What I did over spring break

What did you do for spring break?

It's a question I heard asked a few dozen times this week, and not by my son's teacher for an assignment (though my son recently brought home a creature he drew, with phalluses for nearly every body part, which leads me to wonder what assignment prompts they do have).

The moms ask each other.

We moms drop off our progeny and then line up side-by-side at the playground fence, watching, waving dutifully and conversing in varying states of wakefulness. It's like King of the Hill or South Park where they all line up and talk, only the topics are less interesting ("Really? Sale on American AND cheddar at Fry's?"), and I'm sometimes even less eloquent than Boomhauer, depending on whether the migraine fairy has visited that night/morning.


I'm already at a disadvantage here. I parked next to a fellow-mother-acquaintance-friend this morning. She opened the sliding door on her spotless, scratchless, rustless, cat-piss-on-the-tires-less, brand new van and ... wait, no. She didn't open the door; it opened its-frickin-self, like some kind of Star Trek door. Anyway, I got out, helped my son out, and walked around to reattach the passenger-side mirror, which falls off about once a trip and thereafter hangs by its cords like some kind of sad, redneck ornament. We walked our kids in and I was happy to notice that her son and mine were similarly well-groomed, though I'd be willing to bet hers hadn't weaseled out of a bath last night and wasn't secretly wearing two different socks that only matched above the sneakers.

As our kids sprinted off, she smoothed her mint-green cardigan over a pearlescent blouse, and sort of fluffed it out over her Capri pants. I ... well, I don't own a cardigan or anything that could be rightly termed a blouse, and my calves' disobliging habit of not tapering at all pretty much rules out Capris. But I wore that ASU T-shirt and jean shorts. Her hair did this thing that looked sort of like an elaborate frosting swirl and sort of like an ornate piece of jewelry, but still left it looking shiny. Mine was in the ol' standby ponytail. Her feet were perfectly pedicured, slender little French tips to the last toe. Mine ... let's just say I don't have a desire to draw attention to my feet.

And it's not for an office; she goes back home just like me. So already I'm feeling less-than-successful in the effort-making department and wifeyness/momminess in general.

And then the bragathon starts. And let me tell you, guys don't hold a candle to our pissing contests.

"So, what did you do over Spring Break?" Perfect Mom asked.

"Well, we taught our martial arts class most of last week, but we made time to go to the Hilton in Sedona, after a ton of walking and shopping. They have flat-screen televisions there now," said Sporty Mom, who doesn't dress as impeccably as Perfect Mom but looks like what would happen if Angelina Jolie and Jessica Biel had a baby.

"We went camping. And hunting! It was great. Our youngest took his first big animal," said Renaissance Mom, who near as I can tell has done every activity in existence with her three kids. I was at the other end of our row, which was good because I was too tired to keep the distaste from my face when she described searching for a photo devoid enough of gore so her little one could show off his kill. I am an avid non-fan of recreational hunting, and tried to remain politely impassive as the other mothers voiced admiration. I passed the time entertaining thoughts of a Celebrity Death Match-style throw down between Renaissance Mom and PETA Mom, a mother from David's old school; and also by silently thanking the registration gods that my animal-activist son was in another class and wouldn't be scarred for life by today's show and tell.

The pissing contest continued. Disneyland (whoosssssh), Six Flags (pissss), England (foreign piss!), thirteen-kid sleepovers (actual piss! Beat that!), Tiki parties, day camps.

"So what did you do?" Perfect Mom finally asked me.

"Eh, we just stayed around the house mostly," I demurred. "Harry Potter marathon. Playing in the backyard. We went to the Riparian Preserve a few times, did some hiking."

"Oh, that's ... nice," one of them said. "Must be nice to just step back and stay at home for a change. Oh, did I tell you about the fusion food at that rooftop cantina?"

But it's not for a change, I wanted to say. That's how we have fun. Pretty much always.

Sure, about once a year we do the big-V Vacation thing. Sea World, the beach (which is way exotic for Arizonans), ocean kayaking (which couldn't be described as a vacation experience so much as an ordeal, at least the way we did it), that whole bit. We're looking at maybe going to Hawaii some time.

But most of the time our time off is, well, off. Relaxing. It made me think: Am I being too slack? Sure, overscheduling sucks, but aren't you supposed to want to cram as much into your time with your kids as possible?

That's the thing, though. I feel like we do that. We didn't really do much over spring break. We stayed at the house. Read a bunch of books. Watched a bunch of movies (or the same few, a bunch of times over). Went to the park, went on some walks, played in the back yard.

Or maybe I don't realize how much we did. I'm taken in by the argument that proximity-to-house equals loser-vacation.

We saw the sun set every single day. We found ladybugs and they crawled on our faces. We discovered a tree where the cormorants at the preserve like to roost, and we stood there as the sun set and painted the sky orange and pink, watching and listening to them squabble over perches and burp at each other. (Ever heard a cormorant? They don't chirp; they burp. Grab yourself a seven-year-old and find a cormorant. It's good for an hour of laughter, at least.)

