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Thursday, April 30, 2009

I'm a bad, bad blogger.

But then we knew that.

But this is REALLY bad, because I totally neglected to do my son's birthday post and now he'll think I don't love him. MY BOY TURNED THIRTEEN.

I can say that now without my voice shaking but it took practice. THIRTEEN is awfully close to EIGHTEEN which is awfully close to NOT NEEDING HIS MOM ANYMORE AND MOVING AWAY. And obviously we want him to reach this stage, all in good time of course, because that's what's natural and good and the way God ordained things to be and will make him happy and us too but FIVE YEARS ARE VERY SHORT. So I'm hugging him a lot lately, to store up against that looming day when I'll have to call him and have him drive to my house from his house in order for me to be able to give him a hug. I even kiss his cheek when I can catch him off-guard.

A little premature, you're thinking? Come on, Rachel, the kid's only thirteen, it's not like he's heading off for college across the country next week, you say? I will remind you that FIVE YEARS. They are VERY SHORT. For example:

I have been blogging (such as it is, lately) for six years and that has felt like nothing.

Five years ago LT was eight and I thought he was SO big and grown-up and that was not very long ago at all.

Every year goes by faster than the year before. When LT was born, 5 years was roughly 1/4th of my life. Now it's roughly 1/7th. By the time he's 18 it'll be 1/8th or so.

Remember the year 2000? Does that feel like a long time ago to you? Nearly TWICE five years, people.
What about Claire, you say? You'll still have Claire at home? Yes, but NINE YEARS AREN'T VERY LONG EITHER.

So I think I'm justified in having a wee little bit of a freakout. Now if you'll excuse me, I think he's soundly enough asleep that I'll be able to smooch his face without having him wake up and wipe it off, so I have to go now.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

Thank you, Veronica.

I know you've all heard of (and heard) Susan Boyle by now, right? I HEART SUSAN BOYLE... as much as I loathe those smug sniggering spectators whose collective eye-roll could be heard across the Atlantic when someone DARED to step onto a stage in front of them who was not conventionally attractive, and no their later cheering did not make me like them. Only the ones who actually cried are off the hook and no longer need fear my scorn. Bonus points for wearing sackcloth and throwing ashes on oneself.

Anyway. I've kind of had a blog post in my head about the Susan Boyle phenomenon, and I even sat and typed one out late at night a couple of nights ago but, like most serious and heartfelt things I type at 2 AM, it was too maudlin for words and also very rambly and not quite coherent, so I have not posted it here even though I am in desperate need of content. Then today, Veronica at Toddled Dredge (if she's not featured in your RSS reader she really, really should be) posted something so wonderful and spot-on about Miss Boyle and our attitudes about beauty that I no longer have to come up with a post and can just link you to hers, because she put what I was thinking into much better words than I could have done, 2 AM or no. Here you go.

Sunday, April 19, 2009

Reading survey, and books for March/April. Sort of.

I know I owe a books post. Or two. OK, here goes:

• Listen to Helen's Babies, by John Habberton, available at librivox.org. Charming, funny, pleasant for the whole family.
• Don't bother reading Handle With Care even though the bones (no, um, pun intended) of the story are good and the issues are interesting, because a) the writing it not up to Picoult's usual level and b) the ending is the most jerkish mean horrible unforgivable ending she's ever written and that's saying something. I read it first like I always do now and it STILL spoiled the book for me.
• Fifteen continues to be wonderful, of course.
• I know I'm forgetting something here but you'll have to excuse me, because I'm taking a gorgeous and wonderful algebra class and a mind-numbingly dull California History class and the combination has simultaneously mashed my brains all up AND sucked away all my spare reading time, as is usual during term-time. (<- one of my favorite Lewisisms.)
  

Oops, forgot I was still listing. OK. On with the survey. You might already have read this if I'm your Facebook friend.

1) What author do you own the most books by?
L.M. Montgomery

2) What book do you own the most copies of?
I have several copies of Anne of Green Gables

3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
Maybe a little. But it's not like this is a scholarly paper, so I'll let it slide THIS TIME.

4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with?
As a child: Justin from Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. Yes, I had the preteen sweats for an anthropomorphized super-intelligent rodent.

Later: Stan Crandall in Fifteen, which I can understand, having just reread the book, and that sounds a little bad considering that Stan is and always will be seventeen.

Adulthood: Mr. Rochester and Captain Wentworth. (Shhh!) (OK, not really. But if I WERE going to have a literary crush, they'd be at the top of the list.)

5) What book have you read the most times in your life?
The Anne series, I'm thinking.

6) What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?
When I was ten I spent hours and hours at the library and I had a different favorite book every few days. But probably really Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH, and not just because Justin was the cutest, sweetest, smartest rat on sometimes two legs and sometimes four.

7) What is the worst book you've read in the past year?
I try to block these from my mind. Maybe the new Wally Lamb? Sorry, Mr. Lamb. I'd say it's nothing personal but I know that would do no good. Nine hundred pages or whatever that was, and ten years of work, it can't help but be personal. But at least you tried.

8) What is the best book you've read in the past year?
Probably We Are All Welcome Here, Elizabeth Berg. Or maybe Belong to Me, Marisa de los Santos. That's not counting re-reads.

9) If you could force everyone you tagged to read one book, what would it be?
Aside from the Bible? :) A Thread of Grace, Mary Doria Russell.

10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for literature?
Is there some kind of lifetime achievement award? Give it to Beverly Cleary. You know she's been publishing beloved bestsellers for SIXTY YEARS? Please don't die for a long time yet, Mrs. Cleary.

