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Tuesday, November 29, 2005

books for November

For several days I've idly wondered if I could come up with a convincing-looking graphic of myself falling off the face of the earth to post here, and just be done with it.

Meanwhile, here are my books for November, since I am relatively certain I won't be reading one between now and tomorrow.

1. Uncle Vanya -- Anton Chekhov -- 2
   • I realize that I'm about to reveal myself to be utterly uncultured, but I don't like stories I read to be bleak. I don't mind sad, I don't mind heartbreaking, I don't mind even a decent amount of despair, but I'm bourgeouis enough to want to feel something when I read -- that is, to want to feel something other than desire that I'll just be done already. Which means, if Uncle Vanya is typical, that I'm not cut out to like Chekhov, I don't think. Hey, at least I'm honest about it.
2. A Thread of Grace -- Mary Doria Russell -- 5. Yes, FIVE.
   • A Thread of Grace puts you into the lives of villagers and peasants in northwestern Italy during the second half of World War II. It's a war novel, a holocaust novel -- to use a hackneyed-but-accurate phrase, it is an anthem to the human spirit. Mary Doria Russell is an inspired genius, and she has delivered an absolute gem of a novel, which will probably end up being my most-recommended book of 2005. To fully appreciate it, you need to possess the following characteristics as a reader:
     1. You need to be able to enjoy a book whose list of characters is long and complicated, so long and complicated that it's actually posted at the beginning of the book; you have to be prepared to refer to this list often.
     2. You must be able to hack it when very bad things happen to characters whom you know and love -- and I mean really know, and really love, because in this book, you really do.
     3. You have to like the kind of oh-my-gosh-amazing historical novel that is scrupulously researched and detailed, brilliantly written, beautiful, and heartbreaking in many, many ways -- the kind of book that is a celebration of life at the same time as it's a merciless account of a lot of miserable death.
     4. In accordance with the above, you have to be able to cry and read at the same time, and it helps if you can also laugh while you're crying and reading.
     5. Also, you'll want to be able to put off sleeping for a day or two while you finish it.
     Honestly, I think this is the best new-to-me book I have read this year, and that is saying a lot. READ THIS NOW. THIS MEANS YOU.
3. The Myth of You & Me -- Leah Stewart -- 3
   • I saw an ad for this book online, and the blurb said, "If you have ever googled an ex-friend, you need to read this book." So I said, "OK." The very basic premise was interestingly familiar to me: two girls, best friends as teens, lose touch for basically the entire duration of their twenties, and then reconnect. Sort of made me wonder if that happens to everyone.

     The story itself was just OK. The reason for the separation turned out to be a predictable and clichéd "you slept with my man" sort of thing, which you could see coming half a book away; the mechanism of reunion was rather unlikely (Cameron works as a live-in assistant for an elderly historian, who gets wind of the existence of Sonia and, due to regrets he has about people he's left behind in his own life, leaves a bequest to Cameron which she finds after his death and which forces her to deliver a package to Sonia, in person). Still, it was interesting to follow Cameron on her search for Sonia, learning about their friendship and its demise through flashbacks on the way. The handling of the story was at times a bit blocky and unprofessional; it's hard to really immerse myself in the world of a book when I keep finding passages that were obviously written "to order" -- you can hear the author telling herself, OK, I need a scene that establishes that Sonia has trouble with numbers, that her mother thinks she's stupid, and that her mother physically and emotionally abuses her; I also need a scene that will force intimacy between Cameron and Sonia; hmm, let's have Cameron walk in on Mom shouting multiplication problems at Sonia and slapping her when she gets them wrong. Such scenes do their jobs in a workmanlike sort of way, but they don't perform literary magic. Overall, I just never found myself living in the novel; I didn't feel much for any of the characters, didn't really "get" their motivations, never had a lump in my throat or whispered, "Yes." I enjoyed the story enough to read the book in a day, but not enough to ever read it again, I don't think.

     The problem is that just about any book I read immediately after a truly pitch-perfect novel (see above re: A Thread of Grace) is going to suffer by comparison. The Myth of You & Me is not perfect, but it's not terrible either. It may well actually be pretty decent, but even taking into consideration the contrast issue, it still probably isn't actually great.



