Time to Party

Fried jalapeño poppers, fried mozzarella sticks, stuffed mushrooms, stuffed jalapeños, cheddar fondue, a cheese-ball, summer sausage in sweet and sour sauce, cracked pepper crackers, dessert quesadillas filled with blueberry cream cheese, egg nog and hot chocolate is the menu for our New Year’s Eve celebration. While filling our mouths with finger foods, my family will engage in riveting games of Phase 10, Uno, Rummikub, Scrabble and our newest game, Jenga.

With full bellies, the children will be sent to bed at 10:30 with lights out by 11. At Midnight, the start of the New Year will be sealed with a kiss as a rough, life-changing year ends and a New Year filled with exciting adventures awaits us.

Happy New Year!

Six of a Kind

Teams suit up in matching uniforms to promote unity and common goals. Pre-schoolers sport identical bright colored t-shirts for easy recognition just in case a tot wanders from the group. Although familial harmony and easy lost person detection are legitimate reasons to dress everyone the same, my family dresses alike because I delight in torturing them with matching garbs for just about every occasion. Halloween, Christmas, Fourth of July -- these are the obvious holidays that allow my family to wear complimentary attire, and I never shy away from opportunities to embarrass my kids with matching Mario Brothers Halloween costumes, identical Christmas shirts or the same pajamas.

In addition to outfitting my family in typical tacky holiday outfits, I can never pass up classic complimentary color days, which normally occur for summer outings but can transpire on a whim any time of the year. On complimentary color days, I shout “blue” or “green” or “brown” or “red.” Once the color of the day is decided, each family member is required to dress in that color. Of course, no one ever willingly dresses in the color of the day, and they typically yell “You are just doing this to get good pictures for Facebook.”

I respond, “Why else would I do anything?” Then, I hand them their carefully selected ensembles. Their whining only heightens my delight. They have no choice but to comply; they are my life-size Ken and Barbie dolls. Isn’t that the reason everyone gets married and has kids? Complete control over an entire family’s fashion choices.

The Christmas Stockings

A Christmas concert performed by a local symphony orchestra followed by holiday shopping in a rundown small town mall was the date that changed everything. With our purchase of cheese balls from Hickory Farms and two knit Christmas stockings from Dillard's, I knew that all my future Christmases would be spent with my date and many more Christmas stockings would be added over the years. Four stockings have been added to our hearth, and this year, we hung our original knit stockings for the fifteenth time.

Procrastination Wilts My Mistletoe Yet Again

December 25, Christmas Day – same day just a different year. The recurrence of the holiday should not be a surprise to me, but yet I am flabbergasted by the arrival of the Holiday Season each and every year. And, each and every December 25 concludes with excessive egg nog drinking and my resolution that next year will be better. That I will start earlier. That I will have Christmas pictures taken the day after Thanksgiving. That I will put my Christmas tree up before Christmas Eve. That I will actually give the neighbors real homemade cookies and not the irregular goof ups that I buy at the bakery to pass off as my own.

Did I do it? Was Christmas 2010 better than past years? Well, the answer to the question all depends on who is making the judgment and how low the bar is set. For the first time ever, Christmas cards and presents will arrive at their destinations no later than MLK Day opposed to their usual President’s Day arrival. The tree has been up since December 19, and cookies will be baked a few hours before Santa's arrival, maybe.

It is all about small steps. Maybe someday I'll be that Christmas caroler with the Jingle Bell earrings, the reindeer antler headband and the candy cane perfume.  But until then, I am simply satisfied that my Poinsettias are only partially dead and my tree-topping star is sort of straight.

The Four Fights of Christmas

Money, the kids, the in-laws and sex – these are things that married couples fight about the most. The frequency and duration of the quarrels intensify during the weeks between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

Money: There is never enough.

Kids: They are spoiled and unappreciative. So, why get them more stuff that they will play with one time and throw in their closets?

In-Laws: Your parents’ house, my parents’ house, or our house for the holidays. Let the turf wars begin.

Sex: Who is in the mood to get freaky with all the arguments about money, the kids and the in-laws?

Then, after weeks of bickering, the holidays are over. The kids throw their toys in the closet; money appears in your bank account; you declare “never again” upon leaving your in-laws house and make-up sex occurs New Year’s Eve.

Calm remains... until the fourth Thursday in November.

What I Really Think of Your Christmas Letter

Is it happiness, stupidity or complete oblivion that drives a person to write the obligatory Christmas letter filled with a year’s worth of good fortunate, bliss and too damn many tidings of joy. Does the author really think this is her reality? Is she over compensating? Does her water bottle re-filled with Jack Daniels throughout the day make her life that good? When she tells her readers about her husband’s promotion, her son’s AP classes or her baby’s feat of walking 14 steps at the age of 10 months, does she not realize that her husband is doing her jogging partner, the kid is cooking up Meth in the garage and the baby has many years until she grows into her ears? How much time did she spend to garner so many eye-rolls and behind the back cackles?

Although I feel sorry for this woman with each nauseating Christmas letter carefully printed on her garland and holly laced stationary sealed delicately with a matching address label, my greatest sympathy goes to the couple who send me their dog updates every December. Dogs are not kids no matter how many toys, sweaters and special snacks they have. And furthermore, an obedience school is not an elite preschool; if you have time to put your dog on a waitlist, you simply have too much time.

A better use of both the woman’s time and the couple’s time would be to create a blog or post more frequently to Facebook, so I can mock them year round. Or, really they could just send me a picture Christmas card. Being able to judge a family in 20 seconds or less makes it much easier on them and me.

Be green and skip the Christmas letter this year.

On Decorating the Christmas Tree

“We are going to decorate the tree,” said the mother who lugged the tree across the room on the Nineteenth of December.

“We can be like one of those happy families on T.V. who laugh and smile too much,” said her eleven-year-old son.

“Yep, we can even drink hot chocolate and sing Christmas carols," she said.

“Now that is crossing a line. I don’t do carols,” said the pre-teen.

The Eyes Told the Story

His eyes are like almonds that have been roasted for hours; a deep brown so dark that the black of his pupil is barely noticeable. He has dark, long gorgeous eyelashes that he flutters when he needs you to do something for him; making females of all ages melt immediately. His eyes always tell a story.

The story his eyes told three weeks ago was not a happy one. With an onset of a headache his left eye turned in towards his nose. A layperson would call this being cross-eyed but the eye doctor called it Strabismus. I did not accept this diagnosis. His eye turned in only when he had a headache. So, this angry mother with no medical training fought the diagnosis repeatedly.

“The eye is the key,” I said to my six-year-old’s neurosurgeon as I tried to convince him that my son was suffering from hydrocephalus, which is a build-up of cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) pressure in the brain.

Not willing to accept my maternal instinct as medical evidence, the neurosurgeon and I disagreed about the cause of my son’s eye shift, headaches and vomiting for several weeks. Until he finally was admitted to the hospital and an external drain was placed in his head. Within a few hours, his gorgeous eyes were back in alignment.

It turns out that the cerebral spinal fluid pressure was causing the optic nerve to shift; therefore, causing the appearance of a cross-eye.

Now that my son has a little bit of hardware in his head called his shunt, he is free of headaches and vomiting and he continues to use those perfectly aligned brown eyes to con kindergarten room moms into doing his school work for him.

I Need This Book Please, Oprah Told Me To Read It

“Can you show me where the Oprah books are?” asked an elderly woman, holding her cane and flanked by her health care provider.

This is one of the most frequently asks questions in libraries across the country. Although many people think that Oprah should be her own library category like Fiction, Non-Fiction, Children’s, and Paperback Fiction, the books she has selected since her club’s inception on September 17, 1996 vary widely in authors, genre, style, and literary merit. Due to the diversity of her picks, these books are spread all over the library, typically.

However, I realized that I was working at our library district’s gorgeous “retail-style” library, meaning a library with so many displays that it feels like you are shopping at a bookstore for free. At this particular library, we put the Oprah Selections on our special display for Award Winners. (I feel a little reservation about this because when I think of award winners, The National Book Award, the Pulitzer Prize, the Mann Booker Award, and the Nobel Prize for Literature come to mind. But, is there really any greater boost to an author’s career than being selected by Oprah? So in many ways, her book selections are award winners.)

Having given Oprah selections to patrons at libraries in two different states, I have many of them memorized, so I buzzed around the library grabbing as many as could. From our special display, I snatched Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides, The Road by Cormac McCarthy, Tara Road by Maeve Binchy,White Oleander by Janet Fitch, The Pilot's Wife by Anita Shreve. I then went over to biography to grab Night by Elie Wiesel and found A New Earth by Eckhart Tolle in non-fiction. I later made my way to the Classics for East of Eden by John Steinbeck, and Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy. I concluded my quest with a few of my favorites from Oprah’s list Sula by Toni Morrison, The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison and Daughter of Fortune by Isabel Allende.