We listened to the Canada geese honk as they flew in formation in the evening. We watched egrets; their white primary feathers forming aprons around their forms and glowing almost a painful white as the sun lit them; skim the water as they pulled back to land, necks folding and unfolding in graceful curves. We watched the light play through the trees and the impressionist flowers and grasses, and saw it hit on the glaring red flashes of blackbird shoulders as they called for mates. We feed the geese and ducks.

We saw Saturn through the local observatory telescope, looking as it won't for another fourteen years. The planet's rings are wide but thin, so as the earth passes through Saturn's equatorial plane you can see just a faint line as you get an edge-on view of the rings, and their diminished glow allows Saturn's moons to show more vividly. David didn't want to stop looking. He still hasn't stopped talking about it.

We pulled weeds, and pulled weeds, and pulled weeds. Which doesn't seem like a particularly great spring break activity, but if you happen to be a bug lover, and if your mom's lack of diligence in the yard has turned it into a conglomeration of every arthropod native to Arizona, it's great fun. We found orb spiders, aphids (which explains the ladybugs), rainbow-colored beetles, and grasshoppers in every color imaginable. We'd never seen yellow grasshoppers. We're watching a resident spider as she grows and molts and snacks on crane flies.

We had kicked off spring break with a party for my son's birthday, which was only attended by a few kids (the rest were undoubtedly busy getting passports or firearms), but was full of much sweaty play and cake and Transformers paraphernalia. A few days before, at his request, I had taken him to Chuck E. Cheese, where we spent 30 bucks to win a 25-cent toy and left smelling like feet and pizza, and he had a blast (despite the place housing his one phobia: Chuck E. himself, who, blessedly, never shows up).

We ate cheese sandwiches every day, always on fresh bread with cheddar, Swiss, AND American, the good kind, which was in fact on sale at Fry's. We drank the fancy juice that comes in boxes. We stayed up late every night. We looked at flies' wings and cat hair and leaf cells through the microscope and we played light sabers.

"Mom?" he asked the night of our last day off.

"Hmm?"

"Whenever I'm sad I try to think of you, like what we did today and yesterday. Sometimes when I'm happy too. Sometimes I think of other things instead, but then it always makes me think of you anyway. I like that."

We did nothing for spring break.

And everything.

Things I don't love

I need to have some regular blog feature.

My friend, Mary over at No Titles, is great with blog features. She's started a Wednesday feature called the Nonfictionist in which she interviews us writerly sorts. The latest installment features yours truly, though I'm preceded by Tom French, Pulitzer-winner author and all-around incredible guy; and Leslie F. Miller, whose awesome "mosaic of cakeness" book, Let Me Eat Cake, is due out April 14. My inclusion with these two makes me proud. Also, it makes me realize I've gotta get/keep crackin'.

Mary's also got a Thursday feature she usually does, entitled Things I Love Thursday, or TiLT. I think at some point she mentioned I and other bloggers ought to take up the feature on our own blogs, which I mentioned to a friend.

"But what would be the point?" he asked.

"What do you mean?"

"I mean," he said, "you kinda love, well, everything. Even things you don't love, you love."

"That's not true!"

"Two words: Battlefield Earth."

He's right, of course. I have the hardest time not loving something. I spent a good twenty minutes photographing a fly on a pile of garbage one day. I have an even harder time writing about it. Even bad-at-the-time experiences, like almost dying in childbirth, only occur to me as things to cover because they end so nicely. And then there's the sunsets and kiddy converstaions, and well... Yeah. Rose-colored glasses have permanently fused to my eyes. And I'm happy about that too. Maybe Things I Love would be a little superfluous.

The one time I don't love everything is online. Ignorant morons. Hateful morons. Morons among those I love, about whose moronic beliefs I was heretofore blissfully unaware. I mean, ugh. So that's how I'll balance it, at least today. If I love doing it (I love everything, but it IS online now, so you never know) maybe it can be a feature. Maybe, hmmm, Links I Can't Help Endlessly, Needfully Scorning. Or LICHENS. (Lichen, in case you didn't know, is a composite organism of fungus and a photosynthetic partner such as algae. They love each other, as my son says. And we love them. See how this sappiness works?)

So here are a few things I don't love, either ridiculous in link or in nature of what it covers.

* Needing to make one's point via lack of compassion, and/or blatant idiocy. No matter what my opinion on most issues, I'm more than willing to listen to the other side. But please. Condemning condoms as something that makes AIDS worse? Quashing the teaching of science in science class because your faith isn't strong enough to stand up to reality? Feeling vindicated, even HAPPY that several of one person's family members died in a tragic plane crash? You've lost me.

* The International Federation of Competitive Eating. Came upon it the other day. Pretty self-explanatory.

* The ridiculous fixation with Obama's use of a teleprompter. Do people have nothing to say on the substance of Obama's words? Do they think other presidents haven't used a teleprompters and speechwriters? (Actually, Obama is involved in writing a lot of his own speeches.) Was this better? Seriously, I don't see how this is news at all.

