Christmabirthday 2011

People warned me not to get my hopes up for Lu's first Christmas. She's only nine months old...she's not really going to know what's going on. It might be too much for her, too overwhelming. Or just another day. Underwhelming.

But this baby...


She knew exactly what day it was. Her face looked like that all day long. Lit up with pure wonder.



I loved every minute of it. This Christmas delivered--in the most Kelle Hamptonish of ways.

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I turned 30 yesterday. There were beignets for breakfast. There were Christmas cookies with candles. There was a visit from good friends after dinner, and there is a nice stack of books waiting to distract me from any lingering angst I might have about hitting this big milestone birthday.

30 is definitely off to a good start.

On the eve of my 20th birthday, way back in 2001, I wrote a letter to myself at 30, which I promptly misplaced. But I remember what was in it: a sketch of a life plan for the next ten years. Where I hoped I'd be at 30. A couple of the things on the list were things I wanted so badly: to marry James, to have a baby. But most of the goals were things that other people expected of me, that I expected of myself because I was measuring my life against some kind of one-size-fits-all life yardstick. Go to grad school. Make a lot of money. Buy a house. Some of these things I failed at. Some of these things I rocked. But I still wasn't satisfied. Because they weren't the things that I really wanted.

This letter I'm writing at age 30 to myself at 40 is so different. There are no huge life goals I've set out for myself in it. Get a tattoo, this letter says, instead. Throw a dinner party. Sing at a piano bar. Send your book off to agents. Then start another one. Do all these little things that make you happy, things you were too afraid to do before. Because life is short. Because I want to. Because I can.

To get myself started, I'm working on a list of 30 things I'm GOING to do while I'm 30--I'll post it here when I have it finished. You guys will keep me on track, right? And kick my ass into action when I start overthinking it all?

I'm excited for 30. I'm pretty sure this is going to be the best year yet.


And I'm excited to have my little buddy at my side while I do all of these small, great things.

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Now the clock is just about to roll over to midnight, which means it's almost officially James's birthday. Which means that tomorrow, there will be EVEN MORE cake.

See what I mean about off to a good start?

Happy Holidays, from us to you.

How Santa got his groove back:

Looks like somebody found some new facial hair. Look at that smug little smile.

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Our friend John filmed this year's Solstice festivities. I think his Australian accent in the background really classes the thing up. It's like Lifestyles of the Rich and Pagan. Fast-forward to 3:20 if you want to see the breaking of the darkness. 8:10 for fireworks.
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Here's what we've been up to in the past few days:


We made salt dough ornaments. Click here to see the (NSFW!) one that Daddy made.


We made homemade marshmallows. We used Heather Spohr's recipe. So easy! So tasty! We'll never go back to the store-bought kind.

And speaking of Santa, Godfather Dave donned his suit again last night...this time, to play with his band at the Velvet Lounge.


Everybody loved it. The ladies especially. Gave a whole new meaning to "Ho, ho, ho!" (Har, har, har.)

________

This baby loves the iPhone:


Almost as much as she loves being an asshole in sushi restaurants. Remember the days where she would sleep peacefully in her stroller throughout the loudest, longest, most raucous of meals? OVER FOREVER.

(Try to hear the theme from 2001: A Space Odyssey when you view the pictures above. Da.....daaa...da...DA-DA! Bum-bum bum-bum bum-bum...)

T-2 days, kemo sahbees. I currently have accidentally uncovered the identity of every single present I'm getting and have simultaneously NOT FINISHED SHOPPING for everybody on my list. YUP.

The Barbarian Nurseries by Hector Tobar

Welp, of course it happens this way. The minute I confess that I only read crap in the year 2011, I go and read a real, bona fide, amazing, literary novel. I could have written about it instead if I had only waited a few days, but I didn't, and so now you all know my shame.

The book was The Barbarian Nurseries by Hector Tobar. The New York Times gushed all over it and picked it as one of this year's notable books, and so I read it because I have this contrarian, hatery compulsion to go THAT'S NO SO GREAT whenever anybody gushes all over anything. But this book really was so great. I agree with you, New York Times. Which I know must make you very happy.

Scott and Maureen Torres-Thompson's affluent life is distintegrating along with the economy and their marriage is following suit. They've had to let all of their Mexican staff go, save for Araceli, their brusque, no-nonsense maid. When their fights over money escalate, husband and wife decide to abscond from home, each to teach the other a lesson, and Araceli is inadvertently left stranded with the two young Torres-Thompson boys. When the parents haven't returned after four days, Araceli sets off to find the boys' estranged Mexican-American grandfather, armed only with a decades-old photograph with an address printed on the back. Their journey takes them from their comfortable enclave on Paseo Linda Bonita in McMansionville into the seedier suburbs of Los Angeles.

And then the Torres-Thompson parents return home to find their children missing and sic the law on their illegal maid. And suddenly this woman who people used to look past without seeing, who only existed fuzzily in the background of family photographs, is front and center in the middle of a media shitstorm that encompasses the entire Torres-Thompson family.

Through the courtroom battle that ensues, Tobar shines light on every conceivable viewpoint regarding the immigration debate in a way that shows how well he understands all sides of the issue. It's all very interesting and compelling in that ripped-from-the-headlines way that Law & Order is supposed to be but actually isn't, because it sucks, and you see the million ways that people misunderstand each other every day but how they depend on each other, too, and how this dynamic weaves a fabric of bitterness, paranoia, loyalty, and hatred.

