Happy Valentine's Day!

A little Larry Norman for the holiday; because you ain't nuthin' without love. (And not the kind that Hallmark is peddling.)

This and That

1. We are well into the school year, and I have not once forgotten to send a lunch to school with Nels. If that doesn't sound like a big deal, just ask my mom whether it is or not.

2. I love that Runyan's Jewelers has been in downtown Camas forever. I took my watch and a ring in to them for repair.

"Would you like a loaner?" the lady helping me asked when I handed in my watch. I said no at first, then thought, what the heck, I should take a look, and asked if I could see what they had.

"I never heard of getting a loaner," I said, as she fetched the tray and set it on the counter.

"Well, we have your watch..." she said. "People usually end up bringing these back."

Indeed. The selection was dismal. She was sympathetic.

"Just see if there's something you think you might be able to stand wearing for a few weeks." (Their watch guy was on vacation.) It turned out there wasn't. I thought I might go for a forgettable Anne Klein watch with a brown leather strap, but it had the name of a company blazoned across the face. Probably a commemorative gift for putting in five years.

I turned down a joking suggestion to take a Three Little Pigs watch the size of a silver dollar and left without any watch at all, a decision I regret now that I've found myself checking my empty wrist several times a day for the past two weeks.

The ring I had fixed was a 50's-vintage cocktail ring from my Grandma Toni. It originally had two pearls set on barely visible posts at a diagonal, with a tiny spray of diamonds in between. The ring had been missing a pearl since I'd played with it as a girl, and I had always wanted to have it fixed. Had I known a new (real) 10 mm pearl would only cost $25, I would have done it a long time ago. Of course, the post had broken off too; it was white gold and about 1/6th the size of a tic tac. That cost $30 to replace.

Anyhow, the new pearl is whiter and smoother than the gorgeous older one, but the ring still turned out pretty snazzy.

3. One of my great estate-sale finds last year was the anthology Modern American Short Stories, published in 1945 and edited by Random House co-founder Bennett Cerf. You can see the list of included stories and authors here. The stories are intentionally all over the place, and it is great to read them all juxtaposed against each other.

Before each story there are biographical notes and an explanation of why that particular piece was chosen, and these alone make the book worth reading. Most of the writers were still living and writing at the time the book was published, so you get to read things like "For the past few years William Faulkner (1897- ) has been fitting, more or less, into the Hollywood scene, and the fiction world has been catching up to him, copying some of his technique and mannerisms, dealing with the same weird and underprivileged people of the South." Good fun.

4. Willem has taken to following me around the house when it's just the two of us at home. Up the stairs, down the stairs. Up, down. He even waits outside the bathroom door for me to come out. This morning I got up extra early for some alone time. You'll never guess who popped into the office to stand at my shoulder at 6:45. I know that this phase will soon pass, and before I know it I'll wish he wanted to spend time with me. But, for now, the constant companionship is rough on my inner introvert.

5. I'm taking a break from my weekly writing group. It's time to change things up a little.

Happy weekend!

It's The Little Things

I finally found someone to cut my hair! The first few times I got my hair cut "here," it was in Seattle. Then I went to a stylist at a salon in Beaverton. That was a lot closer, but it still required a dreaded weekday drive through Portland.

Now I've found a salon that's ten minutes away, where a haircut costs only seventeen dollars. That's the good news. The bad news is that the salon is called "Lil' Snippers" and the one "grown-up" chair in the place is situated next to a diminutive bubble-gum pink Jeep. Each of Lil' Snippers li'l customers selects both a vehicle to sit in and a movie to watch at top volume while getting his hair cut. Spa-like it is not.

At Lil' Snippers my hair does not get washed and my scalp does not get massaged (I do love a good scalp massage), but my hair looks downright decent when Kara is done with me. And now that I have reconciled myself to the fact that no haircut in the world has the magic to make me look like I've lost ten pounds, well, some nice layers and something I don't have to blow-dry before going out in the world makes me plenty happy.

Checking In

Yep, we're still here. I haven't had much to blog about of late, and today is no different. This should hold us over until I'm feeling more inspired:

Behold, our seven year-old teenager.

Also, Willem reads now. He totally reads. Which is great and amazing to me, but it's hard to get used to.

Willem is in a phase in which he follows me around the house from room to room. All day. And when I sit down at the computer, I can't tell you how disconcerting--and annoying--it is when he sidles up alongside me and starts reading aloud from the monitor.

Of course I wouldn't have it any other way. But I do miss the days when I could take a quick jaunt through the lingerie department at a store without Willem pausing to puzzle out a word and then asking in his most confident, ringing voice, "Mom, how do you say BRA?"

