Girl Detective

Unless, of course, they don’t. Friday night I had what seemed very much like a gall bladder attack, after indulging in the Modern’s famous pot roast, which includes fork-tender meat, garlic mashed potatoes, melting carrots and veggies, all topped with a dollop of horseradish sour cream. Our family is pretty familiar with gall bladder symptoms, since G. Grod had them on and off for years before having his gall bladder removed earlier this year. Fortunately I had a prenatal checkup already scheduled for this week. When I described symptoms and said that this was the second time this had occurred during the pregnancy (the first at about 12 weeks), I was swiftly given more blood tests and signed up for a gall bladder ultrasound.

The good news is that I received an all clear–none of the tests showed anything to be concerned about. The bad news is that no one knows why I have had two episodes in 8 weeks that seem so gall-bladder-y. The best guess is a virus. I am worried, because I feel as if I’m waiting for a shoe to drop, wondering if I’ll have another episode. I am relieved, though, since I had lurid visions of having to undergo the same surgery that G. did, only at 20+ weeks pregnant.

In the meantime, I’ll follow the usual pregnancy advice to eat several small meals a day. I’ll also avoid especially rich or fatty foods, at least at night. Alas, no more post-dinner ice cream. I’ll have to fit it in after lunch, I guess.

#49 in my movie challenge for the year, Serenity, written and directed by Joss Whedon, was a movie that I got to see IN a movie theater and WITH my husband! A friend watched Drake while we went out to celebrate our anniversary with dinner and a movie. We were reminded that trying to squeeze in dinner and a movie is a challenge, and one that usually makes both events a little less enjoyable. This was true even before we had a child. The timing of movies is such that unless we can make an earlyish show and go to dinner afterward, we have to rush through dinner and off to the movie. Doing one or the other generally ensures that the experience can be savored at a more leisurely pace.

I was unable to make a reservation at my first choice of restaurant, and they had no walk-in tables or room at the bar when we arrived just after 6 p.m. We went across the street to the restaurant we used to frequent when we lived downtown, and were effusively greeted by our favorite waiter. We shared a savory wild mushroom and pistachio pate, served with cornichons, spicy mustard, cranberry chutney and toast. Then I had the sozai plate, a savory mixture of organic brown rice, natto miso, beans, steamed broccoli, arame sea vegetable, marinated tofu, daikon pickle, red cabbage salad and baked yams. G. Grod opted for the chicken with mole verde sauce and salad with prickly pear dressing. I hoped to try the cardamom and something rice pudding that I heard the server mention at an adjacent table, but in order to make our movie, we had to skip dessert.

But back to the movie. Serenity was good fun. It is both a continuation of Whedon’s cancelled television series Firefly, as well as a stand-alone ship-based sci-fi movie. Serenity is a sci-fi B movie at its zenith, with good effects, good production, and good writing. I think one would err, though, to consider it as an A movie, and that’s why I think some of the reviews have been middling. This is a movie that is too good for TV, but still solidly good enough for the movies, though it’s not high art. It’s swashbuckling entertainment, and worth seeing on the big screen.

#77 in my book challenge for the year, Snap is a children’s novel for grades five to eight, but I found nothing childish about it. McGhee’s usual lovely prose and complex characters were present, as was the town of Sterns in the Adirondack mountains. It is a profound pleasure to visit Sterns in McGhee’s books, even if the stories are so often sad.

Snap is narrated by Edwina, an almost seventh grader who goes by Eddie. She wears rubber bands around her wrist to try and tame bad habits. Her best friend Sally’s grandmother and caretaker, Willie, falls ill, and both Eddie and Sally must try to deal with their sadness. This is a bittersweet, short book that is profoundly respectful of its young readers. It does not pretend that loss and complicated families are any easier than they are.

#76 in my book challenge for the year, Invisible is a teen-fiction novel by Minnesotan Pete Hautman, who will be appearing at the Twin Cities Book Fest on October 15. Hautman’s previous book, Godless, won the National Book Award. He writes for both adults and teens.

Invisible is narrated by Dougie, and it a spare, disturbing book. Dougie’s spends most of his time working on building a bridge for his model train. His best friend is popular, football-player Andy. From the beginning, I knew that things aren’t right with Dougie. The book is all the more uncomfortable because I could also identify with the “mean” kids in high school who persecuted him. Dougie is so weird that I could easily see why he was picked on. Hautman skillfully tells the story, giving the history of Dougie and Andy’s relationship, and leading to what felt like a difficult but inevitable conclusion. Invisible reminded me of a shorter, less touchy-feely Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, but also an American teen-boy version of Muriel Sparks’s The Driver’s Seat. It was powerful, unsettling, and moving.

