Every once in a while, I get that urge to clean out the house. This usually involves cleaning closets, drawers, and cupboards. It’s time to do it again. I am so excited about getting started that I took tomorrow off work to have a four-day weekend.
Tonight’s project:
Go through these three boxes of pictures and memorabilia and organize it better. I have a feeling that it is going to take longer than it should. If I find anything really good, I’ll let you know.
- Confucius
One of my most favorite things is my bookclub group. We meet once a month, or so, to discuss a book we chose the month before. These conversations have reach all ends of the spectrum and I have learned more from these women then I ever learned in school.
I didn’t always love reading. In fact, my junior year of high school I wrote a report on Wuthering Heights. I didn’t actually read the book, I bought the Cliff Notes version and based my report on that. Needless to say I got a very low grade on the report.
It would be years before I would pick up a book and read it all the way through. Once I finished one book, I couldn’t wait to get my hands on another.
When I moved here I made a friend who was a part of a bookclub. She invited me to join. That was almost five years ago. I will be honest and report that I have not read all of the books completely. I did purchase everyone, but some just didn’t grab me the way others did.
This year I made a commitment to read every book. Here is a short report on each one (not written by me):
Born mute, speaking only in sign, Edgar Sawtelle leads an idyllic life with his parents on their farm in remote northern Wisconsin. For generations, the Sawtelles have raised and trained a fictional breed of dog whose thoughtful companionship is epitomized by Almondine, Edgar's lifelong friend and ally. But with the unexpected return of Claude, Edgar's paternal uncle, turmoil consumes the Sawtelles' once peaceful home. When Edgar's father dies suddenly, Claude insinuates himself into the life of the farm--and into Edgar's mother's affections.
Grief-stricken and bewildered, Edgar tries to prove Claude played a role in his father's death, but his plan backfires--spectacularly. Forced to flee into the vast wilderness lying beyond the farm, Edgar comes of age in the wild, fighting for his survival and that of the three yearling dogs who follow him. But his need to face his father's murderer and his devotion to the Sawtelle dogs turn Edgar ever homeward.
Thirteen linked tales from Strout (Abide with Me, etc.) present a heart-wrenching, penetrating portrait of ordinary coastal Mainers living lives of quiet grief intermingled with flashes of human connection. The opening Pharmacy focuses on terse, dry junior high-school teacher Olive Kitteridge and her gregarious pharmacist husband, Henry, both of whom have survived the loss of a psychologically damaged parent, and both of whom suffer painful attractions to co-workers. Their son, Christopher, takes center stage in A Little Burst, which describes his wedding in humorous, somewhat disturbing detail, and in Security, where Olive, in her 70s, visits Christopher and his family in New York. Strout's fiction showcases her ability to reveal through familiar details—the mother-of-the-groom's wedding dress, a grandmother's disapproving observations of how her grandchildren are raised—the seeds of tragedy. Themes of suicide, depression, bad communication, aging and love, run through these stories, none more vivid or touching than Incoming Tide, where Olive chats with former student Kevin Coulson as they watch waitress Patty Howe by the seashore, all three struggling with their own misgivings about life. Like this story, the collection is easy to read and impossible to forget. Its literary craft and emotional power will surprise readers unfamiliar with Strout.
In the opening pages of Jamie Ford's debut novel, Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet, Henry Lee comes upon a crowd gathered outside the Panama Hotel. Once the gateway to Seattle's Japantown. It has been boarded up for decades. But now the new owner has made an incredible discovery: the belongings of Japanese families, left when they were rounded up and sent to internment camps during World War II. As Henry looks on, the owner opens a Japanese parasol. This simple act takes Henry back to the 1940s, when his world was a jumble of confusion and excitement, and to his father, who was obsessed with the war in China and having Henry grow up American. While "scholarshipping" at the exclusive Ranier Elementary, where the white kids ignore him, Henry meets Keiko Okabe, a young Japanese American student. Amid the chaos of blackouts, curfews, and FBI raids, Henry and Keiko forge a bond of friendship - and innocent love - that transcends the long-standing prejudices of their Old World ancestors. After Keiko and her family are swept up in the evacuations to the internment camps, she and Henry are left only with the hope that the war will end and that their promise to each other will be kept. Forty years later, Henry Lee, certain that the parasol belonged to Keiko, searches the hotel's dark. dusty basement for signs of the Okabe family's belongings and for a long-lost object whose value he cannot even begin to measure. Now a widower, Henry is still trying to find his voice: words that might explain the actions of his nationalistic father; words that might bridge the gap between him and his modern, Chinese American son; words that might help him confront the choices he made many years ago.
