Girl Detective

Everyone knows the phrase “terrible twos.” As with much of parenting, though, it didn’t become clear what it meant until I was in the midst of it.

Two is when kids start to push back. Previously biddable kids suddenly take to “No!” like it’s the only word in the world. I find it’s the concrete examples, though, that really show the terribleness:

It’s time to change Guppy’s diaper. I pull one from the stack. He says no, he doesn’t want the green dog. I show him purple cat, magenta dog, blue dog with pencil and blue dog with wrenches ; we’re out of blue dog painting, since he’s been demanding those. Irony is that he can’t even see the diaper design once it’s on. He throws a fit, and is big and fast enough to run away, twist away, kick at me and take the green dog diaper off. I’ve zigged, he’s zagged, finally I have to zog. What if we put on the diaper after a book? Suddenly, he’s reasonable again. “I yuv you, mom,” he says, hugging me.

Guppy wants yogurt for breakfast. I take out the yogurt, a bowl and a spoon, and start to put the yogurt in the bowl. Guppy screams; he wanted to do it. I offer it to him. He refuses and continues to tantrum. It’s already begun; I’ve ruined it. I rinse out the bowl. He cries that the bowl is wet. I dry it. He spoons up the yogurt, then cries because the spoon is dirty. I rinse it off. He cries because it’s wet. I dry it off, and he finally begins to eat, about ten minutes after this all started.

Terrible? Insane is more like it. And as everyone knows, three is worse. Can’t wait.

From the archives, on gift giving for kids:
Star Tribune 12/24/89 - Pat Gardner “Tender Years”

The weeks of hectic preparation are coming to a close. Within days, the magic will begin to unfold for our children and, vicariously through them, for us. Just as we remember those wonderful Christmas Eves and mornings long ago, our children will one day look back on these days. How will they remember them? What are you giving your children this year?

I know one family of modest means that makes a great effort to celebrate Christmas in the best way possible. Their children always find five gifts under the tree. And more than that, the gifts are always accompanied by a parent. Here’s how they do it.

The children always receive a gift to hug and love. Sometimes it’s a doll or maybe a stuffed animal. Every Christmas each child has something to care for, to carry along and finally at night to share a bed, secrets and dreams.

The wise parents know that the children will themselves learn to care for others by practicing on dolls and stuffed animals. Mom and Dad demonstrate rocking the stuffed bear and wiping the doll’s face. They talk about being gentle and giving care.

More important, they treat their children tenderly. They make a special effort at this busy time of year for a little more lap time, more frequent hugs and all the physical care and attention their young children need.

The children in this family always receive something to read. The parents know that to give them books is to give them wings. The little ones get books, and the big ones get books. Books aren’t foreign to any member of this family. Books are treasures. And more than that, they become a daily connection between parent and child.

The wise parents know that the best way to raise a reader is to read to a child….They share curiosity. They take the time to listen patiently to their beginning reader. They share discoveries. Through books, these parents explore worlds within their home and beyond their front door with all of their children.

The children receive toys and games. These parents are concerned about each child’s skills and find fun ways to enhance their present capabilities and encourage further development. For a grasping baby, a crib gym; for a beginning walker, a push toy; for a pre-schooler, a shape and color sorter; for a beginning reader, a game of sequence and strategy.

The parents know that play is the work of childhood. They understand that to meet a child at her level of accomplishment is to encourage success in play. Success stimulates motivation and interest in a challenge. So the parents judge their toy and game choices carefully. Not too easy, but not too hard.

They they do the most important thing. They play with their children. The children see that learning is a toy, that it’s fun to challenge oneself, that play can be a very social activity, that it’s OK to win and also to lose and that Mom and Dad wholeheartedly approve of play.

The children in this family always receive a gift of activity. From a simple ball or jump rope to a basketball hoop or a pair of ice skates, they always have one gift that encourages action.

The parents know that those children who, by nature, are very active may need to be channeled into acceptable and appropriate activities. And they know that those children who, by nature, are very passive may need to be encouraged to move with purpose. But their message to their children is that physical activity is important and good.

These parents make their message clear by joining their children in physical play. They skate and play catch. They’re on the floor with their crawlers and walk hand in hand with their toddlers. They get bumped and bruised and laugh and shout. They sled and they bowl. And many times in the next few weeks when resting on the couch sounds much more inviting, these parents will give their kids one more gift. They’ll get up and play with them.

The children always receive a gift of artistic expression. They might find crayons, paints or markers in their stockings. It might be a gift of clay this year or rubber stamps or scissors and glue. The materials change, but the object remains the same: create with joy.

