Girl Detective

I recognize this feeling. It’s that life is pretty good. The last time I felt this was about three years ago. At that point I felt my life, my job, my relationships, my marriage, my living situation were all pretty good. I could either maintain the status quo, or try to move to a new stage in life and start a family. Things didn’t proceed quite as planned.

I was troubled by hip pain and insomnia during pregnancy. Labor and birth did not go well, though they did result in a healthy baby. I had a series of medical problems after the birth, work deteriorated, Drake was continuously ill in daycare, I resigned, we sold our apartment, bought a new house, moved, and my husband promptly lost his job.

Finally, though, spring arrived in its half-assed fashion to Minnesota. The snow mostly stopped. We began to meet people and make friends. My husband found a job. The weather is sometimes warmer. Occasionally the sun even comes out. Drake and I are able to get out of the house with fewer layers of clothing. I am able to see what life is like when we are not in crisis mode.

Drake is often a joy to be around. I’d be lying or delusional if I said he was that way in general. After all, he’s a person, and none of us is good company, always. I finally realized that it is unreasonable to expect him to be cuddly and laid-back, since these adjectives have never been used to describe me, so I better start appreciating him for what he is, which is active and curious. He is learning his letters and numbers, but has trouble with multi-syllabic ones, like W and 7. He also has trouble with multi-syllabic words and usually only pronounces the first. This can make for problems in understanding, since Toe and Toast sound alike, as do Pea and Pete. Drake is excited to recognize letters and numbers in the world, and often shouts them out with delight in public. At home, he likes to “hide” under the cushions on the couch. He’s pretty easy to find, since a large part of him is usually sticking out. He no longer puts every single thing in his mouth. He still loves to be read to, and has memorized passages from his favorite books, so that we can leave out words and he’ll fill them in, as with the “tiddely pom”s in one of Winnie the Pooh’s songs. This can sometimes be unfortunate, as when he runs about chanting “I die,” a line from Edward Gorey’s The Epiplectic Bicycle. (So much for encouraging non-cutesy children’s books.) Yesterday I noticed that he could hang on the bar over the slide; it used to be out of his reach. Today I noticed that the pants I bought too big at Christmas are definitely too small. Life keeps changing.

Outside, the weather is chill, grey and rainy. I have a lingering cold. It is easy to feel laid low by these things. Instead, I’m reminded that I have a very different life from the one three years ago, one in which I read, write and get to spend time with a developing person. I am glad the crises have died down, so I can appreciate this new life.

Years behind everyone else, I recently finished reading Fast Food Nation. Overall, I found the book discouraging, but not surprising. It details many disgusting, inhumane practices of the fast food and meat industries. One of the most disturbing facts is that there is little or no regulation or testing on meat that is sold to public schools. Kids are most likely to get the worst meat.

My most lasting impression from the book is that I am very fortunate. I do not risk life or limb at my job. I can afford food that is grown and created conscientiously. I am, indeed, lucky.

27. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes, translated by Edith Grossman. I did it! It was long, but well worth it. Sancho Panza and Don Quixote are interesting, complex characters. The book is by turns amusing and sad. What I enjoyed most were the tricks that Cervantes played with multiple authors and various reference points. There are gaps in the story, e.g., Sancho’s wife has four different names. Cervantes didn’t correct the mistakes on subsequent printings, but instead wove them into the entire story. Grossman’s translation and notes make this book easy to read and enjoy.

23. The Night of the Hunter. 1955. Directed by Charles Laughton. Mitchum is mesmerizing and terrifically creepy. While some of the sets were laughably fake (one house looked as if it were a cardboard cutout silhouetted against the sky), this movie still packs a wallop of tension. It can’t be coincidence, can it, that in the end, a character notes that “Children abide” while Jeff Bridges noted at the end of The Big Lebowski that “The Dude abides”?

24. Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World. 2003. Directed by Peter Weir. An entertaining, well-crafted and not over-the-top epic. Russell Crowe has good hair, and carries off puffy shirts well.

Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. A woman I know refused to read it because her friends who read it no longer shop at chain grocery stores or eat at fast food restaurants. Scary, enlightening, compelling and well-written. It made me glad I already adjusted my life to (mostly) eschew fast food and grocery chains. One of the reasons I enjoy living in the twin cities is the abundance of whole-food cooperatives, one of which I can (and do) walk to.

I am not a careful music listener. Instead, I listen to Cd’s over and over till they build an impression. Since my husband G. Grod got laid off from his job last fall, I have curtailed purchases of Cd’s and have instead been getting them from our library. While the wait for certain popular titles can be long, I have a few Cd’s at any given time, and can keep them for three weeks.

There are several benefits to the library option. I can try before I decide to buy. I have checked out several Cd’s that I am glad I didn’t spend money on, and a few that confirmed my desire to track them down. The downside to my listening plan is that pop music, which is engineered to be more immediately like-able, floats to the top of my list faster than do other, more carefully crafted Cd’s. A concentrated three-week span of listening, though, is usually enough for non-poppy music to make a favorable impression. Often, three weeks is sufficient to return something I like and not feel I need to own it. Here is a list of some of the recent things that have cycled through, and what impressions they left.

No impression after multiple listens:

Patty Griffin, 1000 Kisses and Impossible Dream
My Morning Jacket, At Dawn–like Neil Young playing in the room next door
Jayhawks, Tomorrow the Green Grass

Grew on me, but I don’t need to own

Interpol, Turn on the Bright Lights
Bright Eyes, Letting off the Happiness–uneven
Jeff Buckley, Sketches for my Sweetheart the Drunk

Just don’t get

Jeff Buckley, Mystery White Boy, Live–so much yowling
Jeff Buckley, Grace–less, but still too much, yowling

Not as good as their last one

Thrills, Let’s Bottle Bohemia

Fun

O.C. Mixes 1 and 2
For the Kids 1
Kings of Leon, Youth and Young Manhood
Bright Eyes, Lifted

Substantively good

Nick Drake, Five Leaves Left–Dreamy
Low, Great Destroyer
Madeleine Peyroux, Careless Love

Kind readers, my husband G. Grod says that comments work, so please give it a shot. Email me if things don’t work. I’m afraid we may have lost those comments that were made while they were broken. Many apologies.

So far, I’m on track to meet my 50-book challenge for 2005. Both of these were recommendations culled from some of the litblogs I read.
24. When the Messenger is Hot by Elizabeth Crane. Stories featuring women who are in recovery, have relationship troubles, and/or have dead/dying opera-singing mothers. Funny and well-written, I especially liked “Return to the Depot!” and “Intervention,” about a woman whose friends intervene to let her know that she’s NOT an alcoholic. I found Crane’s forays into second-person narration less successful than the rest, but not without merit.

25. Stop that Girl by Elizabeth McKenzie stopped being good when the main character in the interconnected stories, Ann Ransom, stopped being a girl. The stories from her childhood were funny and intriguing. Once she got to college, though, I found them boring and pathetic. Perhaps it is the author’s intent to show how smart, sassy heroines get swallowed up into boring lives, but I thought the last few stories took away from the charm of the earlier ones.

I cleaned out my current email inbox yesterday and today, from over 80 messages down to less than 10. Unfortunately, I’ve still got 35 messages in my former email program from April of ‘03 to spring of ‘05. I read email in the morning, when I snatch a few moments here and there, or at night, when I’m tired and want to watch TV or read my book. Email is reading and writing. These require an awake brain, so I’m better mid-day than I am at either end. I have to continually remind myself of an acronym for handling email I learned at my former job, DRAFS:

D: Delete. Do you really need to keep this info?
R: Reply, then delete.
A: Act. Get up and do something, like transfer the information somewhere else, or call someone.
F: Forward. Be sparing and thoughtful. If it sounds like an urban myth, check www.snopes.com first.
S: Save information that want to refer to later but don’t need to do anything about now.

