the four letter word, part 2

(apologies ahead of time to my two male readers.  sign off now.)
(In case you missed my last post on this topic, which was written last summer, the four letter word is diet.  For some reason I can't link to that post, so if you want to read it, go over to the labels and pick 4LetterWord, then scroll past this one to get to the old one.)

So, I'm not going to diet.  I already told you that I can't.  It just doesn't work.  I start obsessing about food, and I end up eating way more than I would if I didn't do anything at all.  I hate obsessing about my weight.  I hate the way our culture eggs us on to obsess about our weight.  I hate that we even have to think about it at all.

But I'm past the age where I can just eat what I want and assume it will be fine.  Up until a few years ago, I was lucky to have a good enough metabolism that I could do that.  I haven't been really thin since before I had kids, but I've never needed to lose more than 10 lbs or so.  But then I hit my mid-40s, and my metabolism slowed to a glacial crawl, and I started adding a couple of pounds every year.  And then I went back to school.

Last summer when I posted about this, I wanted to lose ten lbs--not 10 lbs to get back to some ideal state of thin-ness, but just to get back to someplace reasonably healthy.  Oh, how lovely was that day.  Because instead of losing, last fall, during the first semester of my master's program, I gained five pounds.  And then this semester, I gained another TEN.  In three months, I gained ten pounds.  So now I'm up 25-- not from my ideal weight, just from the "reasonably healthy" weight.  None of my clothes fit.  I had already, a couple of years ago, decided that I was just going to have to live with my increasing size, bought all new clothes, got rid of my old skinny clothes, and generally adjusted.  But this is just too much.  I've crept up smack dab into the middle of the overweight section of the BMI index (27-ish).  I can't buy an entire new wardrobe again.

But I can't diet.  So what to do?  The obvious, I guess.  Exercise more, eat less.  I've been working on this since the Monday after I got done with school.  I've sort of come up with a system.  The guidelines are (I can't say "rules" since that would offend the wordless one)(cue Geoffrey Rush "the code is more what you'd call guidelines"):  only eat when hungry.  don't eat after 8 p.m.  limit sweets (although fruit is fine, and I'm not worrying about a teaspoon of honey in my pero).  and I'm also trying to keep a food journal.  That's it. The exercise part of it I already described in that last post.

It actually was working pretty well, even though I had failed a couple of times on the "don't eat after 8 p.m." part.  When I weighed myself Thursday morning, I was down 3 lbs from the Monday a week and a half before.  But the problem is that things happen, you know?  Example- last night we went out for our anniversary.  We don't get dressed up and go out to a nice restaurant very often.  There was no way I was going to have a salad and a glass of water.  I didn't have bread, and I didn't have dessert (I was too full for dessert, anyway), but otherwise I ate a normal meal, and I had a greek martini (which was yum, by the way). 

So I woke up this morning feeling guilty and depressed and fat and ugly.  But as the day has gone by, I've recovered.  I'm not doing this so I can meet some absurd cultural standard, I'm doing it because my metabolism has slowed down and I need to adjust what I eat accordingly.  This isn't about losing weight so much as it is about changing my eating habits.  I need to eat less, and I especially need to eat less empty calories (sweets and junk food).  And I did eat less than I normally would have last night, so that's a win, right?

I'll try not to post about this very often, because I know it's a boring topic.  But I thought it might help keep me accountable to the new guidelines if I said it publicly, so here 'tis.

Riffday: catching up edition

Some of you will recognize the source of a couple of these.  I missed a lot while I was buried in school.

1.  On the difference between males and females.  I have one child of each variety, which may not make me an expert, but gives me good stories to tell.  They were/are both equally loud, equally dirty, equally active.  The most obvious difference?  If you have a slumber party of six 10-year-old girls and one of them farts, they will giggle and laugh hysterically and make fart jokes for 5 minutes or so, but then they MOVE ON.  If you have a slumber party with six 10-year-old boys and one of them farts, you can come back an hour later, and they will still be making fart noises and telling stupid potty jokes and laughing like loons.  Come back in another hour?  They're still at it.  I shared this bit of wisdom once when we were with several other couples, and one of the guys said, "Well, once you've reached the pinnacle of humor, where else is there to go?"  I think one might argue that they've reached the nadir or, um, the bottom.  But I wouldn't want to contribute to the lame humor, would I?

2.  On how prayer works.  I've said before that I have no idea how prayer works.  But I'll pass on something I heard Caroline Myss say in a videotape of hers I listened to years ago.  I have no idea whether or not it's true, but I find it intriguing. She said that every time you do something generous or helpful or selfless, you build up a surplus of positive karmic energy.  Sort of like making a deposit in a savings account.  So then when you want to pray for somebody, you have this psychic bank account that you can draw on to distribute positive energy to people or situations you care about.  Interesting, yes?  There's no way to know whether or not she's right, but I like it.  Of course, once you've heard this, if you do something selfless in order to increase your psychic savings account, is it still selfless?

3.  I think I owe an apology to people who are really seriously dealing with friends and relatives who have Asperger's or OCD.  I tease about them, and I do have a few of the symptoms-- especially of Asperger's. And I do believe, based on working in the Special Services office of a school for several years and watching them diagnose kids, that when I was pre-school-ish kindergarten-ish that I would have been diagnosed somewhere on the autism spectrum.  I was hyperlexic, hyper-introverted, and hyper-sensitive.  But I don't seriously have to deal with it, especially not OCD.  I don't mean to make light of what is a very serious situation for those who do.

4.  I read an article once about a kid with sensory integration issues--which is fairly common among people on the autism spectrum, it has to do with difficulties in learning how to sort through all the sensory data that is thrown at us every second.  This kid was probably seven or so, and his mom related how difficult it used to be to get him dressed, because everything felt too tight and he just wanted it all off.  After working with an occupational therapist, he was able to tolerate wearing clothes because he figured out that (for example), his underwear only felt too tight at first.  If he waited a few minutes, the too-tight feeling would go away.  In other words, sometimes you can get used to your panties being too tight.  Take this bit of wisdom as you will.  I've been thinking about it quite a bit recently.

5.  Cheery-o sent me a book a couple of years ago about forgiveness.  Being a hyper-sensitive sort, it is easy for me to get offended or to get my feelings hurt over little things, and then I just don't know what to do with it.  You can't make a big thing out of a little thing, it leaves you with no friends.  The author of this book (Lewis Smedes) said (I think in the very first chapter), sometimes you don't have to forgive people.  Sometimes you can just let it go.  (silence) (insert pause here)....  (insert another pause....)  (light bulb goes on over my head)  You CAN?  REALLY?  It was news to me, a true life changing moment.  You can just let the little things go.  Who knew?  For those of you who don't have a problem with this, that probably sounds horrible.  All I can say is, I'm better about it now.  And dh is still with me, making him a candidate for sainthood.

I've told you before that I write this blog for me, and this post is proof of it.  I was really struggling with a certain issue when I sat down to type, and by the time I got to the end, I had worked it out. or at least worked out a new perspective on it. *sigh* love that.

Reading Report-unplugged week

The Help - Kathryn Stockett.  This one and the next have been so widely read and reviewed that I don't know if I have much to add.  It's good.  There were some things about the writing that were interesting to me, making me wish I knew someone I could ask about creating characters.  It seemed at times that they were place holders rather than separate, distinct characters-- as if Stockett had said to herself, OK, now Hilly needs a positive character trait, so I'll show her interacting with her children.  OK, I need an employer-maid pair that really love each other, so I'll put these two in.  But it's not enough to detract from the story, or to take away from the importance of what is said.

For all of us who lived in the South and are more than 40 years old, it brings back memories of things we don't necessarily want to remember.  How wrong it was, but how entirely entrenched it was, and how scary-impossible it felt to change anything.  In case you haven't heard about it, it's the story of a number of white and African American women in Jackson, Mississippi in the early 1960s-- the black women work for the white women, and their relationships are complex and disturbing.  The women in the book are my mother's generation, but I was old enough to see.  We didn't have a maid--we weren't in a high enough income bracket for that--but we did have a series of black women that came in and cleaned for us once a week.  They never did childcare, though, so it was a little different, but maybe not much-- maybe not as much as I wish it was. 

I started the book with a sense of dread, that I would come to love these African American women and horrible things would happen to them.  I wouldn't be able to deny the truth of it or the reality of it, but I didn't want to read about it.  But Stockett did a really nice job of showing the reality of how bad it was without dragging her characters through graphic horrors.  Even though it would have been fair for her to do it.  I'm just glad she didn't.  And I should probably be a little bit ashamed about that. Entirely worth reading, if only to bear witness.

Water for Elephants - Sara Gruen.   It's good.  It's worth reading, especially for the recreation of the world of the traveling circus a hundred years ago.  She did a lot of research, and it shows in many realistic details.  But now I will proceed to gripe about it.

**Spoiler Alert** I'm not giving away anything major but if you are one of the few people who haven't read this, and you like to approach a book with a completely clean slate, skip down to the paragraph that starts with "Savvy."**  Until I took a creative writing class last spring, I had never heard that prologues in novels were a bad thing.  I've read books that had them and I never really noticed them enough to think that they were good or bad, although sometimes I skimmed impatiently through them.  Since that class, I've read several discussions of this on writing blogs, and I sort of see their point.  It can be lazy writing, a way of doing "info-dump" without having to figure out how to fit it seamlessly into the main narrative of the story.

