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