What's On My Nightstand

Last week Common Household Mom shared a photo of an excellent stack of books on her bedside table, then asked the question:

"What's on your nightstand?"

Well.  I don't have a nightstand.  But I do have a house!  (Um, my house is my nightstand?  Never mind, that's an atrocious metaphor.)  I tend to sprinkle books throughout the house, depositing one or two in the places where I frequently find myself.  Although when I put it like that, I have to wonder why I don't have one in the laundry room.

This was the downstairs bathroom book a couple days ago (THAT'S RIGHT- I'm starting with the bathroom, and I refuse to be ashamed, because as J.K. Rowling puts it, "I never need to find time to read.  When people say to me, 'Oh, yeah, I love reading.  I would love to read, but I just don't have the time,' I'm thinking, 'How can you not have the time?'  I read when I'm drying my hair.  I read in the bath.  I read when I'm sitting in the bathroom.  Pretty much anywhere I can do the job one-handed, I read."), but it was so good it was quickly upgraded to a couch book:

I wrote a bit about this book a few days ago.  So lovingly funny.  I inhaled it in a single afternoon, so it's no longer on the couch.

The current downstairs bathroom book:

Pictures of Hollis Woods by Patricia Reilly Giff.  Adelaide reads and loves an enormous amount of books, but she rarely goes out of her way to recommend one to me, telling me repeatedly how good it was.  This was one of those, and halfway through, I'm really pulling for the protagonist, a foster child trying to find her forever home.

Catch-22 is the current dining room table book.  It's one of those that's sharp and grimly funny and really quite appalling at times.  I'm finding it relatively funny, but I have a feeling you'd have to have been a soldier in a war to really get everything Heller is trying to comment and shed light upon.  This is reinforced by the 5-star rating Luis Carlos Montalvan (author of Until Tuesday, impressively decorated 17-year U.S. military veteran) gave it on Goodreads.  

Bedroom book:

The House I Loved by Tatiana de Rosnay.   I don't love it quite as much as Sarah's Key, one of her previous novels, but it's still a book that draws you in.  The setting is probably my favorite part:  1860's Paris, when Napoleon and Haussman are tearing huge sections of old Paris apart to make way for wide boulevards, modern water systems, and other much-needed improvements that nonetheless reduce centuries-old houses and cobblestone streets to rubble.  The protagonist has lived in one of these old sections slated for demolition her entire life, and can't let go of the house that holds so many memories of her late husband. The picture de Rosnay paints of old-world Paris is charming and beautiful, and so far she's doing a terrific job of describing the tug between letting go of the emotional attachments to architectural history and an old way of life and the need to modernize in order to reduce the risk of such diseases as cholera and to admit modes of transportation of the future.  

Traveling Companion:

I always try to have a book in my bag in case I get stuck waiting somewhere, and this one, Bird by Bird by Anne Lamott, fulfills this function perfectly, as it's easy to pick up, read just a few pages, then put back down.  This is only the second book by Lamott I've read, but her nonfiction is definitely the type that needs to be savored, so a few pages at a time followed by long periods of noodling and mental digestion help me get the most out of her work.  She's funny.  She's smart.  She has a perspective on the Christian walk that is very Other to what I often encounter in my relatively safe, white bread world, and I love it.  I just read her book Traveling Mercies a couple weeks ago, which I also recommend.

There you have it.  My nightstand.

June in Photos+Words

Somehow June is over.  While I'm not entirely sure how this happened, I thought it would be fun to do a "June in Photos" post with just pictures and no words, but then I remembered that I'm me and I can't do no words.  So I'm just going to put up a bunch of pics of stuff we did a lot in June, and also type a bunch of words in between.  Gracious, this post is breathtakingly exciting already.

Adelaide and I spent a lot of time sitting on the front porch, reading and sipping iced coffee (which can I just say is half milk with a heavy dollop of creamer, and it's a small glass full of ice, so just back off, mother-hating, caffeine-eschewing antagonists) (turns out I'm also a tad defensive today.  Huh.), because June was bee-you-ti-full, at least until it started raining and never ever stopped <insert requisite diluvial joke here>.  

And when the cats and dogs started a-comin' down, we moved ourselves indoors.  

We also forced reading upon others, me via this blog, Adelaide via the prisoners she calls toys.

