denise

Curmudgeonalia

2 Comments / Books in Bed, Bookstores /

On Friday when I was checking to see if Cedar Key had added any new vegetarian restaurants to their tiny town, I stumbled upon the Curmudgeonalia website and blog. I think all bookstores ought to be blogging, don’t you?

So when TW said to me very late on Friday night, “You didn’t pack many books this time” I knew we were going to be book shopping at Curmudgeonalia the next day.

The first thing you should know about the Curmudgeon is that he does look very much like the cute little Curmudgeon on the website and he acts pretty curmudgeonly too, in the nice way that curmudgeons are. Quirky, outspoken, cranky but interesting sorts of people. Only interesting people should own bookstores, that should be a law.

The next thing you should know is that the Curmudgeonalia store is a tiny little thing with an interesting array of books. There was a nice selection of books about Florida, nice selection of young adult books. The young children’s selection was a little weak, in my humble opinion, but since I didn’t have any young children with me I didn’t particularly mind that.

The Curmudgeon offers internet access on one of his computers and it’s a wee bit pricey though he has a nice note on his computer telling you how much you’d pay for the service at an airport (apparently he hasn’t heard about all the folks grabbing free wifi in airports lately). It’s a nice service because there simply was no connection to be had on the island and there was a moment when I thought I might avail myself of it to email my kids because my cell phone also wasn’t working. But, I resisted spending the $10 and we bought books instead. 😉

TW bought “The Passionate Vegetarian” and the Curmudgeon told us all about the author’s days as a strung out hippy in Haight Asbury and how she’s made a gazillion dollars with a hotel and B&B in Arkansas and how interesting she is because he’s met her a few times. TW also bought “How We Eat” which is going to provide me with all sorts of inspiration for work. I bought “Tellable Cracker Tales” and “Florida’s Fabulous Natural Places” for the kids. I wonder if I can convince the kids to “retell” these Cracker Tales in a podcast…. I bet RJ would do it!

If you find yourself in Cedar Key, Florida then you must check out Curmudgeonalia and the Curmudgeon who runs the place. I bet you will find it as interesting as we did.

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Weekend Reading

Books in Bed, Reading Lists /

books-002.jpg Sassymonkey posted her TBR list so I thought I’d share a photo of the books on my TBR shelves. There are four more waiting at the library for me and two not on the shelf because TW and I are currently reading them. 😉

We are going away for the weekend and I expect to get some reading done. Here’s what I just tossed into the suitcase for the weekend (all hardbacks, ugh):
A Walk in the Woods – Bryson
Until I Find You – Irving
The Virgin of Bennington – Norris
Envy – Harrison
Never Let Me Go – Ishiguro
Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close – Foer
Looking Back – Lowry

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Daily Dose of Life – Arghhh!

Holidays, Kid Talk, Pet Peeves, Pets /

It all started at 1am when I woke with a blinding sinus headache. I thought I was going to DIE. I don’t do well with OTC meds but I was in serious pain so I searched the bathroom for those little red death pills and came up empty. Settled for little pink benadryl and somehow fell asleep around 2am. Woke again at 5am still feeling the pain but dozed through it til the alarm went off.

Made it through the initial morning rounds – dogs, cats, coffee, morning posts, email, blogs. All was right with the world, even if my head felt like it was about to burst. Stopped at Starbucks for my fix, took TW to work and spent $30 to fill up the gas tank.

Came home and went into the bedroom to read my blog feeds on the laptop since I was ahead of schedule. Finished that and headed back to the office to get back to work. Uh oh. My computer screen was black. Power light was on but the pretty blue windows wallpaper and my cluttered desktop were nowhere to be seen. Just blackness.

I moved the mouse. Still blackness. I clicked the keyboard. Still blackness. I fiddled with the monitor settings. You guessed it, blackness. I turned off the power button, waited a minute and turned it back on. Blackness. Turned it off and fiddled with wires. Black, black, black. (insert profanity)

It’s an all in one that TW’s mom bought me a couple of years ago and I love it or I did until this happened. I had 3/4 of a report on that thing! I had my metrix for the report on that thing. I had work for next week half way completed so that TW and I can take the weekend off and hit the beach before Michelle comes home next week. All of that work and on a kid crazy, school pick up, little kid birthday day!

(insert a lot of profanity)

I went back to the laptop in the bedroom and struggled along. Recreated my report. Scraped up an old metrix spreadsheet and recreated. Struggled along some more. Wrote to Gateway about my poor black screen computer. Worked some more. Took a break to wrap birthday presents for E. Worked some more. Took a red pill of death that TW found this morning before she went to work. Struggle, struggle, struggle.

1:15, time to drive across town and pick up the girls from their school. Got disgusted with a woman who sought my white face out of a crowd of non-white faces to complain about the way folks triple parked during pick up. I love NYC, triple parking doesn’t faze me a bit but her assumption that another white face would agree with her – well that bugged me. (I hope it is not her son’s birthday party we are suppose to attend next weekend)

Got home at 2:30 and struggled through work for another 45 minutes while assisting RJ with homework, fixing snack for both girls, talking to E about her birthday presents and just general life with kid stuff.