Dear kind readers, the comment feature is not working. Ironically, this coincides with G. Grod’s return to the rat race, so it may not be till tonight that they get fixed. Many apologies for the inconvenience, and I promise, we will work to get your comments through as quickly as possible!

More from my 50 movie challenge for 2005. My friend Becca wondered if I pick out what I watch/read in advance. Nope. I make it up as I go along. Becca lent me movie #s 18 and 20, which were good antidotes to #17.

16. Second Sight 2: Hide and Seek. 2003. Eh.

17. About Schmidt. 2002. Directed by Alexander Payne. Overly long. Unpleasant. Not that funny. I much preferred Sideways.

18. The Big Lebowski. 1998. Directed by Joel Coen. Very funny. The Dude is an amiable, like-able loser, unlike Schmidt. Favorite quotes: “It really tied the room together” and “Nice marmot.”

19. The Interpreter. 2005. Directed by Sydney Pollack. Sean Penn is stunning. A good, solid thriller. They were wishy washy about the romantic tension and should have left it out entirely.

20. Army of Darkness. 1993. Directed by Sam Raimi. I liked this much better than I remember liking it when I watched it before. Is it the director’s cut? Is it that I didn’t watch Evil Dead 1 & 2 right before it? In any case, good, silly, B-movie fun.

21. Laurel Canyon. 2003. Directed by Lisa Cholodenko. Not a good movie, but a great performance by Frances McDormand. How do you know that Kate Beckinsale has fake tits? Her bra never comes off. Not during sex with her boyfriend, not in the pool or in bed for a three way. McDormand is a good actress, and her beauty is real, interesting and complex. Beckinsale looks and acts like a Barbie doll.

22. The Iron Giant. 1999. Directed by Brad Bird. I love this film. Great story, great 1950’s look, great voice casting.

I found links to Kiernan Ryan’s Guardian article on Shakespeare both at Mental Multivitamin and at Arts & Letters Daily. I like that Ryan challenges the common theory for Shakespeare’s continued popularity.

The popular consensus is that his drama has defied obsolescence and triumphed in translation all over the globe because it expresses the timeless truths of the universal human condition. It’s a view that has secured powerful advocates, from Samuel Johnson in the 18th century to Harold Bloom in the 21st. But it’s a view whose platitudinous piety I’ve never found credible, not least because it’s been used so often to buttress the status quo.

Ryan’s conclusion, though, proved less compelling to me than the one he purported to denounce.

Shakespeare’s drama still thrills us because it allows us to see his world from the standpoint of a world that men and women are still struggling to create. Shakespeare’s gift to our time is an extraordinary one: the power to view the past that shaped the present as if we were already citizens of centuries to come.

I came to Shakespeare via Kenneth Branagh’s film adaptation of Henry V. “I can understand this,” I thought exultantly, as I sat in the theater and waited to find out who won the battle, my enjoyment of the movie made more powerful by my spotty knowledge of history. Since then, I have read several of the plays, seen them performed on film or in the theater and read other books and seen other films that are homages to Shakespeare’s works. I enjoy Shakespeare, and I don’t think it has to do with the universality of the stories, or with what Ryan said.

For me, it’s the language. My brain has to work just a bit harder to process it. Once I have done, I feel I’ve had the mental equivalent of a good workout and a hearty meal. The language draws me in, then the stories keep me engaged.

Recently, a movie meme made the rounds. I ignored it because I am terrible at quoting movies. My ease at coming up with Shakespeare quotes, though, supports my theory on why I like Shakespeare.

Why do you like Shakespeare? The language, the stories, a combination? I propose a Shakespeare variation on the movie meme. If it goes ’round, perhaps I’ll see if I’m the only one who disagrees with Ryan. If you have a blog, post a link to your entry in the comments. If you don’t have a blog, answer in the comments.