* Hate. It increases with things like fear and uncertainty and, gasp, differences, which most people seem to take as staples of continuing to live but which cause a sizeable minority to lash out with righteous contempt and sans brains. It's bad enough when the real nutjobs trot out their usual brand of hate, and bad enough that the recession and having a biracial president is bringing them out of the woodwork. But now I get the occasional e-mail from an acquaintance about stocking up on guns for one reason or another, always something to the effect of "It's time to fight back." It's an us-versus-them message. Sorry, e-mailers. No. I'm part of them. So are you. There is a middle ground between homogeny and all-out war.

* LOLcats. Still don't care about them.

* Perfectly intelligent people believing totally batshit-insane things. I just read something from someone (who really should know much better) about how the Illuminati secretly engineered the First, Second, and coming Third World Wars. Really? I mean, can't you at least be more creative in your conspiracy theories? And Boston Latin School's headmaster had to officially tell people that there are not, in fact, vampires at the school (leading to such irresistable headlines as "Headmaster sucks life out of rumors" and "Boston school drives stake through vampire talk"). What really gets me is that in both cases it's otherwise normal, reasonably intelligent people believing these things. What is it that makes otherwise sane people idiots? The company of other willing participants?

* Lazy faith. Don't have time to pray? Sign up to have a computer do it for you. Please. Whatever your beliefs, this is ridiculous.

That's all I've got for now. I'll get funnier and less preachy next time, hopefully. Until then, here's something you can't help but love, for good measure:

Looking back

Since I've started blogging at least semi-regularly, I've begun to get requests. I'm one of only a few bloggers among my offline acquaintances, and so it was kind of slow going at first. Blogging. Um, sure. But in the months I've been active, blogging's picked up in popularity among even the uninitiated, and I like to think I've also hit a stride of sorts. So it's my thing now, and I get requests. They take three forms, with some overlap -- the topical ("You have to write on such-and-such issue!"); the experiential ("Come on! When are you gonna write about when you: forgot your pants/hiked the Grand Canyon/got mugged for your trash?"); or the writerly ("I loved reading your essay. You should so post it!").

I find the last one particularly flattering, being a writer and all. But I always feel kind of like it's, I don't know, cheating. I'm supposed to write new stuff, right?

I'm cheating today anyway. But this one's different.

David's seventh birthday is tomorrow. I can't freaking believe it. Seven. And between the preparations for his birthday and assorted drama in my own life, I haven't written much about it yet. I will. But I'm feeling too darn nostalgic right now. So here, a repeat for some of you and with less polish than I'd like but pretty much the way I wrote it years ago, is his birth.

*************

It didn’t occur to me until I saw the blood.
This is not how motherhood is supposed to begin.

Blood soaked the sheets, forming a pool, the slick surface undulating. Mine. It never happened like this in the movies. It happened in those “emergency childbirth” shows - blurry, strobe flashes and a melodramatic drumbeat, the narrator grave.

My most coherent thought was that the shows underplayed the drama.

It had begun routinely. The doctors asked the requisite questions and calculated the number of humiliating positions I could assume. After posing me on hands and folded legs, like a terrified jackrabbit, the anesthesiologist prepared the epidural and reassured me. I produced a crackly squeak, which I hoped he would interpret as a polite laugh.

As I steeled myself for the jab, the electronic beeps monitoring my son’s - David’s - heart rate slowed conspicuously, like a neglected wind-up toy. The doctors’ eyes narrowed.

I was flipped on my right side. “…definitely a placenta abruptia.”

On my back. “…gonna need a C-section.”

On my left side. “… don’t want her to bleed out.”

As I wondered if they would employ a mother-to-be rotisserie, the bone-white sheet turned reddish-black.

“Whoa, that’s too much blood. We gotta deliver now.”

I signed to have the operation. I would have signed for a C-section, lobotomy or castration. My hands shook. My arms, legs, torso followed, as if a maniacal puppeteer were throwing a tantrum with my limbs. And why was it so cold?

My sister stood aside as my mom frantically tugged on one-size-sort-of-fits-all sky-blue scrubs.

“She’s in shock, isn’t she?” she hissed to my mom in a stage whisper. She fingered circlets of hair, pulled the sleeves of her sweatshirt up and down - she would not be in the operating room. And there was no father. Only my mom came with me.

Fluorescent lights raced overhead as I sped feet-first down the hall. I gazed at the floor. The beige and taupe tiles became tracer bullets in my path. My limbs crashed against the cot, with a thump-clang-rattle-thump as they hit sheets, frame, sheets again.

It’s all wrong. I’m not ready. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be.

A Caesarean section, I’m told, takes about forty-five minutes. Mine took nine. I managed to turn my head and watch David’s birth. He was blue. Not bluish. Blueberry Popsicle blue. Ice blue. I held my breath with him. The doctors - there were a dozen now - rubbed him, rolled him, and fed him air. Finally: a small, uncertain, “Wah.” His cyanotic tint faded into a coralline red-pink.

Six years later, I’m still not ready. But you’ll know who I am.

A plastic tarantula, empty juice pouches and the books Slinky, Scaly Snakes and Bugs, Bugs, Bugs! litter my car. A Vivaldi CD I played impulsively on the way to the lake one evening has remained in the player for three months, by decree of my son. The only acceptable replacement, I’ve been told, might be the Shrek soundtrack.

