Thanksgiving or Part Trois

For the past few years, Jay's family, either completely or mostly, have gathered together for Thanksgiving.  As we live in the same town as his folks, we get the benefit of a family get together without the holiday travel.  I've loved having the party here even with the missing pangs that come from being 1,000 miles away from my own family, who also get together at my parent's house every Thanksgiving.

Due to lots of reasons, (new babies, college travel, missionaries gone and the economy), none of Jay's siblings and their families decided to travel here for Thanksgiving.  Our kids were out from school for the entire week and Jay's work schedule was not at all holiday-ish (his only day off was Thanksgiving Day), I loaded up the minivan and added 2,000 more miles onto the 160,000+ odometer.  I'm going to drive that thing until it dies!

The boys travelled exceptionally well.  We listened to Harry Potter books the entire time, finishing books 2 and 3 and seven hours of Goblet of Fire.  My kids are kind of sad now that we are home and  no longer have 7 or 8 hours in the car for their listening pleasure:)  While the constant narration made their travel easier, the constant voice in the van wore me out.  The audio version is done really, really well and I was just as entertained as the boys but I usually get some quiet in the car when the boys get on their individual electronic devices and I noticed that I was crankier than usual at each stopping point.

We stayed the first couple of days at my parents house but moved to a hotel on Wednesday when everyone else arrived.  We had a bedroom this summer during the family reunion and I thought it was fair to take a turn at the hotel.  The rooms were nice but Daniel does not sleep well when sharing a room with me.  After a week of getting up at least once a night with him, I am remembering why babies are so much more difficult to travel with than my older kids.  The equipment alone (stroller, crib, diaper bag, weeks worth of diapers, formula, bottles and food) is kind of a deterrent.  I think if I were going anywhere else or being with anyone other than family, I might just choose to stay home for another year until we can leave some of this...stuff...at home.  However, lost sleep and sore biceps from carrying things from cars to hotels notwithstanding, I barely see my kids once home.  They are completely entertained by cousins, fed by grandma and grandpa and Daniel had arms to be held and entertainment to spare with all his aunts, uncles, cousins and grandparents.  It was very nice to get away.

Here are some pictures of the week.  Just a few:)

Seth played basketball the entire week.   Hours each day.

I got my hair done there again.  The girl there does it so fast and I have easy child care:)

I am blonder!

Daniel drinking from my water bottle. He figured it out!

He enjoyed lots of attention this week.

The first meal with everyone.  That's the only downside to getting all together, in my opinion.  The feeding of the children.  It's non-stop!

We did the turkey trot on Thanksgiving morning.  Maureen pushed Daniel in the jogger.

At the back of the pack.  It was so cold going up this street.

The finishers minus Christopher (who took the picture) and Brendan, who decided to run home.

Pretty Thanksgiving dinner table.  My mom likes a pretty table, even when it's inconvenient.

Pretty table for the kids too!

My parent's kitchen is small so it's hard to get in there and help but mom and dad were professionals.  It's like they've done this a time or two or something.

The pies!

I love my mom!

The boys in my family.

Dad cleaning up....always.

Some panorama fun on my phone.  The kids downstairs.

The adults upstairs.  It's like those weird puzzles where you can't get perspective.  Where are the walls?

Instagram photo of Thanksgiving DAy.

Seth trying to get out of a picture.

How the cousins play 500.  It's more of a who can bat the football down sort of game.

Hood ornament!

Henry being Henry.  The kid entertains himself so well.

All 15 cousins!

Tara taught them a very fun game called Lover's Leap.  Cousins match up in pairs with a big and little cousin on a team.  Then, they have to run around and when a pose is called out, they have to find their partner and get in the pose.  The last pair to finish the pose is out.  This first pose is Lover's Leap (can you believe the green grass in November?  It was covered in snow on Monday!)

I cannot remember the name of this pose!

Toilet bowl (they little partner swirls inside the big partner's arms)

Man overboard

Chicken something (I'm failing, Tara!)

Lover's leap again.  Some of their "holds" makes me laugh.

Typewriter

Fire hydrant

Teddy Bear

A Family high five.

I want my kids to know their grandparents.  I hope by making these trips that they do.

We stopped in Salt Lake on the way home and went to see the lights at Temple Square.  It was insanely crowded but just as beautiful.  It's amazing.  

Try pushing a baby jogger around.  We got quite a few glares from hitting people's legs.

The view from our hotel.  Not bad!

I don't know what next year will bring.  Maybe we'll be here at home or maybe not.  My biggest blessing is having a loving family on both sides to spend it with.  Win/Win.

