Books all over again

I haven't posted for a while because, shock of shocks, Web design clients were keeping me busy AND I was prepping to be gone overnight. THAT was busy!

I was gone Friday night at a Daughters of the King retreat in a rural part of the state and came home late Saturday afternoon. I had a wonderful time and felt rested and upbeat. After thoroughly enjoying that time with women mostly in their 60s through 80s, I stayed up late last night and read about another set of relationships among women. I read the entire book Angry Housewives Eating Bonbons last night, and it was such a treat! My friend has supplied me with the next two Thursday Next books, so I'm poised to start Lost in a Good Book, and I need to finish The People of Sparks 'cause it's due this week. I'm still grinning like a fool about all of this fiction lately!

Son1 and I had a good library visit on Thursday evening. Here's Son1's stack (he's 8 1/2).
Mossflower, by Brian Jacques (the prequel to Redwall)
Stepping on the Cracks (1944; kids at home in the USA)
The Deltora Book of Monsters
Prince Caspian
The Borrowers
Will's Story: 1771
Captain Underpants and the Big, Bad Battle of the Bionic Booger Boy, part 2
Rowan and the Zebak
He picked out some great books (and Captain Underpants... certainly tickles his funnybone), so I don't know if he'll get to The Borrowers or Will's Story, which I picked out for him.

Son2 (age 4 1/2) refuses to borrow any books from the public library unless it's a chapter book with hardly any pictures. Sometimes it's a Star Wars book, other times some odd volume he pulls off a shelf. Currently it's a Harry Potter book. He "reads" his book in the car while Son1 is absorbed in his own reading. Son2 occasionally announces, "I'm on Chapter 7!" or some such thing.

At some point I suppose Son2 will become interested again in actually learning to read some words, and we'll pull out the Bob Books and the sweet Little Stories for Little Folks from Catholic Heritage Curriculum. For now, though, he seems to be completely happy to scan his word-filled chapter books, turn the pages, use his bookmark, count with the page numbers, and announce what chapter he is on. Too funny! The librarians are so accepting when he checks out these books with his library card (with me right behind him) -- I hold myself back from telling them he can't actually read the books, so I wonder WHAT they are thinking :)

Political signs as targets

As we drove up to our home yesterday, dear husband and I noticed it at the same time. The Kerry/Edwards yard sign was Not Right. The candidate for senate, fine. The candidate for county clerk, fine. Upon closer inspection, the Kerry/Edwards sign clearly suffered the insult of a kick that ripped it away from the side supports and pushed it and the top support upward and completely out of whack.

I was half-expecting this. As some news reports have said for such things elsewhere, it's typically disinterested teenagers, who love the partisan blame game after they wreck campaign signs. So... I don't blame any local Republicans. Especially since a glance around yielded the information that a local Republican candidate's sign diagonally across the street is very diagonal today, if you know what I mean. Equal opportunity destruction, eh?

I fixed up our sign. Dear husband is more open to my idea of a slightly bigger Kerry/Edwards sign on the back of our back fence; our property backs up to the neighborhood park. I still need to get signs for a couple of other local candidates. And if my fix-it job doesn't last, I'll get a replacement Kerry/Edwards sign. Still need to get that bumpersticker for the car's back window, too.

And to think, this is the first time I've ever put campaign signs up.

Wheee! Fun reading

Perhaps the thought has crossed your mind -- how in the world can she read those serious books? Never fear, my Self tends toward balance.

After finishing The Bone Woman yesterday, I cast about for something else to read, and picked up a book lent me by a friend with her guarantee that it was a fast, fun read. Yes indeedy! I read it today, start to finish, and grinned and chuckled the whole way through.

The Royal Treatment, by MaryJanice Davidson.

The library has Angry Housewives Eating Bonbons waiting for me, so I'm picking it up tomorrow. And I think I'll disturb my long-dormant bookmark in Diana Gabaldon's second book in the Outlander series, Dragonfly in Amber. If I'm still on a roll at that point, I'll return to said friend and borrow another of the fun books calling to me from her shelves.

Wheee! Fun, fun reading!

Is everyone you know like you?

