When I wrote about panacea songs, I forgot to mention George Winston’s December. Years ago, when I lived in Philly, my girlfriends and I would go for sushi at Genji when we needed to talk or build up emotional reserves. December was often playing in the background, and it will always remind me of good sushi and supportive friendships.
Baby Guppy finally got his first tooth at 9 months+. He is crawling now, and not just pivoting. And he got his first ear infection last week, after having (as did Drake and I) three colds in six weeks.
Today I have been:
peed on
smeared with poop
stabbed at with a pen
hit
kicked
smeared with snot
coughed on
sneezed on
screamed at
I don’t know why I’m depressed. Motherhood is SO rewarding.
Kidding. I can tell I’m doing better because today has merely bent, not broken me. I got a long, hot shower in, and that made a world of difference.
So far, my 3yo son Drake enjoys preschool. I appreciate that he’s meeting other kids and making cute crafts. But I exclaimed in excitement when I picked him up last week. Book club order forms! While I’ve enacted draconian cutbacks in book purchases for me and the husband, I am beside myself with excitement as I page through the options. I am overcome by nostalgia for one of the few things I remember fondly about school–these book order forms.
So many books! So cheap! How will I decide?
I’m not sure how I missed this, but I suspect it’s because I stay at home with my kids and no longer work in an office, where sugar fixes are SOP, but my new favorite candy is Hershey’s Take 5. The five elements are peanuts, peanut butter, milk chocolate, pretzels and caramel. Four of the elements: ho hum, been there. But pretzels in a candy bar? Bravo! I deliberately held back a few from those that we gave out, and I was very happy when Drake put some into his pile for the Sugar Sprite. Now if only they would make it in dark chocolate rather than milk.
Sugar Sprite update: Drake asked for candy the two days after Halloween, and has now forgotten about it. The remaining four pieces languish in the pantry, awaiting active duty as bribes.
Speaking of pretzels, I think Chubby Hubby is good, not great. Instead, I take Sonny’s Vanilla Bean ice cream, top it with crushed pretzels, and drizzle with Wild Country maple syrup.
Years ago, when I was in grad school, an erudite English friend lent me her copy of the Arden Hamlet, with her notes from her secondary-school Shakespeare class. The Arden editions have useful and copious footnotes, but I found my friend’s notes even more helpful. It was very hard for me to give her back her book, since I felt I learned so much from it. Buying my own Arden copy helped. A bit.
Currently, I’m reading To Kill a Mockingbird, and I still have the copy I read in 9th grade English class. My notes are in hot-pink ink, in a rounded script that is sufficiently different from my current one that I didn’t immediately recognize it as my own. But what’s most disconcerting is the pedestrian tenor of the notations and underlinings. They probably were quotes from my English teacher, a very nice man who also happened to farm hogs. When I re-read comments such as “shows Jem’s maturation” or “themes: empathy, prejudice,” I cringe. I very much wish my 9th-grade self had been more sophisticated, and not just in pen-color choice and script style. It’s humbling to compare these glaringly obvious notes with the memory of my friend’s more complex ones in her Hamlet.
I am familiar with the disappointment that my education was not what I wish it had been, and envy of my friend’s experience. Yet I console myself with a few things. One, I have taken responsibility for my own ongoing education, and have progressed at least enough to have moved beyond my 9th-grade understanding of To Kill a Mockingbird. And two, To Kill a Mockingbird, while a very good book, is no Hamlet. It’s a book that’s easy to teach, with clear themes and language. Hamlet is complex enough that scholars are still arguing over it centuries later. To Kill a Mockingbird might be appreciated in the coming centuries, I don’t think it has the subtlety to inspire similar debate.
Michelle at Overdue Books (found via Pages Turned) has issued the From the Stacks Winter Reading Challenge:
If you are anything like me your stack of purchased to-be-read books is teetering over. So for this challenge we would be reading 5 books that we have already purchased, have been meaning to get to, have been sitting on the nightstand and haven’t read before. No going out and buying new books. No getting sidetracked by the lure of the holiday bookstore displays.
The bonus would be that we would finally get to some of those titles (you know you picked them for a reason!) and we wouldn’t be spending any extra money over the holidays.