#75 in my book challenge for the year, this mini-series and its subsequent graphic novel collections are like historical fiction of the DC universe, so a sort of meta-fiction about DC silver-age heroes like Hal Jordan and Barry Allen. This is both a history and a new story, though, so seasoned comic book readers have something new to read for. It is incredibly dense, so much so that I understand, though am annoyed by, the need to put one story into two graphic novels. Cooke’s art is distinctive and well-suited to the type of tale he’s telling. Additionally, each issue is dedicated to the writers/artists who created the heroes of the tale, and it is a skillful tribute. Best of all, for someone like me who does not have an encyclopedic knowledge of comic book history, it unfolds in such a way that new readers can get to know a character before finding out which superhero s/he is, while more experienced readers can have fun identifying who’s who.

#74 in my book challenge for the year, Was It Beautiful? by Minnesotan writer Alison McGhee, was, in fact, startlingly beautiful. I put off reading this book for a long time because I was afraid it was too sad. I based this on my readings of her two previous books, Rainlight and Shadow Baby, both of which were wildly lovely and terrifically sad. This one was supposed to be even more sad, and I wasn’t sure I could cope. I should have trusted the writer.

Was It Beautiful? is the story of William T. Jones, a formerly happy man who has lost his son, his wife, and his cat to various forces in a short time. Unsurprisingly, William T. is no longer happy. But how he copes and how his story unfolds is mesmerizing. In the end his suffering, and that of those around him, is redeemed. Crystal, a chararacter from Rainlight, gets an increasingly significant role in this book, and I was pleased that Crystal got her share of redemption as well. McGhee’s characters are so good it’s almost scary. They’re like warm tapestries that I want to draw around me and snuggle into on a cold night.

#73 in my book challenge for the year was The Queen of Everything. This book had a lot of good things, and a lot of distractions. 17 year old Jordan’s father suddenly starts acting weird when he begins an affair with a married woman. The book foreshadows a lot of what is to come. Jordan isn’t able to talk to her friend, who she doesn’t actually like very much, or her mother, who she dismisses as a hippie. When she tries to talk to her grandfather, bad things ensue. Jordan’s voice is strong, and she is a believable teen, though sometimes quite unlikeable. Her romance with a bad boy is painfully drawn out. Additionally, she often quotes Big Mama, a woman who helped her in the aftermath of the difficulties with her father. Jordan’s relationship with Big Mama, as well as Big Mama’s salmon anecdotes, reminded me unpleasantly of the movie cliche of the “Mystical Negro” who has to explain life lessons to the sheltered white kid. What stood out most, though, was how the nasty situation with Jordan’s father was not dumbed down or glossed over. This book doesn’t talk down to its intended young-adult readers.

#72 in my book challenge for the year, Magic or Madness was recommended to me by Duff at Girlreaction, who sent me this link, noting “This sounds like something you’d like.” Isn’t it wonderful to have other kindred readers looking out for you? I certainly think so, and this book is a great example. I liked it a lot, and thought it a really good young-adult fantasy novel. Reason is a fifteen year old Australian girl who has been on the run with her mother Sarafina all her life. They’ve been running from Sarafina’s mother Esmeralda, who Sarafina claimed was an evil person who pretended magic was real. Now, however, Sarafina has been institutionalized, and Reason has to go live with her grandmother. She soon discovers that magic is real when she opens a door to New York City. She meets two other teens, Tom and Jay-Tee. Separately and together they must determine whether the adults in their life are trying to help them, or help themselves. The writing is strong, the characters are likeable, but the biggest strength of this novel lies in its ambiguity. There are no absolute answers given, so the reader is left to draw her own conclusions, along with Reason. This book clearly paves the way for a sequel, which I look forward to.

G. Grod and I live far from our families, so we don’t have the luxury of dropping Drake off at a relative’s house. Luckily, we’ve made good friends in the year we’ve lived in our new house, one of whom offered to swap childcare with us once a month. For politeness’s sake I said I had to check with G. Grod, but he agreed as readily as me.