Caedmon spent an alarming amount of time staring at his hands, which was a little worrisome until he told me he was trying to "get my fingers to do the fing that Spider-Man does when he shoots out his web."

This is not, in fact, how Spider-Man do, but I just have to ask:  Can you do this?  His ring finger is lying flat against his palm, his other four digits are extended straight, and he doesn't appear to be in any pain, which is all the opposite of what happens when I try and contort my hand in just such a fashion.

Our June was, of course, full of flowers, as we are not heathens.  Hello, peonies.

Hello, Huning lily.

These lilies, transplanted from Kansas to our fertile Iowa soil, have spread several feet in both directions and are seemingly intent on backyard domination.  I'll have to divide them next year, if anyone's in the market for ditch lilies.

Hello, yarrow.

Hello, Asiatic lilies.

Hello, scrumptious basil and vivid coleus.

Halloo, zucchini jungle.

Hello, spider in my sunflower.

You'll have to click to embiggen in order to see the spider and his web.

The boys spent mucho time golfing in the backyard.

That's a lovely golfer's tan you're wearing, Derek.

I became a bit obsessive over the birds nesting in our front yard.

Look at their wittle grumpy faces.  Haven't they grown?

You know what almost all these photos have in common?  GREEN.  They're all so green!  Time is racing by, and I'm trying to enjoy how lush it is outside without panicking a bit at the thought that every day we're a bit closer to the white wasteland that is winter.  You know, just to end this post on a positive note.

Five Things Friday

Here's this week's five wonderful things, from me to you:

• About a year ago I came across a superb idea on Pinterest for a better way to fold t-shirts.  This sounds drab and dreary and boring, I know, but just hang on, now, because this may not transform your entire life, but it will transform a couple of your dresser drawers, which sounds trivial, but I swear to you I feel happy every time I open my t-shirt drawer.

We live in an old house that's short on storage space, most notably closets, but thankfully soon after we moved in Derek's grandpa built us a pair of built-in dressers for our bedroom.  Now I had a place for my clothes, but for some reason folding them the traditional way (why does this make me laugh?  like, "ah, yes, the folding methods of yore") created a slop pile of shirts within the drawer.  Enter this new, rolling way of folding!  (Click on the link above for specific instructions.)  It keeps wrinkles to a minimum, I can fit more clothing in each drawer, and I can see each item of clothing with no digging.  Perfect.

• This post on Ann Voskamp's blog about procrastination.  Listen, I'm a seasoned procrastinator.  Why do today what you can put off 'til tomorrow, and all that.  If there's something specific I'm putting off, my house will be clean, my books get read, I'll find all manner of things to do to put that loathsome activity off for as long as humanly possible.  I have gotten loads better in recent years (growing up and maturing and all that necessary junk), but still- I'm a procrastinator at heart.  This post helped me to fold a formidable mountain of laundry and shampoo the carpets and do a couple other things I'd been meaning to do for a day or two (WEEKS, OKAY?  I'd been putting off shampooing the carpets for weeks.).  My brain has already supplied some perfectly acceptable reasons not to wash the sheets and clean out the fridge this afternoon, so it looks like I'll be re-reading this post every other day until it sticks.  Hey, change takes time, right?

• Thunderstorms.  This is one of the things I missed most while living in Connecticut, although Derek and I did share some gleeful chortling on the rare occasion a smallish clap of thunder would boom in the Connecticut skies, causing the natives to flinch while casting fearful looks toward the heavens.  Oh, New England.  We've had tons of rain over the past week (and by "tons" I obviously mean 3 and 5/8 inches), but I've decided not to complain about it, because that rain has been accompanied by thunder and a smidgen of lightning- nothing really severe, just fun.  

• This book:

The woman describes what it's like to grow up lovingly ensconced in a small midwestern town with total accuracy, and does it with such humor that I had to lay my head down on the table a few times, I was laughing so hard.  This book made a rough day better.  I loved it so much I may have to get my own copy (gasp!).

• The eggs hatched!  Last Sunday evening I went to check the robins' nest, and behold:

See it?  Sweet little Ugly there, on the left?  

Based on my highly exact method of zooming in as much as possible and stretching my arm way up to snap a picture, I think there are three hideous baby robins in there.  Perhaps four.  Their mama's gone most of the time, no doubt hunting up tasty morsels for which they'll no doubt be completely ungrateful.  I should note that even when taking photos, I try not to get too close to the nest; I don't want to scare the mother off or leave my objectionable human scent all over the place.  Babies!

