What I'm Reading Now

Mostly I'm reading No Two Alike: Human Nature and Human Individuality which is both fabulous and annoying. The fabulous part is that Rich Harris* has a wonderful mind and she demonstrates the use of it so well. Her review of the literature on personality development is clever, and engaging, and her book is set up like the mysteries she apparently enjoys. There are frequent references to both specifics, like The Daughter of Time and to the general, such as the use of red herrings.


But, understandably, the fierce reaction to her previous book, The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do (which I also really enjoyed and thought was well reasoned) has made her defensive as hell. When she's describing the limits her health places on her activities, I really like the personal stuff, but it's hard to read so much about the attacks generated by her previous book.




Additionally, I'm reading The Shadow Thieves aloud to the Possum, and we're both loving it. And I'm reading all kinds of stuff to the PandaBat, including, last night, My Wobbly Tooth Must Not Ever Never Fall Out , in honor of her first tooth falling out. And I'm reading a manuscript aloud to them both that has lots of birds in it, by the old friend who wrote the wonderful book The Verb To Bird, which, by an uncanny coincidence also has a lot of birds in it. Finally I'm carrying Clarice Bean Spells Trouble, back and forth to work each day, although I am mostly not reading it but would like to, because the Possum really enjoyed it, and the PandaBat is very fond of the Clarice Bean pictures books, and we're all just generally crazy about Lauren Child.




* It seems to me that when a woman uses her maiden name and her husband's last name both, that one should not refer to her exclusively by his name, but one should use both, even if they aren't joined with a hyphen. The same way one would use both last names of an author in the Spanish tradition. So, "Garcia Marquez", and "Rich Harris", and "Baratz-Logsted". But I'm open to discussion, and even to finding out that I've leapt** to hasty assumptions and Rich is not her maiden name, but her middle name.

** Getting meta on my meta, I just love irregular verbs, and I hate to lose them. So I persist with my "leapt" and "slept" and what have you. Even to the point of rewriting kids books as I read them aloud. Yes, I am the sort of person who also modifies the text to make it scan better or what have you. No doubt my loathing of Goodnight Moon is in part based on the faulty rhythm of the thing.

Update 6/25/08: edited to add the wordle version, via Gaiman and Scalzi

Advise Me, Please

For five years now, since I read her The Spiderwick Chronicles, the Possum has been interested in fencing (lessons? classes? coaching? see, I don't even know what learning it is called). Before I sign her up for anything, I want any hints, tips, suggestions, etc. y'all have to offer. My knowledge of swordplay is limited to stage fighting. What does one look for in a fencing school? Is nine too young? I am totally ignorant, so feel free to enlighten me with whatever, or whomever, you know.

Thanks.

I Think I've Got It

In the week before Mother's Day, the Possum asks what I'd like. "Well," says I, "I'd like The Golden Compass, and I'd like to sit down and watch it, together." And just to be sure, I told the Spouse.

Happily, for Mother's Day, I got The Golden Compass, and movie candy (my favorites: Junior Mints, Circus Peanuts, and Whoppers), and the leisure time to sit and watch a movie I wanted to see with my family on the enormous sofa under the faux-mink throw of decadence. If life gets better than snuggling with the Offspring while watching armored polar bears fight, then I don't think I'm ready for it.

Also, it turned out to be a good choice, because I was too ill over the weekend to do much else anyways.

The WolfOwl Competes

That's her, the one in pink.

In April her tap/ballet class went to competition dancing to Waltz of the Flowers. As the only entry in their age group, they won first place. That's her, in the middle, in a red jacket, with her trophy.



I'm really impressed, because they had a lot of extra rehearsals. They worked hard (students and teachers), and I'm proud of her.

I'm also proud of the Foxcelot, who was patient and generous while her sister literally took center stage.

The recital itself is amazingly long. We stayed until the bitter end on Sunday, all four and a half hours of it. That's probably a bit much for a kindergartener.



She behaved better than I did. The Spouse and I tend to get rather punchy the last half hour or so. Fortunately, the balcony has emptied out by that time so no one was offended, except my beloved MIL.

