Keetha.com

Winter?

2012-02-10T06:58:00.000-06:00

All these gorgeous flowers in my yard this week.

If it makes you happy

2012-02-08T11:21:00.000-06:00

I was inspired by Pinterest (although now I can't find the pin to link to so maybe I dreamed it) to reorganize my bathroom cabinet.

This is why I love organizing: I start with a jumbled mess. I get to look for the perfect organizing tools, which in this case was these darling turquoise canvas bins I found at Target.

The best part - even better than looking at organizing supplies, which I dearly love and even better than using the labelmaker - is making order out of chaos. A bin for what's needed for cuts, scrapes, and burns. One for tummy ailments. One for (oft-needed) achy head, sinus, and allergies. A bin for cold, cough, and flu remedies. No more rummaging around through bottles of expired cough medicine and boxes of half-empty Benadryl.

Calm, soothing order.

Super Bowl: the ads in review

2012-02-06T15:26:00.000-06:00

When it comes to the Super Bowl, like a lot of people, the commercials interest me the most. I fold laundry and fix something to drink during the game so I can be back in time to watch the commercials.

I missed the Ferris Bueller ones entirely. I watched them online to catch up. For the Bueller generation, I thought it was great. For all those who don't even know what that is, not so sure.

The Chevy Silvarado apocalypse ad was good. It was funny and made the point about the product it was selling. Seems like that would be obvious but not all Super Bowl commercials do that.

Most of the commercials that I saw fell short. They were trying too hard to be clever or funny or memorable.

The most egregioius ad was the GoDaddy spot. Am I alone in finding it offensive?

I'm so disappointed in you, Jillian.

Finally. Madonna. Wow. I mean, wow. I thought the halftime show was the provebial trainwreck. It felt more like a Saturday Night Live skit. So many questions.

Roman soldiers? Why?
The Richard Simmons look alike on the rope? With Madonna off to the side like a backup singer?
Cleopatra cheerleaders? Why?
Madonna with the gold pompoms?

I wonder what she was trying to do, what statement she was making. I think I missed it. It went over my head or around it or something. Did it feel like a farce to you?

The most entertaining part of the Super Bowl was the #SuperBookBowl hashtag on Twitter:

From Shelf Awareness: There was another game going on last evening, too. It was the #Superbookbowl on Twitter, started by @MissLiberty, who kicked off with, "Garcia Marquez just sacked Vargas Llosa!" Others immediately chimed in. Some highlights of the game:

@peterdamien: Harper Lee had that brilliant pass in the first quarter, but has remained on the bench for the rest of the game so far.

@AdamBertocci: As a New Yorker, I _should_ support my home team, but I scanned and found a cheaper team on Amazon.

@MissLiberty: Man, George R.R. Martin takes a really long time before he throws the ball.

@allshiny: Looks like Kafka just gave up. He's lying on his back waving his legs in the air...

@CrownPublishing: Flag on the field--Stieg Larsson called for unnecessary roughness

@EmperorFranzen: @jenniferweiner and @jodipicoult are complaining about the coverage NBC is giving the male players. #yawn

@writer_not: Orwell asserts that all quarterbacks are equal, but some are more equal than others.

@MissLiberty: The Authors call a time out--Houellebecq is missing. Wait, hold on--they have located him. He was at the beer cart.

@EvilWylie: "This game is extremely loud and incredibly close." --commentator Jonathan Safran Foer

@jefe23: Book of Eli

Here comes the sun

2012-02-04T10:31:00.000-06:00

It's no fun writing posts about all the things I have to tell you, all the things I will tell you, the things I can't wait to tell you. Then end up not posting again for days afterwards.

Mainly it's the sleeping, or not sleeping. It makes my head hurt really bad. Aspirin, Bufferin, Alleve, Tylenol, ibuprofen, hot compresses, cold compresses - no pain reliever touches it.

A good hard cardio workout makes the headache go away for a little while. As does, ironically, a high-carb high-fat meal (like, say, a chicken nugget basket). Later the headache comes back. I can handle being tired and sleepy but my head hurting the way it does is hard.

It's a distraction. I find it hard to think or focus. Worse, the headache messes with my head in other ways, too. When I go to write a blog post or an essay or anything, it says, "Don't attemp it. It's a lame idea on the best of days, and sweetheart, this ain't the best of days. You can string some words together sometimes but not now. Your brain has the snap and vibrancy of a wet noodle. You'll embarrass yourself. Don't do it. You can't anyway."

Mostly I don't. That voice is mean and snarky. I can dismiss the sarcasm even through my achey-tired-head but I also tend to find a nugget of truth in what it says.

Letting it win feels like taking the easy way out, like I'm being lazy. But seriously I just can't think . I can't tell off that voice doing my best Julia Sugarbaker. I can't seem to turn away and pick up the pen and have some fun with words. It all seems too hard, too elusive, too much.

The night before last I stayed overnight at the sleep clinic. That's a story in and of itself (there I go again with the promises of stories to tell!). I hope to find something out - a cure! - by next week.

Until then I am going to try to push through. That's what I do during a tough workout, I push myself and do it. I want to be able to do that in everything.

Birthday Weekend: Part Two

2012-01-30T12:51:00.000-06:00

When I woke the Saturday before last, I'd turned forty during the night. Jeffrey brought me a cup of coffee in the Happy Birthday mug. I went to the kitchen for a second cup to find Bella had shredded her doggie bed. There were tiny bits of pale green fluff covering the floor. It was like she was trying to get in on the action so she provided her own confetti.

Pink roses decorated the kitchen. I opened two birthday cards from Jeffrey. Saturday afternoon we headed to Oxford, sipping coffee and nibbling on Mom's sugar cookies on the way.

We parked on the square and I got out my birthday gift: a new camera! It's fancy and also smarter than I am.

It was cold and windy - not an ideal day to be lazing about the square taking pictures. We had not choice, then, but to go upstairs to the City Grocery bar and have a glass of wine. Only they weren't open yet!

That left the haven that is Square Books.

From there we ducked into Ajax Diner. From the sidewalk glancing in it looked warm and cozy. We sat at the bar that was covered in 1977 Carroll County license plates, the old ones with the magnolia on them.

I love that at Ajax old-school Christmas lights are up year 'round, lights with big bulbs of primary colors.

We stayed long enough to have that glass of wine. It was growing dark by the time we left.

The famed courthouse in the center of the square. When I first attempted to take this photo, the lens cap was still on. So it wasn't quite as dark as I thought at first. Doh!

We met my brother and sister in law back in front of Square Books, where they gave me this birthday card:

I dashed into a convenience store restroom to change clothes for dinner. I took time to slowly put on red lipstick.

After looking around online, I had decided on Ravine Restaurant. I was hoping for someplace with soft candlelight and white linen tablecloths that was friendly, not snooty, cozy and inviting. When we walked in there was a fireplace in the middle of the room. Check. Mate.

We had a room to ourselves. The tables were covered with white tablecloths, candles, and low lighting, just as I'd pictured.

Forgive the out of focus photo. New camera!

It was all that I'd hoped for: great friends, delicious food, laughs.

Seared scallops atop a cauliflower puree.

When the waiter read the dessert specials it was like he knew we were coming: chocolate and hazelnut is one of my favorite flavor combinations. Chocolate hazelnut torte was one of the choices. Jeffrey loves coconut - anything coconut. He and I both love creme brulee. The first dessert the waiter listed was a coconut creme brulee. Delectable dessert with a cup of fresh coffee surrounded by friends - it was wonderful.

We hugged our friends goodbye. On the drive home I thought about the night, the entire weekend. Magical was the word that came to mind. What an incredible birthday.

To say nothing of working on my novel

2012-01-25T10:06:00.000-06:00

This morning I'm almost paralyzed trying to write today's to do list because of the all the undone things looming from yesterday's to do list!

Birthday Weekend: Part One

2012-01-24T11:10:00.000-06:00

If this weekend is any indication, it’s going to be a fabulous decade.

Sometime after Christmas I realized that, Hey, birthday month is just around the corner. And not just any birthday: my 40th birthday!

I wondered why I hadn’t started on decorations and guest lists and fabulous party favors and boxes of sparklers for guests with custom printed ribbon and (can you tell who loves Pinterest?) and on and on.

In short order I came out of that reverie. I am so glad my birthday worked out the way it did, without the overthinking and overplanning. I didn’t spend weeks making myself tired and anxious and overwrought. I didn't spend hours on the color of the napkins and the font on the invitations that should perfectly reflect, sum up, and symbolize me!

I didn’t do that. I bought packages of pink and silver tissue paper to make these paper floofs for the dining room. Didn’t do that, either. Forgot to even get special birthday napkins, or any napkins at all to serve with cake and ice cream. That was okay, too.

Jeffrey and The Child sent me gorgeous pink roses on my birthday eve. They're gorgeous, and, I told him, “They even smell!” Jeffrey said, um, yes, they are FLOWERS. I explained that often florist flowers have no scent at all whereas these smelled heavenly.

We went to my parents’ house for dinner that night. My mom fixed my birthday favorite: chicken pie. The chicken was flavorful and tender and with a bite of the flaky pastry – OH. So good. I asked Mom for iced sugar cookies for dessert, and they were exactly what I hoped for. The cookies were sugary and melted in my mouth. They were topped with a light glaze of creamy icing. Perfect.

After dinner I opened presents. Wait until I tell you what they gave me!

Birthday

2012-01-21T09:19:00.000-06:00

I'm not sure if it's cheerful stubbornness or nostalgia for my 12-year-old self who watched the movie hundreds of times, I think I will always love Sixteen Candles.

No, I didn’t expect to wake up transformed. I just thought that turning sixteen would be so major that I would wake up with an improved metal state that would show on my face. All it shows is that I don’t have any sort of a tan left.

Just a few hours into this day and what a wonderful birthday already. Happy.

Photos and stories to come!

Yay grownup me

2012-01-18T20:44:00.000-06:00

When I was little I did not enjoy going to church. To get to my Sunday school class I had to walk through another room where all these older kids hung out, mostly boys. When I left the house, before I was down the steps of our front porch I already dreaded walking that gauntlet. Not that the boys said anything rude or did anything mean. I hated walking through that room with all those people watching me. (I doubt they paid any attention but still. It felt like a long walk in the spotlight.) Those sixth grade boys, I would whine to my mother.

Our preacher was one of my best friend’s dad. He was a nice, nice man. He was a very smart man. I loved going to their house. I did not love his sermons, however. I found them to be long long long.

To top it all off, Mom insisted I wear a slip under my church clothes. I hated a slip. Whole slip, half slip, whatever. It was just another layer of scratchy clothes to put on. The whole business of getting ready took time away from Lost in Space on TBS that I was trying to watch before we had to be at Sunday school at 9:45.

I whined and asked Mom what was the point of wearing a slip. Whhhyyyyyyyyy? She said, “Because I said so, mainly. Also because people could see right through that skirt!”

And see what, I wondered? My legs. Big woo. When I am grownup, I told her, my little fists clenched, I will not wear a slip. Ever!

She shrugged.

I will be forty years old on Saturday and I am happy to report I do not wear a slip. Ever. I don’t even own one.

What I Learned From Being a Contributor to Reader Unboxed

2012-01-17T15:15:00.000-06:00

I reviewed books for Reader Unboxed, a web site dedicated to reading enthusiasts. Reader Unboxed is now on hiatus.

First, people are nice. A community of fellow reviewers formed fast. Some contributors were more experienced and some widely known. All were friendly. There was no pecking order, just a sincere welcome. We all chimed in and commented on each other’s posts, pointing out how much we enjoyed their take on the book, praising a smart question the review raised, or thoughtful questions about the book. Complimentary comments, in other words. There was a notable absence of snark all around. It’s a vanilla adjective, I know, but sometimes it’s the best way to say it: Everyone was really nice.

Second, I am too nice. I found it extremely difficult to write an even-handed review about a book I didn’t like. The authors of these books had poured their hearts into them. Time, effort, creative spirit, love, work - untold hours of work, had gone into the novels. And I was going to come along and squash all that? Any time I typed out, “I had to make myself keep reading. The plot points made no sense. The character’s motivation was a mystery.” I would wince, thinking of the writer, then delete delete delete.

But I felt like I owed it to it fellow readers not to present a book I didn’t like as something great and wonderful. That would be unfair, too. (I’ve been burned more than once by reading a review, buying the book, and then wondering if the author was the reviewer’s brother in law or had we even read the same book.)

It was challenging writing a forthright review without being terribly vague and without hiding behind the Southern girl mantra (“Be nice. Be nice if it kills you. If you must, you can mutter, “Bless her heart,” but mostly: be nice.”).

My time at Reader Unboxed forced me to stretch as a reader, as a reviewer, as a writer. That is nice.

That's today

2012-01-16T10:38:00.000-06:00

On days like today, Martin Luther King, Jr. day, I never know what to say. I don’t know what to say on Veteran’s Day or Memorial Day. I know that it’s important to stop and a minute on think about these people.

I admire the bloggers who get it just right, whose posts are beautiful and reverent and moving. I can’t come up with much to say that hasn’t been said hundreds and thousands of times before.

I don’t know as much about King as I should. Sometimes when we’re in Memphis we walk by the Lorraine Hotel. It gives me chills every time. I admire King and feel certain that if he were alive today, he’d be such a positive force. I think he’d be horrified and outraged at the welfare state. I think he’d help inspire and motivate rather than divide.

Again, I don’t know what to say. It didn’t seem right to post what I’d planned on posting (it wasn’t another screed about Haley Barbour, although it TOTALLY COULD HAVE BEEN) rather than at least acknowledging what today is. Right?

Not the post I meant to write

2012-01-12T10:29:00.000-06:00

I'm not the most political of people. I have my views and opinions, which I mostly keep to myself. Debating about politics isn't my idea of fun so I don't engage.

But I'm so - words fail me - disgusted, outraged, livid - I can't keep quiet. You may have heard that former Mississippi governor Haley Barbour pardoned some 200 convicts the other day in the last hours of his term as governor.

Granted, a number of these people were already out on parole. Many were non-violent offenders.

Then there's Karen Irby, the ultra wealthy socialite who while drunk drove her Mercedes at around 100 miles per hour after leaving the Jackson Country Club. She crashed into a pickup truck carrying two doctors, killing them both. The two were engaged to be married.

Murderers, rapists, child molesters, pardoned. A pardon means the record is expunged. That means the child molester doesn't have to register with the sex offender list. He can work in a school. In a daycare.

I am disgusted. Outraged. Now that he's no longer governor, Barbour has hightailed it to Washington, DC, where he can continue to work for the tobacco lobby. Good riddance. Make sure you don't look back and pay any mind to the havoc you created.

Disgusted. That's the right word.

Monday and Rainy Out

2012-01-09T10:34:00.000-06:00

A friend suggested my thyroid may be what was causing me to be tired and sluggish.

I did some serious medical research (Googled "thryoid symptoms"). I had seven of the ten symptoms of hypothyroidism, including, most promisingly, slowed metabolism. Inablity to lose weight. Jackpot!

A pill could fix this! It seemed too good to be true! (foreshadowing, irony)

I made an appointment with my doctor. I dutifully fasted before having blood drawn. I was so looking forward to hearing the diagnosis, getting a prescription that would produce energy! Weight loss! (more foreshadowing, irony)

My doctor went over the blood test results with me. "All your numbers look good," he said. My good cholesterol was excellent. My bad was a little high but overall, gold stars from my doctor.

Wait just a minute. "What about my thyroid?"

He glanced at the report. "Those numbers are good." He closed my file and told me to keep doing to do what all I'm doing.

I stopped him and asked him why on earth I'm so tired all the stupid time. He asked a number of questions, including if I snore, which I do, mightily, according to Jeffrey.

My doctor thinks I have sleep apnea, which affects metabolism, among other things. He asked if I'd be willing to go to a sleep clinic. Would I be willing to? If that would stop the splitting headache I have every day, why, yes, I would.

I have an appointment later this month. I don't know when I've ever looked forward to a doctor's appointment with such enthusiasm.

January feeds my favorite tendencies

2012-01-06T08:59:00.000-06:00

I love January. I love the new year. It bristles with possibilities. There are goals to be set and lists to be made.

I love a new calendar, probably more than most normal people. Same with a new notebook, like this beauty I got for Christmas.

The beginning of the year puts me in a reflective frame of mind, looking back, looking ahead. I get to think on and choose a word for the year. Last year my word of the year was big, as in live big, go big. The year before my word was vibrant.

For 2012 my word is do. Do, rather than think I’d like. Do, rather than mean to. Do, rather than plan to do. Not in a rushrush hurryhurry but in a go for it and don’t overthink. Do!

For much of last fall I met myself coming and going. I had taken on a lot and procastinated and meant to and got very tense along the way. I scrambled and dissipated my efforts in going in so many different directions. Most days, I was frustrated and subpar and substandard and disappointed.

Pretty much the opposite of that is what I want. I narrowed my focus. I thought about what I want this year to be about and came up with three main areas: my writing, living well (for me that means smart food choices and working out), and my new role as communications director for my church.

And also to do those things with joy and commitment. Embrace kindness and patience and love. Basically, creating and living the life I want.

All my ambitions for the year aren't so lofty; I'm also on a mission to find the perfect red lipstick along with the backbone to wear it. I love red lipstick and don't have the nerve to wear it. No more. I have a big birthday in a few weeks, one with a zero at the end and a four at the beginning. This year, this month, I shall wear red lipstick.

Mark it on the calendar.

Happy everything, everybody!

2012-01-02T10:00:00.002-06:00

Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas

2011-12-23T11:36:00.000-06:00

Early one Saturday morning a couple of Decembers ago, while Jeffrey was at his family’s hunting camp with his dad and The Child still asleep, I sat on the sofa, drinking my first cup of coffee and admiring the Christmas tree. I looked at the ornaments and played through the memories that came with each one. The Blue’s Clues ornament I gave The Child when he was a year old. The wooden cutout ornament Jeffrey and I bought at the downtown market in Charleston on our first trip there, a few months after getting engaged. The Snoopy ornament with my name on it Mom gave me when I was in elementary school.

