It might be cheaper just to park her in front of educational TV until she's 18, but I've been told that's wrong, and I guess I can sort of see the point. Still ...
Happy VGNO!
... for the literate flightless marine bird.
Friday, April 16, 2010
The Value of a Good Education
We're headed out to my daughter's school fundraising auction tonight. I'm looking forward to it, although my inner tightwad is a little peeved that on top of paying taxes for a public school we feel we can't use, and tuition for a private school that we do love, now we get to go shell out more bucks for ... I'm not even sure what odd impulse will take me tonight when my bidding card is in hand and the wine has kicked in.
It might be cheaper just to park her in front of educational TV until she's 18, but I've been told that's wrong, and I guess I can sort of see the point. Still ...
Happy VGNO!
It might be cheaper just to park her in front of educational TV until she's 18, but I've been told that's wrong, and I guess I can sort of see the point. Still ...
Happy VGNO!
Thursday, April 15, 2010
Excellence In Parenting
When I picked my daughter up from school recently, the teacher asked me to send more food in her lunchbox.
"She frequently complains of hunger during the day."
Suddenly, I know exactly what the teacher sees when she sees me: Joan Crawford.
Crap. Shoulder pads do nothing for me.
I have long believed that there are three ways to get a child to eat something:
Now, I'm a Good Parent, and Good Parents always pack nutritious foods that kids love, in ample quantities, for lunch. So you can imagine how surprised I was to learn that the child who was returning home daily with a half-full lunchbox was complaining of starvation to ... a kind woman who distributes snacks to children.
Clearly, there are many solutions to the problem I now face, but I think the key here is to recognize the newly discovered fourth way to get a child to eat:
The goldfish crackers are - what, orange-er? - in the other lunchbox.
"She frequently complains of hunger during the day."
Suddenly, I know exactly what the teacher sees when she sees me: Joan Crawford.
Crap. Shoulder pads do nothing for me.
I have long believed that there are three ways to get a child to eat something:
- frost it
- put it in a bag with a toy
- serve it at the end of a toothpick
Now, I'm a Good Parent, and Good Parents always pack nutritious foods that kids love, in ample quantities, for lunch. So you can imagine how surprised I was to learn that the child who was returning home daily with a half-full lunchbox was complaining of starvation to ... a kind woman who distributes snacks to children.
Clearly, there are many solutions to the problem I now face, but I think the key here is to recognize the newly discovered fourth way to get a child to eat:
- have someone who isn't the child's mother serve it to them.
The goldfish crackers are - what, orange-er? - in the other lunchbox.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
The Weed That Strings The Hangman's Bag, by Alan Bradley
I didn't think twice about buying this book, even though the reviews on the back cover were all for the author's first book, The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie. Why? First, Sweetness was an amazing book. I devoured it. I loved it. I recommended it to everyone I know, and received enthusiastic praise for my book-recommending skills from all who read it. I was waiting eagerly for the next book in the series.
Also, all the reviews I saw on a certain large bookselling website were raves.
Have you ever read a book review and wondered, "Is that person talking about the same book I read?"
Have you ever read dozens of book reviews and wondered that?
The heroine of both books is Flavia De Luce, a quirky, intelligent, and lively eleven-year-old girl who lives with her quirky family in an English estate and solves local mysteries. The first book reminded me of Agatha Christie, with suspects everywhere and a plot that twists and turns until the end. But there's one important difference: Narrated from the point of view of a child obsessed with chemistry and annoyed by the foibles of the adults around her (not to mention the silly older sisters that torment her), the first book had an unmatchable depth and charm.
I wish I could say this review has a surprise ending to amuse and delight you, but regrettably, I think you see where this is going.
The general outline of the story is, a puppeteer and his girlfriend turn up in 1950s Bishop's Lacey, where their car has broken down, and immediately encounter Flavia de Luce. Although the puppeteer is famous and appears on the BBC, he's also broke, so the couple end up camping in the village, and then agree to put on a puppet show in the local church. During the course of the show, the puppeteer is electrocuted, at which point Flavia sets out to solve the crime, which seems to be related to another crime that took place several years earlier.