My philosophy discussions, once rooted in Kierkegaard and Hume, now begin with “If it’s time to make baby birds, why do the girl birds run away from the boy ones?”

My bedroom-playroom-home office is a hodgepodge of academia and an advertisement for Toys “R” Us. A plastic Superman bust looks over cosmology texts. A scientific paper titled “Candidates of red shift 5.5-7 galaxies” bookmarks Diego Saves the Whale.

I spend days playing, reading, running, teaching, kissing and making it better. I spend nights, and a few afternoons, working. I seldom sleep. I smell like chicken sticks, bubble mix and Play-Doh.

My prayers have turned from generic petitions to the weirdly specific: “God, please let my son pee in the toilet this time. I’m out of dry underwear and paper towels.” Or, “God, please let me say the right thing when the dog dies. I can’t stand to break his heart.”

Every issue is weighty - eating (you can’t have Pop Tarts nine times a day), religion (sure, God might sing “Happy Birthday” to Jesus on Christmas), animal care (cats and dogs cannot “play robots”). He wants to be an animal rescuer, and volunteer at the zoo. It’s an hour’s drive. I can’t wait to take him.

Asked to name my favorite actor, I couldn’t decide between Squidward Tentacles and Scooby-Doo. My physics and calculus are rusty, but I can recite every Dr. Seuss book and know how many times SpongeBob has taken his driving test (thirty-nine).

David’s wide, tooth-packed smile is an explosion that takes over his face. His laugh trickles like the lyrical, playful flow of a mountain stream. To feel his rose-petal lips on my cheek, or his silky, gold-brown hair in my fingers, is to experience love.

It came to me, at the arboretum, as it often does: just watching him. He danced and swirled near a bush, disturbing a flurry of black and iridescent-blue butterflies, which spun briefly about him before alighting elsewhere. This is exactly how motherhood is supposed to be.

For many a young to middle-aged woman, a pivotal moment of anxious resignation is when she finds herself filing coupons alphabetically, scolding drink-from-the-carton culprits or uttering the phrase “You’ll poke your eye out,” and realizes she has become her mother.

Not me. I have become my son.

I giggled the other day when the cashier farted while ringing up our purchase. I have developed an unusually high affinity for Pop Tarts and string cheese. I was always horrible at delivering punch lines, but I don’t even know the jokes anymore. My son’s favorite joke goes:

“Knock knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Me! Ah ha ha! Knock knock.”

“Who’s there?”

“Me!”

(Repeat for ten minutes.)

Other than that, I don’t really know any jokes. But my days are still filled with humor. I do know, for example, that the nature-show narrative “The boobies come in great numbers, as far as the eye can see,” is good for an afternoon of laughter. I know the simple joy that comes from pulling up to the stop sign beside the neighborhood horse stables at the exact moment two mares engage in synchronized defecation, or the snickers borne from lifting one snail from the dirt only to discover a second one attached to it, the hermaphroditic parts “lined up.” I’ve relearned the joke that “your epidermis is showing.” I know that spelling out the word “up” on the talking computer at the science center makes it say “You pee.” I know that I don’t get invited to any parties. I choose to believe everyone in attendance wishes to avoid being overshadowed by my newly acquired comedic repertoire.

I was warned motherhood would mow me down like a trimmer over wild, unruly grass. Make me into a tame, monotonous turf. Get ready for boredom, I was warned. Be prepared for repetition.

Instead, we have tended the wild weeds in each other. There is repetition, sure, and I don’t think I’ll ever quite understand how the same cartoon episode remains enthralling upon viewing forty five times. But rarely is there monotony. We seem to have an unspoken pact, a refusal to abandon wonder. If this is an anomaly of nature, either his as a child or mine in my simple-minded refusal to be bored, I welcome it.

*************

And lastly, if you're wondering where he got the baby-jowls, I give you me, circa 1980:

Happy (belated) birthday, Dad

I tried and tried yesterday to think of a fitting post to do for what would have been my dad's 51st birthday. I did one last year, and was thinking of him all day. But nothing. Well, not nothing, exactly. Fits and starts. I wrote a bit here and there about how he lives on through me in unexpected ways, how he chose "favorite" baseball players whose cards my brother and sister and I would "collect" (starting in infancy; my "favorite" was Keith Hernandez). I scribbled down a list of random quotes I remembered from him:

On religion: "I'm Catholic, but that doesn't mean I agree with everything the Pope or the priest does. It's like being an American. If you agree with everything the President does and don't even question it, you're a pretty lousy American."

On buying ten cartons of ice cream: "Well, it WAS on sale."

On an argument with my mom: "Well, sometimes we do argue. We love each other, and we'll be fine by tonight ... but I am right."

On my mom deliberately ruining his eggs (because he deserved it): "That's fine. I LIKE them this way."

On my mom and I arguing: "Well, I think you're both being a little ridiculous!"

On our response: "..." [Retreat.]

On my mom revealing, after months, that she'd switched the brand name for a generic: "Well, yeah. I figured that out right away. I just didn't say anything."

On political affiliations: "Well, you're Republican. We're Republican. Obviously."