We considered dinner and a movie, but the movie times were tight, and we wanted to take our time over dinner. Then we had to decide where to go. I assembled a list of six different restaurants, then emailed my favorite local food critic for her opinion, since she has been invaluably helpful in the past. Alas for us and good for her, she was out of town on her honeymoon, so we were on our own. We narrowed our choices down to two restaurants. One, Restaurant Alma, we had not been to in a long time, but is not far and very nice. It’s expensive, but that’s based on the high quality of its mostly local, organic ingredients. The other option was a French restaurant that had just opened the previous Monday. It also was expensive, and its menu sounded exquisite. Eventually we decided on the restaurant we’d been to before. We have too little time and money to act like we’re on the cutting edge of fine dining. Let others with more resources test out the new place, and let the staff and kitchen work out the kinks in the first couple weeks. We’ll go if we get the confirmation of a good review.

G. Grod and I both had a three-course, prix-fixe menu. I started with fresh buffalo mozzarella slices layered between slabs of roasted squash and garnished with dabs of herbed olive oil. G. had a beef terrine with spicy mustard. Next, I had orzo and lobster in a white wine and butter sauce. The orzo was done perfectly, tender and each grain separate, with the lightly sauced lobster chunks as a complement. G. had orecchiette pasta with spicy sausage and fall greens. For our entrees, I chose the pan seared Kobe beef garnished sparingly with black truffle hollandaise, and roasted celery root and carrots. G. had the sauteed scallops in a red wine rosemary sauce. We hemmed a little over whether to get dessert at all, or whether to share, but eventually could not agree on one, so got one apiece. G. got the chocolate tasting plate, with a dark chocolate terrine, rum chocolate cashew truffle, chocolate sea salt cookie, and caramel ice cream. While it sounded delicious, I felt I needed something a little less heavy, so I had the buttermilk panna cotta with dried cherries, which was sweet and light and tangy and bright. It was a lovely finish to a lovely meal. Each dish of each course was small and perfectly executed. The sauces and garnishes always allowed the high quality of the main ingredient to shine. The timing was steady, but neither rushed nor too slow. The service was attentive but not intrusive, and my water glass never ran dry.

We returned home just after Drake had gone to bed, so we visited with our friends and their daughter, then watched our movie. It was a lovely meal, and a lovely night, made all the more lovely for the kindness of friends who enabled it, as well as its rarity, which allowed us to savor it.

Veronica Mars premiers tonight at 9 Eastern, 8 Central. It was my favorite show from last season, and I really hope they don’t mess it up. Sassy girl detective fighting the high school status quo, with cute boys. Hmm. Wonder why I like it.

Shopping with Drake is a challenge. He is easily bored, averse to sitting still, shrill in his displeasure, and can easily defeat the strap in shopping carts. One time he even fell backward over the toddler seat into the cart. But we went to our local food coop yesterday and had NO screaming. Here’s how I did it:

String cheese in aisle 1.
Pirate’s Booty in aisle 3.
Spiced meat stick before checkout.
Pear nectar sample on the way out the door.

Luckily, our coop is on the small side. The woman at the register was very nice about ringing up toddler-mangled, empty food packages.

#48 in my movie challenge for the year, Mike Hodges’s I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead is moody, noir and hard to classify. It’s a mystery, a character study, a slow thriller, and most, I suspect, an examination of whether people really can change, especially those who have had lives of violence. The cast is superb–Clive Owen, Charlotte Rampling, and Malcolm MacDowell, among others. I was engaged until then end, when a few things occurred that didn’t quite hold together. Owen and Hodges worked together on Croupier, a 1998 film recommended to me by my friend Rock Hack. I’ll Sleep When I’m Dead is worthwhile, but Croupier is the stronger of the two films.

#71 in my book challenge for the year, Never Let Me Go was a recommendation of Michael Schaub at Blog of a Bookslut. I took Schaub’s warning and advice to read the book soon and not to read reviews of it beforehand, since it is a mystery of sorts, some of which is spoiled in reviews. It has been shortlisted for this year’s Booker prize. In the book, there are gradual unveilings rather than sudden surprises, both for the characters and for the readers. Ishiguro does a wonderful job of ensuring that the reader does not reach conclusions far in advance of the characters. It mainly focuses on the lives of three English school friends, Kathy, Ruth, and Tommy. It’s hinted at, then made clearer, that this story is science fiction/fantasy. Kathy’s narration is often emotionally distant, but the society that these three inhabit is all about distance and euphemism. The low-level emotions are well suited to the story. This book is beautifully written, with strong characters, a compelling story, and it pulled me through quickly to its end. The sci-fi/fantasy topic it centers on was handled so delicately and believably that it is chilling to think about, long after I have closed the book. There was a young adult novel on the same theme a few years ago that garnered awards and praise that I felt were based more on its challenging topic than on the quality of the book, which I found poorly written. (Follow this link to see, if you don’t mind the spoiler of what the theme is.) Never Let Me Go was a far more fulfilling read and complex examination of the topic, suitable for both adults and older teens.

