Monthly Archives: April 2011

Etc., Spare time - Culture, Storytime

Weekend update

I’m not feeling too possessed by the writing bug this weekend, due to YET ANOTHER oral surgery on Friday (don’t even get me started – this has been a pretty miserable experience), but thought I’d update on a couple of things I’ve written about recently:

Pippa is a happy girl, now that she’s back on regular food.  She does drink a lot of water, and she does sleep more than she used to, but she’s enjoying all the extra lap time and morning brushing sessions.  Hopefully she’ll be around for a long time yet.

The mouse is dead, finally.  And I have learned that my perfectionism doesn’t work well when setting mouse traps; I was so focused on making the traps look good that they were virtually impossible to spring.  The mouse enjoyed many snacks of spreadable cheese and peanut butter off of my traps, in absolute safety and comfort.  But then Jim set a trap, and that was the end of mousey.  Mouse did leave us one parting gift, though – he climbed into the sub-woofer for our (thankfully) inexpensive surround sound system, and it would seem that he munched through some wires while he was in there.  Now when we try to use the surround sound we get horrible loud sounds and the system goes into “protect” mode.  And yes, I have unplugged it.  Time to save our pennies for a new system…

Work on the bathroom continues on, slowly but surely.  Jim laid down the remainder of the tiles this morning, all those fussy little pieces that require cutting and fitting and delicate maneuvering into small spaces.  One step closer, one step closer.

So that’s the weekend update for today.  And one plea for those of you who will be attending my storytimes this week: remember that I’ve got another open wound in my mouth, and that I can’t talk very loud, and I’ll probably cut down the length of each storytime this week to spare myself some misery.  And, most importantly, the swelling and bruises on my face are NOT from my wonderful husband!!

Etc., Spare time - Culture

Happy Patriot’s Day!

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I had a lovely day hanging out in Concord for the parade with my friend Linda and with her son – and even saw another friend and his father-in-law while getting a coffee at Sally Ann’s Bakery.  My two favorite photos of the day are below – one of my ubiquitous Patriot’s Day horse photos, and a photo of the oldest flag in the country, which saw the action on April 19, 1775:

Library events, Summer reading

Summer Proud

Yes, I am proud of myself.  Very, very proud of myself.  The summer calendar and program descriptions are 99.99% finished.  This is a four page production – lots of text, lots of fiddling around to make everything fit while properly describing each and every program.  And it’s almost finished!!!  All that remains are to choose four movie titles (which I can’t do yet because the July and August DVD releases have not been announced anywhere yet), get Lisa’s movie titles for the adult movies (obviously, she will have the same movie problem that I do), finalize with the teen volunteers which themes they want to use for the Saturday storytimes, and find out whether Winston the therapy dog is willing to come back for another season of Paws and Read.  But everything else is DONE!  And, I should point out, there is at least one program scheduled for every single day of the eight week summer reading program, and some days have two or three programs scheduled.  Lots of storytimes, a fun puppet making craft program, Scrabble club and Lego club meetings, each book group will meet once, and there will be the debut of the top-secret Book Gobblers program.  And, of course, some awesome performers.  Best summer ever, I hope.

Cats Dogs Plants Animals, Children's literature

Resident Rodent

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Though we’ve always had mice living in the attic and basement of our one-story home, there has only been one mouse dumb enough to venture into the living space – and a younger Pippa quickly and proudly killed that mouse.  Until two weeks ago, when the world’s dumbest mouse moved in to cohabit with us and our two cats.  At least, I thought the mouse was the world’s dumbest when he first showed himself, running around fully exposed and unprotected in our dining room as Ophy chased him with what looked like bloodlust in her eyes.  But we soon learned that Ophy doesn’t have the faintest idea how to kill a mouse, and frequently loses sight of the mouse when she’s tracking him.  If the mouse pops behind the living room door for a second, Ophy will spend a half hour back there trying to find him again, while the mouse has moved on to safety in other parts of our house.  Then there was the classic moment of the mouse sitting in the middle our porch, munching happily on Ophy’s regurgitated kibble breakfast while Ophy sat a foot away watching him. 

And Pippa?  Well, at age fifteen-ish, Pippa has looked me directly in the eyes and communicated via her best cat Jedi mental telepathy the following statement, “Look, Abby, I know you’d like me to catch that mouse, but, honey, I’m old, I’ve done a lot of hunting in my day, and right now I’m really enjoying sitting in your lap doing nothing.  I’m retired.  Deal with it.”  One doesn’t argue with Pippa.

So we’ve been living with this damn mouse in our living area for two weeks.  We can’t put out mouse traps anywhere the cats go, because we know what would happen if we did.  And I worry that if we put a mouse trap in our very small bedroom, one of us is going to walk right into it with a bare toe in the middle of the night.