Hangman starts off re-introducing the characters and setting ... and meanders along in this vein for ooooh approximately thirteen chapters, when much to my relief, the murder finally takes place. In the course of those 152 pages (not that I was counting), little clues as to the book's possible direction are thrown in, but the lack of action made them more frustrating than tantalizing. The background is scenic, to be sure, but there's just too much of it.
Once the story finally got going, I did find myself turning pages, wanting to know how it ended, and it chugged along as a good mystery should. But even as it starts move, there are a lot of oddball details thrown in that were probably put there to illustrate Flavia's intelligent, quirky charm, but come across as forced. When Flavia sees the victim just after the murder, for example, she thinks his eyes would be like the mirror in the Arnolfini Wedding Portrait by Jan Van Eyck, if she could get a closer look - but they wouldn't for much longer. Okay, great, I get the reference, having sat through a semester of Flemish art in college, but since it doesn't add anything to the story and we've already sat through 152 pages of character development, why is it there except to make the book seem ... you know ... intellectual-like?
The improbable plot points don't help the matter. At one point, the action stops completely for a lengthy flashback by a German prisoner of war on how he was captured: a story that involves him, as a luftwaffe pilot, using his plane to drop a wreath on the Bronte's English home after a bombing raid, such was his love of English literature. Charming and eccentric? Maybe. But when he is captured by one of the villagers and then "coincidentally" ends up sent to live with that same villager upon his release, well, at a certain point I stop suspending my disbelief.
On the bright side, my inner nitpicker had a field day with the continuity errors, never a good thing in a mystery. Example: Flavia's elaborate chemistry set was left in the house by her late Uncle, Tar deLuce. Which is fine until she mentions the fact that the house actually was inherited by her mother, whose maiden name was presumably not deLuce, so can you please draw me a family tree because I think some of your branches might be twisted (although funny things do happen, even in the best of families). There's also a matter of a plot-crucial bike clip that is picked up by a character called Mad Meg and then lost but when I went back over the timeline in my head, I felt like she'd had the bike clip when it was being used in the murder ... or something. I got confused following it. It seemed to be in many places at once and none of that was properly explained.
Unfortunately, there are lots more odd details that are never explained. The murder that took place several years ago was of a little boy, whose face appears on the puppeteer's puppet. But why? The motivation is never explained. Flavia uses her wits and her chemistry lab to determine that the puppeteer's girlfriend is pregnant, but this plotline's relevance is never explained, and the girlfriend's story line isn't satisfactorily resolved, given the amount of time that is spent on it in the beginning of the book.
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie was a finely honed novel, adeptly paced, all loose ends neatly tied together in a delightful bow that Martha Stewart would envy. Sadly, The Weed That Strings The Hangman's Bag feels rushed - like it could be a great book if the author and his editors had simply slowed down and crafted the material more carefully.
I wanted to love this book, and I'm terribly sad that I didn't. The author blurb says Mr. Bradley is working on the third book in the series, and such was the strength of Sweetness that I am still hopeful that he can craft another master work.
Also, all the reviews I saw on a certain large bookselling website were raves.
Have you ever read a book review and wondered, "Is that person talking about the same book I read?"
Have you ever read dozens of book reviews and wondered that?
The heroine of both books is Flavia De Luce, a quirky, intelligent, and lively eleven-year-old girl who lives with her quirky family in an English estate and solves local mysteries. The first book reminded me of Agatha Christie, with suspects everywhere and a plot that twists and turns until the end. But there's one important difference: Narrated from the point of view of a child obsessed with chemistry and annoyed by the foibles of the adults around her (not to mention the silly older sisters that torment her), the first book had an unmatchable depth and charm.
I wish I could say this review has a surprise ending to amuse and delight you, but regrettably, I think you see where this is going.
The general outline of the story is, a puppeteer and his girlfriend turn up in 1950s Bishop's Lacey, where their car has broken down, and immediately encounter Flavia de Luce. Although the puppeteer is famous and appears on the BBC, he's also broke, so the couple end up camping in the village, and then agree to put on a puppet show in the local church. During the course of the show, the puppeteer is electrocuted, at which point Flavia sets out to solve the crime, which seems to be related to another crime that took place several years earlier.