My mind turned to all the ornaments that were yet to be added to the tree, all the memories still to come. Every year I would unpack even more ornaments, each bearing its own gift. I took a sip of coffee, and without realizing it, I drifted far into the future.

Would Jeffrey and I move our bedroom downstairs once the stairs got too much? Would we have to ask some strong young person to get the tree in its stand? Would we wear sweaters year ‘round and wonder why it was always cold. With just us on Christmas Eve night, I’d like to think we would still go to Communion, still feel the power, wonder, and joy that comes with the celebration of Christ’s birth. That we would still share a glass of Coppola wine. I wonder if late at night we’ll fill each other’s stockings hung on the fireplace mantle. What will it be like without presents to put out, only two to share a cold Christmas morning? How will it feel to prepare Christmas dinner, expecting The Child and his family by mealtime? What if we celebrate with him and his family earlier in the month because they are too busy with their own celebrations to share the actual holiday with us? What will the tree look each year, bare of the record of little boy ornaments?

Does this sound sad? It didn’t feel sad. Looking ahead, seeing the years stretch out in front of me, the inevitable changes to come, some sad and melancholy, some painful, some more wonderful than I can imagine, I felt contentment.

Happiness is the one virtue we all underestimate, Ralph Waldo Emerson said. I want happy: happy times, happy family, happy friends. I take as my duty to try to be happy. People tend to see happiness in retrospect. I read that one way to feel consistently happier is to recognize when you enjoy something and say, “Right here, right now, I’m happy!”

That Christmas I drank coffee on couch and was visited by Christmas Past and Christmas Future was the first year I tried to honor happiness. Rolling out sugar cookies, using the same copper cookie cutters my mother used when my brother, Lan, and I were little, I thought, “This is wonderful! I love this.”

I want to feel that with every Christmas sugar cookie rolled out, every time I make Jeffrey laugh, every time The Child hugs me. I want to grab hold of the moment and recognize that right now, this is the good stuff.

My theory is that by savoring today’s happiness, the years will be full of such rich moments that down the road, when I unpack the ornaments, I will still see the ones The Child will then have on his grown-up tree at his own grown-up home. I will recall a lifetime of memories while looking forward to this holiday season, this happy moment, right now.

Treat someone - treat yourself - to a great read

2011-12-21T13:03:00.000-06:00

I've read a number of good books lately - and I'll tell you about them all - but one that stands out is Stiltsville by Susanna Daniel.

Frances Ellerby and Dennis Duval are ordinary people who are not thrust in extraordinary circumstance. Frances, given to quicksilver emotions, falls in love with Dennis and begins her family life in a community of stilt houses in Biscayne Bay. Played out against the changes in south Florida from the late 1960s to the 1990s, Frances changes from that impulsive girl to a wise woman, still entirely recognizable as herself.

You can read the rest of my review at Reader Unboxed.

I'm all ears for recommendations. What are the best books you've read this year?

Wild and sweet the words repeat

2011-12-20T10:40:00.000-06:00

Everyone been admiring Bella's sweater?

I didn't mean to be gone so long. I've been attacked by a case of the tireds. Bad tireds. Like gritty eyes, headache, and distraction in the extreme.

Christmas is one of my favorite times of year. I revel in the time with family, the tree, the cookie baking and toffee baking, the songs. But this year, sheesh. It feels like we've been preparing at an all-out sprint for weeks now. I'm ready to get to the good stuff, the enjoying of the holiday, rather than getting ready for it.

Kids these days.

2011-12-09T08:02:00.000-06:00

Since it's turned off so cold, Bella got some fetching new outer wear. She nabbed a Christmas dish towel and ran all through the house. She was all, "Can't tell me nothing. I got a new sweater."

Bring The Funny

2011-12-08T09:49:00.000-06:00

It's possible that the other day at work I looked at a list of blog links and find one under the category of, "The Funny." (I categorize blogs. Dork!) Only because I'd been so diligent and efficient at work, I had time to visit the funny blog.

I read and I read and the more I read [separate links] the more I laughed. I was at work, see, so I was doing that thing where I'm trying to be quiet. Rather than laughing out loud with abandon tears were streaming down my face. I had to stop reading and laughing long enough to wipe my eyes.

I love it when that happens. Have any funny blogs that hit you that way?

I contributed a review to Reader Unboxed

2011-12-07T16:15:00.000-06:00

My review of A Summer in Europe by Marilyn Brant is up at Reader Unboxed.

A SUMMER IN EUROPE by Marilyn Brant was a right pleasant read. I can see it being a great get-away book, perfect for gift giving. The recipient can dive into in January, when escape may be on the mind. For me, I found it light.

Come visit!

Granted

2011-12-06T13:42:00.000-06:00

Sometimes writing is a gift covered in rainbow sprinkles while What a Wonderful World plays tied up with a pink satin bow. Other times it’s a struggle and I wonder why I even try. When it's hard, I tell myself, “You’ve found what you love to do. So do it! And quit griping. SHEESH.”

Moments like that I am grateful for Elizabeth Gilbert’s post about writing. This especially:

As for discipline – it’s important, but sort of over-rated. The more important virtue for a writer, I believe, is self-forgiveness. Because your writing will always disappoint you. Your laziness will always disappoint you. You will make vows: “I’m going to write for an hour every day,” and then you won’t do it. You will think: “I suck, I’m such a failure. I’m washed-up.” Continuing to write after that heartache of disappointment doesn’t take only discipline, but also self-forgiveness (which comes from a place of kind and encouraging and motherly love).

This I find amazingly and wonderfully reassuring.

It was in that spirit that I applied for a grant with the Mississippi Arts Commission. It was a mini grant to offset expenses of a writer’s workshop I want to attend this summer.

Friday my answer came in the mail: I got it!

Beginning Saturday morning my fingers flew over the keys trying to type fast enough to keep up with the story I was seeing. Funny how the affirmation was a sure fire motivator.

I am happy. I could wonder why someone else had to tell me my writing is worthy to make writing fun again. But I’m not. I am happy. I am writing.

For the ages

2011-12-02T09:10:00.000-06:00

Y’all know I am all over Pinterest. Here lately I've been seeing a lot of homemade marshmallows. I think I'm alone in finding marshmallows and s’mores more “meh” than anything. I prefer my hot chocolate undiluted by marshamallows. I don’t especially like rocky road candy.

I wonder if homemade marshamallows would make s’mores transcendent. Or would they still be meh?

Deep thoughts I ponder.

2011-11-28T13:25:00.000-06:00

The only complaint I have about Thanksgiving: no leftovers! Maybe five slices of turkey were left, and even less honey-baked ham.

So I didn't cook with leftovers over the weekend. I also didn't shop in person or online.

I didn't overeat but I also didn't workout for several days.

What I did do:

Spend a wonderful, relaxing, fulfilling Thanksgiving Day with family.

Throw the football around in the backyard.

Laugh.

Take photos for a Christmas card project.

Trim the tree.

We'll cook a bigger turkey and have even more time together at Christmas. I love leftovers; memories are a type of leftover, too, leftover from the fun.

Out of words

2011-11-22T06:59:00.004-06:00

I know that there is no shortage of words to say or write or sing or rhyme. I know this but I don’t seem to have any words at the ready. I don’t have anything to say.

Last month I read a ton of books. I haven't written up the post about those books. I don't know what to say about the books I liked. They were...good? The ones I didn't like ... weren't good?

(Have I told you I'm a contributor at Reader Unboxed? I have a review up tomorrow! Nothing like a deadline to halt whiny navel gazing.)

This time last year I had finished writing a novel. I had completed it two weeks ahead of schedule, even. I’ve been working on a new one with a goal to be finished by Thanksgiving. Right, and I have less than 25,000 words left to finish it. Yet I cannot seem to do it. Every time I go to work on it I immediately begin arguing with myself: “This is crap! That doesn’t even make sense. In the history of the world, no one has written a more stilted, trite, wooden paragraph than that. Congratulations.” And on and on. It’s exhausting. I resist working on it and the more I do that, the harder it is to get back to it, etc.

The answer is to write. Period, the end. Write long enough, often enough and the inner critic will shut the hay up and go away. It’s happened often enough that I know it yet I cannot seem to push through to get to that point.

Not writing makes me cranky. Grumpy. Grouchy. I’m grasping around for topics to write about.

I’m ambivalent about the homemade marshmallows I see on Pinterest so maybe that’s a topic. Barring that, anyone have anything they want me to write about? In the interest of my mental health?

Keeps me guessing

2011-11-21T08:07:00.002-06:00

Last week I removed all my spring and summer clothes from my closet and stored them away. "It's the middle of November," I said, "surely I won't be needing these again."

Actually, you will - the high today is 80.

And don't call me Shirley.

Preshus Wittle Pup

2011-11-18T08:21:00.006-06:00

The Child turned ten last week. He’s been wanting a dog for ages. Begging for one. “I have responsibility!” he said over and over when he was trying to tell us that he would be responsible for taking care of a dog.

The first double-digit birthday is a special birthday. We decided months ago we’d get him a dog.

Her name is Bella (her mother’s name is Isabelle.) She’s been here for a week and we’re all bewitched. She’s got everyone in the house doing baby talk to her. We all laugh when she prances and growls when she is playing. No morning person – not even on Christmas morning - The Child hops out of bed in the morning to take her outside.

Of course, she’s a puppy and doesn’t seem to have things quite figured out; she goes outside to play and romp and comes back in where she promptly poops and pees.

Look that face. How could you stay mad?

Unoriginal go-nowhere outrage. And Happy Thanksgiving, too.

2011-11-16T15:29:00.001-06:00

The middle of last week the local grocery store had begun readying a place in the parking lot for Christmas trees.

Maybe you don’t need a moment to process that sentence but boy, I did.

I’m in the habit of losing days, sometimes an entire week at a time, but I’m pretty sure Halloween was about two weeks ago. By my count, we’ve got a little something called Thanksgiving to enjoy and savor.

I love Christmas. I super love it. But I love Thanksgiving, too. And the fall season. I want to revel in autumn without commerce – pushy, intrusive, loud commerce – breathing down my neck. This isn’t a case of demand driving sales but of retailers trying to create demand. It is irksome.

Not that I don’t understand. Money is scarce, costs of doing business are steadily climbing. One retailer sees another hang a Christmas wreath and they scramble to do the same, in a panic at the thought of missing sales. I imagine I would feel the same fear if my livelihood depending on shoppers opening their wallets. Still, being inundated with forced Christmas cheer for over six weeks makes me grumpy.

The week before Halloween we went to get something for The Child and we were smooth out of luck. The aisle that had been full of every Halloween and fall doodad and knickknack had been completely and totally replaced with Christmas ornaments, Christmas lights, Christmas decorations. In October.

We’re hosting Thanksgiving next week. A few days later we’ll probably put up the Christmas tree. Between now and then I’m resolutely focusing on autumn’s glories and charms.

When the tree is up and the stockings hung and sugar cookies baked, then I’ll enjoy seeing the Christmas tree stand in the grocery store parking lot and will wish the tree sellers well.

Chiming in

2011-11-14T10:54:00.002-06:00

I don't understand how what happened at Penn State took place. How did it happen? How did nobody do anything?

And what the hell are those students thinking?

If someone did anything like this to my child, I would rip them apart limb by limb with my bare hands. If i saw someone doing anything like this to any child - I don't care who it was - I would kick and scream and gouge some eyes out, anything to make them stop.

Right?

I'm not alone in feeling this way. So why? And how?

Rock the Vote!

2011-11-08T13:57:00.004-06:00

They used to give out stickers at the polls. After you cast your ballot, one of the retirees who volunteered peeled off a round sticker that proclaimed, "I voted!" in red, white, and blue, usually with a firework and/or American flag motif. I loved wearing that sticker.

I feel like such a good citizen when I vote. I think about Mrs. Halbrook, my high school history and government teacher, each time I do. She strongly encouraged each of us to vote as soon as we turned eighteen. If I considered not voting, just the thought of her frown would be enough to convince me otherwise.

This morning before I left for work, I went to the precint (our National Guard Armory) and voted. I ran into a good friend of mine, The Child's homeroom mom, and the young woman who teaches the cardio class I'm taking. We visited and chatted. Hooray for a free country!

(Can you tell I'm still loopy over no more daylight savings time?)

Lost and Now Found

2011-11-07T11:01:00.003-06:00

My hour! That was taken away while spring was still cold and muddy - it's back!

Saturday Jeffrey went to the Mississippi State football game. I was congested and headachey and stayed home to blow my nose umpteen times. Before turning in for the night I set the clocks back an hour and left a note for when Jeffrey got home:

Dork, who?

This morning when The Child woke and dressed a full forty minutes before his alarm went off, I thought, "Such is the magic of Real Time."

My mood has taken an upswing like you wouldn't believe! It's the extra hour of sleep plus things like last night we sketched out the menu for Thanksgiving dinner. We get to make the first gumbo of the season soon! The Child's birthday is coming up and we have fun plans in place. I love November. I wouldn't mind if it were seven or eight weeks long.

As soon as I get daylight savings time repealed I'll work on that.

2011-10-27T10:22:00.007-05:00

How much do I love this pancake sign?

A lot. It reminds me of the diner scenes in Back to the Future.

We stopped in Selma, Alabama on our way home from the weekend in Auburn.

Downtown was right charming.

The Pancake House, the Rexall Drugs, Butler Trueax Jewelry - they're actual businesses that are still open. Love that.

Nothing like sight-seeing.

I know, right?

2011-10-25T14:23:00.002-05:00

I'm borrowing my son's favorite line in gathering my thoughts.

How is everyone? Good? Busy? I know, right?

I am befuddled at how quickly days and weeks get past me. I keep thinking I'll get used to it and I keep...not getting used to it.

Photos to show you! I haz them.

Do you know that, here it is, the end of October and I have not even gotten out my orange binder of fall recipes? Gasp! I KNOW, RIGHT? It seems like it still ought to be September, not almost time to be thinking about how The Child will turn ten years old in November and then it will be Thanksgiving, and you know what happens after that.

I've been wondering how it is that I don't watch TV yet I don't get done what I want to. How is that? Ah, then I realized: Pinterest.

Does everyone have big Halloween plans? We're going to supper club Saturday night, in costume. I'll post photos. Last year we were Fred and Wilma Flinstone.

I haven't had a single piece of candy corn. I've more than made up for it with those maple candy things I love.

This weekend I bought a couple of Christmas presents. I'm ahead of the game since Christmas is so many months away. Oh, wait.

Why I Write: National Day on Writing

2011-10-20T10:04:00.002-05:00

My contribution to National Day on Writing: A Celebration

The idea for a story is perfect, right up until I begin the actual work of writing it. That’s when my capability and skill fall laughably short. There’s that moment when I know that the fault lies not in the idea but in my ability to execute. It hurts each time. The disappointment is new and thorough every time.

A writing deadline is coming on fast. (I’ve been trying to order the month of October to slow the heck down with no luck.) I knew writing the novel would be a challenge, but I was thinking challenging in a good way. I looked forward to the thrill of digging deep, that feeling you get when you’re going for it. No shortcuts, no excuses.

That’s what I kept telling myself. Still, it shouldn’t have been a surprise when it was hard when I began the actual work on it, when the work became concrete and real, not intentions and ideas floating all pretty-like in the netherland.

It’s okay for the work to be hard. And I don’t mind calling writing work. I rather like calling it work. It implies that it is worthy and meaningful and of value.

I push through. Writing is worthwhile and deserving of credit because it was so trying and challenging.

I write for the reasons many writers do, for the reasons hundreds of writers before me have given: So I’ll know what I’m thinking. To clarify my own thoughts. To understand a place, a person, a time better. Because when the writing is going well it’s a thrill unlike anything else. Writing is creating and creating makes me feel alive. Because I can’t not write.

It’s what I do. I write.

Reading

2011-10-17T09:59:00.003-05:00

I grew up in a town where the library had a great summer reading program. We’d go to the library almost every day during the summer, riding our bikes downtown. It was a fun place, an inviting place.

We lived in Arizona for a few years when I was younger and a friend of my parents had flown out to see us. We were driving back to Mississippi to spend a few weeks and she drove with us. I got in the car, loaded up with books: This was going to be a 27-hour-drive and I would have some books. I asked my mother’s friend what she was reading. She said that she couldn't read in the car because it made her car sick. That was the saddest thing I’d ever heard.

A few years before, when we moved to Arizona, my mother bought a copy of Gone With the Wind for me. It was to be for the drive out. She gave it to me a few days before the moving van got there and I’d read it, cover to cover, before we left.

I don’t know why she thought I’d possibly do anything else; books have always held that appeal for me. I remember – vividly – learning how to read in the first grade. We sat on carpet squares in the reading corner while our teacher read to us. We were divided into groups and our group had these slender books with a purple cover. I can just see that book. The first day we read from that book, I was dismayed when the time was up. I wanted to see what happened next! I was hooked, just like that.

A book was an amazing thing. Magical. Paper, cardboard yet when you opened one you could go anywhere. And did go anywhere. I read the entire Nancy Drew series the summer I was nine years old and I was right there, in Nancy’s roadster with Bess and George.

I read all the time. When I was in elementary school, I went to the beach with a friend of mine and her family. She and I had words because I preferred to stay in the condo with my book rather than swim in the ocean. It was air conditioned inside and – books!

Another summer our family vacationed in the Smoky Mountains. My mother kept saying, “Look, Keetha! Look at the mountains!” I’d glance up from book, think, “Nice,” and return back to whatever was happening my book, which was far more interesting.

I am so excited to be a part of Reader Unboxed, a new web site that has launched today, by readers, for readers. I'm a contributor and will be reviewing books (my first review is here) and hanging out there a lot. Talk about ideal! I hope you'll come visit.

