Girl Detective

A couple weeks ago I had some friends over. Looking at our wedding picture, one woman gushed that I was so lucky to have a husband who was so much in love with me.

I paused. “Huh,” I said. “That makes me feel really guilty for how enraged I got at him this morning for not stacking the measuring cups when he put them away.”

When we travelled the other week, Drake refused to sit in his wheeled car seat, and instead insisted on pushing it himself. It was hard for him to steer, so he made very slow progress. Drake and G. Grod were the last people off the plane, and I’d been waiting, with Guppy in the sling and a heavy backpack, for some time. Both G. Grod and I were grouchy and tired, and Drake had screamed for a lot of the flight. But a guy standing next to me while I waited looked down the tunnel, and saw Drake coming up pushing his own car seat. “That’s so awesome,” he laughed. My mindset suddenly shifted. “You’re right,” I agreed.

I saw my husband and my kid through other people’s eyes. It didn’t make me a better, more aware person. But the occasional reminder helps prevent me from becoming a worse one.

Amanda’s Weekly Zen, (whose site I found via Pages Turned) put out a summer reading challenge. It’s too late to sign up (I missed it, too) but there’s a forum to talk about summer reading challenges. You set your own challenge, and then post about what you’re reading and what progress you’re making.

Initially, I thought I wasn’t interested in a summer challenge, since I already have my fifty book goal for the year, of which I want at least 25% to be books I’ve owned for over a year but haven’t yet read. (Is that as overly complicated to understand as it was to write?) But when I thought about what I WANTED to read, I was able to clarify a reading project that’s been bubbling for a while, but which I’ve tried to dismiss, since it would involve way more library books than sitting-on-the-shelf-at-home books. Once it broke into my consciousnes, though, I could no longer deny it. I want to do a young-adult centered reading program for the summer. I want to read some of the classics that I missed the first time ’round. As both a fan and a writer of YA fiction, I think it’s remiss of me not to have read The Chocolate War, for example. I also want to read some of the more recently released YA titles that I’ve put off this year in my attempt to be less of a slave to the libarary reserve system when I have so many deserving books that I’ve purchased but not yet read.

I have a couple YA titles on my home shelves, both unread and to re-read, so I think this can fit into my overall challenge for the year. I’ll have to detour a few times since I belong to a book group, but overall, I’d like to make my summer challenge YA-centric.

Also, a reading group hosted by Bookworm (also found at Pages Turned) caught my interest. There’s going to be a discussion of the late Muriel Sparks’s The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie at the end of this month, as well as discussion of her other works. I very much enjoyed The Driver’s Seat last year, so I may add this to the summer list as well.

Though I enjoyed neither, I’m harking back to high-school gym class and baseball to help me manage my to-read list. I distrust myself to commit to any more than three books at a time (I doubt I can even be held to those), but I think this model will help me keep me on track a little better, especially because it includes a fudge factor.

At Bat: What I’m currently reading
On Deck: The very next book to be read
In the Hole: The book after that
Pinch Hitter: The book that jumps in the queue, for some very good reason or other

Current lineup is

At Bat: King Dork by Frank Portman
On Deck: Catcher in the Rye by Salinger
In the Hole: Sense and Sensibility by Austen
Pinch Hitter: Scott Pilgrim, Vol. 3 by Bryan O’Malley

I am remiss in that it has taken me so long to write a follow up to my original post on Grups, or grown ups who have kids and dress and act young.

My friend Blogenheimer astutely pointed out that New York magazine has a habit of running articles that purport to detail a trend, but that are actually just vague, and whose only references are friends of the author’s. His wife Queenie pointed out, also astutely, that most of the people in the Grups article didn’t sound very nice.

I was quick to identify with the article, but think that Mr. and Mrs. Blogenheimer’s points are well-taken. In fact, the urge to identify with the article reminded me of the gazillion online quizzes that will tell you what book you are, what personality your blog is, and on and on. These things, as the Grups article was, are entertaining. They are not meant, though, to stand in for the complex totality of a person, and should not be mistaken for anything scientific or even very meaningful. I want to apologize, then for jumping on the Grups bandwagon. I’m off it now.

Some friends started a CD of the month club–each month, one family makes a mix CD and sends it to the other members. My 20th year high school reunion is this summer, so for our mix I decided I wanted songs from 1982 to 1986. I soon realized we didn’t have our favorite 80s albums on CD. We had them on vinyl or cassette; or we had a greatest hits CD, which often didn’t include the less popular tracks.

