Pink Prickly Pear

Book Review Haiku

Doris Lessing is

so depressing.  It's a shame

'bout Mara and Dann.

The girl rabbits are just for mating!

Nine.

Nine is when it really might start to hit you that your kid is going to be smarter than you ever were, or could hope to be.  

In addition to sharing a childhood favorite, I had an ulterior motive in picking Watership Down for us to read together; I was hoping I might wean her off that awful Warrior Cats series.  In the interests of full disclosure, I have not read more than a couple of isolated chapters in the series.  Initially, I was just irritated with the names and what a pain in the ass mouthful they were when reading aloud.  My disdain really kicked in to high gear when we discovered that Erin Hunter is not one person, but rather three women hired by Harper Collins to push out a seemingly endless series about semi-feral cats.

I thought the plight of a rag tag band of anthropomorphic rabbits would draw her in, and away, from those damned cats.

I was wrong.  My sweet little riot grrrl immediately noticed what I had never even picked up on.  

"Why are all the main characters male?" It having been a while since I'd read Watership Down, I responded that I was pretty sure there would be some female characters.  After all, we were only a couple of chapters into the story.

"But they've already mentioned the does.  They are just for mating, and digging burrows.  I doubt there's going to be lead female character in this."

Um...she's right.  I sort of feebly protested that it was still a pretty good story and maybe we should just, you know finish it?  It being a classic and all?

"Mom," said gravely, and with an inflection that suggested it pained her to have to educate me on this matter, "I really don't think...as a girl...that I will enjoy this book."

"Oh, uh...okay"  

Crap.  What a total FAIL.  On the other hand, feminist nine year old, WIN.  Too bad I didn't have much, if anything, to do with it.

Cormac McCarthy ruined my night.

We're thinking of moving to a new neighborhood.   I like to check out all the amenities*, so we visited what could be our new library.  Everyone was ridiculously friendly, wanting to help us find our books and tell us about jazz night and "Come play Wii night!'.  The library itself is very, very small, but we can order books from the main library and, most importantly, we can walk there.  Mini-pear found a pile of books and I grabbed Cormac McCarthy's The Road.

I'm going to tell you about it because you all keep inviting me to join GoodReads, so you must want to know what I think about what I'm reading.  I'm not ignoring your GoodReads invitations, it's just I'm pretty sure I'm a member already, because they know my name and keep sending me emails about stuff and about books some of my other imaginary internet friends are reading.  I tried to log in with all the usual passwords, but no dice...

Anyway...

The Road.

This is some bleak shit, yo.

I got about a third of the way though in one sitting and it gave me the willies.  A man.  His boy.  Post nuclear annihilation.  Implied cannibalism. 

I wasn't going to read anymore, but d'anjou fell asleep on the way to karate so I read some more in the car while Mini-pear was in class.  Then I did something I never do. 

I flipped to the end to see if anything happy was ever going to happen to this poor defeated man and his boy.  Because, seriously, if there wasn't a light at the end of that tunnel, I just wasn't going to be able to read another page.

Nothing happy happened.  I stopped reading.

Later on, at home, I noticed Mr. Pear was reading one of Mini-Pear's library books.  After teasing him mercilessly, we had the following exchange:

Triple P:  I've got Cormac McCarthy's latest from the library if you want to read something a little more...

Mr. P [interrupting] NO!

Triple P: ...grown up and depressing.

Mr. P:  That guy does bleak very well.

Triple P:  Tell me about it!  That shit was depressing!  There's this man and his boy, nuclear annihi...

Mr. P:  No thanks!  Don't even tell me about it!

Triple P:  ...lation!  Implied cannibalism!

Mr. P: La, la, la, la, la...I can't hear you!

Then it gave me fucking nightmares.

Not cool, Cormac McCarthy. 

Mr. Pear slept soundly, undoubtedly with visions of Warrior Cats in his head.

^{* Which I think is more "I can't wait to get over here and walk to all this stuff! and less "I'm not moving here if the post office doesn't have one of those fancy self-service "print your own postage" machines.}

Easy like Sunday mornin'...(and a rant about the sorry state of affairs in the Border's children's department)

I've been married to my father-in-law's son for over nine years now, and yet he still thinks it's perfectly fine to call me at 8 o'clock in the morning!

Granted, we have a child, and people with children are frequently up earlier than they'd like, but still, on the weekend, she often lets us sleep in.  Or one of us takes one for the team and lets the other one sleep in.

