Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

I finished listening to The Mysterious Benedict Society and the Prisoner’s Dilemma last night–now I can pass it on to my 12-year-old!–and while the old ornery part of me noted that it is, essentially, a third book (of 400-500 pages or so!) in which Reynie, Sticky, Constance, and Kate battle Mr. Curtain and his men with off-and-on adult assistance, I still quite enjoyed it.  I haven’t yet read the prequel, although my oldest has, but I did see on Trenton Lee Stewart’s website that another MBS book is due out this fall, after 10 years.  Whether that one will revive the story arc that Prisoner’s Dilemma concluded remains to be seen, but I’m looking forward to it.  Stewart spins a good yarn, with individualized characters, and he certainly keeps you reading.  If your latter-elementary or middle schooler likes adventures with riddles and puzzles, this is a good bet–for girls OR boys.  Let me know what you think!*

*Incidentally, this feels like a very brief review, but it covers what I thought needed to be said.  I might have expanded it, only I’ve been doing other things today and I’m down to the wire as far as figuring out what to feed my offspring for dinner.  Suggestions?

I ask this question of myself daily, in reference to all sorts of people and situations, but today I’m referencing the invitations I ought to be addressing for my niece’s baby shower.  Why was I so diligent about addressing the lion’s share of them only to put off the handful I have remaining?  Because I’m seriously putting them off again.  Tomorrow, I’m telling myself–and they need to happen, so I’ll likely manage it–but I could have done it over the weekend, theoretically.  Why was the big segment easy but the small one feels so difficult?

Thoughts?

My oldest actually checked Marcus Sedgwick’s Scarlett Hart:  Monster Hunter out of her school library and read it; I grabbed it from our county library system because she thought her younger sister might enjoy it as well.  (I’ll be interested to see if that’s the case, actually; she might find it scary, she might find it confusing, or she might love it to bits.  One never knows.)  It’s been knocking around my bedroom for a while, waiting for me to finish it, and I finally committed myself to that very activity the other night.  Hurrah!  (By the way, if you’re thinking that most of my reviews begin with a book that’s been hanging around for a while that I’ve finally gotten to–you’re not wrong.)

Scarlett Hart is an orphaned young lady following in her monster-hunter-parents’ footsteps;  her loyal butler is both her partner-in-crime and her cover, since she’s too young to officially report their kills and collect the bounties herself.  Their world feels like a hodgepodge of Regency, Victorian, and Edwardian England (with a healthy dose of steampunk thrown in), but Sedgwick’s art focuses more on the monsters than the background details.  It’s a premise sure to appeal to adventure-lovers who don’t mind their monsters on the creepy side, and while the villains are fairly one-dimensional, the story works overall.  I was entertained but not entranced, in part (I’m sure) because I’m several decades older than the intended audience.  You’ll have to tell me what you think!

Since my girls’ dance recital is looming, I finally sat down tonight to read some of the emails about the next few weeks.

Ugh.

I knew their dance pictures were being taken on a Saturday; I NOW know that each dance class reports at a specific time, and one of my daughters’ times is 7:30 am.

ON A SATURDAY.

I now ALSO know that this dance studio, just like our previous studio, does a long dress rehearsal the night before the recital, which means that we get to juggle littles with sitting in an auditorium for hours AGAIN.  I can’t really fault the reasoning behind it, and if my youngest kids were the dancers involved, it wouldn’t be a huge deal, but AAAHHHHH.  Shoot me now.

I’m not cut out to be a dance parent, folks.  Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go shed some inner tears about what time I have to get up this Saturday morning.

I really am trying to encourage books to leave my house–or at least, the books that aren’t worth keeping or aren’t mine.  Barbara Freese’s Coal:  A Human History falls into the latter category; I borrowed it from my in-laws ages ago, got far enough into it not to want to give up on it, and then, well, life happened.  (Pregnancy and newborns and toddlers are ALL death to the ability to concentrate.)  Luckily, my fabulous hubby found it on audio for me, and between listening to it while exercising/doing housework and following along with the statistics in the hard copy that’s been sitting on my shelf, I finally managed to finish it.  More than that, I concentrated on it well enough that I’m now fairly bursting with knowledge about the history of coal–huzzah!  (I’d be a riot at parties, if I actually went to any.)