I began to doubt. Was there a need for an 80s mix CD? Between VH1 and radio, the 80s have been flogged to death. Can there be nostalgia for music that’s played all the time? How should I limit the songs? Did I want stuff I listened to then, or stuff I learned to like later?

I obsessed as nerdishly as I could with a new baby, but as our month wore on (and on, and ended) decisions had to be made. I used CDs we owned or could borrow quickly, started with songs I listened to then that I’m not ashamed to listen to now, and picked tracks not in heavy rotation now. G. Grod decided to forgo (or at least delay) a CD of songs I learned to like later. Here was the final tracklist. My sister Sydney helped with some of the track selections; I also took some inspiration from my friend Rock Hack’s birthday list.

1. 1999 - Prince [1999] (1983)

2. Would I Lie to You? - Eurythmics [Be Yourself Tonight] (1985)

3. Stay Up Late - Talking Heads. [Little Creatures] (1983)

4. Black Coffee in Bed - Squeeze [Sweets from a Stranger] (1982)

5. Twisting by the Pool - Dire Straits [ExtendedancEP] (1982)

6. Driver 8 - R.E.M. [Fables of the Reconstruction] (1985)

7. Kiss Off - Violent Femmes [Violent Femmes] (1982)

8. Borderline - Madonna [Madonna] (1983)

9. King of Pain - The Police [Synchronicity] (1983)

10. Foolin’ - Def Leppard [Pyromania] (1983)

11. Don’t Change - INXS [Shabooh Shoobah] (1982)

12. More Than This - Roxy Music [Avalon] (1982)

13. Slave to Love - Bryan Ferry [Boys and Girls] (1985)

14. Blue Jean - David Bowie [Tonight] (1984)

15. Love My Way - The Psychedelic Furs [Forever Now] (1982)

16. Save it for Later - English Beat [Special Beat Service] (1983)

17. Bad - U2 [The Unforgettable Fire] (1984)

18. The Chauffeur - Duran Duran [Rio] (1982)

I read a recommendation for the cookbook Sunday Suppers at Lucques that emphasized its menus based on seasonal produce, so I reserved it from the library. I find cookbooks some of the best things to check out of a library, since they make poor impulse buys at the bookstore. I don’t know if a cookbook’s any good till I’ve tried a few recipes, and by that time it’s usually spattered and unreturnable.

Sunday Suppers is a heavy, gorgeous book with lots of photos, and delicious sounding menus. But if I’d bothered to research the book even a little, I would have discovered how completely wrong it is for me right now.

Read through the recipe to find out what needs to be done before you begin cooking. Often there are onions to be chopped, spices to be toasted and ground, garlic to be minced, flour to be measured, and herbs to be picked.

This book is for someone who wants to devote time to the process of cooking. I’m all for the type of seasonal, local, organic ingredients it recommends. The food sounds wonderful, but it’s way down Maslow’s hierarchy of needs from where I am with two small kids.

Cutting baby finger and toe nails is hard. I have to wait till Guppy is asleep, and not care if I wake him, which is hardly ever the case. But I just trimmed his nails on Friday, and I used the regular scissors, not even the safety ones. So why does he look like he’s been in a monkey knife fight today?

#24 in my book challenge for the year was The Memory Artists by Jeffrey Moore. This is not an easy book to summarize succinctly. The main character is Noel, a synesthete and hypermnesiac. His mother, who suffers from Alzheimer’s, and three friends are the other neurological misfits who surround him. The entire story is supposedly written by a third party (Moore) and edited by a fictional neurologist, Emile Vorta, whose self-congratulatory views are related through an often hilarious set of endnotes. The narrative switches between first-person diary entries and third person. The font switches to emphasize this, though I don’t think the visual cue is necessary, except in the few instances that it happens within one chapter. One chapter is a discussion between Noel and another character about the details of synesthesia. The information is necessary, but I find dialogue an awkward way to convey a lot of factual information. The neurological conditions are fascinating, as are the insights into Noel’s kaleidoscopic mindworks. The humor is clever and dark. The structure of the book is complex but serves the story. The mother’s decline, told by Noel and though her own diary, is tragic. I found all the characters engaging, but I felt the males were more thickly characterized than the females. But the strength of this novel lies most in the emotional interactions of its characters. The characters all cared about, and for, each other. That made it easy to care about them, and their fascinating stories.