The Good, The Bad & The Ugly...In Reverse Order

I am super grumpy tonight. I know it's the month of November and all and everyone is dedicated to writing lists and paragraphs of gratitude but I'm not feeling it. Hopefully I will soon. In a week would be perfect. In the meantime, somethings aren't going so well.

The Ugly:

Daniel has another diaper rash. When I look back on his first year, I fear my main memory will be dealing with his near constant diaper rashes. He's been actively teething for about 8 months and when he teeths, he has diarrhea. When he's sick, he has diarrhea.  And, I'm starting to think, when he's perfectly healthy, he has diarrhea.  At least something close to it.  When he has diarrhea, he gets a diaper rash. It happens so frequently and even noiselessly, it's hard to keep him dry. It's very bad today and I think I've used a half tube of the Butt Balm Max. I know the very best treatment is air so I kept him naked for almost an hour tonight. Even though I tried to keep him on the hard floors,  he managed to pee on me once and later, pooped on the carpet. Yay. I apologize for writing about bodily functions but I'm just so exasperated. I obviously feel for the little guy but he's seriously had five dirty diapers since three o'clock.  Enough!  Please...enough.  

I had a very lame passive aggressive episode today.  Shamefully, I have nearly nonexistent conflict resolution skills.  I consider it a disability and would consider either a class or therapy to help me be better.  In the meantime, I deal with situations not to my liking in the worst and weakest way.  Take this afternoon, for instance.  My boys' piano teacher is a very laid-back and flexible woman.  On top of those qualities, she is a skilled piano teacher who knows what she's doing.  The flexibility is nice and I readily admit that she is almost always willing to move a lesson time when she can to accommodate different sports practice times, company or whatever thing happens to get in the way.  Currently, I am there two different days of the week because neither she nor I have a solid hour that works for both Seth and Sam as well as us.  With that preface about her much appreciated flexibility, she is also overly laid-back.  Most of the time, I don't let this bug me.  I even try to admire her style.  My kids call her by her first name (I can't imagine calling any of my former piano teachers by their first names!), her two young children are usually present during lesson times (which can be distracting to her but they also give my own kids playmates and toys for the half-hour or hour we are there) and she is never, ever mean.  Even if my boys have awful lessons.  A true "yay!"  However, that very laxness can create havoc when she doesn't pay attention to the time.  I often say my life would be a lot smoother if all the coaches, leaders, teachers and therapists we deal with could simply start and end their things on time.  No special considerations.  No favors.  Just stick to the schedule!  For the past several weeks, our piano teacher has started Sam's lesson fifteen minutes late.  When a lesson is only scheduled for thirty minutes, fifteen minutes is a big deal.  Yes, she tries to compensate by keeping Sam past his scheduled allotment but the next mom and her child has arrived by then and I can't deal with the guilt that they might think we are somehow to blame for keeping them from starting on time.  I've even shortchanged our own lesson occasionally to help her get back on schedule because I usually have somewhere else I need to be - thus the reason I have the piano lesson arranged for that specific half-hour.   It happened again today.   We are there, on time at 4:30, waiting with standing room only in her small living room along with another dad, the piano teacher's own two children, an electrician in the room fixing a fan and said piano teacher and 4:00 student at the piano.  It was chaotic.  At 4:42, when she said to her student at the piano, "O.K.  That was good but this time I want you to play it....." I got up with Daniel, told Sam and Henry we had to go and walked out without a word.  She has called my house three times tonight and I haven't picked up the phone.  Because I am that lame.  I'm not ready for the confrontation.  For my sanity's sake, just start the *(%$!* lesson on time!  I'm so ashamed (and annoyed).  Sob!

The Bad:

Jay and I went to see Skyfall last night.  We went to the 9:20pm showing and maybe that late time gave the theater the impression that their customers were more laissez-faire than, say, matinee show times, but during the previews, instead of the expected green screen announcing the following preview is appropriate for all audiences (which they rarely are anyways), a red screen instead displayed the warning that the following preview contained explicit images.  What the?   Quentin Tarantino then appeared on screen and invited us movie-watchers to enjoy his western gore-fest movie preview to be released on Christmas. What immediately followed was the most horrific and gratuitous violence I have never wanted to see.  It was awful.  Exactly the kind of movie I would never, ever, ever pay to watch.  I remind you that this was at a PG-13 movie.  Has this ever happened to you?  I am writing a letter to the president or powers that be at Allen Movie Theaters and seriously considering never going to a movie there again.  I don't enjoy them that much anyway.  I mainly go to do something easy and relaxing with Jay.  I hope this isn't a new envelope-pushing trend.  There was no time to escape and I shouldn't have to leave my seat in a theater to avoid watching an R-rated preview before a PG-13 movie.  It kind of ruined the actual movie for me.  Everyone keeps saying they liked Skyfall and I liked Adele's opening credits song but the movie....meh.  

