Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

It really has been busy, though. Kids have had temple–and other–appointments, and the kids and I spent Saturday and Sunday night and all day Monday in Clearfield. (My hubby came up Sunday morning and stayed with us the rest of the time.) I made PTA goals for Tuesday, Wednesday, and Thursday, and I did accomplish them, but my email and such paid the price. And more than half of the kiddos have parties to go to tomorrow…

Anyway. I meant to cut up strawberries and have waffles with strawberries and cream for dinner, but I ended up taking a nap and needing something faster. When I found this recipe for Quinoa with Corn and Scallions on one of my Pinterest boards, I thought–hey, I have all of those things in some form! (I already had cooked quinoa and I used frozen corn.) I didn’t expect most of my children to be big fans, but my oldest and I enjoyed it, and my son gave it a thumbs middle; if you like that sort of salad, I highly recommend it. And now, on with the last few days of my busy week!

That’s my question, folks. I have ideas and plans for schedules and such, but there are also the church camps and the reunion and a still-up-in-the-air trip and my hubby’s surgery, and I worry that the whole summer will whirl by between one blink and the next. Today is the official last day of school–only my two younger kiddos are going/have gone–until August 14th. (Which feels ridiculous, but clearly other parents are filling out the calendar survey differently than I do.) Wish us luck!

In the meantime, I finally got around to listening to Maizy Chen’s Last Chance, one of last year’s Newbery Honor books, and it was thoroughly enjoyable. Maizy and her mother drive from LA to Last Chance, Minnesota to spend the summer with Maizy’s maternal grandparents; it’s a different world, sure, but spending time with Opa and Oma is a good thing–even if it’s because Opa is sick. Luckily, he’s not too sick to tell Maizy stories about his grandfather, who emigrated from China when he was young. How that grandfather ended up starting a family in Minnesota in the 1800s is one of the book’s important stories; how Maizy deals with her mother and Oma’s arguments, her Opa’s illness, and the social ups and downs of life in a small, mostly Anglo-Saxon town is another. Even while she’s learning about what it meant to be a ‘paper son,’ she’s learning that while sometimes it’s easy to recognize hatred, enemies–and friends–don’t always look like what they really are. Her story has nigh-universal appeal while also providing an important glimpse into the challenges of being an Asian-American today; it’s well worth your time.

On the sort-of-home-front, I wrote 17 PTA checks yesterday, but that might actually be IT. Hallelujah!

That’s what I decided I’d be okay with, after I used up yesterday’s coherent hours cleaning my dining room and kitchen. After all, if I just posted Tuesday, what harm is it to move Wednesday’s post to Thursday? None, say I! Plus, it gave me time to finish Miss Butterworth and the Mad Baron: A Graphic Novel, since heaven forbid I actually review one of my completed books that’s been waiting for a while. (Although to be fair, Miss Butterworth is a quick read, and none of the books still waiting are physically going back to the library.) If you’ve read much Julia Quinn, there’s a good chance you’ve heard of Miss Butterworth; if not, well–think of it this way. Julia Quinn is sometimes referred to as a modern Jane Austen; if we go with that, Miss Butterworth is her Northanger Abbey.

In graphic novel form.

With possessed pigeons.

To be honest with you, I found the graphic novel version of the famous pigeon scene a bit too graphic, if you take my meaning; nevertheless, Miss Butterworth is a whirlwind of a fantastical, tongue-firmly-in-cheek good time. What breaks my heart is that Violet Charles, the illustrator who collaborated with Quinn, was in fact Quinn’s younger sister–the one who died in a car accident (ironically) in Utah, together with Quinn’s and Charles’ father. The blow of losing two loved ones simultaneously is unimaginable, although my extended family has reason to know that it happens; the literary blow of knowing that no more Quinn/Charles collaborations will grace the world is a quiet one, in comparison, but–I was bummed. Quinn fans will grieve–but they should also enjoy Miss Butterworth.

On the home front, my son’s last 6th grade band concert was last night, and he surprised us all by performing with the jazz band, even though he’s only been practicing with them, for fun, for the last month or two. He was beaming, and it was fantastic to see–or would have been, if he hadn’t been seated on the floor and almost completely hidden most of the time. (Not to mention that their first piece featured a guest saxophonist, who stood DIRECTLY IN FRONT OF MY SON. (Did I mention that, although tall for his age, he’s a young 6th grader, as well as possibly the ONLY 6th grader in jazz band? So the guest player pretty much stood in front of the shortest kid there.)

I’ve got dishes and PTA work on my docket for the rest of my morning–and the beginning of my afternoon–so I shall leave you to your respective Thursdays. And–based on the level of crazy-and-hyper my 9-year-old was exhibiting on the way to school today–good luck to us all!

