Girl Detective

After Drake was born, my husband G. Grod and I continued to dine out occasionally. We would keep Drake in his seat or his stroller for as long as he’d tolerate it, then one of us would hold him while the other person ate, then we’d switch. As Drake grew, though, so did the force of his displeasure, as well as his ability to evade rudimentary restaurant high-chair restraints. After a few challenging dinners, we decided that perhaps we’d take a break from restaurants for a while. It didn’t make sense to pay for an experience that no one enjoyed.

But I met a dad on the playground who encouraged me not to give up, and recommended the restaurant he worked at as a good place for little kids. I also didn’t want to give up because I enjoy dining out. So last Friday night we decided to give it a shot, called some friends who also have a toddler, and went to the restaurant that the playground dad had recommended.

It was a disaster. The nearly two-year-old boys were thrilled to see each other, and got wound up immediately. Their shrieks of delight earned concerned glances from an elderly couple. They splashed their hands in the indoor fountain until our waitress warned that it was dirty. They then got furious when we took them away. The boys refused to sit in the high chairs and were uninterested in food. When we took them outside they didn’t want to stay in front of the restaurant, but ran down the block. We had just gotten appetizers when my friend asked if we should pack everything up and go. Everyone agreed, and we continued the meal in her backyard, where everyone was a lot happier. (Until G. Grod’s gall bladder attack two hours later, that is.)

The good news is that we were brave enough to give it a try, and adaptable enough to make a new plan when the original one failed. The bad news is that we may have to give even family-friendly restaurants a miss until Drake gets a little older. I don’t want to keep putting him, and us, into a situation that clearly doesn’t work.

#53 in my book challenge for the year is another excellent entry in the Rush Hour series, an anthology of short pieces for teen readers and those of us who admire teen literature. In fact, the anthology might have done its job too well. It featured several excerpts from to-be published novels, and over the next few days, I kept thinking, where was that character I just read. Three of the novel excerpts made such a strong impression–”Open Ice”, “Humble and Grand” and “The Center of the World”–that I felt as if I was still hanging out with the characters.

#33 is my movie challenge for the year is Michael Moore’s acclaimed documentary. Yes, Moore can be annoying and manipulative. He tossed around some very fuzzy numbers. But he is also quite funny, and I appreciate how his tenacity often got results, as when he and two boys who had been shot at Columbine High School visited KMart headquarters, and got them to stop selling bullets nationwide. His point, which I don’t think he made clear enough, is that while people should have the right to have guns, they don’t really need them for protection. He blamed the American media and government for creating an environment of fear that resulted in a more gun-toting, violent society.

Ironically, I was still thinking over his point about how our fears about safety far outstrip the actual likelihood of violence in our lives when some drunk yahoo smashed our front porch window over the weekend. I was glad for our home security system.

Last week was a tough week. My nearly 2-year old son Drake screamed a lot and took very short naps. I looked forward to the weekend. Then my husband G. Grod had a gall bladder attack on Friday, and some drunk vandal broke our front porch door window on Sunday at 2 a.m. Any weekend that features both a call to the police and a trip to Urgent Care qualifies as one of the worst ever, I think.

Since when is blue raspberry a “classic” Jolly Rancher flavor? I’m pleased that they stopped including the yucky lemon flavor, and the other flavors make sense: cherry, watermelon, apple, grape. I used to really like the raspberry flavor, but its new, blue color is off-putting. Perhaps they thought that two red flavors in one bag were two many, so they turned raspberries blue and left out the quite nice strawberry, which I’d much prefer to grape.

I wrote recently about nostalgic food. I always think of Jolly Ranchers as pool food. When we were little, my mom would take me and my sisters to the public pool and give us a little money to spend at the snack bar. The big Jolly Rancher bars were a favorite treat. Not as good as the chocolate scooter crunch ice cream bars, but cheaper and really good.

I’ve been bothered for a while how acknowledgment pages have gotten out of hand, and written about Melissa Bank’s The Wonder Spot’s curious lack of one.