I placed this enormous array of books on a table for the woman to peruse. Admitting she was not a huge reader, the senior citizen said she felt like “an Oprah Book was a good place to start," which is such a funny phrase because I tend to think of Anna Karenina as a Tolstoy novel not an Oprah Book. She grabbed Wiesel’s Night and also picked up McCarthy’s The Road when I told her that one was also a movie. She left happy and is just one more example of why Oprah is the Ultimate Sherpa of Library World.

In many ways Oprah is the perfect Old School Librarian, the kind who starts their readers off gently with engaging books and slowly moves them to move literary fiction and Classics. When she started her Book Club, her selections were mostly contemporary books that could trigger some conservation but for the most part were not literary fiction. Early examples of her simple selections include The Heart of a Woman by Maya Angelou and The Treasure Hunt by Bill Cosby. As Oprah’s Book Club grew into an international sensation with millions of readers and the selected books instantly becoming best sellers, Oprah started to select more literary works such as novels by her friend and Nobel Prize Winning Author Toni Morrison. She later transitioned her readers to Classic novel. Average readers who probably read New York Times Best Sellers and paperback romances were reading, The Good Earth and Anna Karenina all because Oprah asked. And, she has done it again by, in her words “going old school” with her winter selections Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations by Charles Dickens.

In the past year, I have put out Great Expectations (my favorite book ever) as a “Staff Pick” with my name scribbled on a recommendation slip sticking out of the book nine times in the past year. It has been returned to shelf nine times without being checked out. Within hours of Oprah’s selection, we had numerous requests for the book. Librarians go to school for years to learn that trick and never have near as much success.

But fortunately, Oprah does the work for librarians. She tells the masses what to read; they us what they were told to read; and, we put the books in their hands resulting in both higher circulation numbers and happy customers. In the early days of her club, librarians shuttered every time Oprah made a new selection. Oprah is both the biggest boon and bane for libraries. Anytime, she announces a new book selection, libraries are slammed with a multitude of requests. Her requests impact libraries everywhere, Interlibrary Loan is not a reliable option to fill requests. So, libraries are expected to purchase books. But, what does a library do with 70 copies of The Book of Ruth after Oprah moved on to her next book? This is where book rentals for libraries come in. Most major book vendors allow libraries to rent “in-demand” books and return them when the books fall out of favor. This movement in libraries is a clear-cut example of the Oprah Effect.

Without any real knowledge of library operations, Oprah has changed the way libraries buy books; accomplished what most librarians have always hoped to accomplish -- getting readers to abandon  bibliographic crap in favor of more esoteric, educational titles; and, has caused circulation numbers to increase.

Next to the Librarian of Congress, Oprah is probably the most powerful figure in libraries.

Should You Tip Your Garbageman at Christmas?

Author's Note: I originally wrote this post to be facetious and to have a little fun with my humble upbringing. Since this post has received so many hits from people looking for a legitimate answer on how much to tip their garabgeman, I called my family to see what the protocol is for holiday tips. Prior to the economy going sideways, most families would tip my grandfather and father between $10.00 and $25.00 each year. Now tips tend to range between $5.00 and $20.00 and are frequently in the form of gift cards. They also receive many plates of cookies and baskets of fruit. All warm holiday gestures are greatly appreciated by my family who have owned their garbage business in the same town for more than 50 years. (However, feel free to take the below advice as well.)

People have been discovering my blog when doing searches for “Garbageman, Christmas, tip” and hoping for a definite answer on if they should tip their garbageman. And, how much is an appropriate tip at Christmas time for the man who picks up their filth all year long? I say write him a check for 20 percent of your annual garbage bill. So, if you pay $200 a year in garbage service then tip your trash hauler $40.

What am I basing my recommendation on? Not a damn thing. How the hell am I supposed to know how much a garbageman gets tipped? Yes, I was a granddaughter of a garbageman and I am the daughter and sister to garbagemen, but it’s not like I was or am privy to their financial dealings. I remember a few checks at Christmas because who we were to tell our customers that we weren’t as poor as they thought we were. In actuality, their act of charity or Holiday cheer (depending on if they were Democrats or Republicans) wasn’t needed but always was appreciated. Every year, my dad cashed the checks and bought a few extra gifts. Why shouldn’t the families of all garbagemen have a few extra gifts?

So with my power and authority as a Garbageman’s Daughter, I deem that all garbageman in the United States and Canada should get a twenty-percent tip. But if your garbagemen happen to be a short bald man in his early 60s with bow-legs and a mustache as well as a short, bald guy in his early 30s with a huge beer belly, I say tip them 30-percent.

Slack as a Root Word

Slackitism is the process of believing that one is participating in meaningful social change by effectively doing nothing like joining a group on Facebook or boycotting a store for a day. Since I am fortunate enough to work in a helping profession and am deeply involved in a non-profit organization that requires me to take the lead on numerous charitable service projects, I am not guilty of slackitism

But I am a huge slacker in other parts of my life. You know the phrase “pick up the slack?" It is me you are picking up after. So, if slack were a root word that provided the foundation to describe my skills, talents, interests and abilities, these words would describe the activities in my life.

Slackleaning: The process of wanting a clean house without picking up a mop, broom, vacuum, or a toilet bowl brush. One step into myself house you would have the visual that goes with the definition.

Slackostess: Wanting to host fun parties without actually planning, buying, preparing anything or even inviting anyone. I like to think of a party as a state of mind.

Slackolarship: The process of wanting to write and publish meaningful works of scholarship without research, re-writes, literature reviews, or query letters. My slackolarship has led me to slackogging. See below for definition.

Slackogging: This is process of blogging daily without a plan, an outline, goals or any real topics in mind as evident by this post.

If the Presents Aren’t Wrapped, What the Hell Were the Elves Doing?

Wrapped presents under the tree with little name tags that read “From: Santa.” This was the image I experienced every Christmas morning during my childhood. Santa Claus brought all the gifts and all the gifts were wrapped, except the huge ones like a bike or a life-size kitchenette (which would later be my premise for rebelling against domesticity and adopting Feminism). Mom and Dad stoically allowed The Man In Red to take all the credit. If this format was good enough for me, it was going to be good enough for my kids.

So, I thought until Christmas Eve 2003.

While spending the Holidays at my in-laws house, my husband and I performed our usual Christmas ritual of wrapping presents and putting them under the tree. But, before I could wrap the Lego table that my husband proudly purchased for our three-year-old son who already displayed tremendous talent in the areas of engineering and construction, my mother-in-law had the table and chairs out of the box, assembled and in front of the tree along with a large art easel that she bought for him so his drafting, sketching and painting skills could continue to flourish.

“Why are they out of the box?” I interrogated.

“They are Santa Presents. Santa is too busy to wrap gifts.”

Having neither a witty response nor the courage to stand up to her, I went along with the ridiculous, anti-climatic, non-surprising, generally un-fun plan. But to this day I wonder why Santa is too busy to wrap the gifts? He has 364 days to prepare for his big night. And, what’s the point of having Elves? Don’t they spend all their days making toys, wrapping them and loading the sled? Sure, the man is busy, but if he has to go down the chimney anyway, a little wrapping paper shouldn’t slow him down too much.

Unwrapped gifts from Santa are as ridiculous as Elf on the Shelf. Save the $29.99 by skipping the Elf and just buy some wrapping paper.

Elf on the Shelf: Lazy Parenting and Just Plain Freaky

Is Elf of the Shelf a harmless holiday gimmick packaged as a new “Christmas Tradition” or a creepy Orwellian device that will push your children to the heights of paranoia found in Ken Kesey’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest? If you are unaware of this holiday phenomenon, it goes something like this: Parents who want to inspire, trick or terrorize their children into behaving nicely purchase a doll called Elf on the Shelf (whether it is inspiring, tricking or terrorizing completely depends on the parents’ Christmas spirit and twisted desire for seasonal spying and manipulation)

For kids to truly be scared into behaving properly, parents are suppose to tell their kids that the Elf watches them all day long and reports directly to Santa. While at the North Pole, he shares the kids' Christmas wish lists but more importantly tattles on them if they are not behaving merrily. Supposedly, the Elf returns to a different location in the house each morning, and the kids are not allowed to touch him. The rituals surrounding Elf on the Shelf exist to promote its mystic and to preserve the Elf’s magical powers. But, when mom forgets to move him from the mantle to the baker’s rack or until the dog chews him just like any other doll, the Elf on the Shelf is just another prop in the ruse called good parenting.

Yes, Elf on the Shelf is all subterfuge and slack-parenting. Whatever happened to “behave or you get your ass smacked and your Christmas presents returned to Kmart.” And when it comes to spying, nothing beats just riffling through your kids’ crap both tangible and electronic.