Be prepared to meet three unforgettable women:
Twenty-two-year-old Skeeter has just returned home after graduating from Ole Miss. She may have a degree, but it is 1962, Mississippi, and her mother will not be happy till Skeeter has a ring on her finger. Skeeter would normally find solace with her beloved maid Constantine, the woman who raised her, but Constantine has disappeared and no one will tell Skeeter where she has gone.
Aibileen is a black maid, a wise, regal woman raising her seventeenth white child. Something has shifted inside her after the loss of her own son, who died while his bosses looked the other way. She is devoted to the little girl she looks after, though she knows both their hearts may be broken.
Minny, Aibileen's best friend, is short, fat, and perhaps the sassiest woman in Mississippi. She can cook like nobody's business, but she can't mind her tongue, so she's lost yet another job. Minny finally finds a position working for someone too new to town to know her reputation. But her new boss has secrets of her own.
Seemingly as different from one another as can be, these women will nonetheless come together for a clandestine project that will put them all at risk. And why? Because they are suffocating within the lines that define their town and their times. And sometimes lines are made to be crossed.
The intricate tale begins when Blomkvist is convicted of libeling top Swedish industrialist Hans-Erik Wennerström. Unable to prove his innocence, Blomkvist prepares to leave his position at Millennium, the magazine he co-founded, now financially threatened by the verdict. But a summons from Wennerström's rival, the aging tycoon Henrik Vanger, presents an option he couldn't have imagined: In exchange for Blomkvist's writing the Vanger family history, Vanger promises to back Millennium financially and deliver incriminating evidence of Wennerström's crooked dealings.
But that's not all. The closets of the Vanger clan are littered with skeletons, and his new patron wants Blomkvist to set one at rest: the disappearance, 40 years ago, of Vanger's 16-year-old grandniece, Harriet. Intrigued by the cold case that was never solved despite multiple investigations, Blomkvist begins to dig for new evidence on an island north of Stockholm.
He is soon joined by Salander, a freelance investigator originally hired by Vanger to vet Blomkvist's reputation. Multiple piercings and tattoos are belied by the young computer genius's photographic memory. A victim of assault and harrowing abuse, Salander is driven by a relentless will and an astonishing capability for merciless retribution.
Larsson's narrative unfolds with mounting suspense, detailing the duo's intellectual ingenuity and increasing courage as they expose hidden cultures of right-wing fanaticism and misogyny and reveal the moral bankruptcy of big capital. As they race across Europe and on to Australia to trap their prey before another woman is tortured and killed, the reader is held in breathless anticipation until the novel's unforeseen conclusion.
When reporter Ellen Gleeson gets a “Have You Seen This Child?” flyer in the mail, she almost throws it away. But something about it makes her look again, and her heart stops—the child in the photo is identical to her adopted son, Will. Her every instinct tells her to deny the similarity between the boys, because she knows her adoption was lawful. But she’s a journalist and won’t be able to stop thinking about the photo until she figures out the truth. And she can’t shake the question: if Will rightfully belongs to someone else, should she keep him or give him up? She investigates, uncovering clues no one was meant to discover, and when she digs too deep, she risks losing her own life—and that of the son she loves.