But still prologues didn't bother me as a reader.  Until this book.  This prologue bugged me, not because it was lazy writing, but because it was manipulative writing.  The prologue in this book is foreshadowing-- a description of a murder that will occur at the end of the book.  When you get to it the second time, it is retold in more detail.  In the prologue, Gruen leads you to believe character A committed the murder, when in fact it was character B.  The changed scene is not a huge surprise-- by halfway through the novel, I was thinking to myself, well, it shouldn't be A that kills him, it should be B.  So you sort of know.  But it just struck me as a really odd choice for an author.  Why would you want to purposely mislead your readers?  It felt manipulative and insincere to me, and left me with a bad taste in my mouth.  But I still think it's worth reading.  The recreation of a moment in American history is fascinating.

Savvy - Ingrid Law.  Even though my kids are too old to read kid books anymore, I still enjoy the good ones, and this is one of them.  First, what didn't work (borrowing from Lora).  The voice of the narrator, a 13-year-old girl named Mibs Beaumont, is really irritating.  I think it would have irritated me even when I was 12, but that was so long ago it's hard to say for sure.  She has a sing-songy way of speaking with internal rhymes and double words ("I felt a tad vulnerable being a jig shy of jaybird-naked in a suit that better suited someone older") that would feel more appropriate for a tall tale or a folktale than it does here.

Another part of the problem with the language is that Law makes up words for the plot that are a little cutesy.  In the Beaumont family, everyone develops some sort of special gift that displays itself for the first time on their 13th birthday.  Rocket can create sparks and electrical currents; Fish taps into the weather.  The gift is called a "savvy" and learning to control it is learning to "scumble."  So there are several conversations about scumbling your savvy that make you roll your eyes.  But I know that wouldn't have bothered me when I was 12, because think of all those science fiction books I read that had all kinds of made-up words for fancy science fiction stuff.  So I will just shut up about that.

But language aside, I loved this book. It opens on Mibs' 13th birthday, and the story of figuring out her "savvy" is the story of the book.  Her father has been in a very serious car accident and is in a coma in an ICU in another town.  She wants to get there to be with him and her mom (who is staying with him at the hospital), but also so she can help him with her new gift.  She hijacks a pink bus and gradually gathers a motley collection of friends old and new.  When her gift turns out to be something that she thinks isn't going to do him any good, she has to struggle with disappointment that she didn't get something spectacular like her brothers.

Law has many wise things to say about learning to value yourself when yourself isn't who you want to be.  She isn't subtle about it; the moral of the story practically hits you over the head at times.  But this is kid fiction, and subtlety is not necessary.  and it spoke to me as an almost-50-year-old who still has self-esteem issues at times--and if you're still working on it at this age, sometimes you need a 2x4.  This is a fun, lovely book, and better yet-- it comes with a sequel already in print.  and p.s. there is some not especially overt religious stuff in here-- the characters attend church, and the preacher's kids are two of the main characters--but it never becomes obnoxious.  I hope you know me well enough by now to know that that would be a deal breaker for me.

Pull

well, I'm so far behind I don't know when the heck I'll catch up.  I've seen enough little hints of things on Facebook and Twitter to know I missed things and it's killing me, but ohmygosh do I have too much to do.  I don't even want to think about how much I have to do, which is why I'm sitting here instead of doing it.

So I will tell you about trap shooting.  You know, when we moved out here, we'd been living on the East coast for nine years in an ultra-liberal university town, and we were card-carrying liberals.  We still are, but we're a lot more thoughtful about it these days, because you can't live in a community of good-hearted, responsible, hard-working capital-C-with-italics Conservative people and not develop a sense of respect for their point of view. Especially when they outnumber you about 12-to-1, so you are surrounded, inundated by their opinions at every turn.

Anyway.  One of the issues I've had to change my mind about is hunting.  when we moved here, I was opposed to hunting, because most of the hunting I'd been exposed to at that point was trophy hunting-- rich guys from the city who use antlers in all of their decorating.  But now we live in Montana.  When we moved here, the median income in our county was $17K.  People hunt to fill their freezers.  I've lightened up.  This is one of many issues that is more complex than I knew when we moved here.

So when MadMax started showing a huge fascination with guns and the whole hunting scene when he was about ten, I gulped, swallowed my pride, and insisted that he take the hunter safety class before we let him anywhere near a gun (I didn't have to insist much, since dh felt the same way).  He took the class as soon as he was old enough, got his license, and now he has two seasons under his belt.  I'm not thrilled about it, and I sure as hell am not mounting any antlers over our fireplace, but there are considerably worse ways teenagers can spend their free time.  And the local hunters-- the good, responsible ones, of which there are many-- are a pretty good, decent bunch of guys.  and women, too.

But what he likes better than hunting is shooting clays, trap shooting, whatever you want to call it.  You have a spring-mounted device that hurls disks made out of clay up into the air, and you shoot at them.  MadMax is scary good at it.  Well, it's scary to me, anyway.  He was in a trap shooting league this winter, and his first time ever he was second or third best on the team. 

so yesterday, dh and MadMax asked me if I wanted to go trap shooting with them.  They've asked before, but I always had a paper to write, or hundreds of pages to read, or it was freezing (I'm definitely a fair weather outdoors person).  But yesterday none of those things were true, so off we went.  We put hearing protection in our ears (little orange spongy things), and dh and MadMax put on their shooting goggles (I am almost never outdoors without my sunglasses so i already had eye protection).  And you know what?  It was really fun.

It takes a surprisingly short amount of time to work your way through four boxes of shells and a two-thirds full case of clays.  We were only there a little over an hour, and we spent at least as much time picking up unbroken clays and spent shells as we did shooting.  I was very impressed with how careful they were about gun safety, especially with me, a complete greenhorn, around.  I took four shots and on the fourth one, I hit it.  I think my eyes were closed, so it was an entirely lucky shot, but don't tell dh that.  I'm done, I've retired with a lifetime career shooting average of 25%.  I'm thinking that's pretty sweet.

and can I just add in one little whine here that we went straight from cool, drizzly, rainy, sleety not-spring into warm, muggy, real Spring and the mosquitoes were THICK.  It's just not fair.  We should have had at least a week or two of nice weather without mosquitoes.  Really.

zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I am way behind on posting, and way behind on reading all my favorite blogs, but first things first.  MadMax and I are having unplugged week starting tomorrow.  So officially speaking we each get 20 minutes a day to do e-mail and whatever else needs to be done, but other than that, we are technology free.  Wish me luck.  I'm going to have to cheat some because I have to make some reservations for our trip, but I'll do my best to stick to the rules. 

I would tell you some enormously interesting, highly scintillating bit of news or wisdom or something, except that my brain is like a dead fish.  I got nothin.  I turned in my final paper yesterday afternoon about 3:30 (hour and a half to spare, you'll note), drove back home, and collapsed.  Unfortunately I was so wired last night I couldn't sleep.  I was still awake somewhere around 3.  So NOW I'm crashing.  I'm off to bed, and will become replugged sometime a week from now.  Hope y'all have a great week. 

the wordless one

Since we don't live near our families, we travel.  I love to travel.  I can't imagine a trip that I wouldn't enjoy.  But I hate to fly.  Mainly because it's a huge migraine trigger.  Get on a plane, get off with a migraine. I could tell stories here, because travel migraines often involve losing one's lunch.  But I'll spare you.  And then there's the whole dislocation thing, too-- I'm out of my usual place.  and worry about missing flights or lost luggage or misplacing a kid.  Just little things, you know.

So I get stressed before we travel.  And I'm a little OCD, as we've discussed before, so I'm a stickler for everything being packed Just. So. I mean: JUST. SO.  If you're feeling pity for my poor beleaguered spouse right now, you're right.  He has learned to just go to bed and let me do my thing.  It is taking me a really long time to get to the point here.

So once when I was probably in my early 30s, I was lying awake before we had an early flight in the morning and I could not go to sleep.  It kept getting later and later, 2:30, 3:00, and I was just lying there wide awake.  I tried all my insomnia tricks-- muscle relaxation, getting up for a bit and going back to bed, clearing my mind, meditation-- but nothing was working.  And I finally realized that what it felt like was that there was some other part of me, some part of me that had control of my physical body but that I had no conscious control of.  That part of me was terrified.  Terrified I would oversleep and miss the flight, terrified of flying, terrified of getting a migraine, terrified of being out of her comfort zone.  She was lying there, completely panicked, and there just wasn't much I could do about it.

I've come to know her a little better over the years.  I call her the wordless one.  She's almost like an animal, a small-ish beast.  I can't control her.  I can't make her do something she doesn't want to do.  She shows up most often when she/I am scared.  I'm afraid of heights, so that's one pretty reliable way of bringing her out.  My conscious brain isn't afraid of heights:  I can look up at the roof of the house and I'm quite sure it's not going to bother me.  but then I get up the ladder and look down and suddenly there she is--the wordless one.  She doesn't know how to say what she's feeling, but she is terrified, dizzy, vertiginous.

She comes out when I try to diet.  She absolutely refuses to diet.  I can manage OK if I work on healthy eating, or if I remind myself not to eat if I'm not hungry, but if I try to go on an actual, literal diet?  She is not having it.  I will suddenly find myself in front of the cabinet cramming food in my mouth, twice the amount of food I would normally eat without a diet.  There is no conscious thought behind it, no plan, it's like a compulsion.  The wordless one, my own internal beast.