Next year perhaps I'll remember that there is no where to eat after five. This is only my fourth recital; I can't be blamed. At least I remembered all the costumes, three this year: for ballet, praise dance, and tap.



The Offspring are amazing. Even when they aren't an image by Degas.



Because the recital is held on campus, I got to hear how much the WolfOwl is looking forward to attending college. Mostly for the cool gothic buildings, and the gargoyles. She's really quite thrilled at the idea of being able to take such specific courses as, say Pre-Columbian American History. They better be offering such a thing in twelve years, or there will be trouble.

Speaking of Readerville

And aren't I always? Come see my list of recommended steampunk reads.

I don't know if it's acceptable to trackback to one's self, but I'm doing it anyway, as practice.

Update 4/22: So much for that practice. How 'bout this: Steampunk at Readerville

Congratulations Lauren!

Woot!

Lauren Baratz-Logsted has a new book released today, and I want everyone to give her some love. Give her lots of love. Give her balloons and champagne. She's fun, she'll enjoy a party.

I've had Secrets of My Suburban Life on order for six months. Ren's mother is crushed by a stack of Harry Potter tomes. Take that, Nancy Drew's (unnamed) mom. In her new, motherless, suburban life, Ren gets involved in a mystery. That's all I know so far. Two days after the book arrives I'll be able to post more.

Lauren became a good friend through Readerville, naturally, where I've discovered and enthused about her books repeatedly. She's done me the great honor of permitting me to be an early reader of several of her manuscripts, both her work for adults and for kids. The single greatest shared reading experience of last year (and probably my life) was reading aloud from the manuscript of the first book in her new series for kids, collectively entitled The Sisters Eight. I had been reporting back to Lauren each night with what the girls loved, and what they wanted more of, and what they thought was coming, and that feedback showed up in later chapters. When the girls discovered that their ideas and suggestions had been incorporated into the books, when they heard me reading out thoughts they had had, filtered and given form by a witty writer, their delight was unspeakable. We howled with laughter. We punched the pillows, we kicked the mattress. We laughed until it hurt.

The frosting in Annie's Adventures: that was the WolfOwl's idea.

(We're currently reading the fourth manuscript in the series. It's also fabulous)

So, I consider Lauren to be the literary godmother of the Offspring, and I fully expect her to get top billing in the acknowledgements of the Possum's first published work. And I'm okay with that.

I love Lauren more than anyone I've never met, and I wish her all the success in the world. Big smooches, dear.

*Joella's post-exam litter seems like an apt image. We all need more "booze-soaked old school feminism".

(Update 1/10/2008) Book has arrived. Now, if I can only put everything else on hold, I can read it.

We're Back in School

Ahhh. It's been a tricky week. Kindergartners were split with half starting Monday and half starting Tuesday. Woof Woof Woofie went Monday, visited the doc for another x-ray (cast off in two weeks!) on Tuesday, missed Wednesday to have ear tubes inserted, and so is only completing her third day of school this week.

What a difference four years makes. When we sent the Possum off, we blithely put her on the school bus for the three block trip each morning. Had the bus schedule not changed to something really inconvenient, we'd probbly have stuck to it. She didn't tell us much about school or how it was going, so it was the first discussion with her teacher at six or nine weeks before we found out how miserable she had been, crying every day.

But third grade is great. Of twenty-two students, she's already had classes with seven, and she's got her best friend from second grade in there.

While the Possum isn't embarrassed to have her mother walk her to class, Woof Woof Woofie is. That's right: on her second day she asked me not to walk right beside her, and this morning she wanted to be dropped off out front. They're great kids and endlessly fascinating in the ways they resemble one another, as well as the ways they differ. Which is exactly what I liked about having two kittens from the same litter thirteen years ago. Cat ownership was good preparation after all.

Zombies by Mail

Lame, I know. Anyway, the gifted, charming, and culinarily canny Rax designed these fabulous t-shirts. So I wanted to post the pictures promptly as a big "thank you!"