And, really why spend $29.95 to trick your children when you can just do what I do? You could tell your children that you are calling the number given to all new parents at the hospital, the North Poll’s Emergency 800 Hotline for the Reportage of Juvenile Naughtiness -- all the deception of Elf on the Shelf for a fraction of the cost. It is always better to have paranoid children for free.

A Provocative Tale of Captivity: A Few Thoughts on Emma Donoghue’s Room

Five-year-olds are cute, funny, charming and adorable when they are biologically related to you. When you are not legally obligated to think they are enchanting, five-year-olds are just plain annoying, a little obnoxious and perhaps the biggest attention seekers in the world. There is probably no five-year-old more annoying than Jack. He is incessantly talking about Dora and Sponge Bob and still breastfeeds. Now the fact that Jack is the biological son of a twenty-six-year-old and her captor (who abducted her when she nineteen) makes Jack’s story worthy of the reader's time.

It is through the eyes of Jack that Emma Donoghue tells the story of Room, a compassionate suspense thriller that has touches of crime fiction balanced with infinite parent-child love. Although Donoghue takes an enormous risk by using a kindergarten-age child with no formal schooling as the narrator, readers are able to get past the gimmicky quality of the narrative voice to appreciate Jack’s insights that make this novel radically different from other exploitative captivity tales. Based on headlines about young girls in captivity like Elizabeth Fritzl, Natascha Kampusch, Sabine Dardenne, Jaycee Lee Dugard and Elizabeth Smart, the author manages to surpass media hype and create a profoundly original tale of a young mother giving her son a healthy well-balanced life in a 12-foot-square room. They play games, read books, have physical education classes, talk about God and Heaven, and watch a substantial amount of TV for both information and escape. Jack feels his truncated world around him deeply, has an unlimited imagination and makes everything a character by referring to all objects as proper names Room, Rug, Sink, Wardrobe, Plant and Tooth (which literally is his mother’s decayed tooth that she extracts herself and he saves as an unusual companion). Everything in the room is tranquil and everything outside the room is horrifying and foreign.

But when his mom, who is only referred to as Ma throughout the book, learns that her captor Old Nick lost his job, she fears what he would do to them before he ever allowed the bank to discover his soundproof shed. So, she plans an escape that fully rests on Jack’s shoulder. She insists that he must be brave and he insists that he is scared, so together they create the “word sandwich” that they call “scave.” Although he is “scave,” Jack follows his charge and the action becomes spellbinding. The events after the escape attempt are poignant and darkly stirring. At times the post-escape reality depicted is far more treacherous and repugnant than their life in confinement; sometimes so atrocious that is uncomfortable to read. But despite the shocking twists and turns, readers stay connected to Donohue’s unflinching tale of horror, rebirth and genuine parental love. The freshness of this novel will be attracting readers for a longtime to come.

The Hot New Trend in Familial Communication

“I could write a book about how adults should communicate with their children,” my eleven-year-old son said.

“Well, it really wouldn’t be a book. It would be three sentences. ‘The best way to communicate with your children is by not talking to them. Do nothing and let them be. The whole family will be happier that way,’” he concluded.

Don’t think I’ll have to worry about him striking it rich in the publishing industry and filing for emancipation anytime soon.

Drinkin’ and Gettin' Sconed

How do you give a proper tea? I have been obsessed with this question since I first read Alice in Wonderland as a child. Not a good example for a proper tea. I pursued better examples for tea time while studying in England by going to a variety of tea houses for Afternoon Tea. Although Earl Grey tea and black currant scones served with fragile cups and saucers allow for a lovely afternoon indulgence, I never learned how to give a proper tea.

But finally today, I will travel to our local senior center to enjoy a freshly brewed cup of tea and a hot, delicious scone with jam and cream. I will delight in learning about the history of tea, tea décor and how to brew a proper pot of tea. Will I be the only thirty-something there? Absolutely. Will I be the only one under the age of sixty-five? Probably. Do I care? No, I am simply a seventy-year-old trapped in a thirty-seven- year-old’s body. Will I am being wearing hat? Pink with pink roses, of course.

It will be a lovely day. As Henry James wrote in the Portrait of the Lady, “There are few hours in life more agreeable than the hour dedicated to the ceremony known as afternoon tea.”

The Beauty of Book Club

A round table by the window that can fit about six people comfortably. Smiling moms with their books in hand. One after another enter the door. Another chair added to the table, another chair and yet another chair added. No more chairs can fit in the corner of the small Greek restaurant. A stare down of the family in the middle of restaurant begins. Finally, the pressure induced by the book-toting mamas is just too much; they leave and the ladies pounce on their table and three nearby tables. The Book Club Mamas own the center of the room.

As the chatter continues, one of the newest book club attendees arrives. “Are you here to impart your literary wisdom,” the moderator chides her dear friend of more than ten years. “I read six pages, but the cover of my book looks different,” she says with her usual self-confidence. She is greeted with smiles and laughter and settles in with the group.

While glasses of wine and bottles of beer were being passed around the table, the banter envelops the room with conversations ebbing and flowing until one phrase rises up above the noise. “Oh crap, I read six pages of the wrong book. You read The Memory Keeper’s Daughter. I read My Sister’s Keeper.” Similar titles and both books exploit illness to tug at reader’s heartstrings. Really pretty similar books, so close enough. Laughter ignites and the regular conversations about kids, husbands and the perils of stay-at-home motherhood resume.

This is the beauty of book club, reading the book is not required for participation. All are welcome and encouraged to abandon their children for the evening.

Missed Potential: A Few Thoughts on Kim Edwards' The Memory Keeper’s Daughter

I love literary tragedy. Works of literature that depict horrific, catastrophic events or deep devastating psychological portraits of personal destruction. And of course, only unhappy endings truly satisfy me. But the story told most be truly tragic and not just sad. There is a huge difference between tragic and just plain depressing.

Kim Edwards’ The Memory Keeper’s Daughter fits the description of depressing not tragic; an exceedingly sad book in a non-particularly interesting way that does not match its fascinating premise. It is the Winter of 1964 in a middle of a snow storm; an orthopedic surgeon’s wife goes into labor. The obstetrician fails to arrive for the birth; the doctor delivers his own child, a healthy boy. Moments later, he is greeted with the surprise of a second child, a daughter with Down Syndrome. In a rash decision, he gives the impaired baby to his nurse to delivery to a home for mentally retarded children; he then tells his wife that their second child died. Unable to leave the child, the unmarried nurse, who secretly loves the doctor, keeps the baby, moves away and starts her life anew. Now that is a plot with tension and much potential for many exciting plot twists.

The potential remains unfulfilled. Edwards misses all opportunities to create a tension filled book that interweaves the lives of the two babies separated at birth. Instead she fills her novel with a bunch of despicable people who keep secrets, behave badly and evoke little empathy. Dr. David Henry, whose childhood was burdened by his parents’ constant concern and worry for his sickly sister, abandons his daughter supposedly to spare his wife and healthy child the rigors and heartbreak associated with raising a mentally retarded child. His wife, Norah Henry, devastated by the supposed loss of her child becomes an adulterous drunk. Trapped in the mayhem of his parents’ failed marriage, Paul Henry becomes an angry rebellious teenager who is indifferent to his father and behaves poorly. The longsuffering nurse, Caroline Gill is a bit of a heroine figure by saving the unwanted baby, but is she really a hero? She kept a baby from her natural mother. Then, there is title character and impaired child, Phoebe who could have been piece that held this book cohesively together, but she nothing more than a literary device who only appears in a handful of touching, tear-inducing scenes.

The Memory Keeper’s Daughter drags along with all the characters keeping their secrets with little tension that the secrets will be revealed, which makes for a long and boring read. By the time that the big reveal occurs, readers are so beaten down by all the redundancy, introduction of strange, irrelevant characters and uninteresting plot developments that the climax provokes very little emotion. Sadly, the premise of this book is substantially better than the actual book. This is a book that can be skipped and not missed in anyway.

Announcement: Not As Good As A Baby But Close

After two years of blogging, I have decided it is time to become more serious about my writing and push myself a little harder. I will soon be starting a Master of Fine Arts program in Creative Non-Fiction Writing. It is time to listen to the tough things that I need to hear, get more focused and see what I can accomplish with a little discipline and determination.    

I started my blog two years ago, when we abruptly moved from Texas to Colorado, in order to cope with my sense of loss. I desperately missed my library job responsibilities, my patrons and my co-workers. My blog gave me a place to re-direct my energy until I started working for a library district in Colorado. Plus, it was possibly the first time in my life when I didn't have to write for work or school. I could write just for myself and write anything that I wanted. Sometimes that much freedom can be overwhelming. With so many possibilities and opportunities for expression, I gravitated towards low-brow humor in hopes that I would find my voice, dedicate myself to re-writes and write something more serious or literary.