While it’s a laudable goal, I don’t think I’ll be officially participating in the challenge. Time is particularly crunchy lately, and I’m trying to counteract my tendency to do one more thing. I’ll certainly attempt to do it on my site, since it coincides with what I’ve been trying to do anyway, which is read old stuff and not buy new stuff. But I’m not sure I want to commit to a list of 5. The last reading challenge I did showed me how restrictive reading lists quickly become. I’ve got so many candidates vying for my attention that there are probably no wrong answers. But I think I may have a glance over my mass market paperbacks, which have been temporarily exiled to the porch off baby Guppy’s room. They don’t get the same face time and consideration as the HCs and TPs do, so I think I’ll give them some equal opportunity.
From “Let’s review the roadkill from Tuesday’s election”
Nick Coleman, Star Tribune
Spoiling to be Spoilers: The Independence Party has begun to give “good government” a bad name. The party called itself “Team Minnesota” but forgot there is no “I” in “team.” Peter Hutchinson got an embarrassing 6 percent of the votes in the governor’s race, and his statewide total of 141,800 was close to the total received by the LOSING candidate for Hennepin County sheriff, despite the fact many Minnesotans embraced his party’s platform. Ol’ Hutch can chisel “Finished a Distant Third” on his tombstone, but had no effect on the 2006 election. Except for the spoiler part. The Independence Party is supposed to care about what’s best for Minnesota. If so, Hutchinson might have said, “Only one person can win, and it’s not me. Please vote for the viable candidate who most favors my platform, Mike Hatch.” If just 22,523 Hutchinson voters (16 percent of his total) had voted for Hatch, Hutchinson would be in line for a post in the Hatch administration. Some folks are just too smart for their own good.
Dear fellow Minnesotans: Didn’t you learn a lesson from the last several elections? When a Republican, a Democrat, and a third party run, the third party will take votes from one contender, in most cases the Democrat. The result is that the Republican is elected, which can hardly be desired by those who are voting third party. This is how Pawlenty got elected the first time, and it’s how he got elected again. If you add the votes for the DFL candidate with the votes for the independent candidate, you get a number that would have defeated Pawlenty handily. And yet he’s still here. Not only because of those who voted for him, but because of those who voted against his most viable opponent, the DFL candidate. While we voted for instant runoff voting for municipal races, until instant runoff is implemented at all levels, the governor’s race might as well be a two party system. Anyone who votes otherwise is likely to elect their last choice.
This morning, I wondered where that strange chemical smell was coming from. The neighbor’s new roof? Oh, no. It’s me. Curse you, Dr. Bronner’s.
I tried the eucalyptus soap, figuring it would be good for sore, post-yoga muscles. I didn’t find it any better than the peppermint, which I quite like. But the lingering scent was a weird, pungent one that I found unpleasant. I found myself in the odd position of needing to take another shower to wash off the smell of the soap from the previous one. Rather than playing it safe with my old reliable, Dove for Sensitive Skin, I decided to throw caution to the wind and try Neutrogena’s Energizing Sugar Body Scrub. It smells of citrus, and left my winter skin feeling well hydrated. I followed it with the Neutrogena body oil, and I think I’ll be able not only to endure, but to enjoy, the scents tomorrow.
Added later: The Neutrogena Sugar Scrub leaves a huge mess in the shower, and should only be used sparingly, with care taken to dissolve the crystals completely.
Another of my bizarre theories is that we’re born knowing yoga. Baby Guppy did an extraordinary bound angle pose this morning. Last week, I was watching 3yo Drake at the park. He flopped down, and I thought, oh, look, he’s in plank position. He then moved his chest forward into upward dog, then shifted his weight back into downward dog, doing the moves in sequence from a sun salute. And no, I don’t and haven’t done these yoga poses in front of him. I tried to teach him triangle pose, and that was a complete flop. But every so often he’ll bust out another move, so I continue to believe that yoga classes merely remind us of skills our bodies have forgotten from childhood.
People who know me may be familiar with my habit of forming bizarre theories. The fact that I have had little scientific education does not deter me.