Mini-pear is sleeping over at her friend's house.  We both could have slept in!  But instead the phone, which was right next to my ear - where it should be when my baby is away for the night - started ringing away merrily.  For some reason, the dog decided to join this joyful chorus by retching violently in the kitchen. Mr. Pear got up and mopped up the vomit.  I listened to my voice mail (of course I didn't actually answer it!), just in case it was an emergency phone call (because really, that's the only reason I want my phone to ring before 9 a.m.).  Somehow Mr. Pear was able to flop back asleep and me?  Well, here I am with my tea wondering what I should have for breakfast.

Should I fill you in on all the hot details of date night?

We took a nap.  Went to Jimbo's to buy laundry soap specifically for cloth diapers.  Stopped at the new Apple Store to check out Mr. Pear's application on the iPhone.  That was really cool!  He wrote that!  And it's right there on the screen!  Apple!  Huge!  Then we stopped at Borders (I've yet to find an indie bookstore with a children's section in defiantly anti-intellectual San Diego county) to refill the summer book fairy's stocks.  Border's books has the most asinine method of organizing children's books I've ever seen.  One would think that fiction for independent readers would be organized in much the same way adult's fiction is shelved.  Wrong!  Instead, there is a section for "Animal Stories" and a section for "School/Friendships", etc.  For someone who went in with the idea of looking - oh, I don't know- say, by the author's last name, it was baffling!

Eventually this employee who soon revealed herself to be completely useless asked if I was finding everything okay.

PPP: No, actually, I'm not.

Useless Employee with No Knowlege of Children's Books: Oh, something in particular I can help you look for?

PPP: Well, I could probably find it myself if the books were shelved properly...

UEWKCB *smiles benevolently*: Well, it is the children's department...

PPP: Meaning?

UEWKCB:  Sometimes the children will pull things off the shelves and not put them back in the right places.

PPP:  No, I'm curious as to why they aren't shelved alphabetically.  If I'm looking for books by a particular author, but don't know the subject matter of each and every book she's written, I'm going to have to look in all these separate sections...

UEWKCB *ignores my logic*: Well, it is back to school time, so we are running low on a lot of things...Shall we look them up in the computer?

So I tell her we can start by looking for anything by E. Nesbit and Edward Eager.  She needs me to spell both their names, and while on one hand, I can appreciate her wanting to get it right, I am mostly really disappointed that she's obviously never heard of them.   If I were in a real bookshop, with a proprieter as opposed to an employee, with someone who actually cared about children's books, I imagine they might screw up their little face with glee and breathily declare how much they enjoyed E. Nesbit's books.  Perhaps they'd even say, "If your reader likes those, she should try something by ________", but, no, this lady is just an employee at a big, box bookstore and doesn't know jack about kid's lit.  So disappointing.

At any rate, they don't carry anything by E. Nesbit.  Really?  Really?  I craned my neck looking at the screen - not just out of stock, but you don't carry them???  And we went and looked under "Independent Readers/Science Fiction" for the 2 individual copies of Edward Eager's books they had in stock.  One, we already owned.  The other I found "mis-shelved" among the E's in "Independent Readers/General".

UEWKCB:  See, the kid's are always putting them back in the wrong place.

PPP:  No, I'm pretty sure that that's where I'd shelve him - with the other E's...

And she had the nerve to give me a pitying look!

/rant over.

We came home, made smoothies and watched American Gangster.  2 hours and 45 minutes!  Long!  A midnight dog walk, and I was more than ready for bed.

I haz godda cold...

...and it really doesn't seem fair. 

It quickly morphed from, "Huh, my throat's a bit scratchy..." to "Why woan my nose stob runnin'?" to "Holy fuck, I know exactly what this pain in my teeth means!"  Do you know what pain in one's upper teeth means?  No?  Well, aren't you lucky never to have experienced sinus pain so severe you've contemplated banging your head repeatedly against a brick wall in the hopes of cancelling the sinus pain out somehow...

Last night, after spending the greater part of the day either thrashing about on the bed in a sweat, or in the bath with as-hot-as-I-can-bear washcloths on my face, I finally remembered that last summer I discovered a cold medicine that not only alleviates my symptoms, but does not supplement my discomfort with paranoia and freakish auditory hallucinations.  Oh.  Duh.  I dissolved two disks in 4 ounces of water, took myself to bed and woke up in the middle of the night with a remarkably clear head.  Mr. Pear, on the other hand, was clearly having a bad night.  He'd turned off the window fan, and was trying to tuck us in under not one, but two extra blankets.