The reading life, the writing life, it’s so full and abundant. So much to wonder and marvel over – it’s a vibrant way of life that I feel so lucky to live.

"Cocktails were not served but I lived through it anyway..."

2011-10-12T07:04:00.003-05:00

Describing a book signing in New York in May of 1952 on page 38 of The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor.

Reading it I feel much as I did while reading Mark Twain's autobiography: a deep regret that I couldn't know this writer personally, admiration for their writing, and happy that I was reading it.

Like a rock star, that's how I spend my weekends

2011-10-04T11:27:00.002-05:00

Saturday morning I made minestrone. I used this recipe.

3 tablespoons olive oil
3 cloves garlic, chopped
2 onions, chopped
2 cups chopped celery
5 carrots, sliced
2 cups chicken broth
2 cups water
4 cups tomato sauce
1/2 cup red wine (optional)
1 cup canned kidney beans, drained
1 (15 ounce) can green beans
2 cups baby spinach, rinsed
3 zucchinis, quartered and sliced
1 tablespoon chopped fresh oregano
2 tablespoons chopped fresh basil
salt and pepper to taste
1/2 cup seashell pasta
2 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese
for topping
1 tablespoon olive oil

1. In a large stock pot, over medium-low heat, heat olive oil and saute garlic for 2 to 3 minutes. Add onion and saute for 4 to 5 minutes. Add celery and carrots, saute for 1 to 2 minutes.

2. Add chicken broth, water and tomato sauce, bring to boil, stirring frequently. If desired add red wine at this point. Reduce heat to low and add kidney beans, green beans, spinach leaves, zucchini, oregano, basil, salt and pepper. Simmer for 30 to 40 minutes, the longer the better.

3. Fill a medium saucepan with water and bring to a boil. Add macaroni and cook until tender. Drain water and set aside.

4. Once pasta is cooked and soup is heated through place 2 tablespoons cooked pasta into individual serving bowls. Ladle soup on top of pasta and sprinkle Parmesan

I cooked the pasta and added it to the soup, then ladled the soup into muffin tins and froze. (Thank you, Pinterest!)

I used a place knife to pop those little suckers out and put them in a sealed bag for the freezer.

When the temps drop below 80 for a day or two, soup will be perfect for lunch.

September Books

2011-10-03T15:03:00.008-05:00

The Borrower by Rebecca Makkai

From the jacket flap:
Lucy Hull, a young children's librarian in Hannibal, Missouri, finds herself both a kidnapper and kidnapped when her favorite patron, ten- year-old Ian Drake, runs away from home. The precocious Ian is addicted to reading, but needs Lucy's help to smuggle books past his overbearing mother, who has enrolled Ian in weekly antigay classes with celebrity Pastor Bob. Lucy stumbles into a moral dilemma when she finds Ian camped out in the library after hours with a knapsack of provisions and an escape plan. Desperate to save him from Pastor Bob and the Drakes, Lucy allows herself to be hijacked by Ian. The odd pair embarks on a crazy road trip from Missouri to Vermont, with ferrets, an inconvenient boyfriend, and upsetting family history thrown in their path. But is it just Ian who is running away? Who is the man who seems to be on their tail? And should Lucy be trying to save a boy from his own parents?

I liked The Magician King by Lev Grossman well enough, but not as much as I liked The Magicians, the first book.

From Amazon.com:
This second volume in Lev Grossman’s celebrated series picks up just after the events of its 2009 prequel The Magicians. Quentin, Eliot, Janet, and Julia are now the High Kings and Queens of Fillory, a fantastic realm not unlike Narnia, and they pass their days “deliquescing atom by atom amid a riot of luxury.” To ease his royal boredom, Quentin embarks on a quest with Julia. Despite his romantic visions of heroic feats and easy accolades, the quest goes horribly awry, and they find themselves back in the depressingly real world of Chesterton, Massachusetts. With the help of seedy underground magicians, a dragon, and a young boy named Thomas, they undertake a desperate journey back to Fillory. Grossman’s writing here is sharp and self-aware, and the characters feel like people you actually know, but cooler: they are delightfully profane and dripping with irony, they are arrogant and shallow, they are finding their way in a magically perfect world that somehow still lets them down, and they are learning to fight for the things they love. The Magician King is a triumph of (and an homage to) modern fantasy writing, and a must-read for grown-up fans of Narnia and Harry Potter.

As a general rule, I don’t read horror. I haven’t in years, thanks to the night terrors that Stephen King novels brought on. I don’t like books that are violent and gory. The Last Werewolf by Glen Duncan is all those things, yet I read it and am here to tell you that it is a good book.

I read a review where Glen Duncan’s writing is compared to Bret Easton Ellis. I like his writing far better than what I’ve read by Bret Easton Ellis.

Book description:
Then she opened her mouth to scream—and recognised me. It was what I’d been waiting for. She froze. She looked into my eyes. She said, “It’s you.”

Meet Jake. A bit on the elderly side (he turns 201 in March), but you’d never suspect it. Nonstop sex and exercise will do that for you—and a diet with lots of animal protein. Jake is a werewolf, and after the unfortunate and violent death of his one contemporary, he is now the last of his species. Although he is physically healthy, Jake is deeply distraught and lonely.

Jake’s depression has carried him to the point where he is actually contemplating suicide—even if it means terminating a legend thousands of years old. It would seem to be easy enough for him to end everything. But for very different reasons there are two dangerous groups pursuing him who will stop at nothing to keep him alive.

Here is a powerful, definitive new version of the werewolf legend—mesmerising and incredibly sexy. In Jake, Glen Duncan has given us a werewolf for the twenty-first century—a man whose deeds can only be described as monstrous but who is in some magical way deeply human.

One of the most original, audacious, and terrifying novels in years.

Before I Go to Sleep by S. J. Watson

From Amazon.com:
Every day Christine wakes up not knowing where she is. Her memories disappear every time she falls asleep. Her husband, Ben, is a stranger to her, and he's obligated to explain their life together on a daily basis--all the result of a mysterious accident that made Christine an amnesiac. With the encouragement of her doctor, Christine starts a journal to help jog her memory every day. One morning, she opens it and sees that she's written three unexpected and terrifying words: "Don't trust Ben." Suddenly everything her husband has told her falls under suspicion. What kind of accident caused her condition? Who can she trust? Why is Ben lying to her? And, for the reader: Can Christine’s story be trusted?

The Hypnotist by Lars Keplar

A lot of people, according to the Amazon reviews, didn’t like this book. I didn’t compare it to the Steig Larsson series for any number of reasons so I went in with an open mind. It was a thriller and relied heavily on plot with not much character development. I pretty well expect that from the genre so that was okay. The story is ludicrous and by the end if felt like a Diehard Part IV but for what it was, it was a good read.

From the book jacket:
In the frigid clime of Tumba, Sweden, a gruesome triple homicide attracts the interest of Detective Inspector Joona Linna, who demands to investigate the murders. The killer is still at large, and there’s only one surviving witness—the boy whose family was killed before his eyes. Whoever committed the crimes wanted this boy to die: he’s suffered more than one hundred knife wounds and lapsed into a state of shock. Desperate for information, Linna sees only one option: hypnotism. He enlists Dr. Erik Maria Bark to mesmerize the boy, hoping to discover the killer through his eyes.

It’s the sort of work that Bark has sworn he would never do again—ethically dubious and psychically scarring. When he breaks his promise and hypnotizes the victim, a long and terrifying chain of events begins to unfurl.

Animal, Vegetable, Miracle by Barbara Kingsolver. Love!

From Booklist:
Living the American consumerist's good life in Arizona's desert makes abundantly obvious how everyday existence depends on nearly limitless consumption of fossil fuel. It's not just the ubiquitous automobile guzzling gas. Even more gas is consumed by trucks that must deliver most foodstuffs, since so very little of what Arizonans eat grows locally. Those plants that manage to thrive in the desert fields require irrigation through massive diversion of rivers. Despite their genuine love of life in the Southwest, the Kingsolver family moved back to reconnect with ancestral roots in Appalachia, to a farm that has been in the author's family for years. There they have at least some chance of re-creating a profounder and more intimate relationship with the foods they put on the table. Kingsolver's passionate new tome records in detail a year lived in sync with the season's ebb and flow. Starting with spring's first asparagus, summer's chickens, and the fall's surfeit of vegetables, Kingsolver's family consumes what they and their farming neighbors produce. Writing with her usual sharp eye for irony, she urges readers to follow her example and reconnect with their food's source. To that end, she provides a bibliography, Web sites, and a listing of organizations supporting sustainable agriculture.

The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson

From Amazon.com:
For outré performance artists, Caleb and Camille Fang, everything in life is secondary to art, including their children. Annie and Buster (popularly known as Child A. and Child B.) are the unwilling stars of their parents’ chaotically subversive work. Art is truly a family affair for the Fangs. Years later, their lives in disarray, Annie and Buster reluctantly return home in search of sanctuary—only to be caught up in one last performance. The Family Fang sparkles with Kevin Wilson’s inventive dialogue and wonderfully rendered set-pieces that capture the surreal charm of the Fang’s most notable work. With this brilliant novel, the family Fang is destined to join the families Tenenbaum and Bluth as paragons of high dysfunction.

Favorite Book of the Month: The Family Fang. No doubt.

Character Who I'd Most Like to Have a Drink With: Jake (The Last Werewolf) or Buster, Child B in The Family Fang. Both entirely fascinating.

Whee!

2011-09-29T08:55:00.002-05:00

I'm sick! Yay! I should spare you the details but my stuffy head and trusty box of Kleenex are looming pretty large in my life these days. I had pretty well talked myself into believing it was allergies and/or sinus mess. It was like if I believed it hard enough, it would be true. Turns out, that didn't work out so well. Now. I have a cold.

One good thing: last night's dinner went really well. That is good. Another good thing: no plans this weekend! Which is very good. Very very good.

I have voted we do no housework this week. We'll wash dishes and laundry, of course, but no dusting of furniture or mopping of floors. Because of the sickness. Let's just don't.

Earlier this week I finished The Family Fang. It is wonderful. I'm reading Aftertaste now, which I'm quite enjoying.

I can't smell. I can't taste. Now would be a good time to take up drinking black coffee*. Or! To try brewing some of those teabags of green tea that I bought a year ago and haven't gotten up the nerve to try.

At night after looking at Pinterest, which has now become part of my bedtime routine, I read a page or two from Stephen King's On Writing (link is to the audio version because that's the cover art I like best). It's a fabulous book. (I read it each September. Every November, I read Making a Literary Life by Carolyn See. I save the most delicious writing book for January, my birthday month: If You Want to Write by Brenda Ueland.)

This is me resolutely vowing to hunker down and finish the novel by my goal, which is before Thanksgiving.

My head hurts. I wish I could pop it off my body, shake it out real good, and pop it back on, good as new.

Why so giddy? It's two days until October. Pumpkins are, like, everywhere.

Whee!

*Pish posh. Like I'd ever give up my cinnamon-sprinkled hazelnut creamer.

Meanwhile

2011-09-27T13:12:00.020-05:00

I'm not done telling you about the Auburn trip and how great it was.

That's now been, what? Two, three weeks ago? Tomorrow night my dinner team at church prepares a meal for 100 people. My turn won't come around again for over a month. I'm on the activities committee for our town's fall festival on October 8th. After that, things should calm way down and I'll have all kinds of time on my hands, she said naively.

The day we were to leave Auburn dawned clear and cool, a gorgeous early fall day. Before we left the state park, we explored the trail that led to the waterfalls.

It was a steep trek, and I do mean, steep, down to the falls. Jane and I both wore flip flops. I had tennis shoes back in the car. We hadn't realized we'd be scampering like billy goats over rocks and tree roots.

It was worth it.

We lingered. Something about the water, the trees, the morning sunlight - it was restorative. We left - in no big hurry - and drove to campus.

Auburn is a pretty, pretty place.

The bride and groom thought so.

They got me to wondering: Was their wedding later that afternoon, on a Sunday? Had it been the day before? If so, they got up following their wedding reception, put back on the wedding day duds, and went to take pictures?

Auburn had won the game the day before so the famous trees at Toomers Corner had been rolled. School tradition dictates that after a winning football game, students roll the huge live oaks with toilet paper.

If you follow college football at all, you may have heard about the trees at Toomer's Corner being poisoned. A few days after Auburn University won the national championship, a self-professed University of Alabama fan, who is apparently bat-shit crazy, poisoned the live oak trees. We know all this - who it was, that he is an Alabama fan, and assurely about the crazy part -because the man called in to sports radio show to brag about it. (No, seriously.)

In years past, water hoses have been used to get the toilet paper down from the trees. The trees are in such shape that they can't withstand it. Now the paper must be removed by hand.

The trees look pitiful.

At the same time, it's nice to see the tradition remain.

We went across the street to get a lemonade at the famous Toomers Drugstore.

Besides its location, the store is also famous for its hand-squeezed lemonade. It was every bit as good as I'd heard it was.

We enjoyed delicious sandwiches at Mama Goldberg's Deli for lunch on our way out. On the drive home we stopped here and there; I have more pictures. We also have a lot of good memories of a great time. Just looking at these photos kind of makes me want to go back.

In search of a career path? I have the answer.

2011-09-21T09:11:00.002-05:00

The answer is in two words:

Be dependable.

A few weeks ago I decided to update my web site. I've been circling the idea. This look, while edgy and cool, is not really me. I am not edgy or cool. The in-your-face closed fist isn't me.

Over the last two weeks, I've contacted five graphic designers. Three didn't respond at all, one assured me last week that she'd be in touch over the weekend (I haven't heard any more from her), and one did get me some samples but is now out of the country, on a mission trip, no less, so I can't blame him for being out of touch.

I've long thought that a plumber or an electrician could be a millionaire if he or she were dependable. Do what you say you're going to do when you say you're going to do it.

It's simple, but it's not easy. Obligations, unforeseen meetings, and nightmarish homework sessions intefere. I know. BELIEVE YOU ME, I know.

So anyone know a freelance graphic designer who is available and wants a small project?

Weekend at Auburn

2011-09-15T09:56:00.015-05:00

Weekend getaway with friends Tom and Jane at a wonderful little cabin in a state park with an SEC football game to attend - that was how we spent last weekend.

On the drive down, Jane pointed out that Tom and Jeffrey were both wearing their school colors.

They are cute that way. Here, they're discussing various SEC teams, strategy, coaches, and all manners of football-related stuff.

We stopped in Meridian on our way down, and had lunch at Weidman's.

We were all but giddy when we reached our little cabin at Chewacla State Park late that afternoon.

Probably we were slap-happy from being in the car so long, coupled with anticipation of the next day's football game but really: how can you not love it?

Inside was just as charming. Stone fireplace with a framed menu from a 1935 Civilian Conservation Core (CCC) Thanksgiving dinner above it.

Cigars and cigarettes on the menu for after dinner.

The site of Chewacla State Park was originally a CCC work camp. The CCC built two miles of foot trails, an arched masonry bridge that is still standing, two and a half miles of roads, a concrete and stone dam on Chewacla Creek, and six stone cabins, including the one we stayed in.

The four of us sat on the deck for hours, talking and laughing -- catching up.

Later we moved inside and visited with Bill and Donna, dear friends of Tom and Jane's, who we now claim as our friends, too, such sweet, fun people.

These are all the very best kinds of friends, the ones who can you wear baggy pajama pants and oversized tshirts around. Be comfortable.

We had a large time that evening. We stayed up later than any of us realized or intended but that's part of the fun of a weekend away with friends.

The next morning seemed to come several hours too early but we rallied. We enjoyed our wake-up coffee from the deck.

I loved the play of early morning sunshine.

Fueled with coffee we slathered on sunscreen and got ready for the 11:25 kickoff.

We met up with Bill and Donna before the game. Donna is a true hostess; she offered us Bloody Marys and cheese straws we walked in the door.

I have precious few (as in, none) photos of our walk to the stadium. I wish I did! It was a true blue game, meaning Auburn fans were encouraged to wear their blue. I saw the cutest navy blue dresses, all appropriate, all in good taste. Some young women were necklaces with orange beads, others tied orange scarves around their heads. They all looked like Stacy and Clinton had just finished styling each one, all with a navy and orange them.

All the maroon we saw was a pleasant surprise.

The Auburn fans were, to a fault, polite, gracious, and friendly. They welcomed us to Auburn, asked if we were having a good time. They were hospitable and showed the best kind of sportsmanship. Later in the game, two Mississippi State players were injured. When each was got up from the field, the Auburn fans cheered. Just as it should be.

School spirit was everywhere and it was all so good-natured. The concourse under the stadium where the concessions and restrooms were was clean.

At halftime, the four of us gathered just outside the concourse for snacks and for the hope of a breeze. I admired this young woman's haircut who was standing close to us. She was so cute, with her rough and ready square-toed boots and jeans and this short haircut. A few minutes later this young woman apparently passed out. She fell smooth down, hitting her head on the concrete.

Several of us bystanders darted through the concourse - there was a first aid station somewhere, I'd seen a sign earlier - and called, "First aid! Medic!" It felt like all 87,251 Auburn and State fans were crowded in there and we were trying to in the opposite direction that they were. I spotted a police officer working the game and told him what had happened.

By the time I got back over there, her friends had her standing. Her lips were blue and her eyes unfocused. When they were trying to revive her, the guy with her kept asking, "What did you take? What did you take?"

The medics got there a moment later, got her in a wheelchair, and took her to get more medical attention. I hope she was okay. It was scary.

The rest of the game was hot, hot, hot. We were in full sun and did I say it was hot? Because it was. Hot. All that sunscreen I'd applied so generously was gone and I hadn't brought it with me (duh).

The game stayed close and it was a heartbreaker for Mississippi State. Still, it was a good game; both teams played well. We were all wrung out from the day: the heat, the close calls, a questionable call by the officials, the anxiety of a game that could have gone either way numerous times, particularly right at the end.