Last night after the second presidential debate, at one point MSNBC spent a few minutes on a live interview with two Missouri women who we were told were of completely opposite world views, had been brought together by NBC over the last few months, and had gotten to know each other. Afterward Chris Matthews on Hardball/MSNBC asked if the (supposed) "two Americas" dichotomy -- red vs. blue or conservative vs. liberal or whatever -- is perpetuated because "regular Americans" spend their lives only around people who are very much like them. I beg to differ!

My personal experience is that I go to church with people with many different perspectives on and beliefs about the world, politics, etc. At my children's school I meet other parents who, again, have a broad variety of perspectives. I have gotten to know many at-home moms through MOMS Club and have gotten to know some pretty well over the years, counting them as friends, even though we gradually have gotten a sense of each others' approaches to life and sometimes discovered they are very different.

Some of my friends are dyed-in-the-wool Republicans. Democrats. Environmentalists. Gun owners. Beef eaters. Vegans. Baptists. Episcopalians. Catholics. Unitarians. Atheists. Trekkies. No-TV families. Attached parents (attachment parenting). Early weaners and baby schedulers. Homeschoolers. Celebrate-all-day-school-ers. Pro-war. Anti-war. Military families. Hard-to-imagine-the-military families. Adult children of hippies. Adult children of corporate executives, and of working-class parents. At-home moms whose children and mine are similar ages, and who graduated high school within a year of me. Similar at-home moms who were preschool age themselves when I graduated from high school -- making me approximately the age of their mothers! Gulp.

I find it much harder to make broad generalizations when the others in the conversation might not necessarily agree. I have to consider the other perspectives as possible or, perhaps, reasonable -- even if I think it's wrong. That keeps me from closing down and hardening my responses, and that's a good thing, even if it takes more effort.

I have some other thoughts but that's enough for now. Some thoughts connect the above to this being the first time EVER that I've put political signs in my yard. Other thoughts connect the above to the book I just finished: The Bone Woman: A forensic anthropologist's search for truth in the mass graves of Rwanda, Bosnia, Croatia, and Kosovo, by Clea Koff. Hmm.

Does your circle of friends include people who are fairly unlike you?

The sweet end of the day

After a busy day or a hectic evening with kids activities, or perhaps a flurry of things to think about or simply having stayed up too late, my latest very favorite thing at the end of the day...

not the penultimate, but the ultimate, final, last thing to do...

the sweet final act...

after having peeked at the sleeping boys, kissed my husband, and climbed the stairs, gotten all ready for bed, lights out, door now closed to any activity, noise, or light in the rest of the house...

is to throw myself across the bed, and simply BE, sprawled crazy on the bed, in the still darkness and quiet.

Aaaaaahhhhhhhh.

Then climb in and nod off.

Sweetest end to any day.

Mishmash

The mind is not a vessel to be filled but a fire to be lighted.
- Plutarch, heard on "From the Earth to the Moon"

We were able to see Tom Hanks' 1998 HBO series "From the Earth to the Moon" for the first time last weekend when TNT ran it over Friday and Saturday, and then in a marathon on Sunday. Dear husband is two years older than me and was old enough to notice and follow the space program in the late 60s and early 70s. Not me! So I learned a lot, and it was really, really interesting.

Wives, housewives, homemakers, stay-at-home moms.

The next-to-last episode of "From the Earth to the Moon" was about the wives of the original nine astronauts. Absolutely fascinating to see their side, their lives as part of the space program. After the last episode Sunday night, I watched (recorded) the first episode of "Desperate Housewives."

Big contrast! The show on the astronauts' wives was more firmly rooted in a fascinating reality, as it ought to be. The Deperate Housewives show was definitely unreality TV, but it had some fun stuff that I could recognize in my own life. Not the adultery, though. Eh. Looking back, my favorite part would be the mom wading, fully dressed and in high heels, into the swimming pool at the wake to drag her three young sons out of the pool and march them home. Only a stretch of degree, not kind, from my life!

Reading

I'm actively reading:
Deacons and the Church
The Practice of Prayer; I'm leading a Sunday school class for adults on prayer. This is a great book.
The Theology of Worship; the worship committee members are reading this book.
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Waiting for the library to reserve for me: Angry Housewives Eating Bonbons, for new MOMS Club book group
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Son1 is reading:
The Silver Chair (Narnia) in a very nice edition put out by HarperCollins; nice wide margins, and well-spaced lines make it very readable.
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Son2 likes:
Night Ride, a great picture book about a family going on an all-night car ride, and all of the things they see. I remember as a kid nighttime car rides being so fascinatingly different from daytime.