Three fourths of our little family is in the throes of a nasty cold, and one of my theories is that viruses are sentient life forms, intent on propagating themselves on a microcosmic level. I only have to observe toddlers with colds for supporting evidence. My usually introverted son Drake suddenly becomes very physically affectionate, far beyond needing some extra physical comfort because he’s sick. He especially becomes more physical with baby Guppy, giving sticky hugs and snotty kisses. He also becomes even more enamored of things in the kitchen. Yesterday I caught him licking the lid of the honey bottle, sticking his hand into the salt dish, and groping food in the refrigerator.
The health cautions of magazines primly advise parents to wash hands, and keep hands away from faces. But I’m pretty sure the only way a toddler can resist the biological imperative of that virus to spread is through quarantine.
I wrote yesterday about my trouble coming up with book ideas for my friend who wants to find longer books that aren’t violent, scary, or disturbing to read to her son.
One suggestion I had was to read longer picture books than the ones usually recommended for three year olds. I found this article from Child magazine helpful, and Drake has enjoyed many of the books they recommend.
Easy reader chapter books are also a good bet. I forgot to mention the Frog and Toad books by Arnold Lobel, which have been favorites of Drake’s. Also, there are some classics that may not have troublesome passages. Mr. Popper’s Penguins, The Cricket in Times Square, and Caddie Woodlawn are all good possibilities.
A friend wrote to suggest the Beatrix Potter and Roald Dahl books. The Potter books have some of the same issues as the Milne books, though they do portray a wonderful tenderness to animals. And the Dahl books are also problematic. They’re funny and dark, and they empower the child characters, but they can be scary. Also, I found James and the Giant Peach positively creepy in its fear of female physicality.
But the one thing I’d recommend above all is to make friends with the children’s librarian at your local library. S/he is likely to be the best and most constant resource for book ideas.
A friend stumped me recently. She said her 3yo was able and interested to listen to longer books and ones without pictures. She didn’t care for the Pooh books because she felt they were too violent, but they had read and enjoyed Because of Winn Dixie by Kate DiCamillo. Since she knows I’m a bibliophile, she asked my advice for other chapter books that would be good for a 3yo, yet not violent.
First, I had to get my head around her complaint that the Milne books were violent. I consider myself a pretty aware reader, yet that adjective had not occurred to me during any of the many readings we’ve done of that book in our house. Yet my friend isn’t wrong. Christopher Robin has a toy gun with which he (accidentally) shoots Pooh, the animals kidnap (joeynap?) Roo when he and Kanga move to the forest, and Tigger bounces Eeyore into the river. These are just the examples I can think of off the top of my head. I’m not going to stop reading Pooh, because I cherish the humor and sweetness of the stories, as well as the childish roughness, though my friend terms it violence, inherent in play.
Still, though, it took me some time to come up with even a few suggestions, and neither were without pictures. I recommended DiCamillo’s Mercy Watson chapter books, which are fun and silly, as well as longer picture books like Jon J. Muth’s Zen Shorts.
Other books that occurred to me later were the Laura Ingalls Wilder books and The Facts and Fictions of Minna Pratt by Patricia MacLachlan, and The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. These are ones that I’ve read that I’ve enjoyed. I worked for a year in the children’s section of a large used bookstore, and I became familiar with some of the other popular titles and series, though I haven’t (yet) read them myself that might be good candidates: Stuart Little by E.B. White, The Magic Tree House series, and the Junie B. Jones series.
But what was most interesting to me was the number of books I thought of that had immediate difficulties. The Narnia, George MacDonald, and Tolkien books are violent, as are DiCamillo’s more recent novels. Charlotte’s Web has an ending that must be discussed, which would be tough with someone only three. After further thought, I still think picture books are the best fit. Just because a child CAN sit through a book without pictures doesn’t mean picture books should be left behind. They’re one of the best things about childhood, in my opinion, and their experience should be drawn out and savored.
