When I was a little girl...

...I loved to read books. I could read and read and read until my eyes popped. I remember in third grade, at the new elementary school, going to the library every day. I read all the books in my section and they had to move me to the "older" section. I was so excited. MORE books. That's when I discovered the Little House on the Prairie series. I devoured them, every single one. I would be so upset it for some reason the next in the series was checked out by someone else. Books helped keep me sane.

I still read all the time. Books are one of those things that still excite me when I get to pick out a new one. I have a shelf of about 70 books that I will read someday. At a book a week (my current pace) that should take me about 1.5 years, so it really isn't as many as it seems....I should get to my next one, now that I think about it!

Efficiency

I had a dream last night about Grandma T. She had planted this huge plot of corn (about 20 acres or so) because she could sell it for things like animal feed, ethanol (it WAS the wave of the future), and corn meal.

Someone who doesn't know her asked "Why at her age would she do something like this?"

My reply was: "Grandma has always been someone who hates waste. She doesn't waste food, or water, or time, or money, or opportunity."

And when I woke up I thought "How apt."

I'm so relieved

I read Bless Me, Ultima, by Rudolfo Anaya years ago when I was in graduate school. It is a phenomenal book, and one I highly recommend to anyone simply because it's a great book. I have always wanted to read more of Anaya's work and have collected several of his books over the years but I haven't read anything else until now.

If you've been observant, you'll notice that I changed my "book I'm reading now" earlier this week without providing a review of that book. That's because I couldn't finish it. It was Jalamanta by Anaya and it was so horrible that I didn't even make it through 40 pages. The premis was ok: An exile returns home to help out his people as they are being persecuted by the dictatorial regime. But the way it was told was just awful. It sounded like some weird mish mash of Emerson, Thoreau, Hawthorne and New Age tripe that I couldn't take it seriously, much less actually care about any of the characters. I put it away disappointed in Anaya and wondering if Ultima was his only good book.

But, I decided to pull out another of his books just to help myself answer that above question and so that I wouldn't avoid him forever if Jalamanta was an anomoly. I'm relieved to say that this next book, Alburquerque (misspelling intentional) is excellent. I was hooked from the first sentence, and committed by the second, and that doesn't happen in very many books. I'll be devouring this one.

Book club book review: The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

I loved this book the first time I read it and I loved it the second time I read it. I’m sure if I read it again, I’ll still love it.

In The Red Tent, Diamant creates a life around the only daughter of Jacob, Dinah. She is the petted and precious daughter of her four mothers, each of whom taught her something special that became an integral part of her life. The red tent, the place where the women go during their menstrual cycle, is a central theme in the early part of the book because it provides a space where women are able to celebrate who they are, their life giving abilities, and the unique characteristics that make them women. The first part of the book is so beautiful and alluring that the reader is willing to give herself over to the fantasy of women’s space undefiled by men.

Dinah’s life takes its own course after they move the first time and then settle outside of Shechem. It is here that Dinah meets the love of her life, has that fantasy destroyed before her very eyes and then escapes to Egypt where she raises her son and establishes herself as a very talented midwife. Her adventures continue and the book ends in a beautiful reminiscence of Dinah’s accomplishments and wonderful gifts.

I find Diamant’s fiction to be so spiritual without being preachy. She is a talented story teller who weaves a wonderful tale about a woman who could see the beauty in life despite all of the tragedies and heartbreaks she endured.

It was a rough day yesterday

Yesterday was tough. I'm not sure where my kids got the notion that I would buy them a car, but they did and it was a tough discussion filled with fit-throwing when it finally hit them that they were indeed going to have to buy their own car. E is actually refusing to learn to drive until she gets her own car. Logic there astounds me.

Not only that, but they, repeatedly, mentioned the fact that David and I haven't had time to go to the store lately and that "if we would only do our job and go to the store" everything would be alright. For many reasons that didn't settle so well with me.

I swear I don't know what I'm going to do with myself when they graduate! E pointed out that we're going to have a lot of free time after they leave and wondered what on earth we would do with it. Isn't it just like a kid not to realize that their parents have lives other than centered around them.

I'm tired and have a headache today and simply don't know what I have the energy to tackle...

When I was a little girl...

I made these really cool things out of crayola shavings and glue. And I did this inside my desk in third grade much to the chagrin (and repeated irritation) of my teacher.