Here, Emily G. does a much better, funnier job of critiquing these pages. I especially like her idea of having a film-credit like list at the end. Link via Bookslut.

#52 in my book challenge for the year, and finally, a really good book! It feels as if I haven’t read one in a while. Housekeeping centers around two young sisters and the family members that care for them. It is a meditation on family, loss, home, transcience, and more. The editors of a recent anthology of contemporary writing noted that most of the submissions from women writers ahd been “disapointingly domestic.” Domestic does not mean disappointing, as Robinson’s novel clearly demonstrates. Her writing is lovely, the characters full-fleshed and compelling, the sense of place concrete, and the story pulls the reader right through. Housekeeping met with much critical acclaim when it was published in 1980, and it was only last year that Robinson published her second novel, Gilead, which I am now eager to read.

#32 in my movie challenge for the year. The Bourne Supremacy was a solid spy movie, with good perfomances all around and well-filmed action and car-chase sequences. Matt Damon is suprisingly effective, as he was in The Bourne Identity, as an action hero. The shaky camera got a little annoying at times; I hope that the current penchant for this will wane soon.

I was warned out of the sun almost two decades ago by a dermatologist, and I’ve mostly obeyed. Even so, I still got one accidental sunburn a year for a while. In recent years, though, I’ve become less vain about wearing a hat and frumpy cover-ups in the sun, and the accidental sunburns stopped. I am very conscientious about sunscreen/sunblock for both Drake and me, since he inherited my fair skin rather than G. Grod’s dark olive complexion.

My new favorite sunblock is Neutrogena Ultrasheer Dry-Touch Sunblock, which comes in both SPF 30 and 45. As its name suggests, it is a non-greasy, non-sticky formula. It has a very light scent, and comes in a slim, light tube that is easy to slip into a purse or diaper bag. Its pleasant formula makes me dread putting it on less, so I use it more; I just bought my second tube of the summer.

The sunscreen that I am less delighted with is the Coppertone Sport Sunblock Spray. I bought it for my back and neck. While it does allow me to reach those spots, it has a tacky finish, and a strong, traditional Coppertone smell. Most unpleasant, though, is that it seems impossible not to inhale the stuff as I’m spraying it on. I usually opt to wear something that covers my upper back, and then use the Neutrogena on my arms and the back of my neck.

When I went to my annual dermatologist check up this year, the office recommended three brands as being overall good for skin and sun care: Neutrogena, Dove and Olay. Best of all, these are drugstore brands that are usually inexpensive and easily available. I haunted department store cosmetic counters for years. I am much more satisfied, with the products and from a simplicity-of-life standpoint, to buy and use the drugstore brands.

#51 in my book challenge for the year, In the Shadow of the Law is a legal thriller. It is sure to be compared to Grisham, which is unfortunate, because In the Shadow of the Law is a solidly written, non-formulaic thriller.

Roosevelt is a professor of law and former Supreme Court clerk. His prose is sometimes more exuberant than necessary, but perhaps fiction provides a welcome departure from legal-ese. There is plenty of the latter in this book. One of the characters, Mark, is a clueless first-year student, who regularly asks other characters what is going on. His ignorance means others explain legal facts to him and thus to the reader. While this is useful to the plot and informative in general, sometimes the explanations are long and result in unbelievable dialogue.

The best developed character is Walker, the former Supreme Court clerk who eventually looks to escape the crush of the firm by becoming a law professor. While some of the other characters were a little too easily categorized, each was given a good amount of complex and believable backstory. There was Mark, the clueless one, Katja, the hardworking one, Peter the soulless head of the firm, and Ryan, the boorish one who thinks he’s smarter than he is. Ryan is so obnoxious that I found the chapters on him difficult to read. I became excited when it looked as if Ryan might die a quick and nasty death. Instead, he goes on to an interesting fate that I did not foresee.

