Kids Back, Titans In, Everything Else Up And Down

My boys are home and the Titans are in the Playoffs! Yay!!!!!

It's so hard to blog during the holidays. I have mixed feelings about everything and none of it seems like it would be particularly interesting to anyone but me. The ups have included a kick ass job interview for Linus (thank you, oh senders of good mojo), third anniversary with Bet (we don't count the first thirteen), and a re-commitment to the triathlon (please not to laugh at the girl who has not run for a month). The downs have included Mr. Tapioca telling Havoc there is no Santa (I hate him, I hate him, I hate him - errr - I hate Mr. Tapioca - not Santa. If I weren't so tired I'd have gone back and retyped to make the antecedent clear instead of explaining, but do you see it's almost midnight? Goes to show you how much I love my Titans that I'd stay up this late.) The inbetweens have included six novels in four days (gotta love avoidance behavior + Borders gift cards!!!) and dogs with new names: Sir Stinks-A-Lot and Princess Fart-So-Fresh. (They LOVE the homemade dog treats we made - bacon biscuits and "snickerpoodles" but man, it is NOT pleasant to have them sleep in the same room with us anymore!)

Shout out to LT - who broke her clavicle immediately after retiring! The surgery went well, the metal plates or rods (or spirals for all I know) are doing their job holding her arm on. I can't see a mere snapped bone holding her back for long - but send her healing mojo anyway, ok? (I mean, you were such the bomb diggety on the job interview mojo that you know I'm going to be hitting up from now on!)

I'm rejoicing and rejoicing and rejoicing that all my chickadees are home to roost! My Grandpa Jack used to have a line about how he couldn't sleep until he counted all the heads in their beds. When he counted and got to the right number, then he'd "hit the hayfeathers" himself and surrender to the "arms of Morpheus" and often as not wish us "bony snowshoes" on the way (which was his goofy way of saying buenas noches. He was an odd duck, my grandpa, but oh how I adored him!) And now I understand him that much better. Heads in the bed tally: 8 (of the human variety) and 2 (of the canine (and smelly) variety). Bony Snowshoes! And Peace.

PS - Havoc's FF team (the Gridiron Chefs) won their league (which is no surprise seeing as how he had Tom Brady and Randy Moss) but Bet and I won our league too (which was a huge shock)! I know you all were wondering how that all turned out. :D

Sassy Sassy Garden Snake

There was a snake right outside my window yesterday. It slithered across the stepping stones in the courtyard and was way to fast to be caught on film. It reminded me of one of my favorite children's books EVER, EVER, EVER. Small Green Snake by Libba Moore (author) and Holly Meade (illustrator) is rollicking. Crazy word but it's exactly right. Hiss a hiss a hiss a hiss a boom! Small green snake wanders off from the safety of his mom and has all kinds of adventures from almost being snicked by garden shears to being trapped in a glass jelly jar. The words are fun to read aloud, the story is sweet, and the pictures are vibrant and interesting. GREAT BOOK. You should read it to a child you love (or sort of like) even if you don't have snakes in your garden.
Peace.

Something Old, Something New

Remember how I was all "Behold! I am doing something new!"? Apparently the newness wore off yesterday and we were back to the old. I could NOT get myself on track with packing and painting and purging. Instead I threw an internal temper tantrum and went for a pedicure. It was lovely to pamper myself. It was part of my Mother's Day present. (As much fun as it was, it was not my favorite part of my Mother's Day present. My favorite part is the handmade card and weird little wind up Carmen Miranda-like bunny thing the kids gave me.)

What was not part of my original Mother's Day present at all was a trip to the bookstore. Yet, on the phone with me as I left the nail shop yesterday, Sweet Hubby said, "Go buy a book! Take yourself to lunch! Re-rax." See why I love that man?

