TW said Cleaning Nabokov’s House wasn’t very good. I ignored her and started reading it anyway and immediately liked it – depressing though it was in the beginning. I’d like a sequel but I guess that won’t happen. I’d like to know what happens to the kids – and the dogs.
I would also like to read a book about Babe Ruth written by Nabokov. What WOULD that be like?
Cleaning Nabokov’s House Read More »
And I was doing so well…
There’s really no excuse for me to have blown it. I managed to blog every single work day in July. I managed to blog on really busy kid schedule days. I managed to blog during emotional chaos.
But yesterday – a slow, quiet, normal, boring day – I did not blog.
To have gone 15 days and then blow it for no good reason at all is probably the worst thing I can imagine – but it’s also the most normal thing in the world. I’m really good at pulling it out during the busy, stressful days – and really good at dropping the ball on the slow days.
Which might also explain why I prefer working vacations… right?
So do I try to go back to the daily blogging or do I just give it up and call it a good try?
Nablopomo bites the dust Read More »
It’s really hard to talk about The Eve Tree without talking about Journey Mama – even though they are not the same thing.
The book is not the blog. Molly is not Rae. The Eve Tree is not the albino tree, though I have to say when The Eve Tree first appeared in the book, I was confused – I remembered an albino tree from Rae’s blog – an albino redwood, not a black oak and I had to stop what I was doing and go look on the blog to make sure I hadn’t just misremembered. And then I got distracted by reading some of the old posts on Journey Mama, which is really just what I needed right then because Molly had stressed me out. That wasn’t a bad thing. I think it was a good thing.
I want to read a book where the characters get under my skin – and Molly did. Oh boy, Molly did.
And then there was the fire.
I have fire issues.
I often smell fire just before I fall asleep – which means I have to get up and make sure there is no fire. (There isn’t.)
And I wake in the middle of the night from a dream where the bed is on fire. (It isn’t.)
Even with all of that anxiety, caused by Molly and the fire, underneath it all was that thing that has caused me to read Journey Mama – life, and peace, and spirit and love.
The Eve Tree is exactly the kind of novel you would expect Rae to write. Her characters are exactly right – honest and real but not perfect. They’re struggling with that imperfection and struggling with love and faith.
I breathed a sigh at the end – one of those sighs of relief and happiness and sadness all rolled up into one. You know the kind I mean, right – something like this?
I woke up at 4am and I don’t know why. I did go back to sleep for a bit but I was at my desk shortly before 6am.
My phone rang before 8am, waking TW up since I left my phone in the bedroom.
The day… it went downhill from there.
Oh it wasn’t that it was bad, really. It was just stressful and now I’m exhausted.
But the day isn’t over. We need to go to the grocery store and we are taking the youngest child to dinner. I promised ice cream, too.
I’d really like to head to bed and hide under the covers.
It’s been that kind of day.
I never really liked Bingo when I was a kid. I had some sort of a Bingo game – something with cardboard Bingo cards and little cardboard discs to cover numbers. I only vaguely remember it and I think you called numbers by turning over a little cardboard tile. Boring.
I may have also had one of those much cooler car versions where you slide a little sheet of colored plastic across the numbers, though maybe I only had some version where you covered a picture of a cow, or a flag or something – as you drove along on your trip.
I might have liked Bingo better if I’d had a cool tumbler with little balls or disks. I like those tumbler thingies. I also prefer to be the caller rather than the card player. I like control and who has more control in a Bingo game than the caller?
I’ve never played Bingo as an adult – not even with my kids. I’ve never been to a Bingo parlor or to a church or school with Bingo players. I’ve never really understood the attraction.
So why in the hell am I playing Bingo on Facebook – every single day?
The answer is… I have no damn idea.
Or maybe I do – I’m a sucker for mothers. That’s why I’ve logged into Farmville or Frontierworld or CafeHoleintheWall or Cityscape or whatever the heck those Zynga games are called … pretty much every single day for a year. My mother made me do it.
This Bingo thing, it’s all @Sassymonkey’s mother’s fault. Yea. I’m playing Bingo for her mother – even @Sassymonkey isn’t playing Bingo for her own mother. I am a SUCKER for mothers.