I was lucky enough to have a mother who bought me the whole 64 pack of crayolas. I wanted this not so much for the variety of colors (though this was really cool) but because it came with a crayola sharpener that you could use to sharpen those pesky crayons when they got flat. There were 4 of us in the back corner (where the good kids sat) who had this awesome box and we would finish our work early and then start our craft projects. If we were lucky enough we would have construction paper, but more often than not, we just had to rely on whatever was handy--and that was often the insides of our desk.

So, this is how it worked. Before the system was perfected, each person would take their flattish crayons and sharpen them which would result in these really cool looking shavings. We would then squeeze a glob of glue about the size of the palm of our hands on the inside corner of our desk and then we'd open the bottom of the crayola box (carefully so that all the crayons didn't go all over the floor) and empty the shavings onto a sheet of notebook paper. Then we'd sprinkle the shavings onto the glue and wait and wait for it to dry. Once dry, we peeled the whole thing up and took it outside to look at with the sun in its background. I'm sure we dropped them after that and proceeded to make more.

We figured out pretty early on, though, that a mix of colors really just looked brown or black and we needed better organization than that, so we would pool all our similar colored crayons with different people and they would shave until we all had several piles of color. Then we'd use these piles to create ART. We could make flowers, birds, skies, whatever. The globs of glue in the bottom of our desk were worked with a bit before we dropped the shavings onto them to make them look like something. Our little factory could put out at least one "painting" a day if we weren't too terribly busy with classwork.

That is until we got caught. Mrs. Lucas was a stickler for a clean room and well-behaved children, and I'm sure that 4-6 smart kids in the back of the room working together on a craft project weren't all that neat or well-behaved (I can see all the smears of crayon shavings on the floor even as I type, not to mention the metal that had to have been ripped out of the insides of our desks). She put a halt to this factory of activity not only by taking up our crayons, but also by telling our parents. I remember my mother being so angry at me for "wasting" my crayons by shaving them for art and not just coloring with them.

After that I was limited to the 48 crayola box, which while still having all the wonderful colors, didn't have the sharpener. Mom didn't understand that the pencil sharpener didn't shave crayolas the same...or maybe she didn't care...but at some point someone, who was also limited to the 48 crayola box at school, managed to get a 64 crayola box at home, ripped out the sharpener, and the little rebel factory was in business once again. I'm fairly sure this is why I ended up getting sent to stand in the hallway one day where I cried and cried so loud that the special ed teacher invited me into her room to help her out so I wouldn't disturb her students anymore. That's another story, though.

Book Review: A Catch of Consequence by Diana Norman

A Catch of Consequence was a really good read. Set at the beginning in pre-revolutionary Boston and then for the remainder of the novel in England, it is a great historical novel. I particularly enjoyed the characters, especially Makepeace Burke, our heroine. She has fiery red hair and a temper to match, not to mention a drive to see things happen. When she finds a man drowning, she has to save him, and the rest of the story is the outfall of that one decision. Not only is the man she rescues a British peer, but he was being drowned by the rebels in Boston who frequented Makepeace’s tavern.

In true romantic fashion, Makepeace and the man she rescued, Sir Phillip Dapifer, fall in love, and despite the difference in social standing, get married. They don’t, however, live happily ever after. Sir Phillip’s first-wife, who he divorced because she committed adultery with his best friend, makes sure that life for them is miserable, eventually leading to the death of Sir Phillip. It is this point that the story focuses on Makepeace and what she has to do to heal herself and move on with her life.

As I said, I really liked this book. I thought that there were interesting changes in character for Makepeace, while keeping the thread of who she truly is. I honestly didn’t understand why she fell in love with Sir Phillip. He seemed a rather flat character who didn’t have the passion to deserve her. The plot is focused and mostly all of the characters were delightful or served a purpose for the novel.

A few things I did not like about the book centered on the writing. I found myself a little stunned by the abrupt transitions between paragraphs. I sometimes didn’t understand that I was reading about another character until I was a few paragraphs into the change. This was disorienting and troublesome for me as I’m not a quick reader and don’t gloss over sentences or paragraphs. I also found some of the dialect extremely difficult to understand, impossible in some instances.

Those concerns were little, though. A Catch of Consequence is a delightful book that I enjoyed reading from the first page until the last. I’m looking forward to my next Diana Norman book.

For the Love of Office Depot

I absolutely love shopping at Office Depot. I can find excuses to go to that store. I love picking out paper, and pens and notebooks and dividers and basically any office supplies you can think of.

