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Thursday, November 29, 2007

hallelujah praise the Lord

It's ours.

It was down to the wire, touch-and-go, white-knuckle, and assorted other frantic and stressful metaphors, due to a few complications, but it's ours now. Our mortgage, our lovely four acres, our fixer-upper, our lifelong home because I am never doing this again as long as I live.

Wednesday, November 28, 2007

and now for something completely different

Let's talk about knitting, shall we? Because there are no asterisks required for that topic. At least, not today. People who don't care a whit about knitting, you get an official vacation from reading Rachel's blog today. Lucky you!

A while ago I got something like eleven skeins of Lily cotton yarn in kind of a Pepto-Bismol pink (only not quite so shocking) for twenty-five (25) cents per skein on clearance at Michael's. Of course I couldn't pass up the price, but that would be a WHOLE lot of dishcloths, so I decided to make something biggish, and the only person in my immediate connection who can get away with wearing this particular color is C. So. I started out to make this pattern* for her, but as I got nearly done with the back I decided that what C really needs is a cardigan. So I actually modified the pattern. Just like if I was actually a real for-real honest-to-goodness knitter! I am halfwayish done with the fronts now, knitting them both at once (THANK YOU to whoever it was who blogged about that idea -- Kara maybe?) on one 29" circular needle, and all is going swimmingly except that I forgot about the twistiness and also the wonky jagged appearance of the vertical edges of stockinette stitch, and I didn't plan for a pick-up-and-knit buttonhole edging thingamabob, so I am going to have to improvise something to remedy this in the front where the pieces overlap. I am thinking a nice crocheted shell edging. Suggestions? Real knitters, will this work, or should I pull out what I've done and start over? (aiee, my hands!)

*not sure, but you may have to be a member to see the pattern. It's a hooded pullover sweater with a two-hand front pocket.

Tuesday, November 27, 2007

yet ANOTHER bewildering change in plans

'cause I know you are all on the edges of your seats.

We signed the papers TODAY, but we don't get the keys until FRIDAY. And if something takes longer than it should and we don't get the keys by Friday, we get to (drumroll please)

start over again at the very beginning.

Which is something I don't even want to THINK about, especially since we just paid five figures' worth of closing costs today, including back taxes which should in no way be our responsibility, much of which I'm very afraid is nonrefundable.

Someone please remind me that someday we'll be glad we did this because I am just not feelin' it right now.

I would say "in other news" at this point, and bring in either (a) a bit of self-deprecating levity or (b) a pertinent and eminently spiritual bit of wisdom (HA! haw HAW!), but I am not feelin' that either. So this is it until tomorrow. Or maybe the weekend. We'll see.

Sunday, November 25, 2007

make that THURSDAY.

When we sign the papers. As opposed to Monday, as we had previously been told. Ah, heck, at this point, what's three more days?

OK, so it's $180, taken literally.

This means that this whole process, which we were initially told would probably take two weeks, has taken [counts on fingers] six. And that's just the time it took for the bank paperwork. By the time we sit down and sign our names over and over and over until our fingers rebel and we say to heck with it and start just scribbling randomly on the lines, it will have been five months and eight days since we made our initial offer on the property. Can I get a little sympathy? Beck, you have no idea how your brief comments have made me feel better. Solidarity! I NEVER want to do this again. There are people (to some of whom I may be related by marriage) who like to do this sort of thing almost recreationally. Those people are either much more patient than I am, or they are a wee bit unhinged, if you ask me.

So how was everyone's Thanksgiving? Mine was eh OK. It didn't feel terribly holidayish, to tell the truth. I am such a consumerist American that nothing felt even remotely holidayish until the next day when I was shopping for gifts. (I blame it on the earliness of the holiday.) I skipped the whole 6-am-outside-of-Joann thing this year, because I'm not planning on sewing any presents this year, what with the whole moving-again thing, but I did go down to the valley and buy a few things around lunchtime, after the mob-shoppers had gone home to sleep it off. Now begins the rushed and crazy time of year when we not only have to get ready for the holiday that we always SWEAR will be low-key but it never is, but we also have three family birthdays to fit into our schedules (one of which is mine), as well as this year's remodeling and re-moving effort which kind of overshadows everything. Can I just go to sleep now and wake up on New Year's Eve with everything done, do you think?

