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Thursday, December 31, 2009

Goodbye, 2009.

1. What did you do in 2009 that you’d never done before?
I learned to use (and love, possibly in an obsessive and unhealthy manner) a pressure canner. I bought a college parking pass, which made me feel ridiculously pleased and it's now a family joke. I hand-loaded ammunition. I played Airsoft. (I... think that was this year?) I exercised voluntarily every day for seven weeks or so. Then I stopped. But I'm going to start again, I swear. I took someone's senior pictures. (Not well, I'm afraid.) I took my daughter roller-skating, which is SO MUCH FUN OH MY GOSH.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
I don't remember if I made any last year. This year, I'm resolving to update our checkbook and reconcile it with online banking every single night, and to relax a little bit during the school semester so that I don't neglect my marriage. (Or cut out social networking for those 18 weeks. Ha ha! Like that will happen.)

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Susan lives far from me but she is VERY close to my heart, and she had baby number six this summer. Go Supermom! (She really is amazing.) Also, a whole TON of my online friends had babies; sheesh, people! Also, there are several new babies in my circle of real-life acquaintance (most of whom I still only see over the innernets because I am a hermit).

4. Did anyone close to you die?
He wasn't close to me anymore, really. We were friends in high school. OK, he was my boyfriend in high school, or one of them, but long after that brief state of affairs came to an end, his family and my family were friends, and his sister was in my wedding. He killed himself in August. I think about his family every day.

5. What countries did you visit?
Um, I went to Arizona...

6. What would you like to have in 2010 that you lacked in 2009?
Time to read novels. Bifocals. Self-discipline (I say this every year).

7. What dates from 2009 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
I don't always remember to associate events with dates, but our trip to Arizona in March was immensely memorable and delightful.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Hmm. Maybe the perfect score in College Algebra? (I wish I could lay that semester apologetically and yet triumphantly at the feet of my perennially disappointed high-school algebra/trig/precalculus teacher.) Or maybe a garden where more than 50% of the things I planted produced edible results? An uncanny number of Twitter posts that were EXACTLY 140 characters long?

9. What was your biggest failure?
I still haven't learned never to raise my voice when I'm upset with my kids, although I'm better than I was.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Nothing major. Nothing even very minor, actually.

11. What was the best thing you bought?
PRESSURE CANNER FTW. Also, this laptop is nice, but seriously, you should SEE this canner. Chickens! We love our chickens. And just this last week we bought a digital piano (used; we're not that flush) which has made me very, very happy all the way from my smile to deep down in my piano-missing soul.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
My husband's. He is... oh, he is just the most wonderful man, and don't take this wrong but he's been growing so much. He's so patient with me and the kids, and loving and affectionate and thoughtful and generous, and getting more so all the time. He's grown more mellow where he needed to and stayed solid and intense where it's fitting and I just can't get over how good he is to me and our family and his friends and strangers and... hey look! she can be REALLY SAPPY when she wants to!

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
Mine, more often than I wish it had. Also politicians'. And my friend's ex-husband's.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Mortgage, bills, Christmas, ugh.

15. What did you get really excited about?
Our trip to Arizona. My kids' birthdays. Algebra class. What.

16. What song will always remind you of 2009?
It's always hard to answer this question until the year's been over for a decade or so. Maybe that Taylor Swift one about how he belongs with her; Claire loves it. Or the Piano Lesson from *The Music Man*, which joined Claire's and my little repertoire of songs we like to sing in bathrooms. (Hey, don't knock it. You're all alone in there and the acoustics are fabulous! Go for it! You're never going to see those people in the adjoining office again anyway!) Ooh, and there was also Regina Spektor's new album, and Imogen Heap's "Glittering Clouds" which was pretty much my driving soundtrack for the spring semester.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:?
thinner or fatter: MAYBE marginally thinner.
happier or sadder: Happier.
Richer or poorer: Slightly richer, thanks to refinancing and paying extra on our mortgage.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of?
Playing with my kids, hanging out with them doing stuff they like, going for drives, being spontaneous.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of?
Staring at this damn wonderful machine.

20. How did you spend Christmas?
The day itself we were at my parents'. The weather was beautiful and we went for a walk after dinner, which is generally my favorite part of Christmas when it happens, and the thing I remember most from the family gathering. We also had separate small celebrations with T's parents and with his sister's family. I have to confess that I kind of like spreading it out like this; not only does it make it last longer, but it's far more relaxing.

21. Did you fall in love in 2009?
I continued falling, as you can see above.

22. What was your favorite TV program?
Cash Cab! It will always remind me of the Arizona trip.

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year?
I don't think I hate anyone. Even people I really sincerely dislike -- and there are few -- I don't hate. That takes too much energy and does nobody any good.

24. What was the best book you read?
That's hard to say. Most of what I read were textbooks, and I have forgotten most of the few novels I had time for. Right now I am really loving Meredith Willson's memoirs. Oh wait! There was a children's book, about a girl with an autistic brother, called Rules, which I HIGHLY RECOMMEND. Whew. I feel better.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery?
Musically, this has been the year in which I discovered that I, um, kind of like techno. I'm not an aficionado, I just like what I like and some of what I like is synthesized and beat-driven and excellent for working out or dancing or cleaning the kitchen or raving, not that I rave. Mock me if you will. I can take it.

26. What did you want and get?
A laptop. A pressure canner. A digital piano. Chickens. A puppy. Tons and tons of love. I am one lucky lady.

27. What did you want and not get?
A waist.

28. What was your favorite film of this year?
I almost never watch movies in the year in which they are released. Maybe "Up."