Part of me thinks that I should be the Creative Children’s Librarian and turn this situation into the next great piece of juvenile fiction.  Maybe Ophy and Pippa could become allies with Fred the mouse and together the three of them will defeat the evil beagle next door named Bridget.  Or maybe the mouse works his clever rodent magic to trick, fool, and otherwise confound those two lazy house cats.  Or maybe the two cats, formerly rather antagonistic roommates, will bond and become best friends as they work out a plan to catch the mouse that is so annoying their beloved people.  Or maybe the two people of the house will go completely stir crazy from the stress of worrying about the stupid rodent running over their bed in the middle of the night, be hauled away by the folks from the insane asylum, and the cats and the mouse will glory in their new-found independence and hold a huge and raucous party, with lots of catnip and cheese.  Wait, that might be the young adult novel version of the story…

Book groups, Children, Children's literature

The Lightning Thief…again…

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It’s great that the book group members have nominated, voted on, and then chosen all of the books they have read and will be reading this school year, but this month I’m feeling a little gloomy personally about their choices.  Notice that I said “personally,” because I’m only talking about me – I think the choices are great for the kids in the groups.  Today we’re discussing The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan, a book that has gotten a lot of reluctant boy readers very jazzed about reading.  And then they go on to read the rest of the series, and then other books, and it’s all good.  The Lightning Thief also introduces readers to Greek mythology, inspiring some to then go to the source and read “real” Greek mythology, which is very cool.  But, and this is where my personal opinion comes in, we’ve discussed this particular book in several book groups over the past few years, and I’m totally sick of discussing this book.  I’ve read it so many times that I didn’t even bother to re-read it this weekend – especially since I thought I might be nauseous if I did.  I have nothing against this book, I’m just tired of it.  And it doesn’t really lead to great book group discussions, at least it hasn’t in the past. 

So maybe I should have told the kids that we wouldn’t be reading it…but that doesn’t seem fair.  I wanted them to have ownership of their book choices, and the entire group was excited about this book.  If I had come in and said, “No, we’re not discussing that book,” then the whole tenor of the book selection process would have changed.  Which means that we’re discussing it today, and that it will probably come up again in some future group.  Arrgh.

And then the 6th grade choice for this month is another well-worn book group book, The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart.  Yawn.  Again.

Library events

Tangled

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Huge crowd last night for the library Family Movie Night showing of Tangled.  It was so nice to see so many people having a great time at the library, for a free movie with great community spirit.  At one point mid-way through the movie, a father came up to me and introduced himself, then said, “This is great!  This is so great!!  This is reminding me why we decided to move to this town in the first place!!”  And it might have been the lighting, but I could swear his eyes were a little misty. 

Of course, after the movie was over, it looked like there had been a popcorn explosion, and there were empty water bottles strewn all over the floor.  Luckily, there were six able bodied teen volunteers who made short work of the clean-up (and, it should be noted, they also did a terrific job before the movie filling 120 small bags with popcorn). 

The only downside of the night for me was that I didn’t like the movie.  At all.  I know it’s gotten good reviews, and I know that kids adore it, but I didn’t like characters, the plot, or the singing.  I guess I’ve gotten old and grumpy and those Disney musical animated features just don’t do it for me anymore.   But my opinion really doesn’t matter, since the kids and their parents had a fantastic time; last night was a true small town event, with kids lying on their bellies on the floor next to their friends and their parents sitting in the seats sharing gossip and laughs with their friends.  Awesome.

Book groups, Teens, Young adult literature

Talking about Terrier and Fantasy and Books and Reading…

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In my last post, I talked about my struggles with the book Terrier by Tamora Pierce.  Today was the meeting of the teen book group, and I hadn’t finished reading the book; I only got to page 248 out of 561, which is a shameful thing.  I thought about my options: I could lie to the teens and tell them I read the whole book, or I could fudge my way through the book group, not lying outright but also not confessing my sin, or I could tell them the truth.  I chose the truthful option – I respect these teens, and they deserve the truth.  (Actually, every teen deserves to hear the truth from adults in situations like this, but that’s a topic for another day.)

Only half of the group made it to today’s meeting, due to play rehearsals and illness, but that half of the group had all read the book, some of them twice, and were very well-prepared to discuss it.  J—-, the teen who nominated Terrier as a book group choice, started off the meeting by saying that one of the teens who didn’t attend today’s meeting had not finished the book, “How could she not finish??!?!?!  This is such a great book!!!  How could she put it down without finishing?!?!?”  To which I gently cleared my throat and pointed to my bookmark sitting happily at page 248.  J—–, bless her soul, figured out what I was telling them, and said, “Well, for Abby it’s different – she has a full-time job.”  What a sweetie, that J—–, trying to give me some wiggle room.  But I told them, no, it’s not just that I work full-time and have had two oral surgeries in recent weeks; it’s because I don’t like high fantasy.  And that got us off and running on a great hour-long conversation about this book and high fantasy and books that we want to re-read and books that just don’t cut it for us. 

