OK, I joined bookcrossing, because the idea has intrigued me for quite some time, and I have a copy of The Perfect Storm and a copy of Into Thin Air, both of which I piicked up at the local library sale for a grand total of 2 bucks, and I am going to register them and release them. One probably on the Pitt campus, and one someplace I take my kids. We'll see if anything interesting comes of it.
posted by BabelBabe @ 1:57 AM
2 comments
why did it never occur to me that my four-year-old never expected NOT to get his desired drumset from Santa? (Is that too many negatives to follow?)I was anticipating joy, shrieking, maybe even tears of joy - however, early this morning he nonchalantly took note of the drumset next to the tree and picked up a wrapped present to rip open. It's not that he was ungrateful or didn't care - he just never in a gazillion years thought Santa would not bring a nice little boy such as himself the drumset he so wanted, and the only thing he'd asked for for the past 6 months. Santa did not, however, bring Mama the requested extra-large bottle of valium and professional-strength earplugs.
Simon went to his first church service yesterday - his first Christmas Eve service. Now he knows all about the baby Jesus and even volunteered during the homily (appropriately, when asked) that there were sheep in the stable when Jesus was born. He dug the stained glass windows of grown-up Jesus preaching to the crowds, and the Ascension, which he actually thought was Jesus taking a quick dip in the ocean. He tolerated the carols but seemed a little bummed that the only one he knew was Away in the Manger, and that they didn't sing Rudolph (which we had sung at the Christmas singalong at the church last Tuesday). Thank God Episcopalians don't go in much for crucifixes, I didn't have to go down that road with him, which is one good reason I did not take him to the church his dad attended while growing up since Catholics really love all that grisly imagery. Well, so do Baptists, to be fair. I vividly remember participating in grade school in a Christmas concert entitled, Born to Die. Those Baptists, they sure know how to do sweetness and light and love. To wrap up the service nicely, Simon threw up all over the vestry and the outside steps of the church. It's a good thing it's a church or we'd never be asked back.
So in yet another Christmas miracle, I got to stay home with my boys. Jude was in bed asleep by 7, Simon pretty shortly thereafter, bravely trying to not throw up, and to stay awake to catch Santa Claus. He did help me put out cookies for the man. Thank God my friend Debi brought us Christmas cookies (may I point out the irony of my Jewish friend delivering bags of Christmas cookies on Christmas Eve?) since I was too sick Thursday to bake a damn thing. And let me tell you, those cookies were good. I need to get Deb to get the recipe from her cookie exchange people, they were light and soft and very lemony. Yummy.
My husband nicely brought home dinner from his mother's (no, Gina, he left the tuna salad there). But he did drag home some horribly lemony crabcakes (good in cookies, not so much in crabcakes), some broiled-to-death salmon. Dan even pointed out that the crabcakes tasted like very strange fluffs of bread, an apt description. Have I mentioned that my mother-in-law is the ONLY Italian woman I have EVER met who can't cook worth a damn? Which is a shame because that might have been the only thing we potentially had in common, was the love of food. Only I love it so much I cook it well.
So we wrapped gifts and assembled the drumset and made a nice sausage-egg casserole thingey for brunch today, and here we are at 11 a.m. Two of my guys asleep, Simon downstairs playing with Jude's toys, and I am about to go conk out on the couch with the new Nick Hornby book Polysyllabic Spree which is all about books, and who reads what why. Not to mention that if you check previous posts, you'll see that syllabic is one of my favorite words. Polysyllabic is even better. Ah.
posted by BabelBabe @ 10:50 AM
2 comments
found this one when I was googling the entroposcope to find the link for our blog:
http://www.valentines.net/blogger.html
She's funny, and she's got a two-year-old. Someone on my wavelength (that would be the wavelength of braindead, no offense, Nicole. Her entry on Disney princesses is particularly a howl.)