It was a great day and a great game and whew! We were wiped out by the time we got home to our little cabin. It was a more subdued gathering on the deck that night and I think we all turned in early.

The next day? Waterfalls, Toomers Corner. More to tell!

A whole new world of books and authors and books!

2011-09-14T10:08:00.002-05:00

I'm a book nerd girl through and through. So much so that in addition to working my way through the archives (treasure trove!) and current podcasts of Books on the Nightstand, I recently called in to comment.

The hosts, Ann and Michael, invited listeners to give feedback about author events, signings, readings, and the like. I have opinions. So I called in.

Last week, my voicemail was part of a show (Episode #145) made up of listener voicemails. My word but does my southern accent come through. I mean, it is pronounced. Also, I had no idea that I enunciate. and. emphasize. every. single. word. How annoying that must be! I really need to brush up on that, you know, for my acceptance speech for the National Book Award. Right?

In the meantime, I'll keep listening. I may practice a bit before I call next time.

That day

2011-09-13T09:41:00.004-05:00

I didn't forget about Sunday being September 11th. Even if I'd wanted to, it would have been impossible, what with the media coverage.

I thought about it and I said a prayer for the families, for the victims, for everyone hurt by it. Who wasn't affected by it? I think we all were.

The Child was two months away from being born on that morning. As our fears and confusion about the terrorist attacks turns ten years old, so does he.

Yesterday morning on Good Morning America I saw some of the coverage. So much pain, so much hurt. Have you seen the picture of the father at the memorial, the one who'd just found his son's name? That is the image I see when I think about the 10-year anniversary. So much despair and pain captured in that photograph.

We put up American flags at our house before we left for a weekend trip. As we traveled, we saw lots of flags. I was glad to see them but at the same time everything about the day hurts a little bit.

I don't know what to say that hasn't already been said.

Focus Not

2011-09-07T16:26:00.001-05:00

The version of myself is skewed. See, I don’t necessarily mind change. Sometimes I embrace it. Like when the seasons change, especially from fall to summer. I tend to think that means that since I’m okay with change, I like all stripes of variety. From there, I jump to I must like working on lots of different things at the same time.

Turns out: No. Not even a little bit.

At best, I can focus on two Big Things at once. Much more than that, and I get this sinking, panicking, squelched feeling because there’s not enough time and how I am I going to this and wait if I do this I can’t do that and how and on and on and on. The internal dialogue alone wears me out.

I have my big rocks that need to go in the jar first. I think (again, my perception of me, so possibly, I’m way off base) that I’m pretty good about getting those big rocks in first.

Here lately, though, I’ve got a lot of big rocks and some of my favorite big rocks get crowded out of the jar, leaving me pointing my finger. “Not fair! Not fair!”

For the last several weeks, I’ve had five big rocks going, six if you count Jeffrey’s birthday, which is today, and which we’ve had fun celebrating and will continue to do so smooth through this coming weekend. Seven if you could The Child’s ridiculous amount of homework and the curse of multiplication tables.

That’s five Big Things too many. They’re all important. None of them feel like obligations. They all matter to me and they’re all things I want to do well.

Yesterday the first thing on my to do list was, “Breathe.” Not, obviously, that I forget to breathe, but lately I feel like I’ve been forgetting to exhale. When I left the office for lunch yesterday, my shoulders and my neck hurt. As I walked down the sidewalk – it was a gorgeous fall day, which helped my feelings a lot – I consciously relaxed. I must have had my shoulders tensed up all morning. Now, why? Does that help? No.

All this is my own making, every bit of it. I’m writing a novel, have an ebook project in the works, and another project that will be announced very soon. I super love all of them.

I volunteered – no one asked me to – to help organize a series of workshops in our church. As of Monday, I’m teaching one about healthy living. I’m helping with a fall festival our town is hosting. I’m doing some freelance editing.

Then there’s time to enjoy with Jeffrey and The Child.

It’s like I have a gas tank with only so much fuel. The engine works best when the fuel goes to only one or two activities. When the fuel is siphoned off to four, five, six things the fuel flow peters out.

What’s worse it feels like the things that matter most are the ones that are starved for the fuel of attention and energy. Why is that?

I’m not sure how to fix this. Prioritize, triage, balance? How?

Anybody got any answers? A glass of wine?

Craptastic

2011-09-06T15:14:00.002-05:00

I'm walking around, hale and healthy. As are my family and friends. I have a roof over my head and food in the fridge. Mississippi State won their season opener. The temperatures have even dropped to comfortable fall-ish numbers, which is all but unheard of for Mississippi in September.

But I have to say: Monday was craptastic.

The day started well enough. I slept until 6:30, and that was nice. Rather than work out right away, I decided to make a cup of coffee and get back in bed, just like it was still the weekend. On Saturday and Sunday mornings, Jeffrey and I sit in bed and drink coffee. He looks up the score to the high school football games the night before and chuckles when my alma mater lost. I read aloud funny things on Twitter, usually by Colson Whitehead or The Bloggess. Good times.

The Child has a sciece project due on Wednesday. He had to write a 1/2- to 3/4-page report, handwritten or typed, about the grassland ecosystem. What type of animals live there? What type of plants? What's it like? It took well over two hours. Mostly for the whining. Whining took up a whhhhhhhhhhhhhhhoooooooooooooooooooollllllllllllllllllllllllllle lot of time. Great, giant, annoying swaths of time. I was ready to pinch his little head off. A child shouldn't make a parent so angry and frustrated. A teenage son, yes. A toddler, certainly.

Later that afternoon I couldn't focus enough to read, and that doesn't happen often. I flipped through channels on TV and came across the sparkly hot mess that is Dance Moms.

I can't even explain it except to say it's a reality TV show about a dance studio and the mothers of the 9-year old class. That probably gives you a very good idea of what it's all about.

We ate pizza out for dinner. When we got home I spent an hour or better on Pinterest.

So. How was your Labor Day?

August Books

2011-09-03T10:32:00.006-05:00

Where or When by Anita Shreve

A man and woman who were in love when they were 14 at summer camp meet up 30 years later and have an affair, both convinced the other is the love of his/her life. I find it implausaible. The woman knows, I think, that this isn't the reason for the affair. The man seems to really believe that she is his one true love. He tells his wife on Christmas Eve that he's in love with this other woman and is leaving. And, oh, yeah, our finances are beyond ruined - the bank will take the house and everything else in a matter of months. He's done that while the woman's husband has tried to kill himself, meaning, of course, she can't leave him so the other guy has ruined his family for nothing. Very Henry O.

She sends him a letter telling him it’s over, period, the end. Then she’s in the grocery store and hears the song – Where or When – and rushes to call him. He isn’t at the hotel where he’s been staying. She leaves a frantic, detailed message with the clerk to find him and tell him not to read the letter, whatever you do, do not read the letter. The man isn’t there because he’s at the post office. Of course. He reads the letter and drives his car off a cliff, sort of by accident because the road is a sheet of ice but sort of not. The End.

Maine by J. Courtney Sullivan was one of the "it" books of the summer, and with good reason.

"I have never stayed at this cottage in Maine, or any cottage in Maine, but no matter: I now feel I know what it's like being in a family that comes to the same place summer after summer, unpacking their familiar longings, slights, shorthand conversation, and ways of being together. J. Courtney Sullivan's Maine is evocative, funny, close-quartered, and highly appealing." –Meg Wolitzer, author of The Uncoupling

Percy Jackson and The Olympians: The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan is a fun, fun book. I thoroughly enjoyed it and could imagine how much a teen would love it. What a cool way to introduce kids to Greek mythology, too. Thumbs up!

I’d never heard of this series until I mentioned to my brother that I’d watched part of the movie version one afternoon in the hotel when we were at Orange Beach.

From the book flap:Twelve-year-old Percy Jackson is about to be kicked out of boarding school . . . again. No matter how hard he tries, he can't seem to stay out of trouble. But can he really be expected to stand by and watch while a bully picks on his scrawny best friend? Or not defend himself against his pre-algebra teacher when she turns into a monster and tries to kill him? Of course, no one believes Percy about the monster incident; he's not even sure he believes himself…

Now Percy has just ten days to find and return Zeus's stolen property, and bring peace to a warring Mount Olympus. On a daring road trip from their summer camp in New York to the gates of the Underworld in Los Angeles, Percy and his friends–one a satyr and the other the demigod daughter of Athena–will face a host of enemies determined to stop them. To succeed on his quest, Percy will have to do more than catch the true thief: he must come to terms with the father who abandoned him; solve the riddle of the Oracle, which warns him of failure and betrayal by a friend; and unravel a treachery more powerful than the gods themselves.

The Poison Tree by Erin Kelly was deeply enjoyable. There were lots of twists and turns and an ending that was surprising yet inevitable. I'd heard lots of good things about this book, and they were all true. I'm looking forward to reading more by Erin Kelly.

From Publishers Weekly:In 1993, the naïve yet brilliant Karen receives a scholarship to London's Queen Charlotte's College, where she's beguiled by Biba Capel, an iconoclastic and edgy drama student, who soon introduces Karen to her strange older brother, Rex. Karen joins sister and brother at the grand but deteriorating Capel family house in Highgate, with its several unconventional tenants. The three throw disorderly parties that enrage the neighbors, but they succeed in creating their own Edenic existence until the unwanted intrusion of Biba's hostile lover. Though melodrama looms, including a double homicide, the tension never wanes, and the ensuing horror comes as a major shock. The surprises don't end until the last page of this twisted tale with its wonderfully evocative London atmosphere.

I can't even tell you how much I liked Food Matters by Mark Bittman.

I'm a fan of Bittman's, anyway; his How to Cook Everything, with its bright yellow cover, is my go-to cookbook in the kitchen. I use it as a reference book as well as a practical book to cook from.

In Food Matters, he sums up his way of eating: Eating vegetables and grains - nothing processed, no junk food, no meat - until dinnertime. At dinnertime, he eats pretty well whatever he wants. In doing this, Bittman lost 35 pounds in four months. His cholesterol and blood sugar went down and his sleep apnea vanished. I love this common-sense, doable approach to healthy eating. It's balanced, with eating well for you for two-thirds of the day, then indulging in a scrumptious meal. Nothing is off limits yet healthy eating is embraced.

Favorite Book of the Month: Any of these could easily be my favorite (except When or Where) but if pressed, I'd say Maine was my favorite. The way Sullivan crafts the characters so the reader sees how they view other people, and how those people view the ones around them, how they all get it wrong yet right is a pleasure to read.

Character Who I'd Most Like to Have a Drink With: Kathleen Kelleher from Maine. Although the drink would be bottled water, as she is a recovering alcoholic. As my grandmother would say, she is a pistol.

Going visiting

2011-08-31T06:58:00.004-05:00

There is nothing like sweet words from someone you admire to make your day. Rachel of Lawn Tea Gatherings, a fellow southern girl, is hosting a post I wrote at her blog. She wrote a glowing introduction that I keep going back to re-read, it makes me feel so good.

Drop by her place for a visit. You'll have a great time at her Lawn Tea Gatherings.

It works for me

2011-08-29T19:35:00.005-05:00

When school started a few weeks ago I re-organized my desk. I’d been relishing the project for weeks: cleaning out desk drawers, taking everything down from my bulletin board and tacking the pieces up in different places.

I knew it’d be a little back to school initiation for me, signaling the start of something new.

I swept the desk clean!

Next, the fun part: filling the desktop back up!

It’s ridiculous how much I enjoyed the ritual. Putting familiar things in new places shakes something up a bit in the brain. It keeps my creative mind fresh and astir.

By New Year’s, I imagine it will need it again. I’m already looking forward to it.

Momentous

2011-08-25T09:11:00.002-05:00

Yesterday morning when I went outside I noticed an acorn on the ground. It's the first one I've seen this year. Then, out of the corner of my eye, I'm certain I saw a yellow leaf fall to the ground.

You know what this means, right? FALL IS COMING after all. I had all but lost hope.

Hooray! Cool weather, fall leaves, football, pumpkins!

Welcome to My Addiction!

2011-08-23T10:54:00.003-05:00

The same day I get all my photos, digital and print, perfectly organized, I figure I’ll also come up with the perfect labeling system for links in my Favorites folder.

I have a folder for regular blogs, the ones I read everyday. I have a folder for sometimes blogs, the ones I read occasionally. I have a folder for recipes I want to try, one with links to inspiring posts, one for posts about writing.

I have a folder called Holidays, Birthdays, and Parties. That’s where I have gift ideas for Jeffrey, for my mom, for The Child. And when I come across a cute packaging idea or something I want to make, I add it.

Inevitably I forget where I've put what and then can't find it. Thank goodness for Pinterest.

I first heard of the web site when a blogger mentioned she organized party ideas there. I ventured over and I was a goner.

I should be embarrassed to tell this (only I’m not) but the next morning I woke up thinking about Pinterest and excited to get back to it.

Thankfully that first wave of excitement faded and now I have a (relatively) normal fix on my Pinterest enthusiasm.

Some people have a board for photos of thin, tan, very fit – very fit – women. They call these inspiration boards. I would call these Get Depressed boards, but that’s just me.

My boards are named things like: Come on in! Parties and Entertaining, where I put ideas for decorating and such. There's my Word up board, a spot for quotes.

For rainy days, there's the I made this for you board, which has all manners of things to make for fun and for gifts, although that board isn’t to be confused with

The Gifting board has ideas for packaging presents. We “eat” with our eyes first, and I think the same is for the enjoyment of a present. It’s fun to make it pretty and make it personal.

If I hear “I’m bored” one more time I will scream board holds lots of ideas for crafty stuff to do with The Child.

I have boards for fall and Christmas and things that I just like.

I can't wait to see what you all find on Pinterest!

You're welcome!

It works, too

2011-08-18T14:15:00.001-05:00

Years ago, I did public relations for a hospital, that, though quite small, had a physical therapy department. So I had a passing acquaintance with physical therapy before I was prescribed therapy this summer for my back.

Still, I thought people who were prescribed PT needed it because they were recovering from surgery, like for a torn rotator cuff, not because they stood up weird while dusting.

I didn’t altogether know what to expect. It was lovely.

The PT room was a lot like a gym, without the ultra-fit women in little gym outfits and men with bulging muscles. My therapist put me on the recumbent exercise machine, then the elliptical, and she had me do all kinds of core stuff. Then I got ultrasonic massage on the sore muscle followed by twenty minutes with a heating pad over little tingly electrodes stimulating the muscle.

It was like having a personal trainer. Not a personal trainer like Jillian Michaels or a tough love types who yells at you like a drill sergeant on the first day of boot camp. Instead, the physical therapists said things like, “How you doing, there? You feel okay? Is that weight too heavy? I don’t want you doing too much. You’re doing great!”

It was like a session with a personal trainer followed by a deep tissue massage, ending with a hot stone treatment.

Truly wonderful. The first day I left feeling better than I had since before I pulled the muscle.

If I could just go back for the massage and heating pad.

Beats me

2011-08-17T18:24:00.002-05:00

I don’t really understand all that I know about the debt ceiling. From what I gather it’s a good thing that legislation was agreed upon a few weeks ago and voted for.

I have questions.

• How did the richest country in the world come to have so much debt?
• When did the U.S. begin taking on debt? For what?
• It’s over 14 trillion dollars. How?
• How did the debt get so out of hand?
• Who do we owe that money to?
• For what?
• Can we ever pay back $14,000,000,000,000.00? I’m thinking no, not really.

A mid-year New Year’s resolution, and this one’s for good

2011-08-15T09:14:00.001-05:00

After spending time at the beach this year I have decided that I’m going to embrace being pale. Next year, I will be the whitest person in the whole of Orange Beach, Alabama. Probably the entire state.

I’m throwing out the self-tanner and the tinted moisturizer. My skin will be the color of heavy cream. I will wear big hats and Jackie O. sunglasses. People will think me mysterious.

Or just weird. (tomato, tomahto)

Call the roll!

2011-08-11T06:36:00.004-05:00

Incredibly, school started Friday. We all exclaim over how early it is. The middle of the summer!

The fact is, I was ready.

Back to school time for my fourth-grade son is back to school time for me, too. And not a moment too soon.

What I have realized this summer is that I need routine. I need parameters and goals and that perfect, elusive balance of just the right amount of things to do that skirts right up to but not over Too Much.

In the summer, routines go out the window. In theory, I love that.

The truth is I crave routine the way most people want coffee first thing in the morning. It helps keep me on an even keel. Otherwise, I feel at loose ends, at odds, like I’m freefalling.

I don’t even try to get myself to buy the mess about long lazy days of summer. The days are long and unbelievably hot but they’re not lazy. Mostly, they’re filled with frustration that I cannot seem to get done any of the things I want to do. Frustration that it is prohibitively hot, ruling out bike rides to the library and late afternoon walks.

Maybe the key is admitting it: I am not a summer gal. Never have been and likely never will be. I will enjoy the fireflies, fresh watermelon daiquiris, the lack of early morning hustling, peaches at farm stands.

I was giddy when we got The Child's school supplies. New pencils and binders and packages of loose leaf paper means school is starting and for me, that spells new beginnings.

I love new beginnings. Back to school feels like the new year way more than January 1st does. It gives me another opportunity to examine goals and where I am, how far I’ve come, what I want to do. It’s a great time to reflect and reevaluate.

It’s also time to revive and revitalize.

This year’s word is BIG. Live big, think big, dream big, do big. B I G.

I’ll admit by March the bloom was off that rose. For the last several months, I’ve not thought about my word or emulating the spirit of it for weeks on end. That’s why back to school makes me so happy; it’s a chance to experience all the wonderful newness and beginnings again. Twice in one year! It’s a way to get back on track, or get on a new track if the old one isn’t working.

Thinking big and living big from here on out. I’ve got my routines, plans, and goals in place. They’re ambitious but not overly so. I can do this, that’s what I keep telling myself. That and other assorted trash talk:

“Go big or go home.”

“If you can’t run with the big dogs stay on the porch.”

“Just do it.”