I hied me hither to yon book shoppe. Did I buy a book? No, I did not. I tried. I tried real hard. In the end, though, I could not bring myself to buy a single book. Not me. I, addict that I am, bought books. Plural. As in multiple. More than two. (More than three, if you must know. And you must. That is the point of me being all confessiony on the internet here.) I did save the receipt so that I could take some of them back if need be. (Which is a complete joke really. If I had the willpower to take them back, then I would have had the willpower (in spades!) to resist buying them in the first place. I mean, I suck at returns I HAVE to make. I cannot for the life of me imagine that I would be better at returns I don't want to make. Still. That receipt is emotional insurance.)

I about panicked on the way home as I realized I had no where to "hide" my books. (I mentioned the addiction part of all this, right?) It's not that I hide books from Sweet Hubby. I promise you, he's not judgmental like that. He won't lecture me about $ or natter on about someone giving inches and someone else taking miles. He won't wonder where I'm going to find the time to read them all while still getting done what needs to be done. He's a prince. (Or a really cute enabler. You decide.) He might be slightly disappointed that my book binge is all chick lit. He likes sci-fi. No, my pattern of hiding books is all about hiding them from myself. The old me would squirrel them away, a few here on this bookshelf, a few on that. I would pick one to gobble up right away and the rest would be scattered to be re-discovered later. That way I didn't have a pile of books beside the bed demanding attention all at the same time. The hiding process keeps a book buying binge from turning into an all out book reading binge. Only it is quite a bit harder to tuck books away on this shelf and that when you have no shelves! Or if the few built in ones you have are absolutely bare except for your new books. You know what I did? I put the new books under my bed. Do you think that helped? No, it did not.

I read my allotted one book of immediate gratification last night: Watermelon by Marian Keys. Now I must spend all of today and the rest of this week resisting the rest of the stack even though I know exactly where it is. I've never done that before. Behold! I am doing something new! (I hope.)
Peace.

Fiction Binge

Since I did manage to read 13 - no wait, 15! - new books since court - I thought I'd list them for myself and share some of my insights (aka completely inexpert opinions) with you. (Note - I read a lot of Young Adult Fiction since I have five readers between the ages of 8 and 16. I think it's as (if not more) important to read what the kids are reading as it is to listen to what they are listening to and to watch what they are watching.) After reading fewer than three books from November to January 18 - here's what I managed to consume in the past 10 days:

YA Titles -

1. Polly by Amy Bryant - well...it was ok. It was interesting in that it was about a girl and her defining relationships with boys as set against the dc punk scene of the 80's. (Actually, I thought that part was a lot of fun and it had me thinking about music I liked then and helped spark some of the conversation that Chaos and I had but other than that it was dark and her relationships were...icky.) Not really my thing.
2. The Insiders by J. Minter - totally not at all my thing. Supposedly a teen fiction book - it's about a group of boys and their friendships/relationships as set in the wealthy New York scene. Bleck. The boys sounded like jaded and pompous 20 somethings and their interactions were superficial and strange. It was the worst of all worlds - boring lists of the boys' outfits and descriptions of risky, pointless behaviors with no authentic plot or growth happening.
   
3. The Clique by Lisi Harrison - the first in a series that is HUGE with the middle school girls. If you can get past the shopping and fashion crap - then the story of what friendships are made of is pretty well done. Young girl moves from Florida and gets forced onto a clique of girls at a private school who wear $600 outfits, strive to earn gossip points with each other, and think being popular is the meaning of life. I think it ends up being a book of mixed messages but the friendship dynamics are intricate enough to be interesting and somewhat possible to relate to. I would hate it if my daughter used ANY of the girls in this book as role models - but it gives us some good fodder for conversations.
4. Best Friends for Never by Lisi Harrison - second in the above series. Was hoping for a change but sadly, it's more of the same.
5. The Boyfriend List by E. Lockhart - FINALLY a good book. Well told story of a Ruby Oliver's sophomore debacles - with great footnotes, more than plausible characters and situations, just enough angst and even better - a therapist who sneakily imparts some great lessons. I immediately put this one on the Ninja Princessa's desk (even though it's a bit old for her.)
6. The Boyfriend Book by E. Lockhart - The second Ruby Oliver Book - and while I liked the first one better, I certainly liked this one enough to hope there's going to be a third.
7. Girl, 15, Charming But Insane by Sue Limb - chronicle of British teen girl's zaniness. More believable than (but not quite as laugh out loud funny as) Louise Rennison's Georgia Nicholson - I liked it.
8. All-American Girl by Meg Cabot - same author as the Princess Diaries - this book is totally unbelievable in terms of an ordinary girl saving the President's life, falling for the First Son, and being appointed teen ambassador to the UN - but it is fun in it's far-fetchedness.
   