I went to a wedding reception this weekend for a couple I did not know.  I know the mother of the groom fairly well and the groom's youngest sister was one of my young women, so, being supportive, I bought a gift, wrapped it in pretty paper, tied it with trendy lime green ribbon and wrote a rather verbose card to the new couple.  I don't know what came over me.  A "congratulations!" would have been sufficient but I had to explain our love of pancakes and how they bring us to the table together and how I hoped they had many years of pancake making ahead of them to enjoy."  As we nibbled on our cheesecake and cookies at one of the tables, I found myself sitting next to the bride's family.  They were pleasant people and I was being affable myself and eventually the bride came to sit next to her mother for a bit of refreshment.  I started chatting her up and asked her how she and her husband met.  Of course, I did not say the words, "Your husband," because that would have been too stuffy and I was trying to be super-friendly-Lucy so I used his first name.  She looked a little confused and said, "Josh?"  With her blank stare wonder, I did a mental rewind and remembered the name on the invitation. The name of the groom was Jake.  Jake!  His brother, who just got home from a mission and who I also do not know is named Josh.  And not only did I say, "Josh" to the bride but I am about 99% certain that in my long-winded congratulatory wedding card, I wrote, "Josh."  Next time, I'm sticking with Mr. and Mrs.  Newlyweds like seeing that better anyway.

In another embarrassing moment of name butchering, last week, I asked a mother of one of Sam's soccer teammates, Jake, if she might be willing to take Sam with her and her son to a weekend tournament in Arizona.  I have not been a regular on the soccer practice fields and thus do not know most of the parents of the other boys all that well.  A few weekends ago, however, there was another tournament that included multiple same-day games and I sat next to Jake's mom and we got to talking.  Both of our boys eat gluten-free and we covered the challenges of that topic as well as many others.  I'm sure she said her name sometime during the day but I wasn't certain of it and looking at the group email list that gets sent out, I deduced which address most likely belonged to her.  I sent her a long-winded email (there might be a pattern here) about how nice it was to get to know her and how much Sam enjoys playing with Jake and does she have room for Sam and yada, yada, yada and when I got a reply, I learned that I sent it to the wrong mom.  She was as kind as possible and even included her desire that I not feel embarrassed or awkward about it but that she was actually Patrick's mom and she was sorry, but she didn't have room for Sam.  Gah!  I stewed for a few hours feeling dumb and then rolled the dice that these two mom's wouldn't compare emails and copied and pasted the same email to the right mom.  She was flattered that I would trust Sam in her care and happily agreed to take him.  All's well that ends well, right?  

The Good:

I am leaving in a day and a half with the boys to Montana for our week-long Thanksgiving break.  I cannot wait.  I need a change of schedule and scenery.  Hallelujah for the big sky! 

Book Review #43 - The Dovekeepers

This is my first Alice Hoffman book.  Truthfully, I'd never heard of the author Alice Hoffman until I read a few reviews comparing The Dovekeepers to her many, many other works.  I'm not exaggerating when I write many twice.  She's written nearly fifty books.  I should have heard of her.

Some of her other titles ring a bell but they aren't the kinds of stories I'm drawn to.  I'm not sure what made me select and stick with The Dovekeepers either, as it isn't even the kind of story I usually go for.  Four women living in 70 CE (which is the secular dating system meaning Common Era vs. the more familiar Christian friendly AD nomenclenture), share their backstories and journeys to their arrival and stay at the famed Masada, a massive rock fortress built by King Herod near Jerusalem, and their work in the community dovecote when the Roman armies fell upon them and close to one-thousand Jews committed mass suicide.

It's an odd book.  Maybe it's Hoffman's style but the narration is unusually distant.  It reads as if ghosts are retelling their doomed story but that's not wholly accurate.  There is a methodical, almost hypnotizing rhythm to it.  It's filled with foreshadowing as whichever of the four narrators clearly already knows both the outcome and the reason for sharing any particular detail, and that sense of foreboding kind of feels ghoulish.  But, not scary.  It's not even that suspenseful as the outcome is pretty obvious if you know the history at all, which was first recorded by Josephus who claims that only two women and five children survived.  Hoffman sticks with that accounting but obviously fictionalizes the details.

Apart from being a story about Masada, it is also a story about ancient feminism.  I don't know how true this is.  History has been mostly written and kept by men so the motivations, fears and desires of women can only be applied from general truths.  They must have loved.  They must have felt passion.  They must have shown great courage and strength and protection for those they nurtured when necessary.  As a woman, I know these traits could not have come only from more recent freedoms.   Freedom helps but it is who we are.

The narrations start to weave and intersect more and more towards the end of the book until the four women's stories become one heroic and tragic end.