1. Name the first five lines of Shakespeare that come into your head. (Don’t cheat–write the first five that you think of, then check for accuracy later.)

We few, we happy few, we band of brothers
The quality of mercy is not strained
All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players
Lead on, MacDuff (Oops, it’s actually Lay On, MacDuff)
To thine own self be true

2. The last Shakespeare play you went to see on stage.

Antony and Cleopatra

3. The last Shakespeare film homage or adaptation you watched at home or at the movies.

Titus (at home)

4. What Shakespeare homage/adaptation/plays are on your to be read/to be seen list?

Looking for Richard on Tivo
Richard II on DVD
Hamlet (read the play and watch the Branagh DVD, once I finish Don Quixote)
Gertrude and Claudius, by John Updike

5. Name a favorite Shakespeare-inspired work.

Issue #75 of Neil Gaiman’s The Sandman. It was a strong ending to a strong series. Good endings are hard to do. Gaiman pulled it off brilliantly. Close second, The Daughter of Time by Josephine Tey.

6. Why do you think Shakespeare’s plays are still popular?

My toddler Drake likes to hear the same books over and over. My husband G. Grod and I have “disappeared” a few of Drake’s more tedious choices. Fortunately, most of Drake’s favorite books have passages I enjoy with each reading.

From Winnie the Pooh by A.A. Milne.

Then, suddenly, [Pooh] was dreaming. He was at the East Pole, and it was a very cold pole with the coldest sort of snow and ice all over it. He had found a beehive to sleep in, but there wasn’t room for his legs, so he had left them outside. And Wild Woozles, such as inhabit the East Pole, came and nibbled all the fur off his legs to make nests for their Young. And the more they nibbled, the colder his legs got, until suddenly he woke up with an Ow!–and there he was, sitting in his chair with his feet in the water and water all round him!

From Best Friends for Frances by Russell Hoban.

When Frances got to Albert’s house, he was just coming out, and he was carrying a large, heavy-looking brown paper bag.
“Let’s play baseball,” said Frances.
“I can’t,” said Albert. “Today is my wandering day.”
“Where do you wander?” said Frances.
“I don’t know,” said Albert. “I just go around until I get hungry and then I eat my lunch.”
“That looks like a big lunch,” said Frances.
“It’s nothing much,” said Albert. “Four or five sandwiches and some apples and bananas and two packages of cupcakes and a quart of chocolate milk.”
“Can I wander with you?” asked Frances.
“I only have one lunch,” said Albert…”I think I better go by myself. The things I do on my wandering days aren’t things you can do.”
“Like what?” said Frances.
“Catching snakes,” said Albert. “Throwing stones at telephone poles. A little frog work maybe. Walking on fences. Whistling with grass blades. Looking for crow feathers.”

From Olivia Saves the Circus by Ian Falconer.

“Was that true?” Olivia’s teacher asks.
“Pretty true,” says Olivia.
“All true?”
“Pretty all true.”
“Are you sure, Olivia?”
“To the best of my recollection.”

My husband G. Grod suggested that I may be trying to do too much, i.e., read 50ish pages of Don Quixote every day, read another book, write this blog, read other blogs, go to yoga class a few times a week, work on my novel, read excerpts of other people’s novels for my writing group. And, oh yeah, take care of my small child. Unsurprisingly, I’m dropping some balls here and there. Last week, the blog ball got dropped. I apologize for the lack of notice for a post-free week.

I took a break from the weblog to focus on other writing. As has happened before, all my writing slowed. Progress on manuscript #1 was painfully slow. I dug out manuscript #2 to change things up. Things didn’t improve, so I’m back to the blog in the hope it will kick my writing and editing back into high gear.

