practical decisions.

It has been approximately eight billion years since a strong wind came through town and pushed a pine tree onto my husband's car. We had an insurance settlement within the week. I've been paying for insurance for a decade or so, and yet I was surprised to see it in action. I have to confess, I think of it more as money you pay to prevent bad things, because it is a rule of the universe that bad things are more likely to happen when you are unprepared. This is the kind of irrational impression that makes me a square.

However, the tree did not ask for proof of insurance before TIMBERing on down, so I learned how the other part of insurance works. It was quick and painless. I called our agent, they sent a tow truck to get the car, the mechanic said it was totaled, and we picked up the check. I was certain that at any second, masked men would descend on ropes from the ceiling, demanding the money back. Particularly unsettling to me was the fact that we had bought the car from my parents at a generous price, in fact about a third of what we received from the insurance company. Sometimes bad things happen to those who are prepared, but they come out a few grand ahead in the end?

Since then, the money has stayed in the bank, earning interest at a very poor rate.

We, as a couple, are terrible at buying cars. We proved that the first time a tree destroyed a vehicle by waiting seventeen months to buy another one. I have no good explanation. It's even worse this time, because we had that pile of cash for the very purpose. Neither of us like dealing with it. Josh has a hard time getting excited about practical decisions in the first place. I was scared of buying a used car, picturing in my head a guy with a greasy combover and a checked suit. Not that balding men with poor fashion sense are necessarily swindlers, but that is the popular image. So we both just ignored the problem and continued to share my Honda Fit. We were united in our denial.

A month or two ago, Josh registered to go to choir camp at the beach for a weekend. We decided that by then, we definitely needed to have this car thing taken care of so he could drive to camp. I made a list of cars that were acceptable in terms of reliability, gas mileage, and cargo space.

Let's talk about one of those specs, namely the cargo space. Josh requires a fair amount of room to haul his musical gear to practice and gigs. However, when this fact came up in discussions, it seemed to me that he was greatly exaggerating his needs. For example, two fallen trees ago, he was managing just fine with a Toyota Corolla. The Corolla is a fine car, but it is compact. Big enough to fit a bass amp, though. He was talking about gear for several people, plus room for those people. He was talking about a touring vehicle, which was surprising to me, seeing as his band had not toured as of yet and was unlikely to anytime in the near future. In case he ever found himself in a touring rock band again, I was of the opinion that he and his band mates could figure out the transportation then, rather than us buying the biggest beast on the road for a daily commute.

Our compromise was a minivan. Room for gear, room for people, acceptable for daily driving. It wouldn't get as good gas mileage as some of the other vehicles on my list, but I could live with it. I started doing regular searches on CraigsList and AutoTrader for a Toyota Sienna, which according to Consumer Reports, was the way to go for minivans. Being a larger vehicle, the amount of miles on the Siennas in our price range was a little discouraging. Also, it got about twenty-three miles to the gallon.

I have to admit that we are spoiled in terms of gas mileage. I think I've raved about this before, but if saving at the pump is your prime consideration, the Honda Fit may be the car for you. It does not have quite the get-up-and-go as some cars, but if you don't mind that, you'll get forty-two miles to the gallon. It is not a hybrid, just awesome.

With that in mind, I tentatively suggested maybe we could get another Honda Fit - cheaper vehicle overall, better gas mileage, and you can still shove a lot of crap in it. No, he insisted. He needed the minivan. Okay, then.

One drizzly Saturday morning, armed with a list of two used car lots that were currently selling Siennas in our budget, we set out to go car shopping. At the first lot, we couldn't find the van we'd seen on the website. I suggested asking for assistance, but discovered that Josh must have the same impression of used car salesmen that I do, as he wanted to avoid them at all costs. So we moved on to the second lot, which did have the Sienna we sought. It was an awful gold color, but looked to be in okay shape. I went inside to ask about a test drive.

The salesman was a young, fully-maned Hispanic man in a lavender button-down shirt and white pants. He made a copy of Josh's license, slapped a dealer tag on the van, and sent us on our way. Josh drove around while I pushed buttons and poked around at all the little compartments. He said it accelerated nicely, and we agreed that the stereo was capable of rocking. I was upbeat and positive - hey, this is nice, look at all the space, temperature controls in the back, neat. Josh was not impressed, and no amount of my new-found minivan enthusiasm could help. I began to suspect that I was just going to have to come home with a car one day and leave him out of it.

We got back to the car lot. I returned the keys and the tag and asked the salesguy a few questions. He answered politely, but didn't seem to care one way or the other whether we were going to buy anything. Josh walked around the lot, admiring a few incredibly unpractical choices. Finally, we got back in the Fit to go home.

"That seemed okay. And he said we could take it to a mechanic to have it checked out," I said, encouragingly.

"I guess."

"You didn't like it?"

"It doesn't get very good gas mileage. You know, I don't really need that much room. I think I'd rather get another Fit."

You have got to be kidding me. I felt mostly frustrated and only slightly vindicated. In the interest of marital harmony, I focused on the latter. And then I dug out my phone and started searching for Fits.

personal questions.

There were coupons for a free dessert in the break room. Kyle was walking around asking who wanted to go over to the newly-opened restaurant down the street and redeem them. I don't know what kind of crazy people I work with, but none of them did. Do you know what the best kind of food is? FREE food.

I hopped in the passenger seat, and we agreed that those other people were out of their minds.

"So, any big announcements?"

Ugh. His question was vague, but I knew what he meant, because he'd asked something similar before. I'm a youngish woman, recently married: he's asking whether I'm pregnant yet. This is kind of a personal question, right? Kyle has been my coworker for seven years, but I think we've exchanged fewer than a couple hundred words. I'm gonna need a few thousand words between us before that line of questioning doesn't seem inappropriate. But then again, I'm a private person.

Being a private person has made me a master of deflection. Jokes are my favorite way to go, but I also employ questions and general vaguery.

"No, nothing to announce." See, this is a bit vague. This just means I have nothing to tell random people, and is silent on whether anything is going on.

"Well, has it been discussed?"

"We are open to the possibility." More vaguery. Since I have gone off birth control, this has been my official answer. It's pretty effective, because it really gives the conversation nowhere to go. Time for me to use a question to get the spotlight off my reproductive plans. "What about you, any big announcements?"

"Me? Oh, no, no." A pause, but luckily no silence is too awkward for me. "Well, I guess it'll get out eventually. I'm getting divorced."

ABORT ABORT ABORT. While talking about an acquaintance's personal issues is much preferred over discussing my own, I felt unprepared. But it's cool, I can do this.

"Ah, that sucks, man. I'm sorry to hear that."

Phew! The rest of the trip did not require much from me. He talked about lawyers, online dating, meetup groups for single parents, when they were going to break it to the kids. I responded enough to show that I was listening. I have no idea if he felt better or worse having unloaded on me a bit, but I feel okay about my part.

And that is kind of the secret to Stephen Ministry. People in general are really uncomfortable with other people's pain. They have that same reaction that I had: look for an exit, change the subject, make a joke, offer a platitude. So for someone to just give an ear for a while can be hard to find. The fact that he came out and told me reveals that this is something very close to the surface. When you're thinking about something all the time, all it may take is an innocent question for it to burst out of you. Or maybe he's just the opposite of a private person, I don't know him very well at all.

Oh, and the restaurant was closed until dinner time, so there wasn't even any dessert.

july 2014 books.

A Short History of a Small Place
T.R. Pearson
Oh man, guys. This book was so fantastic. I started reading it, and the narrator in my head was speaking with my own accent.

Perhaps I am biased, as this book is set in small town North Carolina, round about where my father-in-law was born, in fact. But it's just good story-telling. There is the main story, about an old woman with a pet monkey who climbs the water tower and jumps off. In the course of telling this story, which continues with the aftermath of her suicide, then her funeral and estate sale (!), the narrator tangents off into dozens of tiny stories about the inhabitants of his little town. It is poignant, engrossing, and straight-up hilarious. This was a book that I was mad no one had told me about, particularly considering the proximity of the setting. So I'm telling you about it, whether you hail from 'round here or not.

Housekeeping
Marilynne Robinson
A few years ago, I read Robinson's novel Gilead and was just blown away. Since then, I've gone ahead and picked up everything I find by her. When I picked out a book to read next, I at first grabbed Absence of Mind, which is about the tension between religion and science. I got about fifty pages in before I gave up, because she was talking at a higher level than I could manage. I could have done it, but I would've had to look up a word every paragraph or so. And by a word, I mean a whole philosophical concept (for example, Malthusian). I was not ready to commit to that, so I put it back on the shelf and went for some nice fiction instead.

