What Species of Reader Are You?

I found this awesome, fascinating, magnificent, so, so fun infographic on Pinterest last night, and spent way too much time trying to classify myself when I should have been sleeping.

According to this, I am a *deep breath* Book Lover-Compulsive-Book Cherisher-Hoarder/Library Lover.  But also a Book Lover-Compulsive-Book Abuser-Book Buster (but only for paperback books I own).  But also a Book Lover-Compulsive-Book Abuser-Underliner and Scribbler (but only for nonfiction I own).  But also a Book Lover-Situational-App Happy.  But also a Book Lover-Situational-Comfort Reader (I identified very, very strongly with this one, except that while I own a lot of books in general, within that collection I have a smallish group of comfort books that I have read approximately one billion times).  But also a Book Lover-Situational-Social-Evangelist (but only for very, very specific books, like Harry Potter and 7).  But also a Book Lover-Situational-Social-Book Clubber.  But also a Book Lover-Free Range-Cross-Under.  But also (strangely) an Other Reader-Hater-"I Love to Hate It" Reader (I find throwing books that I hate across the room to be intensely satisfying).  All that to say:  I'm apparently a Cross-Bred Reader Mutt.

Crikey.  Now it's your turn.  What species of reader are you?  Aren't we having the best time?  No?  Just me?

List

• Today has been a tired kind of day because last night was a rough night, Atticus-wise.  I made it through the morning, but when I really started dragging about an hour ago, I decided a cup of coffee should do the trick.  Plugged the coffee maker in, paced for a minute, did some high-knees running around the house (to wake myself up and because I can), then wondered why I hadn't heard any coffee gurgling its way into the pot yet.  As it turns out, you need to add water, a coffee filter, and coffee grounds to the coffee maker, not to mention turning it on, before it will perform its magic.  It took a full ten seconds of me staring stupidly at the empty coffee pot before I figured this out.  

• I've been meaning to write a "Books" post for a couple months now, but every time I've sat down to write one, I've thought Oh, but wait, I wanted to tell everyone about This book and That book and they're next on my reading list.  I'll wait just another week, then write the post so I can include them.  I have done this at least five times now.  It is finally occurring to me that there will always be another book I want everyone to know about and read rightthissecond, as my To Read list is never-ending.  I'm going to try and start the "Books" post tomorrow, but looking back over my Goodreads account and trying to pick which ones to review is a teensy bit excruciating; as such, I may end up doing a few book posts in a row.  Or I may get busy and forget about the whole thing until July.  Isn't this blog fun?

• Caedmon and I went to our local library yesterday morning.  At one point the lovely lady that leads story time said, "Wait... wait a minute.  Caedmon, are your pants on backward?"  Caedmon blithely replied, "Oh, yeah."  She looked at me, and I was forced to admit that yes, I knew his pants were on backward.  I just didn't care.  Not Caring is something I've become excellent at doing, particularly when it comes to backwards pants, backwards underwear (this looks so, so painful but Caedmon continually insists on wearing them that way), backwards shirts, wearing his sister's socks, etc, etc.  I'm so proficient at Not Caring I could put it on my resume, although for what job I have no idea.  Thankfully this library lady knows us well and is regularly confronted with the eccentricities unique to mothers of young children.  She laughed, and that was all.  I suppose it didn't seem all that strange, given that it was from the same child who, depending on the day, insists on being called Batman, Superman, the Head, and, rarely, Caedmon.  The library staff are always very good sports about it and ask as soon as he walks in what his name is that day.  Rolling with the name changes is one of many things they are very, very good at (although "the Head" threw us all a bit.  I still don't really know what that's supposed to mean).  

• Caedmon doesn't use the contraction "won't," instead, he uses "willn't," which I realize isn't a real word, but if you give it (too much) thought, you'll realize "willn't" as a contraction makes more sense for "will not" than "won't" does, anyway.  I may just start using it myself.  It would be a fun social experiment to see how many people I could convince that "willn't" is actually the proper contraction for "will not."  Kind of like the time Derek told a coworker at ESPN that the correct pronunciation of "Wichita" was "Wih-Ih-Ah."  The guy believed Derek, and went on to pronounce it that way.  Hilarity ensued.  For Derek, anyway.

The Tercel

Brace yourselves:  I'm going to talk about cars today.  Be assured it will most likely never ever happen again.  Not because I don't like them or I have a religious belief against them, but because in general I just don't really care about them.

Oh, except for my first car.

It was blue.  A pretty little blue Toyota that had been my dad's.  I remember when we went and bought the car (in large part because it was, up to that point in my life, one of the most intensely boring days I had ever experienced).  The poor sales guy kept showing my parents different cars, and my dad would stubbornly repeat variations on the theme, "I want a car that will get me from point A to point B.  That's it."

And that's what they got.  It was (is, it is, because don't kid yourself: that car is still running, and will probably run until the end of time) a little 4-cylinder, stick shift, two-door Tercel with dark vinyl seats (the better to retain heat in the summer so as to give you immediate contact burns on any surface of skin you were foolish enough not to protect from the car), no air conditioning, no power steering, no power anything, for that matter, no right side-view mirror, no radio, no speakers, no clock, no nothing car.

I loved that car.