Drove to the other side of town to pick up J from school and from there picked up TW at work so she could come home and make E’s birthday cookie with her. Ha. We hadn’t been home long when E discovered the evil dog who ate the cuties earlier in the week had EATEN HER BRAND NEW BACKPACK! sigh

I shut down the work I had been trying to do and jumped in the car. “I think we got that backpack at Target, or maybe Walmart” says RJ. I figure Target. I figured wrong. Luckily Walmart is in the same vicinity as Target so I head there. Target was empty. Walmart was PACKED. No Lisa Frank backpacks! No cutie backpacks at all! They couldn’t have gone to Kmart, it’s not their style! Where did they get that thing???? I was about to give up and head to Kmart when I saw a huge bin of backpacks near the electronics with some bright pink and bright blue in the middle. Paydirt. Lisa Frank – but no pink ones with some funky looking girl and a poodle. I grabbed a light blue one with a CUTIEEEEEEEEEEEE dog on it and hoped for the best.

Drove home, showed it to E, apologizing profusely when she said “I like this one better!” Yea! Crisis averted. So I’m repacking the new backpack and say “Where’s your lunchbox.” Silence. He didn’t. Yes, he did. He ate that too.

Back in the car I go. Back to Walmart. By now it’s 6pm and traffic is umm bad. Walmart is even more crowded than before and again, no Lisa Frank lunchboxes! grrrr! No cutie lunchboxes AT ALL. I’m thinking I’m going to have to drive in the other direction across town and try the other Walmart when I see a wee bit of pink underneath the Spidey lunchboxes. Ha! A Lisa Frank lunchbox just like the backpack Jake ate! It’s not the ugly purple Lisa Frank but surely she will like this since it is the same design as the original backpack, right???

I pay. I drive home. She giggles. Funny. Oh yea, I’m laughing my rear off here as my head threatens to explode some more.

We light the candles on the birthday cookie. We eat. I make a wish that she really was still 4 as she blows out her candles. I don’t know what she wished for but it had better not be another Lisa Frank backpack or lunchbox. I don’t think I can handle that.

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Daily Dose of Books – Blogs

2 Comments / Books in Bed /

I spend time with some friends on a message boards, imagine that. We post about our day. We rant about our kids. We argue with each other about parenting and religion and politics and even blogging. (I am always right though and they should know better than to argue with me but they still do it. Probably because they just like to argue even when they know they are wrong.) We take silly quizzes. We wish each other “Happy Birthday” (though I’m bad at remembering to do this). You name it we have or we will talk about it there. And as much as we all enjoy the message boards, it just hasn’t worked well when it comes to talking about books and keeping track of our books.

Sassymonkey mentioned a book blog and I told her I’d been thinking of it. She told me to do it, so I did. Then, our pal Katie the librarian started one and now sassymonkey has one too. Now skeeter and ghir and gam need book blogs, don’t they?! Yes. They. Do.

Our little message board community has moved to blogs! We have a little book blog network going on! I love it! I am thinking community indicator… how about you?

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Daily Dose of Health – Podcast

Health and Wellness /

Kerry and Jackie launched Crohn’s Talk #2 yesterday! Kerry tallks about going back on Methotrexate, the differences between Crohn’s & Colitis and more! Jackie talked to us about STRESS, (a huge topic for folks and families living with Crohn’s and Colitis).

Again, my favorite part is when the scripts were put down and they talked about recent news articles and such. Keep up the great work, you two! I’ve enjoyed both shows and look forward to the next one.

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Daily Dose of Kids – Birthdays

Holidays, Kid Talk, Pets /

E’s birthday is tomorrow. She will be 7 which seems wrong. She should still be 4. She doesn’t believe me though. This is annoying. Kids should believe me when I tell them important things like this. If she had believed me we could have avoided all of the madness that was today.

E decided she wanted mommy to make the cupcakes for school. She decided this over the weekend and while we did go out to run errands this weekend, we didn’t see anything that looked good for cupcake toppers for her. (Cupcake toppers are especially important for E’s cupcakes because she is like me, she doesn’t really like cake and she cannot tolerate cake with icing AT ALL. So, she wants just plain cupcakes with something “cute” on top and just a little colored powdered sugar on top)

The kids are with their dad today so after I fought the “move in day” traffic on the University and picked up TW at work we battled the horrendous traffic on Archer Rd and went to the Factory Card Outlet. I didn’t have much hope that we’d find something and I was right, not a thing that would work for E. Michaels right next door was the next stop but I wasn’t feeling hopeful because I remembered doing this last year when we were looking for fish to go on top of her cupcakes. Fish are easy but we had to go to 8 stores before we found something that worked.

So, we wandered every aisle in Michaels and began really grasping at straws. “Denise, can you create a rat stencil?” “Who me??? Ha!” “Hey TW, what about finding small markers and sticking one in each cupcake like a candle?” (eye rolling was the response to that) “Do we have to have toppers? Can’t we just buy these mini black velvet marker kits and put one under each cupcake?” “Sigh, if we have to.”