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
There was kind of this whole birthday-week thing going on, really. It was amazing. (I TOLD you he was affectionate and generous! TOLD YOU!) We went for drives and we walked down Christmas Tree Lane. We ate dinner out, we played games in the evenings, we watched movies while I knitted; in short, I was pampered shamefully. (I turned 35.)

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Well, come now, immeasurably? What if there's something that would have made it quantifiably more satisfying? Can I not share that?

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2009?
HA HA HA.

32. What kept you sane?
My family. The fact that my children now clean up after themselves (mostly).

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
I don't get into this stuff, really. I am a boring old matronly biddy.

34. What political issue stirred you the most?
The massive, purposeless federal spending and what it will mean to us and our children and their children in terms of loss of liberty.

35. Whom did you miss?
I really wish I could see my friends who live far away more often. I have not laid eyes on Susan in person for over FIVE YEARS now, for example.

36. Who was the best new person you met?
Oh, hi, yes, that's a great way to make all the other new people I met feel just fabulous about themselves. (Um, did I meet any new people, actually? Oh yes, at school. My biology instructor was pretty awesome...) I reconnected with some wonderful people, though. yay!

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2009.
That keeping busy is good (much better than being lazy, which I used to really truly be), but there's such a thing as overdoing it, and also that I need better time management. I can't spare the time to spend a few minutes alone with my husband after the kids are in bed, but I can keep up with 300 people on Facebook? What does that SAY about me? Something needs to be rearranged here.

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year.
I am so not good at this song-lyric thing. First of all, things rarely fit that well -- maybe because songs about people who are happy and well-adjusted and who live quiet lives mostly at home with their families and their gardens and their schoolbooks and their farty dogs and their chickens don't get much airplay. Secondly, I tend to forget about songs that fit even if I do discover them. And thirdly, I forgot what I was going to say just now so I'll put a quote here and it is this:

"One for whom the pebble has value must be surrounded by treasures wherever he goes." -- Pär Lagerkvist

That quote doesn't just sum up my year, it pretty much sums up my life.

Saturday, July 25, 2009

25 random-ish things about me

Because it was there. (hi, by the way. Garden is mostly fine. Summer is hot. I am a rollerskating maniac. T has been gone three out of the last five weeks. I have at least three abandoned blog posts on my desktop. Also: am totally lame.)

1. Some things I like: Owls. Waterwheels. Windmills. Chickens. Reptiles.

2. Some things I dislike: Turkey mullein. Blowing dust. Insulting jokes. Faithless film adaptations of novels*.

3. I recently took up roller skating (OK, so I've been twice in ten days and I'm going again this next week) with my daughter and my niece. Before last Friday, I hadn't skated since approximately 1989. We are having SO MUCH FUN.

4. I am sad that Twitter and Facebook have killed my blog and I frequently resolve to Do Something About It. But then I don't.

5. I sometimes freak out and just KNOW that I am failing as a parent. Recently this has been because my daughter is becoming concerned about her weight. Maybe it's just part of being a woman, to always think you need to lose weight. But if it is, that sucks. I am sorry, daughter, to have been careless about allowing my body issues to become your body issues by osmosis. I did not want that to happen.

6. I am a mediocre housekeeper, as a rule (laundry and clutter are my dual nemeses), but I'm good at getting stuff done outside and I like special projects like cleaning out the fridge and canning stuff.

7. Things I look for at yard sales: Books. Canning jars. Cast iron cookware. Knitting stuff. Lately: exercise equipment.

8. I have never truly lived the life of a single adult. By the time I was nineteen I was engaged. All of my actual singlehood experience occurred during and just after high school, which hardly counts. So single women, please disregard my advice because I have NO CLUE what I'm talking about.

9. I say "I have NO CLUE" very, very often.

10. I love filling in forms, especially by hand. Buying a house ALMOST cured of me of this but not quite.

11. Skills I possess: Canning. Reading. Studying hard. Mathematics. Cable knitting. Teaching.

12. Skills I lack: Confrontation. Drawing. Anything having to do with social interaction. Writing fiction.

13: Things I miss doing: Making music. Going for walks in town. Riding horseback. Living in the middle of nowhere.

14: Top 10 most-played songs in my iTunes library:

1. "Glittering Clouds (Locusts)" by Imogen Heap
   
2. "1-2-3 Go!" by Belanova
   
3. "In the Hall of the Mountain King" from Peer Gynt by Edvard Grieg, performed by the Czecho-Slovak State Philharmonic Orchestra. (Oh my gosh, watching that video - that is not the orchestra that performs the version I own, btw - makes me want to be in an orchestra RIGHT NOW.)
   
4. "New Soul" by Yael Naim
   
5. "Calling You" by Blue October
   
6. "Music Box" by Regina Spektor (you know, the only reason this one has more plays than "Fidelity" or "On The Radio" is because while I'll sometimes skip those songs if my son's in the car and he asks very nicely, I'll never pass up the opportunity to torment him with "Music Box". Regina Spektor's unique style is on full display in this song, and it's not for everyone, especially 13-year-old boys who sometimes need a little lesson in whose iPod is this, anyway.)
   
7. "Congratulations" by Blue October and Imogen Heap
   
8. "You are Goodbye" by Holly Conlan
   
9. "Blessed Be Your Name" by Matt Redman
   
10. "White & Nerdy" by "Weird" Al Yankovic
    

(compiling all the links for that list took a REALLY long time. You're welcome. Also, this represents the number of plays over about a six-month period -- I reset all my playcounts periodically if I get a lot of new music, so it gets a fair shot at the top 50 -- and so might not be accurate as far as what gets heavy rotation right now.)