Well, two years later, I am still in the arena of low-brow humor. Although it is encouraging that my readers are amused and entertained my humor writing that is not where I need to be or want to be.  Now is the time to shift directions, focus my efforts on rewriting my best works and devote myself to a project that will allow me to soar. I hope to accomplish these goals through the writing program.

So, what does this mean for my blog? Daily blogging is time consuming, even when I do short humor pieces. So, this means my blogging time will be reduced and I'll be doing more writing behind the scenes.

Please check my blog occasionally because I will be sharing some of my work as well as giving updates about my classes. Thank you all for your support as the Garbageman's Daughter starts a new adventure.

I Was That Kid

"Hello," said the unsuspecting mother of three when she answered the telephone.

"Mrs. Garbageman, I am your daughter's first grade teacher, Mrs. Reese. I am concerned about your daughter. She has told everyone in our class that there is no such thing as Santa Claus."

"Is that so?" she said as she grabbed her six-year-old daughter by the arm.

"Yes, she ruined Christmas for a lot of kids. I think you should take her to a psychologist. Research shows that young children who do not believe in Santa Claus share the same sociopathic tendencies as children who abuse animals."

"Thank you for your call. I promise you nothing like this will happen again. "

Yep, that's the story. If you were Mrs. Reese's first grade class in Central Pennsylvania and had a miserable Christmas in 1979, I am truly sorry.

What the Heck, Here’s Another List

While I spent two days locked in my study compensating for procrastinating on reading my book club book, my kids completely trashed the house. So while I am cleaning, check out this list. (Many of you have seen this list on Facebook, but I made some modifications to the instructions.)

INSTRUCTIONS: Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here. Truthfully, I don’t know how seriously to take a list that does not contain Toni Morrison, Thomas Pynchon, Norman Mailer, John Updike, Henry James, Edith Wharton and Nadine Gordimer but does mention books by Dan Brown, Mitch Albom, Helen Fielding and Mark Haddon. Without question Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time is one of the most horrible gimmicky pieces of rubbish that I have ever read, and I truly contend that the person at BBC who added that book to the list should be fired. With that being I said, I decided to not give the list too much validity by modifying the instructions and having some fun with colors.

Black Bold: Completed Book

Black Non-Bold: Have not read the book and am too apathetic to ever read it.

Bold Pink – Started it and might finish it someday.

Bold Orange – Started it and will finish it.

Bold Green – How did I ever get a B.A. & M.A. in Literature without reading this book? Shame will prompt me to read it.

Bold Red – Hell No, I am not reading that book, no matter how many lists it makes and even if the lists are hand-delivered to me by the Librarian of Congress.

Bold Purple - Yes, I finished every last page of that book and I will never get those hours back.

Bold Blue – Sure, I’ll throw it on my personal “I really want to read that someday” list, which normally involves me checking out a lot of books at the same time, starting them all and finishing none of them.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling (all)

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens


11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott


12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy


13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller


14 Complete Works of Shakespeare

15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks

18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch – George Eliot


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 Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky


28 Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck


29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy


32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis

34 Emma – Jane Austen


35 Persuasion – Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis

37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Berniere

39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden


40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne

41 Animal Farm – George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving

45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding

50 Atonement – Ian McEwan


51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel

52 Dune – Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time – Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez


61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck

62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac


67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens

72 Dracula – Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses – James Joyce

76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath

77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal – Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession – AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens

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

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks

94 Watership Down – Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet – William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

Yet Another List, 15 Novels That Have Impacted Me

Part of the charm of Nick Hornby’s High Fidelity is Rob Fleming’s Top 5 Lists. Lists organize a lot of information in a succinct, light-hearted format. Lists are easy to read and easy to write. List-making ignites spontaneous, off the top of the head thinking oppose to outlining that requires organized thought.

Lists also are great for bloggers who checked-out nine books from the library in one month; flip-flopped back and forth between four them, ignoring the other five, not finishing any of them and most importantly putting this month’s book club selection on the back-burner. So, as I continue to drudge through The Memory Keeper’s Daughter (yet another book that uses illness as a metaphor to tug at readers' heartstrings and push the plot forward), I offer you a not so charming list of “15 Novels That Have Impacted Me.”

Here you will see my preference for the dark depressing tales with no happy endings in sight. Despite all the violence, murder, suicide, mental illness, prostitution, rape, obsession, depravity, poverty, destitution, isolation, brutality, tragedy, melancholy, and depression in these novels, there is very little physical illness. I’ll take the Dust Bowl, a touch of Arsenic, a fatal car accident and a jump in front of a train any day over Cancer or Down Syndrome.

This list is in no particular order. Due to my time crunch, I’ll fill in short explanations later this week with a few of these novels being worthy of complete blog posts.

1. Great Expectations, Charles Dickens

2. The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald

3. The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck

4. Return of the Native, Thomas Hardy

5. Jude the Obscure, Thomas Hardy

6. Notes from the Underground, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

7. Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoyevsky

8. Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert

9. The Good Earth, Pearl Buck

10. Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy

11. Song of Solomon, Toni Morrison

12. Loving Frank, Nancy Horan

13. One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez

14. Jealousy, Alain Robbe-Grillet

15. Moll Flanders, Daniel DeFoe

A Literary Time Waster Known as the Fifteen Authors List

When it comes to time wasters, one needs to be selective. With so many options for squandering one’s time online, one must be fastidious and efficient by seizing opportunities to repurpose time wasters. A few weeks ago, several of my friends on Facebook tagged me in a note asking me to: “List fifteen authors (of any kind: poet, playwright, whatever) who have influenced you and will always stick with you. Don't take too long to think about it -- just list the first fifteen you can recall in no more than 15 minutes.”

I normally ignore but notes, but I was intrigued by this task. Well, fifteen minutes transformed into three weeks by the time my list was almost done, people have moved on to ”15 Life Changing Movies” and their “15 Most Favorite Breeds of Dogs.” Movements on Facebook are short-lived, but this task lingered with me. And since I had the list done and don’t have my book read for book club this month, this is a great way to quickly fulfill my daily blog post obligation, complete the Facebook assignment, and show how pretentious my literary tastes really are, all in one effort.

1. Sylvia Plath: An amazing poet with a horribly tragic life who captured my imagination in my college years with her hauntingly dark and melancholy images. Her poetic rendering of her complex relationship with her onerous mother made my fascination with Plath’s writings and life very intimate and undeniable. Once I became a mother, I saw her horrible death at such a young age as less romantic and became less interested in her personal life, but I still remain a fan of her work.

2. Thomas Hardy: Much like Plath, Thomas Hardy’s works are both stunning and full of enormous tragedy. But more effectively than Plath whose poetry vastly surpasses her novel, short stories, play and letters, Hardy was able to write successfully and effectively across my many genres (novels, poetry, and plays) with tremendous skill. His works of fiction have a gravitas associated with them that supposedly put an end to the Victorian novel and made his works among the first Modern novels. Although there is not much lightness, joy and happiness in the works of Hardy, beauty abounds in his characterization, language, and motifs. Without question, Hardy remains my favorite novelist.

3. Tennessee Williams: The Glass Menagerie might have been the first play that I read that was not by William Shakespeare, and I was immediately captured by not only the tragic themes but how dialogue can be used to propel a compelling plot. I went on to read almost all of his plays (I have seen a few of them on the stage, but I am the rare person who likes to read plays a little more than I like to see them). I have been strongly influenced by his character development, dark motifs and dramatic twists. Williams is an American treasure whose plays rank among the best American plays ever written.

4. E. B. White: Although White is mostly known as a children’s author, he is arguably among the world’s greatest essayists. Any writer who even dabbles in essays knows the works of White, and anyone who wants to the master the art of the essay has studied his essays thoroughly. I have read some of his essays so many times that I have large portions of many of them memorized. E.B. White is the essayist who in small doses inspires me to work harder and in large doses makes me curl up in a fetal position, wallowing in by self-doubt, self-pity and self-loathing. Needless to say, I am on a rich but restricted diet of E.B. White. (Every once in a while I am asked: What is an essay and how it differs from short story? If you really want to know pick up a copy of White’s collected essays.)

5. Toni Morrison: This Nobel Prize winning author knows how to weave a yarn that captures the imagination and stirs the soul. Song of Solomon is an epic story that had me riveted and thrilled to turn the next page; The Bluest Eye allowed me to experience an empathy different than I have ever felt previously; Beloved transported me to the time of slavery where I became attached to Sethe and her daughter Denver -- a truly eye-opening novel. Morrison is a challenging author, but she is worth the investment of time in order to read and understand her stunning literary fiction.