Yesterday I bought a labeler. It is so much fun. So far I have labelled all of my notebooks so that I know what I'm grabbing, or can tell someone else, "get the one that says XXX." I feel like I'm in an organization heaven right now.

Back to it!

Goodbye to San Francisco

David left today on a trip to San Francisco...it's a conference trip, so (he says) not fun for him, just something that he has to do. I was planning to go on this trip, if you remember from blogs past; however, I decided not to since I do have a lot of work to do and since it would cost money and not really profit us any business-wise. Turns out that was a really good decision considering how crazy things have been here lately.

But, I have to say that this is the second trip to San Francisco that I ALMOST went on and didn't and I'm dying to go to that city. I've always wanted to see the bridge, the hills, the street cars, china town, the bay, everything. I've wanted to go to the wine region since I discovered wines and know that when you drink them locally they are so much better than when you buy them at restaurants or stores. It's disappointing not to be able to go a second time. One day hopefully...

In the meantime, I work and work and work. Europe will be a well-deserved rest!

I hope it isn't so!

So, yesterday I wrote how I thought I was psychic as a kid and would have these dreams that were so vivid and real and would sometimes "come true." Well, last night I dreamed that David and me and the girls left for our European trip only to find out once we got to the airport (about 2 hours away) that we'd forgotten our passports! yikes! Talk about something that would be horrible.

Well, now that I dreamed it, I can put extra assurances to make sure it doesn't come true!

When I was a little girl...

I thought I was psychic. I truly believed that I could tell the future just by sitting down and thinking. I could predict what was the next song on the radio, I even could predict the words in a song that I'd never heard before. I could solve the puzzles on Wheel of Fortune faster than anybody I knew! I would have dreams that were so profound and real, I really believed I had lived them.

What I now know to be intuition was certainly magic when I was a kid. I believed in my gift and only shared the fact with people that I thought would appreciate it...which were few and far between. I actually thought it was a gift granted to me by Great-Grandma Stricklin. I knew she was magic too. I would often have long conversations with the trees or clouds or spirits or whatever lived in the oak trees on the 30...I learned a lot about the way of the world and how things function during those times lying on the trampoline.

I'm saying all this tongue in cheek, but I actually have had several weird dream experiences. Great-Grandma visited me and mom a couple of days after she died (that's one example, there are others). I knew that I was going to marry a man named David who was tall, dark haired with dark eyes. When my friend Jeffrey Lucan died, he visited me in my dreams several times until I told him that he was freaking me out. I miss him now that he really did leave me.

So, though I don't really believe myself psychic anymore, I do think that there's something to intuition and being observant of patterns for they help us see a bigger picture than the world in which we occupy space. I still can't explain all the dreams, though...

Book Review: The Salt Letters by Christine Balint

While I can’t say I hated this book, I can’t say I loved it either. The Salt Letters provided an interesting and easily readable account of a girl’s escape from family expectations to pursue the love of her life…and to do so required her to travel all the way across the world in a rickety, overcrowded boat. Her experiences are harrowing and the narrative voice is true: you feel Sarah’s experiences and sympathize with her.

What I didn’t like about the book was that it was written in such a vague way that I couldn’t really tell if she died or found her love in this world at the end. The narrative weaves the story through both the present and the past, but the ending isn’t clear if she’s in a dream world from her sickness or if she’s healed and will begin her life anew in the “new world.” It almost feels as if the author wants the reader to be confused, or that she’s being cute in writing a double-meaning ending, but it was unsatisfying for this reader. I didn’t like not knowing.

What I did like about the book is how the characters feel real, how you can sympathize with them, how their struggle to survive the miseries of the long boat ride (boredom, discomfort, unsanitary conditions, bad food, lack of privacy, etc.) makes them all feel a little crazy, how the narrative takes on a fantasy tone at times. The playfulness of the narrative was a stark contrast to the actual events of the story, and was, for the most part, done well.

Oh, to be cradled in the arms of Amazon.com's packing materials!

Vignette #3

In a discussion with A, E, David and me last night about boys and why they're so hard to understand, A said that she would continue believing that boys don't think about sex and that they have emotions but are just stupid, E replied:

E: That's naive Alyssa, and you know what naivitee will get you...pregnant!

Luxury

When I was a little girl...

I'm going to start a new series on Mondays called "When I was a little girl..." where I'm going to try to bring up an interesting memory from the time I can remember until I graduated from high school...So, here goes.