4. Bee Season -- Myla Goldberg -- 1
   
   • I almost bought this book unread, which is something I almost never do, and in this case I am so, so glad I decided to borrow it from the library instead. The cover copy sounded interesting, and hey, it was a book about a girl who won spelling bees! How many of those are there, right? Except that it very quickly stops being about the girl winning spelling bees, which was what had interested me in the story in the first place. It doesn't even turn into a book about a girl with a dad who's a spelling-bee equivalent of a stage mother, which I also had thought might be worth reading about. It turns into a book about Jewish mysticism and kleptomania and masturbation and Krsna, none of which interested me in the slightest. And -- bonus! -- there's a homeschooled girl as a minor character, who is the single most unbelievably and painfully awkward, dorky person you ever met, and who is, according to the narrator, good at spelling because she can focus on that and neglect all her other subjects. Gee, yeah, we all do that, don't we? I mean, I'm so set on having my kids win a spelling bee that I don't care in the slightest if they can, say, get into college, or fill out a job application to work at the Happy Burger. I can't even begin to say if the book was well-written, because it was just so scattered and weird that I couldn't figure that out. I got about two-thirds through and gave up on this one.


5. A Long Way Down -- Nick Hornby -- 4.5
   
   • I like Nick Hornby. His books are funny, but not only funny. His characters are totally knowable -- you expect to meet them walking down the street -- and the situations he puts them in are, if not universal, at least totally believable. In A Long Way Down, we meet four people who are as unlike one another as four people can be, except for the one thing they all have in common, which is that they met as they were preparing to jump off the top of the building that is London's hottest suicide location, on New Year's Eve. The story follows the development of a friendship of sorts among the four of them -- if you can call it friendship when they usually don't want much of anything to do with each other -- based around their one rather obvious bond. Hornby avoids the kind of sentimental 'human-interest' pathos sort of thing that this story could have become, while simultaneously managing to give quite a few subtle and meaningful tugs at your heartstrings while you're not looking. But of course, being as it's Nick Hornby, you knew he'd do that.


6. Bet Me -- Jennifer Crusie -- 4
   
   • Jennifer Crusie is a guilty pleasure for me. These are certainly not books you'd give to your mother to read (well, I wouldn't), and I know at least one of my friends who may well never speak to me again (although I hope she will), knowing that I read and enjoy this book. Bet Me is the story of the unwilling romance between Min (christened Minerva), who is a woman with a few extra pounds and a lot of insecurity about that, and Cal, an accidental womanizer who finds Min and her roundness completely enchanting against his will (and also against hers), and who asks her out initially on a bet in a bar. She accepts because she's just been dumped, and she needs a date for her sister's upcoming wedding. What ensues is, to put it plainly, the most readable contemporary romance I think I've ever encountered (not that I encounter a whole lot of contemporary romances, but still). Min, who is an actuary, learns to take risks and to appreciate her body for what it is, and Cal learns that there is a woman he can stay with for the rest of his life. And we all learn that Krispy Kremes and chicken marsala can be very, very sexy.
     
     The dialogue in this book just crackles -- Min and Cal spar with a smoldering kind of sexy annoyance that completely draws you into the story. The supporting characters are also believable and likable. The whole novel is excellent -- right up until the last two chapters where a bit of farce creeps in. And then there's an afterword, and I never like afterwords that tell me what happened to everyone, well, after. I like to either read a sequel or use my imagination. I took off half a star for the last two chapters and another half a star because Crusie's sex scenes can sometimes be just that little bit TOO descriptive.

Thursday, November 24, 2005

"Pride and Prejudice" review

I'm brewing a post about Psalm 2, as Kristen and I are going to kind of meander through the Psalms together (all are welcome to join us in this, by the way! This means you! Right, Kristen? We're not some kind of exclusive Blogging the Psalms club with a secret handshake or anything....) But before I do that post, I wanted to sort of empty from my brain into text all the stuff that's rattling around in there about the new version of "Pride and Prejudice", which I went and saw today.

Yes. I. In a movie theater. With two girlfriends. On the first day of wide release. SO MUCH FUN. Wish you were there. (There were only about ten other people in the theater, so that was nice too.)