This morning I was...89% better and the sinus pain is gone.  Ahhh.

Mini-pear, as per usual, was completely unaffected by our plague and thus spent the day bored out of her little mind.  Actually, she was a little less bored than she might have been, because the book fairy's been extremely active this summer.  The summer book fairy is my best friend!  Every time Mini-pear finishes one, another one just magically appears!  And then roly-poly pregnant mommies get a couple of hours to...hmmm, what have I been doing?  Drinking water and running to the toilet mostly.

Oh, I've also been knitting a little bit, but actually it's been hard to find a good position to sit and knit in for any extended period of time, so this project (and baby pear's quilt and various other projects I'd assumed I'd finish before he arrived) are a bit slow going.  I suppose I could sit on my big exercise ball and knit, but something about that screams dork to me.

Sometimes it would be nice to do just nothing...

Mini-pear has a new friend who won't be going back to school next year.  Of course, the little girl's mom has a lot of questions and concerns.  She's particularly worried that her daughter won't get to socialize as often as she's accustomed.

I have to smile at that.  A wan, exhausted sort of smile.  Exhausted because mini-pear's social calendar is insane!  She'd never get this much time to socialize if she were in school.  Please stop talking to your neighbor or I'll have to separate you two!  Girls, we're not here to socialize!  I want to be able to hear a pin drop in here!

I haven't blogged all that much over the past couple of weeks.  Partly because I'm just not here all that much.  We are very busy socializing.  In the last week, mini-pear and I have:

Spent 8 consecutive hours at our local Unschooler Park Day!
Went to see her good friend's dance recital, with some other friends, followed by ice-cream (not to mention a sugar fueled exploration of the Whole Foods in La Jolla).
Had a friend over for a few hours of one on one play.
The whole family got together with several other families for dinner and to talk about the possibilities of hosting an Unschooling Conference in San Diego next year.
Karate, karate, karate...
More time at the park with friends!
Book club with 5 of her girl friends
A pottery workshop organized by another homeschooling family*
A picnic, sleepover, and all day play date with another friend and her family
Followed by another park day

And then yesterday, we met up with a different set of girl friends for the American Girl book club.  The girls are reading through the historical novels.  Yesterdays meeting had a Victorian theme in keeping with the Samantha series.  Everyone loved the elaborate tea party - crust-less tea sandwiches, fresh fruit and loads of dainty little cakes - charades, and making their tussie mussies.  Of course, I forgot my camera, but I managed to snap the above picture of mini-pear putting her bouquet into a bud vase at home.  Then she noticed the camera and ran away, having recently developed an aversion to the camera.

So, yes, socializing - I think we've got it covered.  We're trying to stay home all morning, but it's hot, so I think we'll have to accept that invitation to hang at the beach this afternoon.

_{*Actually, here's where I hit a wall and just couldn't handle the social whirlwind anymore.  Luckily, my friends noticed and shuttled me off home with promises to make arrangements for mini-pear to get dropped off later.  I went home and slept like the dead.  And then one of the friends from pottery asked if they couldn't just take mini-pear home with them and I could just reconnect with them at park day the following afternoon.  So then I got to sleep like the dead some more.  Which is something I was apparently in dire need of.}

Review of some things that suck, and others that don't.

When you realize you're reading an bad book, do you plod though it anyway?

I do.  Well, unless it's The Count of Monte Cristo, which I would very much like to finish, but I bought this massive edition of it and it's literally too big to read in bed.  Bed is where I do most of my reading.  It may end up being my beach book, but something about lugging The Count of Monte Cristo to the beach this summer makes me feel like a poseur.

Anyway, two books I recently read, despite loathing them:

A Widow for One Year by John Irving.  Why do I persist with John Irving?  I hated that other one with the bear in it (I think it was Hotel New Hampshire) and I hated this, yet I read the sappy, shoddily constructed thing to the bitter end.  Actually, the end was less bitter and more totally unbelievable.  Were I cartoon style, I think I would have slapped my forehead with the disappointment of it all.

A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby.  Stupid premise, crap execution and yet I wasted about 3 evenings on it.