Like Gilead, this is a quiet sort of book, set in the tiny railroad town of Fingerbone, Idaho. It focuses on two young girls who are passed from relative to relative. The housekeeping in the title refers more to the ways of creating a home, rather than things like sweeping the floor. Some of their guardians are better than others at those sorts of tidy jobs, but those are not necessarily the ones who provide the best "home."

Robinson writes beautifully. Josh says I read like a scientist, which means I read for plot, for the meat. That works for a lot of books, frankly, and so I passed years of English classes without ever knowing that I was missing things in books. You can still pick up things from the mood and tone, and you might even feel those things on some level as you read without noticing that they're even there.

It is not wrong to read this way, but it is limiting. You miss things, and there are whole books that you will not enjoy because not a dang thing happens. Like if you take a walk down the street you drive down every day and realize there are whole houses and yards that you'd never noticed before. Some books paint a picture, some tell a story, some do both.

Anyway, read Marilynne Robinson. She's good.

West into the Night
Beryl Markham
I remember buying this book a couple of years ago, when I was feeling frustrated with the recent streak of book club books about women married to famous men. I admit, I do sometimes wonder what it would be like to be married to some well-known man (usually an artist). In fact, I once spent an afternoon in the car discussing with my friend which of the musicians that came on the air we'd go out with (I was down for Bruce Springsteen, but thought Don Henley was probably not my type).

Anyway...

I looked at the back of this book, where my copy has an endorsement by Hemingway (sigh). But as I looked at it, I found out that it was about growing up in Africa, training race horses, and being a bush pilot. And I thought, this is the kind of book a woman's book club should be reading.

This right here is a telling of a fascinating life. Markham seems simply fearless. She writes about being attacked by a lion as a child, and going warthog hunting with some natives and a faithful bulldog. Once her father leaves, she takes up a career training race horses at the age of eighteen. The last bit deals with her flying career. She spent a few years scouting out elephants for big game hunters, and then became the first woman to fly across the Atlantic from east to west. The episodes are vivid and tense. A story about a horserace in particular had me on the edge of my seat for twenty minutes, when I suppose the race itself lasted ninety seconds.

She doesn't really talk about it, but many times, I was simply incredulous that she was allowed to do the things she did. Not that I think women shouldn't be allowed to do things or that they can't do things, but I was under the impression that people in 1930s Africa would have strong opinions about that. It's entirely possible that she was told she couldn't something or encountered barriers, but she just did it anyway and didn't think it was worth writing about. The only time this comes up at all is when she was talking about flying over a specific swampy area, and women had to have special permission from the British government to do so. She agreed that it was dangerous, but said she was unclear on why it would be more dangerous for a woman. She suspected the rule "had more to do with chivalry than reason." In any case, she got permission.

She seemed a pretty straight-forward gal, always striving but understanding the limits of humanity:

"We fly, but we have not conquered the air. Nature presides in all her dignity, permitting us the study and use of such of her forces as we may understand. It is when we presume to intimacy, having been granted only tolerance, that the harsh stick falls across our impudent knuckles and we rub the pain, staring upward, starled by our ignorance."

Sounds about right.

Lastly, I should mention that Markham was living in poverty and obscurity when some Hemingway scholar read through his letters and found where he was writing a friend about how fantastic this book was. This led to a reprint, and saved Markham from dying in poverty. So, alright, fine, good job, Ernest.

Let the Great World Spin
Colum McCann
In 1974, a Frenchman named Philippe Petit snuck into the as-yet-uncompleted World Trade Center and strung a wire up between the towers. The next morning, he walked on the wire for forty-five minutes, doing tricks, dancing, and even laying down on the wire while New Yorkers gawked below. This book is centered around that event, telling the stories of various people in the city, how their lives are connected, and what they were doing that August day.

For being about a funambulist, the book spends a lot of time with prostitutes. It starts with a radical priest who lives in the Bronx and takes his Gospel very seriously, spending his time with outcasts. And while the circle widens to include a judge and his wife on Park Avenue, some artists living upstate, and a kid riding the subway with his camera to catch the underground graffiti, it always comes back to the hookers. There are also a lot of mentions of computer projects that would later turn out to be the Internet, so I guess you could say connectivity and the universality of humanity were pretty big themes here.

This book was okay. The story-telling structure was interesting, switching as it did between characters, each of them telling their own part of the story. But it didn't really grab me. I did learn the word "funambulist," so there's that.

showing up.

At our very last Stephen Ministry training class, the fear was palpable. We were known as a lively group - the meetings going on in the classroom next to ours could hear our laughter and wondered what was so funny about this week's chapter on depression. But during this last session, the mood was subdued. After a short class, we were going to go upstairs to the sanctuary and have a commitment ceremony. We had to sign a sheet saying we were really going to do this. We'd spent hours preparing for what we were going to do, but the idea of actually doing it was daunting.

We did role play. We'd done role play many times, always treating it with a sigh and a joke. But this time, we were practicing an initial visit with someone who has asked for our help. We were acting out the first time we meet a total stranger and say, "Nice to meet you, tell me what's troubling you." It was terrifying.

I don't think a role play exercise had ever stumped me like this. I found myself staring, open-mouthed at the person who was pretending to be going through divorce and custody issues. What do I say? At our very first class, we had been told that Stephen Ministers show up. They did a great job telling us all the things we could not expect to be able to do. We can't fix problems, we can't cure people. We can show up, and that helps. I believed that when they told us, but sitting there trying to think of something to say made me feel inadequate. What was I doing here?

One lady shook her head and said over and over that she wasn't sure she could do this. We reassured her and secretly felt the same. In the end, she and I and everyone else signed the paper saying we would try our best, we would show up. Someone said they hoped they got an assignment right away, before they forgot everything. I agreed, and then thought, well, maybe not right away.

We went upstairs for the ceremony. Our classes and meetings are all held at a Methodist church. While a lot of congregations have their own individual Stephen Ministry, we have a combined group of three churches - the Methodists, the Presbyterians, and our scrappy band of Episcopalians. The Methodist church is HUGE. I grew up in a tiny church, and the experience of a big congregation feels too anonymous for me, but I have to admit, they have a lot of cool stuff. Tons of programs, activities, and services, something for everyone.

My tiny home church was also a Methodist church, so the commitment service itself was a warm blanket of familiarity, even in a giant sanctuary with beautiful windows and a gargantuan altar. I knew all the songs. And then, when we had communion, the cup of salvation was filled with grape juice, unfermented. Oh, you Methodists.

And then we were Stephen Ministers, not just trainees. The Presbyterians got name badges, the Methodists got badges and business cards. We were told our badges were on the way.

A few weeks later, though still badgeless, I got the call. Someone was struggling and wanted someone to talk and walk with them. Time to show up.

one in four.

An old friend told me that she was pregnant. After all the squealing and obnoxious questions were over, she also told me that she'd previously had a miscarriage. She found out that one in four women miscarry, and we agreed that was a shocking statistic. I mean, sure, I've had family members miscarry that I knew about, but one in four? She'd had no idea either, but once it happened to her, nearly everyone she told said it had happened to them, too. I thought, that is a dang shame. This is common, people should talk about it.

Well, here we are. Just so you know, there is going to be a lot of menstruation talk coming up.

In January, I took a pregnancy test. It came back negative. I shrugged and figured Aunt Flow would just show up eventually. I had been using a menstrual tracking app, and it said I was super late. But I've had this body a few years now, and I know that it works on some alternate definition of days. My cycle has never been predictable. Technically, I was bleeding, or rather spotting. It was weird and brown (told you this would be gross), but I've had that before, too.

A week later, I took another test. This one had two blue lines. I took it on a Sunday morning, so that if I had to tell Josh something, he would have a whole church service to wrap his brain around it. This turned out to be a great idea. During the service, they have the big prayer in the middle, where they pray for those expecting a child in their lives, with the names of specific parishioners. I thought about how that meant us, even though our names weren't called out.

The next day, I called the doctor to...tell them? I dunno, that's what you do when you get pregnant. You tell the dude, and you tell the doctor. I don't know anything about babies. The nurse asked the date of my last period, and I was all ready with that information, thanks to my handy period tracking app. She told me based on that date that I was 8 weeks along. That did not seem right. I tried to explain to her about my cycle which does not respect numbers, but she murmured "mm-hmm" and scheduled me for a couple weeks from then.

There. I accomplished something. On my way to motherhood, with one thing already checked off. Well, two, if you count successfully combining sperm and egg. But I did not feel right. There was the spotting, which I'd researched and found was probably fine. My breasts were a bit sore in a new and weird way. And I'd had some very minor twingy cramping.

I did not feel pregnant. Not that I knew what I was supposed to be experiencing, but it seemed like something should be different. Some sort of indication that I was knitting a new person in my body. Seriously, that's a pretty big deal, shouldn't there be an indication? I'd heard that pregnant women glow, but I wasn't sure if that was an actual symptom or some kind of radiating happiness or just other people projecting their own radiating happiness. I did not appear to glow.