We took our first plane trip as a family of four last weekend. I took 3-month-old Guppy in the sling, while my husband G. Grod took nearly three-year-old Drake in his car seat on wheels. It had been several months since Drake flew. A few things had changed. One, he didn’t want to remain in the wheeled car seat, and he wanted to steer it himself through the airport. Unsurprisingly, we didn’t make swift progress that way. Two, he was very excited to be on the plane, though he looked somewhat frightened as we left the ground the first time. Once we were airborne, though, he was very excited, laughing and saying “whee!” with great delight, even for our descent through lightning clouds and turbulence that had me giving him a rictus grin and clutching my arm rest. The flight home was less felicitous. Not only did we have the delays as Drake navigated his own seat to our gate, but he melted down in the middle of the flight, screaming so loud and continuously that people halfway up the plane kept turning around with WTF looks on their faces. I couldn’t help, because Guppy and I were not even in the same row, but G. Grod (and some of the Tylenol I produced from my well-stocked new diaper bag) got Drake somewhat calmed until the descent, when the screaming re-commenced until landing. Everyone was the worse for wear after that flight. Guppy was his usual, Buddha-like self. I nursed him discreetly in the sling, for takeoff and descent, to help his ears. He cried a little on the flight out, and not at all on the flight home.

I’m taking both boys on a flight by myself in a few weeks. I’ll avail myself of some of the tips from this helpful article. Even though G. Grod and I ran a man-to-man defense this trip, we still had difficulty. By myself, I’m going to have to go to zone. I only hope Drake has a good day. I will also not hesitate to rely on, ask for, or perhaps even demand, some kindness of strangers.

Also, as un-PC as it is, I think it might be helpful to get this.

When Drake was a baby, he cried a lot. I was very frustrated at baby books, articles and other parents who said that after a few weeks, I would learn what his cries meant. I never did get that kind of spidey-sense. I took my best guess, and spent a lot of time longing for him to talk, so that he could TELL me what he was crying about. Now that he’s been verbal for over a year, I see how misguided I was. When Drake is upset, he has a hard time using words. Further, he doesn’t yet seem to understand cause and effect, so “why are you crying?” doesn’t compute. Finally, when he does answer, it doesn’t always make sense. Does “bug in the air conditioner” mean he saw one, he dreamed one, or that he’s afraid it might happen? And might his extreme response be due to illness, even if he says he feels OK?

I wish I could go back in time and tell my former self I was wasting my time wishing. My almost-three-year-old boy is an unreliable narrator.

I’m afraid in my fatigue fog of last night I may have made my two-page goal sound somewhat easier to achieve than it actually is. The good thing about two pages is ….

Please, excuse me while I go up and comfort Guppy for the–wait, wait, he’s stopped crying.

I just finished my two pages. They were first-draft ugly, and probably would be considerably shorter if I applied any editorial effort at all. If they come across as disjointed, it’s likely due to the three or more times I ran up two flights of stairs from our basement (current writing haven) to Guppy’s bassinet to re-insert his Nuk and pat his tummy to get him back to his nap.

Yesterday was even more of a challenge. Drake woke screaming, so loud and so long that he eventually woke Guppy down the hall, who added his voice to Drake’s. I tried to calm Guppy and learn what it was that had upset Drake. Over the course of 45 minutes, I administed some Motrin, nursed the baby, held both boys on my lap to read books, and convinced Drake to get back in bed to finish his nap. Neither boy was able to go back to sleep, but they were able to stay quiet for a total of about fifteen minutes within thirty so that I could finish my two pages.

The good thing about writing two pages is that they’re short enough to withstand numerous interruptions, and can likely be completed even if one or both boys has trouble during naptime.

Children’s author and Newbery Award winner Kate DiCamillo used to say at readings that for years, she called herself a writer but didn’t write. When she finally got serious about it, she set herself a two-page-a-day goal, and has been doing that, with eventual great success, ever since.

My own fiction writing habit has tended to follow a feast-or-famine pattern. It is only recently, in the months following the birth of my second child, that I realized I had to set a small, realistic goal (oh, Freud, why do I always type it as “gaol”?) to make any progress, post-Guppy. I borrowed Kate’s 2-page-a-day idea. And it’s working.

On many days I have just enough time while the boys nap to write two pages and a quick blog entry. Some days I even write–gasp!–three pages. I’m making progress, and the confidence I’ve gotten as the page numbers pile up is very heartening in my current state of sleep deprivation.

Of course, the house is a mess, and there are piles of things everywhere. But I’m writing. I’m also proving what I’ve found in the past, which is that writing begets more writing. I’m at no loss for things to post about on the blog, and my current draft of novel #2 is coming along nicely in its 2-page increments.