15. Many of the things I do would be considered "green" or otherwise granola-ish (recycling, hanging clothes on the line, using cloth diapers -- well, with one kid anyway -- reusing everything I can, avoiding waste, growing a garden, keeping animals), but I actually do these things for reasons having to do with self-reliance, sustainability, and frugality. It's fine with me if the environment is better off as well, but that's certainly not my focus.

16. My memory is so faulty nowadays that I sometimes worry seriously about myself. (Vascular dementia? Multiple sclerosis?) Stuff will happen, and then even just a few hours later I will not be able to remember details until my daughter -- who is very handy for stuff like this -- reminds me when I ask her to. The distressing thing is that I used to have a phenomenal memory.

17. Things to which I am possibly unhealthily addicted: Diet cola. Facebook and Twitter. Reading into the wee hours.

18. I really, really, really need to get some regular exercise. I'm not obese (although I'm overweight) but I am badly out of shape.

19. I am not allergic to anything.

20. I have an appalling appetite. If unchecked, it's truly staggering in its scope. So unladylike of me.

21. I am an staunch advocate of breastfeeding, and of extended breastfeeding in particular.

22. My house, my car, and my older brother all date from the same year.

23. I was an adult before I knew that "Another One Bites the Dust" was a Queen song.

24. My biggest faults: Knowitallism. Laundry laziness. Overtalkativeness.

25. I was the California state elementary-school spelling champion in 1987. The winning words were "simoom" and "frondescence". It was my fifteen minutes of (local) fame.

*with a few notable exceptions. Mansfield Park, I am looking at you.

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

ten ways the world has changed

I am plotting (I even have notes) a longish, serious blog post. Meanwhile, it's been a really long time since I've done a meme, and Michael presented me with one that was hard to resist.

Ten ways the world has changed since I was in school:

1. Number one would have to be the Internet. I mean, it definitely existed in 1993, but almost nobody had it in their homes and I don't think our school even had it in the library yet when I graduated (although it might have). Now everyone from my three-year-old nephew to my eighty-one-year-old grandmother knows how to use it. And this extends to the proliferation of computers in general. Kids in some schools get laptops issued to them like textbooks. As far as I know there was no such thing as a laptop in 1993, and I was really excited to pay ONLY $425 for a used 386 with TWO WHOLE MEG OF RAM. I honestly do not remember the hard drive size. T, a little help?

2. The outsourcing of labor to overseas markets. This has caused a major shift in the American employment scene (granted, not so much around here), with factories closing and companies moving their production to Asia, where the labor is cheaper. It's also caused the prices of computers, components, and other electronics to plummet. I'll never forget going to buy our second inkjet printer. We bought our first one at Staples in 1997 or so for $300. We used that one until it died, and then a friend gave us his old one when he got a new one and we used that one until it died (or until it ticked us off so much with its utter inability to pick up paper that we shot it full of holes, one of the two), and then we went to price new printers and see what we were in for. This was maybe 2001. We were braced to have to save up $250 or $300; imagine our surprise when the most expensive printer on the shelf was under $100, and the models comparable to the ones we were used to were $40. (They still didn't pick up paper.)

3. We're teetering on the brink of another depression. (That's pretty recent. Does it count?)

4. I think gas was around $1.25/gallon when I graduated. And weren't we all mad to see it over a dollar!

5. When I started high school, I had never seen anybody except really out-there punk rockers with unnatural hair colors. While I was in high school, a few cutting-edge alternative types dyed their hair "eggplant". Now ten-year-old boys go around with spiked blue hair and nobody thinks anything of it. (Or was that five years ago? I lose track easily.)

6. Fashions, obviously. When I was in high school, I would have been laughed off campus if I'd worn flare-leg jeans and the strappy little tank tops that are de rigueur now. Also, we still believed in tucking in our shirts -- at least the shirt that we wore under the baggy flannel one.

7. I think in 1993, the children and teens who called their elders by their first names were still the exception, offspring of hippies who never got over being countercultural. Now my children are the freaks because they're actually polite and deferential to people who could be their great-great grandparents. Go figure.

8. Homeschooling was not quite under the radar when I finished school, but it was definitely not the near-mainstream movement that it is today. Everyone's heard of it now, and most people know someone who's doing it.

9. In 1993, if I remember correctly, homosexuality was out of the closet but still stigmatized. Nowadays, schools have "coming-out days" and teenage girls experiment with bisexuality because it's cool.

10. Sexual mores: It took the culture of the 90's to make sex on the second or third date something that was almost expected, instead of something that only the easy girls did. And when I was a teen, I would probably estimate that people who lived together before marriage were still (barely) outnumbered by those who didn't. I sincerely doubt that's the case anymore -- living together is done so casually that even the phrase "before marriage" has pretty much been dropped.
    

Looking back over my list, it's mostly negative stuff, which I didn't really mean it to be. Life's good now, too. :) Just... different. (And hey, I've found that even mid-rise jeans aren't so bad.)

Friday, December 28, 2007

the obligatory year-end survey meme

1. What did you do in 2007 that you’d never done before? Enrolled in college. Bought a house. Participated in SERIOUS DIY (or DIWTHOYDAMF --that's Do It With The Help Of Your Dad And Many Friends) renovations.

