SITY: First of Many

Posted on 04/19/2014 by chick

Behold the first violet of 2014!

first violet 2014

First Violet
April 19, 2014

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SITY: Icy Surprise

Posted on 04/16/2014 by chick

I looked outside this spring morning, and what did I see?

Icy Daffodils

Ice!

IcyD2

Poor, Battered Daffodil

IcyD3

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!

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I Did it!

Posted on 04/13/2014 by chick

I did it! I finished Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour Bookstore in time.

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Reading Report

Posted on 04/12/2014 by chick

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 I read Wampeters, Foma, and Granfalloons in 2008, Look at the Birdie: Unpublished Fiction in 2010, A Man Without a Country in 2013, and now Welcome to the Monkey House in 2014.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!

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Birthday Monsters

Posted on 04/10/2014 by chick

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

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You’re Fired!

Posted on 04/09/2014 by chick

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.

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Nice Tank!

Posted on 04/08/2014 by chick

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.

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SITY: Sun and Shadows

Posted on 04/06/2014 by chick

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.

spiderdualduel

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.

spidercartoon

Shadow Fight

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Setting Traps

Posted on 03/17/2014 by chick

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.

Leprechaun trap

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

“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

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Some Recent Reading

Posted on 03/11/2014 by chick
  1. 13 Little Blue Envelopes by Maureen Johnson, A+: In this book, a timid teenager receives a package from an aunt who has recently died. The package contains 13 blue envelopes and money for a plane ticket to England. The envelopes have instructions for her to follow once she gets to England, and they will lead her all over Europe. The beauty of this story is how the girl follows her aunt’s instructions in her own unique way, leading her to have experiences that are probably very different from what her aunt intended, and yet still wonderful.
  2. Bras & Broomsticks by Sarah Mlynowski, A-: Similar to Meg Cabot’s “The Princess Diaries” in tone, this is the story of a teenager who finds out that her younger sister is a witch. Rather than get jealous, she works on convincing her sister to do spells for her. Magical mayhem ensues. I almost didn’t read this one. “What tripe!” I thought to myself the first time I tried to read it. But I gave it another chance later, and it wasn’t so bad. In fact, by the time I finished it, I was happy with it. That just goes to show how much mood can factor into whether or not you like a book. This is the first in the author’s Magic in Manhattan series. There are three sequels.
  3. The Case of the Missing Marquess by Nancy Springer, A: When 14-year-old Enola Holmes’s mother goes missing, she’s not going to be shuffled off to some horrible school while waiting for her brother Sherlock to crack the case. Instead she sets out to solve the mystery on her own. This is an excellent start to what is sure to be an interesting series. I do not own this book, but I might buy it if the sequels turn out to be as good. Note: I tend to dislike books that are deliberately written to start a series, but I make exceptions for good stories that leave no loose ends. This book met my standards in that regard.
  4. The Crimson Shard by Teresa Flavin, B+: Two kids become trapped in the past after being tricked into walking through a magical door. Though it is a sequel to another book which I have not read, I thought it stood well enough on its own. It was cute but not particularly memorable. I donated it back to the library in hopes that it would find its ideal reader there.
  5. Dragon Magic by Andre Norton, B: I bought this book because I enjoyed several of Andre Norton’s other Magic Books when I was a kid. In this one, four boys from different backgrounds discover a jigsaw puzzle in an untenanted house. The puzzle is composed of four dragons. Each boy feels compelled to put together a different dragon at a different time, and in each case, the act of putting the puzzle together magically sweeps the boy into a story about that dragon. I liked the dragon stories, but the parts before, between, and after were dated and awkward. Recommended only for huge fans of dragons and/or Andre Norton. I’m keeping it for now, though, because it goes with the other Magic Books.
  6. Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library by Chris Grabenstein, A: In this book, Mr. Lemoncello is like the Willy Wonka of the gaming world. After building an amazing, technologically advanced library in his old hometown, he invites a group of kids to play a new, large-scale game: escape from the locked library! With its book-related puzzles and many references to kiddie-lit classics, Escape from Mr. Lemoncello’s Library offers a great deal of fun for readers who enjoy those kinds of things (and I do!). My only reservation in recommending it is that some of the references might be lost on young readers. I don’t own it, but I might buy a copy of it someday.
  7. Fablehaven by Brandon Mull, A:  Two kids go to stay on their grandparents’ farm for a few weeks. Soon they discover that it’s not just a farm, but a preserve for magical creatures, some of them dangerous. Fablehaven contains few, if any, new elements (trolls, fairies, witches, satyrs, ogresses—not new!), but they’re combined in cool, new ways. Recommended.
  8. Far Far Away by Tom McNeal, A: This story is narrated by the ghost of Jacob Grimm (one of the Brothers Grimm of fairy-tale-collecting fame). Jacob doesn’t know why he’s still stuck on Earth but assumes that there’s something important he needs to do before he can move on. He’s a ghost, though, so he can’t really interact with the world. But then he finds Jeremy, a teenager who can hear him. Protecting Jeremy becomes his new purpose. I can’t say much more than that without spoiling the plot. I was initially put off by the idea of Jacob Grimm’s ghost as the narrator, but it works surprisingly well. He’s an endearing character. And while the story does get gruesome (think fairy-tale horrors), I enjoyed it so much that I almost gave it an A+. I gave it the lower grade only because of the pacing. It was just a little too slow in some places and rushed in others. I do not own this book, but I will probably buy a copy at some point.
  9. Granny Torrelli Makes Soup by Sharon Creech, B: Twelve-year-old Rosie’s feelings toward her friend Bailey are changing. While she and Granny Torrelli make soup, Granny listens to Rosie and relates similar stories from her own youth. Creech’s characters were great, but the format was somewhat difficult to follow initially. It was also more of a short story than a novel, leaving me feeling a little bit cheated. I donated it back to the library.
  10. Hole in My Life by Jack Gantos, A: This is author Jack Gantos’s memoir about how, as a young man, he got involved in drug-trafficking and went to prison. Those experiences, for all that they were bad, helped him become a writer. I bought this book because it sounded interesting, even though I had never read any of his work before. I’m glad I did. I will have to make a point of reading some of his fiction.
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