School's back in session. Here's to blessed, happy parameters, routines and a set, solid way.

Scenes of summer

2011-08-09T14:52:00.020-05:00

I rode my bike until it got too hot to be outdoors.

We celebrated our two-year wedding anniversary.

Had friends over for a Memorial Day cookout.

Visited South Carolina.

Dear, dear South Carolina.

Stayed indoors and made things.

I baked with blueberries.

Jeffrey cooked on the grill.

I ate pasta with fresh roasted vegetables for lunch.

Fell asleep with gardenias on the bedside table.

Enjoyed watermelon

Fresh peppers from the garden

And frozen peanut butter pie every chance we got.

I met author Ann Patchett.

Went to the beach.

And came home pale and happy.

Attention Fall: time to get here. Be quick about it please.

July Books

2011-08-08T06:42:00.002-05:00

So many gorgeous passages in The Secrety History by Donna Tartt. I love this one:

“I took a sip of my drink. If I had grown up in that house I couldn’t have loved it more, couldn’t have been more familiar with the creak of the swing, or the pattern of the clematis vine on the trellis, or the velvety swell of land as it faded to gray on the horizon, and the strip of highway visible – just barely – in the hills beyond the trees. The very colors of this place had seeped into my blood: just as Hampden, in subsequent years, would always present itself immediately to my imagination in a confused whirl of white and green and red, so the country house first appeared as a glorious blur of watercolors, of ivory and lapis blue, chestnut and burnt orange and gold, separating only gradually into the boundaries of remembered objects: the house, the sky, the maple trees. But even that day, there on the porch, with Charles beside me and the smell of wood smoke in the air, it had the quality of a memory; there it was, before my eyes, and yet too beautiful to believe.” – p. 96

From Library Journal:
This well-written first novel attempts to be several things: a psychological suspense thriller, a satire of collegiate mores and popular culture, and a philosophical bildungsroman. Supposedly brilliant students at a posh Vermont school (Bennington in thin disguise) are involved in two murders, one supposedly accidental and one deliberate.

I am a fan girl of Ann Pachett’s. Her novel, Bel Canto, is one of the best I’ve read. I had the good fortune to meet her, chat with her, hug her, even, at Turnrow Books. So it pains me to say that I did not care for State of Wonder.

The characters were bewildering; I couldn’t make sense of their actions. One character in particular was so unlikable that I began turning pages when she showed up.

Lots of readers and lots of reviewers love it, though.

A young woman in high school kills herself. Before she does, she records cassette tapes telling why. She mails these tapes to each of the people responsible. 13 Reasons Why by Jay Asher is heartbreaking and compelling and tragic. I think anyone who has ever been to high school should read it. Everyone who has a child in middle school or high school should read it. I will want my son to read it in a few years.

From Booklist:
When Clay Jenson plays the cassette tapes he received in a mysterious package, he's surprised to hear the voice of dead classmate Hannah Baker. He's one of 13 people who receive Hannah's story, which details the circumstances that led to her suicide. Clay spends the rest of the day and long into the night listening to Hannah's voice and going to the locations she wants him to visit. The text alternates, sometimes quickly, between Hannah's voice (italicized) and Clay's thoughts as he listens to her words, which illuminate betrayals and secrets that demonstrate the consequences of even small actions. Hannah, herself, is not free from guilt, her own inaction having played a part in an accidental auto death and a rape. The message about how we treat one another, although sometimes heavy, makes for compelling reading.

Under the Mercy Trees by Heather Newton

From Publishers Weekly:
Newton delivers a stirring debut novel told from the perspectives of four central characters embroiled in a family drama that spans generations and is riddled with defensive secrecy and emotional penury in equal measure.

So many people are wild about So Much Pretty by Cara Hoffman but I am not one of them.

I had issues with elements of the book and also with some of the scenes, graphic and distubring. The book is told through multiple viewpoints, which I've seen done effectively, but it didn't work for me here. I couldn't really get to know anyone because the POV was always shifting.

It was confusing, too, keeping up with where we were and when we were - some of the narration was when a character was three years old, then when was fifteen, then back to when she was eight. It made it work to keep up with.

*SPOILER ALERT*
A young woman disappears and it turns out she was held in chains in a storage building for five months, routinely raped, beaten, and assaulted by a group of teenage boys and a couple of their fathers.

Often the book felt like a violent, graphic ABC After School Special, trying to impart a message about violence against women. I'm anti-violence against women, of course, but all the rattling off of statistics didn't ring true.

It got a starred review at Publishers Weekly, for what it's worth.

Amazon.com reviews:
Stylishly written, closely observed, and bracingly unexpected, So Much Pretty leads the reader into the treacherous psychology of denial, where the details of an event are already known, deeply and intuitively felt, but not yet admitted to, reconciled or revealed.

I read The All of It and now remember nothing, not even one thing about it, which I guess is about all we need to know.

Wait – yes, I do. This is the book I bought because when I met Ann Pachett (don’t think I don’t work that into every conversation I can) she talked about it, how she loved it. The bookstore had the edition in which Ann had written the foreword. I found her endorsement and the reviews and blurbs did not match the caliber of the book.

What Now? by Ann Patchett I did love. Very much. It is right up my alley.

A few choice quotes:

It was for me the start of a lesson that I never stop having to learn: to pay attention to the things I’ll probably never need to know, to listen carefully to the people who look as if they have nothing to teach me, to see school as something that goes on everywhere, all the time, not just in libraries but in parking lots, in airports, in trees.

It took me a long time of pulling racks of scorching hot glasses out of the dishwasher, the clouds of steam smoothing everything around me into a perfect field of gray, to understand that writing a novel and living a life are very much the same thing.

You are, every one of you, someone’s favorite unfolding story.

From Amazon reviews:
Based on her lauded commencement address at Sarah Lawrence College, this stirring essay by bestselling author Ann Patchett offers hope and inspiration for anyone at a crossroads, whether graduating, changing careers, or transitioning from one life stage to another. With wit and candor, Patchett tells her own story of attending college, graduating, and struggling with the inevitable question, What now?

Runaway is the first book by Alice Munro I've read. I look forward to reading more of her work. She is some kind of writer.

From the book flap:
The incomparable Alice Munro’s bestselling and rapturously acclaimed Runaway is a book of extraordinary stories about love and its infinite betrayals and surprises, from the title story about a young woman who, though she thinks she wants to, is incapable of leaving her husband, to three stories about a woman named Juliet and the emotions that complicate the luster of her intimate relationships. In Munro’s hands, the people she writes about–women of all ages and circumstances, and their friends, lovers, parents, and children–become as vivid as our own neighbors. It is her miraculous gift to make these stories as real and unforgettable as our own.

Favorite Book of the Month: The Secret History. I wish that I could read it again for the first time.

Character Who I’d Most Like to Have Coffee With: Hannah from 13 Reasons Why so I could tell her that she is more wonderful than she knows.

Summer back

2011-08-05T12:14:00.002-05:00

I’m not sure how it happens – it’s a force akin to the one in the dryer that vanishes away one sock from each load of laundry – but ever so often a photograph drifts into my day. I’ll shake one out of a notebook or move a box and one falls out. I love these unexpected little trips back in time. It’s like finding a twenty-dollar bill in my coat pocket.

Like this photo. I could feel that summer afternoon and hear the rattle of the air conditioner.

That’s me lounging in Mom’s lap. My brother, Lan, sits to the side, grinning. My sandals are tumbled to the floor. That looks to be a Sears catalog on the coffee table. Maybe Mom looked through it. Maybe she thumbed through to find the toy section before handing it to me.

Mom wears a sleeveless blouse and sandals. I’m guessing it’s near the end of the afternoon, not long before she’ll stand and, holding Lan on her hip and me by the hand, and make her way to the kitchen to start supper.

Wait. It’s after supper: as many times as I’ve looked at this photo, I never noticed that the sky outside the window is dark. So we’ve had dinner and Mom is sitting with us, watching TV for a few minutes, before it’s bath time and bedtime.

On the back, my mother wrote the year – 1975 – and the place – Shelby, Mississippi, where we lived until I was about four years old. For a few minutes, I got to go back there.

This is how my mind works

2011-08-04T13:02:00.003-05:00

Some thoughts, scattered and informal, from my notebook last week while on vacation:

Speeding down the four-lane the pine trees are close. We’re driving south. I’m trying to see if I glimpse that girl who was me 19 years ago driving back to Hattiesburg on Sunday afternoons.

The foliage is so thick and green. It reminds me of summer. for some reason, I think about chef Robert St. John, and how happy this stretch of highway must make him when he’s coming home from traveling. All the familiar signs and sights, the landmarks no one else would notice or recognize.

It feels different, this part of the state. For stretches it is rural and remote, like we’re deep in the woods. Just as quickly we come to a little town – a few houses, an used car dealership, the lot a wide expanse of grass, one vehicle for sale, a black Saturn Vue.

So much looks familiar. I almost think that little has changed. Then nothing at all looks the same.

At the pool I saw a kid who looked so much like Heath B., a guy I went to school with. I wondered if it was him. Then I realized that Heath is a 42-year-old man and this guy I thought was him is easily 20 years or more younger than Heath is now. He looks the way Heath did when he was sixteen. I expect people to remain the way I remember them best or the way I knew them first.

This music seems loud. Maybe it’s just me.

These young girls, fourteen years old, maybe, heading out to the beach with their volleyballs and Frisbees. Good on them. It’s neat to see kids heading out to play rather than to lie on a chair soaking up the sun.

Sometimes, not often, but sometimes I feel like a freak. Why don’t I like the beach and the sun? I just don’t. Never have, really.

He looks so much like Heath.

There is still sand in my bag from my flip flops in there the day before. Does sand reproduce and grow, like rabbits?

What are these birds bobbing around the pool? Pigeons? I have no idea. They must be used to all the food scraps left around.

This place is coming alive. A little after nine and so many people heading to the beach and gathering at the pool.

They're going to have to expand this tunnel at Mobile.

Minority

2011-08-03T10:58:00.005-05:00

For most people, this is their idea of the beach:

This is mine:

Friday afternoon I was at the beach under an umbrella and a straw hat and 110 SPF sunscreen, doing all I could do to stay out of the sun. I thought: “Get out of the sun, fool!”

So I did. Went up to the room and read and watched part of Percy Jackson and The Olympians: The Lightning Thief.

The thing about the beach is 1) There is sand; and 2) It is hot. I know, right!

When I am on the beach early in the morning (which I wasn’t, not even once last week, as 8:30 was the earliest I woke the entire trip) and there is no one else around, the beach is lovely. I appreciate its majesty, the lullaby of waves crashing onto the shore, the changing pattern of the sand as the ocean washes over it. It is beautiful.

I don’t sunbathe, I don’t like hot, and I have a serious problem with jellyfish so the beach isn’t for me.

Jeffrey loves it. He could stay at the beach all afternoon, just relaxing. I know for many people, most people, even, the beach is relaxing. It makes me tense.

So I plop by hat back on my head and and hotfoot it (literally - yikes that sand is so hot) back. The best thing is Jeffrey understands this and doesn't find it (too) weird.

Comforts

2011-08-02T10:00:00.004-05:00

In one of my favorite childhood books, Meet the Austins by Madeline L’Engle, the family goes on a trip. Twelve year old Vicky narrates their return home:

We passed the school and the church and the store and then we were driving up our road, up our hill, and we saw our house, our own beautiful rambly white house, and Daddy was pulling up to the garage, and we were home.

Home!

Our tongues and muslces were suddenly freed and we piled out of the car and in through the garage and into the house, the kitchen.

It was home and I remembered it with every bit of me, and yet in a funny way it was completely different.

We ran all the way around the house, looking at it from all four points of the compass, and then back into the house again, and Mother had a record on the phonograph, and the phone kept ringing, all the kids wanting to ask us about our vacation...

I think about that scene every time I come home from a getaway. I’m a homebody from way back, and I dearly love the home we’ve made. Being away for a few days makes everything seem so dear. I appreciate things, the familiarity of things, when we're back from a trip.

My daydreams are rarely about travel. I like the idea of visiting Greece and discovering great places to eat in Italy and France. From there my mind makes a quick leap to passports, airports, long long long flights, language barriers, jet lag, and the constant low-level anxiety I know I would have about being in a foreign country where something terrible could happen and I could be thrown in a Turkish prison! Even though I’m not in Turkey!

Is this normal?

My parents are not like this. My mother is one of the goingiest people I know. My dad decides mid-morning on a Saturday that he’ll drive out to Texas to visit his brother, spend a day or a week, whatever.

Even while visiting places I dearly love and having a wonderful time, I’m always happy to be back at home. I enjoy the comforts of my home. My own shower, my own coffee mug.

Then again. I may not appreciate those things the same way if I wasn't away from them from time to time.

It's Hard for Me to Say I'm Sorry

2011-08-01T06:09:00.002-05:00

That's not true; I have no trouble apologizing. That song was popular years the summer I was nine and ago went to Gulf Shores for vacation with a friend and her family. Which is where I've been! I had post ideas in mind but the days slipped passed me.

We were in Orange Beach, Alabama and got home late Saturday night. The Child looks like a Coppertone baby, he's so brown. I am as lily white as I was when I left. I spent two afternoons in the hotel room with a book.

Years ago, that vacation at Gulf Shores? I also spent a couple of afternoons upstairs with a book, making my friend, Lara, so mad at me. She couldn't understand why anyone would choose to be inside reading rather than at the beach.

I guess I haven't changed much in three decades.

We're glad to be home and settled back in. What did I miss?

Probably one of the things my parents meant when they said, "Just you wait."

2011-07-25T13:37:00.005-05:00

My son has grown up being taught to say yes m'am, no m'am, yes sir, no sir, the same way I was. It's the norm in the south. It was how we were taught to address parents, grandparents, and teachers. And also police officers and state troopers, even if they are fifteen years younger.

It's about respect.

When The Child says, "Yes," to something I ask and his response is pleasant and respectful, I don't quibble over the "m'am" part; I'm no Mommy Dearest with the wire hangers about it.

The other day a group of folks were standing around. A mother called her son's name. He is about 11 years old. He snarled, "What?!", loudly, in response. His mother didn't seem taken aback or angry at his response. Actually, she didn't even seem to notice.

I couldn't help but think that I really, I mean really, hope The Child doesn't entertain the notion of talking to me like that in a couple of years. My next thought was how my dad would haved reacted had I ever responded like that to him or my mother.

The next thought after that was: Lo, I am old. I sound like an uptight, over-starched, prissy old person!

When did that happen? And how?? I didn't get the memo.

My hands flew to both sides of face and I wagged my head around a bit.

(I stand by my original reaction, though. That kid was rude.)

Steampunk. Sorta. Not really.

2011-07-20T09:17:00.006-05:00

My first digital camera was a 1.0 megapixel Olympus. Remember how it felt, the first time you took a photo and could see it, right then? Wasn’t that remarkable? It made me giddy. No waiting! If the picture didn’t turn out, you could delete it! Incredible!

I'm on my third digital camera since then and I oddly miss 35 mm cameras. I miss film. Here’s why: I have two-years’ worth of photos on my computer that I aim to get prints of. Actual paper prints to go in a photo album, although with lots of little epherma to go with it. I save all this mess, and then I don’t do anything with it.

One reason is that my days tend to be full, every day, so the time never seems ripe to sit down with a photo album, stack of photos, and a box of mementos and put them together.

Too, the fact is: I don’t have that stack of photos. That’s part of the problem right there. The photos are on my computer. To get actual paper photos, I need to:

1) Edit photos. Picasa seems to take forever to load. It’s unwieldly. Then again, my computer is a PC that runs on Vista.

2) After editing, each photo must be saved, a step I sometimes forget, which frustrates me to no end.

3) I either need to print them from my own computer, which I rarely do since it hardly ever works right. (I don’t think I’ll ever get another HP printer.)

4) Or I need to upload them to a photo site. That takes time.

5) Then have to make sure they’re sized right, go through and answer all the questions: Matte! Glossy! 5x7! CD of photos!

6) Make all those decisions then place the order.

7) If they’re being delivered to a Walgreens or Wal Mart, then go pick them up when they come in.

That’s at least seven steps. Too many.

Whereas in the olden days, I’d take my little film canister to Stub’s drugstore or drop it in an envelope and mail it. Then I’d go pick up the photos. Simple.

I still have my 35 mm camera. Maybe I should go back to it.

Or maybe: an Apple computer is the answer. Everything's better with a Mac, right?

You went and saved the best for last*

2011-07-18T15:49:00.011-05:00

The last thing I marked off the Friday to-do list was the item: Make notecards.

I'd been meaning to for a while. Since we made that marbled paper that was so much fun.

Since it was on my list, it had to be done. I don't know that I really felt like doing it, mainly because I wasn't sure if they would be any "good."

I'm glad I didn't let myself talk me out trying. It was fun, which was the main thing.

What made playing with paper and scissors and rubber stamps so satisfying was that I was following through.

Ideas? I got 'em. Tons of them. Sometimes, I convince myself it's not worth trying since it won't turn out. I can't do that. I don't know how. Shouldn't bother.

So when I do follow through with a creative project and it's fun and I'm happy with the results? That's golden.

It reminds me to just enjoy.

I think there's always beauty in really enjoying what you're doing.

I had strips and clips and blocks of marbled paper, discards from trimming the sheets. I played with them, moved them around in different configurations on my desk. They reminded me of birthday candles, and all at once I had this idea:

Birthdays make me happy and this card does, too. I want to make one for everyone I know. Funny how I had to stoke the creative fire a bit, let go, and just play. That's when I came up with something that otherwise I probably wouldn't have thought of.

*Anyone else remember the 1990s Vanessa Williams song?

The summer I fell apart.

2011-07-14T14:26:00.003-05:00

Short version:

The pulled back muscle finally requires physical therapy.

Then my eyes fail.

Finally, between the eyeglasses and funky hair, I apparently look like hell all the way around.

