coyly omitted, though there has been frank talk about the sex life of others throughout both books. The device of writing monthly letters to her friend wears thin over the two books. I, like her friends in the book, just wanted her to get over Hope’s departure and move on.

What works: Jessica’s voice is strong, smart, and funny. The romance between her and Marcus may be cliche, but I liked it anyway and was glad to see them get together. Jessica grows and changes over the course of the book, most notably in relation to her parents and to some friends at school. The inclusion of a brother who died of SIDS provided good grounding for the characters. These were believeable and complex characterizations and didn’t feel gratuitous. Her acerbic observations are dead on, whether she’s analyzing herself or others, especially at a summer program for “gifted” students. Her resurrected friendship with a childhood friend, her changed friendship with a footballer, and her encounters with her crush Paul are all funny, touching, and real. There is a great deal of sharp social commentary as well on high school life.

In the end, they felt more like guilty pleasures than substantive reads. I will read the third book, but I’ll get it from the library first.

I was driving the other week and a song came on that made me vow to check the Current’s website when I got home. Of course I forgot until two days later. Then I heard the song on a commercial for the US Open, and did rather more googling than I thought I’d have to do. It’s by KT Tunstall, from Eye of the Telescope, called “Black Horse and the Cherry Tree”. Woo. Catchy as all get out.

For this week’s episode, the designers were challenged to make an outfit for an international jetsetter. The twist? The jetsetters were they! One would think that designing an outfit for her/him self wouldn’t be hard, but Crazy Vincent and Ditzy Angela had a lot of trouble. Kayne didn’t, but he should have. I agreed with the this week’s judges exactly (thumbnails of the outfits at the Bravo site): Jeffrey as winner; Michael as almost winner; Laura, Ulli, and Vincent allowed to stay; Kayne as almost loser; and Angela sent home. Yes, Jeffrey was being a confrontational jerk. But Angela let him get to her, and it sent her already wildly uneven talent into a tailspin.

Angela’s outfit made me think that it was Laura’s tailoring influence that not only helped win the Macy’s INC challenge from Episode 4, but that spilled over into Angela’s lovely Audrey Hepburn dress for the following episode. Her outfit looked like something from the junior department at Macy’s–way too many “fleurchons.”She said again and again that she wasn’t a jet setter; her outfit was certainly more Ohio than international.

Jeffrey’s meanness did not prevent him from making an outfit that fit the challenge and himself perfectly, and reminded us that his almost win (and perhaps undeserved loss) from “Waste Not, Want Not” was not a fluke, despite the ugliness of the dress he made for Angela’s mom last episode. Don’t get me wrong. I agree he’s being an ass, though I don’t despise him as much or as hilariously as Midwestgrrl, but I still thought this outfit and the recycled dress were spot on.

Michael Knight revealed he’d worked as a model. He is so talented and seems to be such a decent guy I feel bad noting that he has terrible teeth. Perhaps if he wins this thing, which he seems on track to do, he’ll take care of his mom, and then find a good dentist.

Laura now looks pregnant, and I have to wonder how a 42 year old woman in her first trimester (likely exhausted and nauseated) will shoulder the early mornings and long hours. If it were me, I’d certainly cave, but she’s clearly made of sterner stuff. Her biscuit-colored dress, while lovely, and more flow-y than what she has done before, made her look a little monochrome with all that pale skin. And, as she noted, 4 inch heels aren’t ideal for jet setting.

Vincent played it safe and got lucky. Kayne didn’t play it safe, but got lucky anyway. The judges sent him a clear message that his stuff is tacky, and he better shape up if he wants to stick around. As Manolo the Shoe Blogger notes, the problem wasn’t that he looked like Elvis, it’s that he looked like cheap Elvis.

The judges warned Ulli that they want to see if she can do something different from her usual flowing mix of patterns. I’d thought her a shoo-in for the final three, but now I have my doubts. Before this episode, I thought it would be Michael, Ulli, and Kayne. Now I’m wondering if it could be Michael, Laura, and Jeffrey. In any case, I don’t think Vincent is going to last much longer.