First, I have to just say right up front that of course this is only a two-hour movie and so they couldn't tell the whole story in lavish, subtle, beautiful detail the way BBC did in 1995. BBC's edition still reigns as the authoritative adaptation, surpassed only by an actual reading of the book for Austenish pleasure. That is sort of the overarching truth of this review, and it's something that is just assumed in every phrase of the rest of it. I didn't want to sound either too critical or too glowing in my review, but I don't want to say that about every point either, so just keep it in mind.

OK, I'll start off with something that was just different without being necessarily good or bad. It's almost similar to the Rozema adaptation of Mansfield Park, the way the filmmakers took the story and sort of blew a whole different feeling into it. The way I put it to my friends today was that it was as if Tchaikovsky had written a variation on a theme by Vivaldi or Mozart. You have this light, satirical, effervescent, witty story which is oh yes by the way a romance (the original book); in this movie, the satire is blunted, the bubbles are turned into more standard Hollywood funny moments, and the romance takes position as the front-and-center raison d'être for the film. This is... well, you can't complain about it without complaining about the entire movie itself; you just have to accept that that's the premise of what happened, and see it as a different view of the same events. The musical analogy is a good one, I think; this is a Romantic retelling of a Classical story. Or, as a friend told me before I watched it, they made it more Brontë-ish than Austen. I don't know if I'd go THAT far -- there were no wives in attics or bleak moors or gnashed teeth -- but I definitely see her point. I must add that in the past, this would have ruined the movie for me -- this 'reinterpretation' rather than 'direct retelling' approach. I don't know why, but I'm more tolerant of this sort of thing than I once was. It doesn't mean I think it's OK when, say, Kevin Sullivan combines characters and shifts their lines around and alters his characters' entire personalities to suit his film-making preferences. One has to draw a line, after all. But I can accept this sort of reinterpretation more readily than I once did, putting it in a similar category to modern retelling of myths, or, say, the movie "Clueless".

Now for some things that I thought were, well, bad. Negative. Took away from my enjoyment of the story.

• DONALD SUTHERLAND. I'm sorry, but this man did NOT come across positively to me at all. His Mr. Bennet was a sad, defeated, tired old man. There was very little humor in the character, and that's a crying shame, because Mr. Bennet is probably the most humorous of the sympathetic characters in the novel. He's self-deprecating; he sees the folly of his situation as a man who married a pretty girl who became a shrill, annoying woman; he finds pleasure in absurdity because it provides a diversion for him. I didn't see this in Sutherland at all. He just came across like a depressed guy who had a really bad hangover most of the time. There were glimmers -- but only occasional ones -- of the man Mr. Bennet is, but overall, eh. Poor choice, in my opinion.
• Modern language. I don't think Elizabeth Bennet would have used the phrase "what you're going through," nor do I think Mr. Darcy would prate on about "our relationship". I could be wrong. Those could, I suppose, be direct quotes from the text. But they certainly rang a false note for me, along with half a dozen or so similarly anachronistic phrases.
• Of course (see above) they had to chop the story a good deal to make it fit in two hours. Things that happened separately happened together, that sort of thing. It pains me to see things like that, but I understand that it has to happen. Why, though, do they cut out so many secondary characters? There were no Mr. and Mrs. Hurst; no Maria Lucas; no Gardiner children; no Aunt Phillips; no Denny and Carter and Sanderson. And I'm sure I'm forgetting some.
• Some of the casting choices (besides Donald Sutherland who deserves his own section above) were wack. I had a hard time watching Mr. Wickham (who got WAY LESS screen time than his character should have, even so), for example, and Mrs. Gardiner was far too old.
• They rather senselessly changed the times and things of lots of events. Lady Catherine shows up in the middle of the night. Darcy proposes at dawn. I suppose this was done to add to the appearance of urgency each felt in his or her mission, but I didn't like it. I didn't like the way Darcy and Elizabeth met up at Pemberley, but maybe that's partly because that's my absolute favorite scene in the BBC version so I'm biased.
• The whole second half of the movie is quite rushed. Very little time is given to Lydia's situation; Lydia is the one to tell Elizabeth that Mr. Darcy paid for everything, rather than Lydia letting it slip that Darcy was there, and Lizzy writing to her aunt Gardiner for details.
• Oddly, some of the scenes -- dreary ones especially -- seemed dragged out much longer than necessary. The ball at Netherfield, aside from Elizabeth's dances with Mr. Darcy and Mr. Collins, is nearly humorless and is painful to watch, and especially the dinner portion seems neverending -- which I suppose gives us a hint of what Elizabeth may have felt, but ehh. still. There were other scenes similarly dealt with that I thought might have been trimmed. But then, I'm not a multimillion-dollar film director, either, so what do I know.
• Lizzy herself is altered. She's more bookish and less -- not fiercely, that's the wrong word -- less archly independent. She feels more passion for Darcy, earlier on, than she does in the novel. She's more passionately and verbally angry at him, less reserved, than I think she would have been.
• I think they dropped the ball with Miss Bingley. I was looking forward to seeing what they did with her, because she's one of the few sore points in the BBC version. She's supposed to be pretty, and charming in a traditionally feminine way, not just supercilious and conniving -- although she's supposed to be those things too. So I was hoping they'd do handle her a bit better in this new adaptation, and at first I thought they had -- she is prettier than Anna Chancellor -- but she wore the exact same bored expression through every scene she had. Eh. And there were very few moments that showed how much she wanted Darcy for herself -- moments that just make her character.
• I could be wrong but I think they used a modern piano rather than a period-correct pianoforte for the internal music.
• Initially I really disliked Matthew McFadyen as Darcy. He grew on me a bit, but I never did really get used to him. He lacked the intensity that I thought Darcy should have, and (through no fault of the actor, probably, in all honesty) you never really got a good sense of his struggle not to fall for Lizzy.
• NO MENTION OF FINE EYES.
• Several lines were added/scenes were changed; this goes along with the two paragraphs above. But just as one small example, Lizzy and Jane are both eavesdropping on Darcy and Bingley when Darcy says the bit about 'tolerable' -- and she lacks the laughing bravado which she has in the novel (and the BBC version) in that scene; she's hurt and she shows it. She does later cast the line up to him in a possibly-Lizzyish-but-totally-invented way.