I did feel a sort of crushing ambivalence. Well. We did it. We knew this would happen if we went off the birth control, and here we are. In seven months or so, our lives will be radically changed forever! Okay then. So along with worrying about not feeling pregnant, I was worried about not feel ecstatic. Basically, I felt a lot of things about not feeling things.

The next day, I called the doctor again, explaining about the spotting and the not-feeling-pregnant-but-not-sure-if-I-should. They asked me to come in for bloodwork. The next morning, I got up early to drive twenty minutes to the doctor, spent ten minutes having my blood drawn, then drove back home to pick up Josh so he could drive me to work.

The day after that, the nurse called and said that I was a little bit pregnant. But they wanted me to come back in so they could draw my blood again.

They were checking for human chorionic gonadotropin (hCG), which is made by the placenta. It's what home pregnancy tests look for, too. In the beginning of the pregnancy, the hCG levels are supposed to grow very quickly. If they don't, then something is probably wrong. If they go down, then it's a miscarriage. A couple days later, I went back to have my blood drawn again. The numbers went up, but not fast enough, so I had to do it again. I read a lot of pregnancy forums that said this was worrisome, but possibly still okay. The ladies on the forums were all very emotionally invested in the numbers and they wished each other much luck and fat babies. I was fine with either outcome; I just wanted to know. This limbo was making me crazy.

This time, the numbers just went down. The nurse on the phone said she was very sorry, but there would not be a baby in September. I was relieved just to know. And, I admit, I am pretty comfortable in my life, and so if big changes are coming, it's alright if they are delayed. Babies seem like an awful lot of work, and I've got a lot of books to read yet.

Oh, and they wanted me to come back in for bloodwork. They wanted to make sure the hCG levels went all the way down to 0. In the meantime, I kept spotting. For a few days, it got heavy enough to call actual bleeding. There is a misogynist joke that says you shouldn't trust anything that bleeds for five days and doesn't die. I bled for six weeks. Did not die.

I heard and read a lot of terms. I didn't want to call it a miscarriage, mostly because I wasn't sad. I didn't know what to call it, and somehow things are easier to process when they have a name. Calling it a miscarriage would bring me a flurry of hugs and concern, and then I'd have to shock people with my indifference. One of the nurses used the term "chemical pregnancy," meaning you had the right chemicals flowing through your body, but there was not really a baby coming. I also came across the term "blighted ovum." I took to calling it our dud.

This happens a lot. If you were shocked by the number of miscarriages, check this out. Up to half of all pregnancies are just chemical. Sperm and egg meet, but chromosomally they don't add up to a baby. Sometimes it fails to implant, which makes me picture a cross-eyed and confused blighted ovum, trying and failing to meet up with the lining of my uterus, which, uh, is all around it. Sometimes the body recognizes that it's a ship that will never sail and just kicks it on out. A lot of women never even know they were pregnant. However, home pregnancy tests are now so sensitive that more and more women do know, especially if a baby is what they're looking and hoping for.

I went in for bloodwork twice more. After the last time, I started getting the bills for all this. It was not a lot per visit, but it was adding up. The nurse called again and said that my hCG levels were at 7. 7. But they still wanted to see a nice round zero, so could I come back in two weeks?

I said no, I am tired of paying you $12.50 for the inconvenience. If I don't have my period again in a couple of months, I'll come in for bloodwork. The nurse on the phone sounded uncomfortable. She'll get over it.

After I found out that I was chemically pregnant but not having a baby, I told my mom about the whole thing. She was very concerned. Miscarriages can be traumatic. The only part that was rough for me were those two weeks when I did not know. In a fit of frustration, I uninstalled the period tracking app. I did not want pop-up reminders when I was late. I did not want to know when I was ovulating. I did not want to mark the days I had sex with a little heart. My mother found out she was pregnant when she started heaving up breakfast every day, and that was going to have to be good enough for me. That way, if there were more of these duds, they'd work their way out of my system without me having to go to the doctor to find out just how not-exactly-pregnant I was.

So yeah. One in four. Now you know.

cookie lady.

Back when Josh was signing up for church duties left and right, he signed the pair of us up for cookie duty. During the announcements for each service, after the sermon but before the offering, the priest invites us all over to the building next door for "coffee, cookies, and healthy stuff," the last item being cut-up vegetables with ranch dressing dip. It's a nice opportunity to catch up with each other and eat snacks. No one would come if it was just mingling with friendly Jesus-folks, but the cookies are how they getcha.

I thought that we were just being signed up to bake cookies and bring them to church. However, we had actually signed up to bring food, set everything up, keep things filled, and then clean it all up afterwards. Later, they sent around another signup to get people to just bake cookies. As a result, I never have to bake cookies anymore, but I do have to cut up vegetables and then wash the tea receptacles.

Fellowship, as it's called, is run by a former nurse named Sandy who likes to bake experimentally and then use her church pals as guinea pigs. I complain about Josh signing himself up for things and then I complain louder when he signs me up for things, but I do enjoy doing Fellowship. It's very well-attended, and is an especially good way for new folks to mingle and be harangued into signing up for things welcomed. So it's an obviously important ministry, but actually doing the work is pretty laid-back and out of the spotlight. I like to serve quietly.

So an unexpected result of joining the Episcopal church is that I suddenly have go-to recipes for several varieties of cookie. Because I do not like to get up early on Sunday mornings, I started freezing dough ahead of time. In my freezer, you might find dough in roll or ball form, all ready to be put on a cookie sheet and baked to perfection.

With such a ready supply, I end up finding other uses for the cookies-to-be, as what I have learned from the Episcopalians is that God loves everyone, and everyone loves cookies. We had family over for a cookout last month, and in an effort to keep things simple, dessert was cookies and watermelon. Then again last weekend, we were invited to a get-together at a friend's, and we brought beer and, yup, cookies. On both occasions, I received numerous compliments and heard many yum-yum noises, but the surest compliment of all is that the cookies disappeared.

I feel like I'm becoming some kind of bona-fide Cookie Lady. I am totally okay with that, because nobody doesn't like that lady. Just think of all the emergency situations that could be handled by a warm cookie. Neighbor helps us move an electric organ? Bring him some cookies! Need a gift for your postal worker at the holidays? Cookies in the mailbox. Surprise guests? NO cookies, because they should call ahead next time. You get the idea.

nerd-jerk reaction.

Josh's cousin, so my cousin-in-law, I guess, is taking an intro programming class. He was struggling with a project and asked if I could sit down with him and look it over.

Inside, I was of a panic. The class was learning Java, and I haven't used Java in years. I mean, sure, it's an intro class, so they're probably still learning about loops or if-statements. I felt fine about helping him with programming concepts, but I was worried I was going to look at the computer slack-jawed and blinking to match the cursor because I wasn't up on the things built in to the language.

Outside, I said sure.

Aside from worrying about my own competence, I wondered whether someone who needed help on an intro programming project was really right for computer science. People say I must be smart when they find out I'm "in computers," but really it's a certain kind of mind. I'm good at thinking this particular way, which has turned out to be very advantageous at this time in human history. I've encountered people who were not so inclined. We used to joke about the kids who transferred from the Computer Science department to the Computer Information Services department, where there was more setting up networks and less coding. We would sneer at their backs and say they just couldn't hack it. They were not one of us. Being computer science majors, we really did not have a lot of opportunities to sneer at anyone.

More likely, it was just not for them. And if you don't enjoy it, why continue? What if you really like setting up networks?

Only once did I meet someone who just did not get it. He was an older student who would come into the computer lab where I worked as a monitor for minimum wage. Mostly, I did homework or played games, but some people would timidly ask if I wouldn't mind helping them out with some homework. And I did, because it was generally a welcome distraction. Usually the kid would nod thoughtfully for a while before finally nodding more confidently and saying they thought they had it now, thanks.

But this one guy. He had a really hard time with concepts that are pretty basic to programming. And he either did not actually understand, even when nodding semi-confidently, or his brain just refused to retain any of it, because I was explaining the same things the next week. I would never recommend to someone that they ought to check out the CIS department instead, but this guy was not going to make it.

I don't know my cousin-in-law all that well, but I was afraid that he was going to be a repeat of that old guy who would never really grasp the idea of a while loop. So yeah, I worried that I was not going to be able to help with the assignment, while also thinking that maybe he just didn't have the right kind of brain. I think you can call that cognitive dissonance at the very least, if not outright arrogance.

But I told him to come over, let's see what we can do.