G. Grod and I did our very first visit to the fair on our own as a family. Going with Drake and Guppy isn’t that much more challenging than going with Drake by himself, as we did last year. As usual, we eschewed traditional fair activities for my favorite one: eating. I tried several new foods, and sought out some old favorites. My wish list was, not surprisingly, too ambitious, but we did eat a variety of different things.

We began with breakfast at the Blue Moon Diner, near the Loop entrance. We had a strawberry waffle, sausage egg strata, and pull-apart cinnamon rolls. The latter were supposed to be gooey, but were instead overbaked, so crunchy but still tasty. This was a quite decent breakfast, and the diner showed The Andy Griffith Show and Three Stooges videos on a big screen in its eat-in area. This was good if you are looking for fair food with substance.

Next was Tom Thumb mini donuts followed by roast corn on the cob. Drake wasn’t that excited by the corn this time, but he loved the donuts. Drake likes to pat Guppy’s head, and G. Grod and I were amused to find patches of donut sugar on Guppy’s head. We next headed to the Food Building for fried cheese curds. G. Grod was wrangling Drake and collecting the curds when Drake twisted the wrong way, and the curds went flying. Drake found this hilarious, and the cheese curd people kindly gave us a replacement. I tried the Spiral Chips at Sonny’s, but they were only OK, and in typical fair fashion, they were expensive ($5) with a portion much too big for just two adults. Outside the Food Building we got a cup of my favorite root beer, 1919, which was sweet, herbal, and just bubbly enough. Drake had a hard time sharing it with me, but I persevered. G. Grod got a Red Bull push up, and then he and I shared a frozen mocha on a stick, my new favorite item.

Heading north, we stopped at Giggles and tried the porcupine meatballs of elk meat mixed with wild rice, in portobello mushroom gravy over mashed potatoes. These were good, but unseasonally heavy for the summer weather. Like breakfast at Blue Moon, the choices at Giggles were excellent quality for fair food, and good quality in general. They’re more like real food than fair food, so better for those who are staying for an entire day, or not looking to try a lot of different foods.

Drake surprised us by saying yes to a hot dog on a stick, so we got him a beef and wild rice corn dog in the food building, but he only wanted to lick the ketchup off, as if it were a condiment lollipop. The three of us then shared a cone of Sweet Martha’s cookies and a cup of milk before heading to the parking lot. At the car, we were boxed in by marching bands. Drake listened and danced in delight for quite some time, then wanted to go dance WITH the band, and was reluctant to go home. Even after a long, hot morning and lots of food, he continued his nap strike, which has been going on for about 2 weeks. It was a beautiful day, both boys enjoyed the trip, and we had some wonderful food, though, so the trip was certainly a success.

Way back, pre-kids, I tried to do the bulk of my grooming the same way I tried to do laundry and other chores: once a week. I’d reserve one day, usually Sunday, for a long shower, exfoliation, shaving, plucking, clipping and even sometimes finger- and toe-nail painting.

Those days are gone. Now I feel lucky if I get a medium length shower twice a week, and anything else is gravy. The fatigue of parenting plus the additional work makes it harder to muster the energy for maintenance work: ah, I’ll just get dirty again, why bother? Yet ever-increasing levels of filth (on me, rarely the kids) weigh upon my psyche. They’re like a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Showering, then has become another of the several things (like writing and naps) that I have learned to shove to the top of the list. Because there’s not much that kills the simple pleasure of a shower like knowing Drake has the run of the house, or listening to the escalating screams of Guppy, who decides that shower time is EXACTLY when he wants to be held, or fed, or whatever.

And all that other stuff (shaving, et. al) just has to get worked into the crevices, like most things these days.

Once again I find myself at the end of August, with the new TV season about to begin, without the bible of the Entertainment Weekly fall TV issue in hand. I hope to correct this, soon. In the meantime, though, I’ll remind you that Bones starts this Wednesday. The mysteries are OK, but the chemistry and banter between David Boreanaz and Emily Deschanel is great, as is the comic relief of the supporting cast.