Longer version:

I heart physical therapy.

Back in April, I pulled a muscle in my back. It’s bothered me to varying degrees nonstop since then. Since nothing else was working, my doctor referred me to physical therapy.

I thought physical therapy was reserved for people who really need it, like those who have had surgery or a torn rotator cuff, not necessarily for those who twisted weird when they stood up from dusting a bookcase.

I was wrong! I’m very happy about that because physical therapy was a wonderful magical place. It’s worth a full blog post, which I will do. I went for weeks and graduated yesterday. The therapists were fantastic. The Child came with me a couple of times and they were so sweet to him, too. Thumbs up for physical therapy.

The eyes are the next to go.

Some time back – I really don’t know when as my maladies and the triple-digit-heat-index days are blurring together – my left eye started bothering me. It was irritated and itchy. Gook kept gathering in the corners of my eye. It didn’t hurt, exactly, but it was really uncomfortable. I stopped wearing contacts for a day or two then put in a new pair and they were just as uncomfortable.

I broke down and went to the eye doctor. He said it was allergies, prescribed eye drops, and said to give my eyes a break from contact lenses for another two to three weeks, which I did, because I’m a good little patient like that. There was no change. I called the eye doctor back, and they told me to continue with the eye drops and wait two more weeks.

Up until this point, I wore sunglasses everywhere. If I went outside to get the mail, I wore sunglasses. If it was overcast with an 80% chance of rain, I wore sunglasses. The glare, the brightness, it kills my eyes. Not wearing contacts means not wearing sunglasses. Not wearing sunglasses means I squint. Squinting causes (more) wrinkles around the eyes, not a good thing for reasons we’ll get into shortly.

Miscellany.

As you may have gathered from the lackadaisical posting I feel like I have been in a haze all summer. Not a good, daydreamy kind with gardenia-scented gentle breezes, no. A haze more like I’m a beat behind everyone and everything. A haze more like I can't get done the things I want to do.

I’m forever asking, “Hmmm?” and “What?” which drives everyone around me insane. It’s not that I’m not paying attention or listening it’s like I cannot focus. The maddening heat doesn't help. I’m just not with it.

And with it is where I desperately want to be. Between eye doctor and physical therapy appointments two or three days a week for a month or two now, days keep getting away from me. Last Friday I looked up and thought, “Is it Friday? Again?” (Not that it being Friday was a bad thing, OF COURSE NOT. I just couldn’t feature where the last seven days had gotten off to. Again.)

The hits keep coming. Yesterday at physical therapy a fellow patient/client asked me if The Child was my grandson.

Grand.

Son.

I had to ask her to repeat what she said, so sure was I that I had not, could not possibly have heard her correctly.

I was 29 when The Child was born. If I’d had a baby when I was 14 and that child had a baby when she was 14, it is mathematically, biologically, physiologically possible that I could have a grandchild who was almost ten years old, but just barely.

My hair looks like crap. Once this summer its natural body coupled with the humidity and they were divinely, crazily, blissfully happy together. For about five minutes. That’s how long my hair looked good. Then the romance fizzled and my hair went kaput. The humidity makes it irritable, just like the rest of me.

I’m tired of coloring my hair. I’m tired of being unhappy with the way I look, my hair. My weight, which is a topic I can’t get started on.

It’s the summer of my discontent, is all. There will be a nice healthy uptick once school starts back – routines, sunglasses, temperatures dropping below 100 degrees, football. It’s going to be great.

You can tell your ma I moved to Arkansas/ Or you can tell your dog to bite my leg

2011-07-11T10:58:00.004-05:00

My son used to watch the Hannah Montana TV show sometimes. I mentioned not long ago that Hannah’s dad on the show, before he became a television actor, was a country western singer.

The Child studied me, as if trying to figure out if I was pulling his leg or not.

“What?” I said. “He was a singer. Billy Ray Cyrus was his name.”

He thought I was kidding. I had to convince him that before that man was Miley’s dad, he was famous in his own right. Sometimes reviled and ridiculed (not unlike Miley) but still: famous.

I pulled up the YouTube video of Achy Breaky Heart.

The Child looked bewildered at first: Who is this person, he had to have been thinking. There stood Billy Ray in all his Kentucky waterfall-ed glory singing his little achy breaky heart out.

“That’s him. Same guy,” I said. “Believe it or not , he had a life before Hannah Montana.”

It’s funny. Billy Ray Cyrus was practically a punch line to a 1990s country and western joke, whereas to my son, he was the actor who played Hannah Montana’s dad on the Disney channel. Our worlds are colliding.

June Books

2011-07-06T07:47:00.002-05:00

Letter From Point Clear by Dennis McFarland was great. Singing Boy moved too slowly for me to think it was great.

From Library Journal:
McFarland, whose first novel, The Music Room, was a major best seller, again shows his remarkable skill in detailing human emotions and sorrow. One night, Malcolm, husband of Sarah and father of eight-year-old Harry, is shot to death in front of his horrified family…The novel can't sustain the emotional impact of the initial chapters, but its sophisticated and subtle analysis of each character's grief and resolution is compelling.

Swamplandia! by Karen Russell is hard to explain without it sounding gimmicky and outrageous, neither of which it is.

From Booklist:
Swamplandia! is a shabby tourist attraction deep in the Everglades, owned by the Bigtree clan of alligator wrestlers. When Hilola, their star performer, dies, her husband and children lose their moorings, and Swamplandia! itself is endangered as audiences dwindle … Ravishing, elegiac, funny, and brilliantly inquisitive, Russell’s archetypal swamp saga tells a mystical yet rooted tale of three innocents who come of age through trials of water, fire, and air.

With a few exceptions (John Dufresne, Jill McCorkle) I don’t care for short stories. I keep trying, which is why I picked up All the Time in the World by E. L. Doctorow. I liked a few stories here and there but I didn’t have trouble putting the book down.

Wish You Were Here by Stewart O'Nan

From Publishers Weekly:
O'Nan relies on a patient accumulation of detail instead of a focused dramatic arc to achieve a Vermeer-like realism in his latest novel. His strategy is to record minutely the thoughts and actions of all nine members of the extended Maxwell family as they spend a week at their family summer house, until their smallest gestures become familiar to the reader.

My attention waned as this book went on. Even though, I came across some real gems:

Bringing the bags through the living room, he wanted to stop to look at the familiar sailing pictures on the walls, the ugly orange shag rug, the mobile of Spanish galleons that poked you in the eye. It was like entering a party full of good friends, and the memories of each piece of furniture, each object on the mantelpiece stirred up as he passed, orbited like overheard conversations.

The CD protected him – early Bill Evans, real Sunday-paper music. Sunday-paper music. Love that.

There was so many Twilight parallels in A Discovery of Witches by Deborah Harkness: an unworldly, handsome vampire (at least this one didn’t sparkle). Their love is forbidden. He growled a lot, his voice gruff with desire. Scenes like that make me giggle. I turned the pages, skipping over the lovey-dovey Danielle Steele-worthy stuff.

Snow Angels by Stewart O'Nan was dark, dark, dark. When it wasn't dark it was bleak.

It's all true: all the wonderful things you've heard about this book. I was fully prepared to be all, “Meh,” about A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. Instead, I fell for it like everyone else.

From Publishers Weekly:
Readers will be pleased to discover that the star-crossed marriage of lucid prose and expertly deployed postmodern switcheroos that helped shoot Egan to the top of the genre-bending new school is alive in well in this graceful yet wild novel...as one character asks, How did I go from being a rock star to being a fat f*&^ no one cares about? Egan answers the question elegantly, though not straight on, as this powerful novel chronicles how and why we change, even as the song stays the same.

About Everything Beautiful Began After, by Simon Van Booy, Andre Dubus, III (author of Townie) said it:
“If F. Scott Fitzgerald and Marguerite Duras had had a son, he would be Simon Van Booy; this is a truly special writer who does things with abstract language that is so evocative and original your breath literally catches in your chest. This is a novel you simply must read!”

It is one of the prettiest books I’ve read in a long time, maybe ever. I highly recommend it.

If I was less than blown away by the other books by him I read this month, Stewart O'Nan redeemed himself with Last Night at the Lobster.

From Bookmarks magazine:
In his 10th novel, Stewart O’Nan proves once again why he’s the "bard of the working class" by exploring how the closing of one chain restaurant profoundly affects many lives. Last Night at the Lobster may be a small story, dealing with the mundane details of restaurant life, but O’Nan’s complex characters provide a service—an everyday feat that many American novels ignore. Almost all critics praised the novel as a triumph in realism. O’Nan has certainly written bigger, more plot-driven stories before, but Lobster shows off his "pitch perfect ear for life in late 20th century America" to great effect (San Francisco Chronicle). It’s a "Zen koan of a book" (Los Angeles Times), and not to be missed—especially if you’ve served your share of scampi in life.

Favorite Book of the Month: Everything Beautiful Happened After. I'm still kind of sighing over it.

My two cents

2011-07-05T16:07:00.001-05:00

Know this first:

1) I have never served on a jury; and

2) I haven't watched the Casey Anthony trial.

Basically, I don't know what I'm talking about.

But still.

I can't get over the verdict. My word!

At least it was interesting

2011-07-05T09:57:00.003-05:00

Last night when I couldn’t sleep, the song Yankee Doodle Dandy kept going through my mind.

That made me think of the scene in Steel Magnolias where they’re having the birthday party for Jack, Jr. They're gathered around a picnic table singing that song.

That made me think of the scene of the two of them in her room before the wedding. The bulletin board covered with keepsakes is a great touch. Kudos to the prop team

Then I’d circle back to Yankee Doodle Dandy.

I’m reading The Secret History by Donna Tartt. You’d think my insomnia would produce darker thoughts.

Don't tell me/I've nothing to do

2011-07-01T07:57:00.003-05:00

Last night I clicked through 29 pages of letterpress stationery on Etsy.

It's all so pretty. Of course, now I'm convinced that I "need" letterpress stationery.

Etsy is such a labyrinth. I could spend days browsing all the gorgeous handmade paper goodies.

Oh, wait. That's pretty much what I did, right?

Easy and inexpensive and fun and so pretty

2011-06-29T16:17:00.013-05:00

I totally made that!

After seeing a story about it in a magazine, I found a post about making gorgeous marbelized paper. At home. With liquid starch! The post was labeled, "This is awesome!" Absolutely.

(I also came across a version that uses shaving cream and food color. Haven't tried it.)

Start with cardstock. Have ready bamboo skewers and a towel-covered surface for the finished product. Fill a container - I used a 9x13-inch glass casserole dish - with enough liquid starch to cover the bottom. Like so.

Squeeze dots of acrylic paint onto the surface.

Use a bamboo skewer to swirl the colors together, creating the marbling effect. Valerie at Frugal Family Fun Blog suggested lightly bending the paper in half and carefully unrolling it in the starchy paint. Lift the paper and rinse in a container of water. (I used another glass casserole dish beside the first one, a towel beneath both to catch any drips.) Let dry on a flat surface.

We ooohed and ahhed each time we lifted the paper and saw the design.

The Child and I took turns. Here he swirls dots of blue paint.

The finished product.

Gorgeous!

Do you love this? Are you excited? I'm excited. CAN YOU TELL. Tonight I'm totally going to dream about swirls of paisley and marble swoops and swishes, peacock feathers, and luscious, scrumptious colors.

Big Bad Breakfast

2011-06-28T17:44:00.006-05:00

I enjoyed a wonderful meal at Big Bad Breakfast a few weeks ago. From the restaurant's web site - because they say it best:

The forgotten meal gets its due just north of the town square. A breakfast menu with few surprises opens the door to breakfast cuisine full of inspiration and energy. One visit to BBB will guarantee you never look at a breakfast plate the same again. Whether it's the house-cured Tabasco/Brown Sugar Bacon or the Anson Mills Steel Cut Oatmeal, you'll be talking about coming back before you've left the table.

One of the many wonderful things about the Yoknapatawpha Summer Writers Workshop is how warm and friendly everyone is. Friendships formed fast; we piled up in cars to eat together, to go to the bookstore. Everyone was included; snark was notably absent. Belly laughs were out in full force.

Half a dozen of us made a beeline to Big Bad Breakfast on the first day of the workshop. We pulled tables together and roared over the menu. Many of the dishes are named after books and authors. The restaurant's name comes from Larry Brown's collection of short stories, Big Bad Love.

We ordered coffee, Pain Perdue, cathead biscuits, Burgsalom, Burgasalom! (an 8-ounce burger made with ground chuck and ground bacon) topped with pimento cheese, and The Last Gentleman (Coca-Cola brined chicken).

The food was delicious and the company every bit as tasty.

I brought Jeffrey a coffee mug. That picture up there is of the t-shirt I treated myself to. I love that shirt so bad.

Seeing it

2011-06-24T08:44:00.021-05:00

I made a couple of new friends while out visiting old friends in South Carolina. They took us around their family’s home place. We all but tripped over history the entire afternoon.

A grist mill. I loved seeing and hearing the rush of water.

We went inside.

Upstairs were a few rooms.

And one gorgeous, beautiful luna moth.

I wanted to pet it and bring it home with me but I couldn’t. It was so perfectly pretty right where she was. Seeing it made me feel lucky.

At an old cemetery under the shade of a huge tree, we paused at the grave of David Rogerson Williams, the 45th governor of South Carolina from 1814 - 1816.

His family is here.

We pulled over beside an open field where our host told us Indian artifacts had been discovered: 900-year-old pottery, tools, and arrowheads. An entire village had been there once, right where we were. That could set the head to spinning.

All that history so close at hand.

I had to wonder about the trees and all the things they must have seen over the years. Soldiers passing through on horseback and on foot. Native Americans hunting with spears.

On our next trip out, I hope I can see all this again and hear the same stories.

I mean, really.

2011-06-23T09:37:00.002-05:00

Yesterday I thought to look online at the Oneida web site because I can't remember the name of my flatware. (I know I'm a grownup since "salad forks" and "place spoons" will be on my Christmas wish list.)

I scrolled through dozens of pictures and couldn't find my pattern. When I got home, I took a fork from the drawer. The pattern is Gorham. Which explains why it wasn't on the Oneida web site.

May Books

2011-06-21T09:44:00.002-05:00

From Amazon.com
Bill Buford's funny and engaging book Heat offers readers a rare glimpse behind the scenes in Mario Batali's kitchen. Who better to review the book for Amazon.com, than Anthony Bourdain, the man who first introduced readers to the wide array of lusty and colorful characters in the restaurant business? We asked Anthony Bourdain to read Heat and give us his take. We loved it. So did he.

I luckily won a copy of South of Superior and liked it so much. When I see it in bookstores, I fight not to tell other customers, "Try it! It's such a sweet story."

From the jacket flap:
When Madeline Stone walks away from Chicago and moves five hundred miles north to the coast of Lake Superior, in Michigan's Upper Peninsula, she isn't prepared for how much her life will change.

I'd be jealous of Molly Wizenberg and how well she writes if she weren't so darn likeable. A Homemade Life is a beautiful homage to home pleasures and her family.

The Peach Keeper is the newest by Sarah Addison Allen. It's a fast read and I enjoyed it well enough. If you're new to her work, I'd read The Sugar Queen or Garden Spells first.

From the jacket flap:
It’s the dubious distinction of thirty-year-old Willa Jackson to hail from a fine old Southern family of means that met with financial ruin generations ago. The Blue Ridge Madam—built by Willa’s great-great-grandfather during Walls of Water’s heyday, and once the town’s grandest home—has stood for years as a lonely monument to misfortune and scandal.

But Willa has lately learned that an old classmate—socialite do-gooder Paxton Osgood—of the very prominent Osgood family, has restored the Blue Ridge Madam to her former glory, with plans to open a top-flight inn. Maybe, at last, the troubled past can be laid to rest while something new and wonderful rises from its ashes. But what rises instead is a skeleton, found buried beneath the property’s lone peach tree ... the bones—those of charismatic traveling salesman Tucker Devlin, who worked his dark charms on Walls of Water seventy-five years ago—are not all that lay hidden out of sight and mind.

House by Tracy Kidder isn't my typical book and it was fascinating. (Maybe I need to expand my horizons.)

From the back of the book:
Tracy Kidder, Pulitzer prize-winning author, takes us to the heart of the American dream ... House brings us into the intimate lives of a family building their first home. We feel the tensions between architect, owners, and builders.

Kidder is a beautiful writer: When a tree becomes lumber, some of its peculiar characteristics survive. When, for instance, a crooked tree trunk is turned into two-by-tens, some of those homogeneous-looking boards will contain what's called "reaction wood," and they tend to warp. It is as if the lumber could remember the tree.

Had I read The Raising by Laura Kasaschke when I was sixteen I would have loved it in that way that teenage girls love spooky, gothic thrillers like Flowers in the Attic.

From the back of the book:
Last year Godwin Honors Hall was draped in black. The university was mourning the loss of one of its own: Nicole Werner, a blond, beautiful, straight-A sorority sister tragically killed in a car accident that left her boyfriend, who was driving, remarkably—some say suspiciously—unscathed. Although a year has passed, as winter begins and the nights darken, obsession with Nicole and her death reignites: She was so pretty. So sweet-tempered. So innocent. Too young to die. Unless she didn’t. Because rumor has it that she’s back.

Spooky, no? It was a dark look at campus life, especially among sororities. The premise of the plot is pretty outrageous but when the writing is good enough (as in The Likeness by Tana French) I can suspend my disbelief.

The ending was weak, though, and was a let down after all the tension in the thriller.

I borrowed So Easy by Ellie Krieger from the library and copied every other page, pretty much.

I made Blueberry-Almond French Toast Bake (page 55) for Jeffrey for Father's Day. It was good although I'd A) macerate the berries in a bit of sugar first and B) Add some butter in there somewhere. It needed just a touch.

I want to try the Pasta Salad with Salmon, Peas and Herbs (page 74), Broccoli Cheddar Breakfast Bake (page 52), and the No-Cook Lemon Bars (page 238). I'll let you know how they turn out.