6. Arthur Krystal: This author is probably the least famous writer on my list, but he is easily the best essayist that you are not reading. He dismisses humor writing and memoir in preference of the literary essay, and he is very much continuing the tradition of American letters associated E.B. White. When I sit down to write, I stare at homemade sign that reads: “Be Like Arthur.” Arthur Krystal is the modern day gold standard that all essayists should aspire.

7. Harold Pinter: I had no idea who British Playwright Harold Pinter was until I saw his play Old Times staged while I was studying in England. The biting language and dark themes attracted me and made want to read more of his plays. Thanks to my husband, I have read all of his plays and am always astounded by the depth of his characters, his plot twists, and acerbic dialogue. Pinter is a literary phenomenon who greatly deserved the Nobel Prize in Literature that he earned shortly before his death.

8. Mark Twain: Anyone who dabbles in humor should read Twain. Anyone who writes essays should read Twain. Anyone who is an American or wants to be an American should read Twain. Really anyone who can read should read Twain.

9. Christina Rossetti: A minor Victorian poet whose big brother Dante Gabriel Rossetti, co-founded the Pre-Raphaelite movement in art and literature, Rossetti is a fascinating poet who mostly lived in her brother’s shadow and at times would shine on her own with her profoundly feminine poetry in terms of both style and content that touched on themes of motherhood, infertility, repression, and sexuality. Her poetry is simply beautiful and should be enjoyed simply for its beauty.

10. Fyodor Dostoyevsky: When it comes to novelists, Dostoyevsky runs a very close second to Thomas Hardy as my all time favorite. The darkness and tragedy that permeates his works nicely compliments all the depravity, mental illness, and violence; and he is certainly not afraid of an unhappy ending. So much misery and gloom, I just cannot get enough of Dostoyevsky.

11. Gertrude Stein: Truly an innovative marvel who is highly influential and really quite profound, Stein is so much more than a “Rose is a Rose is a Rose.” Her importance exceeds her friendships with Hemingway and Picasso. She was Modernist writer who broke conventions and re-imagined poetry while exploring the conditions of possibilities in politics, art, gender, language, ethnicity, religion and race. I had the wonderful opportunity to spend 18 months of my life reading all of Stein’s works and perusing hundreds of essays about her writing as I earned my Master of Arts in Literature in part by writing a thesis called Becomings: Gertrude Stein's approach to minor literature. (Eventually, I’ll post some of my writing about Stein to my blog, but I really needed a ten year break from the woman.)

12. Dorothy Parker: A depressed, cynical drunk with a caustic tongue and a quick wit, what isn’t there to love? I never tire of reading “The Telephone Call.” She captures with great humor and precision the anxiety we have all felt while waiting for the phone ring—so simple but so brilliant. I must admit that I am completely enamored by her cleverness and have even written a short sketch where I have a conversation with her ghost. (One of my most favorite blog postings that I have been converting into a One Act play for over a year.)

13. Judy Blume: Show me a woman who was a girl in the 1980s and I’ll show you a Judy Blume fan. I highly recommend the essay collection: Everything I Needed to Know About Being a Girl I Learned from Judy Blume.

14. Isabel Allende: A novelist who uses elements of Magic Realism, Allende is just a masterful storyteller. Her stories are compelling and her characters, particularly her female characters, are beautifully drawn. She skillfully unifies humor and solemnity while taking her readers on a marvelous journey. (I was happy to see that she is equally spirited in real life as she is in her writing. She was absolutely delightful and hilarious when I heard her speak in San Antonio – a wonderful treat!)

15. Oscar Wilde: Whether I am reading his plays, his poems, his fairy tales or his epigrams, my usual reaction is: “Damn, he is clever.” Wilde is a writer whose brilliance is revealed with each subsequent reading. During my early 20s, I read Wilde so frequently that when my husband bought me a kitten to keep me company while he worked and went to school, I named him Oscar. Sadly, my interest in Wilde’s writing has lasted longer than my interest in cats.

Surprisingly, not nearly as many British authors made my list as I would have suspected. Here are my mostly British Honorable Mentions: Jane Austen, Charlotte Brontë, Emily Brontë, Charles Dickens, George Eliot, George Bernard Shaw, William Shakespeare, William Blake, Matthew Arnold, Jonathan Swift, John Donne, Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Jorge Luis Borges, and Harold Bloom.

Post Thanksgiving Reflections

Being thankful and giving thanks. There are so many ways to express gratitude on Thanksgiving. A little turkey craft, which is actually an outline of a three-year-old’s hand that holds words of thankfulness on his curved thumb and crooked pinky. A thanksgiving card, a festive Fall bouquet, six candles that when put together spell T-H-A-N-K-S. These small gestures remind us of all our beautiful blessings that inspire gratitude. Most of us give thanks for our families, our health, our home, our careers and the glories of living in a free country.

After Thanksgiving passes, we quickly toss out gratitude in the spirit of greed, frugality, and competitiveness. We knock over Grandma to get a quesadilla maker originally priced at $46.99 for $12.99; we steal a XBOX Kinect out of a distracted shopper’s cart; and, we trick a teenage sales girl into taking an extra 10-percent off our Sing-A-Ma-Jigs due to packaging damage.

As we get lost in the chaos of the Holidays, we forget to give thanks for the little things that may be too trivial or too superficial to articulate on the big day devoted to giving thanks. But as one who never shies away from superficiality and frivolity, here are just a few little things that make me thankful.

• I am thankful for my four children who are so good looking, intelligent, funny and athletic that they make the average child look vastly inferior.
• I am thankful that my husband has retained his good looks over years and looks just damn sexy with a tinge gray in his goatee.
• I am thankful for my DKNY jeans that makes my ass look better at the age of 37 than it did at the age of 19.
• I am thankful for the clothing manufacturers who cut their patterns larger and assign smaller dress sizes than they did 10 years ago. According to most dressmakers, I am the same size I was in high school despite my Freshman 15 that morphed into the First Child 40.
• I am thankful that the Candy, Pie, Fudge and Cookie Season has finally arrived and I will fully indulge thanks to the dressmakers who say I am the same size as I was in high school.

These are just a few of the things that make me grateful. As you embark on the Holiday Season, please remember to count your blessings and eat much pie.

 

The Unspoken Hero

Day after day, he learns of his son’s headaches and vomiting through his wife’s accounts, which are sometimes peppered with histrionics, hysteria, bitterness and anger. He deftly sorts the facts from the melodrama; advises his wife to remain resilient and resolute; and, frequently reminds her that being hysterical, accusatory and mean will only hinder their efforts in getting their son treatment. Despite his worries and fears, he remains stoic for the family. He sacrifices and suppresses his own desires to be home with his son to continue to provide for his family by traveling all over the world for his job. With the exception of work interactions, his life is solitary and lonely Monday through Friday until he returns to his wife and children.

Then upon returning, he comforts his sick child, cleans up vomit, entertains his other children and reassures his wife. He remains formidable despite his own anxieties and concerns. He serves as the voice of rationality and reason that offsets his wife’s hysteria, irrationality and habitual madness. He is the force that moves his family through an intolerable situation and makes it all more bearable. He is the backbone of his family.

Author’s Note: Over the past few days, my narratives have made me look like a lone warrior in the battle to get my son the treatment he needed. Although I may have been the one struggling with the doctors, I was never fighting the battles alone. My husband was there in every decision and reminded me to not be hysterical or spiteful. Even though my storytelling techniques may leave him out occasionally, my husband is present in all the tales of our family.

Relief by Artifical Means

After weeks of headaches and vomiting due to hydrocephalus, a build-up of cerebral spinal fluid (CSF) pressure in the brain, my son will finally be relieved of these symptoms when a shunt is placed his body that will flow from beneath his skull to his bowels. Placing a foreign object in the body is always risky because there is a chance the man-made device could cause infection or simply stop working making his vomiting and headaches return in a stronger capacity. It is said that one in three shunts need revisions in the first year although those statistics are somewhat discouraging, the overall benefits of a shunt outweigh the risks.

So, after a year of enormous life changes, my son will endure one more change to his body -- a change for the better we hope.

A Prescription for Fun

No time for extensive blog posting today. My son and I are under strict doctor’s orders to have lots of fun in order to see what happens to the pressure in his brain. So, a plethora of air hockey, Wii, X-box, Connect Four and Uno are on the menu for us today.

Tapas Still Elude Me

Some things are just not meant to be. Clearly, my enjoyment of tapas in a fine dining establishment is just not meant to be. Somehow I have managed to go to a restaurant not once but twice this month with the intention of ordering tapas, but my good culinary intentions led me down the path of ravenousness once again and wishing I would have filled my tummy before I went to a local lounge. Same old story. I was late to the moms’ night out event, and it didn’t occur to me to ask for a food menu because I had no hungry screaming children with me.