Hangman starts off re-introducing the characters and setting ... and meanders along in this vein for ooooh approximately thirteen chapters, when much to my relief, the murder finally takes place. In the course of those 152 pages (not that I was counting), little clues as to the book's possible direction are thrown in, but the lack of action made them more frustrating than tantalizing. The background is scenic, to be sure, but there's just too much of it.
Once the story finally got going, I did find myself turning pages, wanting to know how it ended, and it chugged along as a good mystery should. But even as it starts move, there are a lot of oddball details thrown in that were probably put there to illustrate Flavia's intelligent, quirky charm, but come across as forced. When Flavia sees the victim just after the murder, for example, she thinks his eyes would be like the mirror in the Arnolfini Wedding Portrait by Jan Van Eyck, if she could get a closer look - but they wouldn't for much longer. Okay, great, I get the reference, having sat through a semester of Flemish art in college, but since it doesn't add anything to the story and we've already sat through 152 pages of character development, why is it there except to make the book seem ... you know ... intellectual-like?
The improbable plot points don't help the matter. At one point, the action stops completely for a lengthy flashback by a German prisoner of war on how he was captured: a story that involves him, as a luftwaffe pilot, using his plane to drop a wreath on the Bronte's English home after a bombing raid, such was his love of English literature. Charming and eccentric? Maybe. But when he is captured by one of the villagers and then "coincidentally" ends up sent to live with that same villager upon his release, well, at a certain point I stop suspending my disbelief.
On the bright side, my inner nitpicker had a field day with the continuity errors, never a good thing in a mystery. Example: Flavia's elaborate chemistry set was left in the house by her late Uncle, Tar deLuce. Which is fine until she mentions the fact that the house actually was inherited by her mother, whose maiden name was presumably not deLuce, so can you please draw me a family tree because I think some of your branches might be twisted (although funny things do happen, even in the best of families). There's also a matter of a plot-crucial bike clip that is picked up by a character called Mad Meg and then lost but when I went back over the timeline in my head, I felt like she'd had the bike clip when it was being used in the murder ... or something. I got confused following it. It seemed to be in many places at once and none of that was properly explained.
Unfortunately, there are lots more odd details that are never explained. The murder that took place several years ago was of a little boy, whose face appears on the puppeteer's puppet. But why? The motivation is never explained. Flavia uses her wits and her chemistry lab to determine that the puppeteer's girlfriend is pregnant, but this plotline's relevance is never explained, and the girlfriend's story line isn't satisfactorily resolved, given the amount of time that is spent on it in the beginning of the book.
The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie was a finely honed novel, adeptly paced, all loose ends neatly tied together in a delightful bow that Martha Stewart would envy. Sadly, The Weed That Strings The Hangman's Bag feels rushed - like it could be a great book if the author and his editors had simply slowed down and crafted the material more carefully.
I wanted to love this book, and I'm terribly sad that I didn't. The author blurb says Mr. Bradley is working on the third book in the series, and such was the strength of Sweetness that I am still hopeful that he can craft another master work.
There's No Place Like ...
On the first day of our vacation, shortly after we arrived in Belize, my nine-year-old daughter pulled me aside and said quietly, "I want to go home. I don't like it here. People are very poor here and it isn't nice."
At that moment, I knew my vacation budget was money well spent.
It's easy to look at two countries, especially when one of them is the US, and do some quick math and decide which seems to have it better. Yes, Americans would seem to have bigger, or at least fancier, houses. For sure, our roads are better - you never really appreciate paved roads until you drive a half hour on an unpaved one. And yes, despite what the folks at Brita would have you believe, you can drink tap water in America.
But Belize is a beautiful, amazing place filled with the loveliest people I can imagine, and in many ways, Belize has us beat:
- Their bathrooms are cleaner than ours. Why this should be, I don't know, but as a woman who was reliant on public bathrooms for an entire week, who never once uttered the word "skeevy," my appreciation for this small fact is boundless.
- Geckos are everywhere, and I do mean everywhere, but they're not trying to sell you car insurance, and thus not nearly as annoying as ours.