Thursday, November 22, 2007

she's a young thing and cannot leave her mother

Did you actually believe me when I said that 'every day' thing? sheesh. You should know me better than that by now. (Actually, I am kind of disappointed in myself.)

I hope everyone who celebrates it has a great Thanksgiving tomorrow. We are going to my inlaws'; I am bringing the no-sugar-added cherry pie I made today. Mine is the type of family where if someone is making a cherry pie, people start humming "Billy Boy" -- we just can't help it -- and then someone starts singing it (for "someone" read "Rachel") and then if my mom is around it ends up being a duet, with harmony. Car rides were a lot of fun when I was a kid. I thought everyone drove around the state belting out "Hennery the Eighth" and "There's A Hole In The Bucket" and "The Cutest Boy I Ever Saw (Was Sipping Cider Through A Straw)".

Also, I introduced my dad to Regina Spektor tonight. (Well, not personally.) It was an interesting experience for all concerned. (Except, of course, for Regina, who had no idea it was happening.) Dad was humming along with "Fidelity" and "On the Radio" but by the time we got to "Après Moi" (one of my personal favorite RS songs, with the Russian and all) and "Lady"*, he was looking at my iPod like it was a visitor from another planet that had come down and attached itself to his shelf stereo system, bent on mischief. I fully concede that Regina S. is an acquired taste, especially if the person to do the acquiring wears overalls, is skilled at driving a 1940's-vintage tractor, and has never listened to NPR in his life**.

We are supposed to sign papers on the house on Monday, and get the key, and all that fun stuff. It is starting to sink in -- the glad part, anyway. The traumatic we-are-paying-how-much? and we-will-be-doing-how-much-work-before-we-move-in? parts are mercifully still resting beneath a veneer of unreality, where I hope they stay. Forever, preferably.

I can always tell when I have finished a really big English assignment woo hoo! because I cut loose with all kinds of verboten excess parentheses and run-ons and forty-character hyphenated compound adjectives and lists that use 'and' every time instead of commas.

*I skipped "That Time", "Uh-Merica", and several others. No need to overwhelm the poor guy.

**I only listen to it for the classical music. Really.

Monday, November 19, 2007

now why didn't *I* think of that?

Oh, I am so going to shamelessly copy these three unbelievably clever ideas.

• My friend Michael-who's-a-girl is making a jeans quilt. I made a denim quilt a few years ago, but it was nowhere near as nice as hers is going to be. THE LITTLE FRAYED DETAILS SO CUTE MY GOSH. Good thing I've been saving up jeans again.

• And then there's dreams of flying, which is, well, dreamy.

• Behold the Fabric Cubby House. Is she not the coolest mom (sorry, mum) you ever saw? I am seriously going to buy the dining table for our new house with this project in mind.

Thursday, November 15, 2007

tying up a few loose ends

loose end the first:
The texbook was in the classroom. The instructor didn't bat an eyelash or even smirk (that I could see, anyway) when I asked about it. As Mr./Ms. Anonymous Commenter noted a couple of days ago, surely the guy knows me by now.

loose end the second:
Claire's ear is healing up. I am not at all certain that the thing was a keloid, simply because it has shrunk so much and keloids are supposed to be more or less permanent. I think it is/was a boil. But what do I know? Anyway, it's responding favorably to antibiotics and very careful earring hygiene, so I'm not worried.

loose end the third:
In case anyone's wondering, we're still buying The House. We just get to pay penalties for the extension of the escrow. The selling agency has courteously agreed to pay the penalties for which it is at fault (failure to get all the necessary signatures as fast as they should have); we pay the rest. Only buying a house (or, I suppose, having unimaginable-to-me wealth, or maybe serious remodeling, or having a dreadful disease... oh, shut up, Rachel) can put you in a mindset where you find out that you are going to have to pay $600-ish extra for something, and you just shrug and move on. So. Sometime between Thanksgiving and the end of the month, we should close, and then we start making repairs and doing a little bit of remodeling, and then we hope to move in before Christmas. It all feels very unreal to me at present, frankly. Watch this space for a possibly-asterisk-laden freakout once the layer of surreality wears off.