He said he'd been to see his professor, a grad student, about this project three times. Apparently, the teacher and everyone he'd met in the computer science department basically acted like if you didn't immediately understand everything, then the best you could do would be to go down the hall to CIS. I apologized for my people, who can be a bunch of nerd-jerks, while being sort of amazed how quickly my own nerd-jerkdom had been shown to me.

So we looked at the assignment and his code. Mostly, he was having a hard time picturing the way the code was all supposed to work together, the flow of it. The code he'd already written looked fine. We talked about what the different parts did, and he went from a thoughtful nod to a confident nod in no time.

At one point, he said that despite the unhelpful teacher, he really enjoyed this stuff. He said he liked the organization of it, which made my eyes light up in recognition. Ah. He is one of us.

birthday letters.

One night, about a week after Josh did not receive any proper presents from his wife for his birthday, he announced that he knew what he wanted. "A love letter."

HA. I got this.

He said he got the idea a month back, when some little sister of a childhood friend asked for birthday mail from her Facebook audience. I guess he was feeling inspired in the moment, so he went upstairs to the greeting card stash, selected one from the Blank Inside drawer, wrote a nice note, and sent it on its way.

He was excited and inspired, but I was cranky. Yes, dear, you invented birthday mail. By the way, how is it that you have access to a Blank Inside drawer, not to mention the Occasions Organized by Event drawer, the Postcard drawer, and the Stationery drawer? HMMMMM? Oh wait, it's because your wife has been sending birthday mail since before she was your wife, before she was your girlfriend even.

In fact, we have had bitter fights about birthday mail. Sometimes, I ask him to write a note in a card that I'm sending, usually someone on his side of the family. I think his grandmother would appreciate a nice note from her grandson, rather than her granddaughter-in-law, who she's seen only half a dozen times. And he is agreeable to this idea - he thinks it's great! I address the envelopes and set the cards out on the kitchen table a week in advance of when they need to be sent. And yet we get down to the last day, and I have two choices: nag him to do what he agreed to do and receive a glare as if I am surely the meanest wife, asking him to write a nice note to his grandmother, geez. Or I could just do it myself, which is what I end up doing after he pouts about the assignment and then doesn't do it anyway.

Sometimes, I can get him to write a note if I do it Sudden Prompt! style. As in, here, we are on the way to my nephew's birthday party, I am driving, so write something in this card. And he does such a great job! He's so charming and interesting, and it makes the receiver so happy to get a personal message like that.

After all this complaining, you're thinking I will be unable to write a love letter to my husband, since our relationship obviously consists entirely of fighting about birthday mail. It is a dumb thing to fight about.

But last week, I sat down at the kitchen table with a pad from the Stationery drawer and wrote my husband a love letter. People complain about how no one writes letters anymore (some people do!), but I'm here to tell you that a hand-written letter can make you sound like a lunatic. It is a snapshot of a moment in a person's mind. There's no way to go back and edit, and while you might start with a plan of what you'd like to say, what comes out of the pen can be unpredictable. Also, your handwriting can get pretty gnarly by the third page.

I posted the letter, he received it, and it was a success. He said it made him love me, which I guess is the idea. Now we shall just see if he remembers his own assignment in a few months when my birthday comes along. I'm not going to nag, and I'm certainly not going to give in and write it myself.

june 2014 books.

Twelve Steps to a Compassionate Life
Karen Armstrong
The author recommends that a person read this whole book, and then go back and do the twelve steps. Each chapter is a step, and you're not supposed to advance to the next step until you've completed the ones before. Many of the steps involve performing Mettā meditation, which involves sending out loving thoughts to others.

Having finished the book, I am not sure whether I'm going to go back and actually do the steps. Not because I don't need or want to be a more compassionate person, but because I'm lazy. I need to read a book first about being a less lazy person, I guess.

I'll give a little summary of the twelve steps. Hopefully, I didn't completely misunderstand anything.

1. Learn about compassion - Armstrong is a scholar of comparative religion, and she goes through the major world religions and shows how they all agree that we need to treat each other with compassion. We spend a lot of time worrying about where we disagree, sometimes on cosmically insignificant details. Yet we often fail at something that is central to many faiths.
2. Look at your own world - examine the particular needs of your community.
3. Compassion for yourself - "Love your neighbor as yourself" only works as an instruction if you love yourself first. It's likely you know someone who treats others badly because of their own insecurities. Don't be that guy.
4. Empathy - learn to see the pain all around you. Seriously, it is everywhere. Everyone you see every day is suffering from a variety of things you know nothing about.
5. Mindfulness - Observe the mind to notice its workings, particularly the logical fallacies that often dictate our behavior. As a note, this is kind of where I hit the wall. I was feeling pretty confident about going through the steps (Love myself, yeah!), but treating my mind as separate from my ego is particularly difficult for me.
6. Action - Remember the small moments that someone went out of their way for you, and how much that affected you. Do the same, as much as possible.
7. How little we know - Be aware and humble about the limits of our knowledge and understanding.
8. How should we speak to one another - Be kind and ask questions. Listen. Do not demonize people who disagree with you.
9. Concern for everybody - Overcome tribalism by accepting the stranger and the foreigner.
10. Knowledge - She recommends picking a country for this practice and going into book report mode. Learn about the history to understand the modern context and help you become invested in people who you seemingly have nothing in common with.
11. Recognition - See yourself in others. We are all just people.
12. Love your enemies - She defines enemies as anyone who threatens you or your way of life. I had trouble thinking of any, but maybe I'm not looking at it right. Maybe I am lucky or delusional.

Now, go out and get your compassion on!

McKay's Bees
Thomas McMahon
This is embarrassing, but I read this book at the beginning of the month and do not remember much about it. It was okay? Sorta quiet and pondering. There were bees and some stuff about slavery. Sorry. I need to write down my thoughts right after finishing the book.

Wieland, or The Transformation: An American Tale
Charles Brockden Brown
Gah. I only read ten pages of the forty page introduction to this book, but I gathered through the effusive praise for the author that this book is one of the first American novels. All I can say is that first is not necessarily best. It is a good thing that other American authors came along later to justify this great experiment we call the United States. Maybe the other thirty pages of the introduction covered that.

Anyway. This book is narrated by Clara, a lady living outside a city in the woods before the American Revolution. She lives on a plot of family land where her brother also lives in a house with his wife and children. Previously, their father died under mysterious circumstances - having built himself a little temple to pray in, his was discovered there, burned to a crisp.

In the present, there have been mysterious voices. Clara hears a conversation occuring in her closet where two men are plotting to kill her. There is general spookiness, which was sorta fun, and then everything just went off the rails. I'm going to spoil it, because you're never going to read this book. In fact, I recommend that you don't. We find out that Clara's brother, having heard the voices, has killed off his wife and four children. Then it comes to pass that the voices were the product of a mysterious vagrant who had a knack for ventriloquy. However, he claims he did not tell the brother to kill his family, so that part is not resolved. Wikipedia says it is some kind of statement about religious fanaticism.

Okay, so the plot is spooky, and then goofily resolved. The writing is overwrought. Whole chapters of Clara fretting about what she is going to do, with her finally making a decision at the end. The next chapter involves her doing whatever she resolved. The chapter following will be more hang-wringing, possibly a dead faint or two that she will need to recover from.

House Made of Dawn

I did not enjoy this one either, but I think that is my defect. Either me or those Pulitzer people are wrong about this one.

A Native American returns to his reservation after fighting in World War II and finds that he no longer fits in that world. He gets into trouble, eventually moves to the city, but cannot find peace there either. Then he goes back to care for his dying grandfather, and he seems to be sorta finding himself again. That's really it. Momaday says the main character is a composite of many boys he knew from the reservation who were unable to find a place for themselves.

The writing is heavy on the description, and there are a lot of flashback and forths. A lot of work goes into setting a mood more than telling a story, and there are many little vignettes that don't move the plot at all. As a result, I had trouble paying attention, and I did a fair amount of skimming.

This book is credited for sparking the Native American Renaissance. I had not known there was one, but hey, good for them.

The Lost Honour of Katharina Blum, or: how violence develops and where it can lead
Heinrich Böll
I liked this one. It starts with a lady turning herself in for murder, then goes back a week or so to show the course of events that led a somewhat prudish professional housekeeper to murder a journalist. The lady meets a man at a party and becomes thoroughly smitten. She takes him home and then helps him escape from the apartment building when it turns out the police are looking for him. That is the extent of their relationship.

The newspapers, however, say that the man is a murderer, and the lady is his longtime lover and accomplice. The paper hounds her, her dying mother, her employers, and her friends, then misquotes them all to indicate that Katharina is a scarlet woman and possibly a Communist. The book is sort of piecing together what happened by recounting statements from different people in the story. It's a little unclear who the "narrator" actually is, but it's a fun read.

