NOTE: I just realized that the Intense Debate comments weren't showing up in the blog, even though I was getting them in email, so I uninstalled it, and lost all of the comments from the last three posts (thanks for commenting everyone!) Let me know if you have further comment problems. Maybe I'll try something fancy in the future, but for now I'll stick with the Blogger standard comment thingy.
I'm trying to read more contemporary fiction; since I want to write fiction, I suppose I should read it, right? The only trouble is, I don't know how to choose books. For some reason, I have no problem picking up a work of nonfiction and knowing instantly whether I want to read it or not, but with fiction I'll browse the new book section of the book store or library, turning volumes over, reading the back, putting them down, just not knowing whether I'm going to like something.
Lately, whenever I read a review of a book that sounds good, I go instantly to interlibrary loan and order a copy (if one is to be had in Maine, which is not always the case), this has worked out pretty well for me, but I want to know more. What works of fiction have you read lately that I should read?
Here's a sampling of the novels I've read (or tried to read) in the last few months:
Sky Bridge by Laura Pritchett. When I was at AWP, I rode the 16th Street Mall shuttle with a woman from the conference, named Laura, who mentioned she had a panel the next morning. She also said she freelances for magazines for a living, and writes fiction "in the mornings," which I figured meant like the way I write fiction--quietly scribbling bad stories and character sketches that will never see the light of day. When I got back to my sister's apartment, in stalker-like fashion, I looked up in the conference catalog panels for the next morning and saw that one had a panelist named Laura Pritchett, who had been spoken of very highly at a panel I had been to that day. When I flipped to the bio page, I saw that she had two published books. In further stalker behavior, I checked out her webpage when I got home, and saw that she has a PhD, 100s of articles, essays and stories to her credit and has edited a number of anthologies as well. And, the final blow, when I ordered her book through ILL, the library credit page listed her year of birth, which is only two years before mine. Wow. I better get to work. Anyway, I just got the book Tuesday, and I love it so far. It's the story of a young woman living on a ranch in eastern Colorado whose sister gives birth, then takes off, leaving her with the baby.
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh by Michael Chabon. After hearing Chabon speak, I was determined to love this book, but I can't get past chapter 2. I guess I'm just not that interested in the coming of age story of a Jewish son of a gangster in the early 1980s (am guessing at this date). This is Chabon's first novel (I only chose it because it was the shortest one of his on the library shelf); maybe I should read something more recent.
In the Year of Long Division by Dawn Raffel. This is such a strange book. It's a book of short stories that are more like poems, and, like poems, I have no freakin' clue what's going on, but the language is lovely. I ran out of time to finish this before it was due back at the library, but I'd be interested in reading more of Raffel's work.
The Fiction Class by Susan Breen. I was really excited about this book--there are writing exercises at the ends of some of the chapters. But the characters are not that well-developed and it mentions god, angels and church a bit much for my taste (this is the same reason I can't get past page 10 of an Anne Lamott novel). I think I'll let my checkout time run out before I finish it.
Borderline by Nevada Barr. I used to gobble up Barr's Anna Pigeon, Park Ranger mysteries, but the last couple I read had really excessively disturbing bad guys, so I quit reading her books. But for my flight home from Denver, I wanted to read something light (not the pile of Sun magazines I had crammed into my carry-on in hopes of catching up), so I bought this in the airport. Quick and fun read about a raft trip in Big Bend that goes seriously wrong, and much less psycho murderer than previous books (plus, Pigeon's latent maternal instincts get stirred up a bit).
Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. I keep this book in my car for emergency waiting room episodes. I like how this character and life in this small town in Maine is portrayed from different points of view. Well-developed characters and for the most part avoids sentimentalizing the quaint Maine seacoast town, which I appreciate. I'm afraid I'm getting to the sad(der) part, though.
Bridget Jones's Diary and Bridget Jones: The Edge of Reason by Helen Fielding. Hurrah! These were both re-reads (possibly for the second time) in a fit of needing something light. I forgot how funny both books are! I found myself on the couch, wrapped in a blanket at midnight laughing my a** off. I needed that in March in Maine. It may need to be an annual tradition.