Tuesday, November 13, 2007

anytime the floor wants to open and swallow me up, that'd be fine

Let's say, just hypothetically, that there was a person who lost her wallet and had to embarrass herself by scurrying around like a forgetful mouse in a nursery tale trying to find it. Then let's say that this purely hypothetical person, barely a month later, lost, say, a rather expensive textbook. Possibly in the same classroom where she thought she had lost the wallet. With the same instructor. Who may or may not have also observed this same hypothetical silly person through four years of high school, back in the dark ages of lost antiquity, as she left a trail of her belongings around campus nearly every day and had to scurry around similarly to reclaim them. Should this hypothetical person:

a) Work up the courage to shamefacedly ask the instructor if she left her book in his class?

or

b) Go through the last five weeks of class including the final with no book and see if anyone notices?

Monday, November 12, 2007

letting other people write the jokes for me

Whenever I'm short on blog material, I can always turn to my search stats. Behold a small sampling of the ways in which people accidentally find themselves at my webpage. I am sorry, accidental webpage-finders, for the terrible disappointment that must have confronted you when my page loaded.

what is the name of the school that goose wants the phone number of in top gun?
Oh, now that takes me back. I haven't watched that movie in years. T has it on VHS; maybe I'll watch it the next time the kids aren't around. Which is -- oh. Never. (I don't actually know the answer to this, but I can picture the scene in my head. Most people associate Anthony Edwards with whatever medical drama show it was that he was on; I still picture him as Goose. Also, Patrick Dempsey will always be that cute little nerd-boy in Can't Buy Me Love. I live in a popular-culture time-warp bubble, people.)

boring blog
Hey, at least this person found what s/he was looking for.

terminology for cough whizzing
I think they meant 'wheezing'. But I must confess, since having babies and reaching my 30s, I'm not entirely sure.

crochet marijuana
This phrase is always popular in my search stat listings. Do people crochet... with marijuana? Or are they hoping to crochet a replica somehow? [scratches head.]

how do you spell subtly
very, very quietly.

what do u call the white puffy thing you put on a cooked turkey
I... do not know. I have no clue. I can't even picture this.

izzy willy nilly cheat essay
Well, at least they're upfront about it. Come on, people, do your own homework! It's not that hard.

mr.collins repulsive
My thoughts exactly.

im going crazy over you wile your locked up poems
Words fail.

craving the smell of gasoline
and again.

how straighten icicle lights
Good luck. You might google "how solve mideast crisis"; you'd have more success.

embarrassing stuff
YOU HAVE COME TO THE RIGHT PLACE.

Saturday, November 10, 2007

flashback! augh!

Today a friend forwarded this hilarious article to me via email. (Go read it now and come back. Seriously, or the rest of this post will make no sense at all.)

Did you look at it? I'm serious, did you? OK. I hope you weren't drinking anything at the time. Diet Coke can really hurt coming through your nose.

My friend appended a question to the top of the article when she emailed it to me. That question was, "Did we ever really dress like this?"

My answer: Yes. Yes, I did. In the 1980's. At a public elementary school. In case you ever wondered why I was so popular. Because sometimes being a loudmouthed, socially clueless know-it-all just isn't enough, and you need a few well-chosen hand-me downs to help you along -- not to mention a really killer hairdo. (My hair was in a shaggy, unruly, flippy pixie-cut long before Meg Ryan made it cool for about eleven nanoseconds).

OK, OK, so my clothes weren't quite that bad. (For instance, I didn't have any chest hair.) But there were a few outfits that came very, very close.

And with that, I've used up my allotments for both italics and parentheses for at least the next six posts, so I'll have to close and go to bed, where I hope I won't be troubled with nightmares about that one pair of orange-and-peach fake-patchwork polyester pants that I wore in the second grade.

Friday, November 09, 2007

relief

The doctor says it's a keloid scar, slightly inflamed. Completely harmless, although we're to watch it in case it turns out she's wrong, and it starts oozing or anything sinister like that. It's already getting slightly smaller, so odds of that are slim. Thank you all for praying and caring.

This was good enough news that the fact that my beautiful Dart has started spewing oil from its innards for some completely undiagnosable reason (this, in case you were unsure, is a Very Bad Thing) is almost insignificant by comparison.

(Poor T... the guy never gets a rest. He is the one who hired himself as the family mechanic, though.)