Or, perhaps I forgot to order because I was too focused on making comparisons between the false advertising and the reality of the lounge. “A darkly burning enclave with walls nearly a century old that hold the memories and merriment of travelers and the surrounding neighborhood alike” was in actuality a small, damp, cold basement with some nice leather furniture and a bunch of candles.” If they did indeed have “unforgettable fare,” the waiter forgot about it since I was never given a food menu. Although my company was delightful and the jazz music was lovely, the only “continuation of yesteryear” occurred when the frail old people, who slowly sipped their gin and tonics, continued to breathe.

Overall, I failed to experience the “evening of revelry” that was promised in lounge’s online advertisements. Some people are just too square for a night life, and I am one of those people. Socialization is highly overrated; I am going back to eating dinner out with my husband and kids. I never forget to order at Red Robin where I can get bottomless fries—now that’s some revelry.

The Party You Have Reached Is Ignoring You

Dear Children:

For the third time this month, I will attempt an evening out of the house that is non-work related. Let me be clear that emergencies are rare, and I should only be contacted if there is a true emergency. Your brother pulling your hair is not an emergency. Not being able to find Purple Bear is not an emergency. Discovering that we are out of yogurt and apples is not an emergency. Heck, don’t bother calling me if there is a fire. What can I do? It’s not like I am going to fight the fire. I’ll deal with it when I get home. You have a very capable babysitter; feel free to bother her as frequently as needed.

As for me, I will be, according to the description of the lounge, traveling back to "a bygone era of exquisite service, timeless style, classic cocktails, and expert cuisine.” I will “step away from one world and descend underground into another—a darkly burning enclave with walls nearly a century old that hold the memories and merriment of travelers and the surrounding neighborhood alike.”  I could, “sip a handcrafted martini from a signature drink menu, or partake in that perfect pairing of wine and unforgettable fare.” I just want some tapas and water, but nonetheless, I will have, if not interrupted for two brief hours, an “evening of revelry, live music, and familiar comfort that is the continuation of yesteryear.”

If I get knocked out of yesteryear to deal with lost underwear and turf wars over Pillow Pets, I will have four grounded children firmly situated in the harsh reality of today.

Just so we are clear.

Your Loving Mother

Beware of the $15.00 Jar of Pasta Sauce

Intricately stacked bottles filled with bright orange liquid wrapped in decorative white labels, much prettier than your standard grocery store shelves. With beautiful well-balanced displays of overpriced kitchen objects and fanciful pantry items with French names and organic ingredients, Williams-Sonoma sucks me in every time. Just like walking around Hobby Lobby gives me the false bravado that I could macramé something, perusing the displays at Williams-Sonoma fills me with the sensation that I could be a great chef.

So, I grab the orange bottle that contains Pumpkin Parmesan Sauce. The artisan label complete with a beautiful sketch of a pumpkin tells me that if I buy this bottle of sauce, my family will enjoy: A celebration of the autumn harvest, our handcrafted pasta sauce makes it easy to savor authentic Italian regional flavors at home.…As convenient as it is delicious, this artisanal sauce makes it easy to whip up a memorable meal. Simply heat the sauce, toss with your favorite pasta and serve.

I turn the bottle over and see the $15.00 price tag and put it back on the shelf only to have my husband snatch it immediately.

“The kids are so not worth a $15.00 bottle of pasta sauce,” I argued.

“Tough. We are trying it,” he replied firmly.

I was glad that I lost the battle and continued to fill our cart with ridiculously overpriced items.

The following evening, I heated the sauce in a pan and brought lobster and crab stuffed ravioli to a gentle boil for a special Sunday night dinner for my kids since their dad was already on an airplane destined for Connecticut. I topped the plump stuffed pasta circles with the slow-roasted pumpkin infused with heavy cream, aged Parmesano-Reggiano cheese, caramelized onions and roasted garlic.

I refrained from stealing a taste until everyone was seated and served. Most of us took a bite simultaneously with only my eleven-year-old son being the holdout and his ravioli were covered in butter instead of the pumpkin sauce.

“Gross,” said the six-year-old boy, who requests salads for lunch and prefers peppermints to chocolates.

“It’s okay,” says the eight-year-old girl, an already wonderful cook who aspires to be a professional chef someday who won’t have to get pseudo-gourmet flavor from a jar.

“I don’t like it,” said my three-year-old.

The kids were right. A mix of pumpkin, Parmesan and vomit stirred with feet covered our pasta. We scraped off the sauce to salvage a few raviolis, but we just mostly devoured our corn and sweet peas.

The remaining pasta was tossed in the trash and along with my trampled desires for a delicious dinner.

At $15.00 for the sauce, $10.00 for the ravioli and $1.75 total for a can of peas and a can of corn, I could have ordered pizza for less money and had happier children.

Is No News Actually Good News?

After four MRIs and seven doctor visits in the past three weeks, there is still no explanation for my son’s vomiting and headaches, which did not start until four months after his brain surgery. Since the vomiting has almost completely subsided and the headaches have decreased in frequency, duration and intensity, the neurosurgeon will not be placing an external drain in his head at this time. Instead, observation at home will continue for three weeks, and he will then return for yet another MRI. At that time, we will discover if excessive brain fluid and pressure are the causes of his malaise.

I guess it could be considered good news that we will not be at the hospital Thanksgiving week like we anticipated, but we will all still be living in uncertainty. It does not matter where we eat our turkey if we are all together and moving towards medical resolution for my son. But for now, we will continue to live in certain uncertainty and take small bites of our yams and bread stuffing with a healthy dose of anxiety.

The Cyberspace Police Should Give You a Ticket...

If you left your car alongside the road, it would be towed, you be ticketed and would be responsible for getting your vehicle out of the impound. So, why shouldn't there be repercussions for abandoning your blog?

When writers establish blogs, they are taking on a commitment. Bloggers make promises to their readers (which may only be their moms, spouses or strangers who also have the same predilection for silent movies, musty old books and New Wave music from the 1980s). Creating a blog is making a promise to deliver timely content updates. When bloggers fail to update their blogs, they fail their readers.

According to a 2008 survey by Technorati, which operates a search engine for blogs, only 7.4 million out of the 133 million blogs the company tracks were updated in the 120 days prior to the survey, which means about 95 percent of blogs were abandoned. It is estimated that about 40,000 people a day start a blog with many of those blogs being abandoned after one or two posts.

If you are not going to stick with it, why go to the trouble of picking a host service, customizing a fashionable blog theme and creating content? Writing a poem or painting a picture would be a more efficient and successful use of your brief burst of creative energy. Why waste your time and disappoint your readers (in particular me) when your zany fashion tidbits, unusual recipes with Huckleberry and wacky advice columns are not longer updated regularly. There is no need to clutter my Blogger Reading List with your lackluster dream that no longer captures your imagination; it is too much of an emotional roller coaster to become a devoted blog follower only to return to my favorite blogs to find stale posts floating in cyberspace.

If you are not going to update your blog, the polite thing to do is either to delete it, or write a short statement such as "Under Construction." "Thanks for stopping by. Be sure to stop by later." "No longer blogging, but please enjoy my archive.” "Too damn busy to update my blog with pictures of smiling kids and clever anecdotes about their mispronunciations that sound like dirty words.” Or, “My blog is a suckish graveyard."

Really any of those would work and would save you from being permanently exiled from my Blogger Dashboard.

Hey Amazon, Any Plans To Play Nice With Libraries?

If you are in the market for an e-book, do not have the disposable income and/or desire to purchase all your e-books and are an avid library user, I strongly advice against purchasing any version of Amazon’s Kindle. Although I am not a technology aficionado or an expert on e-books, I am librarian who frequently disappoints enthusiastic new Kindle owners when I tell them that they cannot download our library’s e-books. The general assumption from patrons both in-person and on message boards is that somehow library technology is behind the times and needs to catch up to modern day conveniences.

This is simply not the case: Libraries are not lagging. Amazon just does not play well with others. There are two reasons why e-books from major e-content distributors for libraries will not work with the Kindle.

1. Library loaned e-books are available as EPUB books, which are not compatible with the Kindle, but can be used on Sony Reader and the Barnes & Noble Nook.

2. The Kindle does not support the Digital Rights Management software that is produced by Overdrive (one of the most commonly used e-book distributors for libraries).