East Hope by Katharine Davis. The parallel stories of two characters who find themselves in a small town on the coast of Maine. One is a woman whose husband dies, has a son in college who's growing distant, is pregnant from a one-night-stand with a neighbor and goes to Maine to claim a cottage inherited from her husband's aunt; the other is a college professor falsely accused of sexual harassment whose marriage is falling apart and who takes a summer job running a used bookstore. I liked the surprising twists this storyline takes, though the book does fall into the sentimentalized "quaint Maine village" trap.
A Bird in Hand by Christina Baker Kline. A woman is involved in a car accident in which a child dies; while it's not exactly her fault, it infuses her with guilt and adds bumps to an already rocky marriage. If you're interested in writing, read Kline's blog, A Writing Life.
Shadow Tag by Louise Erdrich. Wow. This book was amazing. I couldn't read it fast enough. It's the story of a woman trapped in an abusive relationship with her husband. It shows all the complexities of such a life in ways I had never considered before--that you can go from one moment fearing for your life to the next minute discussing what's for dinner. You can't help but wonder how much of the story comes from Erdrich's relationship with Michael Dorris. It's written from three points of view--the blue diary (which the woman keeps in her home office), the red diary (which she keeps in a safe deposit box at the bank) and a third-person narrator whose identity you only learn in the last couple of pages.
Moonspender by Jonathan Gash. C and I had been watching a lot of the early TV series of Lovejoy, so I had to check out one of the books. Lovejoy is a lovable chauvinist; an antique dealer, sometimes-forger and "divvy" (one who can tell on sight if an antique is real or fake). The book's written in East Anglian slang, so I only understood about every fourth word and I started saying things like "kip," "knackered," and "ta."
What have you been reading, or trying to read, or not reading lately?
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Book Booty!
On Monday I received this in the mail:
It's a box of all of the books, literary journals and magazines I collected (some at great discount, some practically thrust at me as the booth attendants were preparing to break down and go home) at the AWP. There was no way these were going to fit into my suitcase, so I had my mom mail them to me. I'm super excited toadd them to the pile of unread magazines and library books next to my bed read them.
It's a box of all of the books, literary journals and magazines I collected (some at great discount, some practically thrust at me as the booth attendants were preparing to break down and go home) at the AWP. There was no way these were going to fit into my suitcase, so I had my mom mail them to me. I'm super excited to
I'm most looking forward to reading Tender Hooks by Beth Ann Fennelly. She was a panelist at one of the sessions I went to and read some of her poetry, which was wonderful--moving and funny and powerful. After reading her bio on the back of the book, and seeing she's an assistant professor of English a the University of Mississippi, I flipped to the Acknowledgements section, and sure enough, there was Ann Fisher-Wirth.
Ann was one of the instructors at a writing workshop I attended nearly six years ago (the other instructor started out the week mistaking me for one of his ex-girlfriends--he was there with his wife and two young kids--and even after he saw my name was Andrea, not Adrian, he still had to ask if I had ever lived in Yukon Territory. Uncomfortable). M was three years old (and I wasn't yet pregnant with the twinsies). At four days, it was the longest I had been away from him (I had only spent one overnight--a bridal shower turned bachelorette party--and one women's ski weekend away from him before), and I loved it (and, of course, payed dearly when I returned). Ann was such a fun, inspiring person. It was the first time I had taken writing seriously since my journalism "career" got derailed after three semesters in college, and I feel like it was the first step in a very slow and protracted process of becoming a "writer" (still working on it!). (Boy I'm into the parentheses today, aren't I?)
Also at the AWP bookfair, Writer's Digest Books was handing out coupons for 40% off titles on their website plus free shipping. I took the opportunity to order three books I've been wanting to get for a while, but have not gotten because I already have a pretty good sized stack of craft (of writing) books that I never use. But these will be different! I swear!
The books:
Writer Mama by Christina Katz
Writing the Life Poetic by Sage Cohen (I took Sage's Poetry for the People Class last spring, and while I wasn't in a good head space for it at the time, it was a good class, and I produced at least two decent poems).