Also my friend David's blog is pretty amusing but you might have to be a CMU alum to get it all, and truly appreciate David's sardonic wit concerning the evils of the CMU drama department.
http://mydaddidntliketheurl.blogspot.com/
Happy reading, all, and I hope other simpatico strangers are finding our blog. Oh, like Maura...hint, hint, woman!!
posted by BabelBabe @ 2:56 PM
1 comments
A friend who I'd like to remain nameless - ok, it's Suzanne, the heartless wench - recently gave me a pile of books and - here's the heartless part - one of them was signed by its author. Suzanne, honestly, how do you give away a book the author signed to you personally? It was Quakertown by Lee Martin and it was a pretty good book.
I have a couple signed books - Maureen Dowd's Bushworld (signed "Cobra"), Madeleine L'Engle's The Glorious Impossible, and all of Chris Smither's CDs. I would never give them up. How does anyone else feel about this?
And I always feel so sad when I buy a book at a secondhand store and there's an personal inscription from giver to givee. I hope my friends never give away the books I give them with inscriptions, and if you have, I don't want to know about it. I treasure the books people have given me with personal inscriptions - a dear, sweet friend from college gave me an inscribed copy of The Prophet and a volume of Jim Harrison's poetry. She promptly then tried to kill herself after freshman year and her father whisked her away and I have never been able to find her since. I'll never give the books away, they make me think fondly - and sadly- of Angela.
I even hung onto a copy of Robert Fulghum's All I Really Need to Know I Learned in Kindergarten from my first college boyfriend, who later smashed my heart into a million pieces (perhaps the gift of that book should have been ample warning but I was 19 and naive as all get out.) And I still have a beautiful copy of Poems of Childhood with illustrations by one of my favorite artists, Maxfield Parrish, that my true love (different guy, thank God) gave me after we broke up and I knew we were not going to ever get married.
Ah. Such sentimentalism. I seem to have enough to cover for Suzanne : ) Suzanne, what do you have to say for yourself?
posted by BabelBabe @ 10:44 AM
3 comments
I just sent an invitation to my friend Kate to see if she wants to play too. That thread about the words we love is thanks to her, afterall, so it only seemed fair. I suspect she does much more work at work than I do, but maybe she'll join us anyway.
posted by Gina @ 10:18 PM
1 comments
I know Christmas isn't even for...what? four...days, but I have already received my coolest gift, courtesy of Gina. The pumpkin bread was good, but nothing can hold a candle in coolness to my entroposcope. Yes, you heard me, an entroposcope of my very own. It doesn't get much better than that.
This is the funniest entroposcope-related link I've found, and it looks like it might be an amusing blog.
http://www.valentines.net/archive/2004_06_13_archive.html
posted by BabelBabe @ 4:36 PM
4 comments
My friend Kate just bought her sister a book of rare words, which got us to talking about the langauge in our happy, geeky way. She sent the above link, which we concluded is pretty bogus. I mean, isn't "mother" one of the most beautiful words in ANY language? And if the beauty of the word isn't based on the definition, what's so beautiful about "mother"?
Kate says she likes "flabbergasted", because it's fun to say. One of my favorites is "fisticuffs". Again, just something fun to say. I also wish more people said "spectacles".
I've always been fond of the sound of "longevity", especially because of the way the "long" part of it is broken up into the word's syllables; add to that the excitement of turning "long's" hard G into "longevity's" soft G, and the word is a big ball of excitement for a geek like me.
Words I can't abide: Moist. Falafel (not English, I realize, but it's a delicious food with the sound of the word "awful" in it--come on!). Panties.
Let's hear which words you guys love and hate . . .
posted by Gina @ 11:25 AM
7 comments
with my treadmill, that is. I hate it with a passion - what does anyone think of for half an hour as they scurry along like a hamster in its wheel? I want to know. I listened to the Spin Doctors today - so that entertained me mildly, wondering what that band's been doing for the past ten years?? But at the same time, without my dratted treadmill, I'd never run when my kids were home, and now I can. Jude is coughing like an old man with emphysema, and I couldn't send him out in the cold, but he still naps at least. So Mama runs, gets her endorphins, and everyone's happier. If still just as fat.
What does *anyone* think about when they exercise? I generally go blank. It makes me happy.
And one last thought: where do you spit when you're running on the treadmill?
posted by BabelBabe @ 1:08 PM
8 comments
I just finshed this book by Kate Atkinson. As I said before, I had attempted her Behind the Scenes at the Museum and it didn't interest me. I have to go back and try it again now.