Here is another spoiler, which you can skip, because I do actually recommend the book. At the end, we finally get back to the murder that Katharina confessed to in the first scene. She has invited the journalist over for an interview after he has dragged her name through the mud. He shows up and smugly asks if she would like to have sex with him, because she's such a slut, everyone knows it, it's in all the papers. ARGH. I...might have shot him, too.

Saint Francis of Assisi
G.K. Chesterton
Have we talked about Chesterton yet? No? Okay. Well, a few years back, I read The Man Who Was Thursday in one day, then spent a week asking everyone I'd ever met if they knew about Chesterton, then asking the sky why no one was telling anyone about Chesterton.

I am here to tell you about Chesterton. He was freaking great. I would start with Thursday, and not this book, unless you are just really into hagiography. Chesterton was an Christian apologist, which means he writes logical arguments for faith. His writing is just so reasonable, and his turns of phrase so nice that it's easy to go along with him. He describes Francis as a poet and troubadour for God, a man who is unafraid to be the fool because he has nothing to lose. Thus he is able to give away all his stuff, hang out with lepers, and still be happy that way.

One caveat - this book sorta shows its age, particularly with the treatment of Muslims. It was not the main point, so there wasn't a whole lot of discussion, but I got the feeling that if there had been, it would've made me sad.

The Picture of Dorian Gray
Oscar Wilde
This is a pretty spooky tale, with lots of zingers here and there, including the famous Wilde line, "there is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about, and that is not being talked about." Oh, Oscar.

The story opens with the completion of a painting of a beautiful and charming young man named Dorian Gray. His new friend, who talks hedonism but seems to be all talk, puts the idea into Dorian's head that he needs to enjoy his youth while he can. Dorian has a crisis and prays that he will never age.

And then the prayer comes true. Instead, the Dorian in the picture changes, not just aging, but appearing more cruel and mean. Dorian realizes this and decides to embrace it, essentially making a Faustian bargain. He hides the painting, and then lives as if he is a beautiful and rich young man who can have whatever he wants. He becomes more corrupt and depraved, because when you can have or do anything, you'll press your limits.

I won't spoil it, because I bet you know how it ends. But it was an interesting exploration of youth and beauty and what each of us would do if we could.

And, for funsies, here is a Monty Python sketch, featuring Oscar Wilde and George Bernard Shaw.


The Sorrows of Young Werther
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
This book is a series of letters from Young Werther to his friend Wilhelm. And I tell you, that Young Werther is a sensitive fellow. A man with powerful feelings. He's gone to stay in the country and draw pictures. He meets and falls for the lovely Lotte, who is already engaged. Her fiance is away at first, and Lotte and Werther strike up a close friendship. He is in love, and so he writes about how she looked at him and how beautiful the trees are because she looked at them under the trees.

Ah, but then, her fiance comes back. The pain of seeing them together is too great, so he leaves to take up a job with an ambassador. He is able to mostly put aside thoughts of Lotte, but then he suffers some social embarrassment and returns to the country. However, he just cannot stand to see Lotte and her now-husband together, and his letters become all about how wretched he is and how the trees, once beautiful, are now tainted because they remind him of her.

Werther kills himself. Of course he does.

This book made Goethe famous. However, he later regretted publishing it, partly because it was heavily autobiographical and partly because even when he was an old man and had done much great work since, people still knew him for Werther. There were apparently even copycat suicides (sometimes called, no joke, the Werther effect).

Now, I am an old jaded woman, so mostly I was just annoyed by Werther. Dude, you knew she had a fiance. Dude, why did you go back there? Dude, put down the pistol. Actually, you know what, just do it and shut up already.

Here's some Werther for you: "I sometimes cannot understand how she can love another, how she dares love another, when I love nothing in this world so completely, so devotedly, as I love her, when I know only her, and have no other possession."

Yeah. I'm sorry the force of your love did not cause her to abandon her husband.

At the end of Goethe's live, he sort of gained a little perspective on his early work. While he seemed to also come to the conclusion that no one needs to whine that much, he said "It must be bad, if not everybody was to have a time in his life, when he felt as though Werther had been written exclusively for him." I can remember being fourteen or so and thinking each pop song related directly to my life. Maybe that was the age I should've read this, but maybe it's best that I didn't.

Austerlitz
W.G. Sebald
I really loved this. The narrator meets a man by chance named Austerlitz, who was sent away from Prague as a child when the Germans came. He went to live with a Welsh minister and his wife, both rather cold people, and was never being able to make real connections with people. Late in life, he begins to remember part of his past, and he goes in search for his family.

The style is interesting and engaging. There is the narrator, but much of the book is a story told by Austerlitz, their conversations being interrupted several times and then not picking up again for months or years. It's very conversational, with run-on sentences and paragraphs, and it's sometimes easy to forget who is speaking. There are also pictures, which are generally pretty grim, and go along with the story.

Lots of good images. It starts with musing about architecture, particularly fortresses. You build a castle to protect what's inside, yet the castle itself attracts plunderers. So you make the castle bigger and better, but then it takes forever to build and it still attracts attention to those who might wonder what is inside worth protecting. During the construction, the site predicts its own ruins.

Good stuff.

last-minute shopping.

Josh's birthday was a couple of weeks ago, and I didn't have a dang thing to give him. The thing about shopping secondhand is not only do you never know what you're going to find, but you have no idea when you're going to find it. So I might spend the whole year buying lots and lots of thoughtful and appropriate presents for my husband, but then the month of June comes along, and I got nothin'.

The birthday boy is completely unhelpful. I asked him, in my hopefully-charming, straight-forward manner, just what do you want, anyway? And he would wax poetic about how he lacked for nothing, and his life was super great, and he had done nothing to deserve it. In most cases, it is beyond fantastic to be married to an effusively grateful person. It's good for the self-esteem, and I never sweat it when dinner is burnt. It does make shopping difficult.

Without any guide other than a decade and a half of personal history, the weekend before his birthday, I shopped aggressively. I hit every thrift store in town, and I got up extra early for yard sales. This is not always a good strategy, as desperation only entices the thrifting gods to sneer at you. Josh sometimes uses this strategy, and I can always tell, because I receive several small presents that are not quite right. Here, honey, I found this ugly purse, and as far as I've noticed, you are really into ugly purses. I can totally see where he got that impression, but that particular purse was just not the right kind of ugly.

Bad gifts bug me. They make me question my whole relationship with the person. I honestly, like cross-my-heart-and-hope-to-die, would rather receive nothing at all than have to make my grateful face while I'm internally having a crisis about whether the other person knows me at all. That's probably my own defect.

Anyway, my last-minute present-hunting came up with bupkis. I bought things, sure, but they were sorta-kinda things for me. While I was very exited about the additions to my collection of Awesome Things, and I was sure that Josh would appreciate their awesomeness, there was nothing personal about them that indicated they were gifts specifically for him, other than the fact that he is also full of awesome. So the day before his birthday, I revealed the things to him, like I would show off any yard sale score, but at the same time feeling out whether these things could count as birthday presents.

But hey, I sort of did okay! I found a magnetic hurricane-tracking map and paid a whopping two bucks for it. He was pretty excited about it.  Okay, so was I.

We have sooooo many maps. I try to space them out around the house, but we are already to the point where every single room has at least one. He wanted to hang this one right below the topographical map of western North Carolina and east Tennessee. He called it "the data center," like we were official types who need to track things, rather than people who are just really into decorating with maps. But whatever, it was his birthday.  He can hang his map wherever he wants.

Hurricane season is just starting, so we don't have anything to track just yet. However, we did make use of a silly crab magnet to re-enact a very bad movie we saw once.

Ahhhhhhhhh!

quadruped

We were out on the back porch, talking about Madame Bovary, about how Flaubert took forever to write a book because he agonized over every single word. Josh picked up the book and started reading. I went inside for a few minutes to see if the hamburger meat was thawed. When I came back, Josh started talking about the word "quadruped." He'd read a total of one sentence in that book, and then spent the rest of the time noodling over why Flaubert said "quadruped" and not "beast" or "animal" or "varmint." Seriously, how can he ever finish a book if he reads that way?

I don't read that way. I don't pause on "quadruped," because I know what a quadruped is. I read it, process it, and in my mind, I picture it about the same as I would have if the word had been beast. I process the basic information. It would never occur to me to think that the author had hidden additional information in the individual words. That's gotta be cheating or something.

Josh said he learned how to read this way in high school. And then again in college, too. They would go over passages line by line and talk about individual word choices. If he had only learned it in his higher education, that would've made sense. He went to college to study literature, and they gotta do something to take up four years, so I guess they read like one book, a word at a time. I went to college to study computer languages, and there are no synonyms in computer language.