These wise parents aren’t terribly concerned about the mess of finger paints. They’re more concerned about the exposure to unique sensations. They want their children to use their imaginations. They want their children to approach life in a hands-on fashion. And they want them to express themselves through their artistic activities in ways that exceed their vocabularies.

Right after I saw My Name is Will reviewed in Entertainment Weekly (link not online), Winfield was scheduled to appear at Rain Taxi’s annual Twin Cities Book Fest. I’ve been on something of a Shakespeare binge this year, so I decided to attend. Late, I hurried through the building toward the room I thought, but wasn’t sure, the reading would be in. A man I passed assured me, “You’re headed in the right direction. Don’t worry. You’re not going to miss it.” How Jess Winfield knew I was going to HIS reading I don’t know, but I laughed, slowed down, and we arrived at the room together. I was fortunate enough to chat for a few minutes before the session with both Winfield and actor Stacia Rice, who introduced Winfield before hustling out to prepare for opening night of The Scottish Play, in which she was Lady Macbeth.

Winfield read a few passages from My Name is Will. The chapters alternate between William “Willie” Shakespeare Greenberg, an 80’s era UCSC grad student, and the William “Will” Shakespeare of 1582 Stratford-upon-Avon. Both are beset by troubles. Willie is avoiding both his master’s thesis and his father with an impressive array of illicit drugs and a few willing women.

He couldn’t go back to Robin’s as he was: no cash, no direction, no thesis, and no fucking clue of who or what William Shakespeare Greenberg was, let alone William Shakespeare of Stratford-upon-Avon.

He looked at his watch again. He would do it all. Right now. Today. Figure out his thesis before the library closed; deliver the mushroom tonight, or tomorrow morning at the latest; be back tomorrow.

Right.

Will is persecuted for his family’s Catholicism, while also pursuing women, being strong armed into making an honest woman of Ann Hathaway, and embarking on a career of writing and playacting. Both Willie and Will are endearing wastrels, and their entwined stories are brought to a satisfying, bittersweet conclusion.

Winfield was a founding member of the Reduced Shakespeare Company, and spent years writing and producing stories for Disney. He knows how to tell a ripping yarn; this is a thumping good read. The historical details for Will are mostly accurate. Like Shakespeare’s histories, this is an entertainment, not a factual tract. It also doesn’t flinch from explicit scenes of drug use and sex. The subtitle for the book isn’t a come on, it’s truth in advertising. This book is not for the easily offended. It _is_ for fans of Shakespeare and comedy, though, and very accessible to those with only a passing knowledge of the Bard. Indeed, it might even encourage those students who see Shakespeare as a chore to do a little experimenting on their own.

Laid low with a serious head cold, I probably was not in the best state to watch Helvetica, a documentary about the influential typeface that traces its history and current status. It has a dry humor and quiet presentation that I might otherwise have appreciated, as it interviews a variety of type experts and artists, some of the them pro-Helvetica, some anti-, and some taking an interesting postmodern rapprochement to the modernist typeface. Unfortunately, I found it a little slow, and so low key about its intentions that it left me bemused. With a clearer head, I might have liked it more. Even so, it’s made me more aware, both of my feelings for Helvetica (OK for signs, but not for text–I don’t like the square punctuation) and of its omnipresence (Guess what typeface you’re reading, now?) I’m all the more appreciative of alternatives.

An inky dark dramedy, In Bruges‘ hitmen, Brendan Gleeson and Colin Farrell, are sent to the title city (in Belgium) to cool their heels after a hit went wrong. Farrell is both hilarious and touching as the simple-minded newbie, while Gleeson brings depth and sadness to a character that could have easily been a caricature. Ralph Fiennes is so over the top he almost is a caricature, though his feelings on loyalty and consequences lend an intriguing edge. This is a very violent, funny, sad film that doesn’t always pull off a balance–not for when you’re feeling fragile. But for whip-smart dialogue, some great acting, and some moments so funny we had to stop the DVD because we were laughing so hard, In Bruges is worth watching.

I’ve been reading Fables since its inception, over five years ago. Even so, I was surprised that Fables: War and Pieces, written by Bill Willingham and illustrated by Mark Buckingham, Steve Leialoha, Niko Henrichon, and Andrew Pepoy, was The End of the overarching story begun back in issue one. I’ve been reading this complex, funny, violent, tragic, comic for so long, and its story feels so eternal–I’d simply forgotten it must end.