It’s been a WEEK? (Okay, a week and a day!) I hadn’t meant to get that far behind, but life has legitimately been pretty full. I chaperoned a third grade field trip last Wednesday, and Friday was incredibly full–we went to the Taylorsville Temple open house as a family, I went to a funeral and then booked it to Ream’s and home to make gluten-free funeral potatoes for the luncheon, I picked up my third grader while they were in the oven, I dropped them off and exercised and–you get the picture. There was a second funeral on Saturday, and my oldest played the piano at it while my second oldest made the cookies I signed up to bring and I did laundry like a madwoman; we had family scripture time in between all that and my doctor’s appointment and errands and the mother’s day shopping some of the kids needed to do with my hubby. On Sunday my niece and nephew and my nephew’s wife came for dinner, which occupied a fair amount of the day, but I did come up with an idea (inspiration?) for a Sunday scavenger hunt to get the kids exercise. (Although next time I’m clarifying that they can’t count things on our own street.) Yesterday was cleanup and knitting and Costco and piano lessons, which brings us to today’s I-know-it’s-Tuesday-but-I-can’t-get-any-further-behind post.

Being my own nerdy self, I finished Helen Frost’s Diamond Willow this morning (after walking my 9-year-old to school) because it’s due and not renewable this week and I was too close to the end to do anything else. (It’s also mostly a verse novel and thus not a big time commitment overall.) The thing is? It was lovely–in an oddly both-solid-and-mystical sort of way. Willow is a completely relatable Alaskan girl who is closer to her family’s sled dogs than most people; she has one close friend but feels otherwise invisible at school. When she finds herself in difficulties, however, she keeps her head and makes her way through; thus, Diamond Willow feels not so much like a true coming-of-age novel, but rather a novel of discovery and acknowledgement. Willow discovers truths about (and extra reserves of strength within) herself, and those discoveries come hand-in-hand with her parents’ recognition and acknowledgement of her strength and burgeoning maturity. And what initially confused me became one of my favorite parts of Willow’s story–she has more family supporting (and loving) her than she realizes.

I went back and forth about whether my kiddos would like this one, but ultimately I’m going to leave it up to them. My 14-year-old rarely loves any sort of mystical elements, but between the dogs and the emotional growth, she may still love this one; my 9-year-old may not understand all of the emotional complexity happening, but the dogs may enchant her anyway. We’ll see–because it seriously touched me. Don’t miss this one!

Not many authors can narrate their own audiobooks well, in my opinion–there’s a reason that professional narrators exist. Even fewer authors can narrate their own fiction well; Padma Venkatraman, however, is one of them. I finished listening to her heartbreakingly beautiful The Bridge Home yesterday, and its balance between profound grief and fierce, hopeful love is nigh perfect. Viji’s determination to care for her sister Rukku is well matched with the courage and kindness she finds in Arul and Muthu, and the family they form is every bit as real as the more conventional kind I was born into. And Venkatraman’s deft portrayal of the plight of India’s millions of homeless children is a more eloquent plea for all of us to do what we can, for whom we can, than just about any other I can think of; after all, opportunities to help those with disabilities or those suffering from abuse or extreme poverty are all around us. Do yourself a favor and read this book.

On the home front, it was a crazy week. I chaperoned a field trip to Red Butte Garden on Thursday and the kids and I took my visiting parents to Subway for dinner (conveniently appealing to all concerned and located en route to my son’s flag football practice); Friday morning I spent at the ER with my hubby, getting him scans to try and figure out his abdominal pain, and Friday afternoon saw its usual collection of piano, weekend planning, and the necessities of feeding people; Saturday my parents came for a Mother’s Day lunch-turned-linner; Sunday saw us at our ward’s meetings before heading to Clearfield to hear my nephew speak about his mission; and today I took two kids to therapy, faced Walmart on an empty stomach, and braved my allergies to take my younger girls to piano lessons. (If I didn’t like cats it would be easier to set my boundaries and keep my distance during their lessons, but I’m solidly a cat person.) Life is only going to get busier until school gets out on the 24th, but at least I start getting more sleep afterwards, right?

In the meantime, Padma Venkatraman’s compassionate, musical voice yet lingers in my head, and I’m grateful–both for the good books in this world and the many amazing women in my life.

We’ve been in need of a new mattress for quite a while now, given how much better either my husband or I can sleep in the middle of our current one than on our respective sides. My hubby did some online research–something he excels at–and we’re trying both a new sort of mattress and a new frame that takes the place of regular box springs. Which means, of course, that not only did the old mattress, box springs, and basic metal frame we’ve been using have to move, we also have to clean out what’s been under our bed for (in some cases) well over a decade. Oh, the dust!

On the other hand, we should have more room under the bed than we’ve had before, and I’m an enthusiastic fan of storage.