It's all very well done and GOD KNOWS I love me a good courtroom drama, but the best part of this book, the meat and drink of this book, is the journey undertaken by Araceli and the Torres-Thompson boys. As they roam the alleyways and ghettos of Los Angeles, searching for old Abuelo Torres, the narrative shifts so that we slip seamlessly into the lives and thoughts of everybody they encounter in this rich, Joycian way, sometimes for only a few lines, sometimes for longer.

The effect is a panoramic view of a certain place in a certain time, seen through the eyes of the African-American old-timer who remembers when the city had "a proper stiffness to it," to the Princeton-bound daughter of a Mexican-American councilman, to the Korean boutique owner whose rich uncle has bankrolled her dreams of success in America, all the while expecting her to fail. What Steinbeck did for the Salinas Valley region of California, Tobar does for L.A.: defines it, familiarizes it, guides us into it and lets us see it for ourselves. Araceli and Scott and Maureen are the three main characters in this story, but the story itself is that of a city in flux, a "very strange North American circus" in which none of the actors know their roles because their roles are rapidly changing.

When you live far away, you never associate California with clutter. When Araceli was in a messy home, when the beds were not made and the dishes were left unscrubbed, she invariably felt pangs of disappointment and loss....Now Araceli could see that this place called California was like a home that had fallen in a state of obsolescence and neglect...She wanted to take all the exhausted American people she'd seen and give them freshly starched clothes to wear and she wanted to take all the misplaced objects and put them back where they belonged. [p. 350-351].

Hector Tobar won a Pulitzer Prize for Journalism in 1992 (when he was um, TWENTY FREAKING NINE, which means I have exactly FOUR days left to win one if I'm going to follow his life plan) for his coverage of the Rodney King race riots for the L.A. Times. Nobody seems to be predicting it yet, but I think he should probably win another in 2012--this time for Fiction. "Distinguished fiction by an American author, preferably dealing with American life?" The Barbarian Nurseries is all about American life--from the perspective of both "real" Americans and those who linger in their shadows with deep, rich dreams of their own.

Have you read Tobar's book? What did you think of it? I'd love to hear your thoughts so comment or post a link to your review.

Solstice

Every year, on the longest night of the year, we gather with friends to banish darkness.


A painted round pinata represents the darkness--we took turns striking it with a hatchet. Inside, was this gold orb, filled with money. We beat the shit out it, too. If you want to see a group of adults hit the floor as rowdy kids, this is the way to do it.

(Hey, times are hard out there. I collected enough Sacajawea dollars to put a gallon in my tank and throw a load of laundry on for good measure.)

We welcomed back the light. This involves fire, in the form of illegal fireworks, purchased by our hosts in Pennsylvania and smuggled into their Virginia backyard.


They're lucky they have cool neighbors.



Lulu spent a lot of time looking up--at twinkly lights arranged in constellations overhead, at streamers of fireworks, at faces of friends. At the smoky, empty expanse of flat, dark sky.

My parka still smells like a campfire burning with handfuls of sage.


We'll know, in the coming days and weeks, as the darkness abates by a few moments every day, as the days grow longer and the nights shorter, whether our efforts worked, whether we broke the banner of darkness and safely called back light and warmth for another year.


In the meantime, we'll revel in cold air on our cheeks, cold beers on our lips, and a light we can pass from friend to friend.

A best of 2011 list and whole lot of hair

It's that time of year again...for people all over the book-blogosphere to assemble their Best Of lists. I love reading Best Of lists. And I usually like writing them. I hoard books from January to December, little treasures, saving them up to tell you about at the end of the year. But this year, it's just not happening for me. Probably because this year, the bulk of what I read were embarrassing, nonliterary fluff books. The kind you read while soaking in the bathtub, when you are so tired that it doesn't matter if your eyes slide over a paragraph or two.

So I have nothing to offer you guys this year unless you will take:

The Top 5 Most Embarrassing Nonliterary Fluffy Bathtub Books I Read in 2011 but Totally Actually Secretly or Even Nonsecretly Enjoyed.

1. Sing You Home by Jodi Picoult: A woman goes through IVF. Loses her baby. Divorces her husband. Falls in love with another woman; wants to have a baby with said woman using frozen embryo from IVF with husband. Bigoted husband will not relinquish custody of embryo because he hates the gays. Court battle ensues. Lots of purple, Picoultish I carried her heart in my hands lest it fall and shatter prose. Comes with CD of folk songs to be played at the end of each chapter for added emotional manipulation. I cried. Of course I cried. How could you not cry?

2. Odd Mom Out and Mrs. Perfect by Jane Porter: The embarrassment from these books comes from their teeth-squeakingly awful titles and their pink, shoe-emblazoned covers. Give them more serious-sounding titles and not-so-pink covers and they would not have made the list. In Odd Mom Out, a single mom moves to Seattle and is bullied by a group of snoburban bitches. Mrs. Perfect tells the story behind one of those bitches' snobbishness, reveals the cracks in her "perfect" life. Really insightful writing; still would not have ventured to read it except for on Kindle, where nobody could see my shame.