I've also discovered recently that she comes into play when I'm trying to write.  She does not like the papers I've been working on for the last two weeks.  She doesn't want to participate.  I'm not sure what her role is when I'm writing, but it must be something important, because without her, I'm getting nowhere. 

The only thing that seems to help is acknowledging her presence.  I sit with her.  She doesn't speak.  I let her know she is important to me.  I'm not sure why, or how this works.  I just know if she's not happy, I'm not happy.  She wanted me to write this post.  I told you it was crazy. But I'm doing it, because I need her. 

riffday: a break from writing papers

MadMax threw a discus 94 feet on Friday.  I still can't quite get over how far that thing goes.  He came in second among the seventh graders-- first place was over 100 feet.  On the downside, I almost froze my patootie off watching him.  The thermometer said 58, but it felt considerably colder since it was damp and breezy.  ugh.

But I should announce:  we have green grass now.  Just thought you'd want to know.  Progress is being made.  We've also had two or three more days of gorgeous weather, but today it is rainy and cool, although less windy.  There's still snow on the mountains and will be for another month or so.

Headaches are back, but only 1-2 a week.  Still a bummer, though, because I went over a month without one.  Whenever I go awhile without one, I always think I'm cured and I'll never have another one.  Every time.  But I'm always wrong, dammit.

And neatly segueing from headaches to caffeine.  I know at least a couple of you have also been trying to cut down on caffeine, so I will pass this on.  I've finally found some replacement drinks for coffee. If you're only newly-weaned from coffee, these won't cut it.  It took a year of being off coffee to be able to seriously consider other drinks.  I haven't really taken to decaf coffee or black tea, mainly because they still have caffeine in them, but also because they don't taste as good as the caffeinated versions, so I end up just being resentful that I can't have the real thing.

First of all, Twinings Pure Peppermint tea.  Bigelow's is good, too, but Twinings is the best.  It's one of the few hot drinks I've found that I can drink without added sweetener. (Also, it comes in K-cups for our Keurig.)  Secondly, Ginger Honey crystals.  I'm getting addicted to these.  I first discovered them in the little market at the student center at the school I attend.  I actually like them better than peppermint tea, but they do have a fair amount of honey in them so I try not to drink it all the time (a packet has 70 calories).  They have real ginger in them, so there's a bit of a burn, which almost makes them as interesting as coffee's bitterness, even though it's completely different.  And third, Pero.  It's not great, but with milk and a bit of honey, I can drink it.  If I just want something hot and bitter in the morning, Pero is my go-to.

The subject of whether or not to blog book reviews came up again last week on the blogs I read (Hi, Judy!), which made me realize that I never updated after my previous post on the topic.  I finally decided that I am OK with blogging my honest opinion about the books I read. First of all, it's one of the main reasons I started this blog seven years ago, so I would have someplace to talk about the books I read, since I bore everyone senseless at social occasions if I don't get it out somewhere.

Secondly, I have so few readers that I can't imagine that I'm really going to hurt anyone's feelings by posting my thoughts.  I occasionally get google search flags in the sources on my stats page, but I think that's only happened three times in the year or so since they've started providing statistics.  I figure a) I don't have enough readers for them to worry about me turning anyone off of their books, and b) if they're looking that hard, they must really want to know what people think, thus they should get my honest opinion.  Why would they want to read just another sycophantic review of how awesome their book is?  Well, OK that was a dumb question.  If it was me, I could never read enough reviews telling me how great my book is.  But maybe you get my point.

But having said that, I should also note that you never hear about-- well, I've never counted, but I'll guess that I never mention about a quarter of the books I read.  I only write up a book review if it's something I want to recommend, or if I think the negative review would be interesting to read.  I don't review a book that's just bad because it's not worth the time-- unless for some reason it is bad in a way that would be interesting to write about.  Or therapeutic, in the case of a book that really disappointed me.  And in that case, it's sort of a back-handed compliment-- either my previous experience with the author's writing has been good, or the book had so much promise that it was frustrating to have it not be as good as I wanted it to be.

OK, I think I've exhausted that topic now. Back to the papers.

skip this one

Just a quick one to tell you that I'm sunk deep in paper writing and will be back in about ten days.  I would write the panicked post about how much I hate the end of the semester, but I've already done that enough times now that it is boring.  So.  You know the drill.  I'm panicked.  But it will all get done and then.... summer. 

March/April 2011 reading report

Mennonite in a Little Black Dress- Rhoda Janzen.  First of all, let me say that I love the name Rhoda, even though (or maybe because) I have a vague recollection of a song about a Rhoda from grade school.  OK, that's out of the way.  I enjoyed her book.  It was laugh out loud funny at times.  It's a memoir sort of along the lines of Eat Pray Love, except way snarkier, less spiritual, and she doesn't travel to exotic locales.  (But other than that, it's just the same!)  Her husband leaves her for a man he met on gay.com, and not long after that she is in a very serious car accident.  So she goes back to live with her Mennonite parents to recuperate after many years of not being a Mennonite.  There are obvious parallels with my past, although we weren't Mennonites.  But my dad's family is German and Baptist, and there are plenty of similarities.  Enough that some of her descriptions of her youth made me smile and get a little misty-eyed.  But good lord, is she snarky.  Sometimes it's really funny.  But other times it borders on being cruel.  Oddly, her nearly-cruel moments are reserved not for the Mennonites, but for the sartorially challenged.  God forbid you should have the temerity to wear a fleece vest in her presence.  I'm not sure I would want to be her friend, I don't think I'd measure up.  I own four fleece vests. -smirk-  But I did enjoy her book.  Recommended.

The Fortune Quilt- Lani Diane Rich.  I'm slowly working my way through Lani/Lucy's books, savoring them.  She's a terrific writer.  The three I've read were alike in at least one respect:  once I got into them, it was impossible to put them down.  I read the first chapter of this one before bed one night, then sat down with it about 10:30 the next night intending to read for half an hour or so.  At 1:30 I finished it.  I could not stop.  It's very compelling.  It's about a young woman in her late twenties who loses her job and her (male) best friend all in the same week. And then her mother, who disappeared 17 years earlier, shows up.  The plotline where she is trying to find resolution with her mother is also a major theme of one of the others of Lani's I've read, Little Ray of Sunshine.  About the only complaint I have about this book is that Sunshine does it better. (Well, and that I liked the best friend better than the hero, but taste in heroes is always subjective--there have been other romances I've liked where I didn't particularly care for the hero--so she gets a pass on that.  And Will was growing on me by the end, anyway.)  If I'd read Fortune Quilt first I'd have no complaints.  But after reading Little Ray of Sunshine, this one just doesn't have the same complexity/depth of resolution.  Good book, though.  I'm definitely taking one of Lani/Lucy's books with me on my next plane flight.  The flight would fly by.  (ark, ark)

For school:  Mansfield Park, Emma, and Persuasion.  Yup, still working my way through Jane Austen.  Emma, I think, is my favorite of all of them.  The main character, surprisingly enough named Emma, is so perfectly drawn, and the resolution of all her little schemes is so beautifully done, it's hard not to just gape in awe at the writing.  There's one argument (discussion) between Emma and Mr. Knightley, where they are discussing Knightley's judgment of another person's character, and Emma's judgment of Knightley, that we ended up discussing for over an hour in class--just because there was so much packed into that two-page section.  Another reason I love it is because of the movie Clueless, which has to be one of the best-ever adaptations of a classical work to modern times.  And another reason I love it is because in at least one way-- her arrogant, youthful assumption that she knows everything she needs to know, and way more than anyone else around her-- Emma reminds me of me at that age.  And yet even though she's such a horrible snob, you can't help but love her.  It's such a great book.  And even though she learns the error of her ways by the end of the book, Knightley makes the most touching declaration of having loved her through the whole thing.  *sigh* *gush*

Mansfield Park is, I think, the least likable of all of JA's work.  Fanny, the heroine, is not a woman to interest a contemporary reader.  She's sickly, shy, retiring, and easily embarrassed; but even worse, she seems-- at least on first reading-- to be a priggish, moralistic prude.  But you know, this was my second time reading it, and I found her to be a much more sympathetic character this time.  She is so thoroughly herself.  She has a very clear and consistently-drawn character that makes her bearable, even when you're rolling your eyes at her timidity.  A closer reading reveals her to be not so much a prude as completely loyal to the people whose opinion she values.  If you could divest the word "pure" of its overtones of moral perfectionism, I think you could say she is 'pure in heart.'  Not because her heart is faultless, but because reading about her is like looking into a pool of clear, still water.  I think. But maybe I'm over-reading.  Anyway.  If you're not an Austen fan, this one is definitely not going to change your mind.

Persuasion.  This one is quite different than JA's others-- or at least, as different as one romance novel can be from another. Anne, the heroine, is older-- in her late twenties.  She has loved the same man all along.  She fell in love early but turned him down on the advice of her mentor because he was a young, penniless, unproven naval officer.  When he comes back eight years later, he must get over his hurt, and she must figure out how to reach through all the social barriers that separate them to let him know how she feels.  And another major difference--she doesn't end up with the big house, as the heroine of all her other novels do.  It's a great story, in some ways far more modern than any of her other work.