That's all the complaining I'm going to do for now, although I may think of things to add later.

On to the list of things I really enjoyed about this movie -- in some cases, even more than the BBC version (sacrilege!)

• MR COLLINS. David Bember did a fantastic job for the BBC, don't get me wrong, but I think maybe the guy in this one did a TEENY bit better. Less oily, but just as obsequious, and short. Mr. Collins has many of the laugh-out-loud moments in this movie. His expressions are priceless, his timing is totally perfect, his appearance is spot-on. He reads Fordyce to them, just as he does in the book.
• The dancing was amazing in most of the dancing scenes. It was more boisterous, more energetic -- the people who were dancing really looked like they were enjoying it. The speech between Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy during the infamous dance at Netherfield was very well-done.
• Mr. Bingley was SO nervous and geeky and just generally totally and fumblingly and obviously in love. There wasn't that air of almost-smugness he seemed to have -- just because of his expressions, I think -- in the BBC version. This was VERY nearly carried too far -- Jane can't marry a clown, after all -- but not quite.
• I think the Focus version is more generous to Mary than the BBC version was. It was like they felt there had to be a truly ugly sister for that adaptation, and they made Mary far more disagreeable than the book has her. The 2005 Mary was much more like the book's Mary: a girl who's a bit awkward, and not AS pretty as her sisters, who takes refuge in her books and music, thinking that they will put her on an equal level. She doesn't have to be a prissy little toad with repulsive manners to accomplish this.
• As I mentioned, this movie is WOW pretty. It's not that the BBC one wasn't nice-looking -- at least they'd shed The BBC Look by then, ugh -- but this has a much more Hollywoodish look to it -- more lush, better lit, better camera angles, that sort of thing.
• Kristen will like this: Mrs. Bennet is less over-the-top shrill than she is in the BBC version. It took a while to get used to that, but once I did I kind of appreciated it.

All in all -- Austen fans don't need to be afraid of this movie, I don't think. I enjoyed it more than I thought I might -- in fact, really, I enjoyed it quite a lot. It certainly won't replace the BBC version in my affections (duh) but I might want to own it when it's available to complete my collection, and for occasional viewing. I'm even glad I paid the $6 to see the matinee in the theater, rather than waiting for DVD.