Writing Picture Books by Ann Whitford Paul
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
Pilo O' Scarves
Before I left for Denver, I made these scarves for my sisters, my mom and a couple of friends I visited there. 
I tried doing a better job on these than I had with my own--actually ironing under the hem before sewing. I also used a very narrow zig-zag for the seam, which gives it a nice finished look and also disguises the fact that I can't sew in a straight line to save my life (even with the newly-discovered fabric guide in place)!
Like the one I made myself last month, they're made with Anna Marie Horner Little Folks voile, from here (which is just down the road--which in Maine means a 20-minute drive--from me).
The fabric is a little bit wider than normal, so just a half yard, hemmed all around makes a perfect spring scarf.
I tried doing a better job on these than I had with my own--actually ironing under the hem before sewing. I also used a very narrow zig-zag for the seam, which gives it a nice finished look and also disguises the fact that I can't sew in a straight line to save my life (even with the newly-discovered fabric guide in place)!
The best part about these? No cutting! Except for the ironing (which I had done earlier), it only took about an hour or two to sew up all six, two nights before I left on my trip!
My only regret? That I didn't keep them all for myself! And also that when my mom and I were in a shop that had different colorways of the same fabric, I felt too sick to look around, enjoy myself, or buy anything!
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
New Favorite Food--Gnocchi
Note: I just installed Intense Debate to make it easier to respond to comments. Let me know if it causes you any problems leaving comments!
Lately I have been loving cooking (and eating) gnocchi (which I believe is pronounced "no-key"). It's a rather time-consuming, somewhat elaborate (but not difficult) meal to prepare, not something you whip up after work on a Tuesday night. However, I don't mind cooking something a little elaborate every once in a while. Actually, in an ideal world, I would cook one big, fancy meal each week and not go near the kitchen again all week--not even to pour cereal or fix lunches. This is not an ideal world, however, so while I try to make one nice meal on the weekends, I still have to make a few quickish (but still mostly from scratch) things during the week, and fix lunches. C usually makes pizza the other weekend night and does most of our weeknight cooking, since he often works from home and can get started earlier. He's also the one who usually pours the cereal.
Anyhoo, back to the gnocchi. First I tried the Beet Gnocchi from Apples for Jam. This is basically a potato gnocchi with a little pureed beet root added for color. And what a color it is. Mixed with the last little bit of last summer's pesto, it looked like nothing so much as raw stew meat marinating in something green, which needless to say, freaked me out a bit (though I still managed to gobble down a heaping plateful). And the texture was a bit on the glutinous side (with the emphasis on "glue"). I'm not sure if that was the recipe's fault or mine.
(Photo by M)
Next I made Gnocchi di Patate alla Veronese (potato dumplings from Verona) out of my hand-me-down-from-my-mother The Romagnolis' Meatless Cookbook (c. 1976). This is a potato gnocchi, made in the traditional shell shape by rolling small pieces on a cheese grater. I had to start cooking at two in the afternoon, however, because the gnocchi required two hours to dry, which may have helped in the much improved texture of these (serving them with an entire stick of melted butter didn't hurt either!)
When I was in Denver, I went to a restaurant near my sister's apartment called Root Down. It's located in an old service station, with the works "breaks," "shocks," and "mufflers" still over the garage bays that are now big windows into the kitchen. I had just been to a conference about brownfields (i.e. redeveloping old industrial sites for new uses), so I was excited to be eating in one (and hoping they had done a good job with the cleanup). They also cook with a lot of local foods and use as many recycled materials as they can. I ordered a "little dish" of carrot gnocchi. I was already not feeling well the night we went there, so I'm afraid I didn't enjoy the gnocchi as much as I might otherwise have, but they kept haunting me--I wanted to go back and eat them again and give them my full appreciation.
With the long commute, however, I did the next best thing and Googled "carrot gnocchi" and came up with this recipe, which I think is a good approximation, flavor-wise. I doubled the recipe, because the first 1/2 pound of carrots didn't look anywhere near enough, and I ended up doubling the flour a second time because the dough was so sticky. These were made by blopping spoonfuls of dough into the water (you're supposed to somehow form a 3-sided pyramid with the spoons, but that was not working for me, even with all the extra flour), so they came out pretty ragged and unattractive. But delicious, and not at all gluey, and, with the doubled version, just enough for our family of five.
