We are supposed to hole up this week around here, to not go outside risking life and limb in the howling arctic winds. But Bye-Bye Nesquik is running low on wet cat food, not to mention that her mullet needs a trim, bad.In fact, the winds just started up. They make the house crackle and the kitten dash from room to room, her eyes all [...]
I’m skulking. I’m sitting in my darkened car on a cul-de-sac in my neighborhood, cornfields on the left, fine, 2700- square foot homes with Halloween decorations on my right. I'm just waiting around here. The woman who lives at the end of the street says a certain cat’s been coming around every night, sneaking in her garage, eating her own cat’s food. It looks suspiciously [...]
We cleaned the tile grout and the window sills and all the other parts of the house we never get to. We ran around town picking up the flowers and the wedding cake and the pans big enough to hold all the food, plus an extra fridge to hold all the giant pans. We shopped for the perfect grapes and strawberries and mixed up a [...]
Lets talk about your high school. Was it one of those fine institutions where you came out ready to quote great books in your church talks and your letters to the editor? When people drop names like Jo March or Count Vronsky or Lucy Manette, do you nod smugly, knowing exactly what books these characters come from? Let's talk about my high school. Let's ask [...]
I always thought I'd make a great army wife--independent, able to tolerate the absences. That is not to say I never want my husband around, you understand. It's just that there are little perks, like reading in bed late into the night. Or traveling with him while somebody else pays the hotel bill. Well, I got my traveling man and I have followed him to [...]
This week on the Finished Book Pile, we have Making Americans by Andrea Most. Most examines how Jews invented the Broadway musical as a way to assimilate themselves into American life. Meanwhile, they created an idealized version of Americana, far rosier than the reality. For instance, Rodgers and Hammerstein presented Oklahoma in 1943, a show full of optimism about pioneer life and a "Brand New [...]
I had the happy accident this week of watching a movie that illuminated a book I had just read. I planned a nice mid-winter goof-off day in which I ate cookies and cashews, drank hot chocolate and watched a Tivo-ed "Sabrina," with Julia Ormond, Harrison Ford, and Greg Kinnear. As Ford and Kinnear, the rich brothers, traded barbs about who worked too much and who [...]
Today, we're going to go to the Finished Book Pile and see what we have there.First up is Laura Kalpakian's novel, These Latter Days. If that sounds Mormon-y, it is, although the characters are highly imperfect. It's really kind of amusing to see them thinking, Well, this is really against the Word of Wisdom, but here goes (Note to my posterity: this is only funny [...]