Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

It’s hard to beat going out of town two weekends in a row for turning you into a tired, overwhelmed lump.  And while both trips–the one to Idaho two weekends ago and the one my friend Britt and I took to New England last weekend–were so, so worth it, that doesn’t actually lessen any of the coming home madness.  Laundry?  Kitchen?  School papers and projects for the kids?  Unpacking?

Blog posts?

Yeah, I dropped the ball there before I left, didn’t I?  I was going to try and post on Thursday before leaving for the airport, but that clearly didn’t happen.  (I was also going to try and mail cards to my sister from the different places we went to, but my brain is apparently too old to hold on to ALL of the things it wants to do.)  So here I am, home since Monday evening, trying to decide if I’ve got the will to write about my trip AND review a book, or if I should stick to one or the other.  I’d like to review a book–say, one of the 3 or 4 on my Goodreads “Currently Reading” shelf that I’ve actually finished, so it can move on to one of the various places that my completed books go–but that doesn’t feel nearly as doable as I want it to tonight.  I also want to actually write about my trip, and yet I think what I’ve got motivation enough to do is list out more of an itinerary–while feeling guilty for not being up to more.

Thursday, Oct. 3rd:  Arrived in RI after midnight local time.  Survived with Britt my first ever renting of a car.  (We adulted so hard!)  Managed to drive it safely to our destination and go to bed sometime after 3 am.

Friday, Oct. 4th:  Slept in.  Headed out to Newport around 11-ish and toured Rosecliff.  Successfully found a parking place near the beginning of the Cliff Walk (the parking meter took credit cards) and did a mile or so of it before returning to the car and desperately seeking seafood.  It wasn’t the best I’ve had, but we thoroughly enjoyed it nonetheless.  Made it home in one piece, but I slept badly.

Saturday, Oct. 5th:  On the road before 7.  Breakfast courtesy of a Dunkin drive-though.  Drove up to Sharon, VT to visit the birthplace of the prophet Joseph Smith.  Beautiful weather!  From Sharon to Rutland–paying for the Norman Rockwell museum didn’t feel worth it, but lunch at Coach’s Deli was AMAZING.  From Rutland to Bennington–the Robert Frost museum was closed, but we wandered around the grounds and took pictures before heading to his grave.  The church was open past closing time because a couple was there preparing for an event the next day, and so we got to wander around both inside and out.  (They were completely lovely people.)  We hit Amherst, Massachusetts in the dark and Britt took pictures of Emily Dickinson’s house with her flash because we were listening to the Women’s Session of General Conference on my phone.  Home late, but it was a beautiful day.

Sunday, Oct. 6th:  Allie’s doughnuts for breakfast and then a drive around Scituate before heading to the Boston temple to walk around the grounds.  From there we went to York, Maine, and wandered around the rocks at Nubble Light (aka Cape Neddick) in some impressive wind.  The salt spray made us sticky, but the view was no less beautiful for being in shades of grey.  We stopped at Stonewall Kitchen on the way home–no purchases, it being Sunday, but we sampled and pondered the possibility of ordering various products online.  Made it home at a civilized hour and took a stroll in the dark before enjoying some music and turning in.

Monday, Oct. 7th:  Survived the drive to the airport and the returning of the rental car (so much adulting!) before embarking on an uneventful flight home.  It’s always hard for me to fly away from the color and into the brown–but my family was happy to see me.

Book reviews to follow, folks–but tonight, I’m turning in.

I don’t have internet.  AGAIN.

This is after not having internet for most of the day before we left for Idaho last week, on a day when my hubby was out of town (he being the technical talent in our relationship).  My junior high student now has homework for which she must be able to access the internet, by the way.  And she stresses about things.  AND she had hours–quite literally–of homework to do last night.  Could she have done some of it earlier?  Probably.  But still.  When it went out (again) last night, my hubby called Comcast and spent a good part of his evening working on the problem.  The upshot?  They have to send a tech out to do something with the line, and that tech can’t get there until tomorrow morning, and in the meantime, I DON’T HAVE INTERNET.

I am CRANKY about this.

Thankfully, I have good friends; I’m sitting at one of their houses right now, because I didn’t want to skip today’s post.  I finished listening to The Extraordinary Education of Nicholas Benedict yesterday, and if I review it, I can return it to the library before my daughter’s hold on the brand-new Mysterious Benedict book comes in.  And everybody wins!