At one point, I thought I had foreseen a key plot point to the ending, but it it turned out to be merely one of several factors. The book centers on two cases, a chemical fire and a death-row appeal. Both the cases in the plot were tied up well and believably. The case endings and the fates of the characters were pleasant surprises, not formulaic or predictable. This was a smart, promising legal thriller.

The term comfort food can cover a lot of bases. It can be what one seeks out when depressed, ill, or fatigued. For me it can also encompass nostalgia–this food from that favorite restaurant, or this food because I used to eat it with that person.

Last month, I visited the east coast. A friend picked me up at the train station, and I said I needed something to eat. She mentioned a restaurant I’d never much liked, but that was close. To my surprise and delight, she had mixed up what was where, and we walked instead into a new location of a bakery that I loved when I lived there. I did not see either of the two favorite treats I used to get, but I asked with tentative hope for a berry roll or a grape focaccia. Imagine my further delight: they had both. They heated the focaccia and toasted the berry roll, then gave me goat cheese to spread on it. My friend shared the details of her new academic fellowship while I munched on two favorite foods that I’d often eaten in her company years ago. It was a lovely reunion, however brief, with my friend. It was all the more lovely for the serendipitous addition of favored food.

I have reached and now surpassed my 50 book challenge for the year, coming squeakily close to doing it by the end of June, if it hadn’t been for the overlong Prep. Since I managed to reach my goal just past the middle of the year, I have re-evaluated. In general, the goal is a good one–approximately one book a week for a year. But I also read graphic novels and teen fiction, both of which are usually very fast reads. I wondered if I should stop counting these books, and only list the so-called adult books. Yet that seems unfair. They may be faster to read, but they’re still books, and books deserving of wider attention and appreciation than they’re usually given. Based on my personal choice of reading matter, I think a goal of 100 books for the year would be a more suitable challenge. It would urge me to read, on average, one “big” book and one young adult or graphic novel a week. The new goal, then, is 100 books for the year. I’m already behind!

Chasing my toddler Drake with a full dropper of baby Motrin:

“Don’t run from the drugs, sweetie. They bring happiness and relief.”

Yet I told the truth. After the Motrin, both he and I were happy and relieved, because the most challenging parts of the day (i.e., screaming and tantrums–mostly his) were over.

I recently noted how I had a hard time recommending Mr. and Mrs. Smith because most people interrupted to say that they didn’t like Angelina. While I certainly understand being bugged by an actor, I also know that good directors can get compelling performances out of normally average actors. Two relatively unknown films I have recommended often get eye rolls because of their stars, yet those who pass up these movies will miss out, because they are treats.

Out of Sight, directed by Steven Soderburgh, starring George Clooney and Jennifer Lopez.

Femme Fatale, directed by Brian De Palma, starring Rebecca Romijn-Stamos and Antonio Banderas.

#50 in my 50 book challenge for the year was Prep by Curtis Sittenfeld, about a midwestern girl who attends an exclusive east-coast prep school on scholarship. Sittenfeld recently wrote a mean-spirited review of Melissa Bank’s The Wonder Spot, which I thought was a sweet, well-written book. When a friend gave me her copy of Prep, I decided to judge for myself whether Sittenfeld had written a good book, and whether it was better than Bank’s.

The answer was no, on both counts. Prep reminded me in tone of Alexander Payne’s film About Schmidt. It dwelt on the awkward, the ugly and the embarrassing in human nature with scarce redemption to balance the pain. My friend had noted, “the main character is a little self-involved. Sometimes I wanted to slap her upside the head and tell her to get over herself.” My friend is much kinder than I am. I found the main character, Lee Fiora, so self-involved that she was almost completely unsympathetic, and I spent most of the book’s 400+ pages wanting to shake some sense into her. Lee was an uncomfortable mix–hyper-observant of others, yet uninsightful about herself. Her actions consistently hurt those around her. Four hundred pages lacking in self-awareness, growth, and plot did not make for an enjoyable or rewarding reading experience. Prep read like an uncomfortably realistic high-school girl’s journal, with the boring, overwrought and turgid bits left in.