Case Histories was a tightly-woven and suspenseful book, with an ending that was just barely not-too-pat. Great characters, too. And the main character, Jackson Brodie, is one intriguing man.
Check it out.
I am off to re-light our sadly non-fragrant but huge Christmas tree. Apparently three strands of lights just isn't going to do it. Simon is downstairs singing Christmas songs (and The Dreidel Song for good measure) TO the Christmas tree, which he has informed me is a boy tree named Rudolph. Whoo-boy. And why did I think he'd have trouble grasping the concept of Santa Claus??
posted by BabelBabe @ 3:03 PM
1 comments
Who are the top five fictional characters you'd be happy to, ahem, have a relationship with? I need some time on this one. I've got a list as long as my arm and need to pare it down. I know, I'm sick. And I need to get a life.
posted by BabelBabe @ 8:46 AM
5 comments
OK, spill the beans...
in no particular order, the top five authors you'd be happy to bonk (see Gina's Tom Wolfe pic below for inspiration : ))
Mine are, hmmm, let's see -
Jasper Fforde (The Eyre Affair)
Salman Rushdie...I know, I know, but the man is brilliant and *sort of* cute, even with those eyelids...or maybe it's because of the eyelids....
Arthur Phillips, based solely on one interview and his author pic. I am only a third of the way thru Prague.
Randolph Ash - I know he's a fictional author, but hey, it's my question.
Hmmm... picking my fifth is the hardest because you have to leave out so many -
maybe Edith Wharton (no, I have no idea what she looked like but who cares after reading House of Mirth?). Or in the same vein, Henry James. (Obviously I mean, pre-death) Maybe JK Rowling...hmmm...no, I am going to have to go with Jon Krakauer. Sorry.
posted by BabelBabe @ 8:23 AM
7 comments
I know it's irrational, but I feel like I would be a much better citizen and mother if this were in my basement, right next to a ball of twine and a pair of scissors.
Am I the only person who has these freaky, quasi-talisman things? Is this the same as feeling that I'd be happier/better if my closet were filled with well-tailored, designer clothes? It doesn't FEEL the same . . .
Can you tell that I just figured out how to include pictures in the blog? :-)
posted by Gina @ 3:32 PM
8 comments
.
I'm sorry, but this picture makes me laugh. I could look at it all day, pretending to make him recite from his award-winning sex scenes. And you should hear the voice I've given him. Good times . . .
posted by Gina @ 2:20 PM
1 comments
books going back to the library today that I READ:
IceBlink by Scott Cookman. Fairly interesting book on the fate of the Franklin expedition to discover the Northwest Passage in the early 1800s. Turns out their canned provisions were laden with botulism. Hell of a way to go but from the sound of it, faster than scurvy which was the most prevalent scourge. I found the book interesting but it seemed full of conjecture to me. It had all sorts of extra stuff at the back - provision list, expedition manifest, but I question the hard evidence. Not that it's not a fascinating conjecture. Most explorers just froze to death. So instead of saying, "I am just going outside and I may be a while." they could say, "I am just going to eat this can of soup, I may be a while." Sorry, explorer humor. I should stop reading these books. Yet next up is Beryl Bainbridge's Birthday Boys, a fictionalized account of the (also doomed) Scott expedition.
Also going back to the library is Mary Kay Andrews' Savannah Blues. God are her books fun. This one was just as fun as Hissy Fit but not as funny.
And I started a book by Kate Atkinson last night, Case Histories. I picked it up randomly at the library because it looked good..I have tried Atkinson's Behind the Scenes at the Museum and wasn't nuts about it...but I cannot put this one down. Yes I know I need to go run and then paint the entryway and hang coathooks and then at three, oh joy, the preschool Christmas pageant (I sent Simon with Scooby Doo pajamas for his Christmas-pajama-costume, they were all I could find in his drawers, will it scar him for life?) but I want to just read this book. Instead I have to listen to ten four-year-olds sing Jingle Bells and then all the 2-year-olds cry while the teachers sing Snowflakes on my Nose. I know, my mother license should probably be revoked.