3. The Luxe by Anna Godberson: What if Gossip Girl was set in 1920s Manhattan? Yeah. It ruled.

4. Something Dangerous by Penny Vincenzi: The second in a trilogy of books recounting the torrid adventures of one family from WWI through the 1950s. There is cuckolding. There is war. There is sex. There are Nazis. There is almost-incest. I described this book in great detail at a party a few months ago and when I had finished people blinked for a while and then tried to talk about something else but it didn't really work and finally they just trickled away from me to go start fresh with someone else.

5. The Scottish Prisoner by Diana Gabaldon: I am only about 10 pages into this one. But it still makes the list. Because: Jamie Fraser, Lord John Grey, time-travel, inappropriate homosexual advances, secret dalliances, writhing muscles, AYE SASSENACH. And I am loving every bit of it.

So that's my very unglamorous reading year in review. Ring out, wild bells, et cetera, et cetera. I promise that in 2012 I will read some David Foster Wallace. Or Proust. Or something.

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I got my hair done yesterday at a new place. With a new stylist. So we had to do that whole "getting to know all about you" thing that you do when you get a new stylist. We shared tidbits of our lives back and forth and I mentioned that I had a new baby and Shanti, this tall, willowy woman, mentioned SHE had a baby too and I was like, "What like a year and a half ago?" and she swiveled her slim hips and was all, "No, in September. When did you have yours?" And I looked all 110 lbs of her up and down and looked at my stomach lumping over the band of my yoga pants in the mirror.

And then my mouth opened and I said "June." Because I guess my brain thought that sounded better than "March?" Because if my baby is six months old instead of nine, I have an excuse for those lingering 10 (20) lbs that I haven't yet shed? It's weird--up until now, I haven't really worried or even thought about the leftover baby weight besides trusting, in a passing sort of way, that it will go away eventually. I usually think I look hot. So I don't know why I said what I said. But I have decided to blame my saying it on the patriarchy (they're used to it by now).

The worst part was, Shanti did an excellent job on my hair. The color is so great. And when I told her I didn't want too much length taken off my hair, she listened. And she made the ends all flippy. And I'm going to go back to her, and I'm going to have to forever remember to make Lu three months younger than she actually is lest I give myself away and violate the sacred trust between stylist and stylee.

A tangled web, indeed.

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Speaking of hair, Lulu finally has it. Or some of it. At least, enough of it for this:


And while I fall firmly on the side of NOT reinforcing gender roles and my parenting tactics for a baby boy would be pretty much identical to those for a baby girl, this was SUCH a "Whoa, I have a daughter" moment for me and I loved it.

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Since I'm apparently putting all my hair-related anecdotes in one place, I'll add that this week, I finally badgered James into shaving the prized Fu Manchu moustache that he's had since this time last year. He emerged from the bathroom, clean shaven...and Lulu began to howl. Like full on STRANGER, STRANGER, ALERT CPS howls. She didn't recognize him. She huddled into my shoulder and cringed away from the smooth-faced stranger and would not let him hold her and it was all very traumatic. Especially for James.

It took a few days, but in the end, she has warmed up to him again. Only--and I would not tell James this--but I am not entirely sure she knows that he's the same Daddy as before. I think she's like, "Welp, the Shaggy Dude seems to have gone...this guy seems cool, though. He gives me bottles and stuff." It's sort of sad but also reassuring in a weird way--if I ever get hit by a truck or something, they can just stuff a sweatshirt with my old socks and paint a face on a volleyball and voila: Out with Boobs Lady and In with Wilson Mommy.

Of course James is lobbying hard to bring the moustache back and restore equilibrium in our small child's universe. To which I say: nice try. Long live Clean-Shaven Daddy. Lu likes his dimples.


And so do I.

Crafting: take two

After last week's success, I might have gotten a little overly confident in my crafting abilities.

This week, I'm introducing Lulu to new textures. I sit her in her highchair and hand her an ice cube to bat around the table top. I give her a plateful of cooked spaghetti noodles to sop through. Today, I was going to fill a tupperware with warm water and let her splash around for a while. But then I spied a tube of kid-friendly, nontoxic paint in the pantry and decided that we could combine art and science into a perfect-mother storm of learning and fun!

On the spur of the moment, I decided we would make tags for Christmas presents. I drew rows of fir trees onto a piece of tagboard and dolloped some red paint onto a plate. Then I dipped Lu's hands into it and sat back to watch her work.

I kind of thought we'd end up with some charming hand-drawn trees with little, delicate finger-dotted ornaments on them.

That is not exactly what happened.


I didn't even think about the onimousness of my choice of paint color until James came in the room and shouted HOLY FUCK CALL 911.

I'm still going to use the tags. I think they make a statement.

A statement that says: It's the most MURDEROUS time of the year.

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'Tis the season to be charitable! Don't forget to participate in Scholastic's One Million Bookprints for One Million Books campaign and help give a book to a child in need this holiday season.

Books that shaped my life

Live on The View today, Whoopi Goldberg kicked off Scholastic’s “One Million Bookprints for One Million Books” Campaign – an initiative to donate one million books to kids in need through the literacy nonprofit Reach Out and Read. By joining Scholastic’s online book community YouAreWhatYouRead.com, you can make a Bookprint – a list of 5 books that have shaped your life. And for every Bookprint, Scholastic Book Clubs will donate a book. It is that easy to make a difference this holiday season!