A book I don't loathe:

I'm completely engrossed in Stones from the River by Ursula Hegi.  I just sort of stumbled across it at the library.  It was a little disappointing to google Ursula Hegi (because once I realized I was really going to enjoy it, I wanted to know what else she'd written and if she's still alive and writing even more) and find that Oprah Winfrey apparently found Stones from the River first.  At least this is an older edition and doesn't have the Oprah's Book Club Seal on it.  Incidentally, I do actually enjoy a great many of Oprah's selections (except that Nicholas Sparks guy and I never read Tuesdays with Morrie - let's yawn for books about old people! - or that book about the people you meet in heaven - not interested since I'm probably not going) but I don't necessarily want to advertise this when I'm carrying my book around.  Not because I'm embarrassed to enjoy the same books as her, but I don't want people to think I can't pick out my own books from sources other than what an afternoon talk show hostess recommends.

Not everyone is so concerned with what other people might think about what they're reading.  There is a mom whose son is in one of mini-pear's classes who usually brings along this huge spiral bound volume with a rather depressing title.  Something to do with demanding respect from your children and maintaining control of a "happy family".  Another mom brings totally trashy bodice ripping romances, complete with gilt covers and Fabio look-a-likes manhandling hot redheads in their very best Ren-fest gear.

We may as well be wearing track suits...

It's been raining all day long.  Actually, I don't really mind.  It's an excellent day to work on secret holiday projects, snuggle up with mini-pear and  read her new book, play with our watercolour pencils (I've been journaling on paper lately) and drool over read this month's Cook's Illustrated.  I love this magazine, but it can be very meaty (I mean actual meat, not hefty in content, although it is extremely hefty in content as well) so I only ever pick up the holiday baking issue which is thankfully, meat free.

There will be cookies and there will be many of them.

The dog minds the rain very much indeed.  She's not particularly bright and on rainy days she gets in such a foul mood with us.  I suspect she thinks we're somehow responsible for the sad, wet state of affairs out of doors (particularly when a little rainy day inexplicably brightens my mood - I know she picks up on that) and so she makes her displeasure known by following one around and whining, and periodically flopping on the couch and sighing in a most exaggerated manner.

In which I dust off my signet ring AND play theatre critic.

It is perhaps unfair to judge a children's regional theatre company too harshly.  But I can't resist, so how about I just not name names? 

Item #1:  I thought taking my daughter to see other children taking their exhibitionist tendencies to the stage might be inspiring.  I did not come to see a crowd of children backing up young adults in the lead roles.  Alice in Wonderland's boobs should not be the main attraction.  There was a lot of talent up there.  No reason why "second purple flower to the right" couldn't have played Alice.  If you are of the opinion that it's too many lines for one child to memorize (And really?  It's not), it's perfectly acceptable to get creative with casting more than one Alice.  You certainly had the costume budget for more than one blonde wig and little blue dress with apron.

Item #2:  This is directed mainly at the choreographer, but since no other person involved in the entire production caught this, you all might want to take this note.

[Insert pause for dramatic effect]

Sealing wax (from The Walrus and the Carpenter) has nothing to do with the ceiling and so to have Tweedledee and Tweedledum gesture towards it dramatically during their performance was not only unnecessary and distracting (Was it about to fall on our heads?  What are they pointing at?), but ill-informed.  I realize that none of us has probably used sealing wax on our correspondence lately and so you might be unfamiliar with the term.  However, might I tell you about this fantastic book you might want to keep around the house?  A dictionary!  You just look up the unknown term and there it is!  Demystified!  You don't even have to keep another dusty old book around the house.  You could just type "sealing wax" into your favorite search engine or Wikipedia or the like and then?  Well, then you would know, and, as G.I. Joe says, "Knowing is half the battle".

Otherwise, it was a nice little production and my daughter and I enjoyed ourselves and will probably attend another one soon.

Now back to your television screens.

Adventures in babysitting

From Monday evening's Bonde Do Role show at the firetrap Casbah.  I still have absolutely no idea what these Brazilian kids are on about, but I'm pretty sure it's very rude indeed. 

The opening act was this skinny little boy from Wisconsin.  Unexpected!  Totally uninhibited person!  It's always nice to see people really don't care what anyone else thinks and just run with it.

And thanks to Kate and family, we didn't even have a curfew!  Mini-pear trotted off to their house with her sleeping bag and we didn't see her until after breakfast Tuesday morning;) 

At the other extreme this week - Friday afternoon in the sun.  Mini-pear was supposed to have a friend over, but at the last minute her friend decided she'd rather host.  Just before we walked out the door, the mailman delivered a package of books I'd ordered last week.  I dropped off my girl at her play date, made a hot cup of tea and headed for the bedroom.  I lay in the afternoon sun reading for three solid uninterrupted hours.  Bliss.  I even let the dog on the bed.