2. Did you keep your new year’s resolutions, and will you make more for next year? I don't remember if I made any resolutions last year. (Gee, Rachel, maybe you should check for the last time you did this survey?) I haven't thought far enough ahead to make any yet for next year, but I'm thinking maybe the standard what-the-heck-I'll-only-break-them-anyway resolutions will do: Lose weight and get in better shape, have more financial discipline (actually, this one I will have to keep or they will take away our house, and that's not pretty), keep the house tidy. I hear you laughing.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth? Susan did! Greetings, Tabitha! Susan provides me with fodder for this question pretty much every year. Go Susan! :)

4. Did anyone close to you die? Our next-door neighbor (at the time) did. I don't think there was anyone else.

5. What countries did you visit? HA! Har har. Tee hee. You so funny.

6. What would you like to have in 2008 that you lacked in 2007? Great faith (sigh) and, as always, discipline.

7. What dates from 2007 will remain etched upon your memory, and why? June 20th: the day our landlord dropped the bomb. October 5th: The day our offer was accepted on the house. November 29th: The day we closed escrow, finally.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year? Not killing our landlord. What. OK, I think I made straight A's in my college classes (for all nine units I completed during the year), and I know I did every assignment in every class, which I haven't done since sometime in the third grade, or maybe before.

9. What was your biggest failure? I was, generally speaking, a slob.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury? Nothing serious. The miserable stomach bug that has just departed only seems serious because it was so recent, right?

11. What was the best thing you bought? A house.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration? My parents deserve a medal. They have put us up since mid-September, tolerating our extremely annoying here-just-long-enough-to-eat-and-make-a-mess status for the first few weeks of that time as well as the past month; they've watched our kids while we were off gallivanting working and/or painting; they've pretty much made the work on the house possible with their expertise, tools and help. There are other friends who are also contributing to our well-being in huge and selfless ways, like our friends who have lent us a vehicle and many power tools and bought us an engine and helped with tons of stuff on the house, and Tolley's dad who donated his real estate commission for our closing costs, and other friends who have saved us tons of money by telling us what to do and/or helping us do it, and of course there are lots of people who have been awesome just in general ways that have nothing to do with us. Anyone with creative ideas for how to thank these people beyond holding a barbecue and giving a teary-eyed speech over dessert? *snif*

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed? My own, at times.

14. Where did most of your money go? Ordinary bills, Lowes, and Home Depot.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about? The house, for the about three seconds that it was neither a paperwork nightmare nor a huge monumental task to be completed. Seeing Jenn in Morro Bay. Going to Morro Bay in general.

16. What song will always remind you of 2007? Well, 2007 was The First Year of the iPod, so I listened to a LOT of new-to-me music. Maybe "Fidelity".

17. Compared to this time last year, are you: a) happier or sadder? b) thinner or fatter? c) richer or poorer?? a) don't remember how I felt this time last year b) maybe a wee bit fatter and c) richer in assets (thanks to a good amount of sweat equity), poorer in cash

18. What do you wish you’d done more of? Spent time with my friends. Also, I feel like for the past few months, since I've had free-and-easy babysitting, ESPECIALLY for the last month which is about the only time we've actually taken advantage of the above, I haven't seen my kids as much as I'm used to. I'm looking forward to getting back into our routine.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of? Griped.

20. How did you spend Christmas? Here at my parents', with much eating.

21. Did you fall in love in 2007? Over and over again, with the same person.

22. What was your favorite TV program? I only watched one (Jericho, via the Internet).

23. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year? No. I find it hard to hate pretty much anyone for more than a few seconds at a time.

24. What was the best book you read? Nineteen Minutes, Jodi Picoult.

25. What was your greatest musical discovery? Regina Spektor.

26. What did you want and get? oh gosh. So, so much.

27. What did you want and not get? Nothing worth having that isn't worth waiting for.

28. What was your favorite film of this year? I have only watched one film that was actually made in 2007 (people, I am so cultured, no?), and it was just eh-ok. (Martian Child.)

29. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you? I celebrated turning 33 with my family here at home.

30. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying? If I had suddenly been transformed into a size-eight, disciplined, more cheerful version of myself. Or if the house thing had gone more smoothly and we hadn't had to impose on my parents for so long. Otherwise, nothing.

31. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2007? Well, I finally started wearing jeans that SIT SLIGHTLY BELOW WAIST. Still overall rather Mom-ish, though.

32. What kept you sane? Sometimes it was the grace of God and nothing else, and that only by a hair. (Also, there's the fact that if I really do have a genuine nervous breakdown, it will scar the poor kids for life.)

33. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most? I do not fancy celebrities or public figures.

34. What political issue stirred you the most? I have become nearly apolitical as a general rule. I mean, I have firm positions on issues, but I don't get riled about them.

35. Whom did you miss? Lots of people.

36. Who was a nice new person you met? Sarah, a friend in my English class.

37. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2007. NEVAH, NEVAH, NEVAH give up. OK, so I didn't hear the WORDS in 2007, but I certainly took them to heart in a very real way.

38. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year. Oh, I am so bad at this. Let me rummage through my iTunes playlists... hmm... OK, this one, as a prayer for what should be, as the rest of the song intends, and not necessarily a statement of current affairs:

Riches I heed not, nor man’s empty praise,
Thou my inheritance, now and always:
Thou and thou only, first in my heart,
High king of Heaven, my treasure thou art.

(from "Be Thou My Vision").

**********************

OK, everyone, your turn now. whew.

Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Christmas meme

1. Wrapping paper or gift bags?
Wrapping paper. This year, my son is wrapping almost everything! YES! Stuff's a little lumpy but he's getting better and better and I don't have to do it so yay!

2. Real tree or artificial?
Artificial. Sometimes I get a hankering for the smell of a real tree, but my practical side wins out and we go with the cheap -- we've had our tree since Christmas 1995, so it's down to, what, $2.50 a year now. I can't bring myself to go buy a tree with money that could be spent on more stuff for my kids to play with and eventually forget about and leave lying around in their rooms so as to help Mommy have that genuine nervous breakdown just thaaaat much sooner. (Also, the fire hazard. And the needles. And the sap. And the need to water it which face it I would always forget to do and we would die in a fiery inferno as a result. Rachel = Scrooge.)