After defining high fantasy, we found out that only one of these teens dislikes high fantasy as much as I do, and that teen commented on how much fantasy we had read in the book group this year.  Which is true, and is something that has been bothering me; in the group in years past I used to always aim for a mix of genres, but that usually involved me choosing all the books.  This year I had wanted the teens to have control of the choices, and we ended up with all fantasy.  Maybe, I suggested, we should read some realistic fiction or historical fiction or a mystery this summer, and the consensus was that was a good idea.  I have a great mystery in mind that I’d love to foist upon the group, so perhaps that will be our choice.

And then the conversation  veered towards books that we choose to read over and over again.  Some of the members of this group are very fast readers, and plow through dozens upon dozens of books, and thus end up re-reading many books.  The Harry Potter books were popular choices for re-reading with these girls, and also certain books out of the Lightning Thief series (as I remember, the third and fourth in the series were labelled by the group as not being worth a second read, but the rest past the test).  The main reason given for choosing to read a book again was to discover a new element of the plot that had been missed before; or perhaps a book had been read before but was not very memorable, so another reading of it actually seemed fresh.  I mentioned that there are very few books I like to read over and over, and the only adult books that come to mind are Jane Austen’s novels – and that I read them again to savor her use of language. 

I wish, as always, that I could remember verbatim all that was said in today’s group; but I don’t.  I do know that I did very, very little talking in the hour-long meeting, and that today’s meeting was the epitome of an excellent book group.  Everyone contributed, we stayed mostly on topic (but all deviations were quite interesting), and civility was the rule of the day – no one even thought about talking over anyone else.  I love this group of teens (and yes, I did very much miss the teens who were absent today), and am so honored to be connected with this bunch of articulate, critical thinkers who love to read.  I’ll be so sad to see our two 9th graders graduate after the meeting in May – they’ll be moving on to Lisa’s book group for 10th to 12th graders this summer – and I’ll be hopeful that the rising 7th graders who will be joining the group in July will continue the streak of excellent, thoughtful discussion that has been the cornerstone of this teen book group for these past five years.

Book groups, Young adult book review, Young adult literature

Terrier

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I’ve been struggling – struggling, I tell you – to get through Tamora Pierce’s book Terrier, first in the Beka Cooper series.  It’s not that I don’t like the book, because I do, it’s just that I have SUCH a hard time reading high fantasy, and really long high fantasy (Terrier is 563 pages) just compounds the misery for me.  Misery is actually too strong a word; discomfort might be better.  Or perhaps I should go back to that word struggle. 

Pierce is a good writer, and I know many teens who devour her books.  And in fact, I’m reading Terrier because it’s the next Teen Book Group book, for our meeting on Tuesday – it was nominated by one of the group’s most dedicated readers, and the rest of the group almost unanimously chose it as one of this year’s books.  I’ve already heard from another group member who loved the book so much that she asked me to request the second book in the series for her.

But as for me, well, the problem with me and high fantasy is that I just can’t get fully immersed in an author’s created world.  I get frustrated by words that I have to look up in the appended glossary, and annoyed by needing to refer to the inevitable endpaper maps of the land.  It’s not just Pierce’s high fantasy, it’s any high fantasy.  Simply put, I’m the wrong person to read this genre because I’m a little too firmly rooted in reality and too unwilling to jump into an imaginary world.

And I’m only on page 150, with two good reading days to go before the book group meets.  And I need to do our taxes in those two days.  I’m in TROUBLE, and the teens in the group are bound to figure out that I wasn’t able to get through the entire book.  I’ll just have to tell them it’s not for lack of trying.  Sigh.

Etc., Spare time - Culture

Bathroom project, part three

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These photos bring us up to the present in the continuing saga of the bathroom renovation.  Drywall has been put up, lally columns have been installed in the basement to hoist the floor back up (the source of the crumbling vinyl floor tile that initiated the whole project), electrical is finished, the floor leveling compound is down, and Jim has installed the cement backer board that will support the awesome new floor tile. 

Pictured below are the fresh insulation, the yucky wallpaper that we found in the foyer (since we’re renovating the foyer and the bathroom together), the drywall, an action shot of Jim applying the mortar before putting down the backer board (I think he was a wee bit annoyed with me at that moment), and the wood floor that we found in the foyer underneath the vinyl tile.  We did decide to cover up that wood floor, mostly because we had already bought and paid for the ceramic tile, but also because it was in poor shape and kinda ugly.  And, important note for Jean and others who visit our house: there now is a light switch for the bathroom that is guest friendly, right by the door from the foyer!  Yay!  (Click on images to enlarge.)