Ulysses.  I read it (click on the link for the long, tortured tale of my progress).  The whole dang thing, and since I'm taking an independent study on it, I'm reading it again.  It's difficult and brilliant, bawdy and sublime, but mostly it's long.  the first time reading it is a 650-page exercise in delayed gratification.  You just don't know what is happening much of the time.  But the second time through (and I'm less than halfway at the moment) is an entirely different matter.  Since you know what's going to happen later, you can see how everything fits together.  Is it a great novel?  yes. absolutely. Is it the best novel of the twentieth century, as so many have claimed?  Well, I'd have to say no, because I don't see how you can claim that a novel that only a very few have actually read is the greatest novel of the 20th century.  Gatsby or The Sun Also Rises or The Color Purple or To Kill a Mockingbird or or or.  Recommended?  yes, if you enjoy a challenge, and if you take it on, I'd add:  read it twice.  It's an entirely different (and better) experience the second time through.

Audiobooks-- I'll make this quick since I've already gone on and on here.

Cotillion- Georgette Heyer.  I love Heyer.  I've read or listened to three now (so I can tell you its pronounced "hay-er"), and I'm working my way through a fourth when I'm in the car.  She's terrific.  Here's the thing about Cotillion.  If you've read many romance novels, you know their main drawback:  you know the ending almost before you start.  You know that the heroine and the male protagonist are going to end up together.  The interest lies in how that is accomplished.  But in Cotillion, honest to Pete, about halfway through you're not sure how it's going to end.  She has several little twists up her sleeve that put the whole thing in question.  I'm not giving it away, and if you think you might want to read it, don't read the back cover or the reviews on Amazon, just plunge in.  Another thing to get used to with Heyer is all the exclamation points.  They're wearisome, and that's one of the best reasons to listen to her stuff as an audiobook.  But well worth it.  Highly recommended.  I loved this one.

and you're thinking, I thought she was going to make it short.  sorry.

Bet Me- Jennifer Crusie.  I've read it at least half a dozen times, but it was on sale on Audible a couple of weeks ago, so I thought it would be fun to hear it.  And it was.  I'm a skimmer, so I often miss details.  With an audiobook, you hear every word, and you realize how brilliant Crusie is at dialogue and amusing little details.  It is a tribute to her skill that I can say I love this book, even though it has my least favorite plotline-- the whole thing would be resolved if the hero and heroine just sat down and talked.  And it's especially irritating because they do sit down and talk, many times, but just never about the right thing.  But I still really enjoyed listening to this and was many times driving down the road laughing hysterically all by myself in the car.  Great book.  If you haven't read it, go straight out and get either the print or audio version right now.

mental health day

I started a tradition with Nell that I sometimes regret, but mostly not.  Each kid gets one mental health day per semester.  They can't miss a test or a big project that's due, but they can take a break for a day.  This is definitely not a universally popular idea.  The kids love it, of course.  But dh is not a fan.  They're supposed to be in school.  They're not supposed to be at home.

But I figure, it's one day.  MadMax hardly even has any makeup work-- he is a demon about getting his homework done at school, he hates to bring it home, so he usually doesn't even make it home with makeup work.  Mental health days are a real sanity-saver for both of us, because I get sick of dragging his butt out of bed every day, too.  Neither of us is a morning person, and it is an ordeal.  every. single. day.

There are problems associated, of course.  Since I was just talking about using words responsibly, I have to say that the phone call to the school makes me a little uncomfortable.  I usually say he's not feeling very good this morning-- which is true every morning, but I leave that part out.  He is miserable in the morning.  It's not quite a lie, and it's in a good cause.

And then there's what he tells his friends.  He has one friend whose parents allow more mental health days than we do, but the rest of them don't do this.  We've had several conversations about how he should talk about it to his friends.  Which is mostly:  don't gloat about it, don't even mention it unless someone asks.  And then just say you didn't feel up to going to school.

With Nell, the whole thing was pretty straightforward.  She didn't hate school, so she didn't even always use her day(s).  But MadMax would stay home from school every single day if I let him.  Almost as soon as the semester begins, he starts strategizing about when he should take his day, or asking me for strategies.  I push him to save it for the end of the semester, not to use it up first thing, which I think he would always do.  He took one today.  (gb, don't tell your wife).  I wasn't sure it was a good idea last night.  But he's been really dragging the last couple of weeks, and he is noticeably more cheerful this afternoon than he has been in quite awhile.  Maybe sleeping until ten was what he needed.

But dh was not happy with either of us.  And I can't blame him, since he faithfully drags his tired self to work every day so that we can sleep under a roof and eat and minor stuff like that.  He can't take a mental health day because too many people depend on him being at work.  I had a hard time taking mental health days when I was working, too.  But somehow I just think it's a good idea for the kids.

What do you think?  Effective strategy for managing school stress?  or cop-out?

Monday Riffday, the not complaining edition

Enough of the serious posts.  I'm boring myself.

The weather was gorgeous this weekend.  It reminded us all why we love living here, because after last week, I don't think there was anyone in a 100-mile radius that wasn't thinking about moving.  It snowed (heavily), it hailed, it sleeted, it rained; it was foggy, and then there were low-hanging clouds, and it was generally gray and miserable.  The temperature didn't come above 45.  Of course, this time of year, the snow doesn't last more than an hour or two, but still it is depressing to see it coming down in APRIL.

But Saturday and Sunday it was sunny and (relatively) warm and utterly perfect.  We went out to our favorite lake and enjoyed it.  It's not warm enough to get in the water, of course, but it was warm enough to be outside.  We'll take it.

The end of the semester fast approaches.  I have a 15-20 page paper on Jane Austen due by the end of next week, which will be something about Christian Virtue in Persuasion (the Christian virtue part was assigned--is Austen's understanding of virtue on a continuum with Christian thinking, or an example of early modernism?-- but we could pick which book(s) we wanted to work with).  And a week from Tuesday I have to turn in a 20 or more page paper for my feminist literary theory class, which is on needlework as gender performance in Alias Grace.  Then for my independent study, I have to write something about the possibilities of the cybernovel, which is a topic that interests me.

In fact, they all interest me.  I just don't want to write them.  I have to keep a positive attitude, so I'm not going to say that I hate writing papers, even though I do. I'm concentrating on this:  two weeks from now, I'll be done.  I'm not complaining.  I'm feeling much better about this than I was two weeks before the end of last semester-- the papers are do-able.

Then I get to start planning our trip to visit Nell, who is having so much fun in Europe that she can't be bothered to say Happy Easter to her parents.  kidding.  She is (or was) in Krakow for the weekend, and they may not even have access to computers.  So I won't complain.  Not me.

MadMax had his first track meet last Thursday.  I was in UTown for classes so I missed it, but the rest of them are on Friday, so I hope that will be the only one I have to miss.  Sounds like it wasn't much to miss, though-- another mom told me that it drizzled the whole afternoon, and with temps in the mid-40s, don't you know that was a nice outing.  MadMax is (for some reason) all excited about the throwing events.  This meet was just his school, but he threw a discus 83 feet.  Good Lord.  Maybe I'm remembering wrong.  That sounds impossible.

Well, maybe not.  I just googled the world record and it is 74 meters.  Or metres, as your spelling may be.  AB3, the blog where you learn something new every time you look.  But it may not be something you wanted to know.

MadMax is also in a Michael Crichton phase.  I don't know exactly what caused it.  Nell read Jurassic Park while she was home for Christmas, maybe that got him interested.  He is now reading his fourth Crichton.  We watched the original Jurassic Park movie on Saturday.  It terrified me when we saw it in the theater way back when.  But you know, it's not nearly so scary on the small screen, and it's not a bad movie. Laura Dern is terrific, and I always like Sam Neill.

And that's all I can think of.  No complaints.

easter redux

I’ve said it before, but I guess there’s nothing wrong with repetition.  Easter is a difficult time for me.  I found myself getting vaguely irritated at the world on Friday, Good Friday, for no apparent reason, until it occurred to me what was going on.  Listening to the heart-felt words of people I love and respect as they talked or blogged about what Easter weekend means to them reminded me of what it once meant to me, and how difficult it was to leave that behind, and how unsure I am at times if I’m doing the right thing.  And of course I’m not doing The Right Thing, the thing that everyone should do, as if there were one right thing, or even a dozen right things. 

So eventually it occurred to me to pray about it.  I pray, as in connecting with "what I think of as God" in a sort of shorthand way, pretty frequently.  Usually wordlessly, either asking for blessing or renewed energy for someone else, or acknowledging a sense of gratitude or wonder.  There are also moments where I (metaphorically) sit down before something much larger than my ego-bound definition of myself and “lay my burdens down”—a momentary respite from stress, from feeling responsible for everything around me.  All of those I think of as prayer.

But I don’t very often pray in the way I used to mean the word back when I was an Evangelical:  as in using distinct words to directly address a being or Being who exists separately from myself—in fact, I can’t even remember the last time I prayed that way.  I'm not even sure that I believe that it works. But I did it Friday afternoon, and although it would sound silly if I repeated the experience, it was re-affirming for me.  I’m on my path.  I’m OK with this.  Maybe I was just talking to myself, to my own unconscious, but it worked for me.

But that doesn’t stop the yearning I feel to connect with the many people I love who believe in the literal meaning of this most momentous of Christian holidays (holy days), and who find a great deal of spiritual renewal specifically in the literal interpretation of the Easter story.  I do find a great deal of metaphoric meaning in the Easter story, but I’m no longer capable of finding meaning in the literal-ness.  I went on and on about this a few years ago—it’s not that I don’t believe in the literal Resurrection.  I’ve seen too many nonrational things happen to do that.  It’s just that the literal meaning of the event, the literal interpretation of any Scripture, is no longer what motivates me. And that very literal-ness is exactly what motivates an Evangelical Christian.