I find that I have spent a ton of cash at Barnes and Noble this Christmas - what's new, you ask? I know...but I just bought my little brother Shadow Divers, because he'll dig the U-boat history I think, and his wife The Time Traveller's Wife (I am holding to the now three-year tradition of buying her one of the best books I have read in the previous year - last year it was Khaled Hasseini's The Kite Runner, and the year before that, Ann Patchett's Bel Canto.), and Dan's smart ass priest uncle whom I adore, The Know-It-All, which turned out to be very entertaining and informative. I can't tell you what I bought Gina, because she'll read this blog : )
posted by BabelBabe @ 8:48 AM
2 comments
I never used to have the courage to quit a book, but I've been doing it a lot lately, and it's liberating. I think all the library books are helping me--who cares if I don't finish a free book? (Okay, the guilty Catholic in me does act up when I quit a book, but I can usually shut her down.)
This weekend I gave up on Loser Goes First: My Thirty-Something years of Dumb Luck and Minor Humiliation, and Wigfield: The Can-Do Town That Just Might Not. The title of "Loser" seemed to me to indicate that the author, Dan Kennedy, is my soul mate. However, he's a mildly dyslexic jackass. Yawn. "Wigfield" was an even bigger disappointment. It reminded me that I can love David Sedaris without caring at all for his sister Amy, and it let me know that Stephen Colbert might be great on The Daily Show, but that his range is pretty limited. This book takes way too many pages to say, "Look how funny and superior we are." Blech.
I did enjoy reading Tom Perotta's Little Children this weekend. Having seen Election and now read this book, I was surprised to learn from the book jacket that Perotta is married with children; he seems to have a pretty bleak outlook on marriage in particular and adults in general. Just my kind of guy. I will buy his books.
Finally, I think I'm about to quit I, Fatty. I picked it up because some critics seemed to think it's really something special, but it turns out that it's nothing more than Permanent Midnight featuring a fat guy rather than a skinny one. I think I would be more inclined to finish this book if I hadn't already read Stahl's memoir, but I just don't care to read the same story over again.
So . . . My name is Gina, and sometimes I do not finish the books I start.
posted by Gina @ 9:36 AM
1 comments
Admittedly Fury sucked....but I'll still check out the new one especially since I've always been fond of Niccolo Macchiavelli. (Don't ask.)
And while I am at it, Ben and I decided we will both read Tom Wolfe's new one. It's sort of like a suicide pact but, frankly, worse. I hated Man in Full so much I couldn't even give it away; I had to throw it out. (I can't help but notice it's selling for a penny on Amazon. I wouldn't even pay that.) I was reading it on an airplane and could not even see my way clear to just leave it on the plane for some other poor sucker to find. If the phrase "Peel yo' scalp" appears ANYWHERE in I am Charlotte Simmons, I am SOOOO outta there.
posted by BabelBabe @ 9:58 PM
2 comments
Got my new issue of Brain, Child magazine today. (Also the new House & Garden, which I subscribe to just so I can read Dominique Browning's editorial column every month. She's terrific.)
I LOVE this magazine; it makes me feel like I am not the only crazy mother out there, trying hard to do her best but sometimes failing miserably. I have bought subscriptions for more people than I can remember at this point, I hope they've enjoyed it as much as I do. Read it cover to cover every issue, and save all my old issues to reread. It's nice not to feel alone.
Check it out sometime, no matter how old your kids are. I know you can get it at Whole Foods (among other wonders you can pick up there...like FiveStar bars and their double chocolate chip cookies and organic popcorn). Yes, this is pure proselytizing, but they deserve it.
posted by BabelBabe @ 9:46 PM
0 comments
I love the Judging a Book by Its Cover feature on Bookslut, and now one more reason to do so: in this month's issue, I find out that Graeme Base has a new book out, Jungle Drums (and there's one I didn't know about, The Watering Hole...extra bonus!). Guess what I'm getting myself for Christmas?