After a huge fight once: "You should know something. You and you mom. You're my heroes. You've changed me more than you'll ever know."

But I couldn't wrap it up, tie it to anything. Because I am my dad for better or worse, including my short attention span, propensity to procrastinate and my devotion to my kid. So I tried in two- and three-minute spurts, and nothing. How do you commemorate someone you're already constantly commemorating in your life and thoughts? I talked to my mom twice yesterday and it occurred to me I had forgotten to say anything. But what do I say? Happy Dad's birthday? Probably, I guess. But that seemed inadequate, somehow, which was the same problem that I had with everything I tried to write. So sorry, Mom. Definitely, Happy Dad's birthday.

My son and I went through old pictures last night, and we found some old pictures of my dad and me. (I'll scan them in and add them to this post later today.) My son, without really looking at them at first, saw the kid and the postures and immediately assumed it was me and him.

And then we went for a walk, and saw this amazing pink and red sky.

David knew what day it was. The world knew.

I guess I'll end with a conversation David and I had last night. It was prompted by a book (Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban), which seems more than fitting.

"Harry must be sad his mom is dead."

"Yeah. I'm sure he's very sad."

"Like, when he wonders what to do, and wants to ask her, and she's not there."

"That would be really hard. He just has to do his best. And he has the memory of her."

"But why does the memory make him happy? Doesn't it make him sad that she's gone?"

"Well, of course he's sad. But I guess Harry's happy because the memory is kind of like him, I mean her, still being there. And when Harry needs advice or love, Harry can still think about what he would have said."

"I'm not talking about his dad. We already talked about that."

"I mean she. What she would have said."

"You miss your dad, huh?"

"Yeah. I do, sweetie."

Textually aroused

I know I made fun of memes a while back. So, naturally, I'm passing on another one now. Hypocrite? Me?

But I had to, for a few reasons. First the actual meme, as seen on Facebook and everywhere else: There's a supposed BBC-originated list of 100 books, only six of which the "BBC believes" the average person will have read. The instructions are to indicate those you've read, liked, disliked, and so on.

The only problem is, I found the list on the BBC website, and it's significantly different. Near as I can tell, someone (or someones) altered the list to make it ... I don't know, more impressive sounding? I'm not sure. I know the original list lacks the Bible, Shakespeare, Anna Karenina, Memoirs of a Geisha, and several others that now appear. Maybe I'll redo my list with the original, especially if I don't feel like working but want to feel productive. But my response to the memed one (with my own commentary) is at the end of this post. I've read 48 of the books.

Like I said, I'm responding for a couple of reasons. First, I can't resist a chance to show the world how smart and nerdy I am. Second, I feel terribly clever for knowing it's modified list, though I'm sure plenty of people have already realized that. But third, I sort of take issue with the implications of doing so and of the "list of books to read" phenomenon in general. So I'm, what, eight times more well read than most people? I don't buy that. Or perhaps what I don't buy is the hierarchy of book worthiness.

Because the thing is, I'm obsessed with reading. Obsessed. And I didn't get that way on Wuthering Heights and The Great Gatsby, or even on Lord of the Rings. I didn't read a lot of the books I "counted" until well into adulthood. My obsession started young and was nurtured into a love affair by junior high and early high school, by which point I had still read almost none of the books that appear on any of these kinds of lists.

I almost had to be a bookworm. My dad (whose birthday would have been today; more on that in the next post) gave new meaning to "avid reader," and sort of made it his mission to pass it on to me. He turned me on to nonfiction reading, countless novels, and comic books (Wolverine and Batman were the favorites -- you like them now that they're cool to like? Bone up on your back stories and then talk to me.) We spent nearly an entire summer reading and rereading A Wrinkle in Time, just talking about how it worked.

Add to that my grandmother, my dad’s mother. When we were growing up, she worked at a bookstore across the country. Each month, surplus books would have their covers torn off for some sort of record keeping and the books would be slated for disposal. As a kid, it always used to strike me as somehow wrong that a bookstore could destroy books, business or no. Fortunately, my grandmother couldn’t abide the idea any more easily, and she shipped the books to us. They arrived in huge brown boxes, waiting on our steps after school, wrapped about ten times over in packing tape. The tape became a running joke. She had an inexplicable attachment to the stuff, and it almost made the end result -- the challenge, the wait, the eventual revealing of the prize -- sweeter. Like a strip tease, only with books.