Thursday, November 08, 2007

fear

C has this... abscessy THING on the back of her right earlobe next to her piercing. I just discovered it tonight. It is about the size of a pea, and it looks exactly like the pictures of the early stages of MRSA infection that are all over the Internet right now. We are planning to be on her pediatrician's doorstep when the office opens tomorrow. If they refuse to fit her in to the schedule, we'll be going to the ER. Please pray. Not just for her, and for accuracy in diagnosis, but for me, because I am simmering silently at a level just below total freakout right now and I know sleep won't come easy tonight.

I can't think of anything else to write. Just please God let this all be a huge overreaction on my part, that's all I ask.

Wednesday, November 07, 2007

whiny rant, nipped in the bud

little reminders that this earth is not my home:

1. Almost two weeks ago now, we were piling into my parents' van for a trip to town. C was wearing a long, straight denim skirt, and I was demonstrating for her how a lady gets into a van when she's wearing such a thing, and because I am so awesome, mid-demonstration, my head impacted the top of the van's door frame so solidly that I both felt and heard three or four vertebrae popping, reminiscent of the way a bendy straw does if you stretch it out and then compact it again. Um, ouch. The situation is not improving, and now (as soon as the chiropractor's office is closed; my neck even knows that he takes the whole day off on Wednesday) I get these lovely shooting pains down into my shoulders. If I end up in a wheelchair at the age of 34, know all men by these presents that it was my own stupid fault.

2. I am going grocery/sundries shopping on Friday. Printer ink is on my list; we need it very badly. Obviously, this is why tonight I got an email from FIL/agent with a whole bunch of papers that I need to print, sign, and return to him tomorrow (when, by the way, I do not ordinarily go into town). I hope a signed document is valid if it has that faint-dark-faint-dark ripple thing going on. You know, I am beginning to wish we had just moved into another stupid rental in the first freaking place. Actually, I lied; I am not beginning to think that; I'm just finally allowing the thought to fully form in my consciousness instead of stuffing it mercilessly back where it came from every time it started to edge forward, as had been the rule previously.
   

OK, I can hear you saying it: Shut up, Rachel, you ungrateful brat! Sheesh.

You know what? You're right. I am going to stop now because Whining Is Not Nice. Instead, here's an assortment of things that made me smile today:

From my screensaver:

LT, age just past two, with his trademark grin. I never saw such a grinny child as he was then. I miss that carefree grin of his. In fact, I'd better move on before Annie Dillard has to come knock me around some more.

OK. This too:

C, age not quite two, obviously plotting mischief

Today's "Brevity" comic panel. I have no idea why (and frankly, I'm afraid to dig too deeply into my psyche to figure it out, for fear of what I'd find) but this made me guffaw out loud this morning. Repeatedly.

Lastly: Chocolate-chip cookies; I made them last night. I have been making this recipe (not my own; it's from Pillsbury) since the first Christmas I was married and I see no reason to experiment with other methods since these are the BEST CHOCOLATE-CHIP COOKIES EVER.

Soft and Chewy Chocolate Chip Cookies

1 1/4 c. sugar
1 1/4 c. packed brown sugar
1 1/2 c. butter or margarine, softened
2 t. vanilla
3 eggs
4 1/4 c. flour
2 t. baking soda
1/2 t. salt
2 11-oz. packages chocolate chips

Preheat the oven to 375ºF.
In a large bowl with an electric mixer, beat the sugars and the butter until
they're light and creamy. (This takes a longish time; don't rush this step.) Add the vanilla and the eggs, and beat well. Combine the dry ingredients in a large bowl. Then add the dry ingredients about a cup at a time to the sugar/butter/eggs concoction, mixing well. Add the chocolate chips, and stir them in with a spoon. When the chips are as evenly distributed as possible, drop dough in rounded teaspoons onto cookie sheets. Bake at 375º for 9 ½ minutes or until they're done to your liking.

The problem is that this recipe makes between four and six dozen cookies, depending on how generous you are with the heaping teaspoons thing. If your cookie capacity is anything like mine, this fact is a disaster in the making. Don't blame me if you can't fit in your jeans tomorrow.