But he learned this stuff in high school! I feel pretty good about my rural North Carolina public education. Great math, science, and english teachers. We won't talk about history. Not a lot of elective choices, but we had a thriving vocational department. But I don't remember anyone teaching me how to read, or how to parse a book for subtext. When we read books, we talked about themes and symbols and relevance of literature to real life.

I wonder if that last one is really the hardest. How do you get the kids to care about books? Probably not by making them read a sentence at a time.

Josh admits that maybe he was one of the few to get this education from his high school. He was a very responsive student of literature. Maybe the teachers would've loved to teach how to really dig deep in some prose, but there was a test at the end of the year, and no one seemed all that interested. I didn't have a Josh in my class, so no one was raising their hand, asking about the possible differences between quadrupeds and varmints.

So I stopped grumbling about how no one taught me to read. Maybe they tried to teach it, but I didn't learn it. Sometimes that is ineffective teaching, but I can't say that I was always a completely engaged student. In many cases, I learned what I needed for as long as I needed to have the information, but after the test, it slipped out of my mind. The student has to be invested in the process, too.

And that continues on! Because if you stopped learning when there stopped being a teacher, you've done it wrong. You have to be your own teacher. I did not learn how to recognize character development, but I am learning now. I didn't learn how to parse each individual word of a sentence to find the subtext, but now that I know that writers are hiding things in there, I can. Maybe I should start with a short book for that.

doggie daycare.

I'm going to tell you about a crappy job.

Last year, when my brother-in-law moved back into town, he really, really needed a job. He was putting out applications right and left to whatever job would hire him. He ended up at a doggie daycare. In case you're not familiar, this is a place where people leave their dogs for the day so their pups can play with other canines rather than sleep on the futon all day or chew up the house.

The daycare is located in a strip mall. There is no outside where the dogs might frolic in the fresh air. Forget frolicking, the dogs don't even get to poop and pee outside. Where do they do it? Inside the doggie daycare. One of Trevor's responsibilities is to clean it up. There is a bucket in the middle of the room that is meant to work like a fire hydrant and draw the dogs to do their business in one spot of the room. Apparently, it doesn't work. They instead pee everywhere else, for instance on the wall or the crates or on the little tykes climbing castle. More things in the room is just more stuff to clean the pee off of. Trevor has a mop for these messes. He frequently has to change out the mop water, which involves putting all the dogs in their crates so he can leave the room, because if you leave the dogs unsupervised, they might just kill each other while you're gone.

This means that when Trevor needs his own break, he has to use the walkie-talkie to ask someone up front to come watch the dogs while he steps out. He has to ask for bathroom breaks. The dogs are able to just go whenever and wherever they like.

Now, anytime you get a few dogs together, not all of them will get along. There are some dogs that play fine with most others, but not quite all others. And so you have to rotate the dogs in and out of the crates that are in the room. Some dogs don't really get along with anybody. As much as Trevor would like to just lock these dogs up in the crates all day, the owners are bringing their dogs in specifically so they don't have to do that themselves. He could still do that, except that there are cameras in the room so that people can check in and see what a terrible job looks like their sweet pups all day. Trevor actually installed the cameras on his day off for extra cash.

Apparently, some people treat the daycare as more of a kennel, and leave their animals for weeks at a time. As a result, the dogs are woefully untrained. Very few of them even know "sit." Training them is out of the question, as cleaning and keeping the dogs from killing each other take up the whole day.

There are two rooms in the daycare - The Gym, for the big dogs, and the Romp Room for the little ones. Neither of them have windows. So picture being in one of two windowless rooms all day long. There are as many as twenty dogs all around you. Some of them are moments from biting each other. Many of them are barking for no reason at all. Also, there is poop and pee everywhere, all the time.

Every day, Trevor came home and ranted about this horrible job he was doing for $7.50 an hour. He said it was making him hate dogs. I tried to put on my best sympathetic face, but at some point it was just too funny. It was a comically bad job. I had no idea this job existed. I knew about doggie daycares, though I assumed they had outside space, rather than some poor sot performing the Sisyphian task of cleaning up their mess.

Trevor has found a new job. There are no dogs, and he can manage his own bathroom breaks.

moved in, finally.

Our office move is finally complete. We were told to have our cubes packed up into boxes before leaving work on a Wednesday. Then we were to work from home Thursday and Friday while the movers took our cubes and our boxes from one office space to another. By Monday, we'd be back to work as usual, just in a slightly different place.

It did not go that way. The main holdup seemed to be getting the proper permits, and then there was something about the stalls for the bathroom being delivered late. We ended up working from home for two weeks. Except for the sales department, who had to all sit together at a big table in the conference room in the old office.

That sounds particularly miserable, even moreso when compared to my day, which involved working in my pajamas, pausing occasionally to look at the birdies in the backyard or walk the dog. I did go a little stir crazy from not leaving the house all week long. I've never been so excited to go get groceries.

On the Friday we finally got back to our new office, we spent the day redecorating our cubes. They are bigger than our old ones, but still cubes. I hung up my Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and my posters from Josh's band.

During the afternoon, we cleaned out the old office. I thought we'd done that already. We'd received a lot of emails about how we were supposed to be doing that, but there still seemed to be an awful lot of stuff lying around. In fact, the shipping warehouse area basically looked exactly the same. A dumpster was pulled up to the backdoor, and we were instructed to chuck basically everything in.

Oh, I hate waste. We threw away so much perfectly useful stuff. Chairs, lamps, whiteboards, CD cases. All the extra computers and monitors we piled into a corner to be hauled away. The cardboard boxes were loaded up and taken to a different dumpster that someone insisted was cardboard recycling, but I never actually saw a sign that said this. I scavenged bits and pieces - a table, some gift bags, heat lamps, a big roll of plastic sheeting, a bit of chain. I do not have specific plans for all these things. Most of it is still sitting in my new cube, where that slight bit of extra space is already paying off.

It was a sweaty day. Aside from my poor frugal heart breaking at the sight of the rapidly-filling dumpster, it was kind of fun. The men were having fun being destructive. We left a lot of metal furniture to be taken away for scrap, and they took turns heaving the pieces at each other to bust them up. I suppose then we can justify throwing it away, as it is now broken. I myself enjoyed chucking sleeves full of CD cases as far into the dumpster as I could. My poor frugal heart just looked away.

may 2014 books.

This is very, very late. I have excuses about leaving my flash drive with half of the text written on it at the office for a couple of weeks, but you're not interested in excuses. I'm not all that sure you're interested in the books either. Anyway, books.

Once on a Time
A.A. Milne
Did you know that A.A. Milne wrote novels? Me neither, until I found this one day.

This is a fairy story, in that it takes place in a far-off kingdom and there are dragons, princesses, and enchantments. In the introduction, Milne says he wrote it for adults, specifically for himself and his wife. He says that children prefer plot-heavy stories, while adults enjoy characters more. I have no idea if this is true. It seems my book club experiences would say otherwise.

In any case, the result is that the plot is mostly silliness. There is a war, but no actual fighting. A prince is turned into a bunny-sheep-lion-thing, but it's mostly just funny. A Countess embezzles tax money meant for an army that doesn't exist so that she can ride around on a horse and throw the money back to the people it came from. The war is ended when someone cuts off the king's moustache. At the end, there is a double wedding.

However, there is some character development. A princess grows into her role as ruler, and a king becomes a swineherd and is much happier. The book is rather morally ambiguous - there is a villain, and while part of her plans are thwarted, she mostly gets what she wants in the end. In fact, the narrator spends a lot of time defending her (he also spends a lot of time complaining about Roger Scurvilegs, who wrote the history books the narrator is pulling his story from). And the handsome prince, who is obnoxious and vain, goes home alone.

Anyway, it was fun.

The Martian Chronicles
Ray Bradbury
This is not exactly a novel, but more like a bunch of stories that are loosely connected. I guess you could call them "Chronicles." Some of the stories were originally published in sci-fi magazines. I guess Bradbury decided one day that he had enough put together to make a proper book.

The stories deal with astronauts arriving on Mars, meeting the natives, and then colonizing Mars between the years of 1999-2026. I guess I'll just give everything away and tell you that the human race basically mucks it up again by killing most of the natives and then ruining the land by trying to turn it into another planet Earth. But fear not! Meanwhile, on Earth, humans continue to be terrible and there is a massive nuclear war, destroying pretty much everything. Most of the colonists return to their home planet.

If you ever feel cynical about mankind, then you might enjoy this book!

I generally do not care as much for short stories compared with longer fiction. I never feel all that involved and then, whoops! it's over. While there were some chapters that I forgot already (looking through the Wikipedia summary and only vaguely recalling something I read within the past week), some of them keep popping up in my mind again. I think my favorite was the story about what happened to the second expedition. There were four expeditions to Mars, and the first three basically disappeared without a trace. During the second, the astronauts approach the Martians and declare themselves Earthlings, only to be ignored. They are put in an asylum filled with Martians who think they are from Earth. But see, Martians are telepathic, and so if one is insane, he can project his delusions into your mind so you can see them. So the Martians just think that they have one crazy Martian whose delusions are so powerful he can change his appearance and also manifest very complicated visions of three other astronauts and a rocket ship. Good, good stuff.