When finally the tape lay in a giant ball on the carpet, we’d fling open the box flaps to reveal stack upon stack of paperbacks, piled tightly together, turned sideways and slid down vertically on top of and beside the main stacks where spaces remained, to maximize the number of books per box. My brother and sister would pick books here and there, but I became nerdily determined to read every single one. It didn’t matter what the subject was -- kids’ novels and older-audience titles, poetry, nature, science, medicine, fiction as well as nonfiction. I even read an Unauthorized Guide to the Mario Brothers, though I don’t play video games. I became obsessed with stories and background information, with different ways of describing things, with characters, with facts. I read every book in The Babysitters’ Club series, and all the Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark books. I read every book written by Madeline L’Engle and C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien save a few obscure volumes that remained perpetually on my Christmas and birthday wish lists. I knew each time a new title was due from Christopher Pike or R.L. Stine (pre-Goosebumps series). I read old and new together and mixed genres like a kid at a soda fountain mixes flavors: Rocket Ship Galileo and then Pippi Longstocking; The Wind in the Willows and then a volume ambitiously titled The Story of Mankind. I read a book on a professional painter turned marine biologist, who used his hybrid training to portray sharks in a positive light at a time when it wasn’t en vogue to do so. I read a novel chronicling the last twenty-four hours of the life of Christ. I learned words like polydactyl and metaphysics and struthiomimus. I learned how to build stilts and how to do card tricks. I learned a great many dirty jokes and some clean ones, though I was and still am terrible at delivering one effectively. I memorized “The Raven,” “Jaberwocky,” “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” and “Casey at the Bat” long before I ever studied poetry in school; and even gave a go at understanding “The Hunting of the Snark,” though I wasn’t able to make much sense out of it, other than to be quite unsure how the boojum was dangerous, or what the hell it was, for that matter. I also learned from books, however, that a boojum was a rather peculiar upside-down looking tree related to the ocotillo, and let my intellectual pride take solace in this fact, unrelated to snarks though it might be.

Yeah, I pretty much thought I was the shit. I must have been a royal pain.

And now David reads all those same books. The exact same ones, many missing covers, others read so many times that pieces of the covers have permanent creases or purple unicorn "Belongs to Kim" stickers that themselves have been worn thin.

Now, I know what a lot of people think at this point. Because, except for a few, there aren't many books or subjects I've just listed that would appear on any "best" list. So the common response is, well, it's still great, because at least you were reading something. At least David's reading something now. That's probably why you went on to read 48 books on that list.

I hate the attitude of "At least they're reading something."

Who needs a caste system of books? Really? "At least?" "At least" is the opposite of why I've read 48 of those books. Conditioning myself to read, and then "discovering" the "real" stuff, has nothing to do with it. I learned to read because my dad and others taught me it was fun. Those boxes were treasure boxes. It's the same reason David reads today. Reading is exciting. We've all learned to read for purely recreational purposes.

Now I'm not saying that lists don't have their place. A list of books college bound students should read, fine. A list of the most educational and accessible books in some field or other, great. I think they're infinitely helpful. But I take issue with the general "these are the best books" list. You know the book that made me a passionate reader? This one:

It contained such scholarly tidbits as the "Cyclops girl," a man who painted with his tongue, a guy who held his arm outstretched for ten years, two women who each gave birth to 69 children, and a temple where "thousands were hurled to their deaths."

The thing was, I read all 332 pages of this book. At eight years old. My neck would get stiff and the carpet would make indentations in my knees, from sitting and reading. The morning light would turn brighter and harsher, and only then would I rise from murderous tyrants and 20-foot-tall flowers to eat a late lunch. I had to read it.

In my mind, some of the only books on the list that would have given me that gotta-keep-reading feeling would be the Harry Potter volumes, and it's not because the writing's that great. It's not, technically. For one thing, Rowling's overuse of adverbs makes me want to barf after two or so pages. But her storytelling rocks. Her dialogue is excellent; the characters tell the story for her. The point is, for whatever reason, these kinds of books fly by for me. They're easy in a good way and accessible and I'm actually a little disappointed when I can't "live" in their worlds anymore. We'd be severely deprived if this was the only kind of book out there, but it's what turns readers on.

Today, David's engrossed in a book about the universe. Catcher in the Rye can't be far behind. But I know it won't precede severed toes and The Hearse Song. We're in the middle of The Goblet of Fire, and I have to pry him away from it each night. He'll never have to have a book assigned to him in his life. He reads anything.

The books in both lists are good stuff, no doubt. And yeah, if you take my Lord of the Rings or Mockingbird, we might have to have words. But even those, I can put down. Whatever combination of good writing and storytelling and one's own point in life makes it happen,
it's a rare book that makes you almost wet your pants because you can't put it down.

Or maybe that's "rare" for me and "never" for sane people. Whatever. Here's my list. (You can stop reading here now if you're totally tired of these things. The list is ugly. I would have put it in the comments, but the spacing was all weird there.)

The instructions, for the uninitiated, were to:
1. Look at the list and put and (X) after those you have read
2. Add a (+) to the ones you LOVE
3. Add a (-) to books you didn't like.
3. Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4. Slash (/) those you don't plan on reading.
5. Tally your total at the bottom

1. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen):X
2. The Lord of the Rings (JRR Tolkien): X
3. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte): /
4. Harry Potter series (JK Rowling): X+
5. To Kill a Mockingbird (Harper Lee): X+
6. The Bible: X
7. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte): X
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four (George Orwell): X
9. His Dark Materials (Philip Pullman):X (would have been X+ if I'd read it as a kid; still almost + for ideas if not writing)
10. Great Expectations (Charles Dickens): X
11. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott): X
12. Tess of the D'Ubervilles (Thomas Hardy): /
13. Catch 22 (Joseph Heller): X (And there should be a hyphen, list writer. Also, I award my own "+" to anyone who actually uses the term "Catch-22" PROPERLY)
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare: X+
15. Rebecca (Daphne Du Maurier): /
16. The Hobbit (JRR Tolkien): X+
17. Birdsong (Sebastian Faulk): /
18. Catcher in the Rye (JD Salinger): X+
19. The Time Traveler's Wife (Audrey Niffenegger): /
20. Middlemarch (George Elliot): X
21. Gone With the Wind (Margaret Mitchell): /
22. The Great Gatsby (F Scott Fitzgerald): *
23. Bleak House (Charles Dickens): /
24. War and Peace (Leo Tolstoy): /
25. The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams): x+
26. Brideshead Revisited (Evelyn Waugh):/
27. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky): X
28. Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck): X
29. Alice in Wonderland (Lewis Carroll): X+
30. The Wind in the Willows (Kenneth Grahame): x+
31. Anna Karenina (Leo Tolstoy): /
32. David Copperfield (Charles Dickens): x
33. Chronicles of Narnia (CS Lewis): x (can I say "+" on some readings and "-" on others?)
34. Emma (Jane Austen): /
35. Persuasion (Jane Austen): /
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (CS Lewis): X (Um, this IS part of Chronicles of Narnia, idiotic list-maker person)
37. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini): X (It was OK, but I feel like I must be missing something.)
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin (Louis De Bernieres): *
39. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden): *
40. Winnie the Pooh (A. A. Milne): X
41. Animal Farm (George Orwell): X (In 9th grade, I'd have said "X++++," because I thought I was SO smart for "getting it.")
42. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown): sorta * (Meh. Maybe.)
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez): *
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney (John Irving): *
45. The Woman in White (Wilkie Collins): / (Don't recognize this one.)
46. Anne of Green Gables (LM Montgomery): /
47. Far From the Madding Crowd (Thomas Hardy):/
48. The Handmaid's Tale (Margaret Atwood): X+
49. Lord of the Flies (William Golding): X+ (mainly because my dad and I spent a month reading and re-reading it and discussing it.)
50. Atonement (Ian McEwan): * (maybe)
51. Life of Pi (Yann Martel): X+ (Just go along for the ride. Suspend incredulity. It makes it better.)
52. Dune (Frank Herbert): X+ (and also Dune Messiah, Children of Dune, God Emperor of Dune, Heretics of Dune, Chapterhouse Dune, The Butlerian Jihad, and The Machine Crusade. I'm working on the rest. Yes, I do have a life. Why do you ask?)
53. Cold Comfort Farm (Stella Gibbons):/
54. Sense and Sensibility (Jane Austen): /
55. A Suitable Boy (Vikram Seth): (Don't recognize.)
56. The Shadow of the Wind (Carlos Ruiz Zafon): * (I have it. I think I picked it up solely on the merit of its title.)
57. A Tale of Two Citites (Charles Dickens): X
58. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley): X (Again, boy did I feel clever for getting it. I must have been a pain in the ass in junior high and high school.)
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time (Mark Haddon): / (what's the deal with this one? It's supposed to be some big deal, right?)
60. Love in the Time of Cholera (Gabriel Garcia Marquez): * (maybe)
61. Of Mice and Men (John Steinbeck): X
62. Lolita (Vladimir Nabokov): X
63. The Secret History (Donna Tartt): *
64. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold): *
65. Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas): X
66. On the Road (Jack Kerouac): X
67. Jude the Obscure (Thomas Hardy): (Don't know this one either.)
68. Bridget Jones's Diary (Helen Fielding): /
69. Midnight's Children (Salman Rushdie): X
70. Moby Dick (Herman Melville): X (I hated it in high school; it was alright the second time.)
71. Oliver Twist (Charles Dickens): /
72. Dracula (Bram Stoker): X
73. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett): X
74. Notes From a Small Island (Bill Bryson): X+
75. Ulysses (James Joyce): X
76. The Bell Jar (Sylvia Plath): *
77. Swallows and Amazon (Arthur Ransome): *
78. Germinal (Emile Zola): (Don't recognize.)
79. Vanity Fair (William Makepeace Thackeray): /
80. Possession (AS Byatt): (Don't recognize.)
81. A Christmas Carol (Charles Dickens): X
82. Cloud Atlas (David Mitchell): /
83. The Color Purple (Alice Walker): /
84. The Remains of the Day (Kazuo Ishiguro):/
85. Madame Bovary (Gustave Flaubert): /
86. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry): *
87. Charlotte's Web (EB White): X+ (I loved this book when I was 8 or so.)
88. The Five People You Meet in Heaven (Mitch Albom): /
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes (Sir Arthur Conan Doyle): X
90. The Faraway Tree Collection (Enid Blyton): *
91. Heart of Darkness (Joseph Conrad): *
92. The Little Prince (Antoine De Saint-Exupery): / (Started it; didn't like it.)
93. The Wasp Factory (Iain Banks): *
94. Watership Down (Richard Adams): /
95. A Confederacy of Dunces (John Kennedy Toole): /
96. A Town Like Alice (Nevile Shute): /
97. The Three Musketeers (Alexandre Dumas): X (Only after my friend and I saw the movie, because we hearted Chris O'Donnell.)
98. Hamlet (William Shakespeare): X+ (Saw the play too! One of the only formal events I ever attended. DOn't miss that boyfriend, but I loved that.)
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (Ronald Dahl): X
100. Le Miserables (Victor Hugo): /

I've read 48.