Prep, though, is not without merit. Sittenfeld’s prose was overall good, and she had some excellent insights into issues of class, as cwhen Lee notes how she sometimes wears her non-scholarship roommates clothes: “And I could have offered her something of mine, but she didn’t wear my clothes, which was not a fact we discussed.” (P. 252)

A weird thing that bothered me was that Sittenfeld used semi-colons so liberally that I suspect many of them had to be edited out. Most pages had a semi-colon and frequent em-dashes, and as a former copyeditor I found these punctuation marks to be distractingly frequent.

A weird thing I liked, though, was the cover, which has a pink and green grosgrain belt that is realistically crinkly to the touch.

Who on earth would be ringing our doorbell at 8:05 a.m. on a Sunday, we wondered. Yet no one was there. It occurred to my husband G. Grod that he had just turned on our laptop. The doorbell, which is radio controlled, rang several more times during the day, always in conjunction with some activity on the laptop. We have removed the batteries from the doorbell until we have a better solution. Better to disable the doorbell than the laptop, methinks.

Descending basement stairs carrying laptop, power cord, wireless mouse, hardcover book, glass of juice and snack was not a good idea. Better to take spillable item on separate trip.

Note to husband: laptop is fine. So am I.

The exterminator came today after I sighted what turned out to be an earwig yesterday, a roach a week ago, and far too many centipedes last month. He agreed with me that the lone roach was probably a fluke. He did not seem nearly impressed enough that I’d had to presence of mind to save the corpse. Yet that’s what ALL exterminators ask for, and they often doubt that it was a roach, and I could prove it!

Sadly, I have had a fair number of roach outbreaks, all of which have proved to either be flukes, i.e., they came in from a box or paper bag, or overflows from somebody else’s roach nest. Even I’m beginning to be suspicious. Maybe it is me. I’m not the most sluttish housekeeper in the world, but the place isn’t sparkling, either.

As for the centipedes, he said the bad news about them and about spiders is that they’re the top of the insect food chain, so if we’ve got ‘em, it means we have other insects as well that they’re feeding off. So he sprayed inside and will come back to spray outside, and said that our dehumidifier, as well as the recent drier weather, should help a lot. Also, he noted that spiders don’t respond to spray because they just tiptoe over it, and don’t groom themselves like insects do.

Lovely image, don’t you think?

I did see one small centipede carcass already, so I’m feeling good about calling in the cavalry.

#31 in my 50 movie challenge for the year was Mr. and Mrs. Smith. I know that you may not like either of the stars, particularly Ms. Jolie, since this is a usual comment once I say that I saw and liked the movie. This was a good summer action film. It was funny, it had good car chase scenes, and like it or not, there was good chemistry between the stars. They looked like they were having fun. Vince Vaughn was good if underused in the role of Pitt’s less good looking but funnier friend. The metaphors of lying for repression and violence for sex were hardly veiled, but some of the updates on the war of the sexes were quite good, e.g., he keeps his guns in the toolshed while she keeps hers in the oven.

#30 in my 50 movie challenge for the year was Crash, directed by Paul Haggis. In Altman-esque fashion, Crash follows a handful of characters through a few days and several belief-straining coincidences. But the story doesn’t suffer for these coincidences, as it doesn’t from a few bits of stilted dialogue. Instead, I was swept up in characters, their stories, and amazement because I didn’t see a bad performance in the bunch. Don Cheadle was, as usual, amazing, but the surprises were Sandra Bullock and Brendan Fraser, both cast against type. Matt Dillon and Terrence Dashon Howard both chewed up the screen during their scenes. Dillon’s character was sometimes so hateful that it was a brave role to take on, and an even braver one to do so powerfully. Crash was about racism, and it had some ugly moments, but it had compensating beautiful ones, too. What was most interesting was the complexity of the characters. Only one character seemed wholly good; the others were all a compelling, wrenchingly real mix of good and bad. I am still thinking about this film days after I saw it. One of the themes I took away was that we often can’t predict outcomes, so we might as well act in line with our higher ideals rather than out of our baser fears.