The thing is, coal’s history really IS fascinating.  Coal was a catalyst for and the major contributor to much of the industrialization our world has seen, and we still get more than fifty percent of our electricity from it.  (That surprised me.)  Sadly, it’s also a major contributor to our world’s pollution levels, and the solutions to that problem are complicated.  (For many reasons, by the way.  A few weeks ago I would have assumed that coal was coal, if I’d thought about it at all.  Now I know something about the difference between anthracite and bituminous coal, eastern and western coal and their respective sulfur contents–the things I never knew I never knew!)  I enjoyed the history more than the contemporary analysis, partly because problems that have no clear solution make me anxious and partly because I love history (that is, after all, why I borrowed the book from my father-in-law in the first place).  I don’t necessarily quibble with the trajectory of Freese’s history, you understand; I just enjoyed the main section of the book most.

Bottom line?  This is a fascinating read, although it’s by nature a dryer sort of nonfiction.  If you enjoy history and/or information–or you have secret yearnings to know more about coal–give this one a try.

That’s what Reed Benson at BYU would say about modern day revelation and the teachings of the living prophet, and he was right.  You’ll note that I completely spaced Friday’s post; I’d decided to listen to all of October’s General Conference–the twice-a-year sermons from our church leaders–between Wednesday and Saturday morning, when April’s General Conference started.  (I was actually aiming for Friday night, but that didn’t happen.  I made it by 9-ish on Saturday morning, though–April’s sessions started at 10!)  I was both inspired and reminded of what I wanted to be focusing on in my personal and spiritual growth.

This weekend’s General Conference brought another wave of inspired messages, and I look forward to studying them in the weeks and months ahead.  (Now that I can listen to them on my phone–and have been doing so for months–I’m blown away by how much more I get out of them.  You miss SO MUCH trying to listen to talks and parent at the same time…)  I stumble and struggle in my commitments to my Savior–especially in making Him the center of my life instead of getting lost in daily and weekly tasks, commitments, and projects–but I’m trying.

May all of us find the guidance and growth we seek in this life.  I am grateful for the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, which lights the path that I work to follow in faith.  I am also grateful for a living prophet–and for Today’s News Today.

Tomorrow is my hubby’s birthday, technically, but today was a better day to visit him at work with birthday treats, and so last night I went searching on Pinterest.  Since he’s a S’mores fan, I looked no further than these S’mores Magic Cookie Bars–they seemed like a match made in heaven, you know?  A graham cracker crumb/butter crust, a sugar cookie layer, chocolate chips and marshmallows, and sweetened condensed milk drizzled on top.  What’s not to love?  I got them in and out of the oven before preschool dropoff this morning, thanks to my hubby’s graham cracker crushing skills and some fabulous neighbors who had marshmallows that WEREN’T hard as a rock.  I picked up my youngest from preschool, we bought lunch from an untried place to bring with us (risky, I know, but it paid off), and eventually we sat down with Daddy to eat Doner Kebob Express sandwiches, crinkle fries, and the aforementioned bars.

Sadly, they were my least favorite part of the meal.

Here’s the thing, though.  Part of the problem was that they were underdone–not only was I worried about preschool dropoff, but the recipe warns you to watch carefully.  Do watch carefully–but let them get ALL THE WAY DONE.  The rest of my problem was that they were SO very sweet.  I like sweet, yes, but even with semisweet chocolate chips (I don’t buy milk chocolate) and salted butter, I was wishing for contrast.  Unfortunately, I have no idea how much of a difference another 3-5 minutes in the oven would have made (although I suspect there would have been a difference).  All I can say is that if these sound good to you, and you’re prepared for sweet, make sure you bake them til they’re done!

One of my best friends and I had our two youngest children within three weeks of each other.  I’m thinking it was sometime in the following year that she lent me Tina Cassidy’s Birth:  The Surprising History of How We Are Born, but the truth is, my memories are hazy and she remembers nothing about this at all.  (Which is partly what makes me think it was within a year after having our babies…)  I’m pretty sure she’d found it interesting, however, and was thinking I might as well; now that I’ve gotten around to it (those babies we had are FOUR YEARS OLD, and I’m not sure how that happened), I did indeed find it interesting.  The book focuses more on the western world, certainly, but Cassidy provides enough statistics, anecdotes, and history to fascinate anyone.  I was often riled in the reading–let’s face it, women endured a great deal of pain (which not infrequently ended in death) as a result of supreme stupidity, inexcusable arrogance, and completely misguided ideas–but I was also amazed, fascinated, and even amused by turns.