I provide the zombies, you provide the captions.

Real Life

I'm tired. What I would like to do after work is put my feet up, eat cake or cookie dough, and read some Terry Pratchett that I got for my birthday. Someone bringing me slippers and a cocktail would be lovely, too.

What I do, however, is come home, run around the yard for an hour being a Spice Girl or a Sailor Scout or Shaggy (my Shaggy voice is pretty good, zoinks!), fighting evil with swim noodles and breaks for boogie boarding in Hawaii (because superheroes need surfing vacations too), fix a mediocre supper of some kind of pasta (I am still just learning to cook [I know], if The Spouse is working, or serve as chef's assistant if he isn't. Eat, put away the leftovers, dole out desserts and allergy meds to the Offspring, and then get them into their jammies, watch them brush their teeth and try not to crack up about something, apply fluoride, get them into bed (all three of us in Woof Woof Wolfie's bunk for books and it's crowded, all elbows and knees), read to them for an hour from two of the endless series of Henry and Mudge books (now with spin off series of Annie and Snowball) or the other new Rylant series, The High-Rise Private Eyes and either The Miserable Mill or Matilda or Thodosia and The Serpents of Chaos (the Possum's choices these days), after which I will put out the light and lie still, hissing like a goose occasionally when someone who shall remain nameless will not be still in that top bunk and is making an astounding amount of racket, contorting her body into impossible shapes trying to find a comfortable position and get the pillows just right. Finally, when I have just started to doze off myself, but have been jerked awake by an untimely mattress squeak, I will realize that Woof Woof Wolfie is out cold and I may find my shoes and creep from the room, after almost-but-not-quite forgetting to pass out the good-night kisses, and then I can retire to the screen porch for ten minutes of peace and a smoke.

Ah.

At which point I will realize that while still tired, I am no longer sleepy, and that there is a load of laundry that's been moldering in the washing machine for 24 hours, which desperately needs a rinse, and when I go to put it in the drier, I'll discover a load that's been wrinkling in there for 24 hours, and by the time I get that folded and weighted down (in order to replace the random creases with proper ones), I'll be too exhausted to read a word, but too wired to go to sleep without pharmacological assistance.

And somewhere in there I manage to fit in gathering whatever permission slips and checks are necessary for second grade tomorrow, bringing in the mail and Mom's newspaper, chatting with my beloved Spouse about the news of the day and upcoming special scheduling events and the weather (he's very knowledgeable about the weather, and just think how much more fun it will be when he gets his birthday weather station up! we'll be rolling in data and the exact time of sunset!) and movies we've seen recently (mostly animated and G rated) or twenty years ago when we both worked separately in theaters. And I'll have a conversation with Mom about her garden, and extended family news, and what a wonderful husband I'm lucky to have. And I'll feed the cats and pet them.

This is my life and it is exhausting and I love it. I'm insanely lucky to have all this.

What We're Reading

I'm currently in all sailor all the time mode, reading Peter Pan to Woof Woof Woofie and The Pirates! In an Adventure with Communists to myself. The Possum checked out The Pirates! In an Adventure with Scientists, but she's reading Half Magic right now. I'm reading Snicket's The Bad Beginning to her (last chapter tonight), but that has a character with hooks for hands, so it feels right.

Currently accepting sailing/pirate recommendations for any age level. Also, accepting tacky Hawaiian shirt recommendations.

Simple Gifts

The Purple Possum received two fifth birthday presents of particular note.

The first to mention is a fish tank, smallish, I think, although I know absolutely nothing about fish, but cute. It has a blue plastic base and top, with a light, and a filter, and a heater. The effect is a fish take designed by the same designer as the iMac. The bottom has been covered with blue and green gravel. Originally, there was an adorable snow scene background drawn by the girls, but that didn't stay up long after fish were introduced to the tank. The fish are two black mollies, Blackie and Molly, two guppies, Cameron and Goldie, two swordtails, Peter and Susan, one catfish, Splee, and one snail, Gary.