Both of these issues could be resolved if Amazon was willing to corporate with outside vendors, but at this point, Amazon has no plans to fix either issue. However, Amazon has made an announcement that they will not sue libraries for purchasing Kindles and Kindle books in order to lend them to their patrons. Amazon states that this violates their Terms of Service Agreement, but they will cut libraries a break. How generous of Amazon to not sue non-profit libraries that are paying full retail price for their products because they won’t allow library e-books to work on their products. Even Apple, the most proprietary company on the planet, allows some Overdrive and NetLibrary products to operate on their devices.

When it comes down to it, consumers have many choices and there plenty of e-book gurus out there that will happily break down every make and model of every eBook reader on market. A plethora of reviews and comparisons exist to tell you about design, content, screen size, resolution, product weight, battery life and memory. If you are in the market for eBook reader, check out those reviews to find the product that best serves your needs. But if are a library user who believes that you should be able to use your tax dollars to access both print and electronic resources, please select any of the fine e-book readers out there, other than Amazon’s Kindle.

Relax: You Are Not a Sinner, Criminal or Loser

I will hear your confessions. I will listen to your excuses. I will tolerate your begging. I will smile at your negotiation tactics. But in the end, I do not have the power and authority invested in me to absolve of your library fines. I am a mere reference librarian; you must seek absolution from the circulation department.

As a front-line librarian, I spend a portion of my time at the reference desk reassuring people that it is not a moral failing to have an overdue book. A library fine is nothing like a speeding ticket fine; there was no crime committed. Sometimes you just need that extra five days past your due date to finish The Elegance of the Hedgehog; sometimes a book sits on your nightstand untouched until you exhausted all renewals and that 10 cent a day fine eats away at your cheapskate soul until you finally read the book in two days; sometimes your kids throw the Caillou DVD case behind the couch and put the DVD in an Arrested Development DVD case during a quick clean-up of the entertainment center, resulting in $4.60 in fines.

Although you may think you are letting your library and community down when you are delinquent, in actuality, you are helping your library. Fines are substantial revenue generators for non-profit libraries, even at 10 cents a day for books and 25 cents a day for DVDs, which is the standard fee at many libraries across the country.  It is time to stop thinking of your library fines as a punishment and start thinking about your overdue charges as a generous donation or an extended use fee (meaning you actively choose to keep the item and pay a small charge for the extra time.) Every time your kid stuffs the Diary of a Wimpy Kid under her bed for weeks, you are helping your library.

So even though, many patrons pride themselves in never having a library fine, I feel pretty confident (although it has yet to be confirmed) that there is not a special reading room in Heaven for patrons with perfect reading records, so be daring and watch those episodes of Californication for an extra day or two. Your library record is confidential, so no one will ever know, but the Ultimate Librarian.

The Cherokee Dance

Key in the ignition. Nothing. Turn air conditioner on. Turn on the heater. Open driver side door. Slam it behind me. Lift up hood. Look inside for I don’t know what. Slam the hood shut. Open and slam the passenger door. Open and slam the back door three times. Open driver’s door and slam it. Put the key in the ignition. It starts. This is the Cherokee Dance done with love at least two to three times a week. Perhaps it is time to take my old 1995 Jeep Cherokee into the shop for a tune-up. With her 201,501 miles, she is running a little sluggish these days, and some days has no get up and go at all. Back in June 2004, she was diagnosed with a condition that would eventually result in transmission failure. For six years now, she has beaten the odds and keeps chugging along without first gear. She does zero to 35 in about four and half minutes. Yeah that was me the other day; I made you late for work. But as long as I don’t pull out into traffic or have to be at my destination too fast, my old girl gets me where I need to go.

Some say (well mostly my husband’s parents) that it is time to retire her to the junkyard, but that would be like euthanizing Grandma. Our Cherokee, which was an engagement gift from my parents, has been a part of our family since the summer of 1996 and has been part of every crucial milestone in my adult life. My husband and I drove her from Pennsylvania to Texas to Colorado to start our lives together in the Rocky Mountains in 1996; we brought home our first child in the backseat in 1999. To keep him from getting lonely, I sat with him in the backseat for the first three years of his life until his sister came along in a matching car seat. We then drove our beloved vehicle back to Texas in 2002 and had two more kids. When we returned to Colorado in the summer of 2008, the mechanic recommended that we tow her. Just another naysayer. We did not listen and she made the trip like a disabled triathlon runner in the Special Olympics.

Yes, it is true that when our family of six needs to ride in her five passenger capacity body we have to draw straws to see which family member stays at home. This is why; the old girl mostly remains in the pasture known as our driveway while we comfortably voyage in a red Dodge Grand Caravan complete with a navigation system, a DVD player, stow-and go storage and leather seats. Sure, it has a nicer chassis, but who develops an emotional attachment to a Dodge? The minivan may be newer and more functional than a vehicle with only five seats, two-doors, manually operated windows, locks that you have to remember to push down and technicolor coffee and milk stained upholstery that carries most illnesses that are typically only found in Third World Countries, but the Dodge minivan will never be a member of our family like our beloved Jeep Cherokee.

The Ceiling, Really?

Dear Eldest Son:

Since you like math so much, here are a few facts for you to contemplate. The average width of a toilet seat is 15.7 inches and the average head circumference for an almost twelve-year-old boy is 15 inches; therefore, with 0.7 inches of head room, I would like to know why you can’t manage to get on your knees, hug the toilet real tight and hit the target with your vomit. Out of my four children, only you are not capable of properly aiming your vomit. If your three-year-old brother can hold his own barf bucket steadily during a two-hour minivan excursion, throw up three times, and not get a drop on his clothes or his car seat, how does a sixth grader who completes math problems at a tenth grade level manage to not only miss the toilet completely but hit all four bathroom walls, the bathtub, the floor, the hand towels and the ceiling? The ceiling, really? How did you make your vomit defy gravity?

It was one thing when you were one-year-old, vomited all over yourself, smiled with delightful relief and started screaming once you felt that mushiness of your puke through your sleeper. You were a baby. Even when you were a four-year-old and couldn’t make it to the bathroom on time, I was grossed out, dry-heaving beside you, but I could understand your inability to control your gag reflex. But at as a middle school student, it is time show some self control, boy!

With each passing day as you get closer to the age of twelve, I realize that you are not likely to ever move out. You will never find a college roommate that will tolerate puke on the carpet, and you certainly won’t find a wife willing to aim your head towards the toilet. Dear son, I love you, but I don’t want to be cleaning up your vomit for the rest of my life. You will find a bucket, mop, and Lysol in the bathroom, please use these items accordingly.

Your Loving Mother

My Good Deed

“Mom, can we have a snack?" asked my eight-year-old daughter anchored by her three brothers and a set of twin eight-year-old girls from down the street.

I reached into the pantry and grabbed a white box adorned with a small picture of a blonde girl with braids wearing a blue bonnet and a huge smile framed by naturally bright red lips. I reached deep into the slender box and retrieved six brown rectangles decorated with pastel circles and covered with shrink wrap.

“What is it?” said the perplexed brunette.

“A Little Debbie Brownie,” I responded.

“What does that mean?” asked the other perplexed brunette.

“You have never had a Little Debbie? " I inquired.

“No,” said twin number one.

“Really? You have never seen a box like this before. What about these or these?” I asked while holding a box of yellow Twinkies in my left hand and a bag of Oreos in my right hand.

“No,” said twin number two.

This really did not come as much of a surprise since my family lives in a town like Lake Wobegon but better. Here all the children range from well-above average to presidential. My four children are squarely in the middle of the pack in the position of “somewhat exceptional.” Their rankings have possibly been stunted by their extensive exposure to simple sugars, trans fat and hydrogenated oils.

“What does your mom give you as snacks?"

“Grapes and apples. Sometimes she makes his hot chocolate and warm chocolate chip cookies,” said the first twin with the other one nodding in agreement.

“Really. Fruits and homemade cookies. You poor kids," I said with a sympathetic smile. “Enjoy your Little Debbie. When you are done with the brownie, have an Oatmeal Crème Pie. I am sure it is nothing like the cookies your mom makes with rolled oats.”

Missed the Tapas, Where’s the Dead Dog?

I am so relieved. I am relieved that Garth Stein did not bring Enzo with him to his talk about his New York Times Best Seller, The Art of Racing in the Rain because I would have eaten him. Yes, I would have devoured Enzo’s decaying corpse and wiped the moldy tendons from my lips the same way that Enzo licked the squirrel’s blood off his face and ate curdled yogurt off the baby’s highchair. In fact, I was so hungry that while Stein was sharing tales about the writing process and how tough it was to sell a book narrated by a dog, I stared at his burgundy loafers, wondering if there was a piece of gum or sticky Laffy Taffy on his soles. Hunger replaced the excitement that I felt earlier.