A Purposeful Paucity of Lists

I've been trying to wean myself off of lists.

Not in general, but here, on the blog.  I've been leaning so hard on them that, combined with the cheery nature of my Five Things Fridays lists, I've begun to feel a bit like Tiny Tim with his crutch and his "God bless us, every one!"  I'm afraid that down this list-strewn path lay the inability to form a cohesive story and an attention span that lasts no longer than four sentences.

So far all that's come of this is a certain paralysis anytime I think about the blog.  I know it may often seem as if my upper limbs engaged in an ill-advised date with the rototiller and this blog is written by two bandaged stumps merrily smashing away at the keyboard.  (They have unerring aim for the bullet point button.). There is a certain amount of thought that goes into these posts, however, and yet take away my list format, and all I can think about is how for a time my sister believed our dad was the Zodiac Killer.  This sounds absurd, unless you actually know my dad- not that he's the type of person you meet and think,  I bet you drive a sketchy white paneled van, because he's actually very charming and funny and makes a mean pot of chili.  It's just that he's also a little eccentric and has serial killer handwriting, plus he's a crack shot- I mean, I'm sure if his neighbors were informed of his newfound criminal status at first they'd be like, "WHAT?  No way! He's such a nice guy!"  But then after a day or so they'd start saying, " Yeah, I can see that."  Kelli did eventually decide our father is not a mass murderer (phew!), although not before I read a murder mystery where the demented villain just happens to share the first and last names of my father.  But then, so does one of our local meteorologists.  I don't know what that says about the weather guy- I'd have to see his handwriting.

Haha!  I did it! It's barely coherent, but I wrote a list-less post.  Not listless, you understand, just lacking a list.

Five Things Friday

I need everyone to do me a favor and pretend that today is Friday.  So we're all in agreement, then?  Today is Friday!  Happy Friday, everyone!  That means today is Five Things Friday!  Here's what's great this week.

• Adelaide + Hair.  Adelaide has been working on her braiding skillz; having mastered various random triplicate strands made out of things like plastic and wax, she has moved on to human hair.  As I am the only other person in the house with a long, braidable mane, she has been working on my hair frequently, which is great because

• Air conditioning.  I am beyond thankful for AC this week.  It's been hot, and it's been humid, and it makes me think of a couple summers ago when we didn't have a functioning AC, and I was third trimester pregnant with Caedmon and wanted to die.  I say a prayer of thanks every time the AC kicks on, every time I walk into our house which doesn't feel like a Native American sweat lodge, and at random times throughout the day when I'm not at risk for heat stroke in my own home.  I'm not sure that I'll ever take air conditioning for granted again.  Amen.

• Librarians.  This time it's because of a great resource one of our favorite librarians directed me toward- see, I've been trying to incorporate daily math into our schedule over the summer, and while Adelaide has been great about reminding me about her daily multiplication flash cards, aside from that I kind of suck at remembering things, especially things that I don't really like to begin with, like math.  Enter bedtimemath.org!  They send you an email every day with a fun math problem for your kiddos to complete, or if you have one of those fancy smart phones, they also have an app.  Here's today's (because today is Friday, remember?) daily math problem to give you an idea- I really like the fact that I can read the same problem to all three kids, but there are different questions for each age group.  We do not, however, do these at bedtime.  I do not need one more thing to do that close to the finish line.

• Dots.  If you value your productivity or your sanity, do not, I repeat, DO NOT start playing this game.  Derek downloaded it to our tablet for Adelaide.  She played it a few times and enjoyed it.  I decided I'd see what all the fuss was about, especially when I heard it described as "like Tetris or Bejeweled."  What I'd forgotten was Carl Jung's tidbit of wisdom:  "Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol, morphine, or idealism or Dots."  I may have paraphrased a bit there.  This game.  Gaaah.

• Robins.  There's a nest that's been on a branch that overhangs our sidewalk for a few years now, and this spring a couple robins moved in.  As it turns out robins are the HGTV of birds and now instead of boring old twigs and grass for furnishings, they've gone for the modern look and weaved duct tape into their nest.  A nice long strand even hangs down from their newly remodeled dwelling, dangling in your face should you happen down our sidewalk.  We noticed what I assume is the mama sitting in the nest for a couple weeks straight, only leaving for short times a couple times a day.  But today both parents are present, which caused perhaps uncalled-for levels excitement amongst the Crisler offspring.  (And who hollered them out of the house with "YOU GUYS, GET OUT HERE!  IT'S MAMA AND PAPA ROBIN!"?  Um... yeah.  Me.)  