- They have proboscis bats in Belize. Proboscis bats hang out in neat, tidy rows on trees, thus appealing to my OCD tendencies. Add to this the fact that a proboscis bat can eat 200 mosquitos in a day, and I think you know which critter is my new favorite. Top that, Roomba.
- Wildlife in Belize is both spectacular and predictable: The most amazing creatures appear whenever your camera is out of reach (or the battery has died). We spent 20 minutes gazing at a herd of manatees at sunset, at the edge of a pier. We named them all but did not manage to capture a single image of Barbara, John, or Alphonso.
- The bread in Belize is magical. What is it about American bread that sucks so much? Mushy, bland, blah American bread. I kind of expected a week of tortillas but instead it was a week of breaded bliss: cinnamony Hot Cross Buns on Easter Sunday, spicy cheese-and-pepper bread with dinner, coconut-and-pineapple cupcakes after dinner, coconut spice bread with breakfast. I had a bread maker for years and never turned out anything that could hold a candle to the bread I feasted on in Belize.
- Business is less generic. In A Supremely Bad Idea, the author talks about The United States of Generica: The way American business is dominated by large companies and there's a peculiar sameness about everything. It's all very nice and slick, which is wonderful in it's way, but some of the character is lost under all that shiny veneer. Not so Belize. If you've got a bus, you can set up your own bus line. We saw buses in many colors (sometimes many-colored buses), with all different names: James' Bus Line was my particular favorite. Nearly all the store signs were handpainted by their proprietors, which on one occasion left me quite startled to discover that the business in question (David's Wood Working) sold elegant, handcrafted, US$200 wooden bowls. Selling a house? No problem. Spray paint "FOR SALE" on the side of your house and you're good to go.
Still, at the end of the day, it was nice to come home, and so we did, with a camera full of pictures, a mind full of memories, a sprained ankle, a sunburn, and a case of hives.
Money well spent.
At that moment, I knew my vacation budget was money well spent.
It's easy to look at two countries, especially when one of them is the US, and do some quick math and decide which seems to have it better. Yes, Americans would seem to have bigger, or at least fancier, houses. For sure, our roads are better - you never really appreciate paved roads until you drive a half hour on an unpaved one. And yes, despite what the folks at Brita would have you believe, you can drink tap water in America.
But Belize is a beautiful, amazing place filled with the loveliest people I can imagine, and in many ways, Belize has us beat:
- Their bathrooms are cleaner than ours. Why this should be, I don't know, but as a woman who was reliant on public bathrooms for an entire week, who never once uttered the word "skeevy," my appreciation for this small fact is boundless.
- Geckos are everywhere, and I do mean everywhere, but they're not trying to sell you car insurance, and thus not nearly as annoying as ours.
- They have proboscis bats in Belize. Proboscis bats hang out in neat, tidy rows on trees, thus appealing to my OCD tendencies. Add to this the fact that a proboscis bat can eat 200 mosquitos in a day, and I think you know which critter is my new favorite. Top that, Roomba.
- Wildlife in Belize is both spectacular and predictable: The most amazing creatures appear whenever your camera is out of reach (or the battery has died). We spent 20 minutes gazing at a herd of manatees at sunset, at the edge of a pier. We named them all but did not manage to capture a single image of Barbara, John, or Alphonso.
- The bread in Belize is magical. What is it about American bread that sucks so much? Mushy, bland, blah American bread. I kind of expected a week of tortillas but instead it was a week of breaded bliss: cinnamony Hot Cross Buns on Easter Sunday, spicy cheese-and-pepper bread with dinner, coconut-and-pineapple cupcakes after dinner, coconut spice bread with breakfast. I had a bread maker for years and never turned out anything that could hold a candle to the bread I feasted on in Belize.
- Business is less generic. In A Supremely Bad Idea, the author talks about The United States of Generica: The way American business is dominated by large companies and there's a peculiar sameness about everything. It's all very nice and slick, which is wonderful in it's way, but some of the character is lost under all that shiny veneer. Not so Belize. If you've got a bus, you can set up your own bus line. We saw buses in many colors (sometimes many-colored buses), with all different names: James' Bus Line was my particular favorite. Nearly all the store signs were handpainted by their proprietors, which on one occasion left me quite startled to discover that the business in question (David's Wood Working) sold elegant, handcrafted, US$200 wooden bowls. Selling a house? No problem. Spray paint "FOR SALE" on the side of your house and you're good to go.