So consumed by anticipation for the event, I spent most of my day bouncing back and forth between housework, laundry, and Facebook – doing none of them with focus or concentration. Well, with one exception, I did manage to write blog entries, Facebook posts and emails about my hot black leather boots. My boots consumed all my thoughts and distracted me from properly doing my husband’s laundry. One load of pants, one load of dress shirts and one load of socks and underwear. It was the same every week until this week. I forgot to turn on the dryer for the third load, resulting in soggy socks and dripping underwear 15 minutes before my husband was scheduled to catch the airport shuttle.

My laundry faux-pas resulted in me driving my husband to the airport, eating half a bambino burger from Good Times in the car and arriving 45 minutes late to the chic restaurant where the Book Club Mamas were meeting for appetizers and drinks before the author talk. Not wanting to appear undignified, I declined offers of both bread and crackers. I soon realized this was a mistake when I started seeing parachutes landing behind the author’s head and the six rows in front of me looked like gigantic Hershey bars. Next time, I’ll just drop my earring and pick up the scraps, or I could just arrive promptly.

Hittin' the Club...Again

A short black sleeveless dress, black kneehigh leather boots, black pantyhose and a sexy burgundy scarf will be my attire when I go clubbing tonight for the second time in four days – book clubbing that is. Even bookworms need a social life and sometimes bookworms splurge on a babysitter to discuss a rather mediocre book, not once but twice. Truthfully, Garth Stein’s The Art of Racing in the Rain is really not worth all the trouble, but it just happens to be the book that our dog friendly community selected for its version of a One Book, One City program. So, Stein’s arrival in town is the Book Club Mamas’ excuse for a night on campus in our college town. Wearing nice clothes, eating delicious food, and having splendid drinks are my primary motives, but if the author actually looks like his picture on the back of his book, the talk could be riveting too.

Oh, the nightlife of a clubbing bookworm…

Adorable Canine Redeems Lame, Cheesy Novel: A Few Thoughts on The Art of Racing in the Rain

Shocked! This was the look on the faces of my fellow book club members when I gave Garth Stein’s “The Art of Racing in the Rain” a thumb in the middle during our traditional opening Thumb up/Thumb down ceremony. It was strongly anticipated that I would not like this book because I am petrified of dogs; I ridicule gimmicky narratives; I do not typically read New York Times Best Sellers; and, most importantly, I despise uplifting endings.

For all the above reasons, I really should have loathed this book, but I did not on two simple grounds: Enzio, the charming narrating dog suckered me in with his jokes and wisdom and the racing metaphors absolutely captured my imagination. In actuality, The Art of Racing in the Rain is a simplistic story of a man, a woman, their child, the man’s dog and the woman’s horrible parents. Not much interesting happens. Man gets dog; man marries woman; dog and woman don’t care for each other too much; woman gets cancer; and the grandparents try to steal the child from her father. In terms of plot, this novel is really sort of puerile until the dog comes along and gives the reader an “under the table” view.

Enzio narrates every detail with a four-legged perspective. We hear from his point of view the details of human mating rituals; we learn what is like for a dog to discover a rancid chicken nugget under a kitchen table; we experience firsthand a dog’s thirst for squirrel’s blood and how that is a magnificent metaphor for irrational acts of human passion. And of course, Enzio charismatically draws us in with his T.V. addiction, hatred of monkeys and ardent belief that he would transform into a human upon his death. Reviewing that list, it still surprises me that this ridiculous book appealed to me, but the success of this book lies in the humanistic portrayal of the universe from a non-human point of view. Furthermore, it gave me that tingling in the nose about to cry feeling many times.

In fact, for a moment or two, I adored Enzio so much that I wished I liked real life dogs (not likely to ever happen). Enzio is a literary device not a dog, a literary device that makes this non-dog-lover’s experience with this novel very different than a dog lover’s encounter. Generally, dog-lover’s were ecstatic about this book. For the non-dog lover, Stein’s book is a light, tolerable read. If you have a few hours to kill, this one will make you laugh and tear up a little.

Memo to Aspiring Babysitters: If You Want to Watch My Kids You Better Dehoochie Your Facebook Profile

Dear Applicants (all 42 of you):

Thank you for your interest in watching my four amazing and beautiful children; your life will truly be enriched by being around them. Likewise, I would expect that you would have something special and heartening to offer my children. To earn the privilege of watching my children, you must not look like a slutty party girl on your Facebook profile. If your “likes” include tequila, beer, hooking-up with strangers in public restrooms under a full-moon, and having Cool Whip licked from my tummy, I will not hire you. And, it is not because I am old and jealous. Sure, those two facts are true, but I am a public servant. My public will not take kindly to a sign that reads: “No reference librarian today because her babysitter was too hung over to watch her kids.”

I need reliability and maturity. It also doesn’t hurt if you are as haggard and ugly as a copy of War and Peace that has been checked out a multitude of times. Plain Janes are encouraged to apply.

If I do not respond to your application, this means you were too pretty, too fun, too dumb, or too young.

However, if you were smart enough to checkout your potential employer’s Facebook profile like I checked out yours, please email me a copy of my blog link and I’ll hire you immediately. Smart, innovative girls are encouraged to apply.

Sincerely,

Your Potential Boss
Garbageman’s Daughter

An Open Letter to Prince Regarding His Most Recent Asinine Business Decisions

Dear Prince:

A few weeks ago, you announced your Welcome to America Tour. This announcement was greeted with great excitement by your most devout American fans, despite the ridiculous name of the tour. You are an American citizen. Why are you coming to America? Don’t you already live here and have a lot of properties that you don’t pay taxes on until the tax authorities chase you down and demand payment? And, why you are not doing the 20TEN tour in the United States like you did in Europe and like you will do in Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates? And why are you stuffing your show with a bunch of artists that no one wants to see? And of course, the most important question, why are starting your tour just a few days before Christmas?

I know you don’t celebrate Christmas and that you need replenish your bank accounts given your huge tax penalties and the ridiculous amount of lawsuits that you lost in 2010. (Did no one ever tell you not to sue babies and not to make a deal with a stinky perfume company just because their name reminds you of the Bible?) Do you really need to burden your fans with your problems? Sure, you are worth the $173.00 sticker price for tickets on the floor and possibly worth the $500 per person for a table in the exclusive Purple Circle. But, why right before Christmas?

Do you not realize that you are old? Since you are old this means that most of your fans are old and are parents. You would like to think that your fans hot twenty-somethings but that is not the case. Face reality, your fans are mostly women between the ages of 35 and 48 who were kids when you took the pop music world by storm in 1984 with Purple Rain. Yes, it is true. Your fans don’t have taut asses and perky breasts, they are bunch of stretch mark laden, cellulite riddled moms who are going to try to look like Vanity (circa 1982) by squeezing their sagging, misshapen breasts and post-baby bellies into retro trampy dresses, lining their eyes heavily in black to mask their crows feet and wearing thigh-high boots to hide the spider veins. This really should have occurred to you once your promoters used the line “maybe your parents told you about him” to sell tickets to younger audiences.

So, although I have no problem being an “old fan,” who is willing to place financial burden on my family and will happily wear my streetwalker boots that hide my cankles, I am not thrilled about wearing so little clothing on the East Coast in the middle of winter. (Still searching for fashionably floozy dress that can easily be converted into a conservative dress that is appropriate for my library’s reference desk.) From the financial burden to the weather forecast, a concert in December is just bad idea, but you are “The Prince of the Bad Idea.”

In fact, 2010 has really been a banner year for your bad ideas. You started the year off with your depressingly dreadful fight song for Minnesota Vikings, which caused thousands, no hundreds (most football fans don’t know who you are) to blame you for their loss. Then, you followed that travesty with a couple of crap demos and fled to Europe for a few magnificent shows with fantastic set-lists (I know this because bootlegged copies of the shows were available almost immediately. Great job trusting the Europeans. They gladly steal from you just like the Americans.) You deprived your American fans of legal opportunities to hear those songs and then further screwed over your American fans by only releasing 20TEN (a really solid musical offering) through newspapers and magazines in Europe. You got your money upfront with no thought of your fans. Most of your fans didn’t care because they had an illegal copy of the CD within 24 hours of the release in France. But, now you are releasing a deluxe version of 20TEN. So, fans will soon pay an obscene amount of money for a CD that they partially possess. You know your hardcore fans are completists and will purchase every brilliant, average and horrid piece of music you put out.

Yes, 20Ten Deluxe is just another example of the way you screw over your fans. Redundant, frivolous albums, ridiculously overpriced inconveniently timed concerts not to mention all the embarrassing things you say like “the internet is dead” that forces your fans to defend your crazy ass. If there ever was an artist who did not deserve fans, it would be you, Prince. But for some reason the fans like the way you screw us. You don’t deserve it, but you’ll see me and thousands of your other fans when you come to America. See you then.

Sincerely,

Garbageman’s Daughter