Thursday, November 17, 2005

Oh no. It's after eleven and she's updating. You know what THAT means.

I do tend to get a little rambly late at night, for those of you who might be new. You've been warned.

I just cut my bangs and I think I bungled them a bit. Good news: they'll grow out fast. Bad news: they still have to be on the front of my face while I wait for that to happen. Sigh. Usually I do pretty decently at it but I wasn't in the proper frame of mind for it tonight, and they just NEEDED to be done. I always swore, thanks to unpleasant childhood experiences, that if I couldn't cut my daughter's bangs (assuming at the time that I ever had a daughter, which of course I do now) in a way that looked OK, I would take her to a professional, every month if need be. Fortunately, T did not have to take out a second job to cover our child's haircuts, but I do live in fear of someday inflicting One Of Those Bangs Jobs on poor little C.

Thank you to all who posted clapping rhymes in response to my last entry. C and I are having a great time, and I have the Joanna Cole book on hold at the library -- thank you, Courtney, for bringing that to my attention. Because we all know I need more books to read.

Speaking of books, I'm currently reading Bee Season, because someone told me it was about a girl who won spelling bees, and I wanted to look for any uncanny similarities between my experiences and hers. There are none. Except that [drumroll please, maestro] the little protagonist sees words in her head, just as I do! Sometimes in neon! I am not alone in this world!

I had a frantic kind of day today. I baked an apple pie AND a cake, I made thank you cards for our AWANA club leaders, I became increasingly frustrated with how easily the house gets messy and how hard it is to get it clean, I did not get a check in the mail from the person (I will restrict myself to neutral nouns to represent this individual, but I want to go on record saying how difficult that is for me to do) who misused my picture in his magazine. Along about 4:30 I began to realize that I was going to be in trouble about dinner because I had nothing thawed, and was probably going to have to fall back again on pancakes which UGH I AM SO TIRED OF, when my dad called and asked if we wanted a pizza. I think someone was praying for me. If I had unorthodox beliefs about angels, I would say that my dad is an angel in overalls and a cowboy hat, but since I know that that's not likely to be the case, I'll just say 'yay' for having parents whom I would choose as friends even if I weren't related to them. And also to God, who was so nice to whisper in my dad's ear about that pizza. But we were still half an hour late for AWANA, sigh. It's not our fault that they schedule a meeting at a location half an hour from our house that starts forty-five minutes after my husband gets home from work.

I am SO HUNGRY but since I accidentally caught a glimpse of myself in these accidentally-form-fitting pajamas on my way out of the bathroom after messing up my bangs, I am going to content myself with a glass of water. Or I'll at least try to convince myself to be content, and fail. I have had two friends in the past week mention that they were having problems because they don't weigh enough. At least I'm a big enough person (hardy har har) not to be jealous about this. Much. ;) If I ran the world there would be some way for me to give them a few of my pounds. I have plenty to share.

Monday, November 14, 2005

Help, please

Today C and I were learning (she: learning; I: attempting to re-learn) how to do that whole hand-clapping rhyming thing. We're doing OK with the clapping patterns, but we're short on rhymes. I remember in elementary school we knew a zillion rhymes, but couldn't remember any of them today (big shock, right?). I Googled 'clapping rhymes' and came up with a few good sites, but most of them repeat the same three or so (except for one, which I'd completely forgotten about until I read it on someone's circa-1996-era website, which is full of typical elementary-school potty humor and which we thought was baaaaad, hence we did it ALL THE TIME, but it's not something I necessarily want to teach C). So. Any of you who were once little girls, did you do clapping rhymes at recess/on the bus/whatever? Do you remember any? Please share. :) Thanks!

neglect

I've been neglecting my poor loyal blog readers (I can tell you are all SO disappointed). I apologize. It's all dpchallenge.com's fault. That and just plain busy-ness. Here are some things that happened over the past four or five days (oh goody, a list!):