Staring at birds.  It's an exciting life we lead around here.

Anyone know when I can be expecting grand-birdies?  My knowledge of the life cycle of the American Robin is nil.

Strictly Book Reviews, With No Unnecessary Tangents

I think I can I think I can I think I can talk just about books and not Jesus weeding his garden or my abiding love for Post-Its.

Still Alice by Lisa Genova

Okay, so first off, I know this book sounds depressing- Harvard professor begins to experience symptoms that go beyond mere forgetfulness- bewilderment at what the items on her own to-do list could mean, not being able to find her way home in familiar surroundings, etc.  She is soon diagnosed with early-onset Alzheimer's, and most of the story follows her descent into dementia, while her family and loved ones attempt to cope, she works for as long as she can, and tries to hold on to recognizable pieces of herself.  No, this is no lighthearted romp through the land of mental illness, but it feels important, like Genova is giving a voice to those who can no longer speak for themselves, and she does it all with dignified honesty.  Yes, this is fiction, but she evidently did the kind of in-depth research this topic demands, and this is the only novel to ever receive the stamp of approval from the Alzheimer's Association.  I read this book weeks ago, and I still find myself thinking about it.  A must-read.

Sadako and the Thousand Paper Cranes by Eleanor Coerr

My sister Kelli told me about this book that she read as a child:  "You mean you've never read the one about the post-WWII little Japanese girl who gets leukemia because of the atomic bomb radiation and whose friends and family try to help her make a thousand paper cranes believing it will save her, but it doesn't and she dies anyway and it's the saddest book ever?"  To which my response was "SIGN ME UP."  

This book will take you maybe 15 minutes to read.  It is tragic, heartwarming, quality children's lit.

The Panic Virus:  A True Story of Medicine, Science, and Fear by Seth Mnookin

I have friends and family on both sides of the vaccine debate; I myself come down most decidedly on one side.  I am not going to make this blog a platform for this debate, as I do not want the comments section to become a filth-arium of spewing vitriol and hatred.  I will tell you that I love this book.  I will tell you that I have read it twice so far.  I will tell you that I gave it five stars on Goodreads.  I will tell you that if this blog were a classroom and I were the professor and you were my to-be-pitied students, this book would be required reading.  

That is all.

The Thief (The Queen's Thief Series #1) by Megan Whalen Turner

A boy with a talent for thievery must steal a legendary talisman under threat of death.  Terrific fantasy quest YA literature, with a healthy subtextual morality lesson.  I'm only two books into the series, and am really enjoying it so far.  I've been reading a substantial load of heavy fiction and nonfiction recently, and Turner's books have been wonderful escapist page-turners when I need a break from Alzheimer's and pro- vs anti-vaxxers and little Japanese girls dying from radiation poisoning.  

Book Reviews

I've been meaning to do some more book reviews, but then I looked at my Goodreads account to remind myself what all I've read recently and got overwhelmed.  It would appear that I read too much.   (KIDDING.  That's not possible.)  Soon enough, though, I realized I don't have to tell you about all the books I've read ('cause I'm smart, see), and decided that anything I gave three stars or fewer on Goodreads wouldn't get a mention on here.

And now I'm thinking you really don't need any of the information in the above paragraph.  I could have just started straight off with the book reviews.  I refuse to devote any more mental energy to this, however, so it's staying.