I will say, however, that I enjoyed the history most; her interpretation of the modern era feels (perhaps unconsciously) skewed towards the “birth is an EXPERIENCE” end of the spectrum.  I didn’t necessarily feel that she referenced my sort of birth experience–she talks about some women having c-sections because they “don’t want to put their vaginas at risk,” but her tone seems almost flippant.  (For those of us who ripped as far as you can rip, who had more stitches after a vaginal birth than after a subsequent c-section, and who wondered at their baby’s 9 month checkup if sex would ever stop hurting again, it isn’t JUST vaginas at risk, and this is not an issue to be flippant about.)  She talks about lactation consultants from La Leche League as women who teach, help, and support breastfeeding mothers;  this is, of course, true in theory, and undoubtedly true of some (perhaps many?), but I know mothers from multiple areas of the country who felt bullied by those consultants (some refer to them as “Nursing Nazis”).  I still wish I’d complained to the hospital administration about one of mine–she gave me completely false information and then informed me, when I told her that what she was doing hurt, that “it shouldn’t!”.  (And NOT in an “oh, let me fix that, then” kind of way.  She also noticeably disapproved of–and subtly disparaged–my very first successful attempts at breastfeeding, which pushed me that much further down the path of postpartum depression.)  Cassidy’s self-evaluation at the conclusion, however, was reassuringly human; ultimately I was far more fascinated than frustrated.  If you’re looking for an interesting (if by no means complete) history of childbirth, look no further.  (And, really, an actual, fully complete history of childbirth all over the world?  Ain’t NOBODY got time for that!)

When I finished Dewey:  The Small-Town Library Cat Who Touched the World last month, the afterward mentioned Dewey’s Nine Lives:  The Legacy of the Small-Town Library Cat Who Inspired Millions.  I found myself interested enough to pin it, mostly because the original book was also Vicki Myron’s memoir, and the afterward made it clear that the follow-up would carry her through Dewey’s loss and fully into her (happy) next stage of life.  When I mentioned this to my friend Britt, she responded with ‘oh, I think I’ve got an ARC of that somewhere;’ we uncovered it shortly afterwards, and since I’d read Dewey recently and was interested, it came home with me.  I finished listening to the audio tonight–because finding on audio books that are taking me forever to get to is helping me sort through my TBR piles–and while I enjoyed it (not passionately, but in a calm sort of way) and I was interested all the way through, I’m passing the hard copy on to my sister.  It was nice–it kept me going on the elliptical and entertained me while I was folding laundry–but I don’t see myself rereading it, you know?  Fans of Dewey will likely enjoy Dewey’s Nine Lives, but it’s more of a cat book and less of a memoir (even if it ends with Vicki in a long term relationship).  Its collection of cat-and-owner stories are touching, you understand, but rather than a true collection of cat tales (so to speak–groan if you want to!), it feels more like Myron’s response to her Dewey fan mail.  It answers questions about what happened next with her; it shares reader experiences that she most connected with.  That’s not necessarily a bad thing, you understand, but it lacks the (fairly) cohesive “story of a small town and its library cat” plot of the original.

Bottom line?  This is an enjoyable read, but you do have to really care about cats–and be at least somewhat interested in Vicki Myron’s life.  If that describes you, go for it.  If you didn’t care much about Dewey–OR if that’s not what you enjoyed about it–than I’d probably pass.

As a kid, I always needed my daydreams to be technically possible.  Wildly improbable didn’t bother me, you understand–neither did unlikely to an astronomical degree.  As long as the subject was a theoretical possibility, I could lose myself in fantasies starring me, myself, and I doing heroic things, or triumphing over difficulties and disasters, or being swept off my feet by my crush-of-the-moment.

As a kid, I would have loved Andrew Clements.  That’s what his books feel like to me, as an adult reader–daydreams coming true because they are possible, even if they’re a stretch.  I picked up a copy of his About Average at a library sale and then listened to the audio of it while I was doing all the things after returning from Idaho, and it embodies that feel perfectly.  Jordan Johnston is likable, sweet, cheerful, and average; she dreams of being a star in a dozen different ways, and yet she hasn’t managed to make it happen.  Then comes an unexpected chance to use talents she didn’t feel really counted, and finally Jordan gets her chance to shine.  While that’s a beautiful moment (and ending), of course, I found Jordan’s thoughts and feelings over the course of the book to be just as enjoyable as the big finish.  She reminds me a bit of my second girlie, who has an older sister with a)showy talents and b)2.75 years more experience at everything.  It’s hard for a 9-year-old to appreciate the amazingness of her own heart, and it’s nigh impossible to convince a younger sister not to compare herself to her older sister without taking the age difference into consideration.  (I know this from personal experience.)  If you have a child who feels less than, even sometimes, this is a book he or she ought to read.

I’m passing it on to that second girlie now.