It is Enniscorthy in the southeast of Ireland in the early 1950s. Eilis Lacey is one among many of her generation who cannot find work at home. Thus when a job is offered in America, it is clear to everyone that she must go. Leaving her family and country, Eilis heads for unfamiliar Brooklyn, and to a crowded boarding house where the landlady’s intense scrutiny and the small jealousies of her fellow residents only deepen her isolation.
Slowly, however, the pain of parting is buried beneath the rhythms of her new life — until she begins to realize that she has found a sort of happiness. As she falls in love, news comes from home that forces her back to Enniscorthy, not to the constrictions of her old life, but to new possibilities which conflict deeply with the life she has left behind in Brooklyn.
When Elspeth Noblin dies of cancer, she leaves her London apartment to her twin nieces, Julia and Valentina. These two American girls never met their English aunt; they only knew that their mother, too, was a twin, and Elspeth her sister. Julia and Valentina are semi-normal American teenagers -- with seemingly little interest in college, finding jobs, or anything outside their cozy home in the suburbs of Chicago, and with an abnormally intense attachment to one another.
The girls move to Elspeth's flat, which borders Highgate Cemetery. They come to know the building's other residents. There is Martin, a brilliant and charming crossword puzzle setter suffering from crippling obsessive-compulsive disorder; Marjike, Martin's devoted but trapped wife; and Robert, Elspeth's elusive former lover, a scholar of the cemetery. As the girls become embroiled in the fraying lives of their aunt's neighbors, they also discover that much is still alive in Highgate, including -- perhaps -- their aunt, who can't seem to leave her old apartment and life behind.
Paris, July 1942: Sarah, a ten year-old girl, is brutally arrested with her family by the French police in the Vel’ d’Hiv’ roundup, but not before she locks her younger brother in a cupboard in the family's apartment, thinking that she will be back within a few hours.
Paris, May 2002: On Vel’ d’Hiv’s 60th anniversary, journalist Julia Jarmond is asked to write an article about this black day in France's past. Through her contemporary investigation, she stumbles onto a trail of long-hidden family secrets that connect her to Sarah. Julia finds herself compelled to retrace the girl's ordeal, from that terrible term in the Vel d'Hiv', to the camps, and beyond. As she probes into Sarah's past, she begins to question her own place in France, and to reevaluate her marriage and her life.
Emily and Jessamine Bach are opposites in every way: Twenty-eight-year-old Emily is the CEO of Veritech, twenty-three-year-old Jess is an environmental activist and graduate student in philosophy. Pragmatic Emily is making a fortune in Silicon Valley, romantic Jess works in an antiquarian bookstore. Emily is rational and driven, while Jess is dreamy and whimsical. Emily’s boyfriend, Jonathan, is fantastically successful. Jess’s boyfriends, not so much—as her employer George points out in what he hopes is a completely disinterested way.
Bicoastal, surprising, rich in ideas and characters, The Cookbook Collector is a novel about getting and spending, and about the substitutions we make when we can’t find what we’re looking for: reading cookbooks instead of cooking, speculating instead of creating, collecting instead of living. But above all it is about holding on to what is real in a virtual world: love that stays.
In this wonderful holiday books we meet James Kier. James is a miserable man. He does not care who he hurts as long as he's making money in the process. One morning he wakes up and reads his own obituary in the newspaper. He is shocked when the on-line obits by those who worked for him and knew him....told it like it was. Jim was not a man who was loved by all. However, when he straightens out the newspaper, and when everyone realizes he is alive and well, James decides to make right all the wrongs he has done in his life: hence The Christmas List. A touching emotionally charged story of redemption and the power of forgiveness.
This was one of my favorite years in bookclub, I believe in part because I actually read all the books. I have decided to carry this on to next year. Now, I need to put the computer away and get to reading.
Oh, in case you were wondering, I did finally read Wuthering Heights and it is now one of my most favorite books!
Christmas is officially over for this year. The presents have been opened, the wrapping paper has been gathered up for the recycling, and the tree is now located in the far corner of the yard (under the four inches of snow we got today).