With our son Drake just past two and another kid due in February, I knew a double stroller purchase was on the horizon. I’d begun to research our options, side by side or front/back, cheap or expensive, etc. My brief research indicated that there weren’t that many good options, rather ones that were better than others. Then G. Grod, obviously hard at work, send me a link to this profile at Salon. Not only does this sound and look like a great stroller, but the profile is written by Marjorie Ingall, my favorite writer from the late, lamented, Sassy magazine. Perhaps I don’t have to do much more research, just start clipping coupons and saving pennies.

I swear, I didn’t teach him this. On purpose, at least.

Drake was playing with the bottle of nose drops when he pointed to the black dot with the black ring around and said very clearly, “Target.” I stared at him as if he were possessed. I teach Drake the names of lots of things. He is currently able to identify not just fire trucks and police cars, but also Beetle Bugs and PT Cruisers. But I have never directly identified Target, though he’s accompanied me on countless errands there.

I forgot about this till the other day we were at a store that had a toy delivery truck with the Target name and logo on the side. Sure enough, Drake pointed at it, and said, “Mommy, Target.”

He’s two. And he can identify the trademarked bullseye design.

What have I done?

I’ve long been a fan of cupcakes, and their popularity is reaching a fever pitch. Most big cities now have a bakery solely or largely devoted to them. Cupcakes are small, portable, finger food with the potential for good design and great taste. The twin cities have the simply named Cupcake, and I can confirm their wares are delicious. There’s at least one blog, Cupcakes Take the Cake, about them, too. Thanks to Blogenheimer for the link.

#47 in my movie challenge, Zhang Yimou’s House of Flying Daggers has stunningly lovely visuals, intricately choreographed fight scenes, and a prohibitively slow pace. This film was another in the list of recent disappointments. We’d been waiting a long time in the electronic queue at the library, and I think the anticipation built over time. G. Grod was hoping that our friend Blogenheimer was wrong (no offense, B) and that it would be better than Yimou’s companion film, Hero. According to G. Grod, it is not, and he enjoyed neither of Yimou’s films more than he did Ang Lee’s Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Visually an achievement, but the pace was slow and the romance never felt genuine to me.

Did anyone else besides me in the Twin Cities have J. Geils’ song running through their head last night? In one of those rare instances, the weather people were not being alarmist, and it was indeed a severe thunderstorm. Power was out for 8 hours, we got water on both front and back porches and our attic window broke, but nothing was serious. Drake was not at all scared. He was thrilled when we let him hold the big Maglite flashlight. He’d turn it on and off. When off, he’d look out the window at the lightning, then cry, “Flashing! Flashing!” Then we read him books by flashlight and put him to bed early, with nary a peep. He slept till almost 8 this morning. What a guy.

If you, like me, are lucky enough not to have any lasting property damage, then you may still be worried about the television you missed, notably the season premiere of Lost. I called KSTP, and they will be replaying Lost on Saturday October 8 from 7 to 8 locally. Also, Lost was to be followed by the series premier of Invasion. According to Tivo, ABC is scheduled to nationally re-run the pilot and the second episode of Invasion on Saturday October 1 starting at 7 p.m.

Heads up to all readers and writers in the twin cities that the Twin Cities Book Festival is Saturday, October 15. It features well known writers both from Minnesota and beyond. I look forward to seeing local writers Alison McGhee and Pete Hautman, who write both adult and young adult novels.

#46 in my movie challenge for the year, Finding Neverland was good, but not great. Johnny Depp did a wonderful job, and the movie had some lovely effects for the interplay between reality and imaginination. It did a valiant job avoiding sentimentality. Even so, there were times that it dipped, perhaps unavoidably given the subject matter, into preciousness. One other thing that nagged was that it has not been that long since I’ve read Peter Pan; the presentation of how Barrie viewed children in the movie does not mesh with my memory of the book. I recall that the book portrays children as selfish and rather cruel. It doesn’t paint Peter Pan in a romantic or likeable way. I will have to re-read my copy (which has lovely illustrations by the late Trina Schart Hyman, one of my favorite illustrators) to see if the disjunction lies in my memory or in the film.