The Magic Pudding: Being the Adventures of Bunyip Bluegum and his friends Bill Barnacle and Sam Sawnoff
Norman Lindsay
You know, I buy a lot of books. And unless it is meant as a gift or perhaps a hardcover upgrade of a paperback favorite, then it goes into my to-read pile. My pile is not a pile at all, but a set of three shelves, alphabetized by author. When I finish a book, I go to my shelves and pick out a new one. Since there are so many, oftentimes I find a book that I have no recollection of acquiring. Sometimes I have no idea what struck me about the book enough to buy it. Other times, the book is instantly intriguing, and though I do not remember the moment specifically, I imagine that I was filled with wonder and excitement to find that not only does such a curious thing exist, it came to me in a shot of secondhand fate. I am able to imagine this moment so vividly, because I relive it right there, except this time it seems even more wonderful that this book not only exists, it has apparently been in my house for some time.

This book is a classic of Australian children's literature, but I enjoyed it, even though I am neither a child nor Australian. It is plot-driven, with very silly characters having very silly adventures, mostly focusing around their puddin', which is an anthropomorphic blob in a bowl that can be eaten and eaten and never run out. A sneaky wombat and possum keep trying to steal the magical puddin', and our heroes are forced to fight them to get it back.

It's really pretty funny and clever, in a completely nonsensical kind of way. There are lovely illustrations, and the story is frequently interrupted by songs and poems. When I was a kid and I read books with poems in them, I just skipped over them completely, like you would if you were reading a birthday card from a spinster aunt. Now that I am trying to develop my poetry bone, I made myself read the songs. In fact, I read them aloud, and I think that helped my enjoyment quite a bit, particularly since I do enjoy lyrical poetry when I hear it.

So, if Milne says that children prefer plot, rather than characters, this book fits that mold. Lindsay apparently wrote this book to settle an argument with a friend who said that children like stories about fairies. He said they liked stories about food and fighting much better.

A Fine Balance
Rohinton Mistry
Man, this was kind of a downer.

This book follows four people who were living miserable lives. They briefly come together, where they make a hodgepodge family for a while. And then circumstances break them up, and their lives suck once more.

The action takes place during Indira Gandhi's term as Prime Minister, specifically during the time known as the Emergency, when a state of emergency was declared across the country, and the PM basically ruled by decree. I know very little about the history of India, but this book does not paint a flattering portrait of the PM and her administration. Rampant corruption, forced sterilizations, demolition of the slums, and then carting off the newly homeless to a labor camp. So, yeah.

The title refers to the balances we all strive to strike in our lives. There were many examples, such as the one between hope and despair when your life is just truly awful. Since my life has never been truly awful, it was harder for me to relate to that (lucky me!). The one that struck me was in our dealings with other people - how to be kind and giving without being taken advantage of. Meanwhile, the other person is doing the same calculations from their own standpoint, and you don't know where they will decide their balance lies.

Overall, the book was okay. The character development was excellent, as each person was forced to reassess their ideas about others, specifically within the caste system. The first part of the book was spent introducing characters and then immediately reading their backstory, which made each one very sympathetic. So while you understand that this person is an antagonist in this other person's life, because you know both people's stories, you feel for both of them. You also feel sad that we just can't get along. And then you get really mad at the government, because they seem to be the antagonist in everyone's story. You want to go back to reading about fighting and food.

party bus.

The wedding had two receptions. That was the answer to the question I'd had when I saw that the wedding started at 2 PM, but the reception wouldn't be until 6. What were we supposed to do in the meantime? The answer was eat some more.

The first reception was at the church, out the door, to the left, and then down the stairs. The room was not really big enough for the crowd, but that issue worked itself out as the more agoraphobic among us cleared out. There were sandwiches and spring rolls and cheeses and tiny red velvet cupcakes. There was also wine, because this was a Catholic church. I recognized it as being left over from the rehearsal dinner the night before. I ate and drank and mingled, like you do at a reception.

Then the crowd really started to thin out, and I spied the groom carrying a couple of bottles of wine, full, but opened and recorked. He beckoned for us to follow. Josh was an usher that afternoon, which I have discovered as the sweet spot for wedding enjoyment. Very little responsibility, no posing for pictures, but full wedding party privileges. Actually, I guess being the date of an usher is the sweetest spot of all.

We walked outside with the rest of the wedding party and there, as if it were waiting for us, was a party bus. Maybe this was the answer to the two receptions. There were not actually two receptions, but one long one at three different locations: the church, the country club, and the party bus itself.

I have never been on a party bus. In fact, I don't think I even knew you could just rent one. It was a regular short-style bus, purple, with the name of the company on the side. The driver was separated from the party area by walls and a door. There was one long padded bench that ran along the inside. Beneath the bench were compartments where you could store your party supplies. Along the top were a variety of glasses - pint, shot, and wine. We passed out the wine glasses, which were all souvenirs from local vineyards. The lights and the windows were dimmed, and there was music. More than once, I caught the reflection of my flushed and happy face in the mirrored door.

The groom told the driver that we didn't have to be at the country club until 5, so just drive around awhile. He poured everyone a fresh glass of wine. Someone tried to pass around a flask, but it seems that we are all old enough to know how to pace ourselves.

So we just rode around for a while. There was a place to hookup an iPod in the back, so someone designated themselves DJ. We danced as well as we could in our seats and sang enthusiastically when we knew the words - our rendition of "Piano Man" was surely for the ages. Every once in a while, someone would raise their glass to toast the newlyweds, at which point the rest of us would go "Wooooo!" Once, I said "Woo!" out of pure excitement, which started up everyone else. We were in a woo-ing kind of mood.

After only a short trip on the party bus, we pulled up to a pristine golf course and club, our final destination. There was more wine, appetizers, wine, dinner, cake, and then dancing.

At 10 PM, I discovered the only drawback about arriving on the party bus - our car was still at the church. And since we had been woo-ing it up in the bus rather than watching the road, I really had no idea where I even was. Some club employees gave me a number for a cab, which I guess means that there is a hidden fee in riding the party bus. Whatever. Worth it.

the thirty-seven most promising graduates in all the land.

Josh's little brother graduated from high school this past weekend. I've been to lots of graduations, and they're never very exciting, but it seems to be the kind of thing you go do to be supportive. I think every previous event I've attended was in a sports facility of some kind, like a gym or a stadium. This one was in a church, a beautiful Methodist chapel that must've been modeled after Duke Chapel.

It was a schmancy affair. The organist played the processional, accompanied by a bagpiper. It was not "Pomp and Circumstance". I don't know what it was, only that it was not what I expected to hear. Or maybe it's just hard to recognize P&C on a bagpipe. The teachers filed in first, followed by the line of graduates. Everywhere there were phones and tablets out, aimed at the line of kids in general or trying to capture one specifically.

There were a series of remarks by various local bigwigs. The salutatorian was given time for a speech, except it was really just an introduction to the valedictorian (salt in an open wound, that). The valedictorian spoke next, providing a top ten list of advice that included things like "work hard" and "persevere." It also included the command to "be gracious," but judging by the comments afterward, what she meant was "be grateful." You know, when I graduated, someone gave me a dictionary. I thought it was lame, but maybe it's just what some kids need.

And then - we're moving right along here, might be done before McDonald's stops serving breakfast - it was time to give out the diplomas. There were only thirty-seven kids in the class, so one would expect that this part would be briefer than my niece's graduation, where something like 500 kids filed across the stage. In every graduation I've ever seen, some uptight administrator would sternly warn us not to cheer or show any sort of enthusiasm when our graduate's name was called. The reasoning given is that it takes up time, plus other kids who don't have a slew of relatives in the stands would feel left out when no one screamed for them. Mostly, it always seemed to be targeted against the poor kids, whose families are assumed to not know that graduation is a dignified affair and therefore not the place for yeehawing. Or maybe those are the kids for whom graduating was not a forgone conclusion, so their families are actually, you know, proud and happy.

Anyway.

There was no lecture about cheering here, because there was ample time for it. Cheering time had been purchased in advance, built right in to the cost of tuition. First, the kid's name was called, along with his parent's names. The fresh-faced be-gowned youth would come forward and then stand up front while a teacher or coach would give a personal remembrance about them. This took a very long time, but was not as dry as it could have been. The speeches were short, and some of them were pretty funny or interesting. I also had fun picking out the families of each individual, as that was when a whole row of people would pull out their phones to take pictures.