Tuesday, November 06, 2007

you'll be able to say you knew her when

Here is the latest from our resident eight-year-old poet, written at journal time today, dedicated to yours truly:

A Poem For Mommy

I love you Mom
Your name is not Tom
And when you are asleep in bed
You are so cute from toe to head
Your birthday
is Christmas Day
And when I see you I think Yay!
Hurray Mommy!

Yes, I think we'll keep her. Especially since she knows my name is not Tom.

growing, growing, gone

Lately I have been getting really maudlin (again) about The Passage of Time and How Fast They Grow Up. I know, I know, when am I ever not (answer: never), but this latest spree of sentimentality in particular began when I looked across the room and couldn't tell who was taller, my mother or my son. And my mother is not one of those dinky petite little women; she's 5'5" or 5'6" -- pretty average for an adult.* As often happens, I found myself getting choked up thinking about that little squeaky toddler boy who grew into the leggy, squeaky preschool boy who seemed to vanish overnight and leave this gangly, solid preteen, whose voice I swear I heard crack the other day, in his place.

Then I was, as aforementioned, reading Annie Dillard (how do I love thee?), and she sucked me in with sympathy and then slapped me around a little bit:

"...few, if any, women love anyone so much as their children... Often she missed infant Petie now gone -- his random gapes, his bizarre buttocks. How besotted they gazed at each other nose-on-nose. He fit in her arms as if they two had invented how to carry a baby. [...] Later she washed his filthy hair and admired his vertebrae, jiggling his head in toweling that smelled like his steam. She needled splinters and sandspur spines from his insteps as long as he let her. That is who she missed, those boys now overwritten. Their replacement now sat at the green table wiping crumbs onto his plate. [...]
She confronted the sink. How she wished she could see all those displaced Petes and Peties once more! She imagined joining picnic tables outside by the beach and setting them for 22 Peties and Petes, or 122, or however greedy she was that day and however divisible Pete. Together the sons at every age and size -- scented with diaper, formula on rubber nipples, salt-soaked sand, bike grease, wax crayon, beer, manila, engine oil, fish -- waited for dinner. Who else knew what each liked? It was a hell of a long table. She gave herself a minute to watch them -- Petie after Petie barefoot near his future self and past. They pinched or teased or shoved one another. All but the babies ignored the babies. What mother would not want to see her kids again? When this sort of thing got out of hand, Lou called herself 'Poor Mom'. She dreaded 'Poor Mom', her periodic walk-on role as grieving and piteous victim. Lou spied her from a distance floating long-skirted over the sand, hands on face. Lou gave the hag a short hearing to shut her up, and tea in a cup. 'Poor Mom,' she commiserated: her child grew up."

--Dillard, Annie. The Maytrees. New York: HarperCollins, 2007.

Whew. Thank you, Ms. Dillard. I needed that.

*(Since I know the suspense is killing you, it turned out that she's still about three-quarters of an inch taller than he is, but you couldn't tell, what with his thick golden wavy Mediterranean-Italian hair standing up all over his head.)

Sunday, November 04, 2007

warning: politics. RUN AWAY, RUN AWAY!

In response to yesterday's post, Karen (hi Karen! nice to meet you) asked me the following question:

Maybe you've addressed this before and I've forgotten, but what is it about those two books that's annoying you so much? I've read the second one, and I'm curious to hear what you're thinking.

The books, to save you going back and clicking on the links, are The Working Poor: Invisible in America by David Shipler and Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By In America by Barbara Ehrenreich. They annoyed me for mostly different reasons, although some of the overarching Big Deal reasons were the same.

Karen specifically mentioned Nickel and Dimed, which details the results of an experiment the author conducted wherein she shed her upper-class lifestyle for three separate one-month periods to see if she could make ends meet at the minimum wage. She treated this as if it was a Giant And Very Important Journalistic Endeavor. (Think Nelly Bly doing Ten Days In A Madhouse, only with more angst and less creativity.) The main problem I have with the book, aside from the author's obvious political slant (not as obvious as Shipler's in The Working Poor, though) was the fact that there is absolutely no way she could learn anything significant about the lives of the working poor in ninety-divided-by-three days spent pretending she was one of them.