But there's no going back.  I don't even want to.  I just feel this .... sadness every year on Easter.

impeccable words, part 2

In the comments, Delia hit on the main thing that was bugging me about that post, which is the moral perfectionism involved in setting up some kind of ideal of being "impeccable" with my words, or with anything for that matter.  We're human beings, we're not gonna achieve perfection of any kind, unless it is of the "being perfectly ourselves" kind.  Striving for moral perfection leads to holier-than-thou-ness, which leads to all kinds of problems.

But there's a tension here, too.  Because even if  we're not going to achieve it, I think there is some use in thinking about this, especially this particular issue.  Probably everybody has their own list of what is important to them in terms of ethical standards, and "using words responsibly" is high on my list.  Off the top of my head, I think I would even say it is #1.  I will never do it perfectly, but I already do it better than I used to just because I'm more aware of it.  And I would like to continue to improve.  Honesty and integrity are important. 

Maybe where I got off was in using the phrase from The Four Agreements (which is not religious, in case you didn't click on the link to find out).  Maybe I should have just used that as my jumping off point and come up with my own phrase, because "impeccable" does bother me.  It's just a little too .... high-minded, maybe.  Chilly.  Good-goody.  I almost re-wrote the post, because after thinking about it more, I understand it differently. But I ended up leaving it as is. It still stands as an impetus to think about how I use my words.  I feel like a toddler, using my words.  "Use your words, sweetie," is something I must have said a thousand times to my kids.

But the other thing that happened with that post-- as with many of my posts-- is something that is just my own neurosis. I post something, and then I feel like I've set myself up as someone with "Something to Say" on an issue.  Who am I to think that I can set myself up as someone whose opinion matters? would be the most blunt way to state it, although that is overstating the case to make the point, because of course technically I believe everyone's opinion matters, and the religion of my past does, too.  Technically.  So making a statement like some of these blog posts do, even when it's pretty mild, triggers a reaction from my past.  I absorbed all kinds of ambivalence about having my own opinions.  I would have laughed at you if you said that to me, because of course I had chosen my opinions!  No one forced me to believe the things I believed!  Or so I thought, until I began realize how much pressure there was in the air that you breathe in that kind of environment.

So not to get off on that again... just explaining a bit of what happens when I post these things, and then panic a couple of hours later and want to immediately delete them.

just a link

I'm passing on this link Parents don't dress your girls like tramps because I really appreciated it, and also because by the time I got halfway through and he said, "Which raises the question: What in the hell is wrong with us?" I wanted to applaud--because he said it, and because he said "us."  So I'm passing it on.

and plus I'm feeling dicey about that last post, and if it's not the one at the top of the pile, I'll sleep better. My mouse has been twitching over the delete button, but I'm being brave and leaving it there.  See, Julie, I listen (sometimes).

Use your words

What I'm thinking about today comes out of The Four Agreements.  If you haven't read it, here is the website --the agreements are listed right there on the front page.  I read the book years ago, and I remember thinking I could have just stood in the bookstore and read the four agreements off the book jacket, because all the book does is elaborate and elaborate and elaborate. Since that kind of repetition makes me a little crazy, when I closed the book, I thought I'd forget about them.  But two of them, the first two, keep coming up.  I think about them pretty often. I couldn't even remember the other two until I Googled to see if there was a website for them somewhere, and of course there is. The third and fourth ones sound fine, but they're not the ones I think about.

The first agreement is "Be impeccable with your word."  When I first read it, it made me a little uncomfortable, I have to admit.  First of all because the word "impeccable" sounded like some kind of moral perfectionism, and that irritated me.  But also because it struck a little too close to home.  I can think fast.  I can process a lot of information quickly (although that doesn't keep me from being brick-wall-obtuse at times).  And I sometimes use that knack of thinking quickly to manipulate people, to get them to do something or just to make my own life easier. I'm not proud of it, especially not now that I am so much more aware of it.

An example.  Back in the day, before it became de rigueur to offer no-questions-asked returns, you had to have a good reason if you wanted to return something to a store: it had to be defective, or you'd bought it for a gift and it didn't fit, or whatever.  So on occasion when returning something, I would spin a plausible story and tell it without batting an eye.  I figured, what difference did it make if it wasn't the truth?  I didn't know the salesclerk, s/he didn't know me, there was no real reason I shouldn't be able to return the item, so big deal.  But now that makes me uncomfortable.  I don't do it anymore.  (Although, to be impeccable with my word here, I have to add:  now you can return stuff without much hassle, too.)

It was fairly harmless stuff.  I almost never straight out lie, but I'm owning this: I am capable of dancing around with words to mold what people think.  but you know what?  I've come to see that once you've said "I almost never straight out lie," you're already in trouble, if you ask me.  If the Agreement had said, "Don't ever lie," it wouldn't have hit me as hard, because it didn't really seem like lying since Lying is Bad and this kind of stuff didn't seem that bad.  I didn't do it in situations where it would make a difference.  But be impeccable with your word is a different thing than don't lie, a harder thing. It has to do with using words responsibly, with saying just exactly what you mean, no more and no less.  It means using your words to accurately reflect what's going on in your head or your heart or your body.  It's not easy.  I've been working on it ever since.

I also think wording it that way ("Be impeccable with your word") completely subverts any arguments about whether or not it's OK to lie sometimes.  Because of course it is. I don't even have to give any examples.  We've all told social lies, white lies, the kinds of fictions that spare people's feelings when your true opinion couldn't possibly do any good.  Being impeccable with your word isn't about slicing people open with your opinions, it's about being aware of what you're saying, and not either over- or under- stating your case to get what you want.

I can't claim success, because sometimes I'm spineless or afraid, and sometimes I'm lazy or indifferent.  and sometimes I'm just not a very good person.  More recently I've come to realize that it's not just when you speak that's important, it's also when you remain silent.  Do I not speak up when I should?  Do I let my silence imply agreement when really I disagree?  Do I stay silent when I long to be heard?  And if you include that, I probably can't even claim 60% success.  But as I've worked on it, being impeccable with my word has become more and more important to me.

Next time (or sometime soon), on to Agreement #2:  Don't take anything personally.

And can I also add, for the record, do you think they could have warned us that they were going to completely change the blogger website?  Hmmmm.  Maybe they did and I just missed it.  It's not too bad, but I did have to hunt around a bit to figure out how to do what I wanted to do.

short one

Sorry I've been incommunicado. (is that the right use of that word?)  Things are going fine, I just don't have much to say at the moment.  Back soon.

and there's no one to blame but me

I am such an idiot sometimes.  It was March when we left for vacation, and April 12th seemed so far away.  Then we got back, but it was still spring break, and I'd more or less lost track of what day it was.  And then at midnight last night, I figured out that I have to turn in an 8-10 page first draft of a paper on Tuesday.  I am so screwed.  I haven't written a word of it.  I have the idea, and it's sort of outlined in my head, but I haven't done any research or written any of it.

All I can do at this point is just the best I can, because there's not enough time left for anything else.  Thank goodness it's just a draft.  I don't think it is graded, but I wasn't there the day she talked about it, so I'm not sure.  It will be workshopped, though, which means three other students and I will read each other's drafts and comment, and it is going to be highly embarrassing to have such a lame effort.  But at this point it's spilt milk, you know?  And to add insult to injury, I have 200 pages of Emma left to read for Tuesday, too.  I was purposely putting that off because if I read it too far before classtime, I can't remember it.  Which, in hindsight, was a major mistake. 

So I need to get back to the grind (I've been working on it all day), but I did just want to let you know that our trip South went really well.  My dad is frail and obviously not in good health, but he is doing better than I expected.  We went out to eat both nights I was at their house, and he is alert and seems to be dealing well with all that's happening.  My mom moved into a new place last summer, but this is the first time I'd seen it.  It is great, and is perfect for her needs, although she's still getting used to it since it's smaller than what she had.  Had a blast with my sister and all her gazillion children (there's only six, really, but sometimes it seems like more).  It was a great trip, and the weather was perfect.  If only I hadn't let my brain go completely to mush while I was there.

So-- I'm way behind on blog-reading and probably won't be able to catch up for awhile.  Hope you're all doing well and if you can spare some paper-writing vibes for me, I will be grateful.

dad again

A little less than a year ago I told you that my dad was dying.  And he was.  He is.  but not quite as quickly as they predicted.  They gave him 4-6 months last April, at best.  But then they started him on an experimental protocol, one of just eight people in the country who was trying it.  the others are now gone, but dad responded remarkably.  His doctor even used the word miraculous.  He was doing so well that he made it to our family reunion last summer, and got to be there for many more occasions in his grandkids' lives.  Every one was a gift.