The snail moves around much faster than I would have guessed, probably because there isn't a lot for it to suck off the walls yet. The catfish is fun to watch, bottom feeding, because it's whiskers waggle when it eats. Peter and Susan are the only mating couple, the Spouse tells me, so to me it seems a little like the Smurfs, with only the one female in the group. Or, as Geena Davis would remind me, like most programming for kids. Susan has a bulge, which may be eggs. Yes, I am speculating on the baby bump of my non-celebratory fish. One of the original black mollies didn't survive the transition into the new tank. I've just learned that this is a common problem for new fish. One of the guppies also had problems, and we couldn't find it for a while. It was either trapped in the filter, or under the filter, or just hanging out. Fish are inscrutable, their actions and motivations opaque. After being re-released into the tank as a whole, the guppy in question was noted to be missing a portion of its tail, which the Spouse said would grow back. Said guppy spent the rest of that evening getting caught in the filter some more, or floating in ways that are not good, belly-up, for example. So, after the girls were asleep, the Spouse went back to the fish purveyor to replace the two unsatisfactory specimens.

Yesterday morning the girls woke up, and the Purple Penguin asked right away about the struggling guppy.
"Go look," I said, "Pop got new fish." You see the problem: "fish" is both singular and plural. She went, she looked, she ran back to tell me.
"The guppy's tail grew back! And there's a new black one."

By the time I came home from work, it was understood that no miraculously quick tail growing had occurred. That there were two new fish. I went to look at the newly-named Goldie, and couldn't spot it.
"Sweetie," I asked the Spouse, "I can't see Goldie." He leaves off cooking dinner to check. A couple of long pauses later, he comes back, with something in his hand. He found Goldie. She managed to jump out of the fish tank. Through an uncovered area this small.

No more guppies, the Purple Penguin has decreed. She didn't specifically mention that she didn't like their dying/suicidal ways.


The second gift I wanted to mention, was a real electronic keyboard. The Purple Penguin's favorite toy from Christmas was a tiny plastic harmonica that came in a cracker, so we all agreed that something musical might be the way to go. By a happy coincidence, a second-hand keyboard became available. The Spouse demonstrated its use by plunking out Linus and Lucy, a household favorite. My mother and the girls were all terribly impressed, unaware that he could play piano, too.

After supper, the Possum went off to play Ascendancy with her father, a game which has recently delighted her no end, not only because the Spouse has customized his version by naming all the alien races from classics of science fiction.

The birthday girl spent about two minutes playing with a magnetic paper doll with me, before she came up with a new idea. I was to pick out a background, dress the doll in one of the costumes available, and she would play appropriate music on the piano.

My five-year-old invented for herself the idea of a musical soundtrack. Huh.

That Miracle Grow was a Bad Idea

This is my youngest, rather tall child, (currently) aka, the Purple Penguin.












This is my eldest, tallest child, aka the Possum.










Soon my evil plot will come to fruition and the Spouse will never again be able to hide things from me on the top shelves.

Finally, A Good Night's Sleep

...which I haven't really had in seven and a half years. Kids tend to disrupt sleep. It's wonderful to snuggle with a baby or toddler, and co-sleeping while breastfeeding was a piece of cake. but by age five or so, their legs are too long, and their arms, and that adorable tendency to sprawl sideways means I spend all night wedged in between two people, unable to move, and wake up drenched in sweat from all that body heat and with my left leg killing me. Something about being trapped on one side makes my left leg kill me, all the next day, and I have to lie on the floor and pop my hip, and it's hard to sit in my chair for very long at all. Waaanh.

But lo! I bring tidings of great joy! Because last week, for the first time ever, Princess Carrots (four years, ten months) woke up in the middle of the night, came to me for something to drink, and took her drink back to her bed. Her bed! Where she stayed, the rest of the night! Last night, she did it again!

The reason she didn't have to climb into bed with me, was the Possum (seven years, five months) was sleeping with her in the lower bunk. What do I care, her poor sister is getting crawled over repeatedly? She's young and strong. Hehehe.