I looked outside this spring morning, and what did I see?
Ice!
Poor, Battered Daffodil
Four Floored
My husband said, “Marshall, did you wish for more snow?”
Marshall replied, “No, I wished for no more snow!”
Wish harder, Marshall, so that the winter weather will finally go away!
I did it! I finished Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore in time.
I got a little crazy for a while and ordered more books from the library than I could possibly read. I tried hard, but it wasn’t enough. I had to send a few back unread, including The Last Days of Ptolemy Grey, because the library wouldn’t let me renew them.
I did well to get some of them done as fast as I did, though. I just finished Welcome to the Monkey House by Kurt Vonnegut. It was due on April 10th, so to have finished it on the 11th was pretty good. The 11th was coincidentally the anniversary of his death (and the same day of the month that my 2007 Vonnegut Marathon ended on). I said to my husband, “That’s so cool. What are the odds that I would finish the book on that particular day?” He replied, “One in 365.” Ha-ha. Smart-ass!
He also said, as he always does when I read Vonnegut these days, “But didn’t you already read all the Vonnegut?” No. The Vonnegut Marathon only encompassed Vonnegut’s fourteen novels. It did not include the collections of short pieces, which I’ve been working on since. I read Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons in 2008, Look at the Birdie: Unpublished Fiction in 2010, A Man Without a Country in 2013, and now Welcome to the Monkey House in 2014.
Welcome to the Monkey House is said to be one of his better collections. Vonnegut is often thought of as a sci-fi writer, but this collection provides a wide range of subjects, from a housewife obsessed with interior design, to a self-employed man who scares himself into taking a factory job, to an amateur actor who completely immerses himself in his theater roles. I enjoyed some of the stories quite a bit, and some of them not as much, so I decided to give it an A- grade.
My next big reading hurdle will be Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore. The library book club discussion is scheduled for next Monday, so I will have to hurry. My husband doubts I’ll be able to read it in time. Hah! By saying so, he has virtually guaranteed that I will. I like a challenge.
After that, I will have to finish Moonwalking with Einstein by Joshua Foer (it’s very good so far). Then I’ll be rushing though Winter’s Tale by Mark Helprin, The Last Dragonslayer and The Song of the Quarkbeast by Jasper Fforde, and Elidor by Alan Garner. Once I’ve completed those, I’ll be done with my stack of library books. That is, unless I’m crazy enough to order more.
Am I?
I’m not sure it matters. I have stacks and stacks of my own books that are still waiting to be read. One way or another, my reading plate is full!
Marshall asked me to type up this little story and make it “rainbow colored,” so . . .
Happy Birthday!
A monster ate your present.
A geeger-eeger ate the monster.
The monster tried to get out before being chewed and swallowed.
There’s no such thing as monsters.
But there are invisible monsters.
The End
Sometimes when Marshall gets mad at us he vents his irritation by saying, “You’re fired!” I have no idea where he got that phrase from, but it’s kind of funny, so I don’t mind. But one day he told me that I was fired, and I couldn’t help but tease him. Here’s how the conversation went.
Marshall: You’re fired!
Mommy: Yay! I’m fired! Do you know what that means, Marshall?
Marshall: No.
Mommy: I won’t have get up with you in the morning, feed you, wash your laundry, or wipe your butt, because it won’t be my job anymore. That’s what it means to be fired.
Marshall: Oh. Then you’re not fired.
We had our septic tank pumped this morning. Exciting, huh? But the best part is what my husband told me afterward. The septic guy says that I’m personally to be congratulated for keeping the septic tank so nice. I didn’t know whether to be pleased or sort of insulted by that until my husband explained that it’s all about the laundry. Laundry has a big affect on the system, and my refusal to use chlorine bleach and powdered detergent is part of why our system is so healthy. So yay for me, Queen of the Septic-Friendly Laundry.
The sun was shining so brightly today that I had to go outside. It was beautiful. But then I noticed something moving on the siding of the house. It was a spider fighting with a bee. The spider had caught the little bee in his web and was attempting to subdue it.