Gah. Where is the 46 again? Is that “N” or “G”? Math is hard and so is Bingo, damn it.
Way back at the very beginning of the year, Sassymonkey asked what everyone was reading. Someone mentioned Little Bee and since I’d been seeing a lot of buzz (hah!) about the book, I decided to go ahead and add it to my reserve list.
The book arrived and I didn’t read it and I didn’t read it and I didn’t read it. It’s due back soon so I figured what the heck, I’d give it a try.
And I could not put it down.
It’s a hard book to talk about because I don’t want to give it away. You just need to read it for yourself.
A woman and a girl meet on a beach in Nigeria… and this is their story. Dual narrators – done beautifully.
At the first BlogHer Food, when was that? I’ve forgotten, this really cool HP printer was on display at a party hosted by Elise, Ree and Jaden and TW and I fell in love with it. But it was really expensive – of course it was, you’d expect the God of all Printers to be expensive. Flash forward several months and we saw one on sale at a Staples that was going out of business in Skokie. We could not resist and we brought it home.
We love that printer and it’s never given us a moment of trouble. All of the computers talk nicely to it and it talks nicely to them. Even the computers who come to visit for winter vacation have played well with the God Printer.
And then something bad happened.
We switched from ATT DSL to ATT u-verse and the God Printer seemed ok with that. Until a couple days later when suddenly none of the computers recognized the God Printer. The God Printer itself said it was online. It happily showed me its wireless networking report (six times). It was happy to connect to the internet with the apps hosted on the God Printer. It was simply the computers who refused to talk to it.
I spent HOURS trying to get the computers to recognize the God Printer. Tweaking settings, uninstalling, reinstalling and finally – all was right with the home network. The laptops all began to talk to the God Printer and much printing took place.
Until a few hours ago when I wanted to print out a coupon for $2 off of a rotisserie chicken.
The laptops insist that the God Printer is offline. The God Printer on the other hand has happily shown me it’s networking report (twice) and it connects happily to the internet via the apps.
It’s like some sort of Holy War here in my office and it’s making me crazy. Why can’t we all just get along?
The small children who live next door have a new swimming pool. I can’t see it. I can only hear the splashing and the squealing and the constant refrain from the youngest child, “Mom! Watch Me!”
Over and over and over again. “Mom! Watch This!” “Mom! Watch Me!” “Mom! Watch This!” Hours of “Mom! Watch Me!”
That reminds me of Christopher.
The boy spent most of his early childhood yelling for someone to watch him do something. Even when I WAS watching, he had to yell “Mom! Watch Me!”
Neither Jenn or Michelle felt the need to tell me to watch. They were either confident enough to know I was watching – or they just didn’t care. I am not really sure which it is. Maybe some combination of the two?
Christopher – I really was watching. I swear.
It’s true, I do not normally order pancakes. I don’t hate them and up here in pancake world, they often come on the side of egg orders and I like that just fine.
Today, however, I ordered pancakes — and just pancakes. But not any old, boring pancakes. These were special made just for me pancakes. Well it seemed like they were made just for me. They came with watermelon, which I love. And blue sprinkles, which I also really really like (all sprinkles should be blue!), and BBQ (yes, I said BBQ) and also with … sugar wafers.
I love sugar wafers.
I should really vow never to eat them again, like I did with ‘Nutter Butters, because if I buy a package I will eat the package — and I will not share.
I was nice and offered TW a bite of my sugar wafer today. She did not accept, I don’t know why. If someone offered ME a bit of a sugar wafer, I would not say no. Nuh uh. I love sugar wafers.
And I’ve decided that pancakes should always come with BBQ and with sugar wafers. Always.
Yes, I Ordered Pancakes Read More »
I’m on a roll here, aren’t I? Another book I wanted to love but just didn’t, though I think for significantly different reasons.
Have you read Getting to Happy, Terry McMillan’s sequel to Waiting to Exhale? I read it for the BlogHer Book Club and wish I had liked it better.
Getting to Happy – Another Book I Did Not Love Read More »