Allergic reaction update.

I filled my steroid prescription at Wal-Mart on Saturday afternoon. Even on Claritin and benadry I had hives all over my legs and was itching on the soles of my feet. Now I'm on the next-to-last day of the tapering doses of the steroid, and continuing with the Claritin and benadryl. Weird to have these drugs in my usually drug-free system. Unfortunately the hives keep threatening and yesterday morning they showed up my legs for about an hour or two before the morning meds kicked in (I hope). I wonder what will happen when the steroids are done, sigh.

New two-wheel rider.

Son2 (age 4 1/2) requested the training wheels be removed from his bicycle last weekend. He has spent the last few days tackling the new skills he needs, and his stops, starts, and turns are really good now. He spends a lot of time on his bike now, and the guys apparently went for a bike ride around the neighborhood yesterday evening while I was at a meeting. Wow!

Politics.

My meeting finished, unexpectedly, in time for me to hear the beginning of the vice-presidential debate last night on my way home, and then I watched/listened to the rest at home. Taking Son1 to school today, I parked behind a car with a bumpersticker for the president, and made a mental note to pick up a Kerry/Edwards bumpersticker for our car. Oklahoma is pretty much Bush country, so my hope is to add to the visual clues to other voices in our community, our neighborhood, our church, our school.

Fall's fallen.

Today is such an autumnal day! Gloomy morning but mild, a spritz of rain, a sideways dash of sunlight mingled with windchime-ringing breezes, and the prospect of thunderstorms and heavy rain this afternoon. After Son2's bike riding time this morning, he came in declaring his need for hot cocoa. Perhaps that's because he was wearing shorts and sandals with that long-sleeved shirt?!? Over the summer he had asked for hot cocoa several times, but in midsummer I was not willing to make a quintessential winter drink for being "chilled" in the sprinkler on an 80F day no matter how windy! Today, at last, I fixed the first cup of hot cocoa since last winter.

Rx R Us

You know, I always thought I could tolerate itching fairly well. I suppose I can -- if it's a lowly mosquito bite or seven. But this subtle, steadily increasing ultra low-level itchiness that gradually turns into a realization that I can't stop touching my skin... Aaaaaaah! I usually gut it out and try to ignore itching, but with this I eventually find myself rubbing or smoothing the itchy skin. I rarely actually scratch an itch; I worked on stopping that habitual reaction years ago. But this -- it's really, really hard to think coherently when you're itching like this!!

At bedtime last night I took another dose of benadryl. This morning, all morning, my palms itched and were blotchy and my ears itched. Can't see 'em, don't know about redness. I really wanted to go without the benadryl and see if the Claritin would be enough (clue: no, it wouldn't).

A pretty funny thing happened this morning at Panera Bread (we met friends there): Son2 reached for the honey dispenser, wanting to smell the honey, and my reaction was to stay far, far away from it out of self preservation. I am NOT interested in tasting any honey at all right now. Too funny.

My palms and ears itched very slightly all morning. At noon I took my day 2 Claritin. An hour and a half later I realized I was rubbing my palms and knees an awful lot. By the time it was time to pick up the boys from school, aaaaaaaah!!! We went directly to the drugstore, I bought the store brand benadryl, and I took one then and there in the car. A couple of hours later the itching was completely gone, sweet relief.

I acknowledge that I may have to fill the prescription for the steroids in order to more fully knock down my body's response to whatever it was, honey or whatever. I almost never take prescription drugs, and the combination of Claritin (maybe) and benadryl makes me tired and sort of buzzy and feeling unwell for the first 2-3 hours. I can only imagine how fun it will be to have a steroid romping around in me. But I don't want my body getting into this whole reaction thing; I want it to relax! and cut it out!

I just took my bedtime benadryl -- I realized just beforehand that my ear lobes are itching, and my knees, and a spot on the front of my right leg, and of course my palms, and... aargh. I'll be going to bed soon. Benadryl, tire me out, take me away...