11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?
Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen. And I'd love to see a new BBC Anne, as long as they hired Canadians or people whose accents could pass for Canadian.

12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie?
Well, I'm touchy about this. Most of my very favorite books, as much as I might like to see them as movies, I just KNOW they'd change a ton of stuff and it would make me mad. So for most of my favorites, unless it's a classic or period novel being handled by the BBC, hands off please. (The abovementioned Water for Elephants is a possible exception because it's written in such a way that it would make a very marketable movie without changing a word, and also it would maybe be worth the pain of seeing a few changes to see a really excellent director and DP and art director team up on it, because it has enormous visual potential.)

13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.
It involved Mr. Rochester. It was over a decade ago. That is all I'm going to say. (Mostly because, truth be told, that's all I can remember. I'm not as young as I used to be.)

14) What is the most lowbrow book you've read as an adult?
I know there have been several but I can't think of them offhand. Maybe that YA series whose title involves something about Angus and thongs and snogging.

15) What is the most difficult book you've ever read?
Les Miserables, but it was worth it. I do wish he'd abridged that long chapter about the Paris sewer system, though.

16) Do you prefer the French or the Russians?
I've not read a lot of Russians but what I have read tends to be pretty bleak and I didn't like it much. (Anton Chekhov, I am looking at you.) I've not exactly majored in French literature, but I have read a few more French authors than Russian ones, and I do think I like those (Verne, Hugo, Leroux) better.

17) Umberto Eco?
Does Umberto echo? I dunno.

18) Roth or Updike?
I've read two Updikes and thought they were OK but overrated. Never read Roth.

19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?
Never finished anything from either.

20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?
Shakespeare. But I like Chaucer too. OK, I'm man enough to admit it, I like the one thing I've read by Chaucer which is the one thing everybody has read by Chaucer (except Chaucer scholars, who have read two things) and that's the Canterbury Tales. Some funny parts, some interesting parts, some totally incomprehensible parts, the end. So to repeat: Shakespeare.

21) Austen or Eliot?
Austen, but I love Eliot too. That was mean to make me choose.

22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
I own everything by Dickens (thanks to an awesome birthday B&N gift card many years ago from my husband) and I keep swearing I'm going to read through everything he wrote in chronological order, but instead I've read the same four or five of his novels that everyone's read (David Copperfield, Great Expectations, A Tale of Two Cities, Oliver Twist, and of course A Christmas Carol) and that's all. I've read the first 100 pages or so of Pickwick about three times, but so far apart in between that I always forget and have to start over. There, I've confessed. You can take away my literary snob card now.

23) What is your favorite novel?
I can't answer this question because my head just exploded. Thanks so much.

24) Play?
The Philadelphia Story

25) Short story?
Something by O. Henry, I think.

26) Work of non-fiction?
Mover of Men and Mountains by R.G. LeTourneau. Or MiG Pilot by John Barron, about Viktor Belenko. Or What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew, by Daniel somebody. Pool. I just Googled it. Oh wait! I absolutely cannot leave out A Girl from Yamhill and My Own Two Feet by Beverly Cleary. BEST MEMOIRS EVER. Is it super callous and selfish of me to say that I hope that she lives long enough to publish a third installment?

27) Who is your favorite writer?
I don't want to choose. You can't make me. Elizabeth Berg and Kazuo Ishiguro and Charles Dickens for the way they put words together. Cynthia Voigt, Anne Tyler, and L.M. Montgomery for the characters they create. Sara Donati, Charlotte Brontë, Audrey Niffenegger, Mary Doria Russell, and many others for the stories they craft. Jane Austen, Beverly Cleary, and Jan Karon for the way it makes me feel to read their books. Even this small exercise has caused me much pain. My poor exploded head was just beginning to heal from question 23 and there it goes again.

28) Who is the most overrated writer alive today?
JK Rowling. I don't dislike her writing as much as Nicholas Sparks', but she's more overrated (just my opinion, of course) because she has so much larger a following than Sparks does. (This has nothing to do with any of the "sorcery books are evil" reasons for not liking Harry Potter. I just think the books are mediocre at best. Excuse me while I flee before this screaming angry horde.)

29) What is your desert island book?
the Bible

30) And ... what are you reading right now?
I just finished Fifteen and I haven't yet picked my next school-semester-in-session light comfort read-before-bed book. (I don't think that sentence had enough hyphens.)

Tuesday, April 07, 2009

hazards of multi-tasking. beware: this could happen to you.

Here's what can happen if you try to simultaneously clean out a junk drawer and have a discussion with your children about the varying degrees of disagreeableness in pseudo-swear words:

"OK, yes, 'crap' is not nice. 'Crud' is less bad. But 'crap' is not like going around saying -- Oh my goodness, look at this big Sharpie I just found!"

Guess what is the new expletive of choice for the giggling juveniles in my household.

Monday, April 06, 2009

Other things have been growing too.

Well, we've joked about having a betting pool for when this would happen, but it's too late now. (I always guessed he'd be 13. But you know, if I was still 5 8 3/8" like I SWEAR I used to be, I'd have been right, most likely. Barely.) Anybody want to put in for which week of his 13th year he'll pass up his Daddy at 5' 10 1/2"?

(Today's photos helpfully taken by Claire. Baby photo taken by my brother Toney.)

April 6, 2009. He is fifteen days shy of his thirteenth birthday, and a quarter-inch taller than his mom at 5' 8 1/8". A historic day! :)

April 6th, 2009. Left-hand side is on my head; right-hand side is on LT's.

LT and his mama, April 1996. I LOVE THIS PICTURE.