I took some pictures of the struggle. I noticed later that the bright sun had been making creepy bug shadows and that I had caught them in the pictures.
Dual Duel
The shadow images were pretty cool, so I decided to play with one of them in my photo-editing program. Here’s an image that I created by increasing the contrast and using a filter.
Shadow Fight
Dear Kids,
In the lead-up to St. Patrick’s Day, Marshall became fascinated by leprechauns. He wanted to catch one so that he could steal the pot of gold. “Then I’ll be rich!” he shouted with glee. I doubt that he really understood what it would mean to be rich. But then, one doesn’t need to understand economics to be intrigued with the idea of tiny, magical men who stash pots of gold at the end of the rainbow, right?
Marshall was so eager to catch a leprechaun that he made a leprechaun trap. It was a contraption that couldn’t possibly have worked, and yet a surprising amount of thought went into it. It was almost plausible. What he lacked in materials, he made up for with his imaginative use of the items on hand, including a plastic spider.
The finishing touch was the note. First Marshall drew a birthday cake (an appealing image to lure in the leprechaun) on a piece of paper, then he dictated some text for Daddy to add to it. Here’s a close-up of the finished product.
“This is not a TRAP! Go and get the candy!”
He set this first trap on the evening of the 15th. He laid it out on the dining room floor. I asked him why he thought he could catch a leprechaun in our house, and he informed me that leprechauns visited people’s houses at night. That was news to me, but I had to admit that it made sense. Santa and the Easter Bunny go to people’s houses, so why not leprechauns?
On the morning of the 16th, we found that the trap had been sprung and that the candy bait was gone. Interesting. So he set a new-and-improved trap that night. On St. Patrick’s Day morning, not only did we find that the trap had been sprung and the bait taken, but there were two pieces of gold in the trap!
Well, they were chocolate candies wrapped in gold-colored foil, but they might as well have been gold. The two of you ate your chocolate greedily, quite pleased with yourselves and your leprechaun trap.
Marshall wanted to set another trap that night. And who can blame him when the reward was chocolate? But I explained that leprechauns go on vacation after St. Patrick’s Day. So the leprechauns are safe, at least for now.
But the Easter Bunny had better watch out!
Love,
Mom
I have been in the middle of a little depressive episode. This happens periodically and is nothing to be too concerned about. But it is important that I try to do things that make me feel better. Book shopping sometimes improves my mood, so I arranged to go to the library’s used-book store on Saturday morning.
I found a few books that wanted to come home with me.
I tend to focus on the children’s/YA section when I’m at this store. That’s partly because of my reading tastes. But it’s also because the turnover rate is high in that section, so you never know what you might find there. Stuff in the other sections seems to sit and sit (which could be why the store is planning a “bag sale” for later this month).
But I’ve noticed that my donated items get put on the shelves immediately. So maybe it’s just that you have to be in the right place at the right time to get the new stuff. That’s why I try to give every section a quick look, even though I don’t get my hopes up.
This time I hit gold in the music section, which is good, because listening to music also tends to lift my mood. Someone (or someones) had donated a slew of interesting CDs. My husband likes Sufjan Stevens, so I snatched up those three CDs (and he was quite pleased when I brought them home to him!). I had been thinking about giving The Decemberists and Beck a try, so I was happy to find some CDs by each. The Decemberists collection was particularly good (The Hazards of Love, Picaresque, Her Majesty the Decemberists, Castaways and Cutouts, and The Tain). There were also some movie soundtracks (Twilight, New Moon, and Wayne’s World) that had songs by notable bands, so I bought those, too. When a CD costs $1.00, you only have to like one song to make the album worth the price. Plus the money goes to the library, which is a good cause, and if you don’t like the CDs, you just donate them right back the next time you go shopping.
Anyway, I’m listening to one of the albums from The Decemberists right now. I like it. And given that Amazon would charge me more for it than what I paid for all 13 CDs, I think I got an excellent deal!
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