I Believe In Bad School Pictures

This post is very long in the making. I imagined it in the springtime, following the second batch of school picture taking. What, you ask? Your school takes school pictures twice a year? Yes. Yes, we do.

Usually, I forgo the spring package because one bleak grayish  background mug shot a year is all I really need to document my children's facial development. I know lots of people who no longer pay for the privilege of bad school pictures at all because they have a friend or know so and so or take better pictures themselves. I understand that logic. Part of me envies that logic. But, I don't have that local friend or personal talent and so, for posterity's sake, I usually purchase the cheapest portrait package available.

When the advertisements for portrait packages came home in the school folder last spring, I laughed at the plethora of festive backgrounds and poses. It immediately reminded me of my own sixth grade year.

You see, my mother was also a believer in bad school pictures. Oh, back then, no parent really had any kind of alternative, but each of us six kids got the exact same package. The 5 X 7 was the largest photo desired (it hurt my feelings a bit that neither parent wanted me in an 8 X 10) and it went to a shelf of framed photos, updated every year, in my Dad's law office. There was no pleading with my mother for a bigger package, one with more wallet sized pictures to offer even more friends. Like me, I think she got the cheapest one available and always....always with the traditional grey background.

I was a bit big for my britches in sixth grade. I fancied myself...popular. My friend, Lisa, and I were kind of the rulers of the school, if you will. And she was not getting the boring grey background. She, with the help of her cooler parents who let me call them by their first names, had selected the scenic background. The one with the captain's wheel.

I had to have it as well. Even though I knew my mother would never agree to it. I remember walking to school, up the final uphill stretch along Custer avenue and taking the order form out of my backpack. I scribbled out the box checked "traditional" and placed a checkmark next to "scenic."






Even though I vividly remember my own feelings and urgent desire to have this backdrop, as well as the photo to prove that I got it, I don't remember at all any kind of punishment or trouble for getting it. I know for certain it couldn't have been my parents favorite. At the very least, there was one glaring photo in a row of six sitting behind my dad that screamed, "One of these is not like the others!"

Maybe it was to prevent my own children's urge for picture rebellion, I ordered each of my elementary kids some scenic backdrops of their own. The selection was truly hideous. Sam chose his, which makes sense because he is a sports nut, but I got the ugliest one available for Henry, which was harder to choose than you think. There was lots of colorful variety.

Their pictures came again this year and even though they aren't shimmering with sunlight or photoshopped with bright eyes and dazzling teeth, I love these bad school pictures. Probably because I really love these amazing boys.

Because I have been a very bad blogger in the past, here are all of their school photos I never posted!


From fall 2011:




Seth: Fall 6th Grade



Sam: Fall 3rd Grade



Henry:  Fall Kindergarten


The "fancy" backdrops from spring 2012:





Sam: Spring 3rd Grade



Henry: Spring Kindergarten

Last year's class photos:




Sam's 3rd Grade class with Mrs. Harper




Henry's Kindergarten class with Mrs. Henderson

And, finally, all three boys this fall!




Seth:  Fall 7th Grade



Sam:  Fall 4th grade



Henry:  Fall 1st Grade (with his transformer teeth thanks to his dentist not offering me tooth colored crowns!)

Book Review #42 - Wild

The premise is fascinating. A woman with no real hiking experiences decides to hike the Pacific Crest Trail, from southern California to the Washington/Oregon border...1100 miles in all, to cope with her unraveling life.

I admit that I would love to do this. I'm always a bit jealous of people who give in to their self-absorbed motives. I'm never sure what gene is necessary to buck the responsible adult, responsible wife, responsible parent out of the way and succumb to that desire to escape from real life and do something outrageous or extraordinary but memoirs and biographies seems to be limited to those who have it. I'm not saying it's always a bad thing. Heroes, presidents, adventurers, artists all seem to be guided by a magnet that leads them away from the dull and expected. For their stories, I'm always amazed by their courage to be different. To lead. To dare. But, for someone like Cheryl Strayed, who I didn't at all like when getting to know her through her memoir, I think much less magnanimous thoughts. They are more like, "Get over yourself!"

I'm not sure what the point of Wild is. Strayed admits herself at the beginning of her trek that she had no real business being on the trail with so little experience and preparation. She makes the claim that hiking is really just putting one foot in front of the other over and over again. So, I thought it might be a sort of cautionary tale that warns other would-be novice hikers that hiking the PCT is about much more than moving your feet. But, she ends up ok. Oh, she has lots of side trips that include shelter, new boots, hamburgers and even a date to a nightclub but her adventure also includes rattlesnake scares, snow, water rationing and equipment failure. And so, even though her hike didn't really resemble what I imagine a pure PCT adventure would or should, perhaps the point is that we tend to over think things and, really, anyone at all can hike the PCT with success. Seriously, after reading the book, you have to think, "Well...if she did it, so could I." She's kind of an idiot.