But several weeks ago, things started going downhill again, and he spent much of last week in the hospital.  The last two nights, I've dreamed about him, dreams where I'm saying good-bye, and it makes me wonder if the end is close now.  That's the main reason for our trip south next week.  It won't be easy.  Things with my dad are never easy for me.  But it will be good.  Send some positive vibes my way if you think of it (what are known as FGBVs among some of us), with some extras for my dad, his wife, and my sisters.

late breaking pictures

OK, here is the bamboo:

and here is the bland-tan carpet.  That glove looks kind of vaguely alive.  Sort of like Thing from the Addams Family.

there.  aren't you glad you stopped by?  Aunt BeaN's Blog, more value for your entertainment dollar.
As if you would pay money for this.  :-)

hair today, gone tomorrow

Two of my most favoritest blogs have had entire posts dedicated to hair this week.  Coincidence?  I don't think so.  So I've been trying to come up with some interesting way to blog about my hair.  But you know, I just don't think I can do it.  I might be able to work up a paragraph.  Here goes.  If it's boring, it's Julie's and Melanie's fault, because I would never do this if they hadn't gone first.

I finally have hair love in my life after an entire lifetime of hair hate.  Although my hair is a nice color, it is utterly impossible.  (Of course, since I turned about 43, said nice color has been a chemically enhanced color, but let's leave that aside for the moment.)  It is thin, baby fine, limp, and perfectly straight.  Which is not to say that it hangs perfectly straight, like hair that has been straightened, because it does have a bit of a bend around my ears and I have two cowlicks.  By "perfectly straight" I mean that there is nothing on God's green earth you can do to get the ends to curl, or even curve.  Believe me, I spent many hours in high school trying everything I could think of.  Then spent the better part of my twenties with a perm, which made it frizzy and apparently thicker, but the ends still would not curl.  And thin?  When it was long enough to pull into a pony tail, it was about as big around as my index finger.  I had to buy ponytailers in the children's section to get them small enough. 

(Hey!  Second paragraph!)  Then about five years ago, I was introduced to the amazing, wonderful world of hair product.  Now I use my amazing shampoo, followed by a dab of any old conditioner, smoosh in a little mousse, blow it dry with a metal round brush, and voilà!  Curved hair.  It ain't cheap, but it has changed my life.  For the first time since junior high, I love my hair.  Not every day.  I still have hair hate days.  But there are many days when my hair makes me happy.  So just in case any of you out there are dealing with the thin, fine, limp hair problem, may I just tell you this:  Ojon Hydrating Thickening Shampoo.  It's expensive, but I don't drink lattés anymore and it's less expensive than a thrice-weekly latté habit.  And you don't have to use it every day.  No, I did not get anything from them to say that, but if they should happen to come across this post and want to send me a year's supply, I won't turn it down.  Just sayin'.  Same goes for Nexxus Comb-Thru hair spray, which is not especially expensive but equally amazing..  Much happiness on planet BeaN. 

And before someone tells me to stop using conditioner, I'll say in advance that I've tried that.  But my tresses are so thin and fine that if I don't use at least a little bit of conditioner on them, they get all static-y.  I look like I have a tesla coil in my pocket.  Or maybe I'm just glad to see you.  Wait.  Did that work?  It made me laugh, anyway.  And I called my hair "tresses," just as if I were Rapunzel.  (and while we're on that topic, I will remind you--because doubtless you already know this-- that Tangled comes out on DVD next Tuesday, and it is worth watching.  Much fun.)

Well that was THREE paragraphs, although the third one was short.  Let's see, what else can I tell you.  The floors are done, as of about 6:00 this evening, and I did take pictures although I haven't figured out how to load them on here yet.  I remember I put pictures on here once about three or four years ago, but I have no idea how I did it.  So now we just have to put the house back together-- literally, since we moved all the furniture, took the beds apart, took the doors off rooms and closets, etc.  So guess what we will be doing tomorrow?  Had the meeting with the tax guy today, grumble and groan but at least that is done except a couple of little details he wants us to track down.  And since we are leaving the middle of next week to go South, I only have one class next week, so although I have TONS of studying I could and should do, the only thing I have to do in the next four days is read half of Emma.  Dang.

Monday, Monday-Riffday again

For many years I wrote an annual post griping about how much I hate spring in the Northern Rockies.  I think I skipped it last year, though, and the year before I think I just linked to the one from the previous year because nothing had changed.  Winter I don't mind, but "Spring" is hardly deserving of the term.  It's cold and gray and a typical day may include rain, fog, sleet, freezing drizzle, and/or snow.  It would not be unusual to have all of the above.  But it's going to be in the 40s today, and therefore--after months of temps below freezing-- in the minds of the natives, it is Spring.  My sisters in the South are wearing shorts and t-shirts and complaining about the heat, raving over the flowers in bloom, and generally being irritating.  We won't even have green grass here for six weeks or so.

But I must have crossed some magic line over the past couple of years, because although I think "Spring" here will always rank as my least favorite season, it seems right.  This seems like what spring is supposed to be like:  raw and muddy, with everything sloooowly coming back to life.  The good thing is that you appreciate every little nuance.  The crocuses will be blooming soon, and then there will be daffodils and tulips.  This morning when I went out to drive MadMax to school, I could hear birds singing for the first time in months.  By mid April you can plant pansies and peas.  And then eventually it will be so riotously green and gorgeous that it makes up for it.  We just have to hang in.

(Also we are cheating for a week and going South for spring break.  I just got off the phone making shuttle reservations from the airport and I can't tell you how nice it was to hear that Southern drawl.  I felt mine coming right back (comin' raht back)-- it's like having pudding in your mouth, or warmed honey, and your jaw moves differently, like it's loosening up.)

Next up:  We're getting new flooring this week.  We've had the same (awful) mauve carpet in our bedroom for the twelve years we've lived in this house.  I've hated it the entire time, but it was brand new when we moved in, and there were other far more important things to spend money on.  And since I'm not a particularly visual person, I can pretty much ignore it.

hmm, I'm realizing I have to back up a little to finish the new floor story.  How much did I blog about trying to sell the house?  I can't remember what I've told you.  The short version:  as part of my midlife crisis, I really really wanted to move.  I'm kind of a seven-year itch person anyway, and we've been in this house for twelve years.  So we put the house on the market for about six months in 2009, and then for another six months last year.  But the market around here (as in many other places) was pretty dead, and it didn't sell.  So I told dh I would be willing to stay here if we could do a little upgrading.  So we're getting bamboo in the living room, and a sort of basic-tan-ish carpet on the stairs, the upstairs hall, our bedroom, and Nell's bedroom.  MadMax is getting "Granite" colored carpet.  He wanted a dark color, and that was as dark as I was willing to go.

So the floor guys are here this week, and we spent a good part of the weekend clearing out closets, moving furniture etc.  I was planning on staying home to study today, but it is considerably louder than I was expecting.  Considerably.  I may have to go somewhere else to get any studying done, and I have a LOT to do today.  Deconstructionist criticism, which is always the hardest for me to wade through, and lots of work on the Joyce project.  I finished Mansfield Park on Saturday, so that class is done.

Nell is now safely arrived in the Netherlands with her boyfriend and visiting his family there.  She's been there four days now and seems to be recovered from jetlag.  I am jealous, but she is being pretty good about e-mailing (so far).

and:  this is not worth an entire post.  But what is the deal with books that cost exactly the same in their digital version as their print version?  I understand that the physical book is only a part of the cost of producing a book, editing it, marketing it, etc.  But it should be SOME cheaper--they're not paying for paper, ink, glue, shipping, or shelf space.  Obviously there are people who are paying $7.99 for a Kindle "paperback" because they are selling, and some of them are selling pretty well.  I want to tell the people that are buying them, just stop.  You're only encouraging them.  I'm not doing it.  I'm just too cheap.  Especially since I can often get that $7.99 paperback at Target for $5.70 with my Target card, or for $6 (averaged out) on Amazon with their 4-for-3 promotion if I wait a couple of weeks. 

Can't think of anything else.  Y'all have a good Monday.

sin revisited

What I started to talk about a couple of days ago was sin, always a favorite topic.  Apologies in advance that I will not be describing any lascivious sins in detail, which would make this post much more interesting, but even though I'm way less neurotically private than I used to be, I'm not that open. Yet.  Stay tuned, it could happen.

So, anyway, I'm sitting there in the Ash Wednesday service, which is specifically about repentance--among other things, but that is a major theme.  And I couldn't do it.  Not that I have no faults anymore.  But I couldn't separate out specific actions or attitudes anymore.  I used to be able to do this.  In that old post about sin, I talked about how even though I'm not sure I believe in God anymore, I use the time of silent confession at church as a sort of internal housekeeping-- a time to reflect on actions and attitudes of mine the previous week that I regretted or wasn't happy with.  I would acknowledge them, release any guilt or shame I felt about them, and resolve to do better in the future.

But this time, I was sitting there waiting for stuff to come to mind that needed to be confessed, and I realized that I can't split off specific actions (or attitudes) from who I am anymore.  It's all one piece, if that makes any sense.  If anything, I'm way more aware of my faults now than I used to be.  (And even the word "faults" still sounds like something that's separate from the "real" me, which isn't what I mean, but I can't figure out how else to word it.)  I think in a way being able to enumerate "sins" in the way I used to do it was almost a way of absolving myself of responsibility for them-- like they were actions I had done that were unrelated to who I "really" am, like I had just made a mistake or been caught off-guard or was tired or whatever.