Also, the little she did learn, she managed to learn in spite of the fact that while she had resources most poor people lack (namely, start-up costs), she didn't take advantage of the resources that they do have. Most working poor people have friends and families and significant others, or at least churches or social workers, or, for crying out loud, roommates to help them; she did not even attempt to take advantage of any such assistance, and so her results were skewed. In virtually any field of endeavour, there's room to move up from the entry level for those who make enough of an effort at it; of course this could not be a factor in such a brief experiment. The poor have loves and grumbles and joys and sorrows just like she does in her upscale condominium in Key West; she wrote about the poor in a manner that claimed to be empowering (see! they are real live people! They have real needs and wants!), and which might have been so on the surface, but which in actual fact was almost unbearably condescending (how can they possibly think they are happy living like this? omg, look at me aspiring to be trailer trash!). In doing her Dian-Fossey-among-the-gorillas bit, she learned about the habits and activities of minimum-wage earners, to an extent, but there is no way she learned what it is like to actually be poor any more than Fossey learned what it was like to actually be a gorilla, or Nelly Bly learned what it was like to be insane. Ehrenreich admits this, but then she spends the rest of the book acting like she's telling us what it's like to actually be poor. Ehrenreich purported to tell people about life at the minimum wage, but as a person who has lived the lifestyle at which she was only pretending, I can authoritatively state that she had only the very faintest idea what she was talking about.

So why even bother? Well, I will admit that maybe to other people like herself -- people who have maybe never considered that the person who waits on their tables or cleans their houses has actual feelings -- this book has value. Also, I have to confess that the woman can write well and she's very, very funny when she wants to be. Still and all, the Economist's Bible it's not, and you can perhaps see why it made me a wee bit angry.

As for the Shipler book, in some ways it was much better than Ehrenreich's; in others it was much worse. His research was far and away more complete and compelling than hers; while she was playing waitress and dashing back to her trailer to taptaptap away about it on her laptop, he was interviewing dozens of "the working poor" (I am so, so tired of this phrase), some of whom had succeeded in moving beyond minimum wage, and some of whom had not. The result was actually quite interesting to read overall, although there were more than a few times when I wanted to throw the book against the wall. For much of the book (with some substantial exceptions), his obvious socialist slant was restrained to some purposeful decision-making in the way the research was presented, and pepperings of commentary here and there; there were times when I would actually have deemed it politically balanced.

However, he opens and closes with two of the most thinly veiled socialist rants I have seen since my own writings as a soulful, oh-so-compassionate, completely misguided teenager. His solutions to the problem of working poverty are: raise the minimum wage really high (of course), pay higher-paid employees less to compensate (that'd do wonders for people's motivation to excel, no?), "restructure the hierarchy of wealth to alleviate the hardship down below" (p. 286), socialize healthcare (another of course), subsidize housing, mobilize poor voters (because, of course, the point of voting is to help better your own situation, as everyone knows), and, oh yeah, develop job-skills training and vocational education (the only two of his solutions with which I agree). To many people, obviously, this list presents no problem at all (after all, look who's running away with the Democratic presidential race). To me, however -- well, you asked why I found the book annoying, and that's the answer. I just don't agree with the guy's solutions, or his priorities, or his conception of the role of government in American life contrasted with the importance of individual responsibility, or even his overall values as far as I can tell. And yet I have had to eat, sleep, and breathe his book (me exaggerate?) for weeks on end. Picture your average Prius-driving, Clinton-voting neohippie in a class built around the essays of George Will.

And now that I've alienated/bored/shocked you all with my utter and complete lack of soulful compassion, I'm going to bed to read. This much-beloved time change is working its usual unreasonable havoc on my sense of time, and I feel like it must be at least 1:00 AM by now.

Saturday, November 03, 2007

A random, listy kind of I-don't-really-have-anything-specific-to-say kind of post

Things that fill my days:

• teaching the kids.
  
• washing clothes, hanging laundry on the line, bringing it in, folding it, putting it away*
  
• assisting in the Great Family-Wide Autumnal Wood-Gathering effort, which is monumental and seemingly unending and absolutely wears me out, meaning I'm a total wimp, because my dad, who is twenty-two years older than me with a painful case of MS and who knows what all other ills and discomforts, is the driving force behind it and we scurry to keep up with him.
  
• cooking for six, but only a few days a week.*
  
• going for long walks when I can, usually with one or more of the kids.
  