While my son Drake napped today, I took to bed, and snuggled up with a short story and a chunk of Don Quixote. Sometimes Drake can sleep through cacophony; other times he wakes at an inopportune creak of the floorboards. To increase my chances of a long nap, I try to do just one thing. Today it was reading, and lots of it.

What is your definition of luxury?

Saving Francesca by Melina Marchetta. I found this book on a blog dedicated not only to YA literature, but to portrayals of sexuality that are real, balanced, and specifically about girls and women who are responsible for their own sexual actions. While I commend that ideal, I’m not loving the book recommendations on the blog. Saving Francesca had good elements, but overall I can’t recommend it unreservedly. It is a teen problem novel, in that the main character starts off the school year with a problem–her mother is depressed and won’t get out of bed–and then solves the problem in the course of a school year. Parts of this book are funny, well-written, and true to life. It contains some great supporting characters. But the problem feels contrived; no one even asks if the mother has seen a doctor for the depression until halfway through the book. Also, Marchetta has an aggravating tendency to over-write. Countless paragraphs that ended a scene had ending sentences that lessened the impact of whatever decent writing came before it.

And being that happy makes me feel guilty. Because I shouldn’t be. Not while my mum is feeling the way she is. How I can dare to be happy is beyond me, and I hate my guts for it.
I hate myself so much that it makes my head spin.

Finally, I thought the issue of sex was largely avoided. The main character talks about it, but only kisses the boy she has a crush on. One of her friends may be having problems, but it isn’t discussed. The parents’ sex life is discussed, which I applaud, but the teens themselves are suspiciously abstinent.

Most happy and fortunate were the days when the bold knight Don Quixote of La Mancha sallied forth into the world, since, because of his honorable resolve to resuscitate and return to the world the lost and dying order of knight errantry, we can now enjoy in our own time, which is so in need of joyful entertainment, not only the sweetness of his true history, but also the stories and episodes that appear in it and are, in some ways, no less agreeable and artful and true than the history itself… (p. 227)

I am reading Don Quixote. Charmed by the editor’s preface and undaunted by the needlessly pendantic introduction by Harold Bloom, I read a little bit each day. I am about a quarter of the way through. Don Quixote is easier for me to read early in the day. Like Shakespeare’s, the prose requires a bit more attention than that of modern authors, but just a bit. Grossman’s translation is quite accessible.

My mind works by analogy. Also, I am rather obsessed with food. I was pleased to see that the featured cheese for May of the Twin Cities food co-ops is Manchego.

Originally made from the milk of sheep on the plains of La Mancha, it is a rich, golden, semi-firm cheese with a full, mellow flavor. It is excellent as a table cheese and melts well.

Try it:

*Melted on an open-faced sandwich of rare beef, a slice of hearty, toasted sourdough bread, au jus and a little garlic aioli.

*Serve with smoky Idiazabol, Cabrales, Mahon, fresh figs and Marcona almonds as a Spanish party tray.

*Wrap small chunks of Manchego with thinly sliced prosciutto or serrano ham as an appetizer.

–from Mix, a Twin Cities Natural Good Co-ops Publication (www.mwnaturalfoods.coop)

Most of these items are available at Twin Cities Co-ops. If you don’t feel up to making them yourself, Twin Citians can also visit Solera in downtown Minneapolis, for a stunning selection of lovely, delicious tapas.

We moved last September to a new neighborhood, where I hoped to find new friends and community. The winter was lonely, though. As the months wore on, I wondered if we should have moved closer to our families instead.

Spring has wrought many changes. People, like all living creatures, wait for more temperate weather to show themselves. It is easier to make new friends and keep up with old ones. Like an outdoor plant raised inside, our family in winter did OK, but didn’t thrive or spread. Once exposed to fresh air and sunshine, we realized our potential to put down roots and grow.