So, the book review.  I did like Extraordinary Education; I don’t know that I loved it, though.  It has a lonelier feel–which is unavoidable, yes, given Nicholas’s story–that affects me as a parent more than it would have affected me as a child.  I ‘m not going to dock it stars for that, but it was definitely a factor in MY reading experience.  Orphaned Nicholas is a lonely, cynical 9-year-old, and his fixation on treasure hunting rather than being a friend lasts longer than I want it to.  (Not unrealistically longer, necessarily, but still.)  My other issue may also be a function of my stage in life, because I also felt the book dragged a bit.  The target audience has more time to read and often likes its mystery/adventure stories to be fat, but I was getting impatient for resolution with more than a hundred pages left to go.  I might be more enthralled with the intricacies of the mystery if that were more my thing, but I’m a historical fiction lover at heart; I’m reading this series more because my oldest LOVES mysteries.  (And puzzles.  And adventure stories).  Ultimately, I think this prequel is best suited for fans of the series, but then again…I’m cranky today.  So I guess you can do with that what you will.

That is why I took care to finished Terri Libenson’s Just Jaime today, folks–self defense.  Because if I had taken ONE MORE DAY to finish it and hand it over to my 10-year-old, she might have spontaneously combusted–after all, how long can a girl endure waiting for an illustrated novel by an author she already knows and likes?–and I would almost certainly have been injured during the fallout.  Once I finish this review (and she finishes the chores I need her to do!), I can pass it on and live another day.

As for the book itself?  Hmmm.  I think it was excellent, really, but it was so painful to read as a parent–the queen mean girl’s adolescent gaslighting, Jaime’s confusion and sadness, and Maya’s torturous mental journey from mean girl’s brainwashing to clear-sighted awareness.  The ending is satisfying, though, and there are delightful touches all along the way, so perhaps my slow progress through it made the hard things worse to experience.  (So many things to do…)  This is a finely told story about friendship, what it is, and what it isn’t, and I’m thinking the 8-12 bracket is going to love it.

Oh, and incidentally, I’m taking the weekend off for some family time.  I’ll see you all on Tuesday!

This past weekend one of my aunts passed away very suddenly, leaving my mother’s youngest sibling widowed and one of my closest cousins motherless in this life.  I grew up far away from my cousins on that side of the family and I mostly saw my aunt at family gatherings; her death, however, was and is a shock.  Aunt Jeanne was a quiet, unassuming woman who always greeted me with kindness; I knew her as a wife, a mother, a sister, an aunt, and a grandmother, and I have never in my life heard a single human being speak critically of her.  Instead, I saw Jeanne quietly doing her part in our family.  What I remember most vividly, perhaps, are her stitches.  My mother’s 3 sisters and 3 sisters-in-law have come together to make quilts for each member of my generation, and I’ve had the privilege of putting a few stitches in one or two of these quilts with my slow, unskilled fingers.  As I’ve done so, I’ve observed the quilting style of each of my aunts, and Jeanne’s stitches made a lasting impression on me–they were tiny, even, and beautifully precise, stitches that held together and did all they were meant to do.  In my (few–I have a 4-year-old) quiet moments in the past few days, those stitches keep coming back to me as a metaphor for her life.  I will not be able to attend her funeral–I have previous commitments to my parents and siblings–and that saddens me.  In lieu of my presence, all I can think to offer is this small tribute to a woman whose life was made up of small, even stitches, the sort of stitches that create, in the end, a work of well-made–and well-lived–beauty.

I’ve been second guessing my review of Stella by Starlight ever since I posted it, wondering if I should have noted the details that didn’t quite ring true.  It’s not that it wasn’t a good story, because it was; it’s that I read Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus right afterwards, and the contrast was marked.  Stella was a pretty good story; Insignificant Events in the Life of a Cactus is an amazing book.  Like Wonder, it immerses you in a life that few can imagine and makes it so real that you’re living it, too.  Aven Green, born without arms, has just moved from Kansas to Arizona, where she starts 8th grade–late–in a school where no one is accustomed to her armlessness.  It’s there that she meets Connor, a schoolmate with Tourette syndrome, who understands what it’s like to be seen for your disability instead of yourself.  Their friendship shifts their relationships with the world, just as Aven’s discoveries in her new home shift her perspective on her past, and together they find the courage to reach out to the world around them just a little bit more.

Okay, that sounds a little bit generic.  And maybe a little bit cheesy?  I promise, that’s totally on me.  This is the kind of book that will make you laugh, make you cry, and make you think, sometimes at the same time.  Aven is a fabulous heroine, and her story will grab you from the very beginning.  There are no buts about it, folks–you should absolutely, positively read this book.

You were maybe going to get a longer blog post, but my hubby and I got sucked into our current puzzle, and then I got sucked into clicking on one of those ‘worst plane experiences’ lists.  I’m back from the rabbit hole, but it’s shower and bedtime.  Goodnight all!