I find that I can't do that anymore.  Yup, I'm overly-analytical and drive my poor spouse to distraction.  Yes, I get absorbed in what I'm thinking about to the point of neglecting my kid.  Yes, I get overwhelmed in social situations and just leave, prompting the poor, nice people around me to wonder what they said to drive me away (I just did that this week, as a matter of fact).  But those are all parts of who I am.  I can't separate them out and "let them go."

that may sound like I'm letting myself off the hook for those kinds of actions, but in fact, it's the opposite.  This way makes me feel more responsible, more aware of what I'm doing that hurts others.  I want to say, more aware of the need to change, but I'm not sure that's the right response.  This is brand new, I'm still figuring this out.  It's entirely possible that this post doesn't make a lick of sense, but I tried.

after 18 years, I may sign on

When I was in my twenties, like many people, I huffed and puffed that I didn't need church to be in a relationship with God.  Now I'm not so sure I believe in God, but for the most part I'm OK with church. Or at least, I'm OK with our church, and I think there are a pretty good percentage of churches that are like ours.  They're not perfect.  There are things about ours that I don't like.  My spouse is on session right now (meaning he is one of the Elders, or leaders, of the church), and the bad thing about that is that you hear a lot more about the things you don't like than you would if you just showed up for church on Sunday mornings.  But generally speaking, our church is doing the kinds of things I think a church should be doing-- actively participating in the community, doing our best to help people that need help, puzzling over what it means to have faith. My life is enriched by being a part of a community of people that comes together to support each other in their faith (or lack thereof, I suppose, might be more appropriate in my case)

But one of the things I've never liked about our church is its exclusion of members of the GLBT community (gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgendered persons) from positions of leadership.  It's a PC-USA church (which is one of the varieties of Presbyterian), and the language of the Book of Order (which is sort of like the constitution for PC-USA churches) states that candidates for ordination must "live...within the covenant of marriage between a man and woman...or chastity in singleness."  And since in PC-USA churches pastors, elders, and deacons are ordained, that means not just that there are no GLBT Presbyterian pastors, but also none can serve as Elders or Deacons, the positions of lay leadership in the church.  (Women have been able to be ordained in the Presbyterian church since at least the 1950s, and we have many female elders and deacons, and also a woman lay pastor.)

It's for this reason that although I've attended our church for 18 years now, I've never officially joined as a member.  It's a technicality, I know.  We volunteer at our church, we attend services on average 1-2 times per month, we give them money.  It's kind of lame to say that I'm protesting their stand on gay ordination by refusing to join-- especially since probably not that many people realize that I'm not a member, and the ones that do probably don't know that this is why I refused to join.  But there it is.  Although there are many, many churches in our town, there are only a few that even allow ordination of women, so when we moved here, we didn't have many choices.   

Last July, the PC-USA General Assembly voted to change the wording of the Book of Order to allow gays/lesbians to be ordained-- actually, what they did was remove the words about marriage and singleness.  They've done this before, but approval by the General Assembly must be followed by ratification in a certain number of presbyteries (regions), just like a certain number of states must ratify any amendments to the U.S. constitution.  None of the previous efforts made it past this stage.  So we're all waiting to see what happens this time.  I am cautiously optimistic.  And I told our pastor that if it passed, I'd join.  At this late date, the idea makes me smile.  We'll see.

procrastination gyration

I'm writing a paper again, and it's due tomorrow, so I think I can assure you that this will be brief.  It's the first paper I've written since the one that went so badly at the end of last semester, so I'm feeling a little intimidated.  And especially because it's for the same professor-- whom I like very much, I have no complaints about her.  I'm just intimidated by her red pen, so to speak.

The encouraging thing is that the system that I had worked out by the end of last semester for getting a paper together is working really well.  The depressing thing is that I can't understand why it always comes down to the last minute.  Why do I do this to myself?  I very consciously set out not to do it this this time.  I set aside the entire weekend to work on this paper exactly so that I wouldn't end up at 9:15 the night before it was due with two or three hours of work still in front of me.  But here I am.  There's something about my brain, about the part of my brain that blurts out words to be typed into a paper, that just refuses to function until the proverbial gun is held to my head and I have to do it.

This paper is only has to be 7 pages or so, so it's not as huge a thing as it was at the end of last semester, when I had three twenty-page papers to finish in the space of ten days.  If I had one of them done a week ahead of time, it would have made all the difference in the world, but I just couldn't make myself sit down and do it.  I think it's dread.  Actually, I know it's dread.  I'm just not sure exactly what it is that I dread.  That the paper will be horrible?  that I'll make a bad grade?  that I won't like what I've written?  maybe all of the above.  But I really, really need to get it figured out before the end of the semester.  I only have two 20-page papers to write this time, plus a 10-page report of work for my independent study, but that's enough. 

Do you procrastinate?  Do you have any tricks you can share that you use to get yourself to work ahead?

in which AB does not finish what she attempted to start

A long time ago, not long after I started blogging, I wrote a post about the idea of sin. I had recently talked to a friend of mine, who is not at all religious in the conventional sense of the word, about how much she hated to attend regular church services because of the emphasis on sin, a concept she had no patience with.  So the post I wrote back in 2005 was basically a defense of the idea of sin, and the way I looked at it in my life.  At the time I wrote it, I thought it was the best post I'd written up to that point, and for a long time when I told someone about my blog, that was the post I would send them as an example of the kinds of things I was writing about.

But I went to the Ash Wednesday service at our church this last week, and I discovered to my surprise that my understanding of sin has changed.  I should maybe detour for a minute here and talk about why I still go to church.  I haven't written much about religion or spirituality recently because not much has changed.  The post I wrote last summer-- in which I talked about how I both believe and don't believe at the same time-- still pretty much covers how I think today. I've grown used to the feeling now, the oxymoronic believe/don't believe combination.  It makes complete sense to me on an intuitive level. But when I try to put it into words, it becomes stupidly complex.  It starts to sound like double-speak, like talking out both sides of my mouth.  So I've taken the easy way out and just not written much about it recently.

But it's still something I think about all the time.  Daily.  An online acquaintance of mine calls it being a Spiritual Atheist.  I hesitate to use the term myself, because the word "Atheist"--although it certainly applies to some of my opinions-- conjures up a response in other people that has nothing to do with what I mean.  "Agnostic" still comes the closest I think-- not in the popular sense of the word, which seems to be "don't care enough to have an opinion," but in the literal sense of the word ("a- gnostic," can't know or don't know):  I believe in certain experiences that I've had that could be described as spiritual, but I don't know how to define exactly what they "mean." 

Sheesh.  I really didn't mean to get off on this.  I guess that's what happens when you don't post about something for months and months-- you have a lot of catching up to do.   So if I'm an agnostic, or a Spiritual Atheist, or an oxyMoron ;-), why do I still go to church?  Well, honestly, the short answer is:  because if I don't go for three or four Sundays, I miss it.   We're not the most regular attenders.  We're certainly not there every week.  But if it gets to be more than three weeks, I start to yearn for it.  There's something about sitting in the sanctuary, a space dedicated to the acknowledgment of something vastly outside our piddly little selves, that is meaningful to me.  It would work for me to just go in to the sanctuary when it was empty and sit for awhile by myself, but I find it more effective and more meaningful when I'm there with the music and the readings, sharing the experience with others.  They may not be of the same opinions as me, but we're united at some level in spirit.  It's centering and restorative for me.  (That's the "short" answer-- the long answer is in the second half of this post). 

I haven't even come close to talking about the issue I originally sat down to type about.  But it's late and my brain is about to shut off, and as I've been typing, I've thought of several more directions this could go.  So maybe this will be another two- or three- parter.  More later.  Probably not till Wednesday at least, though.

the jig is up, the news is out, they finally found me

The insanity of what I'm doing-- driving 500+ miles per week, at almost 50 years old, to take classes with a bunch of kids many of whom are less than half my age, so that I *might* be able to get a job that I'm not even sure I will like-- is always apparent to me.  But more so at some moments than others, and never more so than today, when I raced around (as usual) getting ready to go this morning, popped a couple of advil and a magnesium to ward off a headache and a couple of zinc to head off yet another cold, dropped my son off at school and drove two+ hours to UTown, walked the mile from the free parking lot to the building where my class is, sat down at an empty table to finish reading the last three pages of our reading assignment that I just could not hold my eyes open for at 12:30 last night, and then walked up the stairs for class only to find out it was cancelled. 

And oddly, I'm back into the student mindset enough that I couldn't help but feel a leap of happiness-- even more strongly than the frustration.  Woot!  No class!  So here I am, in the student center, writing a blog post, because I cannot get right back in the car and drive home.  On Thursdays I only have one class, and that was it.  Even on the days when I actually have the class, I can't make myself drive straight home.  I usually hang out in the student center or the bookstore for an hour or so, then go to the bagel place (no good bagels in our town), then head home around 2:00 or so.

So let's see if I can think of something interesting to say.  Hmmmmm... the long-stewing half-written post with further thoughts on feminism?  a summing up of why some people think Ulysses is the greatest novel of the twentieth century?  (which I never felt I could write before because I hadn't actually read it)(but NOW I HAVE!! yay!).  an update on the plans to visit our daughter in Prague in June? (we bought the tickets!! woo-hoo! but there's a long complicated story involved, including an explanation of the Schengen area, which might just bore you to tears).  An update on the audiobooks I've been listening to? (to which I've listened?)  a rant about how as soon as the temperature rises above 40 degrees around here, they start working on the roads? (with no warning, suddenly there was a five minute construction stop about halfway here). 