3. When do you put up the tree?
The day after Thanksgiving without fail, except this year when we are not putting up our own tree, so we convinced my parents to let us put up their tree on the day after Thanksgiving, even though that was more than a month before Christmas.

4. When do you take the tree down?
I try for New Years' Day but sometimes I lapse.

5. Do you like eggnog?
NO. Beck, best description of eggnog EVER: chilled phlegm. I am going to use that for the rest of my life. (Also, the paint we were putting on our living room walls was exactly eggnog-color and eggnog-consistency, although it dried a tiny bit darker, so now there's the whole negative *twitch* painting *twitch* association too.)

6. Favorite gift received as a child?
Favorite in retrospect: A giant rag doll that I played with for years and wish I had to give to my daughter. Favorite at the time: The Dr. Drill & Fill play-dough toy that I begged incessantly for and then played with for maybe four nanoseconds before I lost all the pieces and ground the play-dough into the rug.

7. Do you have a nativity scene?
My parents have a full set. We have a small one, given to us by a friend this fall, made of wood and very nice. C has adopted it as her Very Own and it will have pride of place on her bookshelf year-round, I'm thinking.

8. Hardest person to buy for?
My husband. I want to be all original and genius-y with the gift-giving like he is, but it's hard. He has a very specific list of things that he wants/needs for his various projects, and while, yes, I could go online and order the grommet for his fuel tank thingamabob for his Charger, it just feels kind of unwifely. So I try to find something that he'll absolutely LOVE that's not so ... practical ... and yet can be opened around the tree in front of the kids, and it's difficult. He doesn't need clothes -- he already has a ready supply of the black turtlenecks, checked flannel shirts, and black polos that make my heart beat faster. I got him cologne last year and he still has almost all of that. He has a few collections of "toys" -- die-cast Mopars and the like -- but he has all the ones I've ever seen already. Last year I gave him a hundred dollars and a trip to the Telescope Store at the coast to spend it -- which went over well, but now that's been Done, and besides I don't have a hundred dollars unless I forego paying my college tuition with my transcribing money which I swore I would do, and to give him a hundred dollars that he earned seems a little... eh. Yet he is a GENIUS at gift-giving. He always gets me things I love whether they were on my list or not.

9. Easiest person to buy for?
The kids. Even in years when we hold to our No New Toys rule -- there are just so many things they like.

10. Worst Christmas gift you ever received?
I can't think of anything.

11. Mail or email Christmas cards?
This year I thought with all the moving and stuff that we wouldn't bother, but now I'm feeling guilty about that, so I am seeing a family photo session and a trip to the valley to buy cards in my future.

12. Favorite Christmas Movie?
It's a Wonderful Life and While You Were Sleeping.

13. When do you start shopping for Christmas?
Usually in the early autumn. This year, not so much.

14. Have you ever recycled a Christmas present?
I plead the fifth.

15. Favorite thing to eat at Christmas?
Anything that is not nailed down.

16. Clear lights or colored on the tree?
Colored colored colored. They photograph much better. :)

17. What is your favorite Christmas song?
This year for some reason I am all about Chanticleer's version of "Silent Night" from Sing We Christmas, where they sing the first verse in German, the second verse in French, and the third verse in English, at which point I start bawling like a baby and feel like my chest is going to explode.

I also like "Carol of the Bells" as performed by the Bel Canto Women's Choir from Azusa Pacific University. And "Christmas At Ground Zero" by Weird Al.

18. Travel at Christmas or stay home?
Home. Or within fifteen miles of home.

19. Can you name all of Santa's reindeer?
Yes. When I was a girl I was the type who was excited to get a Social Security number because it was something new to memorize. (OK, so maybe that's not exactly a type, it's just nerdy little old awkward strange me.) In my secret heart, denied to the meanies at school who somehow thought it was inappropriate to like anything but The Right Music and The Right Clothes and The Right People, I loved memorizing. So yes. Thanks to my nerdy childhood, I can recite all the names of the reindeer, as well as all the levels of biological classification and all the dwarfs and all the books of the Bible and probably some other stuff too.

20. Angel on the tree top or a star?
Star.

21. Open the presents Christmas Eve or morning?
Christmas morning.

22. What I love most about Christmas?
Well, I'm feeling Christmasy enough now not to say at this point, "the moment when it's over and quiet and all the mess is cleaned up." So. What I love most about it is the anticipation, and reliving my own childhood through the kids' excitement, and making people happy by giving them STUFF that they will like.

Thursday, September 13, 2007

book meme! book meme!

My friend Kiwiria posted a BOOK MEME. I'm supposed to be either packing (looks ominously like we might get a light rain shower later and there's stuff that needs to get under cover at storage before that happens) or doing my homework for English class, but how could I resist?

Okay . . . picture this (really) worst-case scenario: It’s cold and raining, your boyfriend/girlfriend has just dumped you, you’ve just been fired, the pile of unpaid bills is sky-high, your beloved pet has recently died, and you think you’re coming down with a cold. All you want to do (other than hiding under the covers) is to curl up with a good book, something warm and comforting that will make you feel better.
What do you read?

The first thing that pops into my head for this situation is a Mitford book. Also L.M. Montgomery would be helpful here.

So, this is my question to you – are you a Goldilocks kind of reader?
Do you need the light just right, the background noise just so loud but not too loud, the chair just right, the distractions at a minimum?
Or can you open a book at any time and dip right in, whether it’s for twenty seconds, while waiting for the kettle to boil, or indefinitely, like while waiting interminably at the hospital–as long as the book is open in front of your nose, you’re happy to read?