Now what? There is such a build up to the holidays. But now I am sitting here and for the first time in a while, I am doing nothing. It feels kinda nice. Four days to work this week and then another three-day weekend. What to do, what to do?
This year my niece brought her favorite holiday side dish to Christmas dinner:
Do you recognize this dish? It’s from the movie Christmas Vacation. Lucky for all of us, my sister doesn’t have a cat so they had to improvise and use Cheerios instead.
Someday I may outgrow sitting on the kid side of the table:
Who am I kidding? I love the kid side. We took six pictures to get this one. Trust me, it’s the best of the bunch. We were having too much fun.
Speaking of fun:
My sister is a pro at getting people to smile for pictures. She’ll use any tactic. You don’t want to know what she did to get my mom to laugh.
Meanwhile, back at the fire station:
Scott’s crew was having issues getting the oven to stay lit. They still managed to enjoy a spiral ham with several homemade side dishes.
All in all, it was a good Christmas. I am glad that the weather held off long enough for us all to travel safely. I am happy that I got to see my family and have Scott and the boys home for Christmas day. Everyone got what they asked for.
One last thing. Another reason Dawn is my best friend is because she knows how to give that gift that you truly want, but that no one else will get you.
I GOT A BRAND NEW PAIR OF ROLLER SKATES!!!!!
Today is the first day of winter. I wonder if anyone around here even noticed. Considering the winter weather started here a month ago.
We went out to dinner and to see the community production of White Christmas the other night. When we went into the restaurant for dinner the roads were clear and most of the snow was gone. When we came out an hour later, the snow as blowing sideways. It was fitting for the evening.
Yesterday morning, while it was still dark outside, Daisy started barking. The kind of bark that I knew meant someone was at our house. Dragging myself out of bed and through the house, I could see headlights in our driveway. Who could possibly be at my house at 6:30am on a Monday morning. As the vehicle backed up, I could make out the plow on the front of the truck. It was a moment in time where I had an out-of-body experience. Growing up I would never have imagined living in a place where the local snowplow driver shows up in the wee hours of the morning to plow your driveway so that you can get to work. I couldn’t believe that I was standing here watching this. Then reality hit and I realized that, since my driveway was now clear, I would have to go to work.
We got enough snow over the weekend that Scott had his crew out plowing the stations on Monday.
The kids enjoyed their first day of Christmas vacation by sledding down the fifth hole at the local golf course.
The sunrise this morning showed a promising first day of winter. I am happy to report that there was no new snow today. Don’t get me wrong, I love the snow, but it would be great if it could hold off another five days, just long enough to get through the travel weekend.
One good thing, today is officially the shortest day of the year. Brighter days are ahead.
The girls at work have an annual Christmas tradition. Every year we bake goodies for one of the shifts. This year is A-shift, which happens to be on duty tomorrow. When I started working at the Fire District, there were five of us girls, then we went to four, and now we are down to three. (Are you feeling the guilt yet Tonja?)
This year we decided to bake pies instead of candy and cookies. Honestly, it was much easier. I came home tonight and gathered everything I would need to make my famous apple-blackberry pie. Ok, it’s not famous yet but I figure that if I make enough, I’ll become known for it.
The pies have to bake for an hour so I figured I would bake two and then three.
The first two went off without a hitch. In the oven in record time. Then I realized that I miscalculated the amount of blackberries I would need. Living where we do, it’s not really convenient to run to the grocery store. Not only is it twenty miles away, but I passed three cars already in the ditch on my way home, one of which had rolled a couple of times. I decided it wasn’t worth risking my life for some blackberries.
I considered rationing what I had left, which was just enough to make one more apple-blackberry pie. I figured rationing them would make it look kinda funny that there were just a few blackberries in each pie. In the end, I made two pies which were just apple.
Group two is just about ready to go in the oven.
Slits cut in the top of each one.
Brushed with a little half and half.
And sprinkled with a little cane sugar, direct from Hawaii.