Oh, I know-- I never told you about DH's 50th birthday party.  It was a couple of weeks ago.  His best friend--whom we met in 1984, and who went through many years of professional training with dh, then spent a few years living in the Southwest, and now lives across the street from us with his wife and three kids--was born exactly one day before DH.  So his wife (the subject of this post) and I usually plan something together for their birthdays, and since this year was the big five-oh, we had been pondering the occasion for quite awhile.  At one point we were going to take a trip.  then we were going to rent a condo up on the ski slopes and have an après-ski party.  But shortage of funds nixed both those plans, so we ended up deciding to just have a party.  We invited about 80 people and I'm pretty sure there were at least 65 people there. 

It was a lot of fun, even for me, the anti-social one.  DH had a ball.  The party wasn't a surprise, but I bought a plane ticket home for dear daughter, and that was a surprise, which was fun.  We had it at their house, which made my life much simpler.  If you aren't a party person yourself, DH's BFF's wife is the perfect person to give a party with, because she is amazingly awesome and did about 75% of the work.  My contributions were a) the invitations, which were way cool if I do say so myself; b) to clean up our house and provide kid-friendly food so all the kids could hang out at our place while the adults were across the street; and c) to come up with an iPod playlist for the party music.  b) ended up being something of a bust because the kids didn't want to be across the street, they wanted to be at the party.  So we ended up with a clean house and a bunch of kid food out of that one.  And c) the iPod playlist was useless because it was so noisy I never even plugged my iPod in.  So a) the invitations were pretty much my only contribution.

But putting the playlist together was like a trip right back to high school.  DH and I had pretty different taste in music back then (we didn't know each other yet, we met our jr year in college)-- he liked Kansas, REO Speedwagon, Styx and Journey; I liked... oh, dear, am I going to admit to this in public?  all the pop stuff-- Elton John, Chicago, Earth Wind & Fire, Ohio Players (Rollercoaster! of Love!), and.... Barry Manilow.  I can still sing all the way through on "Weekend in New England" (although now I crack up when I get to "with YOU there's a HEAVEN, so earth AIN'T SO BAAAAD!!")  When I was in college I retroactively changed my taste in 70s music to Led Zeppelin, the Stones, and Clapton, but at the time I even liked Olivia Newton-John.  It shames me to remember, and I can't believe I just told you.

So anyway.  I listen to the Stones and LedZep and Clapton all the time, but I hadn't listened to all that other stuff in a very long time.  So my new 70s playlist has been on near constant rotation while I'm driving.  Lorelei let's live together, and can't smile without you, and if you leave me now and so HERE I AM with OPEN ARMS hoping you'll see what your love means to me.... Ah, the good old days.  Just kind of makes you want to grab somebody and sway gently under a disco light while plastered to each other's sweaty bodies , doesn't it?  (Those weren't on the party playlist, of course, because they aren't exactly party music, not like *ahem*  YMCA and Sisters Sledge.)

aaaaaand it's done

I finished it!  finally!  the last chapter (of Ulysses) is about 40 pages with no punctuation, all told from the point of view of Bloom's wife.  It actually wasn't as hard to read as I thought it would be.  yay!  *happy dance*

Reading Report: Feb 2011

March 6th it is, and I'm just now posting the reading report.  It's been that kind of week.  I've been buried in academic reading, so you may not get any good recommendations, but here 'tis.

Jane Austen-- Lady Susan, Northanger Abbey, Sense and Sensibility, Pride and Prejudice.  It's like Nirvana, yes?  Oh, damn, I have to read Sense and Sensibility this weekend.  Poor me.  Lady Susan, which I'd never even heard of before this semester, is an early novel, written in epistolary style (i.e., the whole thing is letters that the characters write back and forth to each other).  It has an extremely rushed ending, but other than that, it is surprisingly good for an Austen novel you've never heard of, and in some ways funnier than her later stuff.  And it's short.  Worth picking up if they have it at your library and you need a quick snarky read.  Northanger Abbey is a parody of the popular romances of the time.  I found it the most tedious read of the ones we've done so far, but it still had some great moments.  I suspect it would be funnier if I had read Castle of Otranto or Mysteries of Udolpho (which were the popular romances of Austen's time), but I haven't, and I didn't have time.  I already wrote about S&S, and P&P... well.  It's brilliant.  There was a thread on Facebook recently between a friend of mine and a bunch of her other friends about how they'd never been able to get through it and they couldn't understand why everyone loves it so much.  I don't understand how you couldn't.  It's not exactly a quick read, especially not at first while you're getting used to her slower pace.  And unfortunately, she has a habit of leaving out the scenes that turn into the best scenes in the movies  (In the movie of S&S, when Emma Thompson totally loses it when Hugh Grant comes back?  (which has to be one of the most brilliantly acted scenes ever) Not in the book.  Not kidding.  the Emma Thompson character is so overcome with emotion that she runs out of the room before she can break down.)  So I suppose if you saw the movie first and then tried to read the book, you'd be disappointed. But I'm not.  I adore these books.

OK.  I think I've gushed enough over Austen.

Alias Grace by Margaret Atwood.  I read this when it came out twenty-ish years ago and thought it was way too depressing and didn't particularly care for it.  But I had to read it for my FemLitCrit class this semester and loved it this time.  It's definitely not a feel-good, cheerful novel-- it's about a young woman who has been convicted of a grisly murder, and the psychiatrist who tries to cure her of her amnesia so she can remember what happened.  But it's far from the dark, despairing novel that I remembered.  I'm not sure why I read it that way twenty years ago.  In fact, probably my main objection to it this time is that it ends a little too neatly.  I can't say anything more than that without spoilers.  Highly recommended.

Ulysses update.  Yes, I'm still reading it.  It goes on and on and on.  It's basically the story of one day in the lives of two men, Leopold Bloom and Stephen Dedalus.  During the day, Stephen has various deep conversations with different people and ends up drinking with medical student friends at a maternity hospital.  Bloom, who has spent the day going to a funeral, eating lunch, and masturbating on the beach as he watches a beautiful young woman, has also been avoiding going home to his wife, whose lover has been to the house during the afternoon.  Bloom goes to the maternity hospital to check on a woman he knows who is delivering there and ends up sitting with Stephen and his friends as they get progressively more drunk--although Bloom himself imbibes very little.  Bloom, feeling protective of Stephen, follows him to the red light district of Dublin, where there is a long, astonishingly inventive dream sequence that takes place in a brothel.  Now Bloom and Stephen are sitting in a cheap coffee house.  Bloom is hoping Stephen will sober up a little, and he is still avoiding going home and avoiding even thinking about what happened during the afternoon.  It's brilliantly done, but it isn't easy to read, and I can't possibly recommend it.  You'd kill me.  But if you're determined to read it, let me know and I'll let you know my strategy (for what it's worth, which may not be much).  It involves two commentaries, a paraphrase, a dictionary, and the book itself.

And on a more fun note:  (sorry, this is getting long).

Dream a Little Dream, Susan Elizabeth Phillips.  I've read enough SEP novels to know that I almost never like the way they begin and the way they end, but the in-betweens are good enough that I keep reading them.  This time, I figured I could get the setup off the back cover, so I started reading on about page 75, which worked really well.  The story is about Rachel Stone, who is the widow of a corrupt televangelist. She returns with her young son to the small town where they lived, where almost everyone hates her for the way her husband (and by implication, her) fleeced them out of all kinds of money.  She is so broke that she and her son are living in her car.  She has to find the last bit of her husband's fortune, which she's convinced is hidden in the house where they lived.  Their house has been sold, and Gabe Bonner, a widower who has unwillingly hired her to help him renovate an old drive-in movie theater, just happens to be the caretaker of the house.

There is also a secondary romance between Gabe's brother, a local pastor, and his church secretary. As with most of Phillips' novels, the secondary romance is almost more interesting than the primary one, although in this case it may have meant more to me because of my background.  The brother-pastor is questioning his faith, and has an ongoing conversation in his head with God, in the persons of Clint Eastwood, Oprah, and somebody else whom I'm forgetting.  It's a little weird, but I thought it worked pretty well, and his moment of resolving his faith--although hardly an in-depth analysis of faith issues-- worked well enough that I could buy it.  It will remind you of The Shack, if you've read that, except that it is about a gazillion times more believable than The Shack was, partly because rather than stretching the metaphor till it breaks, Phillips lets it be a low-key, not-too-serious sideline to the main story.

But where the story really got me is the relationship between Gabe and Rachel's son.  I was sobbing by the time they got it resolved.  I thought it was beautifully done, and believable.  And that's where I should have stopped reading.  Because once again Phillips managed to write an ending that all but ruined the book for me.  I could go on and on about what bugged me about it-- tantalizing details that are thrown out and then dumped without resolution, a tacked-on crisis that serves no purpose, big moments that fizzle (after a long, tense night, Gabe's brother volunteers to keep the kid so Rachel and Gabe can go home and talk things out. So what do they do?  in the next scene, Rachel is TAKING A NAP and Gabe is out working in the yard).  When they finally do have their big talk, Rachel insists that Gabe talk about how much better she is than his dead first wife.  Not kidding.  Suffice it to say, yuck.  Now that it's been a couple of weeks since I read it, I will say that the middle 300 pages is good enough that I'd still say it's worth reading, especially if little niggling details don't bother you as much as they bother me.  But if you talked to me the day after I read it, I would have told you to burn it.  Next time I may not only skip the first 75 pages, but also stop reading 50 pages before the end.