I finished listening to Sharon M. Draper’s Stella by Starlight last night and I’ve been trying to think how to review it.  On the one hand, I thoroughly enjoyed the book; Draper tells stories that keep you reading, and her main characters are eminently likable.  I also appreciated the differentiation between the Klan and the whole of the white community.  On the other hand, the menace of the Klan didn’t affect me with the impact I wanted it to, and I’m honestly not sure why.  (Certainly North Carolina isn’t the deep south, not like Alabama or Mississippi–perhaps Klan violence was less likely to escalate to a deadly level?  And it did cause significant harm, so maybe it was just me.)  What’s interesting about Stella is that a few of the things that happened to this black child and her family in the segregated south weren’t the things I thought were going to happen, but other things entirely.  Draper intimates that this book has roots in her own family history, and hey, truth is stranger than fiction, right?  At the end of the day, this was a compelling book, with touches of humor, pathos, and drama, and it’s most definitely worth your time.*

*One thing, though.  This is absolutely going to be a relatable book for today’s readers, and that’s not a bad thing; I read quite a bit of historical fiction, however, and Draper’s characters do feel a bit more like modern voices in historical settings rather than fully authentic historical figures.  This didn’t necessarily affect my enjoyment of the book, but while I was engrossed in the story, I didn’t feel submersed in the time period, if that makes sense.  It’s still worth reading, though.

To be fair, there are a lot of things I love that my kids love, too.  (Not all of them at the same time, necessarily, but that’s just too much to hope for.)  None of my children, however, are anywhere near as passionate about savory lemon as I am–and apparently, none of them like capers as much as I do, either.  So when my friend’s hubby bought some campanelle for an incredible price and brought me some, making this Campanelle with White Beans, Lemon, and Burrata was not exactly a selfless choice.  On the other hand, not every dinner has to be, right?  Because I loved this recipe.

I did change it up, mind you.  I didn’t have burrata and I wasn’t going to shop for and PAY for burrata on that particular day, and so shredded mozzarella from Costco was going to have to do.  I didn’t have arugula, either, and I wasn’t going to shop for that; spinach is milder, anyway, not to mention easier to find at my corner grocery store.  (I had my two oldest girls walk there with a five dollar bill.)  Finally, I cut the crushed red pepper flakes down to a manageable amount for my household (like I always do!).  What really mattered, though, was the beautiful tart brightness of the lemon married with the salty piquancy of the capers, topped off with the mild loveliness of the mozzarella, all coating the pasta and fresh spinach with layers of flavor and goodness.  I really did love it.

My 10-year-old had to hold her nose to force down her last bite.

I had all of the leftovers to myself, though.  And THAT was a beautiful thing.

I’ve been reading through Eva Ibbotson’s books and passing them on to my daughter for years now; tonight I finished listening to The Dragonfly Pool, and it was just as good as I wanted it to be.  Ibbotson tends to either mix a bit of poignancy into the absurd or a bit of the absurd into the poignant, and Dragonfly Pool was the latter.  It’s a story about a girl, a boarding school, a fictional European nation, and a very real period in history.  Tally loves her home and friends in London and is terribly upset when her father sends her off to a progressive boarding school; her father is just as upset, but it is 1939 and he knows Tally will be safer in the country. She soon grows to love Delderton.  When she and her friends travel to mainland Europe to participate in a children’s folk dancing festival, however, Hitler’s growing menace touches and changes all of their lives.  How the Deldertonians help the Berganian prince escape the Gestapo–and what happened after–makes for a period story that tugs at the heartstrings.  Ibbotson’s own history and experiences lend an authentic feel to a blend of historical fiction, fantasy, and fairy tale that ought to appeal to readers who enjoy at least one or two of the three.  This is an eminently worthwhile read–and on that note, I’m heading off to bed.  Goodnight all!

Yes, I still have a book to review, but I couldn’t manage to fall asleep until 1-ish last night–or this morning, rather–and I’ve got the dreaded Tired Headache to show for it.  Britt and I did try a new recipe today, however, and if you bought 18 ears of corn or so at a farmstand the other day and your family didn’t actually eat it all for dinner that night, you might experiment with this Parmesan Cilantro Corn yourself.  We mostly followed the directions except for the cutting down of the pepper (for my sake), although we did have to supplement my leftover corn with some of her frozen corn to have enough.  (It was excellent frozen corn, so this was not at all a hardship.)  We also substituted evaporated milk for the cream (no surprise there), and we both thought it was pretty tasty.

One thing, though.  If you’re looking for a creamy, mild corn dish with notes of cilantro and hints of the other ingredients, this is perfect.  If you want a pop, add some cilantro lime vinaigrette (or perhaps some feta?  or just lime juice?) before eating.  Either way, this was a lovely addition to our lunch!