• my own studying and schoolwork.
  
• a varied and tiresome list of home-purchase busywork, like lining up homeowner's insurance and keeping on top of the substantial paperwork required by the lender, all of which would be less annoying if we didn't have the axe suspended over our heads, ready to drop at the close of business hours Monday, rendering all of this absolutely pointless.
  
• driving back and forth to town (seventeen miles/thirty minutes) and the chapel for Boy Scouts, school, Bible study, Awana, groceries, and who knows what all else.
  
• reading. You can't stop me reading, no matter how busy I get.
  

*actually, my housework-load has never been lighter. Dad cleans the living room, he and Mom and I split the cooking, Mom and I do the laundry, and that just leaves my room for me to tidy, pretty much. And generally I just shut that door and shrug.

Things that have annoyed me (aside from the obvious):

• this book and this one too. Only SIX MORE WEEKS of that abysmal class and then I am going to fully shoot those books full of holes. You think I'm joking, but I'm not.
  
• My jaw. Hello, jaw, you are only thirty-two years old; you are not supposed to be worn out and be all clicky and so so painful. Maybe I have reached my lifetime quota for talking, and will have to spend the rest of my days in frustrated silence (shut up, I hear you cheering) with my teeth wired together, living on milkshakes. (hey, there's some consolation).
  
• This afternoon, I stopped off downtown to buy something at a store and there was Christmas music, loud, terrible Christmas music blaring from speakers hidden in the awnings that run along the businesses on the main drag in town. Come on, people, if you're going to start the commercialization of the whole thing so nauseatingly early, at least give us some Chanticleer or Mannheim Steamroller or London Philharmonic or something, not the Christmas version of what commonly passes for country music these days. Please. I am begging.

Things that have my nerdy synapses firing double-time and all gleeful-like:

• The Language Log. It simultaneously makes me feel linguistically satisfied and very, very stupid.
  
• in a similar vein, RACHEL WANTS FOR CHRISTMAS SO MUCH. (don't buy it, though, because I have alerted T already in an email with more exclamation points than I am generally inclined to use.)
  
• My Barnes and Noble membership. Because now, of course, I have to buy books, or else the membership will have been a total waste. Also, I have found that bn.com has wishlists just like Amazon except it's all books, all the time, which, yay. Remember when Amazon was just books? Ah, the good old days.
  
• Also, yay for the time change! I am completely in favor of getting an extra hour to stay up late and read. Thank you, William Willett!
  

Friday, November 02, 2007

I can't believe I'm doing this.

This is November, which means that NaNoWriMo is in full swing. (That's a link, for those of you who have just discovered the Internet within the last eleven months.) And no, I'm not that crazy. I am crazy enough, though, that I've decided that during the month of November I will post every single day in my blog. After all, I pay for the darn thing*; I might as well use it. Besides, it might be nice to do a little writing when I don't have to worry about Tight Paragraphing and Citing Sources and all those very important English 01A kinds of things.

That sound I am hearing is people rushing to their RSS feed-readers and scrambling for the DELETE button.

So, um. A post.

I am so everlastingly tired of the whole home-buying thing but I'll do a short update. No, They(tm) haven't taken back their statement about how escrow must close by, egads, this Monday, isn't it. Our lender and our agent are just figuring (hoping?) that by continuing to make progress and demonstrating such to the seller's bank or whoever it is, we'll mollify their angry, impatient little bankerish selves (who, hello, are the ones who dragged this thing out for four months for no reason that anyone can discern) and they'll let us proceed. So we'll know more in, eh, three days or so, how that went. If you hear a primal scream followed by a medium-sized explosion on Monday afternoon from the general direction of California, you'll know why.

Living with Mom and Dad is going very, very well. We all like it so much that it's a good thing we're already roped into buying a house, because otherwise we might just keep mooching off my parents for years. Everyone without exception in the outside world (at least it seems this way) assumes that we all can't wait to be out of each other's hair, but we're actually pretty sad about the fact that we'll only be here for maybe another month or six weeks. Unless, of course, They(tm) dump us on our sorry behinds and we have to start that whole process over again at day one, in which case, hey, spring wildflowers are just awesome out here.