Earlier this fall, I consumed the Entertainment Weekly Fall TV Guide with my usual fervor. But very little sounded good. I watched two eps of Studio 60, then realized I wasn’t looking forward to the third ep at all, so I didn’t bother. I watched the premiere of Heroes, and was aggravated by its predictability. I didn’t feel like bothering with the Lost-like ensemble of The Nine. I gave up on Lost midway through last season when I got bored. I figure if it gets good again, I’ll hear about it, and I can watch on DVD. I have heard good things about Friday Night Lights and Standoff, but I don’t feel moved. Instead, I’m only watching returning shows:
Veronica Mars: hate the new opening, hate the revised music, and like the show less since they’re giving Kristen Bell a break and not having her in every scene. I’m not sure there’s any way they can top season 1, but I’m watching anyway and it’s still pretty good. Favorite character? Dick. He makes me laugh. My guess for the campus criminal? The TA: his (his? not certain he’s a he, but then he won’t be the culprit) hair looks funny and wig-like.
House: Hugh Laurie is darkly funny. The medical mysteries are secondary to the character interactions and witty repartee.
Bones: the mysteries can get kind of lame, but the banter and characters are excellent.
My Name is Earl: funny, naughty, yet rather sweet, and not mean-spirited.
The Office: Steve Carell has the tough job of being the cringe-inducing guy while everyone else gets the laughs.
Battlestar Galactica: probably my favorite show. Things are pretty much back where they were before the abrupt change at season 2’s end, but darker, bleaker and more complex. James Callis continues to be a wonderful villain who does evil because he’s selfish and cowardly, not out of malice. Jamie Bamber’s fake extra weight is painful to look at, and I keep hoping we’ll get a workout montage set to Madonna so he will stop looking puffy and orange.
#62 in my book challenge for the year was Morality for Beautiful Girls, the third book in Smith’s African detective series. I enjoyed this book far more than I did #2, Tears of the Giraffe. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni finally became less than perfect, the apprentices became less worthless, and Mma Makutski very quietly became more complex. There were three mysteries: a boy found in the desert, a possible poisoning, and an investigation of the integrity of beauty pageant candidates. All three were used as backstory to the much more interesting development of the series’ characters. One mystery was left purposely unresolved, another was resolved unexpectedly, and the third was predictable, but so charming in its execution and resolution that I can’t complain. This book was a more worthy follow up to the first book. While it still had some of the sexism and romanticisation of the simplistic that I disliked in the second book, it was a more balanced and thus enjoyable story.
Halloween went a bit better this year. Drake was excited to dress up as a cowboy, but when it came to trick or treating, he asked G. Grod to carry him between houses, so what with that and the cold, they weren’t out very long. Nonetheless, along with the slew of candy he got at preschool, Drake had PLENTY of candy.
An aside: what’s with all the candy at preschool? THEY’RE THREE. Their little bodies can’t handle much sugar. I was the odd mom out and gave organic dried apple slices. I don’t think the kids are old enough or cynical enough to resent me for that, yet.
I told Drake that he could go through his candy, pick six pieces, then put all the other extra candy in our Halloween tin. Then overnight, we’d get a visit from the Sugar Sprite (got the idea from A Toy Garden), who would take our extra candy and leave a special gift.
Drake seemed to buy this, and picked out six pieces, and put the others in the tin. I was nearly breaking my arm patting myself on the back. But this morning, he opened the tin, found the 3-pack of Guido, Luigi and a tractor from the movie Cars, and only seemed mildly excited. A little later, he asked, “Can I have the extra candy?”
I reminded him the Sugar Sprite had taken it.
“Can you call her?”
“Um, maybe. But if you want the extra candy, you’ll have to give her back the cars,” I said, thinking this would settle the matter.
He called my bluff, gathered them up, and held them out. I told him the Sugar Sprite wouldn’t be home till later, and felt very fortunate when he got attached to the cars, and agreed to enjoy his one treat (a Tootsie pop) for the day, and finally stopped asking about the extra candy.
I don’t think this stands a chance of working next year. And I bet the dried apple slices won’t, either.
My husband G. Grod and I recently passed our eighth wedding anniversary. We celebrated by getting a babysitter and making a dinner reservation at a Twin Cities restaurant friends have praised, but that we had not yet tried. The chef is a veteran of many local and national big-name places, and started his own place not long ago. The menu was strong, and we were excited about the food. We shared a foie gras appetizer and french fries. Both were quite good. Then I got the fish special and G. Grod got a steak. The server stopped by immediately, and we said things were good. But soon after, I found that the fish was overwhelmed by the winter vegetable preparation that accompanied it. G. Grod’s steak was overdone. We gave the server this feedback when he did finally return, but by then we had finished the entrees. We ordered desserts, and had a very good berry tart and a spiced chocolate cake. But our impression of the restaurant was of infrequent service, and expensive though only OK entrees. Our experience didn’t leave us eager to return.