Education of a Wandering Man:  A Memoir by Louis L'Amour

 Okay, so first off, this graphic is bothering me- just know that my copy of this book is blue and silver and not-ugly, and is only fuzzy when I'm not wearing my glasses, although then it's more of a blueish blob, because I have truly terrible vision.  (Gracious.  Apologies for my unchecked garrulousness today.)
I doubt I would ever have picked this book up on my own, but a lady from my book club brought it one day recommending I read it, and because we have similar taste in books (totally unrelated side note: she has excellent taste), I decided to do as she said and read it.
Like many of you, I grew up in a house full of books, including one entire shelf full of brown leather-bound volumes whose titles were gold-foiled:  The novels of Louis L'Amour.  As it turns out, he lead a fascinating life before he was ever even published:  sailor, mine caretaker, boxer, self-proclaimed hobo, all before and during the depression.  As he puts it:  "Over the years the terms applied to wanderers have been confused until all meaning has been lost.  To begin with, a bum was a local man who did not want to work.  A tramp was a wanderer of the same kind, but a hobo was a wandering worker and essential to the nation's economy."  The tales of his travels and his impeccable memory of the books he was constantly reading throughout make me feel both lazy and ignorant, but in a good way, somehow; a way that makes me want to get off this couch and do something, for Pete's sake.
As with most nonfiction, I had the insatiable urge to write in the margins of the text; but as this is not actually my book and I am not a heathen, I wrote on little scraps of paper every time I was struck by something or other he said.  As such, the book looks like it's been hit by a Post-It plague.  A few things I evidently felt were worth writing down:  "It is constantly reiterated that education begins in the home, as indeed it does, but what is often forgotten is that morality begins in the home also.  It also begins in the car seat, where many a budding criminal career is born when the child not only watches his parent repeatedly breaking traffic laws, but hears him lie about it when caught.  The example is not, supposedly, expected to influence the child (p 4)."  "We do not at present educate people to think but, rather, to have opinions, and that is something altogether different (p 75)."  "Look up Stephen Vincent Benet"  (I still haven't done that one.)  I highly recommend this one, both as a wonderful memoir and a commentary on a vanished way of life.




The Family Fang by Kevin Wilson

The Family Fang is the book to read if you want to laugh and feel better about your own crazy family.  It will also make you want to call your siblings, those fellow veterans of that little episode known as "childhood."  It's told from the perspective of an adult brother and sister whose parents were performance artists.  As children, these siblings were roped into every wackadoodle scheme posing as "art" their parents could dream up.  I've never read anything by Wilson before, but based on this book alone, I'd say he has the gift of creating characters that evoke incredible emotions; I rarely love or hate characters the way I did those inhabiting this story.  I even felt the urge to write my thoughts down in the margins of this one, and it's fiction!  Although I own this book (raise your hand if you love the book section at Goodwill of insanely cheap books!), for some reason I can't quite make myself scribble in the margins of novels.  Nonfiction, sure, that's just commentary on things that have happened, the world we live in, etc, and why shouldn't I add my own opinion to those already on the page?  Whereas with fiction, we're talking about a created world, an alternate reality contained within the ink and paper, and to sully that with asterisks and scribbles that don't belong, I would be forcibly breaking the spell cast by the author, and I like to think my ego will never be so big as to make me that bold.   So let's see, what do these little post-its stuck in here say... (it's always strange for me to look through my bookcases and find books littered with Post-Its, reading whatever thoughts I had while reading and felt were important enough to write down)... "It is so hard, so hard to find fiction that manages to voice those truths that strike you right down to the bone but are at the same time utterly without pretension, and, in the case of modern fiction, also completely lacking anything like light or hope."  Huh.  I guess I really liked this book.  So yes, I do recommend this one, but with the caveat that it's... PG-13, maybe?  There's a little cursing, and my gosh, do the characters make some questionable decisions that make you stop reading and lay the book open on the top of your head so that some of your good judgment will for once seep out of your brain and into the plot of the story.  This has yet to happen, but I keep trying.






Fever 1793 by Laurie Halse Anderson

When I first saw the cover of this book, my first thought was, Oh, great.  More vampires.  But I was wrong!  Not vampires, but yellow fever!  Huz...zah?  The protagonist is Mattie Cook, a sixteen-year-old girl who lives with her mother in an apartment above their coffee shop in 1793 Philadelphia.  She tends the garden in their tiny backyard, runs to the market for her mom, helps run the coffee shop, banters with her beloved grandfather, generally living a fairly average life for an eighteenth century working-class city girl- then the yellow fever epidemic hits.  Loved ones become ill.  Food becomes scarce as farmers surrounding Philadelphia refuse to enter the sick city. Her courage is tested.  I loved every piece of this book:  the setting, the simultaneously vulnerable and strong heroine, the reminder that we're ridiculously lucky to be living a 21st century life.  Please read this book, then rip The Selection or whatever other trash your daughter is currently reading out of her hands and replace it with this book.







More books tomorrow, and I promise to do a better job of staying on-topic.  (And if you believe that, you must be new around here.)