A few years ago, I periodically felt like I couldn’t adequately fill my lungs with air. I had allergy tests and pulmonary function tests, all of which came back normal. On the recommendation of a co-worker, I went to see a holistic chiropractor. After a series of tests, he told me to stop eating wheat. I took the advice a step further and stopped eating gluten. This meant no pizza, pasta or cereal. It also meant learning what things contain hidden gluten, like soy sauce, which is brewed with wheat.

After several weeks on the new diet, I felt much better. My breathing troubles were gone. Additionally, so were the severe abdominal cramps I’d been having on such a regular basis that I’d come to accept them as part of the natural digestive process. I was eating more fruits and veggies to compensate for the lack of wheat products, so I was eating more mindfully and healthfully. As a result, I lost weight, though I didn’t restrict my diet beyond eliminating gluten. Eating out was more difficult, but I learned both to read menus and to work with servers. In general, gluten-free items were not as good as those made with wheat, but I found a very good mail-order bakery whose muffins, biscotti, and brownies disproved this. (Gluten-free bread, though, was always a compromise.) Every so often I would eat something with gluten in it when the temptation became too much. I told myself that occasional consumption might not be good for me physically, but it would stave off feelings of bitter deprivation and self-pity. Each time I indulged, I felt ill the next day. Never so ill that I couldn’t function, but nonetheless bad enough that I would return to my restricted diet.

I did not get the medical test to determine if I had gluten intolerance for two reasons. One, it involved resuming gluten intake fully until the test. Two, the test, if positive, is followed by an intestinal biopsy. I did not welcome the idea of getting a piece of my intestine cut out.

A few months ago, though, I had digestive troubles while traveling, even though I adhered to my gluten-free diet. Perhaps it was time, I thought, to seek out the medical diagnosis. Confirming it would mean that I could embrace my restricted diet without the little voice of doubt in the back of my head. If it wasn’t confirmed, then I could go back to eating gluten, and wouldn’t that be swell?

My first days back on gluten were mixed. I was thrilled to be eating things that I had avoided for three years, but not feeling well as a result. I had to consume gluten for two weeks for the test to be effective, though, so I had to persevere. I could hardly wait to try all the things I’d denied myself for so long–pizza, pasta, bread, donuts, cupcakes, and more. What I began to suspect, though, was that my feeling unwell could be caused, or at least complicated by, overindulgence in sugary carbs. As the novelty of eating gluten again wore off, my diet became less sugarful, and I gradually felt better. Perhaps, as my husband G. Grod had long surmised, my body needed more than one or two times of gluten for it to become re-accustomed to digesting it. I went in for the test, and several weeks later got the result, which was negative. There was no indication that I should have a biopsy.

This is good news, but I have mixed feelings. I appreciate not having to restrict my diet, which is hard not only on me but also on those around me. But I continue to have a hard time eating as consciously and healthfully as I did when I was gluten free, and I’ve gained some weight very quickly with the change. I also am plagued by the worry that I followed a gluten-free diet for three years when I didn’t need to. Yet my breathing problems vanished and have not re-appeared with the resumption of gluten, plus I learned how to eat and manage my weight better. Overall, I am very fortunate to have my previous diagnosis overturned. I just need to learn how to find balance again in my diet.

Here is a list of good gluten-free resources and foodstuffs that I found, both through trial and error and through recommendation.

Tinkyada rice pasta
Glutano Ritz-style crackers
Gluten Solutions market
Celiac.com
Living Without magazine
Ener-G or Glutino pretzels
Kinnikinnick pizza crusts and donuts
The Silly Yak bakery

Based on a recommendation in Lucky magazine, I sought out Neutrogena Clean Lash Tint mascara. I almost missed it sitting on an endcap, in what looked to be a temporary, seasonal display. I’m glad I didn’t, though, because this is a great product. It is a lash darkener only, so there are no clumps and bumps. It has a good brush, a long handle, and goes on in one coat for a look that is extremely natural. This is that rare makeup product that enhances without making me look made up. I will be writing Neutrogena to request that they make this a part of their regular product line.