Memoirs are hard for me to review because it's not just about the writing. Without a doubt, Wild is an interesting tale. A single woman hiking alone in perilous conditions is just not the kind of thing most of us know anything about. Of course I want to know what happens next. For the most part, the details she included about the trail - it's scenery and topography - were the best part of the book. I wanted to be on the trail myself.

But, memoirs always come with baggage. Why is this person writing this? Are they famous or wise? Did they have an extraordinary life or at least an extraordinary experience? I suppose Cheryl Strayed's motive would be an extraordinary experience but she includes enough of her life, as one writing a memoir must do, to taint the take-away message.

Cheryl lost her mother when she was in her early twenties. Her mother was only 45. Her loss influences everything else throughout the book. In essence, this is a book about her grief and I acknowledge that there is no proper way to grieve. If someone deals with it all by abusing a loving husband with frequent adultery, shooting up heroin and escaping from a former life by leaving it all behind to go hiking....it is what it is. That's their way. But, there were times when her way of writing about it was so ripe with self-indulgence that her my-mother-died carte blanche got all used up. For instance, there was this sentence early on in the book that just left me reeling. She wrote, "I got an abortion and learned how to make dehydrated tuna flakes and turkey jerky and took a refresher course on basic first aid and practiced using my water purifier in my kitchen sink." Just like that. She had gotten pregnant from a heroin-fueled affair and I'm not saying she should have been a mother. I'm not even saying that she owed her readers some kind of explanation about how ending her pregnancy made her feel. She didn't need to reveal her abortion to us at all. What I am saying is that if you are going to mention getting an abortion in your memoir, it'd be best if you didn't include making tuna and turkey jerky in the same sentence. I think the topic of abortion deserves, at the very, very least, its own sentence. It is not the kind of topic most readers treat lightly. I had a very hard time garnering up sympathy for her after that thoughtless inclusion. Especially upon later discovery about her own mother's unexpected and unwed pregnancy. There was no connecting of the dots. Just Cheryl, Cheryl, Cheryl.

I'm glad she learned something. Or found peace. Or forgave herself. Or whatever. She's just another person who doesn't have any bigger troubles than the rest of us and yet the likes of me and Oprah buy her book anyway. She is lining her pockets with our chump change. That is wild.

Book Review #41 - The Chaperone

I'd never even heard of this book until it was selected for October bookclub.  The book is an interesting mix of fiction and history.  The protagonist, Cora Carlisle, is an invented portrayal of some actual chaperone who accompanied the real life Louise Brooks, silent film star of the 1920s, from Witchita, Kansas, to New York City.  And while you might be saying, "I don't know who Louise Brooks is," you probably have seen an image of her somewhere.  She is an iconic figure of the jazz age.  Did you watch So You Think You Can Dance this past season?  You know Amelia?  She was trying to copy Louise and her blunt bob with bangs, pale skin, and doe eyes.

Laura Moriarty highlights the tension between generations of women by pairing Cora with Louise for five weeks one summer.  Cora is twenty years older than Louise, wears a corset and skirts that come to her ankle and is in constant bewilderment, awe and worry over Louise's disregard for societal rules. She is of the generation that believes that a young woman traveling to New York on her own needs a chaperone to guard both the reputation and actual virtue of the vulnerable weaker sex. Louise could care less and resents Cora, who is neither a relation nor a friend, and openly mocks Cora when reminded about the rules that have never applied to her.  She freely talks to strange men.  Her clothes don't cover much and, worse, she seems to enjoy all the scandalous attention.  I thought the idea of unveiling the evolution of womens' rights, including the right to vote, birth control and having careers of their own, was interesting but Moriarty lost points, in my view, with her execution.

In order to develop her characters, she rightfully weaves in a lot of backstory to both Cora and Louise's views on life.  Through Cora, she tells the history of the orphan trains and how sad, dangerous and incredible it was.  Through Cora's friends and family, she also brings up the taboo gay lifestyle, the Klu Klux Klan, the use of Lysol as a feminine hygiene product/birth control (for real) and sex as a means of intimacy and not solely procreation.  Through Louise's actual history, she includes the heavy topics of alcoholism and drug abuse, pedophilia, promiscuity and mental illness.