“Fables” are the personifications of fairy tales who escaped long ago from the tyrannical Adversary and his warring Empire. They took refuge in the real, or “mundy,” world. Even there, though, they were not free from attacks and spies. In this book, the long term plans and stories of the characters come together in a final, huge battle. Prince Charming partners with Sinbad to captain a skyship, Cinderella is a killer spy on a dangerous mission, Bigby Wolf leads the last stand, and Boy Blue narrates, since he’s all over the place. There’s a satisfyingly big ending, and a short epilogue that balances things nicely. Page 172 shows a celebration in which I suspect a few of the “characters” depicted are actually the writers, illustrators, their loved ones, and DC Comics staff. I’m betting Willingham is the one holding the green bottle, and I’m curious why Rorschach would make an appearance. He’s not much of a party guy.

This story, of the Fables against the Adversary, is over, but the series will continue. There are still many stories to tell. I, for one, want more about Frau Totenkinder, one of the creepiest characters of them all.

From Book Design Review, a list of favorite book covers for 2008. I own only one, Michael Chabon’s Maps and Legends.

A two dimensional picture doesn’t do the layered cover justice. Boing Boing shows details of the impressive, three-part cover.

I think my favorite, though, is The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction. There’s a ballot at the end of the entry. Link from Blog of a Bookslut.

Jeff from Season 5 of Bravo’s Top Chef
and Jesse Spencer, who plays Robert Chase on House, MD:

We live in Minnesota. I have one son in preschool, and one in daycare. Virus season lasts from September to April. We’ve already gone a few rounds, but the current virus is the worst yet. After some online research, I set off to the grocery cooperative to stock up on remedies.

This article, “10 Ways to Boost Immune Health” recommended vitamin C. I got lemons, satsumas and kiwis. It warned against caffeine and sugar, but encouraged sleep, protein, and moderate outdoor exercise.

This article, “How to Treat the Common Cold with Traditional Chinese Medicine” distinguished between colds caused by “wind cold” and “wind heat”. For heat-related symptoms, it recommends Yin Qiao. It also warns against caffeine, and sugar, plus ginseng.

From “10 Best Cold and Flu Fighters“, recommendations for echinacea and andrographis, which I bought in liquid, Yin Chiao, astragalus and elderberry, which I got in pill form, plus my usuals of garlic and ginger, which I put in chicken broth and then pureed.

I took a round of all these that night, then chewed a clove of raw garlic, which caused me to vomit it all back up, then was more ill the next day. After much rest, I’m doing better, but 2yo Guppy is still having trouble, so we’re off to the pediatrician to rule out pneumonia.

We ordered the graphic novel Daredevil: Cruel and Unusual by Ed Brubaker, Greg Rucka, and Michael Lark, from Big Brain Comics, by accident. After I read the last Daredevil collection, I decided I was finished reading the series. But when it showed up in our box, we bought it, and once we’d bought it I figured I might as well read it.

I’m glad I did. I enjoyed this Daredevil collection more than any in recent memory. Matt Murdock continues to be mopey and self-involved, but friends jar him out of his stupor and get him involved in a case. I thought the mystery and the supporting cast were done well, and it was great to see Daredevil back to form. He’s spent far too much time mooning schmoopily over the dreadful character Milla. Was her absence what made this book so much better than its predecessors? I think so. My husband G. Grod thinks that it’s a matter of contrast: the last few Daredevil collections have been so terrible that the new one seems great even if it’s only OK.

Bottom line, though? I’ll pick up the next one. And if they’d kill off Milla and remove her from Matt’s memory? Heaven.

I was 30 when Can’t Hardly Wait came out, so beyond the high school and college final-party demographic. But when EW reviewed this new DVD and said it had 9 Buffy alums, I decided to give it a try. It’s a solid B movie. Some funny stuff in a movie filled with party cliches. The leads are mopey and schmoopy, but the supporting characters are fun, especially Seth Green trying hard to be “urban”.

I only caught 4 Buffy alums, though: Green, Eric Balfour, Clea Duvall and Amber Benson, plus three Six Feet Under future stars: Lauren Ambrose, Freddy Rodriguez and Balfour, again. And Jason Segal, looking like he actually belongs at a high school party.