Snapshots from Monday morning

Me: David, you know I don't like when you grab my butt.
David: But you let DAD do it!

David: I wish I was an X-Man. I would be Nightcrawler, and I'd teleport to Chuck E. Cheese! Or, I'd have pizza power, where I could turn everything into pizza. Except I'd turn off the pizza power in my lips, so I could kiss you. And my butt, so the toilet isn't pizza. Maybe I could make a butt glove like Rogue has for her hands.

David: Mom, why do my eyes water after I hit myself in the head with the baseball bat? And when I hit the chair really hard with my face?

David: [Obnoxious bullcrap.]
Me: You need to cut it out right now. And don't make that ugly face at me!
David: BwaaaughWHAAA! You called me ugly!
Me: No, of course I didn't! I would never! I meant your attitude. I think you know that.
David: No, I don't! What attitude?
Me: I mean, you were sneering and growling and rolling your eyes and scrunching up your face pretending to cry. You were acting in an ugly fashion.
David: Like ugly clothes? Like that black shirt and pajama shorts you drop me off at school in?

David: [Different obnoxious bullcrap.]
Me: Would you please.
David: [Continues crapulous attitude.]
Me: You need to knock it off right now.
David: No thanks!
Me: Excuse me?
David: No thanks, please, Mom?

Then I dropped him off this morning. He sprinted back to me because he "forgot a couple of hugs and kisses," bellowed goodbye, and ran back to be mobbed by his friends. Loving Mom and being the popular class clown/smart kid. He's got it all down.

Also, butts are always funny. He's just sayin'.

25 things

So I've been tagged a bazillion times for the "25 things" meme, and posted one on Facebook, but I've been tagged several times since then, via Facebook, MySpace (to which I forgot I still even belonged) and e-mail. So, if you really can't get enough random, useless facts about me, here is a cheater post because I'm to lazy to write a complete blog entry the list from Facebook, with only minor edits.

25 Freakin' things about me:

1. I like the idea for this list, which is the only reason I'm doing it. I hate memes, as a rule. I know you've tagged me, and will continue tagging me, and want me to tag others. Bah humbug. I'm not tagging. Besides, I'm out of friends to tag.

2. Also, I don't mind doing this because it allows me to procrastinate. I procrastinate pathologically. (Below, one of the products of said procrastination. Real useful.)

3. I also multitask obsessively. It actually makes me much less productive.

4. I have three book/manuscript ideas in progress right now. I think they're all winners. None are near completion.

5. I'm changing the subject because my inability to be productive depresses me, so I'm going to avoid it now. I do that.

6. I never wear makeup. Ever. I really don't know how to apply makeup.

7. You know that dream where you realize you're in class with no pants on? I really did that. Yes, folks, I forgot to wear pants.

8. I'm having a hard time writing this list, as I discover there are very few things I don't share about myself. Perhaps this item would be that I overshare?

9. But that seems so weird to me, because in demeanor I am an extremely private person.

10. I guess it's that I'm blunt and straight-forward. I actually see brutal bluntness as a positive trait, and am proud of it in myself.

11. My husband does not share my opinion of blunt, brutal honesty.

12. No. 11 keeps our marriage interesting, to say the least.

13. I didn't see Star Wars until 6th or 7th grade, but I pretended to know all about it before then because a guy I liked loved it. (I love it now.)

14. I once sneaked onto a construction site to use the portable toilet. (14b: I'm ridiculously proud that I know to say "sneaked" and not "snuck.")

15. I trim the skin around my nails compulsively. I've already done it twice today.

16. I worry for a big part of every day that I'm really a total failure, and just managing to fool everyone. Sometimes I worry that I'm not fooling anyone and they're just being nice.

17. If I had a superpower, it would be the power to freeze time. I've actually had extensive conversations about this.

18. I just talked to an old friend to congratulate him on a milestone. I used to have this huge unrequited crush on the guy, and unlike other crushes, told no one. He's still hot, but there's nothing now.

19. I used to be Republican, but I'm not anymore.

20. I used to get my nails done, but I don't anymore.

21. I have a gym membership, but I don't really go anymore.

22. I love carbonated drinks. If I could buy carbonated milk, I would.

23. At one point in my life, I said I'd never want kids. I literally can't put myself back in that mindset. It's like trying to remember not being able to read. I just can't conjure it.

24. I just thought of a couple of things not everyone knows about me, but they're not going out to the Internet at large. Sorry.

25. I haven't eaten a proper meal all day. I tend not to when I'm alone, but I'm obsessed with cooking/eating proper meals as a family.

26. (Bonus thing): I promise (you, myself) my next blog entry will not be a list. I'm swearing them off for at least two weeks.

There. You officially all know way too much about me. Like I said, I ain't tagging. But if you've shared yours, post a link. I'm kind of addicted to reading the lists.