If it all sounds like too much, you're absolutely right.  These were/are important issues.  Most were, I'm sure, relevant to women of all ages in the 1920s.  But, Moriarty's ambition to deal with all of them in one novel didn't work for me.  To make it all plausible, she had to make both her main characters live on the polar ends of the cultural spectrum.  I thought the story would have played in a more interesting fashion had Cora not been quite so naive or unhappy.  Likewise, although I know Louise had a real history that shouldn't be changed, I felt the question of which lifestyle was more dangerous to women could have been better addressed had she fictionalized a young and ambitious flapper instead.  That way, the side to root for wouldn't have been nearly so obvious, as it rarely is in real life.

In spite of the overwhelming amount of propaganda to trudge through, I still thought The Chaperone was a well-written novel and worthy of a book club choice until the last hundred or so pages.  The book should have been about those five weeks Cora and Louise spent together in New York.  Had the author ended her story with the train ride back to Witchita, I would have applauded the way she left Cora's feminist awakening uncertain.  But, she just couldn't leave well enough alone.  Because Louise Brook's history continued, Moriarity decided Cora Carlisle's parallel history needed to be included.  She whizzed through years...decades at a time until both were old and gray.  The abrupt change in both style and pacing was disconcerting.  It ruined the whole book for me.   I thought including what was, in essence, a hundred page epilogue was the wrong choice.  We still managed to have a lively discussion on the range of women's included but we pretty much all agreed that the book ended poorly.

Daniel - 46 Weeks

I have a tradition that I won't cut my babies' hair until they turn one. Seth was bald and it barely mattered. In fact, that's probably how the tradition got started - he didn't need one! Sam and Henry both had more hair and as funky looking as they got with longer wisps over ears and necks, Henry's so abundant that he was sporting a mullet, I held to my guns. No haircuts for my babies! Those trimmed up locks with even necklines and blunt bangs just ages them so much.

Now, at 10 1/2 months, Daniel is starting to rock the shag. My sister, Sarah, mocks my tradition but I know secretly she thinks they are cute in spite of, or maybe even because of, their long hair. He doesn't have nearly as much hair has Henry did, so I don't think he'll look too awkward for the next six weeks, but we'll see.





Daniel has revealed his favorite thing to do, besides eat (that activity has a significant lead in the polls), and that is play with balls.  He loves basketballs best because they bounce and make a funny noise, but he'll make do with nerf or soccer balls too.  He can play by himself quite well because he lifts the ball up and lets go and unless it hits his chest or knee, he can usually pick it right back up.  But he especially likes when someone plays ball with him.  He gets a little too excited to remember to let it go but with encouragement and patient, eventually, a pretty darn cute game of catch gets going.  Jay played it with him this morning and he was delighted.



He's still not walking, although he cruises the living room pretty well with the fireplace and furniture to aid his tip-toed steps.  He is an excellent and speedy crawler and is back to veering to the right when he crawls, thanks to his left leg pushing off harder than his right.  If he gets too far off track, he puts his knee back down and straightens himself out, but I think he thinks he gets there faster if he uses this move.

Only six more weeks until his first birthday!  Crazy.

Book Review #40 - The Magnificent Ambersons

The Magnificent Ambersons is the 1919 Pulitzer Prizer winner. That sentence reveals two things. It has merit - especially as a cautionary tale of wealth, accountability and pride - but it is also old. The writing style felt really old to me - not quite vaudville-esque but almost.

It's an interesting window of history to look through. Aristocratic wealth and the gentleman's lifestyle makes way for the Industrial Revolution and a new wealth's ideals rooted in work and invention. The two ways of life are not romanticized, though the tone and characterization throughout the entire book is lighthearted to the point of caricature, and both arrogance and waste of the old life ideal along with the pollution and risk of progress are exposed.

The style kept me separated from the story. I felt too modern to be reading it. Like silent films where actors relied on melodrama to compensate for a lack of sound , I felt like the writing here was from a bygone era when authors stuck to polite ways of description, as if certain language couldn't be used yet. Interesting as both a look at history and once-upon-a-time style, and certainly as a classic of American literature, I'm glad I read it but I didn't love it. I need more intimacy between author and reader in a novel.

Book Review #39 - State of Wonder

Unlike Ann Patchett's Bel Canto, which felt tragically unrooted in reality, State of Wonder is worth its hype and then some.  Fascinating in its description of the Amazon, original in its mix of science and plausible fantasy, incredible in its characterization of both indigenous people and a colorful team of researchers, I was beguiled from the beginning of this entertaining tale.  Patchett does an incredible job of drifiting in and out of various settings, from a cold Minnesota spring, the dirt and chaos of urban Menaus, Brazil, and up the claustrophobic rainforest around the Rio Negra, so that I, the reader, never really noticed if time was passing.  While her technique does have the side effect of being occasionally slow, especially when filled with meticulous detail, it produces the very thing the title promises - a state of absolute wonder.   Smart, imaginative, ambitious and perfectly ended, I really enjoyed this.