My kids have actually eaten every type of gnocchi I've made so far, with varying degrees of coercion and spoon-feeding (dinner is not a popular meal among the short people in our home). Now that I know you can substitute carrot for the potato, I think I'll try experimenting with other mushable vegetables, like sweet potato and winter squash. Parsnip perhaps? I'll let you know how it goes. In the meantime, here's the Romagnoli's recipe:
GNOCCHI DI PATATE ALLA VERONESE/
Potato Dumplings from Verona
2 lb baking potatoes
3-3 1/2 c. unbleached all purpose flour (approx.)
1/4 t. salt
6-8 T melted unsalted butter
4-6 T grated Parmesan cheese (I always use Peccarino Romano rather than Parmesan)
Boil the potatoes with their jackets on, drain them the minute they are tender and peel them as soon as they can be touched. Put them in a big bowl, add the salt and beat until smooth with an electric beater or mash well with a potato masher.
Add the flour gradually, working it in with a fork. Keep adding flour until you have a workable, rather solid dough.
Generously flour the pastry board or counter and your hands, take a handful of dough and roll it into a long cylinder no more than 3/4 inch in diameter. Cut it into 1-inch slices. Press each slice with your thumb against the side of a cheese grater. Roll your thumb gently downward and away, allowing the dough to curl up a bit and be dimpled by the grater, making a shell-like shape--a gnoccho. Keep on rolling cylinders, cutting slices, and shaping until all the dough is used. As you finish each gnoccho, line it up on a floured cookie sheet. Gnocchi should dry at least 2 hours.
When it's time to cook, bring at least 4 quarts of water to a boil in a big pot and add 1 teaspoon of salt for each quart of water. Drop in just enough gnocchi to cover the bottom of the pot. As they are done, the gnocchi rise to the top. Let them cook gently as they float for a minute or two more. Remove with a slotted spoon, drain well over the boiling pot and put in a warm serving dish. Repeat this process until all the gnocchi are cooked. Dress with the melted butter, sprinkle with the cheese, and serve. For 6 to 8.
Lately I have been loving cooking (and eating) gnocchi (which I believe is pronounced "no-key"). It's a rather time-consuming, somewhat elaborate (but not difficult) meal to prepare, not something you whip up after work on a Tuesday night. However, I don't mind cooking something a little elaborate every once in a while. Actually, in an ideal world, I would cook one big, fancy meal each week and not go near the kitchen again all week--not even to pour cereal or fix lunches. This is not an ideal world, however, so while I try to make one nice meal on the weekends, I still have to make a few quickish (but still mostly from scratch) things during the week, and fix lunches. C usually makes pizza the other weekend night and does most of our weeknight cooking, since he often works from home and can get started earlier. He's also the one who usually pours the cereal.
Anyhoo, back to the gnocchi. First I tried the Beet Gnocchi from Apples for Jam. This is basically a potato gnocchi with a little pureed beet root added for color. And what a color it is. Mixed with the last little bit of last summer's pesto, it looked like nothing so much as raw stew meat marinating in something green, which needless to say, freaked me out a bit (though I still managed to gobble down a heaping plateful). And the texture was a bit on the glutinous side (with the emphasis on "glue"). I'm not sure if that was the recipe's fault or mine.
(Photo by M)
Next I made Gnocchi di Patate alla Veronese (potato dumplings from Verona) out of my hand-me-down-from-my-mother The Romagnolis' Meatless Cookbook (c. 1976). This is a potato gnocchi, made in the traditional shell shape by rolling small pieces on a cheese grater. I had to start cooking at two in the afternoon, however, because the gnocchi required two hours to dry, which may have helped in the much improved texture of these (serving them with an entire stick of melted butter didn't hurt either!)