I own several other books of his - Animalia, Eleventh Hour, Sign of the Seahorse. In college I rationalized buying picture books because I was a design major, and so owning his books was a necessary part of learning design. But now I am old enough (and somewhat mature enough) to admit that his books are just plain FUN, and the illustrations are gorgeous, and I could never hope to come anywhere close to his talent in a million years. These are books that I will not surrender to the grubby sticky hands of my little ones. They'll have to ask for their own copies. Sorry, guys!
posted by BabelBabe @ 10:09 AM
1 comments
and so do I.
I hate Christmas, the whole Christmas season
Now please don't ask why, I don't quite know the reason.
(Except maybe my pants are all three sizes too small.)
And I don't hate the Whos. In fact, my little Whos (one of whom is no more than two) are the ONLY thing that makes the whole shebang bearable.
On the other hand, I suppose if I hadn't given birth two weeks before Christmas - wait a minute! I gave birth to Jude two weeks before my husband's birthday, so it's really not fair, I have that Christmas pressure TWICE a year! Argh!- anyway, if Si's bday was not two weeks before Xmas things might be a wee bit calmer. My bad.
At this point in my (admittedly conflicted religiously) life, Christmas is just a bunch of consumerism (I HATE Walmart too but that is a post for another day) and pressure and a list as long as my arm to DO things. I'm pretty sure this is all just because my head isn't screwed on just right. But really, why hasn't anyone ever invented a holdiay in which we are required to DO NOTHING?
I hereby declare April 18 (my birthday incidentally) to be Slothful Day. Lie on your couch with a book or the remote, a Coke, and a bag of chips. You are REQUIRED to do this to be at all in the spirit. If you are out trimming the hedges or cutting grass or shopping for bargains or even contemplate sending Slothful Day cards or giving Slothful Day greetings or gifts of any kind whatsoever (including the bags of chips!), you will be taken out and shot immediately. Now this is a holiday I can get behind. As soon as I work up the energy....
posted by BabelBabe @ 10:30 AM
3 comments
This editorial by the Boston Globe's Ellen Goodman came at the perfect time - only a day after I had had one of the worst days ever, totally losing it with my kids and winding up sobbing in the kitchen as I poured apple juice and spooned up mac and cheese. I love Ellen Goodman just for this paragraph:
"This "truth" is that even a woman who purposely chooses to be a full-time mom can be one nap away from losing it. The "truth" is that mothers who would throw their bodies in front of a truck for their children also fantasize about throwing their kids in front of a truck. OK, a little wooden truck."
I spend my time alternating between happiness that I can be home with my boys, not worrying about their wellbeing in one way, and worrying myself sick about their wellbeing because they are home three days a week with a mother who is often very close to flinging herself off a bridge at the thought of changing one more diarrheal diaper, cutting crusts off one more sandwich, dressing Mimi the doll one more time. I am bored most of the time but feel guilty being bored. I mean, what intelligent sensible adult wouldn't be bored watching the Wiggles, playing Junior scrabble, molding playdough, and painting trains, not to mention singing and/or listening to every children's song ever written? (It's only Dec 3 and I HATE Jingle Bells already.)
My husband thinks the pressure Felicity Huffman refers to in this article is fictional, a product of my own imagination and completely self-applied. He may be right about the self-instigated issues, but societal pressure to, for instance, NOT admit that you can totally see how Andrea Yates got to where she was when she killed her children, is insane and ever-present. This craziness manifests itself differently in different people - I don't know that I would ever lay a hand on my kids to do serious harm (I mean more than whacking their butts), but the days I have fantasized blissfully about driving myself off the Fort Duquesne Bridge are too numerous to count. I suppose admitting suicidal thoughts is way more acceptable than admitting you'd ever once considered harming your children. But every mother has been at her wits' end at some point, and it's about time we relaxed and helped each other thru it, not penalize each other for feeling what everyone feels.
In last week's episode, Lynette drives off in her minivan, leaving her kids with a neighbor, and sits sobbing at the playground. When her friends come find her and tell her that they have both been there too, she looks at them and asks, "Why didn't you tell me this before?" She should just be grateful they told her at all; most mothers wouldn't, and that is our collective weakness.
posted by BabelBabe @ 9:07 AM
0 comments