• T had a four-day weekend. This is always nice. Four days is so luxurious, because on Friday you get that Sunday he's-going-back-to-work-tomorrow kind of dread feeling, and then you realize that there are two more whole days with him at home. It's like a present, every time you remember.
• We cut wood. It was not so bad. I got brownie points (from myself, anyway) for doing this even though a few short days before, I had done that whole falling-on-a-trash-can-from-a-fence thing. I wasn't very sore, and it felt good to get out and do something.
• On the way home from woodcutting, my staggeringly-arachnophobic husband stopped the car and let me photograph a tarantula in the road, before backing up to run over it (previously he's only offered to allow me to photograph them afterward), on the condition that he never have to see the pictures ever in his life. You may not understand, on simply reading that sentence, how very generous of him this was. Trust me, it was a huge sacrifice on his part.
• We went to the city, 40 miles away. Twice. ugh. Wal-Mart both times. Double ugh.
• LT was finally able to have his Star Wars All Six Episodes Marathon with his best friend. It ended up being broken up over two days. Much candy, soda, and popcorn were consumed.
• C had her first paid modeling session. She earned a vanilla Coke all for herself by standing/sitting/lying on the lawn for fifteen minutes, talking to me and making faces, while I took her picture about thirty times. This was, of course, for a contest at dpchallenge.com. (stay tuned for reports about tonight's photo session involving T, his new-to-him slide projector, and his astronomy photos.)
• Um. Thatisall. I think.

Thursday, November 10, 2005

more Internet crack, and then some other stuff

Actually, it's Internet crack combined with photography crack which is basically just really bad news. Good thing I discovered this just in time to injure myself, so that I had a few days of inactivity to fill in anyway. Because OH MY GOSH I can spend all day there.

----------some other stuff---------------

I had a fantastic time over the weekend. I haven't blogged about it yet because there just aren't words for its fantastic-ness. Here's what I had:

1. Six hours in the backseat of our friends' van, to read and/or crochet, while T and our friend talked. I could also join in their discussion, and frequently did, but unbroken, guilt-free reading/crocheting time is hard to come by, so that was exciting.
2. Six MORE hours in the van with my friend Jenn. Jenn and I have a long and colorful history, and we adore each other, and we hardly ever see each other, so it was fantastic to get to have some time to talk and laugh and annoy the two men in the front seats, who just wanted to talk about Hank Hanegraaff and politics and what-not without a bunch of giggling and raucous laughter coming from the backseat.
3. ALL NIGHT IN A MOTEL ROOM WITH JENN. We did sleep. But not until we had talked for quite some time. And I was afraid we would further disturb the men (in the next room) with our laughing and talking, but since they were out cold at 10 PM I guess we didn't.
4. A really cool and interesting conference about creation and accelerated decay and radioisotope dating and the age of the earth and radiohalos and all kinds of other fascinating stuff. Also with Jenn, whose handwriting (we were taking notes. And, um, occasionally passing notes) is exactly as it was when we would write day-long missives to each other during school.
5. About five more hours in the car with Jenn. See #2 above. Also, a really cool discussion in a Carl's Jr in Garden Grove, I think it was. I have never spent an hour in a Carl's Jr. before.
6. HUGS FROM JENN. Jenn gives really excellent hugs, and I miss them. *snif*
7. Five more hours in the car on my own (well, with the men in the front seat), but with less reading or crocheting because it was dark. Still, it was fun.
8. Much exhaustion and disorientation (is it Friday? No, it's Monday) for the next few days. Totally worth it.

Throw in five count 'em FIVE meals I did not have to plan, cook, or clean up after, and I was (and am) one happy lady.

Tuesday, November 08, 2005

well, it wasn't a ridgepole...

The reason it hurts me to type this is that I was taking a picture, and I was standing on top of a fence (shut up. everyone stands up on a fence to take a picture now and then, right?) and when I went to move to get down, there was a rotten board, and I fell from about four feet up and landed on my back on the edge of an open metal trash can.

Yeah, I flinched too. Even just typing it.

I tore a muscle or something (nice attractive ridge of swelling going across the right-hand side of my back; the bruises are going to be amazing, I can tell), and hence I can't use my right arm much at all. As soon as we get home from voting, I'm going to seek oblivion with a muscle relaxant and a soft, horizontal surface. Hey, at least I won't have to fold laundry for a while.

P.S. The Nikon is fine (whew!).

P.P.S. Here's the picture. For what it's worth.