When I was in Denver, I went to a restaurant near my sister's apartment called Root Down. It's located in an old service station, with the works "breaks," "shocks," and "mufflers" still over the garage bays that are now big windows into the kitchen. I had just been to a conference about brownfields (i.e. redeveloping old industrial sites for new uses), so I was excited to be eating in one (and hoping they had done a good job with the cleanup). They also cook with a lot of local foods and use as many recycled materials as they can. I ordered a "little dish" of carrot gnocchi. I was already not feeling well the night we went there, so I'm afraid I didn't enjoy the gnocchi as much as I might otherwise have, but they kept haunting me--I wanted to go back and eat them again and give them my full appreciation.
With the long commute, however, I did the next best thing and Googled "carrot gnocchi" and came up with this recipe, which I think is a good approximation, flavor-wise. I doubled the recipe, because the first 1/2 pound of carrots didn't look anywhere near enough, and I ended up doubling the flour a second time because the dough was so sticky. These were made by blopping spoonfuls of dough into the water (you're supposed to somehow form a 3-sided pyramid with the spoons, but that was not working for me, even with all the extra flour), so they came out pretty ragged and unattractive. But delicious, and not at all gluey, and, with the doubled version, just enough for our family of five.
My kids have actually eaten every type of gnocchi I've made so far, with varying degrees of coercion and spoon-feeding (dinner is not a popular meal among the short people in our home). Now that I know you can substitute carrot for the potato, I think I'll try experimenting with other mushable vegetables, like sweet potato and winter squash. Parsnip perhaps? I'll let you know how it goes. In the meantime, here's the Romagnoli's recipe:
GNOCCHI DI PATATE ALLA VERONESE/
Potato Dumplings from Verona
2 lb baking potatoes
3-3 1/2 c. unbleached all purpose flour (approx.)
1/4 t. salt
6-8 T melted unsalted butter
4-6 T grated Parmesan cheese (I always use Peccarino Romano rather than Parmesan)
Boil the potatoes with their jackets on, drain them the minute they are tender and peel them as soon as they can be touched. Put them in a big bowl, add the salt and beat until smooth with an electric beater or mash well with a potato masher.
Add the flour gradually, working it in with a fork. Keep adding flour until you have a workable, rather solid dough.
Generously flour the pastry board or counter and your hands, take a handful of dough and roll it into a long cylinder no more than 3/4 inch in diameter. Cut it into 1-inch slices. Press each slice with your thumb against the side of a cheese grater. Roll your thumb gently downward and away, allowing the dough to curl up a bit and be dimpled by the grater, making a shell-like shape--a gnoccho. Keep on rolling cylinders, cutting slices, and shaping until all the dough is used. As you finish each gnoccho, line it up on a floured cookie sheet. Gnocchi should dry at least 2 hours.
When it's time to cook, bring at least 4 quarts of water to a boil in a big pot and add 1 teaspoon of salt for each quart of water. Drop in just enough gnocchi to cover the bottom of the pot. As they are done, the gnocchi rise to the top. Let them cook gently as they float for a minute or two more. Remove with a slotted spoon, drain well over the boiling pot and put in a warm serving dish. Repeat this process until all the gnocchi are cooked. Dress with the melted butter, sprinkle with the cheese, and serve. For 6 to 8.
Friday, April 23, 2010
A Peek Inside My Drawers
For Christmas, C got me One Year to an Organized Work Life by Regina Leeds, and I've actually been following along (it is organized in a month-by-month, week-by-week format), organizing my cubicle drawers, setting up a filing system, etc. Admittedly, it's almost cheating for me, since I changed jobs in December and had already jettisoned 12 years of accumulated crap. However, it's nice to start out nice and fresh, with an actual filing system. Funny, but a liberal arts education doesn't teach you anything useful, like how to organize and store files. The only task I have had a hard time with is getting out the door and to work on time in the morning (the author only devotes one week to this exercise, when I need about six months of individualized steps...probably doesn't help that I get up early to blog when I should probably be showering and fixing lunches!).
My "writing table." This is just a tiny table crammed in my bedroom between my sewing corner and the Big Ugly Chair (you can see it in the last picture here), at which I rarely sit to write.
And, finally, not a drawer, but my "writing shelf." This is a shelf in my closed where I cram my writing notebooks, back issues of zines, sketchbooks and, apparently, all the other crap I own and don't know what to do with. It's the one shelf I did not deal with when I did my major closet clean-out.
