Bibliomama

So I read at Blogging Out Loud Ottawa  (HI LYNN ) on Tuesday night and now it's Thursday and THIS is why I can't be a current-events blogger. My friend Patti (HI PATTI) said about BOLO three (!!) years ago that reading there was a "small jump into a very soft landing", and that being nervous was silly. And I agree, but I was still nervous. But Pam picked me up so I didn't have to find the church or the parking lot or not down two gin and tonics for courage. We had dinner with Nat and Jennifer and Amanda , with so much laughter and loudness (and an incredibly patient waitress) that much of the nervousness drained away (and not just because of the gin), although a big part of me (and Nat) was saying "OR, we could just sit here and while the evening away in beer and idle chatter...." Then we walked over to the church and tried to wander through the halls quietly and respectfully, looking for the right room. Then a small child bolted out in front of Je...

You know the great thing about doing a blog post series of your own volition with no pay and no deadlines? No urgency or unpleasant repercussions if you get busy and your husband leaves the country a lot and you lose the will to live for a few months. This is also probably the bad thing about doing a blog post series of your own volition with no pay and no deadlines. Anyway. Not a clue how I missed this one on my first pass through childhood. Lynn  (HI LYNN) lent it to me a few months ago, but I've been watching too much Supernatural and reading too much after Lucy goes to bed (which means ipad only) to attack the pile of actual books lately. Yesterday I got home from dropping Angus at basketball, went upstairs and declared that I would read the book at the top of the first pile my eyes fell on. And it was this book. Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH won the Newbery Medal in 1972. It's a great story, with strong characters and a fantastic plot that has suspenseful intrigue ...

Saturdays around here don't tend to be a beehive of activity. There's usually some kind of sporting event, for one kid if not both, early in the day, and then some down time and we catch up on Modern Family (Matt and Eve and me), Person of Interest (Matt and Angus and me) and/or House of Cards (Matt and me - Angus hung around for part of one hoping for some kind of salaciousness and almost died of boredom; not a future politician, I guess). Saturdays after Matt has just returned home from a week overseas are usually reserved for stumbling through the required activity and then adjourning to the couch (him) and the reading chair (me) for some recovery time. As things shook out, he was scheduled to get home from France Friday night, after a week in California and a week in Asia not long ago, but Eve's spring Glee recital was on Saturday morning and I had NAC tickets for Saturday night, AND then we found out that Collette's birthday dinner was reserved for Saturday night...

I have a habit of not really 'watching' tv when I'm watching tv. I tend to be cooking or cleaning, or sorting and scanning old newspapers to get rid of, or doing something else that doesn't require all of my (ever-diminishing) brain power. I used to think this was actually a fairly virtuous habit - my dad used to call the television the 'idiot box', after all, and if I wasn't actually just sitting on the couch watching then I wasn't a couch potato. A few years ago, I read a book about how to better use your time. I don't remember all that much about it (yes, that's right, I ignored all of its sound advice and I'm having a blast just flinging my time around profligately, thank-you very much), but I do remember the suggestion that if you were going to watch a television program, maybe you should actually just sit down and watch it with all of your attention, and if it wasn't worth that, then maybe you shouldn't watch it at all. I st...

I used to be more selective and discerning when adding books to my to-read list. Sometimes I was self-conscious about the fact that other people could see which books I was adding, or realized that I already had many, many books in the same vein on there, or just that there wasn't enough time left in my life to get through them all. Then I thought, screw it. My tastes are wide-ranging, from the elevated and erudite to the tawdry and profane, and anyone who knows me already knows that. And if I leave one off, I inevitably end up spending long minutes searching frantically for it a few days later. I've started to think of it less as composing a prescriptive list than gathering butterflies in a net - "you get in, and you get in, ooh, you're pretty, squish over everyone, this one's going in too". I won't get to all of them, and if I did only a few would maintain their lustre after the first few pages, but every once in a while it's a pleasure to fan them...