Thursday, November 03, 2005

It's a really great day to be a homeschooler

"We agree, and hold that there is no fundamental right of parents to be the exclusive provider of information regarding sexual matters to their children, either independent of their right to direct the upbringing and education of their children or encompassed by it. We also hold that parents have no due process or privacy right to override the determinations of public schools as to the information to which their children will be exposed while enrolled as students."
--Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, Nov. 3, 2005

Here's the Rachel's Paraphrased Edition(TM):

"Just because you're their parents doesn't mean you can make decisions about how you'll raise them. Sheesh, who did you think you were, the government?"

And the kicker is, for a ton of families there's no way around this. Of course, you can always pay for private school, or stay home and teach them yourselves, right? Oh, wait, you can't? Gee, that's tough.

Tuesday, November 01, 2005

childhood survey

Lifted from KiwiRia, bien sûr!

1. What was the first car your family had?
The first one I remember was a light-green Maverick. We owned a series of old rattle-trap sorts of cars until I was ten or so, when they started getting better.

2. What was the name of your first pet and why?
Again, the first one I remember was Belle, an old black mutt of a dog, who was very sweet-tempered.

3. What did you want to be when you grew up?
A teacher, most of the time. A mom, all of the time.

4. What was the name of your elementary school?
It was just [name of our town] Elementary School. I'm sure if you're interested in stalking me (because I totally am stalking material, no? with my vivacious personality and ravishing good looks?) you could put stuff together and figure it out. But I'm not going to just hand it to you.

5. Who was your first best friend?
In fourth grade there was a girl named Lawana Hayes. She and her sister April were my best friends for a year or two.

6. Are you still friends today, and if not, what happened?
No. They moved away. This was like a disease with me in elementary school. It was hard enough for me to make friends, and when I did, right away they'd move away. This happened like four times in a row. April and Lawana started the trend. Maybe they knew something I didn't.

7. What was your favorite board game?
Hmm. Payday, I think.

8. Did you play house or other make believe games?
Yes. Plenty of 'house', and also army, and fort, and school, and lots of horses with April Hayes and our friend Amber R. (who also moved away, and then back, and then away, and then back, and then away). We would gallop around the school field, neighing. Sometimes on our hands and knees. In case you ever wondered why I was so popular with my schoolmates as a child, that was probably a small part of the reason.

9. Were you a Dungeons and Dragons geek?
No. I was lots of various other kinds of geek, though.

10. Did you sleep with stuffed animals as a kid?
Mostly I slept with books. Not so comfortable but a lot more useful.

11. Do you still sleep with stuffed animals?
I still sleep with books. :D

12. Who was the first person you looked up to when you were younger?
Aside from family members, I had a sort of friend-crush on my fourth-grade teacher, Mrs. A____. I wanted to be JUST LIKE HER.

13. Who was your favorite relative?
My mom and dad. We had a huge extended family and I really liked some of those, but you said 'favorite'.

14. Were you short or tall in elementary school?
Tall. I was 4'10" in 4th grade, 5'0" in fifth grade, 5'3" in sixth grade, and then I reached my adult height of 5'8 1/2" in eighth grade. I was elephantine.

15. Were you teased in school?
Oh dear me yes. That was among the major defining facts of my life, especially in elementary school and junior high.

16. What was the name of your favorite teacher?
After Mrs. A____ in fourth grade, my favorites in high school were probably my AP English teacher, my French teacher, her husband who taught physics, chemistry, and geometry, and my music teacher.

17. What was the name of your least favorite teacher?
you know, I had several whom I disliked at the time, but living in the same small town my whole life, I like or respect pretty much all of them as adults. I did not get along at all well with my second- and third-grade teacher, but I've lived in her neighborhood my entire adult life and I like her just fine now.

18. What was your best subject in school?
In early school, when there was such a subject, reading and spelling. Later on, I was pretty good at most subjects, but just about the only ones to which I really gave a real effort were music, physics, English, and French. So those were the only ones where I got consistently good grades.

19. What was your worst subject in school?
Analytic geometry, eleventh grade. It was the class where my awful study habits finally caught up with me, and I couldn't do well enough on the tests and quizzes to make up for my utter failure to do homework. I FAILED IT. As in, WITH AN F. Plus there were all these rose curves, and I was SO BAD at them, because they involved drawing these pretty, perfect shapes, and I can't even write my name the same way each time.