Scary, huh?
Where to begin? On Saturday afternoon, I emptied the contents of all five drawers and the shelf onto the living room floor and began sorting things into piles and categories (the biggest pile being "recycle"). I dusted out each drawer and only put back what I actually wanted in each one. Here's how they look "after":
Better, no? However I still had a gigantic mountain of homeless crap in the middle of the floor (my children were not pleased with me a. taking up all the play space and b. not cleaning up my stuff--except that they wanted me to play with them so that I couldn't clean up my stuff. You can't win, I tell you!).
Sunday morning, I emptied out my drawer in the filing cabinet (we have a four-drawer filing cabinet, with two of the drawers for C's work, one for our family financial stuff, like taxes--which I'm sure should be next on my list of cleaning, sorting, organizing and dumping--and one just for me). I went through each and every file folder, with the recycling box by my side. My goal was to free up most of the cabinet for writing, with files dedicated to works in progress, submission guidelines, my zine, etc.
I did keep some items strictly out of sentimentality--does anyone else have a hard time tossing the papers you wrote in college? And I have a file of poetry dating back to when I was in third grade, which consists mainly of a vast body of melodramatic work from the tween years, including one poem that begins, "Have you ever had a broken heart?/Have you ever cried like I have?" Yikes. Maybe I'm relieved I don't have any daughters (not that men don't write their share of broken-heart poetry--which is a good thing for the pop music industry--and not that my boys don't engage in their share of melodrama). I also saved my seventh-grade diary and an entire file on the Southern Methodist University Swim Team circa 1991-1992 (hey, I covered the team for the college paper!).
By Sunday night, still ankle-deep in papers and piles, I was starting to whimper a bit, and C asked me why I hadn't just tackled one drawer at a time (clearly he does not know me very well--hello! I gave birth to twins, remember? I don't do things by halves.). But I got the floor cleared and the filing cabinet refilled (with not as much free space as I'd been hoping for, and with a system probably not up to the standards of Regina Leeds, but much improved no less)
Anyway, all that cleaning and organizing of drawers at work, got me itching to tackle my drawers at home. So finally, this weekend, with cloudy/snowy/rainy weather, I had time to tackle them.
This is what I had to face:
The computer desk. (This is the desk I freed up for writing a couple of years ago, only weeks before our laptop crashed and C bought a desktop, and my "room of my own" became his office!)
My sewing table. The drawer on the right wasn't too bad--it got cleaned out a little when I got my sewing cabinet. The drawer on the left was crammed full of tutorials and patterns printed off the Internet--not stapled and completely mixed up and out of order.
My "writing table." This is just a tiny table crammed in my bedroom between my sewing corner and the Big Ugly Chair (you can see it in the last picture here), at which I rarely sit to write.
And, finally, not a drawer, but my "writing shelf." This is a shelf in my closed where I cram my writing notebooks, back issues of zines, sketchbooks and, apparently, all the other crap I own and don't know what to do with. It's the one shelf I did not deal with when I did my major closet clean-out.Scary, huh?
Where to begin? On Saturday afternoon, I emptied the contents of all five drawers and the shelf onto the living room floor and began sorting things into piles and categories (the biggest pile being "recycle"). I dusted out each drawer and only put back what I actually wanted in each one. Here's how they look "after":
Better, no? However I still had a gigantic mountain of homeless crap in the middle of the floor (my children were not pleased with me a. taking up all the play space and b. not cleaning up my stuff--except that they wanted me to play with them so that I couldn't clean up my stuff. You can't win, I tell you!).
Sunday morning, I emptied out my drawer in the filing cabinet (we have a four-drawer filing cabinet, with two of the drawers for C's work, one for our family financial stuff, like taxes--which I'm sure should be next on my list of cleaning, sorting, organizing and dumping--and one just for me). I went through each and every file folder, with the recycling box by my side. My goal was to free up most of the cabinet for writing, with files dedicated to works in progress, submission guidelines, my zine, etc.