My Bookprint:

1. Anne of Green Gables by Lucy Maud Montgomery
2. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
3. We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates
4. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
5. The Courage of their Convictions by Peter Irons

This was a fun list to make, because I got to sit and remember for a while. I made three very good friends because of Anne, and I love the story of our friendship. It makes me smile. I remember shaking with anxiety in my fifth grade classroom as Meg confronted IT in A Wrinkle in Time and the tears of relief I cried in front of everybody when she resisted him. Moby-Dick reminds me of the first class that James and I took together in college (American Lit from 1760-1865) when we were first dating. Holding hands under the desktop can make even that long boring chapter on the anatomy of the sperm whale seem romantic.

Mulvaneys was one of my first forays into contemporary fiction, made when I was 14 or so, and it shook me to the core with its grimness and its quiet joy; Courage made me realize--really realize--that ordinary people could change big things, if they tried.

Don't forget to go over to Scholastic today to create an account and share your Bookprint. (And then come back and share your Bookprint--and the stories behind your picks--here!)

The Case for the Only Child by Susan Newman, Ph.D.

If there is one thing I have learned as a parent so far, it is that people will ask you some SERIOUSLY intrusive shit about your personal choices. Are you breastfeeding? Are you going to sleep train her? Are you going to stay home with her? These are all potential minefields and must be handled with care. Luckily, though, I am confident enough in my parenting choices to answer these questions firmly and then not give a rat's ass if I get any static. You think supplementing with formula is akin to poisoning my daughter? Tough tootie, lady in the Safeway produce aisle. Deal with it.

But there is one question that pops up again and again, and that is: when do you think you'll have another? At first I didn't get it, and I thought they meant another crying jag or shot of tequila. FOR THE LATTER I HOPE SOON. But then I realized: they meant baby. When do you think you'll have another baby?

Sometimes I say, "Oh, someday." Sometimes I say, "Let me tell you what it feels like to stare at the same patch of wall every day for 13 weeks, to see your brand new baby attached to wires that beep and ping when she STOPS BREATHING. I am never, never doing this shit again in a million years." The response? "You really need to give your daughter a sibling. You don't want her to be lonely." Sometimes I say that we really want to adopt, thinking that will make everybody happy. But even that was not enough to put off one interrogator from her quest for a biological sibling for my little girl. "What if she needs a KIDNEY TRANSPLANT one day?"

Hello, I am Cath. This is my husband, James, my daughter, Lulu, and my other daughter, Backup Organs.

But most of the time, my answer to the question? Is "I don't know." As in, I don't know when or I don't know whether. Maybe one kid is enough. Maybe two would be nice. How can I know? How can I be sure?

"Dr. Susan Newman provides a guide to help you decide for yourself how to best plan your family and raise a single child," read the blurb for The Case for the Only Child. Caitlin over at Chaotic Compendiums hosted a giveaway and I entered to win, thinking this book would have the answers I wanted. And I won, and it came in the mail, and I sat down with my highlighter like a good former law student and I began to look for those answers.

The Case for the Only Child is a summary of Dr. Susan Newman's twenty years of experience studying only children and their families. In it, she debunks myths and stereotypes associated with only children--that they are lonely, isolated, spoiled, selfish, introverted--by presenting information from sociological studies and from 200 interviews she conducted of families with singletons in many different geographic and socioeconomic situations to show that only children are actually the "least predictable subgroup in [the] family dynamics model, precisely because they have no siblings."

The book was most interesting for me when we heard from parents and singletons in their own words. But these instances were sadly glossed over in most cases. "Anne Marie had gestational diabetes," Newman writes, "And had to give herself insulin injections. As a result, she is sure: 'I can't do a baby again.'" My ears (eyes?) pricked up when I read this, and I was hoping for more, but Newman moves on to a description of a research effort by British scientists. I would have liked to know more about Anne Marie, her pregnancy, how she feels about her decision today, if she ever doubted herself--it would have been so much more compelling than percentages and statistics that pepper these pages. Similarly, I would have liked to have known more about the lives of only children--as kids, teens, adults. In their own words.

Did this book convince me to stop at one? No. Did it help me learn to deal with "pressure from friends, relatives, and strangers to have a second child?" No. But that's not the book's fault; it's because people are dumb. I can't imagine that if telling somebody that my child would literally starve to death without formula wouldn't change their minds, that a heap of statistics from psychological studies would be more convincing for them.

Did the book raise some interesting questions and change the way I think about singleton families? Yes. But did it give the answers I was looking for? Am I any more decided on the issue than I was before? Do I feel like I REALLY understand the singleton experience?

Not really.

However, I did appreciate knowing that if I do decide not to have any more children, Lu will join an exclusive club of "singular sensations" comprised of such auspicious members as Indira Gandhi and Sarah Michelle Gellar. That, in itself, is almost reason enough to stop at one. I wonder if they have a secret handshake? Or superpower rings? A battle cry? "We are our parents' sole heirs...GO SINGLETONS!"

Laughing all the way to probate court, bitches.

Gwyneth Paltrow reads Dr. Seuss

What Would Gwyneth Do is one of my new favorite blogs. In honor of it, I give you Goopy reading Horton Hears a Who to a pack of schoolchildren.

"Seriously--you'll never get invited to party with Bey and Jay in THAT hat."