Favorite Book of the Month: South of Superior

Character Who I'd Most Like to Have a Drink With: Bill Buford, author of Heat. The book was really good but I just know there are many stories that didn't make it in the book that I'd love to hear!

I'm going back someday*

2011-06-20T10:22:00.004-05:00

There was so much beauty in South Carolina. There was the scenery that was beautiful – Spanish moss dripping from cypress trees. Then there were the things I find charming and wonderful, like the white sign that said: Boiled Peanuts. Fresh Peaches.

What impressed me as much as anything was how nice the people were. I’m from the south, and I’m used to counting on standing in the checkout longer than necessary while people visit. It’s not odd to see somebody stop and hold the door open for someone who’s name they don’t know when they leave the post office.

It was no different there. When we were on the lake, passengers on every boat we passed lifted their hands in greeting. Out and about in the neighborhood, people walking their dogs or jogging waved to one another.

The Monday morning before we began loading the car to return home, I went outside to take pictures of the magnolia tree in their front yard, of the fan light above their front door. I had on sloppy gym shorts and a green Piggy Wiggly t-shirt. It was seven a.m. and a man in a pressed white shirt and tie in a Land Rover passed by. He looked surprised and puzzled but he smiled and waved.

Something about this simple friendliness made me feel so welcome. It made me embrace the town, the neighborhood, the whole area even more. There was something genteel about these little kindnesses.

The good manners weren’t limited to people who drive Land Rovers. In a local restaurant for a quick bite, a scruffy-looking guy with tattoos down both arms was so polite to both Jeffrey and me.

The little acts of being nice I saw over and over made South Carolina that much prettier.

*What's happened to Linda Rondstadt? I haven't heard anything about her in ages.

Dad's Day Eve

2011-06-18T10:23:00.009-05:00

I love this picture of my dad and me.

And this one - him leaning down to hold my hand.

Another one of my favorite dads is the guy on the left.

After we told The Child we were engaged, we went out for ice cream to celebrate.

Happy Father's Day to all the dads, stepdads, granddads, brothers, uncles and friends. Thank you.

Don't Do This

2011-06-17T10:07:00.003-05:00

I know how riveting it is to hear every last detail of my Adventure With Back Muscle Pain.

That one persnickety muscle in back has revolted. It was bad enough this morning that I called my doctor to tell them the hospital hadn't yet called about physical therapy, and also, I woke this morning with my back hurting hurting bad. Like real bad. Whatever affects Ibuprofen or Aleve or any of those are supposed to have bounces off and does nothing. I invited myself over for a shot.

Since this is a small town and a great clinic, they told me to come on in. I did and the nurse gave me a shot. It didn't hurt when she gave it to me but a few seconds later, it stung. Yow.

Now, some hour or so later, I feel pleasantly floaty and I really, really shouldn't be blogging.

I wonder what that shot was? I didn't even ask.

Not a square to spare

2011-06-16T10:04:00.002-05:00

I don't have an original thought in my head, not a single one, so this time I'm copying Mental Pause Mama.

This and That:

- All day yesterday I thought the next day (being today) was Friday, even while I knew that yesterday was Wednesday. This morning Jeffrey and I talked about what we'd do for dinner tonight. I mentioned getting boudin from the freezer, our standard Friday night meal (grilled boudin, sharp Cheddar, saltine crackers). He said, "But it's not Friday."

- I do not have anything for my dad for Father's Day. DAUGHTER FAIL

- When I saw the footage this morning of the riots in Vancouver, I thought I was seeing a scene from Libya due to political unrest. But no, it's in Canada over a . . . hockey game. Come on, guys.

- Why is it not Friday? It seems like Friday.

- I talked to a nurse yesterday at my dr's office. They've ordered up physical therapy to strengthen my back muscle. BRING IT NOW AND PLEASE HURRY

- What I know from not working out in seven weeks and one day: Exercise is a wonderful, quick-fix, stress reliever and mood elevator. Which I now don't have access to. Awesome.

- I tend to substitute food for that quick-fix stress reliever and mood elevator. Ask me (and the scale) how that's working out for me.

- I have more photographs from the lovely trip to South Carolina. It does seem like I'd stop shoveling the food in long enough to edit and post them, doesn't it?

- Summer is officially a few days away and it is stupid hot. Like August hot and no relief in sight until October.

- My dad is the hardest person to buy for. I will make him some peanut butter fudge, which he likes. Other than that? I got nothing. I gave him a book for his birthday last month.

- This is waiting for me at the library.

- Yesterday I heard an interview with Ann Patchett about her new book, which I cannot wait to read. LOVE her. She is also opening a bookstore in Nashville. Ann Patchett is my BFF. She just doesn't know it yet.

- Three cheers for air conditioning!

All the news

2011-06-14T10:20:00.003-05:00

Thanks to Mary, who posted a bullet list on her blog. That gave me permission (which, for some reason, I apparently needed) to do the same rather than wrestle with time to write a real post.

- I was in Oxford, Mississippi last weekend for the Yoknapatawpha Summer Writers Workshop. It was tremendous. (My friend Susan Cushman wrote about it here.) There's nothing like spending three full days immersed in writing, books, craft, writing, books, writing. It was a wonderful group of faculty and attendees. I got some great feedback on the new novel I'm working on. You are a powerful writer. You have a strong voie. So good to hear.

- My home computer has Vista on it. I kind of hate Vista.

- Over the weekend, one of my best friends pointed out to me that, duh, you don't have to get prints made of the pictures you take. Why would you anyway? They're on your computer so there they are. It's why they're called digital pictures. Now why have I been thinking for ages that I *should* have prints made, that I was behind because the pictures were stuck on my computer?

- My back, the muscle that I pulled SEVEN WEEKS AGO, still hurts. I've gained weight. I can't even type the number because it's so big it freaks me out each time I even say it. When I work out or go for a brisk walk or ride my pretty bike, my back HURTS. Ask me how sick I am of this. Ask me how upset and frustrated I am that I've gained weight. Ask me how flabby I am.

- Last week I helped tutor an elementary aged boy in math and reading. It felt like a tiny drop in a very large bucket, such a disparity between what is needed and what I was doing, or trying to do. I've never tutored before and have no idea how effective I was.

- My hair looks like crap. If I had any nerve at all I'd get a cute short haircut and color it blonde so it will better camouflage the grey that's steadily coming in.

- We have squash and pimento peppers ready in our garden. The basil looks great and the bell peppers are growing. Come on, eggplant. You can do it! Don't let those grape tomatoes show you up again like they did last year.

I knew I loved mine for a reason

2011-06-13T09:13:00.002-05:00

Mental Pause Mama shared the results of this quiz on her blog.

You Are Cowboy Boots

This doesn't mean you're country, just funky.

You've got a ton of attitude and confidence.

You're unique, expressive, and even a little bit wacky.

You wear whatever you feel like – and you have your own sense of style.

You are straight shooting and honest. You tell people how it is.

Low maintenance and free wheeling, you're always up for an adventure.

You should live: Where you can at least get to wide open spaces

You should work: In a job that allows you to take change

The Shoe Personality Test

Blogthings: Our Quizzes Weren't Written By Bored 12 Year Olds

Creekside

2011-06-08T13:00:00.026-05:00

Ever been asked to describe your perfect getaway?

It’s a question I’ve struggled with, oddly. Not for me worrying over string theory or noodling over why are we here. No; I fret over not having an ideal dream getaway. The important stuff.

It’s definitely not the beach. Geez. Hot hot and more hot, followed by a big old heaping of hot, and sand. Not to mention jellyfish. And hot.

I thought about a cabin snuggled into some mountains in the wintertime. I pictured mornings in front of a fire, that first perfect cup of coffee. Red and black check flannel shirts, a big stone fireplace, the smell of wood smoke. I wonder what would I do after that cup of coffee? I’d want to get out and go for a walk, only – brrrrr – so cold out there. That won’t work.

I found it last weekend at Black Creek in South Carolina.

The cypress trees are incredible.

I don’t think I could ever get tired of looking at them.

There was something elemental about the creek.

It could have been a hundred years ago, three hundred years ago.

It was quiet. The creek was welcoming and hospitable as if it sensed our reverence and appreciation. Somehow, on an incredibly hot and oppressively humid day, it was cool on the creek. Pleasant.

We went for long stretches where there was no sign of another person, past or present.

Around each bend we turned in the creek was more gorgeous scenery.

The water black yet so clear and still.

Sure, every now and then we’d come across reminders of modern life.

Can’t you just picture teenage boys climbing and jumping into the water?

The afternoon had an almost dreamlike quality.

I glimpsed this colorful cottage and thought, “That’s it! There’s my perfect spot!”

Not really.

Then I saw this:

That’s more like it.

Weekend in South Carolina

2011-06-06T08:45:00.003-05:00

We're headed home to Mississippi after spending a few wonderful days visiting friends in South Carolina.

(pardon the iPhone photos - they're all the pictures I have for now)

We hadn't been on the road long this morning before I was daydreaming about the cypress trees and Spanish moss we saw.

Flood

2011-06-02T15:06:00.030-05:00

Here's our ride.

My dad took us up in a small plane so we could see the water, the flooding.

Here we are.

Everything looks normal when we first get up in the air.

We hadn't flown far south before we saw the flooding.

It’s been all over the national news and the local coverage has been even more so. I’ve seen the newscasts. I’ve seen the photos on Facebook and via email. Seeing it, though, even from 400 feet in the air, was something else.

That's not a lake.

The farm shop below could well hold a combine, used to harvest corn, that cost the farmer approximately $275,000. If he's like most farmers, he pays a fat note to the bank each month for that loan.

This is the Yazoo City airport.

Those things sticking up? Irrigation systems, a center pivot. The irony. The water is probably four to five feet deep.

The forests are covered with water. My dad commented that an awful lot of wildlife was killed in the flood. They have nowhere to go.

Some parts of the area are overrun with wild hogs. Deer have moved and are eating so much of the new cotton plant growth that they’re a nuisance.

I keep thinking about the people who live there when they first get back. The mosquitoes that will cover the place. The mud and the sludge. The smell. The drowned rats. The snakes. In their house. Their home.

Those things bobbing in the water are aerators for catfish ponds. They weigh about 1,500 pounds and cost about $25,000 dollars. Each.

That green stuff is someone’s corn crop. Week before last it was chest high. Now it’s flattened. I asked if crop insurance covers a natural disaster. What about people who don’t have crop insurance? Not only have they lost the year’s crop, they've also lost their means for the entire year.

The Yazoo River isn't protected by a levee in certain sections between the Whittington Auxilliary Channel and the river channel. The flooding is from backwater from the Yazoo River.

We circled around and headed back to the air strip.

These are catfish ponds. They're about to ten to fifteen acres a piece.

Cutting wheat.

Irrigating. The irony.

I took tons of pictures. My dad took The Child up to see it. I don’t know how interesting he found it but we wanted him to see it. It’s historical. Here’s hoping we don’t see anything else like it.

Heading in.

Back on the ground safe and sound.

House Story: The Garage

2011-06-01T06:46:00.004-05:00

When we moved in, the garage was the place we took things “for the time being.” Stuff we thought we wanted to keep (otherwise, we wouldn’t have packed it and moved it, right?) went in the garage. Things we wanted but didn’t yet know where we’d put them went in the garage. LOTS of things ended up in the garage.

That was a year and a half ago. Saturday before last Jeffrey and I pulled everything out of the garage. Fun isn’t exactly the word I’d use to describe it but I did get to make categories of things. I organized.

Jeffrey took two loads of stuff to the dump. I piled my trunk with things to donate to Goodwill.

After the things were sorted and organized, we began neatly putting them back in the garage. That was satisfying, seeing a formerly junky jumbled area neat as a pin. Although I know for a fact that many things I picked it seemed to have grown much heavier than they were when we took them out. That was over three hours into the project; we were hot and tired.

The end result makes us proud every time we go in the garage.

If I'd taken before pictures you could really appreciate what a pretty sight it is.

This would have made more sense yesterday.

2011-05-31T09:58:00.003-05:00

May 30th was our second wedding anniversary. We had dinner out Saturday night to celebrate, cooked out with friends Sunday night, and yesterday, did a whole lot of nothing, which was nice.

A side note:
This blog is so much fun. When I'm not able to post, I try not to think about it in terms of being behind. That may make it feel like work and it's too much fun to be work. Still, though. I have so many posts drafted, so many photos to post, so many stories to share. It's frustrating that I haven't been able to do all that just yet. But I will!

You'll Never Guess Who Got a Bike

2011-05-25T08:56:00.009-05:00

What a great Mother’s Day gift from The Child. I’m thinking he had more than a little help. (Thanks, Jeffrey!)

I was putting up groceries when Jeffrey asked if I'd come help him get something down from the attic in the garage. He told The Child he could come, too (he loves getting up in that attic). I turned on the lights in the garage and saw:

He and The Child tricked me good!

I fell in love with the bike when I spied it at the store. This was a few months back when The Child and I were checking out the local bike selection. He was daydreaming about getting a new bike.

We weren’t looking for me a bike but when I spied the Cranbrook I loved it.

On Mother's Day I opened a gift from The Child to find a homemade gift certificate for a bike of my choice. Naturally, when we went to get it, they didn't have it. I was sad and the teeniest bit envious of whoever was riding all over Winona on my bike.

That didn't stop me from thinking about the bike. I'd be like Mary Poppins. Jessica Fletcher! I'd give the bike a name, like Flavia's bike in The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie: Gladys.

Gladys in repose

The first bike I remember was a Huffy. It was yellow (just like the wallpaper in my room, just like the bedspread on my bed), had a banana seat, and a white plastic basket with daisies on it.

I rode that bike after school every day. In the summer I rode it to the library; I was an enthusiastic participant in its summer reading program. I rode bikes with friends and I rode my bike by myself.

Riding around the block yesterday took me right back to those sun-dappled summer days.
When I got on my new bike, it was, you know – just like riding a bike. You don’t forget how.

Like that Alice Cooper* song

2011-05-24T09:57:00.003-05:00

School's out for summer as of Friday at 1:00. The Child celebrated with a new bike. What we saw of him most of Saturday and Sunday was a blue blur going down the driveway and up the street.

Sunday night he spent the night with my parents. That's an odd thing, for him to be gone on Sunday night. It really felt like summer then. We ate dinner in front of the TV (Food Network's Best in Smoke). We enjoyed burgers (tuna burgers but still) and french fries. The air conditioner clicked on and off as twilight gave way to dark.

It surprises me every year that for all of summer's heat and humidity there are some lovely compensations.

* When I was in the 8th grade, Shaelin, a friend who was in high school, mentioned she an Alice Cooper concert. I immediately said, "I want to go!" She told me it wasn't a good idea and besides, I wouldn't like the music.

"Why?" I said. "What does she sing?"

Shaelin looked at me for a long moment. "Exactly."

Once and Always

2011-05-20T09:45:00.008-05:00

After the debacle at the restaurant, we hopped on a trolley and headed to the Peabody Hotel.

The Child and my four-year-old niece were thrilled with the trolley ride. My son was beside himself with excitement to be going to The Peabody. We had told him the story of the ducks, how they ride the elevator down from their rooftop home and waddle the red carpet to the marble fountain in the lobby.

As it happens, the ducks get out of the fountain, waddle back down the red carpet, and go up to their house at 5:00 every afternoon.

It was almost 5:00 before we got away from the restaurant. When we rushed in the lobby, the carpet was rolled up and the miniature staircase the ducks walk down was beside the fountain and the ducks were gone.

The Child was crushed. He had been so excited about seeing these ducks swimming in a fountain. I told him I thought we could ride the elevator to the rooftop and see them. His eyes lit up.

The ducks have some pretty swanky digs on the rooftop. He and my niece squealed in delight over the ducks.

I told him we'd have to leave before much longer. I walked around the rooftop taking pictures. He wanted to stay where he was with the ducks.

When I went to round him up, I came around the corner to this:

We hated to leave and assured him that next time, we'd come see the ducks - in the lobby fountain - before we ate anywhere.

That was Sunday in Memphis

2011-05-18T10:12:00.022-05:00

We had time to spare that Sunday in Memphis; we weren't meeting our family for lunch for a few hours. We drove down to the river where I took a series of boring pictures.

They’re boring because it’s so hard to get the impact of what is photographed. Unless a person knows what the river normally looks like, it's hard to gauge how dramatic the river level is.

This is Riverside Drive, which, as you may have gathered runs alongside the Mississippi River. The police officer and barricades are usually not there. Just a few blocks down Riverside Drive is flooded.

That is a whole lot of water. The river is high. Mud Island generally has a lot more showing.

We left downtown and headed down Union Avenue past Sun Records. I must have ridden past this place dozens of times but have never stopped to take a picture of it. Can you imagine? We stopped this time.

I love the red convertible parked out front. It looks like a prop, there to lend an authentic air to the circa 1960s studio. I thought it rather brave to leave a classic Corvette with the top down on a city street in Memphis. Maybe the ghost of Johnny Cash watches over it.

Every few years or so my dad's birthday and Mother's Day fall on the same day, as they did the weekend we were in Memphis for the wedding.

My brother and his family drove down to Memphis, my parents drove up, and we converged on downtown Memphis.

We met up for a late lunch at Pearl’s Oyster House on Main Street, downtown Memphis. Here a tale of woe begins.

We got there at 2:15 to learn there was a 45-minute wait. It was Mother’s Day; we expected a wait. We sat on the patio around back and visited.

I got reacquainted with my youngest niece who I hadn’t seen in a couple of months.

It was a long, I mean a long, 45 minutes.

I wanted to like this place, really I did. Look how many pictures of it I took while we waited.

Doesn't it look like a great place? When we finally got seated we were surprised that the restaurant wasn’t more crowded than it was. We ordered appetizers. Dad opened his birthday presents, Mom opened her Mother’s Day presents. We waited. And waited. And waited. Waited. And waited. Waited some more.