Book Review #38 - Tisha

Tisha was a Goodreads recommendation based on my adoration of the book, Mrs. Mike.  I've stated it before and I'll say it again, I love Mrs. Mike.  Of course, I was interested in reading a book that might be similar to it in both style and message.  After reading it I can only say, "Well....kind of."


Their mass-market cover art is similar.  There are dogs that pull sleds.  There is reference to "Indians" doing things deemed foolish or wrong by white person standards.  But, that's about it.

Really, Tisha is about a young woman without ties who chooses to go teach in the bush of Alaska.  Without experience or training, Anne Hobbs, called Teacher or "Tisha" with native accents, fumbles quite a bit in trying to fit in her tiny community in Chicken, Alaska.  A quarter Native American herself and partially raised by her indian grandmother, Anne escapes what most Alaskans living the hard life cannot: prejudice.  She is willing and desirous to teach all the children in her area, much to the dismay of the local whites.  As she stands her ground by accepting all into her classroom, falling in love with a "half-breed" and eventually adopting two orphaned indian children, I understood how much times have changed as well as the universal tendency towards labeling different as bad and the dangers of pack mentality.

Still...this was no Mrs. Mike.  Not even close.

Book Review #37 - Tell The Wolves I'm Home

Tell The Wolves I'm Home surprised me.  When a book is listed as young adult fiction and the blurb from Goodreads begins with,  "In this striking literary debut, Carol Rifka Brunt unfolds a moving story of love, grief, and renewal as two lonely people become the unlikeliest of friends and find that sometimes you don’t know you’ve lost someone until you’ve found them,"    I expected something a little more Hallmark-esque.  A little more feel-goody.  But this is about AIDS during the 80s when nobody was sure how it was spread and if you could catch it by sharing Chapstick or not.  This is about prejudice and jealousy and revenge and deception and death.  And just like the title implies, this is about facing down something that could easily destroy a person.

The title is beautiful.  It's nuanced and unique and has both symbolic meaning as well as being referenced several times in the story.  The book centers around a fourteen year-old misfit, June, who by any teenage standard is considered weird and whose only after school activity involves donning gunnie-sax dresses and lace-up suede boots while walking around the school woods pretending she lives in medieval times.  Her older sister, Greta, is a golden child.  So smart she skipped a grade.  So talented she's being offered Broadway roles.  June is consistently labeled "average" by both teachers and her parents so she revels in the adoration and attention from her uncle Finn and is left devastated by his AIDS related death.  After she discovers that important facts about Finn's life were kept from her, including his boyfriend,Toby, who is blamed by her entire family for Finn's death, she chooses to step out of her comfortable fantasy world and with much confusion and ignorance, begins to see a complicated but not awful reality.

There are several toe-the-line YA rules that are followed.  June's parents are absent throughout the book (they are both accountants and most of the story takes place between January and April - tax time) as well as clueless, condescending and wrong.  That is not my favorite thing in a book.  Also, at 14, June seems entirely too free to engage in extremely high risk behavior including meeting a stranger by train, frequently hanging out without permission or notice in New York City, smoking cigarettes and consuming alcohol.  But it all sounds worse than it is.  I feel bad writing that, as if those things aren't big deals, but in this particular story, they aren't the main deal.  They are byproducts of her grief and not a glamorous portrayal of teenagehood. In actuality, this is a story of naivety and innocence and grief and friendship and love. The author makes a point to differentiate between ways of being romantic.  Through her character, Finn, she defends the romantics by defining them as optimists and I like that.  I'm not sure how believable the story is at times.  Lots of times, I thought it was weird, independent of June's own weirdness.  Greta seems contradictory as a character and the pacing is often irritating in its repetitiveness but by the book's end, I felt Brunt justified her writing.  With art and symbolism framing its message of beauty and acceptance, Tell The Wolves I'm Home isn't a perfect book but it's a good one.

Twenty Year Statute of Limitations

After three attempts and a very shaky hand, I took a black Expo marker and wrote my name next to "Sophomore Class Treasurer" on the white board in Mr. Brown's classroom.  I have a horrible weakness in only trying out or auditioning for spots that are already pretty sure things but I had no idea about my chances of being elected treasurer.  My good friend, Kari, was very involved in student council and I was slightly jealous of her class officer status throughout freshman year.  Not being interested in accounting, budgeting, finance or banking, I suppose I chose the position of treasurer because no one very popular would be running against me.  It seemed my best chance of having student council success.