Anyway. I also have a graphic novel to review–or, rather, a nonvel, given that it’s nonfiction–and my 9- and 14-year-old would never allow me to put off such a thing. (More to the point, they’re fiendishly good at noticing–and endeavoring to pilfer–graphic novels in my possession.) I’ve been looking forward to Hour of Need: The Daring Escape of the Danish Jews During World War II for some time; I’m moved to tears every time I think about what Denmark did to save its Jews from the Nazis, and especially how well it succeeded. (Only 120 Danish Jews died in the Holocaust, while well over 7,000 escaped to Sweden.) Hour of Need follows 9-year-old Mette and her family during their escape, as well as a few other Jewish refugees and a teacher-turned-resistance-leader who went by the name of John for protection. I had actually expected a broader approach based on the title, but the book’s individual approach may well make it more accessible to its intended audience; I’m not necessarily complaining. I will confess, however, that I didn’t love the art–other than hair color and style, the adults looked awfully similar to each other, and the overall aesthetic had a ‘Dick-and-Jane’ feel for me. That may complement the time period, I suppose, but I seriously doubt my kids will be impressed by it. Given the topic, however, I’m still going to have each of them read it, because it’s an important piece of history–and because we need more heroes worthy of the name. (And at 160 pages or fewer, it’s also not much of a time commitment.)

Wish us luck banishing the dust!

Last week was busy, but clearly, it’s a new week and I’m going to finally review a book I finished probably two months ago. (Although only because it’s due and not renewable today.) I’ve been putting off my review of The Blackbird Girls for so long only because I loved it, and it takes more concentration and coherence to review something that’s touched you deeply than it does something that was fun but more up your children’s alley than your own. I’ve had it pinned since before my friend Andrea picked it for book club, but her picking it got me to read it sooner than I would have, and I am solidly grateful for that.

So. Blackbird Girls has three different points of view–Valentina and Oksana in 1986 and Rifka in 1941. Rifka being a Jewish name, it’s not hard to guess that her story focuses on running from and escaping the Nazis; Valentina and Oksana begin the novel in Pripyat, Ukraine–back when Ukraine was part of the Soviet Union–and their fathers’ workplace, the Chernobyl nuclear power plant, experiences a catastrophic accident. Oksana, whose father has always been loudly anti-Semitic, finds herself evacuating with Jewish Valentina and her mother, her own mother’s radiation levels having sent her to the hospital instead. Train tickets are limited, and with no other real options, Valentina’s mother sends the girls along to stay with her own mother, the grandmother Valentina has never met–and so begins the relationship that is the book’s real focus. What is friendship? What about love? What does love look like? Do the people in our lives always tell us the truth? Why not? What do we deserve? Blackbird Girls explores all of these questions and more, and manages to be both dramatic and suspenseful (rather than overtly philosophical) while it’s doing it. Indeed, the book feels eerily real–or not so eerily so, once you realize that the author had a friend who experienced Chernobyl as a child before emigrating to the US and incorporated much of the friend and her family’s experiences into the story. If you like historical fiction at all, you’re going to want to read this one.

Hmmm. I can’t help feeling like that’s a 3.5 star review for a 5 star book, but it seems to be the best I can do. In the meantime, we tried playing pickleball as a family on Saturday and learned that playing on a seriously windy day isn’t advisable. (I also wanted to strangle each of my children in turn, because they were all making the experience difficult to enjoy–each in his or her own way.) We hit a yard sale on the way home and then had a niece pop in on our family scripture time, so it was a busy day. Yesterday we taught the Sunday school lesson and had family dinner in Clearfield, and this morning I set out to tackle the amount of paperwork piled on the counter by my computer. Hallelujah!

The kids didn’t have school on Monday, for starters, and while there was still piano and flag football practice and a school dance thing for my 14-year-old, it was also a day at home that saw me deciding to tackle all the spring/summer bins of girl clothes at once. (Except for what currently fits the teenagers.) I brought up anything at all likely to fit my 9-year-old this year, and I either put away or set aside to give away anything fleecy, one drawer-full of pants, and all of the long-sleeved shirts not specifically arranged into outfits. (Which is, of course, why this week’s projected highs have dropped from 80-ish to 60-ish. You’re welcome.) I also reorganized the still-too-big-for-my-9-year-old clothes into types–there’s now a bin of shorts, a bin of tops, a bin of pjs, and so on. Good times!

Tuesday saw me running around doing mom things until I hadn’t the concentration for a book review, and yesterday kind of did, too. This morning, however–after knitting with my friend from 9-10–I am determined to play a bit of catchup and review Katherine Applegate’s Wishtree, which I finished listening to earlier this week.

It was lovely.

Not that we should be surprised by this, of course, Katherine Applegate being routinely lovely. But Wishtree has the added novelty of being narrated by a tree, and it works even better than you might hope. Red (the tree) is inhabited by multiple animal families, and Applegate’s explanations of how the different species name themselves and their offspring is fabulous; the humans in the surrounding neighborhood, by contrast, may be in the minority as characters go, and yet it’s their actions that inform the book. Trees (and animals) aren’t supposed to talk to humans, you see–but how else can they share wisdom gained in centuries of living? Especially when the world (and the neighborhood) are in need of that exact kind of wisdom once again?

When such a short book makes you both laugh and cry, you’ve generally got a winner, and that’s absolutely the truth here. This almost-fable brings the both funny and the feels; don’t miss it.