When I was a little girl I used to have a very very hard time waking up in the mornings. I would get out of my princess bed (the four poster wooden bed that was a "gift" from a slave owner to her slave upon emancipation, or at least that's the story I was always told) and put my feet on the little rug beside my bed and scoot on that rug over to my doorway. My room didn't have carpeting in it for a few years and the floor was always cold on my warm sleepy feet.

I would then dash to the bathroom and do my business and get back in bed where I would cozy up and usually fall back asleep.

After a couple of scoldings I would then get up and sit in front of my dresser. The bottom drawer was broken, so when I pulled it out it would lay on the floor instead of hold itself up. I would sit there and usually doze off to sleep again only to wake up when my head hit the dresser or floor or when one of our cats came to greet me good morning. I would then select my clothes and get back in bed where I would cozy up again.

At some point I managed to get dressed and then would start my ritual of eating breakfast. I loved cereals that had different kinds of "bits" in them. My favorite was always Lucky Charms. I would go through and eat all of the oat bits first and then I would eat the marshmallows color by color. I'm sure this took me forever because the marshmallows were usually all soggy and gross by the time I finished.

At some point my mother would start fussing because she was going to be late for work yet again, and I would have to start running around to get all my stuff ready for school. Then we would get in the car for our LONG ride to school and I would usually fall asleep again on the way, or at least try to if my mother's singing didn't rouse me too much.

Easter Beauties

It's a Good Friday

And I'm thankful for that. I have a bear of a month coming up that involves at least 3 Saturday workdays for me and 2 for David and unfortunately, they are not on the same Saturdays. I'm ready for May 5th to be out of the way so we can resume our normal pattern--Friday night date with dinner and movie, Saturday sleeping in and then doing nothing all day except what we want to, then Sunday more of the same.

So, I will enjoy this long weekend (we're taking Monday off with the kids) and then we'll begin a month from hell in just enough time to stop, take a short breather, pack everything and head off to Europe!

Hope everyone has a wonderful Easter!

Bookclub Book Review: Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (a week or so late)

Rarely does one come across a book like Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston. It's a love story, a tragedy, a social commentary on the plight of African Americans at the turn of the century, an anthropological study in language and culture, a historical perspective of the building of "black towns." And it's so well-written and conceived that I have not met one person who didn't love this book.

It is rare for our bookclub to unanimously love a book. There are usuallya couple of us who really love it, a couple who really hate it, one or two who tried but couldn't finish, one or two who wanted to read it but didn't for whatever reason, and then those who were indiferent. Everyone of us loved this book.

While the language can be a little difficult to master at first--being written in dialect--you get used to it after a chapter or so, and the reading of the book is very quick after that. I read it the first time in college and fell in love with Hurston as a result. This time was also a wonderful experience.

High praise from me, who doesn't always love a book, and not necessarily the second time around.

Book Review: The Runaway Quilt by Jennifer Chiaverini

I fought with myself on whether I liked this book or not. I really did not like the main character of the memoir--Gerda, Sylvia's Great Aunt. She was pompous and self-righteous and seemed motivated to do the right thing for all the wrong reasons, but somehow she grew on me and by the end I liked her despite her flaws.

This was a tough book to read considering how all of the other "Quilter's Apprentice" series books have been really feel-good books that help you see how quilting has formed relationships between women that span generations. I was at a point in my life where I needed that "easy read" and The Runaway Quilt did not provide me with that. However, by the time I finished and was keenly aware of the fact that I missed all that wonderful female bonding that happens between quilters, I realized that I was getting just that, but it was between generations of quilters that would never know one another. It was at this point that I learned to like the book.

The Runaway Quilt posits quilts' roles in the underground railroad of the 1850s. Were they really signals for runaway slaves, and if so, how did they work? Despite evidence to the contrary, did the log cabin quilt really signal a safe haven? Most importantly for this story, was how did an Elm Creek quilt make it to South Carolina with such glaring evidence that it originated there, but no evidence that there were familial or other contacts in that area? That mystery gets solved in Gerda's memoir and through other revelations, which do make the book a worthwhile read.

Don't pick up The Runaway Quilt if you expect another "easy" read by Chiaverini. However, if you're looking for a book that helps us understand the challenges facing people during the Fugitive Slave law time period, then this book will help you see those in addition to positing how women's work (i.e. quilts) helped fuel a rebellion movement.

Monk's Fishouse, Cobh, Ireland