I was elected and my confidence in running for things grew.  At the end of my junior year, I decided to throw my hat in the ring for head honcho and try for Senior Class President.  I don't know about your high school elections, but ours were held during the day and were kind of set up like a sketch comedy show.  The goal of any candidate was to be the most entertaining and memorable show of the day and I stuck to what I knew and gave my speech while sitting at a grand piano bench, sing/talking my speech a la a lounge act while wearing a very tight sky blue tuxedo (I distinctly remember not wanting to stand up because those pants were like painted on).  Again, I was more interested in the status of the position than in actually leading any kind of high school government but after I won in large part because my opponent decided to give a real speech decrying meaningless, silly speeches (he was going after the serious voter, I guess, if such a thing exists in high school), I actually enjoyed student government.  I liked going to meetings and making decisions and...well...leading.

A HUGE downside of being senior class president at my alma mater is the tradition of that person being in charge of planning future class reunions.  I took the responsibility seriously and went about planning our ten year without the benefit of Facebook, Twitter or any kind of email list.  We graduated before email, after all.  I conducted the business of reuniting everyone the old fashioned way: paper and snail mail.

I hated it so much.  We lived in Spokane at the time and I had just had Sam and I knew the easiest thing would be to just say "meet at this bar on this day" and let the alcohol do all the work of planning something fun for me but being a non-drinker, I just couldn't.  No, I had to plan a night at the high school with refreshments and a family picnic at a park and an evening meal at a nice hotel with a cash bar.  I even made color copies of everyone's senior pictures from the yearbook and cut and pasted name tags by hand.  We had some money saved as a class after PROM and opened a bank account for the express purpose of having money for our ten year reunion. You'd think those sophomore class treasurer skills would have been useful but at the weekend's end, I was in the red and I lost personal money on the reunion.  It was nice to see a few old classmates but my memories of the weekend are not particularly fond ones.

Now, our twenty year reunion is approaching next year and within the past month,  I have seriously gotten a half-dozen inquiries about what I'm doing to plan it.  All have come from nice people but not anyone with whom I've stayed in touch or even anyone  who was a particularly close friend. They wonder what dates I've selected and if they can do anything to help.  I ignored the first two because they stressed me out and I just felt like it was so unnecessary to respond.  It's been twenty years people!  No seventeen year-old who wins and election because she plays Tea for Two in a blue tuxedo should have to organize a weekend gathering for hundreds of people she no longer knows, all while living almost a thousand miles away.  I think this should be obvious.

A few months ago, I wondered if I should send out a Facebook message reminding any former classmates who hadn't yet hidden me (I have hidden a lot of them so I try not to take it personally if I'm hidden) that I had said at the ten year that I was NOT planning the next one.  I decided that it was pretty presumptuous of me to think that sort of grand announcement was even necessary.  Surely those Bruin alumni who still live in my hometown would be saying, "I can't even remember who our senior class president was so I'll just get this thing going!"  Am I crazy to think so?  My husband, who also happened to be his senior class president and has never even been to one of his reunions even though we live in the town where he graduated, thinks it's insane that anyone would expect me to plan it.  My four siblings who have already had their twenty year reunions reassured me that they just sort of get planned by self-selected committee and I shouldn't feel responsible. I thought so too until the messages started.

I've responded each time that they (whoever sent the message) should plan it because they'd "do such a great job!"although with each subsequent message, I've had to include that so and so also contacted me and they should check with them before any major planning in case something has already been done.  The end result has left an unpleasant mood.  The multiple "Nope!  I'm not doing a thing!" responses have made me feel lame and flakey, like I am letting the class down in some way.  It's also made me very disinterested in attending anything that does eventually get planned.  Which is weird because I am one of the few that actually really liked high school.  So I search deeper.

Of course there are other reasons beyond simply not wanting to be the one in charge.  I don't want to go see a bunch of people I knew who knew me when I was seventeen and had six pack abs and Julia Roberts hair in my current state of significantly overweight with greying roots.  I also think Facebook has ruined a bit of the lure of high school reunions.  It's kind of embarrassing to admit here but some old friends have hurt my feelings by actively commenting or liking mutual friends statuses and pictures and totally ignoring mine.  I can't believe I just wrote that.  Hello insecure Facebook user.  It doesn't hurt all the time.  I don't see Facebook as an extension of high school but there are a few people who, in my memory, were my really good friends. And their Facebook snubbing is like a much more boring episode of Mean Girls.  On the other hand, I already know too much about other classmates, including their political leanings, alcohol drinking tendencies and whether or not they "like" Walmart or not.  I mean, what else it there to talk about at a reunion :)?  Still, I don't want to be one of those grouchy people who can't enjoy running into someone and reminiscing about a time when we were all younger and dumber.

Whatever happens with the reunion,  I think twenty years pardons any high school crime.  Especially those involving sky blue tuxedos and a girl singing the line, "If you want your time to be well spent/Vote Lucy for your class president!"