Remember we have two young children and a baby with us. Not to mention six increasingly hungry and cranky grownups.

Finally the appetizers arrived. They were pretty good. Not great but not awful. We were starving. Remember, there are empty tables all around us. The place was simply not that crowded.

Then began the really long wait for our meal.

It went on.

And on.

On.

On.

And on and on and on and on and on and on and on.

When our food finally came, we pounced on it. After all that the meal was disappointing – the food was mediocre. It wasn’t awful but it wasn’t good, a long way from good. We left the waitress a decent tip; it wasn’t her fault that the kitchen was backed up. I’m guessing something went screwy in the kitchen early in the day, on one of the busiest restaurant days of the year, and they were in the weeds from then on.

We got to the restaurant at 2:15. It was nearly 5:00 before we could leave. I don’t know that I will ever go back. There are plenty of good places to eat in Memphis.

It was a good day: Downtown was high and dry, safe from the overflowing Mississippi River. We were safe, we were with family, it was a gorgeous spring day.

Night Out

2011-05-16T10:56:00.004-05:00

Saturday night Jeffrey and I had a date. We didn’t call it date night; we just decided earlier in the day that rather than cooking out on the grill, as we do most every Saturday night we’re at home, we'd go out.

We went to Delta Bistro, a James Beard award nominated restaurant right in our back yard. The meal was incredible. I ordered one of the specials: honey roasted pork tenderloin, seared Brussels sprouts, and aged cheddar mac and cheese.

The few times I’ve ordered pork tenderloin at a restaurant have been mistakes. The meat is usually overcooked, tough, and tasteless. I wanted those Brussels sprouts. I threw caution to the wind and ordered the special; I am so glad I did. It was the best tenderloin I’ve eaten at a restaurant – tender and so flavorful. Jeffrey had a ribeye steak with chimichurri sauce with a fried egg on top and potato hash. I tried a bite of his steak and of the potatoes and they were both excellent. So much flavor.

We left there and went to the Alluvian. We ordered drinks at the bar and went outside to the courtyard to enjoy them. I love the courtyard at night. It’s strung with white lights. There’s a fountain. It feels enchanted. We sat at the same table where we sat the night we got engaged, both of us giddy, calling family to tell them the news.

On the way home, we got started on music, meaning searching XM stations for songs to sing along to. When we got home, it escalated. Before long, we were pulling out old CDs and were scrolling through our iPhones for songs.

Even as we sang and laughed through Saturday night, I knew I'd feel it the next day, all day long. I also knew it would be worth it.

Sometime after midnight, we called it quits. Thank goodness. As it was, I felt it keenly all day Sunday – pounding head, dragging all over.

Midnight is late for people who are old like us. Our date, a couple weeks shy of our second wedding anniversary, was worth the late night.

Walking in (University of) Memphis

2011-05-11T09:23:00.000-05:00

Saturday afternoon I dropped Jeffrey off at the church; the bride and groom were taking all the photographs before the ceremony. Jeffrey looked so handsome - just dashing - in his tuxedo. (I wish I had a picture.)

The wedding party was staying at the Holiday Inn at the University of Memphis. On my way back there I called my brother. He got his first college degree from the University of Memphis.

He told me about its landmarks and how attractive the campus is. I parked and walked across Central Avenue to Innovation Drive where the FedEx Insitute of Technology is.

Lan would say, "The psychology building should be coming up on your left. Keep going straight and you'll come to..." He was sixty miles away to the north as he conducted a personalized virtual walking tour of sorts.

I stopped to take pictures of flowers while he told me about some of the buildings around me.

This one, for instance, is really old. That's about all I can remember about it.

I was enjoying the outing - warm but not hot, breezy, walking on campus.

He earned his degree - in geology, I think - over ten years ago. Now he is taking graduate classes working toward his second Ph.D. He showed me where the building is where he has classes once a week. I looked at the shady parking places in front of the building. "Do you park in front?" What a funny thing to be curious about. He told me about the $25 parking pass that allows him to park there as long as it's after 5:00 p.m.

It was neat: My little brother showing me around, telling me about both his old stomping grounds as an undergrad and where he takes classes now.

Something about it felt familiar. I thought about other times my brother was proud to show me something he'd done.

Wedding Weekend

2011-05-10T10:20:00.006-05:00

A few years ago, a friend of mine introduced me to Jeffrey. She knew him because Jeffrey is a good friend of her then boyfriend, Keith. Over the weekend, then boyfriend Keith became her husband. We were in Memphis to celebrate their wedding.

At the rehearsal, Keith gave the wedding party personalized hats.

Because, as the bride said, you can never have too many trucker hats.

The rehearsal dinner was at The Rendezvous. I've gone on and on here before about how much I love The Rendezvous, so I'll spare you except to say: it was wonderful.

Afterwards, we went down on Beale Street (where I got carded to even get onto the street of Beale) to Silky O'Sullivan's. We found a table on the courtyard near the front. Some ordered generous drinks -

And enjoyed them.

We were right up front, near the band. The band was great. I watched the two whitest people in America get up and dance. When the lead singer bolted out, "At laaaast..." Jeffrey and I hit the dance floor and that other couple could no longer claim that title.

We were crowded around a black wrought-iron table, a big group of friends, old and new. A breeze drifted through now and then. The air was mild, not hot. Overhead, palm trees blinked. It was great.

We had an early night, staying just long enough to soak up the atmosphere and enjoy the music without going overboard.

It was the perfect wedding eve: the bride and groom relaxed. Friends and family gathered for a casual meal made special by the event and the fact they were all there together. What a great way to start the wedding weekend.

April Books

2011-05-05T10:25:00.006-05:00

I had the pleasure of listening to Andre DuBus read from his memoir, Townie, at our local bookstore. He is a wonderful speaker – funny, charming, nice. His book didn’t disappoint. It was violent, disturbing, and sad (three qualities I typically shy away from) but it’s also gripping, searing and compelling.

Amazon.com Review
Amazon Best Books of the Month, February 2011: You might think that following his father's trade would have been natural and even obvious for the son and namesake of Andre Dubus, one of the most admired short story writers of his time, but it was anything but. His father left when he was 10, and as his mother worked long hours to keep them fed, her four children mostly raised themselves, stumbling through house parties and street fights in their Massachusetts mill town, so cut off from the larger world that when someone mentioned "Manhattan" when Andre was in college he didn't know what they were talking about. What he did know, and what he recalls with detailed intensity, were the battles in bars and front yards, brutal to men and women alike, that first gave him discipline, as he built himself from a fearful kid into a first-punch, hair-trigger bruiser, and then empathy, as, miraculously, he pulled himself back from the violence that threatened to define him. And it was out of that empathy that, wanting to understand the stories of the victims of brutality as well as those whose pain drove them to dish it out, he began to write, reconciling with his father and eventually giving us novels like House of Sand and Fog and now this powerful and big-hearted memoir.

Ellie Enderlin is a coffee buyer. The descriptions of that job alone make No One You Know by worth reading.

From Booklist:
As in her previous two novels, Dream of the Blue Room (2003) and the best-selling Year of Fog (2007), Richmond turns a family crisis into heartbreaking and compelling reading. Ellie Enderlin has never recovered from the unsolved murder of her sister, Lila, a Stanford math prodigy, some 20 years earlier. The day her sister went missing has become “the touchstone from which all other events unfurled.” Compounding the tragedy is the fact that her English professor, the person to whom she confided some of her most intimate feelings about her shy, private sister, has turned the tragedy into a best-selling true-crime book. To have those moments turned into fodder for the public’s voyeuristic appetite has felt like another violation. When Ellie, a world traveler and coffee buyer, meets up unexpectedly with the brilliant mathematician implicated in her sister’s murder, she sees it as a way to wrest back control of her own narrative and solve the crime. Richmond gracefully weaves in fascinating background material on the coffee culture and the field of mathematics as she thoughtfully explores family dynamics, the ripple effects of tragedy, and the importance of the stories we tell. Combine all that with perfect pacing and depth of insight, and you have a thoroughly riveting literary thriller.

Await Your Reply was a riveting read that I really enjoyed. Right up until the ending. The story went kaput at the end. It was a non-ending. Not satisfying.

From Publishers Weekly:
Three disparate characters and their oddly interlocking lives propel this intricate novel about lost souls and hidden identities from National Book Award–finalist Chaon (You Remind Me of Me). Eighteen-year-old Lucy Lattimore, her parents dead, flees her stifling hometown with charismatic high school teacher George Orson, soon to find herself enmeshed in a dangerous embezzling scheme. Meanwhile, Miles Chesire is searching for his unstable twin brother, Hayden, a man with many personas who's been missing for 10 years and is possibly responsible for the house fire that killed their mother. Ryan Schuyler is running identity-theft scams for his birth father, Jay Kozelek, after dropping out of college to reconnect with him, dazed and confused after learning he was raised thinking his father was his uncle. Chaon deftly intertwines a trio of story lines, showcasing his characters' individuality by threading subtle connections between and among them with effortless finesse, all the while invoking the complexities of what's real and what's fake with mesmerizing brilliance. This novel's structure echoes that of his well-received debut—also a book of threes—even as it bests that book's elegant prose, haunting plot and knockout literary excellence.

When Harry Met Sally is one of my all-time favorite movies. It’s right up there with Sixteen Candles, if that gives you any idea of how much I like it. When a friend loaned me I Remember Nothing by Nora Ephron, who wrote the screenplay for When Harry Met Sally, I all but clapped.

I read it in a day and still wanted to clap when I got to the end. I’m resolutely ignoring the lukewarm reviews at Amazon.com.

From Publishers Weekly:
Reading these succinct, razor-sharp essays by veteran humorist (I Feel Bad About My Neck), novelist, and screenwriter-director Ephron is to be reminded that she cut her teeth as a New York Post writer in the 1960s, as she recounts in the most substantial selection here, "Journalism: A Love Story." Forthright, frequently wickedly backhanded, these essays cover the gamut of later-life observations (she is 69), from the dourly hilarious title essay about losing her memory, which asserts that her ubiquitous senior moment has now become the requisite Google moment, to several flimsy lists, such as "Twenty-five Things People Have a Shocking Capacity to Be Surprised by Over and Over Again," e.g., "Movies have no political effect whatsoever." Shorts such as the several "I Just Want to Say" pieces feature Ephron's trademark prickly contrariness and are stylistically digestible for the tabloids. Other essays delve into memories of fascinating people she knew, such as the Lillian Hellman of Pentimento, whom she adored until the older woman's egomania rubbed her the wrong way. Most winning, however, are her priceless reflections on her early life, such as growing up in Beverly Hills with her movie-people parents, and how being divorced shaped the bulk of her life, in "The D Word." There's an elegiac quality to many of these pieces, handled with wit and tenderness.

In reading The Paris Wife by Paula McLain, I expected to learn something new about Hemingway but I didn’t much feel like I did. Maybe that's because I read A Moveable Feast recently, about his time in Paris. Most readers thought this a masterpiece. I found it slow and I wasn’t altogether sorry when I came to the end.

The Season of Second Chances by Diane Meirer had been on my to-read list for a while. It had some of my favorite elements: a college professor (of English, no less) living in New York who moves to a small town and fixes up a house.

Back of the book:
Coming-of-age can happen at any age. Joy Harkness had built a university career and a safe life in New York, protected and insulated from the intrusions and involvements of other people. When offered a position at Amherst College, she impulsively leaves the city, and along with generations of material belongings, she packs her equally heavy emotional baggage. A tumbledown Victorian house proves an unlikely choice for a woman whose family heirlooms have been boxed away for years. Nevertheless, this white elephant becomes the home that changes Joy forever. As the restoration begins to take shape, so does her outlook on life, and the choices she makes over paint chips, wallpaper samples, and floorboards are reflected in her connection to the co-workers who become friends and friendships that deepen. A brilliant, quirky, town fixture of a handyman guides the renovation of the house and sparks Joy’s interest to encourage his personal and professional growth. Amid the half-wanted attention of the campus’s single, middle-aged men, known as “the Coyotes,”and the legitimate dramas of her close-knit community, Joy learns that the key to the affection of family and friends is being worthy of it, and most important, that second chances are waiting to be discovered within us all.

Favorite Book I Read This Month: I can't decide between Townie and I Remember Nothing.

Character Who I'd Most Like to Have a Drink With: Andre Dubus, III. Hands down.

We Admired Our Work for the Rest of the Evening

2011-05-03T10:59:00.010-05:00

Saturday afternoon we put in the garden. It took from 10 in the morning until nearly 4:30 that afternoon.

We started with last year’s auxiliary vegetable patch,

which this year we expanded so it will be the primary vegetable garden. We'll plant last year's long skinny one in spaghetti squash, zucchini, and pumpkins.

Jeffrey rented a tiller. Working up last year’s spot went well. Breaking up the new ground was a lot more work. Our yard slopes so half the time he was pushing the tiller uphill.

It took about three hours worth of work to get the garden spot ready. That included raking grass out of the way, filling two five-gallon buckets of dirt and grass and hauling to the compost box that contains mostly onion peels and strawberry tops. (Did I tell you I got a countertop composter for Christmas?) The three hours included included dumping bags of humus and manure onto the garden and using the tiller to work it into the soil. (Next year we'll get to use our very own compost.)

I drove the tiller for a few minutes;

less than five minutes and I could feel it in my arms. I don’t know how Jeffrey did it for a solid two hours or better.

Then came the fun part: planting.

We planted pimiento peppers, bell peppers, brandywine tomatoes, beefsteak tomatoes, grape tomatoes, cucumber, squash, eggplant, butter beauty lettuce, and green beans.

We ran out of steam before we got the herbs in the planter boxes or planted the sweet pea and dahlia seeds. Or built the trellis for the cucumbers; Jeffrey did all that Monday night before dinner.

It may not look like all that much in the photo but that there is a good day's work.

I Take It Back

2011-05-02T08:42:00.002-05:00

A little before seven Friday morning I turned on the TV - I had all but forgotten about the wedding - and I was transfixed. I stood there, smiling at the TV like a fool, for the longest! It was one of the sweetest things - did you see Kate turn to Will in the carriage and say, "So happy,"? Swoon.

Lip readers report that during the ceremony, Will told Kate's father: "I thought we were going to have a small wedding." What a charmer.

When the couple stepped onto the balcony, I burst into tears. (That could have been the PMS talking.) I couldn't help but remember Diana on the balcony holding newborn William. Sigh.

The wedding was lovely, it was historical, and it did the heart good to see happy news being reported.

At a loss

2011-04-29T08:07:00.002-05:00

When something terrible happens, something that is terrible on a huge scale, I have no idea what to say. I find I even think in cliches: It's surreal. I can't believe it. I can't imagine. It's so awful.

The lives lost and the damage caused by the tornadoes that tore across the south this week is awful. I don't know how else to say it.

Words seem hollow. Trying to express sympathy and concern and well-being for thousands of victims, their families, the rescue workers, all those affected - I don't know how to do that with enough meaning. Whole towns are gone. Not there anymore. Landmarks absent, the entire landscape changed. Schools wiped out. Neighborhoods where a few days ago families cooked burgers on the grill, ran late for school and work in the mornings, settled in to watch TV after dinner, they are gone. Not there anymore. How does anyone cope with that?

I won't re-post the horrific photos. I will post part of an interview I heard yesterday driving home. NPR's Michelle Norris interviewed Reginald Epps, a firefighter in Alabama who survived the tornado. She spoke with him from a hospital where he is recovering from injuries he suffered during the tornado.

An excerpt:

Mr. EPPES: The kids were still in bed, and I said oh. And right when I said oh, the wind picked up, and the wind blew in the kitchen window. So we run to the boys' room. She gets the baby boy. I get the middle child - I have three sons.

And I said, R.J., which is my older son, get up, son. And right when I said get up and I put my hands on him, the walls went, and he went. He just - he left. The tornado took him right then. I held onto what I have which is James Peter, and my wife held onto my other son, which I could hear her praying to my left. And I was praying over my boy, and I said -and I could see his little face (unintelligible) I could see him. He was looking up. I said it's OK. It's OK. And I was getting hit, you know? I was just shielding him. And my wife yells - she said: Do you have R.J.? I said no. I said I don't. And then, I heard her get louder praying. And then, I started - I kept going, and I look up, and my oldest son come walking right through the rubble. And I got...

NORRIS: He walked back.

Mr. EPPES: He walked back the rubble.

The entire interview is here. What an incredible story.

We can help.

The Royals

2011-04-27T08:01:00.003-05:00

I was as shocked as anyone that Sunday morning in August when I learned that Princess Diana was dead. I remember clearly where I was when I heard the news; our generation's equivalent of when Elvis died.

I watched the funeral procession and I cried; I won’t lie. The handwritten card that said, "Mommy", those two boys walking behind their mother’s casket broke my heart.

The next day I bought a copy of the newspaper carrying the story. I still have it.

I’m not heartless, nor unromantic; trust. But the amount of coverage about Will and Kate’s wedding is staggering. Pretty much every network, from ABC to E! Entertainment to the History Channel, is focused on the wedding. Seriously?

Doesn’t it seem a bit much?

Scattered and Smothered

2011-04-26T11:32:00.003-05:00

I must have half a dozen blog posts drafted. Some days my mind just feels scrambled.

In other exciting news I brought a salad today for lunch. The salad has diced Easter ham on it. The exciting part is that we had only a little bit of spinach and broccoli left in the fridge, not enough for a decent salad. I was all, "Aw, man. I wanted a salad. I don't want to go to the store."

Then, then! I remembered that right outside our kitchen door we had a pot bursting with fresh romaine. (I have photos of that romaine, too, that I'll post. Soon.)

Whatever you do, don't ask me about my back. Unless you love to hear a litany of fierce complaining. Uncle! Enough already! Muscle pain, you win, hear me? Just S T O P.

On the up side, Jeffrey gave me a bag full of Reese's peanut butter eggs. He's super.