*actually, if it weren't for the fact that my husband's car-restoration blog, whose URL is Very Important to him, is a subdomain attached to this one, I'd have pitched the whole thing and gone back to blogspot months and months ago.

Thursday, November 01, 2007

Books for October

1. The Hero and the Crown -- Robin McKinley -- 4
   • Maybe this shouldn't be in bold, because I have read it before, but it was back in the dark ages of antiquity when I was in elementary school; except for a few moments here and there, the story was entirely new to me. I bought it early this month because I'm making an effort to collect Newbery winners, and because I remembered liking this one all those years ago. I still liked it, and furthermore, I can see why it appealed to the awkward misfit I was in the mid-80's. (Go ahead, say it.) The protagonist of this fantasy novel, Aerin, is a little clumsy and a lot unsure of herself. She was born into the royal family of her country, but her mother was an outlander, feared by the people, and since she's a child of a second family and female, she's not likely ever to rule. Instead, her cousin and dearest friend Tor is "first sola" -- inheriting prince, basically. Aerin feels the eyes of her people on her wherever she goes, and she knows they disapprove. Her cousins are all more graceful and beautiful than she is, and one girl in particular loves to play unkind, even dangerous tricks on her. Then, almost by accident, Aerin discovers her niche: She is an absolutely expert and unbeatable dragon-slayer -- not exactly a feminine-wiles kind of occupation, but there it is. Up until this point, I loved loved loved this book, as you can imagine. I have never read a book that does a better job -- without a single overtly feminist overtone -- at expressing to young girls that it's OK if you're not like everyone else; it's even OK if everyone thinks you are weird; it's even OK if everyone thinks that the thing you are really good at and to which you want to devote your life is weird; just be yourself and that's how you'll be happiest. Even Anne of Green Gables didn't ring quite true to me, much as I love it, because in L.M. Montgomery's imaginary world, Anne goes to school and all the kids love her not in spite of her brains and oddities but because of them. I would love to have gone to school with those kids. Aerin, who accidently becomes immortal in a place populated by dragons where even the grass is purple, faces what I found to be more realistic suspicion and dislike from the populace at large even after she finds herself. (Plus she gets to have a beautiful friendship with a gorgeous horse. My inner ten-year-old is alive and well when it comes to horse stories.)
     
     But there was that "up until this point" up there. For the last third of the book, McKinley got into the fantasy stuff a little more than I like. But then, this is a fantasy novel, so the complaint is obviously not with the author, but with the genre and probably even with me. I still recommend this book wholeheartedly, especially to awkward misfit young girls of about ten to thirteen years of age. Or to the women they grew up to become.

2. Salem Falls -- Jodi Picoult -- 4
   
   • A young, handsome male teacher serves jail time for sexually assaulting a female student, and then when he gets out he does it again -- or does he? This is no Nineteen Minutes -- have you read it yet? -- but still a good Jodi Picoult book, rich with her usual attention to detail and carefully-constructed relationships. The parallels to The Crucible and the Salem witch trials in general add interest. And of course there's a twist at the end; I cheated and read this one in advance and I can tell you that if you look carefully for nuances as you read, it won't surprise you. I got a little tired of the characters, especially the teenage girls and their exploration of Wicca, but YMMV.

3. House of Sand and Fog -- André Dubus III -- 4
   
   • This Greek-tragic novel, in which a woman's house is repossessed due to what turns out to have been a bureaucratic error and the man who purchases it understandably doesn't want to let it go, is a lushly composed story about the tragedy that can be triggered, domino-style, by circumstances beyond our control. (Well, not entirely beyond our control. If this story has a moral, it's "Dude, woman, don't let your distress over your divorce lead you to stop opening your mail.") I felt for all the characters, except perhaps for that one untrustworthy cop, and even he had his moments. The story kept me turning the pages right up until the end, which completely took me off-guard (not in a contrived Jodi P. way, though) and which actually made me whisper, "no, NO!" and cry a little.
     
   
   

I know I've read some other stuff, besides the Mitford comfort-rereading I've been mainlining doing and the incessant reading of annoying texts for my English class, but I can't for the life of me remember what it was. I am in the middle of a new Annie Dillard book, The Maytrees, and I can't wait until December first to tell you to READ THIS NOW THIS MEANS YOU. I LOVE Annie Dillard. LOVE LOVE LOVE.