20. Did you do well in Physical Education?
Most parts of it. I wasn't a star, by any means, but I could do well enough to get good grades in the classes.

21. Were you clumsy when you were younger?
Yes. I was the cousin who spilled her Kool-Aid at every meal at Grandma's house. (I am still clumsy, but not AS much.)

22. Who was your favorite band as a kid?
Oh, I was such a nerd. I liked Roger Whittaker. I liked classical music. I liked choral music. I liked 70's easy listening. You can again perceive how it was that I attained such dizzying heights of popularity.

23. What was your favorite movie as a kid?
You know, I don't remember. There was a series on HBO called "Dot and the Kangaroo"; I got really obsessed with that for a while when I was really young. When I was in sixth grade, "Top Gun" came out, and I was quite fixated on that.

24. Did your parents read to you?
Yes, lots.

25. Did you have a favorite book?
I had tons. The Little House books, the Narnia books, Beverly Cleary, Trixie Belden, the Hardy Boys, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of Nimh, Anne of Green Gables etc. And many many more.

26. What was your favorite restaurant as a kid?
The Sugar Pine. It was a little diner in town. I still miss it. It was my favorite from the days of brunch between Sunday School and church with my grandparents where I would order a "Fish Wish" because I liked the name, up through high school, when it was the restaurant I was in the first (and only) time I ever wrote my phone number on a napkin for a guy. You could get a big, sharing-size order of fries and two delicious chocolate milkshakes in tall glasses (with the remainder in their frosty metal canisters) for $6.31 including tax but not tip. Let's have a moment of silence for The Sugar Pine, shall we?

27. What TV or movie star did you have a crush on?
I don't remember having real crushes on any. I kind of made myself have a few -- on Johnny's cousin Billy in Dirty Dancing, on Goose in Top Gun (did I not consider myself good enough to fabricate crushes on the actual stars?) because it seemed like The Thing To Do and because my cousin Becky always had a crush on one celebrity or another. Whereas I just had crushes on book characters.

28. Do you now wonder what you were thinking?
No, as you can see above, I now know what I was thinking. :)

29. Who was your first crush in school?
Jenn is going to keel over if she remembers who this is. Likewise Debi. It was Chad Benson. In first grade (he was in second).

30. As a child, what kind of car did you want when you grew up?
I have no idea.

31. Did your parents spank you?
Yes, but not much. They were more into talking-to. And I was easily disciplined without spankings because I wanted so badly to please everyone.

32. Did your parents fight a lot when you were a kid?
They went through a couple of stages where there was a lot of arguing, but overall, no.

33. Did your parents get divorced or stay married?
Still married after 34 years, and I think they're more in love than ever.

34. If they got divorced, how old were you when it happened?
n/a

35. Did you ever run away from home?
Not exactly. I packed my things several times when I was a little girl and made a big show out of preparing to Run Away. And when I was a teenager I got so mad at my mom that I walked (barefoot) five miles to my best friend's house and spent the night there.

36. How old were you when/if you first got glasses?
I was fourteen.

37. Did you need braces or a retainer?
No.

38. If you're male, how old were you when you had your first wet dream?
um, n/a. Gross.

39. Both sexes when did you start shaving?
Eighth grade, I think.

40. Girls when did you start wearing a bra?
Ditto with the eighth grade.

41. What was your first kiss like?
My first real kiss (because there were guys who kissed me before this but I didn't know what I was doing really, and didn't like it) was when I was fourteen and my then-boyfriend and I went on a little date to the movies. If I remember correctly, Jenn was there as well, and she pretended to time the kiss on her watch.

42. What did you do on your first date?
I just described it.

43. How old were you when you first drank?
well, before I was born I drank a little amniotic fluid... (seriously, alcohol-wise, aside from occasional sips of Kahlua or beer when Dad was having some, I drank a couple of beers on a couple of different occasions the summer I was sixteen and that's pretty much it. Ever. Cause I am so virtuous and all. [Really, I disliked the taste and after that, just never saw the point.])

44. Where was your first house?
When I was born, my parents lived in a little trailer park. It's about two miles down the road from where my husband works now, although our particular house is gone, I think.