I did keep some items strictly out of sentimentality--does anyone else have a hard time tossing the papers you wrote in college? And I have a file of poetry dating back to when I was in third grade, which consists mainly of a vast body of melodramatic work from the tween years, including one poem that begins, "Have you ever had a broken heart?/Have you ever cried like I have?" Yikes. Maybe I'm relieved I don't have any daughters (not that men don't write their share of broken-heart poetry--which is a good thing for the pop music industry--and not that my boys don't engage in their share of melodrama). I also saved my seventh-grade diary and an entire file on the Southern Methodist University Swim Team circa 1991-1992 (hey, I covered the team for the college paper!).
By Sunday night, still ankle-deep in papers and piles, I was starting to whimper a bit, and C asked me why I hadn't just tackled one drawer at a time (clearly he does not know me very well--hello! I gave birth to twins, remember? I don't do things by halves.). But I got the floor cleared and the filing cabinet refilled (with not as much free space as I'd been hoping for, and with a system probably not up to the standards of Regina Leeds, but much improved no less)
Thursday, April 22, 2010
Happy Earth Day and One Small Change Wrap-Up
Happy Earth Day!
What do you do to celebrate? I hope to get out for a walk at the Arboretum at lunchtime, if it's not raining.
The Motherhood Muse Subscription Drawing Winners
That's right. It turns out I have two subscriptions to give away after all. And the winners are:
Jaimie from Two Chicks and a Hen
and
Lone Star Ma
Congratulations and please send me your email so you can get your subscription.
In the meantime, be sure to check out the rest of The Motherhood Muse blog tour for more chances to win a subscription. There's an interview with me posted at Blogging Mama on April 6 (I thought it was going to be on the 19th so I didn't check! Oops!).
One Small Change Wrap-Up
My April Change--realizing that Hoarding is Not the Same as Recycling--has been slow to take off. So far I have:
--taken a huge bag of plastic cutlery to work where it will actually get used (then thrown away). Ok, I admit it was still March when I did this, but it was the inspiration for April.
--finally convinced C to take our ancient late-1980s Macintosh computer (a.k.a. The Big Mac) to the E-waste recycling dropoff at our transfer station--after I got it out for M to try out and the screen just showed a little frownie-face icon and it coughed out a pile of rust.
--put three pairs of old glasses in the Lions Club collection box at the optometrist's office.
I still have several more things (or categories of things) I want/need to find ways of recycling in the next couple of weeks. It may not happen before April is done.
I really liked the One Small Change challenge. It's given me an opportunity to focus on things I've been "meaning to do" one thing and one month at a time. Here's the low-down on my changes this year:
January--Buy Nothing and Wrap-Up
February--Getting the Plastic Out, Stage One and Wrap-Up
March--Getting the Plastic Out, Kitchen Edition, Week One and a Half and Wrap-up
April--Hoarding is Not Recycling
There are always so many little things we can do to reduce our personal impact. I plan on keeping it going right through the rest of the year. For May, however, instead of a new change, I'm going to keep going with Hoarding is Not Recycling in the hopes of getting rid of most of the stuff I have piled up in the basement, waiting for new life. I also plan on doing a major clean-out and re-org in the kids' room (in time for their birthdays), and I would love it if I could find new homes for about half of their clothes, toys, etc (not sure if that would actually be good for THE environment, but it will help our personal--and my mental--environment); along these same lines I plan on cleaning up (and moving out) some of the white-trashiness in our yard. And speaking of birthdays, I'm going to try to keep it simple--follow that "something to wear, something to read, something to play with" rule, perhaps. I'll keep you posted, and remember, it's never too late to make One Small Change!
What do you do to celebrate? I hope to get out for a walk at the Arboretum at lunchtime, if it's not raining.
The Motherhood Muse Subscription Drawing Winners
That's right. It turns out I have two subscriptions to give away after all. And the winners are:
Jaimie from Two Chicks and a Hen
and
Lone Star Ma
Congratulations and please send me your email so you can get your subscription.
In the meantime, be sure to check out the rest of The Motherhood Muse blog tour for more chances to win a subscription. There's an interview with me posted at Blogging Mama on April 6 (I thought it was going to be on the 19th so I didn't check! Oops!).