Out on the web, though, I dug up the full list of the Buffy alums, and the comment thread at this MySpace page includes other movies and shows for Buffy fans:

Amber Benson
Seth Green
Paige Moss
Clea DuVall
Eric Balfour
John Patrick White
Nicole Bilderback
Channon Roe
Christopher Wiehl

Recommended at Entertainment Weekly, Tana French’s Irish murder mystery The Likeness took a while to come in at the library. Once I started it, I realized it was a sequel–I got and finished In the Woods in a few days, then started The Likeness, worried that I wouldn’t be able to finish it by the time it was due. I needn’t have fretted.

The Likeness is at least as compelling as In the Woods, and is a tighter, better-written book to boot. I hate to use this trite phrase, but it fits: The Likeness is a taut, psychological thriller. It’s narrated by Detective Cassie Maddox, who still suffers from the events of the last book but is spurred back to risk taking when a unique investigative opportunity presents itself.

This is Lexie Madison’s story, not mine. I’d love to tell you one without getting into the other, but it doesn’t work that way. I used to think I sewed us together at the edges with my own hands, pulled the stitches tight and I could unpick them any time I wanted. Now I think it always ran deeper than that and farther, underground; out of sight and way beyond my control…

This is the main thing you need to know about Alexandra Madison: she never existed. Frank Mackey and I invented her, a long time ago

Like In the Woods, the book has wonderful, complex characters who are carefully and believably written. Cassie’s case is an involving one, and it’s easy to see how she gets in too deep. It is dark and violent, so defer it if you’re feeling fragile and depressed. But if you’re looking for a well-written murder procedural with great characters, I highly recommend starting with In the Woods and continuing with The Likeness.

Today is Thanksgiving Day in the US. We have much to be grateful for at our house. G. Grod is thrilled to see the Philadelphia Eagles doing well again. He and I were grateful for pie. I’m glad to have finished my book before it’s due at the library. And the kids were grateful that I gave them bread and butter, since they refused to eat anything else I made for our only-veggie-sides-and-pie dinner.

Today’s menu:
Savory Corn Pudding, from Cook’s Country
Gingered Beets, from Sundays at Moosewood
Creamy Cauliflower Casserole with Bacon and Cheddar
Impossible Pumpkin Pie with Maple Whipped Cream

Tomorrow, I’ll attempt:

Roasted Carrots
Sweet and Sour Brussel Sprouts
Apple Pie from Cook’s Illustrated with their Foolproof Pie Dough with its secret ingredient of vodka. I’ll use a mix of local Honeycrisp and Empire apples.

Edited to update the menu. Everything turned out well, though my boys still wouldn’t eat anything. I couldn’t even bribe Guppy with two kinds of pie. I was glad to skip the sweet potatoes, mashed potatoes, and turkey. G. Grod and I didn’t miss them.

The connections to Dostoevsky’s classic Crime and Punishment just keep coming. S, who blogs at Puss Reboots, recently reviewed Hemingway’s Moveable Feast, which I read and very much enjoyed last year. She noted that the book, published posthumously, had been edited by Hemingway’s last wife to an unknown extent. While doing research on that point, I found Crime and Punishment named as an influence by Hemingway on the book. Hemingway’s isn’t an obvious homage, but now I knew what to look for, I found it.

Raskolnikov is a man whose guilt and crime prevent him from accepting the love of Sofya until the very end of the novel. To me, A Moveable Feast felt like a loving apology from Hemingway to his first wife Hadley; before the editing the book included an overt apology. Like Raskolnikov, Hemingway left his love for dark reasons but came to his senses much later, and asked forgiveness. Unlike Raskolnikov, though, Hemingway did not reunite with his earlier love.

As part of what’s turning into my Shakespeare/Elizabethan course of study this year, I rented Elizabeth. Like Shakespeare in Love, I saw it in the theater the year it came out. I think I enjoyed it better then, before I learned a little about film. The performances are strong, particularly Blanchett’s and Geoffrey Rush’s, and the costumes are spectacular. I’d forgotten Daniel Craig in the cast. Yet too often I felt as if I were watching a music video rather than an historical movie–the visuals were too splashy. Additionally, the story was hardly subtle. Like Shakespeare’s history plays, the heroes and villains are not complex. Instead they’re so starkly defined they’re almost caricatures. Elizabeth was pretty to look at, so-so on historical accuracy, and mostly entertaining. Worth watching, though not what I’d call a great film.

Compared to Shakespeare in Love, I thought Elizabeth had a worse performance from Joseph Fiennes, but a better one from Blanchett than from Gwyneth Paltrow, who took home the Best Actress Oscar that year.

I was thrilled when Tana French’s The Likeness finally came into the library for me; I’d seen it praised several times. I was less thrilled when I realized it was a sequel, when I started it anyway, and when some critical points from the first one were divulged. So off I went to Target for In the Woods, since it still has a wait list at the library, too.