9. Kung Fu Princess by Pamela Walker - is much less about shopping/fashion/cliques (thank heavens) and more about a young girl coming into her birthright. Unfortunately for her that birthright is being a princess of two bloodlines destined to face five ancient enemies imprisoned in cursed gold coins. Cassidy Chen is great and exactly on my 12 year old Ninja Princessa's level.
10. Wuthering High by Cara Lockwood - was a bit worried to buy a book under the MTV imprint. (Um, Music Television has their own book division??) But! Spoiled and conflicted Miranda won me over. She gets sent to a spooky boarding school for delinquents on an island off the coast of Maine. The literature they read starts to play out eerily in real life and Miranda begins to suspect that Bard Academy is not at all what she expected. Spooky without being truly disturbing - fun without being superficial - this book was surprising.
11. The Scarlett Letterman by Cara Lockwood - second in the Bard Academy novels and I liked it better than the first because Miranda's character becomes more complicated and interesting. I'll read any more of these that come out.
12. Boy Meets Boy by David Levithan - Fantastic book!! Odd, off beat - cross between a Polyanna Utopian high school and the world as it is - this is a sweet and real story about a gay boy who falls for the new boy in school. The gentle romance - the challenge of navigating high school friendships - the way misunderstandings rupture our plans and sometimes our hearts - all of it is quiet, musing, accessible in Paul's story. I absolutely want all of my kids (and my friends) to read this book.
13. Forever in Blue - the Fourth Summer of the Sisterhood - I loved it. It's the perfect conclusion for the Traveling Pants books. If you haven't read the first - you should. If you liked the first three and are waiting for this one to come out in paperback - then I don't know what to say other than I think it was worth every penny of the hardback price.

The only non YA books I've read in the past 10 days

1. Nylon Angel by Marianne de Pierres - Aussie author I'd never heard of - but I think her Parish Plessis is a fantastic cyber punk heroine. De Pierres is a great new voice in the world of speculative fiction. She uses words and labels in intriguing ways and she creates social conflicts that span race, economic strata, and customs. Gritty and slick at the same time - these books helped me out of my wallow.
2. Code Noir by Marianne de Pierres - second Parish Plessis novel (paperback as of this past summer). Not a stand alone and ends clearly as if there's a third on the way - but I enjoyed it every bit as much as the first.

So there you have it. This is what I was doing while I was not posting. Well, that and watching ESPN. Did you see Serena Williams spank Maria Sharapova? And if you saw that, did you also see the weird commercial with the writer who had a whole trashcan overflowing with crumpled first drafts who then drinks some energy drink? If you saw that, could you please explain to me how those wadded up papers turning into gremlins who attack the writer so that he has to climb walls and chop them with scissors would make someone want to buy that energy drink?!! I didn't understand that commercial AT ALL. Really it was almost as bad as the commercial for running shoes that features two almost dead pieces of road kill talking to each other. Why would talking a half dead rabbit and a smushed bird saying those shoes were cool make you want to buy them? I begin to realize how NOT the target audience I am.

And finally - need I say that I am excited and also despondent that it is nearly Super Bowl weekend? I LOVE the Super Bowl anyway and this year there is a team I really love in it - GO COLTS!!! But damn - only one more game until August?! Sad. Sad. Sad.

Peace.