While the speakers were generally comfortable with public speaking from their professions, the quality of each speech varied a lot. It was also clear that some kids were just hard to write about. I felt the worst for a stone-faced young man who stood there while his chemistry teacher did a word association poem that was ostensibly about him. Some of them talked about the kid's parents, which makes sense, as the continuing existence of the school likely depends on the donations of parents of former students. Particularly amusing was a tennis coach who referred to a set of parents as being "very involved," followed by a story about them all going out to lunch approximately an hour after he first set foot in the school. Other speeches were sort of confusing, which I chalk up to being written in a hurry during the last crunch of the semester. Someone said a student was able to dish it out and also take it, then concluded that this probably had something to do with his Belgian heritage. I don't know enough about the history of Belgium to know what that even means. My favorite, though, was the young man who was said to have "business-minded social awareness," which I can only interpret as meaning "knowing how to tell who will be useful to him someday."

It was, after all, a giant self-congratulation session, like all graduations. I felt the urge to grumble about it, because rich people are so much better at self-congratulation than us regular folks, but in the end, these kids did not choose to be rich and go to a fancy school. Also, the speeches totally worked, as I left convinced that I had just been introduced to the thirty-seven most promising graduates in all the land. We can expect great things from them all, I'm sure.

movers.

The office move is this week. The shredding has continued, mostly done by the accountant with the rest of us assisting in shifts. She was even in here over the weekend with her kids, feeding more invoices and packing slips and expense reports into the hungry hungry shredder. I helped out on Monday, and there were four of us standing in a circle around the shredder. We made Enron jokes.

Last week, we were given boxes and told to pack up. I was amazed at how much crap I had, since I moved desks just a couple of years ago. But moving to a new spot in the same office is just a matter of dumping your drawers into a box, moving the box ten feet, then dumping the contents into a different drawer. This time, I actually bothered to look through each item and decide whether it was worth keeping.

Of course, my coworkers have it worse. Some of them have been with the company for twenty years, and they last changed offices in the mid-90s. In fact, one of them even found a piece of paper from the previous move, with information about their new address, the one we are now leaving. He decided to let that go. He was going through his desk, pulling out notebooks.

"I probably don't need this notebook from 2004, huh."

"My cut-off date is 2007."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah, before that I didn't work here."

"Oh." He threw 2004 away.

After cleaning out my desk, I was left with stuff that I didn't want, so I started a little Goodwill bag (using a paper bag I'd saved from a trip to Dunkin Donuts, who knows when). Then I saw other people throwing things out that were definitely still useful, so I grabbed one of the packing boxes and wrote "GOODWILL or FREE" on it. I dumped the Dunkin bag in there and sent out an email letting everyone know. By today, we required a third Goodwill box. Someone had left a big stack of cassettes in there, so if you're looking for some Van Halen to play in your beater car, just let me know.

Today was the last day in the old office. Tonight, people will come and dismantle the cube farm so they can set it up again at the new place. Tomorrow, movers will pick up all these boxes and hopefully put them in the right cube, as designated by the stickers on the sides of each box. All our computers are to be put into the conference room and plugged into the internet so we developers can all work from home the next two or three days. The sales guys, the support team, and the accountant will all work in the conference room at one table.

This morning, there was a call for help, so I put away my Fortran project and went to pack up the kitchen. For the first cabinet, I faithfully boxed up everything, using packing peanuts to cushion the breakables. By the second cabinet, I asked someone if we were ever going to use these four vases again. During the third cabinet, I gave myself the authority to decide what to get rid of, and so went a basket, four plastic bowls, and three coffee grinders. I salvaged a canister for myself. I wish I'd taken this initiative before I packed up fifty coffee mugs. I packed up the three champagne flutes, though I can't imagine us using them. It must've been a different kind of company before 2007.

adult formation.

Last week, I went to a meeting at church about Adult Formation. And if you don't know what that means, then you are pretty much where I was before I went to the meeting. I thought it was going to be about Sunday School for grownups, and since I go to Sunday School, I might have ideas about it. Basically, someone asked me to come, and I said okay. That's how they getcha.

There were ten or so of us, and I knew who everyone was, at least by face. These were church people, the ones you see every week, usually doing something like reading the scripture or carrying the banner or singing in the choir.

Our priest started the meeting by asking everyone to say their name and what their passion was in Adult Formation. I got sort of a panicked look in my eyes, because I do not as of yet really feel a passion about Sunday School. I managed to get by with only saying that I was here because I was an Adult interested in being formed. Other people seemed much more passionate. A couple of them spoke intensely about something called "EFM" that happens on Wednesday nights. I wanted to ask what it stood for, but the moment passed.

As it turns out, Adult Formation does not mean just Sunday School. It basically means any programs in the church targeted at adults. So that includes the evening Bible studies and mission trips and EFM, whatever it is.

The meeting stuff was fine. We talked about the results from a previous meeting, where some other group of passionate individuals had come up with a list of things we did well and things we would like to do better. I didn't really say much. I laughed when things were funny or made a sly comment or two, but for the most part, I just listened. I got the feeling that the meeting was really more for ideas-people than implementers like myself, but I was still interested.

About halfway through, the priest looked at me and asked, "Sandra, are we giving you room to speak?"

The lady next to her said, "Yes, I'd like to know what Sandra thinks!"

Oh, geez, no. No no no no no no. My face red, I assured them that I would say something if I felt the need. We moved on to talk about Wednesday night Bible study.

Up until that moment, I had felt very comfortable. I was interested in the conversation, and any thoughts that I'd had, someone else had spoken up about them.

And then I just wanted to go home. I did not feel comfortable, I felt anxious, like I needed to be sure and have something to say in case I was called on. And then I felt more anxious about the fact that I was so busy worrying about not having anything to say that I wasn't paying attention to the meeting anymore.

That was the first time I have ever left my church feeling mad. Room to speak, bah. Can't I just have room to listen?

On Sunday, I was at the cookie hour following the service when I saw someone who had been at the meeting. She said it was funny how different people can be about speaking. She mentioned a person at EFM (?!) who never used to say anything, but after a year or so, began to speak up more. Then she said something about people needing to feel they are in a safe space.

So do I need to feel safe? Or do I need room to speak? I really don't know. But I do not like being treated like I'm fragile or even just shy, because I don't think I am. I'm just quiet...right?

I don't know. I still don't know what EFM is, either.

research.

Today, we went on a research mission with regards to my new goal to disguise the well with a piece of yard art. Oh, you didn't know I was serious?

This serpent is like the one our neighbors have.

Like I said, I want a gargoyle. Maybe it was last year's trip to France, or maybe I watched a lot of that Disney Afternoon show in my formative years, but to have a gargoyle seemed like something I could mark off my life's list. They ward off evil spirits, you know. Maybe that's why the trees have been taking out our Toyotas. Evil spirits.

This Chinese dragon came in a pair.  You can't really tell from the picture, but there are pretty intricate lines on him.

As soon as I mentioned the gargoyle idea to Josh, he decided he wanted a lion. And I have to admit, a lion would be pretty good; we could call it Aslan. Josh says that then everyone would know that we were Gryffindors.

Our preferred lion was like this one, but in a darker shade

We drove out to the garden center across from the farmer's market. It has a name, but I'm pretty sure most people just refer to it as That Place With the Statues. I took some pictures for your amusement (and my own recollection). There were lots of other things that I did not photograph, because while they were interesting, I wasn't going to buy them. So you'll just have to imagine the cement Yoda, saints, Easter Island heads, and palm trees.

This guy's pretty nuts, right?  Not sure what the cultural influence is, but I bet he could get rid of some spirits.  He was sadly a little small for our needs.

The statues were predictably kind of expensive. Or maybe they were about right for giant cement statues. The lion that Josh picked out was $150, and the gargoyle that we agreed was superior was $175. While my desire for a well statue is strong, my patience is great. I have seen statues at estate sales, but they are usually bird baths and occasionally an angel or a cat. Either the kind of people who buy yardgoyles are few and far between, or they live forever due to being protected from evil spirits and therefore never have estate sales. Now that we have an idea of what is out there and what kind of price to expect, our next step is to look online. And maybe I'll put out a swear jar or something where we can start a statue fund.

Some other fine fictional beasts.

One of the guys running the shop came up to us a couple of times to see if we needed assistance in fulfilling our yard art needs. I guess he could tell we more than just browers, as we had covered the whole area, and then kept going back and forth between the lions and the gargoyles. He said, "Narrowing it down? Maybe not sure where you could put it?" I assured him that we had just the spot, which he seemed to find surprising. I think that's when he decided we were the kind of customers that know what we want from life.

Our preferred gargoyle - large and scary, but not nightmarish

So, nothing to report just yet.  I assure you, I will keep you updated.