Still, at the end of the day, it was nice to come home, and so we did, with a camera full of pictures, a mind full of memories, a sprained ankle, a sunburn, and a case of hives.
Money well spent.
Friday, April 2, 2010
On Achieving Balance
When I was a fun-loving single chick in New York, my friend Virginia told me her theory on the universe: Every woman can have a great guy, a great apartment, and a great job, but not at the same time. You can have two at the same time, but never three - so if you have, say, a great job and a great loft and meet a great guy, brace yourself, because a pink slip or an eviction notice is coming your way.
I observed the phenomenon always held true - I had a great place to live and a great job and when I met my future husband, I went uh-oh, and sure enough, my manager quit and my great job became, well, vomitrocious.
I've been reflecting on Virginia's theory recently and wondering why it worked. I think it has something to do with an overload of good karma, kind of like overeating - if you have too much of a good thing, you have to pay the piper. Or something.
Now, I am married and have a nice house and a good job, but I work a lot and my house backs onto a busy street and also we have crazy neighbors in one house so, even though it appears I've been binging, there has been enough roughage in my karmic diet that I've been able to avoid divorce, unemployment, or relocation.
That is, until we decided to book a really amazing vacation this spring.
I have not actually been out of the country since my nine-year-old daughter was a year old, and since that trip a) involved spending three weeks with my soon-to-be-ex-inlaws and b) was immediately followed by a divorce, I think it's safe to say it's not high on my list of awesomest foreign adventures I've ever been on. So in January, we decided it was time to do something amazing and foreign, and found an resort in Belize, and ... booked the trip. I decided to live on the edge, and paid a nonrefundable deposit just days before layoffs were to be announced at my husband's job.
We dodged that bullet, I am pleased to report, and I blithely assumed that maybe the increasing volume of the construction at the college next door had rendered my house sufficiently unpleasant that no further harm would befall us. What else could it be? I found a swimsuit that fit me. A wonderful dog sitter. Pink docksiders in my shoe size. Books I had been waiting for were suddenly waiting for me at the library. My hairdresser stopped whining about her terrible boyfriends and instead gave me a great cut and some good movie recommendations.
And then it happened. On Saturday, my dog came to beg at the dinner table (I don't know why he does that, he gets plenty of table scraps as it is), and I noticed ... his eye looked funny. I held up his face, and he closed his eye defiantly.
I said, I think something is wrong with the dog's eye.
My daughter replied, No there isn't. He's been doing that all day.
Fifteen minutes later, the dog and I were in the car headed to the vet's office, where the on-call emergency vet (read: I charge extra! Lots extra!) determined that although there is nothing vision-threatening going on, my beloved Rufus required three kinds of eye drops and a follow-up visit to clear up the problem.
As she was ringing up my Visa card and I was calculating how many tropical blender drinks I would have to forgo because I love my dog, my tongue hit a rough patch on one of my back molars.
Odd. That wasn't there before.
So, Tuesday morning, right after dispensing the doggy eye drops (and just before calling the dog sitter to find out how much more her stay is going to cost now that there is medication-dispensing involved), I headed on over to the dentist, figuring, well, he should probably check that tooth, and letting my coworker know that I'd be ... ohhh ... maybe a half hour late for work.
I think you know what's coming, because all dentist stories tend to follow the same arc. My visit ended with the words, "Take as much tylenol as you need for a few days, don't chew anything on that side, and remember, you were" - hold up two fingers a fraction of a millimeter apart - "that close to a root canal."
Because I'm a grownup, I don't get anything from the prize box, even though I was very well-behaved for three hours, but I did get an emergency packet of dental goo to use if my temporary crown comes off in Belize. And as an added bonus, the dental technician who did the work was very interested in my upcoming vacation, and regaled me with her stories of her own vacations, which involved lengthy descriptions of her fear of flying, and why, exactly, she is afraid of planes. I would have comiserated with her about my own dread fear of planes but seeing as my mouth was full of dental gadgetry designed by medieval barbers, it was a little hard to mention it.
