Dear Livia,
You love Cheerios. Sometimes you let them disintegrate in your mouth without eating them. Those sodden cereal pieces wind up all over the place—hanging off your chin, plastered to your shirt, stuck to the rug, and smeared on your fingers. I hate that, but I like the lingering scent of cereal on you, particularly on your moist little hands. Wholesome. Is there any better way for a baby to smell?
Love,
Mom
Poirot would be a difficult person to be friends with.
It is always difficult with Poirot to know when he is serious and when he is merely amusing himself at one’s expense.
from “Double Sin”
Yesterday I defriended someone on Facebook. I’ve been defriended a couple of times myself, and even though I didn’t care much for the people who defriended me, it still hurt in some small way. I therefore never thought I’d do the same thing to someone else. But that was before the Cake Lady. Continue reading
Sometimes it seems like people take everything you say and approach it with the attitude of “let’s find a way in which to be personally offended by this.” I want to say that I don’t engage in such bad behavior myself, but I can’t. I’m just slightly less inclined to it than some people.
What is wrong with all of us? Why are we like this? Have we been so strongly instilled with the tenets of political correctness that we must examine every little statement for its hidden potential to insult someone?
Humph. I am offended by the very suggestion!
I always have a song stuck in my head. Always. It’s like having the radio on all the time. And my brain comes up with some obscure stuff for me to listen to. This morning it was playing an orchestral tune that I was almost certain came from a movie soundtrack. But which one? I puzzled and puzzled for almost an hour, then I finally got it—Sleeping With the Enemy. I haven’t seen that movie in years, so why would my brain dredge that up? Probably because Livia woke me up at 4:00, and any sleeping, with or without an enemy, sounds appealing right now.
Dear Marshall,
I’m going to miss so many things about your childhood, things you won’t remember, things you’ll probably never understand my attachment to. Take this coloring book, for example.
It is called The Tale of Mr. Jeremy Fisher. It was created from the story by Beatrix Potter. Not that it matters who wrote it. We never read it. We didn’t have the chance. You treated it like all of your other books, which is to say roughly, and most of the pages are long gone. A few linger, and on these you color with your “clee-oo” (crayons).
It is your very first coloring book. You haven’t learned yet to color sections (I colored the green part shown in the picture and, for the record, not with that crayon). You just draw random lines using random colors. That’s all you want out of coloring right now. You have no artistic plan, no standard by which you’re compelled to judge your work. You just like to hold crayons, to smell them, and to make marks in your special book. That is so wonderful.
The everyday things you have and the everyday things you do are what make my every day colorful.
Love,
Mom
In Death in the Air, Poirot said,
Close your eyes, my friend, instead of opening them wide. Use the eyes of the brain, not of the body. Let the little gray cells of the mind function. Let it be their task to show you what actually happened.
I am closing my eyes and remembering a whole year of the Weekly Poirot. Yes, a year! And my little gray cells, they’re working hard. They’re trying to decide if I should do another year of Poirot quotes or move on to something else.
Hmm. I wonder how many Poirot books I have left to read. Here is a list of all books with links indicating the ones I have read and reviewed here already.
Wow! That’s a lot of books. I guess I’ll have to continue the Weekly Poirot until I finish reading all of them. Here’s to another year of Poirot!
Have I mentioned that we have a bug problem? It’s not a continuous one, but rather a recurring one. Our first year here, we were invaded by caterpillars in the spring. Next it was millipedes, and they’ve returned every year since, though never as bad as that first season. Other annual events include the early food forays of carpenter ants, the brief swarm of pavement ants, and the occasional summertime attacks by katydids, who flock around the back door at night, drawn by the light.
We’ve gotten used to these incursions, but enough is enough. How many bugs must be put up with? Alas, our space is being invaded yet again. Meet our newest nemesis, the weevil.
I call him Agent Smith, because from a distance he looks black and quite menacing, just like the character in The Matrix. And you can kill him as many times as you want, but that won’t get rid of him. No sooner is he gone than he’s replaced by another who looks exactly the same. It’s like being invaded by an endless stream of clones.
We don’t know what kind of weevil Agent Smith is. After doing some research, I came to the conclusion that there’s a weevil for every type of plant in existence, making identification almost impossible without the help of an entomologist. Chances are that the weevil is not interested in infesting our pantry, but how do we know for sure? Because we don’t know, that makes him weevil non grata, and I’m not necessarily going to be nice about removing him from the premises.
Sorry, Agent Smith. I suggest you stay outside.
Dear Livia,
You turned eight months old just a few days ago. You have done a lot in 8 months. You’ve been standing and cruising for quite a while. This is amazing to us, given that the baby books say you should only have recently learned how to crawl. A few days ago, you started standing without holding on to anything. You must be very close to walking, and I have my camera at the ready.
You’ve started babbling. You say “mamamamama” when you’re upset and “dadadadada” when you’re happy. Marshall used to do the same thing. We wonder if it’s instinctual to call on your mommy when you need something and to try to get your daddy’s attention when you’re at your most adorable. In any event, you say “dadadada” so sweetly that I forgive you for saying it so much more often than “mamamama”
You’ve made yourself an integral part of our life. As engaged as we are with Marshall, it would be easy to overlook you from time to time, but you have an intense quality that makes it impossible to ignore you. It’s not because you scream and cry (though you do sometimes, naturally). It’s because you’re eager to join in the activities going on around you. You try to make eye contact with other people, and when you succeed you positively beam back at them. You love to play, and you have the cutest little laugh. You’ve only been with us for eight months, but already you’re unforgettable.
Love,
Mom
Portuguese Irregular Verbs (A Professor Dr von Igelfeld Entertainment) by Alexander McCall Smith
Grade: B+
Alexander McCall Smith is most famous for his mystery series, The No. 1 Ladies’ Detective Agency. Portuguese Irregular Verbs is apparently quite different from the books of that series. It is not a mystery, but rather a collection of short stories about Dr von Igelfeld, German professor of philology, fool at large.
The book starts out strongly with a story about von Igelfeld and two of his colleagues. They decide to play a game of tennis though none of them has played before. Indeed, none of them is typically inclined to any kind of athleticism, but as von Igelfeld says,
That’s no reason not to play. . . . Tennis, like any activity, can be mastered if one knows the principles behind it. In that respect it must be like language. The understanding of simple rules produces an understanding of a language. What could be simpler?
So they locate an old rulebook and, having absorbed the rules, two play while the third keeps score. Unfortunately, neither player can mange a proper serve and, according to the rules, the match must continue until a lead of at least two games is established, which is never going to happen. Von Igelfeld says,
This is quite ridiculous. . . . A game must have a winner—everybody knows that—and yet this . . . this stupid book makes no provision for moderate players like ourselves.
They all agree to quit, and off they go to take a refreshing swim, even though none of them has ever tried swimming before….
If all of the stories were this funny, I would have given Portuguese Irregular Verbs an A+ and a glowing review. However, the stories seem almost to be arranged by quality, from best to worst. By the time I reached the end of the book, I’d had quite enough of von Igelfeld and his travels. So I half-recommend it, or recommend half of it, whichever way you want to look at it.
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