Weekend Playlist: Dreaming of a punk Christmas

Making a bookish holiday wreath

I said there would be crafting this Christmas. Nobody believed me. Well, hold on to your hats, bitches, because yesterday I TRIMMED A WREATH.

Isn't there something so Austenian about the idea of trimming a wreath? Eliza could not respond to his proposal because she was absorbed in the task of trimming a wreath. We queued up Christmas carols and had hot chocolate and trimmed the shit out of this wreath. It's my awesome bookish Christmas snowflake wreath, and I am insanely proud of it, like a little kid with a misshapen clay jug. LOOK MOM LOOK MOM SEE WHAT I DID!

Would you like to follow along at home?


You will need:

• A wreath
• Ribbon
• Scissors
• Hot glue gun
• Book
• Gold paint (optional)

I chose to work with Diana Gabaldon's Dragonfly in Amber, the third(?) book in the Outlander series. I know David is hyperventilating at the thought that I did harm to a book, so I want to be totally open about the fact that this book was already missing a chapter owing to a tragic bathtub accident and was destined for the recycle bin. (And I have another copy, so no worries).

Step 1: Tear pages from book. Cut into squares of varying sizes. Make snowflakes. There is a tutorial here.

You can pull pages at random, or you can seek out certain passages that you like. For example, in this particular project, I flipped through to find pages from as many of the sex scenes as possible.

Even warmer than the skin of his belly, his penis was silken under the touch of my stroking thumb, pulsing strongly with each beat of his heart. [p. 530]

Because nothing puts me in a holiday mood more than the thought of a silken penis. (Also, I think we might have just discovered why I own multiple copies of this book.)

Other books that would make a similarly festive statement: Tropic of Cancer, Portnoy's Complaint, Lolita. Anything by Alan Hollinghurst.

Step 2: Make snowflakes for a while. There's really no set number you need to have. James and I cut snowflakes for a while and gossiped, and as we worked and gossiped, sorted our snowflakes into three piles: pretty, OK, and abomination unto God. When we had about nine or ten in the pretty pile, we moved on.

Lulu was very helpful in disposing of the other two piles.

Step 3: Paint snowflakes with the optional gold paint. Use a light touch--you want the words to show through so that holiday cheer and your own ingeniousness may be spread unto all.

Step 4: Affix snowflakes to wreath with hot glue gun. There are, sadly, no pictures of this step, as I was too busy dealing with my $2 glue gun, which decided to leak copiously all over the floor, my hands, and my hair. Like a very overactive silken glue-gun [see above].

Step 5: Put salve on burn marks. Attach bow to wreath.

Step 6: Hang wreath on door. Admire handiwork. Wait in hallway, primping branches, until neighbor comes by to check mail. Clear throat and very pointedly wait for them to acknowledge your beautiful, spangly wreath. Then be all nonchalant, "Oh, thanks, yeah, I made it. Isn't it great? NO, REALLY, ISN'T IT?"

Step 7: Repeat Step 6 for UPS man and food delivery guy.

It's not perfect. I'm not opening an Etsy store anytime soon. But still, it makes me ridiculously happy.

Fahoo, fores, indeed.

And a partridge in a poetree

A couple of weeks ago, I went out for pollo with Godfather Patrick, and at some point during our outing, the topic of conversation turned to Dorothy Parker (as it is wont whenever I am around) and he had never heard of her (!) and so I tried to describe her to him.

"She was a writer and a poet," I said. He'd never read anything by her.

"She reviewed books," I tried. He nodded.

"She said a lot of funny things," is what I settled on. "Men don't make passes/at girls who wear glasses? That was her. She said that."

Ah, yes. He'd heard that.

But that doesn't really sum up the total of Parker's parts. And now, weeks later, I have figured out the perfect way to describe Parker's career. Here is what I should have said: she was a BOOK BLOGGER. Only computers hadn't been invented yet, and so she had to post her reviews in magazines.

It's kind of perfect, right? And totally true? I've been imagining all morning the triumph Dorothy Parker would make of Twitter and Blogger and all that. Her Klout score? Would be off the charts. I'm trying to imagine any other commentator of that time translating that well into our modern setting. Do you think crotchety old William F. Buckley could condense his snark into a pithy 140 characters? Dorothy could. I know it.

She was a book blogger. She is our patron saint. She is the mother of us all.

___________

I am in love with this story I read on NPR's site. Over the last year, somebody in Edinburgh was leaving these delicate, beautiful paper sculptures made out of books in libraries and museums all over the city, "a small gesture" of thanks for their continued existence.

A "poetree" at the Scottish Poetry Library...

A dragon hatching at the Scottish Storytelling Centre...

A tea party setup at the Edinburgh book festival. Inside the cup is the message: "Nothing beats a nice cup of tea or coffee and a really great BOOK."

The Phantom, whose identity is still unknown, left 10 intricate sculptures in all, "in support of libraries, books, words and ideas" and obviously of the heft and weight of real-life, hold-them-in-your-hand books in an age of digital publication. That's punk as fuck.

You can see all the sculptures here.

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Yesterday, this happened.

Yes, that is my EIGHT MONTH OLD baby standing up. And reaching for my DSLR, which I had to whisk out of the way of her clumsy, groping hands.


I'm not ready for this. We still haven't babyproofed. When she was in the NICU, they scared us silly with warnings about delayed developmental milestones. Lu's adjusted age is only six months. She hasn't even crawled yet.