Oh my gosh, definitely the latter. I can lose myself in a book anywhere, under any circumstances I can think of, much to the chagrin of my husband who, after thirteen years of marriage, still forgets sometimes that there is an established and necessary protocol for speaking to me when I'm reading.
1) Ask yourself: Is this conversation really necessary?
2) Get Rachel's attention and establish eye contact. If it is super, extra important that she pay attention you might want to explicitly ask her to close her book.
3) Speak your piece as efficiently as possible*.

Otherwise, I'm perfectly capable of remaining lost in my book and making 'hmm' sounds at appropriate places without being fully aware that someone is talking to me; this has been getting me in trouble my entire life.

*speaking haltingly in such a moment may result in rolled eyes and/or the use of "move it along" hand gestures. COME ON SPIT IT OUT THE BOOK PEOPLE ARE WAITING.

One book at a time? Or more than one? If more, are they different types/genres? Or similar?

Sometimes I'll be actively engaged in five or six books. Sometimes I feel more like focusing on one at a time.

1. In your opinion, what is the best translation of a book to a movie?
2. The worst?
3. Had you read the book before seeing the movie, and did that make a difference?

1. The best, in my opinion, is A&E's/BBC's Pride and Prejudice, hands down. BBC does a very good job with adaptations; their Wives and Daughters is very well done as well, especially considering that the book is about four inches thick. (OK, not quite four.)
2. First, I must say that I am the pickiest person I know regarding adaptations of books. Every once in a while I can like one that flies off on total tangents and even changes the plot and the characters' motivations, but that is SO SO RARE (Mansfield Park, I am looking at you.) Other than that, I am happiest if the screenwriter essentially just turns the text of the book into a screenplay... and this doesn't happen often. There are SO MANY adaptations that I have disliked that I am going to focus on a special category: adaptations that other people think are great, that make me shudder.

First in line for this non-award are the LOTR movies. Yeah, the timeline of events is basically correct (although there are many details changed, e.g. the beacons of Gondor, and many alterations for the sake of added drama), but the characters are completely altered. Every time my kids are watching this trilogy and get to the part where Frodo (who, yes, was one conflicted hobbit, I'll grant you) tells Sam to GO HOME I very narrowly manage to not do lasting damage to my television. Likewise the completely opposite-to-his-book-self character of Faramir. And the complete fabrication of the whole Arwen thing just so the film would have a woman character on screen for more than thirty seconds. And a jillion other incidents/characters as well. Don't even get me started on Frodo's drugged emo gaze filling the screen until it makes me feel physically nauseated.

OK, Rachel, don't hold back, tell us how you really feel.

Next (I could go on all day but I'll just do two), and I know I'm going to step on some toes here: the new Narnia movie. I know that even long-time Lewis fans really liked this movie. But not one single one of the four kids is anything like Lewis would have had them to be. Physically, the casting was flawless, and the actors were excellent, but let's go down a list from worst to not as bad: Susan, instead of being a mildly annoying older-sister type, is an absolute brat who wants to undermine the entire everything until practically the very last minute. Peter, who in the book is this very staunch, brave in spite of his fears, matter-of-fact doing-what-has-to-be-done boy hero, is a wishy-washy "eww, I don't want to STAB the wolf" whiner. Both Peter AND Susan constantly harp on their desire/need to go home and how they shouldn't be here and it's too dangerous waah. Lucy is not nearly as badly done as the first two, but even she has her moments (she, who "never once said 'I told you so'" as per Peter in the book, implies that concept virtually as soon as they step into the snow). Even Edmund, about whom I have the fewest complaints, instead of merely being a boy led astray who learns his lesson, continues betraying Aslan's people left and right for quite a while on his trip with the Witch. Just as annoying as the mischaracterization of the children was the way the entire movie had an entirely different tone from the one Lewis gave it. The books are these very subtle, subdued, British-feeling adventure stories; the film tries to be a kids' Indiana Jones, with daring escapes on a grand scale and snotty wisecracks from the animals and children (I have to physically leave the room when the scene with the river starts or risk committing mayhem; also, I would rather watch the humorously bad costumed-people-with-terrible-accents beavers in the 80's BBC movie than the cleverly animated smartass "The Honeymooners" beavers in this one).

My goodness. Um. Moving on. Question three.

3. Yes, I think it does. For a very long, detailed book, sometimes watching the movie first makes the book more readable for me (hello, Tom Clancy, I am looking at you). Also, I am more inclined to be fiercely loyal to a book if it's an old friend before I see it desecrated by filmmakers, but that doesn't mean that I have never learned to like a movie less once I realized how it veered away from its original source. However. I watched Forrest Gump and thought it was an OK movie; I tried to read Forrest Gump and couldn't make myself do it. The Black Stallion the film is wildly different from The Black Stallion the book, which I read as a child and really liked, but as an adult I infinitely prefer the film. And I watched The Princess Bride for the first time in junior high and have loved it ever since, in spite of the fact that when I read the book I found that the filmmakers had taken some pretty substantial liberties. In other words, I'm a fickle, inconsistent brat and don't listen to me.

Sunday, April 29, 2007

meme from maria

I am feeling kind of meme-ish. And still quite sick, with a very sore throat. And plus anything that helps me put off cooking supper is a Good Thing.

The idea of this meme-thing is that you (or, in this specific case, I) go to the IMDB and pick seven or however many of my favorite movies, and then post some keywords from each and see who can guess what the movies are. NO FAIR going to the imdb and doing a keyword search to find the answers.

Edited to add: I'll italicize the ones that have been correctly guessed, because I am so white and nerdy (when my friends need some code, who do they call? I do ht-M-L for them ALL.).

OK, here goes.