Ta Da. Five pies for five crews. While slicing all the apples for these pies I was thinking about how busy this time of year can get. But I can’t imagine giving this up. Now, I just hope these guys remember the love and appreciation that was put into each of these!
What is it about a parade? This question came up the other day in a conversation that I had with someone. It actually made me stop and think. What is it about a parade?
In the town I grew up in, we had the Timber Carnival. This annual event happened the first week of July every year. Four days of logging events, fireworks, a carnival, and a parade. The parade consisted of every logging outfit within a hundred miles polishing up their best log truck, loading it with the biggest logs they could find, and parading in a line down main street. Mix in a few marching bands, floats holding the boy scouts and campfire girls, and the Shriners on their little red convertible cars. More than anything, this parade brought our community together to celebrate the backbone of the industry that employed our dads and our granddads.
I have so many memories of the Timber Carnival. The red and white gingham shirts we wore, the night we pierced my sister’s ears with the back of a Timber Carnival button, sitting on a blanket watching the log rolling events until the sun went down and the fireworks started.
The Timber Carnival no longer exists, along with the logging industry. I honestly can’t remember the last year that the parade was held. This time last year, the last of the big mills closed in my hometown. My generation was the last to walk through those doors, the same doors their fathers and grandfathers walk through every day for thirty years before they retired.
Sorry, I got a little side-tracked. Back to the question of what it is about a parade. It’s about a community coming together to celebrate something they have in common. Here, we have the the Snowflake Celebration that runs the first week of December. It includes a gingerbread baking contest, a tree decorating display to raise money for charity, and the headline of the week, the Snowflake Parade. Thousands of people turn out, rain or shine, snow or not, to watch. Last year, it was –2 degrees at parade time. This year, it was a little warmer, but it rained as soon as the parade started.
You gotta get there early to pick out your spot. Here Dusty and I are holding down the fort. By the time the parade started, the crowd was four people deep all the way down Main Street.
The parade always kicks off with the Snowflake mile. Runners dressed in all sorts of costumes, some wearing only Santa boxer shorts, run the mile parade route.
Everyone gets excited when the motorcycle cops come by, signifying the official starts of the parade.
There are still the boy scouts.
The marching bands.
The local celebrity new anchor.
The junior hockey team.
Santa riding in a sleigh on top of a fire truck.
Ok, I am really not sure why Jimmy Neutron was there, or why his float looks like a giant phallic symbol.
The debut of our new baseball team mascot, Tater. Again, not everything in a parade makes sense.
And what parade wouldn’t be complete without the Shriners in their little red convertible cars.
So, what is it about a parade? It's about a community coming together to celebrate itself. It’s about showing the pride you have for that community. It’s about making memories that twenty-five years later you will remember like it was yesterday.
Usually I use Scott’s laptop to type up my blogs. This means that I am at the mercy of him being home. He uses his computer a lot so when he works he has it with him.
Not anymore. Meet “The Green Machine”:
This bad boy will be my way of blogging from here on out. No stopping me now. Here’s another view:
I know what you are thinking. You have seen a laptop before. Nothing spectacular. Well, check these out:
This is The Green Machine compare to Scott’s normal sized laptop.
His laptop weighs about ten pounds; mine not even three pounds.
Here, they are spooning.
I love it! It’s compact, my favorite color of green, and comes with blogging software that has made posting this blog take a fraction of the time.
I haven’t even scratched the surface of finding out what The Green Machine can do, but I am sure that we will get to know each other very quickly.
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| These boys look really proud of their find at the Christmas tree lot. |
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| It was important for Mack to supervise the process of putting the tree in the stand and making sure it was straight. |
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| Daisy and I stayed out of the way and only added our input when it was asked for. |
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| This is my favorite Christmas decoration in our house. It's an old sled we found in an antique store downtown that we use to display the Christmas cards we receive |
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| Lae'ula loves the tree. If she had her way, we would have one inside year round. |
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| Decorated tree - check. Presents wrapped - check. Stockings hung with care - check. |