I'm spending a large part of today putting things up high, where neither Lu (nor I, sigh) will be able to reach them.

We're also crafting! Check back tomorrow to see the finished product, and to hear the tragic story of how I burned my whole house down with a hot glue gun.

Free Air by Sinclair Lewis

When people find out I am a book blogger, there is one question they ask me over and over again (besides "what are you reading?") and that is, "The Great American Novel: YOUR THOUGHTS?" And I always give the same answer. My pick for G.A.N. is not anything by Hemingway, with his turgid stories of Americans BEING AMERICAN or by Fitzgerald, with his flimsy, cruel aristocrats doing aristocratic thangs. I tell them that, in my opinion, it's Main Street, by Sinclair Lewis, and that I think Lewis is the Great American Novelist in that he covered many topics of importance to Americans, from race relations to capitalism to religion to the abuse of political power, as seen and experienced by Americans in many different walks of life, and including many, many lols.

And then I usually go off on a tangent about how perfect I think Lewis's career is as a whole in that his oeuvre reflects his own, shifting relationship with the concept of America. He starts out by writing books that embrace America in all its Americanness, and then he's snide and mocking of America in all its Americanness, and then he's disillusioned, and finally he moves into the cautionary tale with works like It Can't Happen Here and Kingsblood Royal. But underneath it all, there is always, this weirdly surprisingly sweet current of hope and possibility that amazing things can and will happen because America is an engine that is always moving forward.

Free Air is one of Lewis's early novels. It's not his first, but in my mind, it's the first in which Lewis does the Lewisy things we all love: the comedy, the satire, the mocking. It's also probably the first road-trip novel, written in 1919, set before WWI. It's a journey of self-discovery set against a backdrop of geographical discovery, sort of a prototypical, less stinky version of On the Road. The basis for the trip is one Henry Boltwood's politely talked-around nervous breakdown. It is decided that he needs a change of scenery, a fresh start, and so his young socialite daughter Claire sets out to drive them clear across the country from Brooklyn to Seattle.

When Claire and her father stop at a garage in Schonenstrom, Minnesota, mechanic Milt Dagget sees her and falls immediately in love. He decides on the spur of the moment to follow the Boltwoods to Seattle, in his own couplet, with his cat Vere de Vere as passenger. Milt's path crosses many times with the Boltwoods,' and a friendship between the young people is formed, which causes everybody to think long and hard and reverse themselves many times, back and forth, about things like class and status and education and occupation and what they've all been missing in their own tiny versions of America as they encounter America in its vastness.

The romance between Claire and Milt was charming. I am always surprised and delighted by the focus on romance in Lewis's works, and also by how well he seems to identify with and understand his female characters--but the real love story in this novel is Claire's burgeoning love affair with her country.

She did not desire gardens, then, nor the pettiness of plump terraced hills. She was in the Real West, and it was hers, since she had won it by her own plodding. Her soul--if she hadn't had one, it would immediately have been provided, by special arrangement, the moment she sat there--sailed with the hawks in the high thin air, and when it came down it sang hallelujahs, because the sagebrush fragrance was more healing than the piney woods, because the sharp-bitten edges of the buttes were coral and gold and basalt and turquoise...

The commie-hippie-liberalness of Lewis's writing is evident but not so subtle as his other works (which, actually, aren't entirely the most subtle to begin with). Lewis champions the Everyman Dagget, the average, everyday, hardworking Americans and is eager for Claire--and us--to know their dignity:

These were not peasants, these farmers...[Claire] could never again encounter without fiery resentment the Broadway peddler's faith that farmers invariably say "Waal, by heck." For she had spent an hour talking to one Dakota farmer, genial-eyed, quiet of speech. He had explained the relation of alfalfa to soil-chemistry; had spoken of his daughter, who taught economics in a state university...

Later, when Claire makes a remark about the humble origins of a waitress in a roadside cafe, Milt corrects her.

"Our waitress? Well, sort of. I understand she's professor of literature in some college," said Milt, in a matter of fact way.

And Claire exclaims (in Lewis's own voice): "There is an America! I'm glad I've found it!"

He does not, however, spare much in the way of charity for the Boltwoods, with their "imitation monocles" and "New York-London accents." And while I generally agree with Lewis about the shortcomings of the 99%, I would have liked some nuance or at least some of the indiscriminate mocking towards EVERYBODY that characterizes Lewis's later works.

And Free Air is clumsy in other ways: there's too much back and forth in the romance between Claire and Milt, the pacing is off, the book goes on too long, too long. There's not one character that isn't at least 85% caricatures, their worst parts and best parts illuminated, but not a lot of light cast on their in-between qualities. Still--these things are important, because in them, I can see Lewis's evolution as a writer. Main Street is, in many ways, Free Air written over again, only more finely honed, more merciless.

And Main Street wouldn't have been Main Street without Free Air, just as Babbitt wouldn't have been Babbitt without Main Street, and It Can't Happen Here wouldn't be what it is without Babbit... Free Air is the first link in the chain of Lewis's career. And just for that, it's easy to forgive its flaws.

Santa baby

Going to see Santa is one of my favorite things. Supporting deserving charities is another one of my favorite things! This weekend I got to get all "let me not to the marriage of true minds admit impediment" up in this hizzy and do both at once, which was my FAVORITE THING EVER.