1. Death of Wife / Poignant / Senior Citizen / Starting Over / Zoo

2. Sister Sister Relationship / British / Suitor / Estate / Opposites Attract

3. Shock Therapy / Boyfriend Girlfriend Relationship / Loner / Ivy League

4. Correspondence / Deafness / Mother Son Relationship / Single Mother (Kind of an indie movie; stars Gerard Butler and Emily Mortimer. If you don't know this movie you need to rent it ASAP. It's a beautiful movie.) (OK, this is "Dear Frankie", and it's a movie that I recommend to just about everyone.)

5. Romantic Comedy / Ice Skating / Hockey / Olympics

6. Broadway Musical / Anvil / Love / Marching Band

7. Based On Poem / Historical / 1890s / Australian Bush (1982. It's a horse movie.) (You ladies must not have oohed and aahed over "The Man From Snowy River" at slumber parties like I did. :)

8. Arranged Marriage / Synagogue / Ukraine / Father Daughter Estrangement

9. Handicap / Falsely Accused / Left Handedness / Dog / Neighbor / Lawyer / South

10. Composer / Vienna Austria / Domineering Father / Jealousy

OK, have at it.

Thursday, April 19, 2007

A Thursday Not-Thirteen Pity Party

Thirteen Some Completely Random (and Mostly Annoyingly Self-Centered) Things I Have Been Thinking. Now with Extra Parentheses!

1. I am kind of disappointed with college (midway through one night class at a satellite campus, mind you). I had kind of thought that the whole grade-school apathy about all things academic would not survive the transition to adult education, and that it would finally be OK to be excited about learning and interested in academics. Not so. Maybe on the campus of a small Eastern women's college with Chaucer seminars and trees in the windows*, but not here. I've heard it said that community college is high school with ashtrays. I'm here to say that it's not. It's junior high with ashtrays. In some ways.

2. I should clarify that I am also rather disappointed with myself as a college student. Not that I'm not looking forward to continuing my education (music appreciation and English 41 next semester), but I have also come to realize that academic apathy is not the only thing to survive the transition from grade school. Some things about me will never change, and one of those things, I am coming to realize, is that I have a hard time self-editing (one of the many reasons I love online communication so) and that this makes me a rather annoying person to have around, on campus and off.

3. My husband has been losing a lot of weight (on purpose; he's not sick. He and a couple of other guys at work are having a competition). I think he's down 20 or 25 pounds now. He looks great. I, however, am moving slowly in the opposite direction. If I'm not careful, we'll meet. Oh good Lord no. But the thing is, I KNOW what I need to do (move myself around more and stop stuffing my face) and it is basically the direct opposite of what I actually end up doing.

4. Perhaps related to the above, my gut (ha ha!) is telling me that said husband, who has adored me wholeheartedly for the past fourteen years, is getting tired of me. He SAYS he's not; he says the change is due to a really stressful situation that has nothing to do with me. I don't know. Maybe it's just that I'm tired of myself.

5. There is a really stressful situation going on that has nothing to do with me, no doubt about it. A ministry that one of T's closest friends was starting with another family has fallen apart due to interpersonal conflicts and a whole lot of divisive, ugly stuff that grieves God whenever it happens among His children. (Remember how there was this mass exodus of T's friends in the space of a year and a half or whatever it was? One of them is back.)

6. A really BIG problem with me is that my prayer life is zilch. I read the Bible for our weekly chapter summary and that's it. I am completely unenthusiastic about Sunday morning worship services**. I am beyond the point of worrying about this sense of apathy, and have become almost completely, um, apathetic about it. Then I was reading a post at Maria's (not THAT post) about prayer and it kind of zinged me. When was the last time I just sat and prayed and told Jesus I loved him? I can't even remember. The zing is a good sign, I think. I think it's a sign that the wet-newspaper feeling hasn't grown so deep yet that it can't be penetrated with a bit of effort. The problem that still remains is that I need to gather myself and actually make a bit of effort.

7. I am once more completely out of contact with most of my Really Close Girlfriends. It's appalling what happens when people get, you know, lives, and stop using instant messaging.

8. And lastly (criminy, talk about being sick of myself, after a post like this I think I should throw myself off a bridge as a service to mankind), I am ever so ever so tired of absolutely always having juuuuust not quite enough money. Supposedly, in a few weeks, things will be much better. Considering that we've been telling ourselves that for basically the entire duration of our marriage, I am not holding my breath, concrete reasons to believe it this time or no.
   

* for a more thorough exposition on the topic of Chaucer seminars and windows with trees as the epitome of the unattainable educational dream, see Up the Down Staircase by Bel Kaufman.

**It doesn't help that frankly they never have really excited me at the chapel we've been attending for, oh my gosh, seven and a half years; I came from a home church where everyone was elbows-deep in Scripture every day of their lives and the worship was seriously Spirit-led, to this more typical, polished, mechanical Sunday-Morning Church Service where the pastor does the talking and the people do the sitting (except, of course, when the people do the standing for the really repetitive singing). I truly love the people, though.

Friday, March 16, 2007

really? that high?

You Are 45% Normal

While some of your behavior is quite normal... Other things you do are downright strange You've got a little of your freak going on But you mostly keep your weirdness to yourself

Monday, March 05, 2007

music meme thingamabob

I have been plotting this meme for a while. It's not really a meme, because I'm inventing it, but hey, maybe it will become a meme, and then my life will not have been in vain and all, and wouldn't that be fun?

The idea is, you take your iPod or similar device, and you hit SHUFFLE SONGS in the first menu, so that it randomly selects songs one after another from your entire library, except for the ones (audiobooks in my case) that you have told it NOT to select during shuffle. Or, if you have no iPod, you can do this with the song files on your computer and your favorite listening software -- just make a big playlist with everything you have and randomize it. Or you can use your favorite mix CD. Or that tape you made on that lazy Saturday in 1988. Man, remember when high-speed dubbing was just so awesome?