Next week House, M.D. returns. If you can’t wait, check out Hugh Laurie with his native accent as a dim, goofy optimist, as Bertie Wooster in Jeeves and Wooster, and as George in Blackadder.

Our family will be visiting the Minnesota State Fair this week. Other families go for the rides, or the exhibits. I go for the food. A kind friend this week commented that I was passionate about food. Some might say obsessed. Last year’s visit found me not as prepared as I would have liked to be. Here is this year’s food plan. I’m not sure if it’s even possible to eat all these things in one day. But I’m going to try.

Old Favorites:

Food Building cheese curds
World’s Best french fries
roast corn
Sweet Martha’s chocolate chip cookies
Tom Thumb mini donuts
1919 root beer

Rick Nelson’s Best of 2005

- Frozen Mocha on a Stick (Minnesota Farmers Union Coffee Shop, Dan Patch Avenue at Cosgrove Street).
- Mini cinnamon rolls (Cinni Smiths, Murphy Avenue at Cooper Street).
- Sorbet in hollowed-out fruit (Key Lime Pie Bar, Cooper Street at the Skyride).
- Spiral Chips (Sonny’s Spiral Chips & Sandwiches, Food Building).
- Puff Daddy on a Stick (Sausage Sister & Me, Food Building).
- Smoked salmon wrap (Giggles’ Campfire Grill, Cooper Street at Lee Avenue).

Rick Nelson’s Best of 2006

- Boatload of Chicken Sticks and porcupine meatballs, Giggles’ Campfire Grill, Cooper St. at Lee Av.
- Chocolate-covered marshmallows, Ultimate Confections, Grandstand
- Breakfast, Blue Moon Dine-In Theater, Carnes Av. and Chambers St.
- Wild rice corn dogs, Minnesota Wild Rice, Food Building

And, for the husband:

- Red Bull Push-ups, Axel’s, Food Building, southeast corner

After observing my son Drake at his three-year checkup, our doctor commented “I see he has an oppositional personality.” He recommended a book, which I got from the library and have yet to read. My husband and I were talking about the oppositional thing yesterday. Drake was in the other room.

“Yeah,” I said. “He’d probably claim that the sun wasn’t shining on a day like today.” (The weather was clear and beautiful.)

Drake came running into the room. “The sun is NOT shining,” he stated.

I laughed. “Yes, honey, it is.”

“NO, it is NOT!”

Meaningful glance exchanged between parents.

Today we were walking home from church. The closer we got, the more reluctant Drake became. “Let’s cross the street to our house,” I coaxed.

“It’s NOT our house.” he shouted.

“Um, yes it is. That’s our house, right there, across the street. Let’s go to our house.”

But Drake was adamant. “That’s NOT our house!”

I tried a different tack. “OK, Drake, let’s go to our house. Which house is our house?”

He pointed vaguely up the street. “That guy’s house. I want to go to that guy’s house, Mom.”

I reminded him. “But if we go to that guy’s house, we can’t ring the doorbell. Why don’t we cross the street and ring the doorbell?”

That was part of what finally worked. Drake likes to push buttons, in more ways than one.

or, Why I Shouldn’t Ask for Books Before I Read Them. Drake’s third birthday was last weekend. I told his grandparents that he would enjoy the new Olivia book by Ian Falconer and the new Lilly book by Kevin Henkes. I thought these were sure things. In one way, they were. Drake loves them both. I, however, only love Lilly’s Big Day.

Don’t get me wrong. Olivia Forms a Band has many of the elements that make our previous favorites, Olivia and Olivia Saves the Circus, so wonderful: the pencil drawings, the imaginative inclusion of real images, the humor, the spare use of color. But this time I found some of the photorealism a little creepy when Olivia puts on lipstick and sports a coquettish smile full of teeth. Of course, Drake loves these pages and wants to linger over them. Also, I didn’t enjoy the pages that didn’t move the story forward (the first two about red socks and the lipstick pages) and I found the ending predictable. This is a book I’m happy to own, but I would be just as happy to return it to the library, as we did with Olivia’s third adventure, Olivia and the Missing Toy.