I wondered at the time whether the problems were due in part to dining on a Friday–did an increase in the number of diners mean diminishing quality? My next two restaurant experiences didn’t disprove this theory. I ate out with friends at 112 Eatery on a Wednesday. The service was attentive and friendly, and the food was quite good: french fries with aioli, romaine salad with roquefort, the lamb sugo pasta, and the pot de creme dessert, which was great when mixed and matched with the banana cream dessert that a friend got. The burger received raves. I must remember that the pot de creme easily feeds two.
I did another night out on Thursday at Gardens of Salonica. I’ve been to Gardens a lot over the years we’ve lived here, but I went with a friend who was very familiar with the menu, so I tried some things I hadn’t before. I had the Greek salad, which was lightly dressed and bright with lemon. We shared a sampler platter of feta dip, potato/garlic dip, and artichokes on pita. I got greek fries and leek lemon boughatsa–a phyllo packet, and shared some of a friend’s stuffed cabbage leaves. Finally, I tried the galaktoboureko, a layered custard with phyllo in an apricot honey sauce. Service was helpful, attentive, water glasses were refilled, and the food was well prepared and delivered quickly.
I may be comparing apples and oranges. The latter two restaurants are small, and more neighborhood places than destination joints like the first. But of the three experiences, I’d prefer to frequent a small place that does its thing well, than a large place that costs more, and is more ambitious, but less of a sure thing with quality and consistency.
#61 in my book challenge for the year was Alexander McCall Smith’s Tears of the Giraffe, the sequel to his wildly successful novel, The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. A kind friend gave it to me ages ago, and it languished on the shelf because I bought new books, or something came in at the library. But after re-reading In Cold Blood, I felt the need for a sustaining book, and thought this might suit my mood.
Alas, I found the book uneven. The main characters from the earlier book were back, and I found them aggravatingly unnuanced. Precious Ramotswe was so insightful she barely had to do any detective work. Mr. J.L.B. Matekoni was kind. Mma Makutsi was clever. In fact, there were no complex characters. Each person had one defining characteristic, and that’s all there was to them, and it identified them as either bad (e.g., the wife-beating ex-husband Note Mokoti) or good (e.g., Precious’s late father Obed).
The main mystery, the fate of an American boy who disappeared ten years before, seemed to turn on a mistake. When Mma Ramotswe investigates, she finds “a newspaper photograph–a picture of a man standing in front of a building. There had been a printed caption, but the paper had rotted and was illegible.” (p. 93) She puts the fragile paper in her pocket.
Yet twenty pages later, the photograph includes multiple people, and has names on it. Mma Ramotswe determines that one man in the photo is evil, and traces him easily by the name on the paper. While the mysteries aren’t critical to one’s enjoyment of the books, this inconsistency was surprising and sloppy.
One of the strengths of the book is the small details of daily life in another culture. Sometimes these are incisive, as when the characters muse on the futility of revenge, the connectedness of people, and the meaning of family and place. At other times the author seemed to be making clowns of his characters, as when they wondered at Freud (since all men should love their mothers) or Madame Bovary (who should have been content married to a boring man, who would provide for her.) Many of the comments were sexist, e.g., that men are disorganized and women are hard working. There was also a great deal of nostalgia for a past that supposedly had better manners and values, yet no insight into why things changed, or ironic awareness that some of what was good about the past might have been a result of otherwise unlamented colonialism.
This book gave me some things to think about, but at the end, its flaws outweighed its merits. It provoked my critical consciousness repeatedly. While I understand it was trying to champion simplicity of life and values, I think instead it was too simplistic in character and narrative, and this undermined for me its message of culture difference and appreciation.
The last two films we’ve borrowed from the library were Hero and Ong Bak. Yet they don’t make my movie challenge for the year, because I was unable to stay awake through either of them. What I saw was pretty (Hero) and fun to watch (Ong Bak) but both were long, and without strong narrative lines. My husband G. Grod enjoyed them for what they were, though.