In the Woods is narrated by Rob Ryan, a homicide detective in Ireland. He and his partner Cassie volunteer to investigate the murder of a pre-teen girl. The case bears suspicious resemblances to a missing children case from twenty years before, one in which Rob was involved.

What I want you to remember is that I’m a detective. Our relationship with truth is fundamental but cracked, refracting confusingly like fragmented glass. It is the core of our careers, the endgame of every move we make, and we pursue it with strategies painstakingly constructed of lies and concealment and every variation on deception…

This is my job, and you don’t go into it–or if you do, you don’t last–without some natural affinity for its priorities and demands. What I am telling you, before you begin my story, is this–two things. I crave truth. And I lie.

This is an engrossing procedural, with excellent psychological characterizations. Dark and grim, though, it’s not fun or escapist, if that’s what you’re looking for. For those who have read the book and want to know more about an item mentioned at the very end, see here.

Will I be able to finish both books by the time I have to return The Likeness, which is non-renewable? We shall see. But judging by In the Woods, which I finished in about 5 days, I think I’m gonna make it.

Sean Penn’s Into the Wild finally came into the library for me. It’s a road movie about a college graduate who forgoes the materialistic world of his unhappy family and sets off for Alaska. Though it jumps around in time, the story is easy to follow. Emile Hirsch is frighteningly convincing as Chris McCandless, who tumbles from bright idealism into gaunt, frightened loneliness. And the supporting cast is quite strong, which helps carry the 138 minute movie through to its end. Beautiful, though perhaps overlong, it mostly resists preaching, and simply shows the internal and external journeys of McCandless.

Two thoughts:

One, I find Hirsch looks distractingly like several other actors: Brian Austin Green and Thomas Dekker from Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, and Zac Efron of the High School Musicals.

Two, Sean Penn’s films tend to revolve around dead or doomed children. It’s a strange theme to own.

This month’s pick for my book group, The Return of the Dancing Master, is an engaging procedural mystery by Swedish writer Henning Mankell, best known for his Kurt Wallender series, soon to be televised by the BBC.

The prologue takes place at the end of the second world war, then jumps 54 years to the home of Herbert Molin. There is a brutal murder, bad things happen, and the narration stays mostly with Stefan Lindman, a policeman who used to work with Molin. Lindman’s reeling from a recent diagnosis of cancer, and lets himself be drawn into the investigation.

At least once every year he found himself in situations where he experienced considerable fear. One one occasion he’d been attacked by a psychopath weighing over 300 pounds. He had been on the floor with the man astride him, and in rising desperation had fought to prevent his head from being torn off by the madman’s gigantic hands…Another time he’d been shot at while approaching a house to deal with domestic violence…But he had never been as frightened as he felt now, on the morning of October 25, 1999, as he lay in bed staring up at the ceiling.

Detailed and not predictable, the mystery unfolds at as measured a pace as the reader can manage–I raced through the book in a few days. It paints a disturbing picture of post-war Swedes hiding ugly secrets in the wake of the Holocaust.

In the New Yorker, Joan Acocella summarizes concerns about over-parenting from several books, many of them not new. As I read the five-page article, my annoyance grew. Who _isn’t_ against overparenting, except those who are too oblivious to realize they’re doing it? And isn’t this truly a small number, hardly the epidemic that articles like this about books like these imply?

A final question that one has to ask is whether the overparenting trend is truly the emergency that these authors say it is. In the manner of popular books on psychology, the commentators tend to forget that they are talking, for the most part, about a minority.

Further, my experience says it’s a no-win situation. I’ve been criticized for over-parenting, and I’ve been criticized for under-parenting. In the end, I quietly remind myself that I’m the one who spends almost all day every day with my kids. Mother knows best, and is doing her best. I do not need a book, or an article, to scare me to the other side of the parenting continuum, thank you. These books aren’t there to help parents. On the contrary, they seem more likely to result in an increased culture of judgment against parents. Not helpful. (Link from Blog of a Bookslut)

G. Grod asked for an apple pie several weeks ago. I finally worked up the nerve–I don’t think I’ve ever made an apple pie, or a double crust pie. It’s definitely a make-ahead; it takes at least 4 hours to cool.

I used different recipes from Cook’s Illustrated for the pie and the dough, which has a secret ingredient. It’s not a pretty pie, but it smells good. I’ll be serving it with Cedar Summit’s cinnamon ice cream.