Books and Movies

I'm not exactly sure when it happened, but at some point I stopped reading books. There was a time in my life when reading was so important to me that to say I stopped reading books would be like saying I stopped breathing. But I started reading fewer and fewer novels (I've always been a fiction girl and a bit of a plot junkie) until finally, when I had my first baby, I just about quit books entirely.

I couldn't not read--I subscribed to a bunch of magazines and journals, because I knew I would be able to read to the end of something and put it down when duty called. Duty called often and with a very screechy voice.

Well, not long ago, Shaun took up reading in his spare time in a way that he hadn't ever done before. And I saw him sitting down with his book, and I thought how has this happened? How can it be that I don't read novels anymore?

So I started in. And now I remember. I picked up Little, Big by John Crowley and it took me a while to get going, but once I did, I was back to my old habit of staying up all night because I couldn't stop turning the pages. And despite the book's shortcomings, it was so successful at creating its world that I got crabby when I finished the book and it was time to say good-bye.

Because Shaun was so enthusiastic about it, I read Cormac McCarthy's All the Pretty Horses next. Well, that was different. The first several pages were hard for me to get through; the language felt suffocating and I seemed to be reading with the lights out. After a bit, though, it opened up and I was sucked right in. The whole deal; up too late, mad when it was over, trying not to talk like a cowboy.

I haven't dared to pick up another novel this week; I've been reading some short stories and my new issue of First Things. I guess I will have to institute a strict bed-time if I'm going to let novels back into my life. Self-discipline is not my strong suit.

Weirdly, I have also stopped watching movies regularly in the past several years. I used to love to watch movies. In the past two weeks I've seen four movies. Between those and the books, I feel like my head might explode.

Shaun was in a western mood, so we watched Rio Bravo. And I liked it. Who knew Dean Martin was such a good actor? We also watched the movie version of All The Pretty Horses. It was interesting to see what they did with it, but I didn't think it was worthwhile apart from that.

Departing from our theme, we took the boys to the cheap theater ($3 tickets!) to see Despicable Me, and for maybe the first time in the life of our family, all four of us equally enjoyed the movie. This review says a lot of things I was thinking about it better than I could. It's good fun.

Shaun's folks took the boys this weekend, so on Saturday we spent our gift certificate at Powell's (thanks, Nancy!) and loafed about at Clyde Common. The excellent Jeffrey Morganthaler was behind the bar, so we decided to stay put rather than rushing off to catch a showing of True Grit.

When we got home we watched Exit Through The Gift Shop. Is it weird that the narration was my absolute favorite part? Anyhow, it is an engrossing (and occasionally very funny) documentary that raises significant questions about art without being preachy or taking itself too seriously. You don't come across movies like that every day.

So, that's the year's worth (for me) of culture I've taken in in the past few weeks. I'm also reading The Borrowers (a book I somehow skipped when I was a kid) to the boys. Willem usually loses interest in books written at Nels's level, but the notion of tiny people grips him, so he's following right along. I don't think I'll ever count it among my favorites. Nevertheless, it should come as no surprise that I still find it hard to resist that perennial plea: Just one more chapter!

Catching Up

I would not have thought it possible for anyone with a googly eye stuck on his forehead to look so serious.

I did no pre-Christmas baking this year, so when Shaun got a hankering for holiday cookies he had to fend for himself. I found him a recipe for "Christmas Nuggets," which was the only thing in the house we had all of the ingredients for. They tasted much better than their name suggests.

The pre-school Christmas program was better than it has been in the past, but I'm glad it was our last one. Nels played games on Shaun's iPod until he could no longer control his audible outbursts ("Oh man, come on!") and we had to cut him off.

Saddest Christmas kangaroo ever. (Yes, the kids sang a song about Roo Roo the Red-Nosed Kanga. Yes, they're wearing reindeer antlers. No, it makes no sense.)

Shaun built us a lot of nice fires in December. Willem settled down alone in front of this one. Sometimes even a five year-old needs some space.

We had a great Christmas with cousins at Grandma and Grandpa's. I like to call this photo "Unusable Signal."

Now this is a Christmas Eve outfit.

Boys are great, but we definitely enjoyed having a little girl around.

No shortage of Christmas cookies here.

Somebody stole the curlers right off Grandma's head.

It wouldn't be Christmas for Shaun without krumkake.

And here's our little cyclops again, slightly less grim this time and wishing you all a happy new year.

For Those of You Not on Facebook and Who Therefore Missed This Announcement

My very short story Rainy Day was published at the online Journal of Microliterature this week. Fiction is not my forte, so of course it's all just real-life stuff rearranged and condensed to 1000 or so words.

Thanks to friend of the blog Oleg, whose friendly short story contest prompted me to write it.

Happy New Year!