One Small Change Wrap-Up
My April Change--realizing that Hoarding is Not the Same as Recycling--has been slow to take off. So far I have:
--taken a huge bag of plastic cutlery to work where it will actually get used (then thrown away). Ok, I admit it was still March when I did this, but it was the inspiration for April.
--finally convinced C to take our ancient late-1980s Macintosh computer (a.k.a. The Big Mac) to the E-waste recycling dropoff at our transfer station--after I got it out for M to try out and the screen just showed a little frownie-face icon and it coughed out a pile of rust.
--put three pairs of old glasses in the Lions Club collection box at the optometrist's office.
I still have several more things (or categories of things) I want/need to find ways of recycling in the next couple of weeks. It may not happen before April is done.
I really liked the One Small Change challenge. It's given me an opportunity to focus on things I've been "meaning to do" one thing and one month at a time. Here's the low-down on my changes this year:
January--Buy Nothing and Wrap-Up
February--Getting the Plastic Out, Stage One and Wrap-Up
March--Getting the Plastic Out, Kitchen Edition, Week One and a Half and Wrap-up
April--Hoarding is Not Recycling
There are always so many little things we can do to reduce our personal impact. I plan on keeping it going right through the rest of the year. For May, however, instead of a new change, I'm going to keep going with Hoarding is Not Recycling in the hopes of getting rid of most of the stuff I have piled up in the basement, waiting for new life. I also plan on doing a major clean-out and re-org in the kids' room (in time for their birthdays), and I would love it if I could find new homes for about half of their clothes, toys, etc (not sure if that would actually be good for THE environment, but it will help our personal--and my mental--environment); along these same lines I plan on cleaning up (and moving out) some of the white-trashiness in our yard. And speaking of birthdays, I'm going to try to keep it simple--follow that "something to wear, something to read, something to play with" rule, perhaps. I'll keep you posted, and remember, it's never too late to make One Small Change!
Wednesday, April 21, 2010
Catching Up
Remind me, next time I go away for a week (if there ever is a next time, which I am seriously beginning to doubt), to take the day after I get back to just lie on the couch with a rice bag over my eyes, letting my kids crawl all over me so that they won't feel compelled to cling to me like famished deer ticks for the next two weeks (or more).
Thanks to the Patriots and the state budget crisis, I had another four-day weekend this week and was able to slowly creep back to where I was before I left. Saturday, after dropping M off at relatives for the weekend (with a possibly broken arm...more on that in a later "stellar parenting moments" installment), I was actually able to log a few minutes on the couch, with the rice bag, even dozing off for a bit while C took the boys to the mailbox (which, in my opinion, is not nearly far enough away), before embarking on an epic organization project, which took me right through until late Sunday night and which I'll tell you about in its own post later this week (I know how you love my organizing posts). Monday, I actually took a great deal of delight in dusting, vacuuming and cleaning bathrooms. I really don't know what's wrong with me--apparently I've been bitten by the spring cleaning bug. Fortunately, we had a date to spend all day in Belfast, visiting with friends and family and picking up M, otherwise I might have done something drastic, like wash windows or mop the floors.
I was able to sneak a bit of creativity in amidst the flurry of cleaning. When I was in Denver I went into a store that sold herbal body products and they had these mini prayer flags made with scraps of fabric and I realized it was the perfect project for our Easter egg dyed fabric straps. E and Z took turns putting a running stitch across the top of our little scraps and we hung it across the front door.
And Monday night, while the boys were in the tub, I finally made our spring book basket, resulting in the boys staying in the tub way too long and going to bed way too late (which I payed for dearly the next morning, believe me). I embroidered the words while watching our March Netflix selection (we're on the two movies a month plan and still cannot manage to get them both watched before the month is out!). Again with the crooked letters--apparently I have issues with actually measuring things.
Our spring books are mostly made up of bunny and bird books, with an Easter and a Passover book for good measure (if you don't already have it, you MUST get The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes--it's this amazingly populist, feminist story from 1939, where a little country bunny, mother of 21 children, becomes one of the five Easter bunnies).
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