We fly out tomorrow: nine hours of flying (no, I'm not nervous), an hour's drive to our resort on "mostly paved roads," and then I'm looking forward to a week with a book, a beach, and a blender drink. At least, I think I am.
I observed the phenomenon always held true - I had a great place to live and a great job and when I met my future husband, I went uh-oh, and sure enough, my manager quit and my great job became, well, vomitrocious.
I've been reflecting on Virginia's theory recently and wondering why it worked. I think it has something to do with an overload of good karma, kind of like overeating - if you have too much of a good thing, you have to pay the piper. Or something.
Now, I am married and have a nice house and a good job, but I work a lot and my house backs onto a busy street and also we have crazy neighbors in one house so, even though it appears I've been binging, there has been enough roughage in my karmic diet that I've been able to avoid divorce, unemployment, or relocation.
That is, until we decided to book a really amazing vacation this spring.
I have not actually been out of the country since my nine-year-old daughter was a year old, and since that trip a) involved spending three weeks with my soon-to-be-ex-inlaws and b) was immediately followed by a divorce, I think it's safe to say it's not high on my list of awesomest foreign adventures I've ever been on. So in January, we decided it was time to do something amazing and foreign, and found an resort in Belize, and ... booked the trip. I decided to live on the edge, and paid a nonrefundable deposit just days before layoffs were to be announced at my husband's job.
We dodged that bullet, I am pleased to report, and I blithely assumed that maybe the increasing volume of the construction at the college next door had rendered my house sufficiently unpleasant that no further harm would befall us. What else could it be? I found a swimsuit that fit me. A wonderful dog sitter. Pink docksiders in my shoe size. Books I had been waiting for were suddenly waiting for me at the library. My hairdresser stopped whining about her terrible boyfriends and instead gave me a great cut and some good movie recommendations.
And then it happened. On Saturday, my dog came to beg at the dinner table (I don't know why he does that, he gets plenty of table scraps as it is), and I noticed ... his eye looked funny. I held up his face, and he closed his eye defiantly.
I said, I think something is wrong with the dog's eye.
My daughter replied, No there isn't. He's been doing that all day.
Fifteen minutes later, the dog and I were in the car headed to the vet's office, where the on-call emergency vet (read: I charge extra! Lots extra!) determined that although there is nothing vision-threatening going on, my beloved Rufus required three kinds of eye drops and a follow-up visit to clear up the problem.
As she was ringing up my Visa card and I was calculating how many tropical blender drinks I would have to forgo because I love my dog, my tongue hit a rough patch on one of my back molars.
Odd. That wasn't there before.
So, Tuesday morning, right after dispensing the doggy eye drops (and just before calling the dog sitter to find out how much more her stay is going to cost now that there is medication-dispensing involved), I headed on over to the dentist, figuring, well, he should probably check that tooth, and letting my coworker know that I'd be ... ohhh ... maybe a half hour late for work.
I think you know what's coming, because all dentist stories tend to follow the same arc. My visit ended with the words, "Take as much tylenol as you need for a few days, don't chew anything on that side, and remember, you were" - hold up two fingers a fraction of a millimeter apart - "that close to a root canal."
Because I'm a grownup, I don't get anything from the prize box, even though I was very well-behaved for three hours, but I did get an emergency packet of dental goo to use if my temporary crown comes off in Belize. And as an added bonus, the dental technician who did the work was very interested in my upcoming vacation, and regaled me with her stories of her own vacations, which involved lengthy descriptions of her fear of flying, and why, exactly, she is afraid of planes. I would have comiserated with her about my own dread fear of planes but seeing as my mouth was full of dental gadgetry designed by medieval barbers, it was a little hard to mention it.
We fly out tomorrow: nine hours of flying (no, I'm not nervous), an hour's drive to our resort on "mostly paved roads," and then I'm looking forward to a week with a book, a beach, and a blender drink. At least, I think I am.
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