OK. Anyway. You do this shuffling random songs thing with a timer set to go off in a given amount of time, and you discuss each song for the length of the song or until you hit skip, at which time you go on to the next song. So you could end up with a doctoral thesis on Vivaldi, say, or little snippets about twenty different songs. Who knows?

In case you're wondering why I ever thought this was a good idea... I have no clue. But I'm going to do it anyway. Here goes.

Endangered Love, from the Veggietales. We always call this just "Barbara Manatee". We like it a lot; in fact at least one of our many family nicknames comes from this song (it's C's). This was the Silly Song on the first Veggie Tales video we ever had, and we thought it was... really silly. And it is. Even LT sings along with the entire thing. OK, next song.

Blind Man's Bluff, from Tales from Childhood by Schumann. Not much to say about this except that it is gorgeous piano music and I downloaded it for free from musopen.com and it's really short because it's already over and I had to pause the next song which I think might be cheating.

Love Bites, Def Leppard. Oh my goodness. This was my very favorite song in the eighth grade; it was from the very first album I ever owned for myself. On cassette. It was a clear cassette, which I thought was the coolest idea. I can still smell that just-opened-the-cassette-box smell; can you? At the first school dance when I was in eighth grade, this was the last song, and I asked this boy to dance who was geeky and skinny but seemed nice, and after he made sure that the girl he really liked didn't want to dance with him, he shrugged and danced with me. I developed an enormous and embarrassing crush on him that lasted the entire school year, and then we were a couple for a year and a half after that. And this was Our Song. It was fully a year after he broke up with me before I could hear that (utterly unintelligible) opening bit without feeling like I'd been punched in the stomach. I used to torture myself by the hour with this song, à la Marianne Dashwood, except with electric guitars and screaming instead of decorous pianoforte melodies and Shakespearean sonnets. Ah, young luuurve. Now it's just a song that evokes a time period for me, and I still think it's pretty cool-sounding. But then I like tapered-leg jeans too. Bring back the ankle zippers! OK, skip.

Sometimes Love Just Ain't Enough, Don Henley and Patty Smith. Don't really like this song too much. I downloaded it years ago when I was specifically making a CD set of songs from my high-school and junior-high years. It's just... kind of cheesy. It made it onto my iPod because compared to the size of a Librivox audiobook, it takes up no space at all, and someday I might want to listen to something cheesy. Who knows. Skip.

Amazing Love, Rebecca St James. I love this song. It makes me cry in a good way and sometimes it gives me chills. You know, I'd never listened to it on my iPod before and I don't think I knew that it was a live recording with the audience singing along. But now I do. T dislikes this song because she changes the lyric "how can it be that you my God should die for me" to "... you my King should die for me." Doctrinally important, yes, but musically I think it's just a quibble. If he'd never heard the original version, he'd still think it was fine. When we sing it in church, my dad changes the line about "in all I do, I honor you" to "in all I do, I WANT TO honor you", because as he aptly points out, a lot of the stuff we do actually doesn't honor God. Scuse me while I just listen quietly to the rest of this song. Thank you. I needed that.

Adagio from the Brandenberg Concerto #1 by Bach. Um. I like Bach? Bach makes me smile? All of this is true but it's not exactly an 'epoch in my life' kind of song. It's not even my favorite Bach, by a long shot. And I can't listen to it properly while I type anyway. Skip.

Orinoco Flow, Enya. You know, this has been one of my favorite songs since it was new. I just love the sound of it, and it's just such a joyful song. Must turn it up. The whole family likes this song. It was actually really popular when I was in, what, high school? I don't think Enya gets a lot of play at high-school functions nowadays, more's the pity.

Dies Irae from the Requiem in D Minor by Mozart. I can get so carried away by the sheer musical perfection and intricacy of just about anything by Mozart. The Requiem always makes me think of the movie Amadeus, where it has a part in possibly my favorite movie scene of all time, from a pure cinema-appreciation standpoint. The way the scenes with Mozart in bed are constructed around the creation of his music -- the heartbroken despair of Salieri as he sees firsthand the genius that he has quite literally killed in his jealousy -- the passion -- the brilliance -- the beauty of the music itself -- agh. OK, I know what I'm watching while I knit tonight. AAAA-MEEEENNNN.

Another Def Leppard one from Hysteria: Pour Some Sugar On Me. Jennifer and I used to shout the beginning thing at each other all the time. Also, we would put on loud rock music and clean her house (she had a borderline-wicked-stepmotherish aunt who generously allowed Jenn to live with her but also made Jenn do what I still think was far more than her fair share of the housework -- i.e. all of it) and it made cleaning Jenn's house fun. If Jenn lived next door to me we would probably take turns going over to each other's houses to crank up the music and help each other clean. I do not understand the point of any of the lyrics of this song, except to know that really the lyrics were not the point. I'm thinking that they're not talking about pure cane sugar from Hawaii, though.

Four minutes to go.

Ooh, In the Mood, performed by the Boston Pops. Was this Glenn Miller? We played it in high school band but my fond memories of it go back to that hilarious scene in Cannery Row, with the crazy dancing, and even more than the movie itself, I remember my dad's utterly abandoned laughter while we watched it. Musically, I didn't appreciate the brilliance of big band music till late high school. Now I torture my kids with it for long periods of time. It's my favorite music for dancing around the house. Well, it and the Bangles.

And there's my timer, so now you have it: thirty minutes in the life of Rachel's iPod.

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