Every year, the Montgomery County Humane Society has pet photos with Santa to raise money to benefit their shelters, and this year, we took our pet. People were all, "Oh, that's a nice dog, is she purebred?" Naw, she's a mutt. But we still love her.

Lulu took to Santa with a bit more aplomb than I did for at least the first six years of my life, as can be seen in a series of photos in which I am clinging to my mom's hand-off camera like a kid who's watched too many after-school specials on child abduction.

But this could have had something to do with how incredibly awesome this particular Santa was. That jolly, jolly face...don't you have the feeling you have seen it somewhere before?





















That's because you have! It's Godfather Dave, y'all! That beard, in the christening pics? It was for a good cause.

Godfather Patrick was on hand, too. Santa's enforcer. Don't let those twinkling eyes fool you. Santa don't take no shit.

As you can see, though, I've got the hookup. If you've been especially naughty this year, let me know. I'll put in a word.

________

DC metro area readers who would like a photo of their pet (or kid!) with the Santafather can get one at Sniffers Doggie Depot in Rockville this Saturday, December 10th, from 1:30-5:30 PM. No appointment necessary, packages start at $20, and it's for a good cause! More details here.

(If you go, be sure to cop a feel of Santa's beard. It's so soft. He uses special shampoo.)

Weekend Playlist: Like it's 1999

Rainbow Rowell's Attachments, which I reviewed yesterday, was set in 1999, and reading it really took me back. 1999 was my last year in high school; my first year in college. For the past day or so, I've been going through old yearbooks and emails, old AIM chats, and being nostalgic. And I needed a soundtrack.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Miss Constance Reader's NOW THAT'S WHAT I CALL RANDOM.



In 1999, my musical tastes were a pastiche of classic rock, folk, emo, and gateway punk. 1999 was the year I discovered Cole Porter. It was also the year of Rent. My Governor's School friends and I were obsessed with Rent. We would sit in Channelo's Pizza in Downtown Norfolk and sing Seasons of Love in six-part harmony, being obnoxious, as theatre kids are wont to be. My BFF Danielle and I would call each other and queue up various Smiths albums on our respective stereo systems so that we could listen to the same song at the same time. "1...2...3...GO!" During the summer, I'd leave my job as a camp counselor and drive to visit Dani at her job at Harris Teeter down at the beach. After leaving her, I always stopped and bought a CD at the little indie record store next door. Because even then, I was prudent with money.

I bought the Dropkick Murphys album in October, after discussing it with a tall, cute boy, a roommate of a classmate. He was cute, this boy, and I wanted to impress him. I guess it worked because four years later, he became Mrs. Constance Reader.

What were you listening to in 1999?

Friday thoughts

The cold that I had over Thanksgiving seems to have settled itself right in the center of my face, occasionally making brief reconnaissance expeditions into one or the other of my ears. It's a little bit like being underwater while somebody stabs you in the eardrum. My teeth know that something bad is happening, and are currently trying to ache themselves free from my jaw like rats jumping from the deck of a sinking ship.

An ear infection is such a present kind of pain. You really can't get away from it. I haven't had an ear infection as a grownup, but I used to get them ALL THE TIME as a kid. Having one now triggers a PTSD-like memory of writhing in my parents' bed in the middle of the night while my mother called the doctor and my father read to me to try to keep me calm.

He always chose books from the Disney Wonderful World of Knowledge series. Does anybody remember these? They were little mini-encyclopedias, each covering a different topic. I have an especially vivid memory of screaming in pain while dad read to me, soothingly, from the volume on different forms of transportation.


Could this be why I hate flying? Part of me thinks it is the whole fear of crashing and dying thing, but the other part of me is willing to believe this could be behind it.

______

This is mine and James's first year doing the whole Christmas card thing. Because we are slackers, we left it to the last possible moment. I planned on taking a picture of all of us posed somewhere all together but since I currently look like an extra in The Walking Dead, we offered up the baby as a focal point instead.

The template I picked had the words BE MERRY emblazoned along the bottom, so of course I wanted something in which Lulu looked, you know, merry.

And of course, in every picture, she gave me this face.

Stone cold. That's how I look when someone tries to make me ride in a plane.

I did enjoy sitting down and drawing up a list of people I wanted to send cards to. It made me happy to see the list get longer and longer, to think about all the people I love and all of the people who love me. There was a brief moment, leafing through my old address book, when I got teary, thinking of all the people I would love to send cards to but can't. My grandparents. James's. My friend in Colorado who doesn't want to be my friend anymore. Old teachers. People I lost touch with along the way.

But that isn't very festive and so I will end this blurb with some more outtakes from our photo session.


Because there is nothing more festive than a baby hell bent on eating her weight in mulch.

____

On a happier note, last night we got our tree. Usually, in our household, the tree-selection process is long and arduous and involves much consideration of the feelings of the tree (will it like us? Is it a homely tree? Will someone else be willing to take it if we don't? Because I do not want the tree to have died in vain.) But again, because I was feeling so bad, the entire experience took about 9 minutes. I jumped out of the car, picked the first tree I saw, and waited while the Home Depot guy lashed it to the top of our car. James isn't glad, per se, that I am sick, but he did express to me, in a nice way, that he appreciated the brevity of the experience.