We’d almost given up and I was thinking we were gonna have to use those dumb rainbow rubber balls that we bought last year when we thought we’d never find fish. Ha, look! In the clearance rack! CUTIESSSSSSSSSSSSSSS! I grabbed a handful and ran through the store in search of TW. “LOOK! How about these!!” “Yes!” So we went back to the rack and chose 20 “cuties”. (Cuties is what E will call these flocked tiny little animals, cutiesssssss is what E says about anything tiny and animal and furry)

Deep sighs of happiness as we checked out. We ate dinner at Falafel King and hit Publix for a cake mix and eggs and whatever else it was TW said we needed and drove home. We checked our RSS feeds. Tried to call the kids’ father (who had called while we were out). Tried to call TW’s mom (who had called while we were out). Home maybe 15 minutes and TW went back into the kitchen to make the cupcakes while I went back to work on my boards.

“Denise! WE HAVE A PROBLEM!!!” “huh? what problem” “THE DOGS ATE THE CUTIES!!!”

sigh

sigh

sigh

I got back in the car and drove back to Michaels. I got replacement cuties. The cashier cheerfully asked me how my evening was. I growled. I couldn’t help it. Then I felt bad for growling at the poor girl and explained what had happened. She laughed. The cashier 3 rows away burst into hysterical laughter. The other people in line laughed. I growled some more. Soooo not funny.

If the darn kid had just listened to me and believed me when I said she is not going to be 7, she’s just going to be 4 then we wouldn’t be in this situation. We could have sent regular cupcakes and gift bags and all sorts of fun little kid toys to preschool rather than cupcakes with funky tops on them. Next year I’m going to tell her she’s 18 and too old for cupcakes.

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Daily Dose of Education – New Schools

Community Chest, Kid Talk, News and Politics /

All three of the small children started new schools on Monday. All three are attending “magnet” schools that are rather far away. His highness attends a middle school about 15 minutes from here and the girls attend an elementary school that is 20 minutes from here. The middle school has a pretty wide range of kids, in terms of economic and social status but the girls’ elementary school is, well, it is in a minority neighborhood and the majority of students are minority. The magnet students have classes in one building, not in the same building with the “neighborhood kids”. Some of the magnet classes do join the “neighborhood” for specials like PE, Music, etc… There are soooo many things to say about this that I just can’t even start. So instead, I’ll tell you two little stories that were shared by the girls after day one.

RJ is in 4th grade and when TW said “what happened in school today,” RJ said “There was a crime scene at school and there was an outline of a dead body!” It’s hard to know what the right thing to say is when your child makes this announcement on day one at her new school, ya know? TW seemed to manage ok because after a bit more of RJ rambling about this, it turns out this was an actual school activity. No, they didn’t kill anyone in the name of education. It was an observation/detective work type activity of some sort. No real crime, that we know of, was committed. Although, I personally find it troubling that they chose this particular activity for this particular group of kids in this particular school. I am afraid I’m going to have some difficulty keeping my social and class issues to myself…

Then, on the way to school this morning, E (who is in 2nd grade) said that her teacher told her that one year she had a student who would scream and yell and cry and crawl under the tables when she did not get her way. And the teachers finally figured out how to handle that. They discovered that if they quickly shoved something in her mouth, she would stop pitching a fit. Ummm, huh? TW and I were both quiet for a moment. Again, what to say… I asked, “what exactly did they shove into her mouth?” E said, “food!” Oh thank goodness, the light bulb went off and I said BLOOD SUGAR, it was her BLOOD SUGAR. Sheesh.

These kids, I swear they will be the death of me. Or maybe it is this school. We didn’t have these issues with Mrs F…

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Vanishing Acts

2005, Books in Bed, Favorites, Fiction /


I’ve been a Jodi Picoult fan since the days of women.com. Kyra wandered onto a board one day and talked and talked and talked about The Pact. She talked so much about it that I went out and bought it in hardback and read it immediately. I’ve been hooked ever since on Picoult. (And I still own that hardback of The Pact and think of Ky every time I see it on the shelf.)

Vanishing Acts is not my favorite of Picoult’s library of family/relationship fiction. It’s pretty low on the list now that I think about it. I tend to enjoy Picoult telling the story from various points of view but this time none of the characters seem to see a single flaw in Delia (the woman who discovers her father kidnapped her from her mother when she was a child). Nobody is perfect, except Delia.

I saw some reviews that suggested the scenes from jail were too long and too violent and a distraction from the rest of the story. I didn’t feel that way at all. If those were glossed over and all was fine and dandy in prison, I’d have found that pretty unbelievable, ya know?

I wonder, did Picoult really need to add the scene where she “loses” her own child? Or toss in the “disclosure” from Andrew on the witness stand? Just a little too much, I think.

If you are a Picoult fan, you won’t really be sorry to read this. But, if you haven’t read any of her novels then I recommend you try My Sister’s Keeper or The Pact first.

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