This draft is my third start of novel #2. The first draft and first start was during NaNoWriMo 2004. I let it sit till I felt ready to send out novel #1 to editors, then picked it back up. My writing group and I agreed that parts of it had potential, but it wasn’t a sequel to #1. I started again, trying it from the point of view of a new character. It still didn’t feel right until I introduced a second voice, then a third and a fourth. Now I’ve got four characters telling the story, and I feel a fifth is on the way. Parts of my original draft are salvageable, but most of the current draft is new. Right now that feels fun and exciting, not like work, so I’m pretty sure this draft is heading in the right direction at last.

#23 in my book challenge for the year was The Thin Place by Kathryn Davis. This was a complex, challenging and disturbing book. Set in the New England town of Varennes, its omniscient point of view shifts among characters, animals, and sort of wide-focus panning of history. The prose defies a quick reading. The characters are beautifully drawn, which is suprising given the number of them. I cared about many of them, which is why I found the novel so troubling. In general, good things did not happen. I love a good redemptive ending. This novel not only didn’t have one, but also suggested that redemption may be only lucky accident.

One thing that bothered me in this novel that had so much going on was an apparent mistake. One character at a dinner early on says, “Help yourself to some of Mrs. Banner’s mashed potatoes, girls.” (p. 28) but on the next page, the omniscient narrator states “The room smelled like potatoes and varnish and baby powder, though they weren’t having potatoes but Le Sueur canned peas…” This novel is juggling so much that I needed to feel the author was in complete control. This passage made me doubt it early on, though nothing else in the book did.

Overall, though, the book was provocative, thoughtful, dark, and funny, like this passage I particularly liked:

The minds of twelve-year-old girls are wound round and round with golden chains, padlocked shut, and the key tossed out the car window on the way to the fast-food restaurant. This is probably a good thing, since what they keep in there isn’t always very nice. Human sacrifices, cockeyed sexual advantures both sadistic and masochistic, also kitties with balls of yarn and puppies chewing on slippers and soft pink babies and disembowelings. (p. 59)

The New York Times recently did a stupid list of books, one that purported to discover the best American novels of the past 25 years. The list was predictable and boring, as was the pseudo-controversy it inpired, as other lists have done.

I find canon lists boring because I’m more interested in how individuals I like respond to books, emotionally or intellectually. And while some books are most certainly good, many of those aren’t actually enjoyable. Take Beloved, for example, the novel that won the top spot. A great novel. But so wrenching and awful that it scared the bejesus out of me. It’s not one I press on friends who are looking for a good read.

There are two questions I find useful when I ask people about books. One, what books have you read that you both admired AND enjoyed? And two, what was a watershed book for you, one that might not be a so-called great book, but that had an important role in your life?

The latter question was one asked by The Guardian in this article from last month, which discusses differences between typical watershed novels for men and women. I have read very few of the New York Times list, but most of the women’s watershed novels listed, and a few of the men’s as well.

There is one book that answers both of my questions: Possession by A.S. Byatt. I admired it, I enjoyed it, and it was a watershed novel (touched on previously here).

What do you think? Are lists worthwhile? Did you like the NYT list? What are books you admire and enjoy? What are your watershed books, and were they listed in the Guardian’s article?

Lately Drake insists that every book is what he calls a song book–one that contains something that can be sung. Some of his regular books fall into this category, like Sandra Boynton’s Snoozers, and They Might Be Giants Bed, Bed, Bed. Now, though, he’ll pick up my copy of Kathryn Davis’s The Thin Place, open it and sing Frere Jacques. He’ll pick up G. Grod’s book on Texas h01d-em p0ker (trying to avoid increasing my spam hits) and start singing along, pointing to the pictures of cards as if he’s pointing to musical notes in a hymnal. He’s also continuing to sing entire songs by himself. Interestingly, though, he likes to be sung to, but refuses to sing along, either when I sing to him, or in music class. I think he might be shaping up to be a diva.

Seventy-four percent of the women passengers survived the [Titanic], while 80 percent of the men perished. Why? Because the men followed the principle “women and children first.”