Lilly’s Big Day, though, made me laugh. I don’t enjoy all of the Henkes mouse books. I think Lilly is too mean in Julius, Baby of the World, and I was appalled by Wendell’s behavior in A Weekend with Wendell. Lilly’s Big Day, though, reminded me pleasantly of my favorite, Lilly’s Purple Plastic Purse. It has a finely balanced story, with some nice in-jokes for the adult reader. Lilly’s teacher Mr. Slinger is getting married. She wants to be a flower girl, but he’s already asked his niece. Lilly is spirited and charming, and the ending was not predictable. While the book isn’t preachy, Lilly, unlike Olivia, learns something about herself by the end.

I am reminded yet again that the library, not the bookstore, is where I should browse for books.

The designers were challenged to make something for the everyday woman, and their mothers or sisters were brought in. The designers, though, had to pick someone else’s relative as their model, and did it in one of those horrid selection events where one person ends up picked last, like the worst grade-school gym class ever. With family came revelations: Laura is pregnant with #6; Jeffrey is a recovering alcoholic according to his mother, but was a street-living junkie by his own admission (kind of a chasm of James-Frey-ish ambiguity between the two, no?); and Kayne was really fat as a kid.

Manolo the Shoe Blogger loved Joan Kors as a guest judge, and reminds fans to visit the Blogging Project Runway site. The gals at Everybody Loves Saturday Night were universally hating Jeffrey.

Vincent won. While the judges lauded the fit, I thought the fit neither great nor flattering, though Vincent’s design was attractive and age-appropriate. Uli’s outfit was both beautiful and better suited to her model, Kayne’s mother.

Robert was eliminated, finally. Tattoo Neck Jeffrey came awfully close, and his interactions with poor Ohio Angela’s mom were hard to watch. I thought they kind of ganged up on him, though, by asking her what she felt without him there, and asking her the only open-ended question at the end. It also became clear that at least some of his attitude stems from insecurity and defensiveness, not innate mean-spiritedness. Some might argue convincingly that Jeffrey’s was as bad as Robert’s. Both were unfortunate, but Jeffrey at least tried to infuse some style. Angela was also called onto the loser’s carpet. Her all-over-the-place talent was on the down side for this show. She should have done a variation on her chic, structured Audrey Hepburn design of two weeks ago. Instead, she committed the same fringe faux pas as departed Bradley for a shapeless black outfit that did Laura’s mom no favors.

A question from our audience: why didn’t the designers with the lusher models show some cleavage?

Favorite moment: when Vincent says there’s something European about Uli’s mom’s style. Vincent, she’s FROM Europe. Vincent seems to exist in a separate reality from the rest of us, doesn’t he?

Did you know if you kill a centipede, and some of the legs fall off from the body, they keep wriggling for a LONG time? This is especially creepy if there’s more than one pile of them. Drake was with me, so I had to be all “brave mommy killing the bug” but I was shuddering inside.

It’s either the sound of silence, or the sound of me sucking.

I’m feeling a little bitter today. I applied for an annual writing mentorship earlier this spring, one I applied to a few years ago, and heard nothing back. This time, I felt I had a strong manuscript and application. I knew the competition was difficult. I didn’t expect to win, but I knew they recognized many writers in each category. The winners were just announced, though, and I didn’t make the list of four winners, two finalists, or twelve honorable mentions. There were 90 applicants; 18 were recognized. So my writing and manuscript (again, even after much work) weren’t deemed worthy of recognition, and weren’t in the top 20%.

While this is discouraging news, there are two possible responses. One is to take it personally and give up. The other is to humbly admit that I still need to work on my writing, and get to it.

Guess which one I’m picking.