I hung a few ornaments, but the bulk of my tree-decorating 2011 efforts consisted of sitting on the couch and directing James in the hanging of the ornaments. I was quite exacting. He rolled his eyes. But we can't have two sparkly icicles next to each other. They have to be interspersed! And we can't hang the giant camel next to the tiny GI Joe helicopter! The scale will be off! WHAT KIND OF A CAMEL IS BIGGER THAN A HELICOPTER?

Lulu is fascinated with it.

Are we done here, with the pictures? Because these twinkly lights aren't going to watch themselves.

For what it's worth, I like it, too. I think even Kelle Hampton would approve.

Attachments by Rainbow Rowell

I hate when my reading takes me through a span of good books. Because then I have to write good reviews of them, and they are dull. My bad reviews have so much more SNAP and MOXIE than my good reviews. And you guys know I'm not good with positivity. Snark is my element and I wanted to get back to my roots. I took Attachments out from the library and I planned to write an extra-snarky review of it even before I started reading just because I'm a bitch like that.

I tried really hard to find something in the book to tear apart--a character that seemed too character-y, some clumsy writing, an implausible plot point.

I could not do it. I loved this book. I know that you will all be very disappoint.

Attachments is pretty much the perfect novel, and I mean that in the way that THIS is the book that I have been trying (and failing) my whole life to write. You know how all authors have the idea of the perfect book in their head, the one that they dream of getting out and putting down on paper? Something like this one is mine. There's a whole heap of characters that are loveable without being too too utterly so, there's snappy dialogue, there are tender and heartfelt friendships, and there is even a quirky love story. You see how I left the love story element until the end? That's because it isn't so much a love story as it is a perfectly paced aligning of events that bring you to a conclusion in which two people fall in love. The love story isn't the point and I love that, too.

The plot is as thus: Beth Fremont and Jennifer Scribner-Snyder are colleagues at the Courier, a Nebraska newspaper. It is 1999, and the internet is still new enough that people have just learned to use it for procrastination during work hours and corporate overlords have just learned to be wary of people using the internet for procrastination during work hours. Beth and Jennifer spend their workdays writing back and forth about B's noncommittal musician boyfriend and J's uncertainty about having a baby with her husband Mitch. Lincoln O'Neill is an IT tech who spends his nights monitoring their email accounts. He's supposed to read only enough of the emails to tell whether the employees are misusing company internet privileges, but he is drawn in by Beth and Jennifer's witty missives (as was I, Lincoln--as was I) and suddenly he can't stop snooping into their shizz.

And then Lincoln falls in love with Beth, but it's too late, he's already that creepy dude who has been violating her privacy for months on end and he's pretty much doomed any chance of a relationship with Beth before he's even seen her face.

I loved Lincoln. I loved Lincoln as much as he loves Beth. Which is very odd, considering that he is actually a little creeptastic and what he's doing is more than a little offputting. But he is such a good, simple, lonely guy that you understand why he is drawn in by the friendship between the women and Beth and Jennifer really are so fucking funny that you're drawn in, too, and then you're no better than Lincoln. You know he should stop, but you keep turning the pages, and it's hard to judge then, isn't it? I see what you did there, Rainbow Rowell!

I loved Beth and Jennifer, too. We go inside Lincoln's head and we experience his thoughts, but all we get of Beth and Jennifer are their emails for most of the story. Still, I felt like I knew them just as much from how deftly Rowell reveals their weirdnesses and insecurities through their writing to each other:

I have a closet full of dead dresses. Prom dresses. Bridesmaid dresses. I was prepared to scoop them up in big fluffy armfuls and throw them into the Dumpster outside my building. I was going to light a cigarette in their flames, like I was the cool girl in Heathers.

But I couldn't. Because I'm not that girl. I'm not the Winona Ryder character in any movie. Jo from Little Women, just for example, never would have started laying all those dresses out on her bed and trying them on, one by one....

And while I sort of TOTALLY ADORED the Beth/Lincoln romance angle, it was the friendship between B&J that really charmed me. I loved the way their friendship was so obviously one of those work friendships begun out of necessity and boredom and convenience grown into something bigger, and I loved watching them start to realize that.

Beth to Jennifer: I might have to see if there's a What to Expect When Your Crabby Best Friend is Expecting book...

Jennifer to Beth: It's nice of you to say I'm your best friend.

Beth to Jennifer: You are my best friend, dummy.

Jennifer to Beth: Really? You're my best friend. But I always assumed that somebody else was your best friend, and I was totally okay with that. You don't have to say that I'm your best friend just to make me feel good.

Beth to Jennifer: You're so lame.

Jennifer to Beth: That's why I figured somebody else was your best friend.

I guess since this is already a big love-fest, I should just come right out and say that I love Rainbow Rowell, too. I love her book, I love her characters. I love her springy, bouncy author-photo curls. I wish I worked in an office at a newspaper with her, and we could write back and forth all day, and she would tell me what shampoo she uses and I could ask whether "Rainbow Rowell" is really her real name.

The only thing I hate is that this is Rainbow Rowell's first book, which means that after reading it, there is not a long past oeuvre of her work for me to immediately devour. I hate that her second book is only available in England and that it's going to cost me something like $40 to have it airmailed here.

And I hate that it's going to take a WEEK for me to get it. Seriously--didn't we send a man to the moon in like a day and a half?

Eucch. All this positivity. Someone recommend me a shitty book, STAT. Hasn't Philippa Gregory published anything new lately?