I read this book review of Masculinity, a book by Harvey Mansfield (link from Arts and Letters Daily), and was surprised at how not offended I was. Had I been on the Titanic with my two kids, I would not have been gallant; I would have taken a seat on a lifeboat, and appreciated those who let me. Titanic example aside, I think Mansfield’s argument for masculinity as presented in the review is a compelling one. Yes, I’m certain that there are countless individuals who don’t conform to the norm. But I bet they don’t make a dent in the majority who do. I gave up the illusion a long time ago that my husband would care as much about the house as I do. And one of the main reasons I consider schooling my children myself is that I don’t see conventional schools that can accomodate the energy of boys. (Hey, I can barely do so most days.) I especially like Mansfield’s idea of a public/private split. That publicly, we strive for equality in the sexes, but at home we embrace what differences come naturally. Like Nietzsche, whom Mansfield quotes, the book sounds like it is problematic, and its arguments dangerous in the wrong hands. Yet his un-PC arguments sound so well-grounded and reasonable that this feminist was provoked without being pissed off.

I have grown tired of sarcastic humor. It’s a given in much of the blogosphere, but I wish authors would rely on other methods. They could even–gasp!–not try to be funny, and instead write in a straightforward manner. I’m not referring to the Onion/McSweeney’s et. al. but rather to the type of short, factual posts that I sometimes have to re-read in order to glean the information buried in the snark. Perhaps I’m impatient and befuddled from lack of sleep, but I’m increasingly annoyed by what I perceive as adolescent posturing. (Sorry, no links. The sites I’m thinking of are ones I like, in spite of the bitchiness.)

Drake, like many boys his age, loves cars. While I never set out to teach him the names and brands of cars, he asked, we answered, and he learned. (Quick parenting aside–I never know what he’ll pick up, and what he’ll ignore. It’s an awesome lesson in how brains work individually. I’ll try to remember that the next time I’m fretting about potty-learning.)

The first few cars he learned were distinctive looking–Beetle Bugs and PT Cruisers. Lately, though, he’s able to identify cars by their logos. The first type he learned was Mercedes–”a Y car, Mom.” “Uh, yeah, kind of.” Next were Volkswagens, which he initially called W cars. He calls Pontiacs triangle cars, and he learned that H cars were Hondas.

Last week we were walking when he started talking agitatedly. “The H is falling! The H is falling, Mom!”

I backed up a few steps to take a look at the car we’d just passed. It was a Hyundai.

#22 in my book challenge for this year was My Sister’s Continent by Gina Frangello, a recommendation from Blog of a Bookslut. I nearly stopped reading at page 23 because of writing issues, but a friend said it was worth it, so I continued and am glad I did.

I’ll cover the writing issues first, because most of them are technical issues. Perhaps they’re matters of taste, but they were pervasive enough to repeatedly interrupt my progress through the book. There were overwritten sentences, like “Her hair smelled cold like Christmas.” There were passages of unwieldy dialogue. The framing device for the novel is clumsy. It is supposed to be a re-writing of one twin’s psychological case study to include the perspectives of both twins. This leads to a thoroughly wacked point of view. It’s told in first person by one twin who includes her sister’s experiences in third person (both in near past and in flashback), but occasionally goes into second person to address her shrink, the author of the original case study. It begins and ends with diatribes against the shrink that felt unearned, because the shrink sessions were such a small part of the overall narrative.

In spite of my problems with writing and structure, I really liked the book. It is a contemporary re-telling of Freud’s Dora case, and is filled with complex, interesting characters. There’s dysfunction, illness, mystery and a lot of dark, messy sex. There’s some Atwood-ian ambiguity at the end, leaving the reader to decide what (and whom) to believe. Kirby, the narrator, goes through a believable and wrenching transformation. Her sister Kendra, the absent twin, seems to be self-destructing, though things are not as simple as they might appear. Frangello puts some intricate twists right through to the end. Though Kirby asserts that it is both their stories, ultimately Kendra is the one I cared most about.

A friend who reads parenting books (I don’t) told me recently about a tendency to avoid discussing emotions with boys. The next time I read with Drake, George and Martha Round and Round by the late, great James Marshall, I pointed to a picture of George looking happy, and asked Drew what George looked like. Silence. I asked, “Does George look happy?” “No.” Further silence. “Well, Drake, what does George look like?” A pause. “Good!”

OK, I thought, “good” is close enough. Then I pointed out a picture of Martha looking unhappy, and asked Drake what she might be feeling. Silence. Then, “Does she look unhappy?” “No.” “What does Martha look like?” A pause. “Cranky!”

Later in the book when one of the characters had their eyes closed, Drake pointed to it and said “Sleeping!” (of course, with his lisp it was more like “Fweeping”)

Further reading of books has only reinforced these answers. According to Drake, there are two emotions: Good and Cranky. And if someone has their eyes closed, they’re Asleep.

You know, it’s not a bad world view.