It was peppy.  It whipped around corners beautifully.  It was as reliable as the sun (more on the sun in just a moment), got great gas mileage, and the one amenity it featured, heat, worked so well in the winter it was like it was trying to make up for the fact that it lacked pretty much everything else other cars have.

So maybe it wasn't the most powerful car in the world.  I've heard another Tercel owner compare the sound of the engine to that of a lawn mower.  So what?  It moved with alacrity when I pressed down on the gas pedal.  It's not like my life was The Fast and the Furious.

So maybe my affectionate nickname for it was The Easy-Bake Oven.  I remember getting in the car to drive the five minutes it took me to get to work as a carhop at Sonic, and arriving in clothes quite literally drenched in sweat.  When it's well over 100 degrees outside, you're sitting on dark vinyl seats, and the cooking implement isn't so much a light bulb as the sun, it's going to get a little hot.  So what?  As a carhop, I spent half my shift outside, anyway.  (This was a little different when I started working in a drugstore.  On the very hottest days, I would bring a different shirt to change into when I got to work, and hang my sopping wet shirt up to drip-dry while I worked.  I'm pretty sure they loved me there.)  I had friends who said things like WHAT IS THE MATTER WITH THIS CAR and I HAVE NEVER BEEN THIS HOT IN MY LIFE and OH JEEZ I FEEL SICK.  It was a car, wasn't it?  Teenagers.  So dramatic.

It was because of this car that I was so confused and not a little cranky when we moved to Connecticut.  We lived in a relatively working-class neighborhood, not at all what you'd call affluent, especially by Connecticut standards, but there was a high school just a couple blocks away from our condo, and that school parking lot was full of nice, new cars with brand names like BMW and Lexus.  What the heck?  This gave me lots of opportunities for curmudgeonly grumbling about Youth Entitlement and Kids These Days (it just occurred to me I was the ripe old age of 21 when I moved there- at this point I could either label myself as an "old soul" or just accept that I've always been a little cranky).

Now, thankfully, we're back in the midwest, where the school parking lots are full of bikes and old trucks and, my favorite, an old, rusty, beater car that has a bumper sticker that reads "Don't be fooled by my car- my treasure is in heaven."

My point?  I don't really have one.  Except to say that even if you have money coming out your ears, please don't get your kid a nice car when they first start driving.  I am happy with just about any car I drive now, I don't care if it's pretty, I don't care if it doesn't have power-whatever- I just want it to get me from point A to point B.  (Although, I'm not gonna lie, I might cry on the day when I finally get to drive a manual transmission vehicle again.  I feel very strongly about those.)

Failed Duplicity

Caedmon has been getting himself into a bit of trouble lately.  Nothing serious, merely small naughty-isms that he must perform half a dozen times apiece before he learns that Oh!  Maybe I shouldn't do that anymore.

The wonderful thing about these daily rituals is that he appears to be utterly lacking the gene for slyness.  I can always count on being alerted to his dealings outside the (Crisler) law by two things:  Running and Declaration.

Yesterday morning, exiting the bathroom, I watched as Caedmon Ran wildly out of the kitchen and Declared, "I didn't drink your coffee!"

A few days before that, I came downstairs after putting away some clean clothes upstairs, only to have Cade Run up to me and Declare, "I wasn't messing with Adelaide's pens!"

One day last week he Ran into the living room just as I was walking in and Declared, "I don't know where the chocolate chips are!"  His face was much darker than usual, perhaps because it was covered in chocolate.

It is (almost) always so, so difficult not to laugh when he does this.  I'm usually able to keep my composure, however, because my favorite part of this little play we perform is when I kneel down and say, "Caedmon, I know it was you who colored on the floor," "Caedmon, I know you were playing with my makeup," "Caedmon, I know you ate a sucker without asking."  The look on his face is pure astonishment tinged with not a little dazzled amazement at the Mommy Magic I must be employing to bring about this parental omniscience.  I know that worldliness is creeping in and, too soon, he'll learn more devious forms of disobedience.  I like to think that this simple innocence, present even in his three-year-old deceit, is compensation for all the hard parts of parenting littles.

Now if only he'd keep this practice up through his teenage years (although, I'm not gonna lie, I shudder to think what his Declarations would sound like then).

Lists Are Your Friends

I don't even know what that title means.  Anyway, onward.

• Yesterday and today the high temperature was close to 50.  Fif-ty.  Enough snow melted that I was able to see parts of my flower beds, and yes, I did put my face close enough to the dirt to smell it.  I also found myself searching for green shoots, even though I know the ground is still frozen and that a few days of above-freezing temperatures is not enough to compel flowers to begin their growth cycle, and that if I were to see plants this early in the season, it would in fact be a bad thing, overall.  Whatever.  I'm getting desperate.  Plus we're in a blizzard warning all day tomorrow and tomorrow night.  I will never see my flowers again.  

• It would appear that our children have no volume control, but only when we're in public, and only when they're saying semi-mortifying things.  At church Sunday morning, I had just picked Adelaide up from her class, and we were in the common area of the children's section, which is just crawling with, well, children, when Adelaide announced to me that "I know why you don't like me singing that song 'I'm sixty and I know it.'"  Oh, no no no.  "It's because it actually goes 'I'M SEXY'!"  See, every once in a while they play a pop music station on Adelaide's school bus, so one day last year Adelaide began chanting "I'm sexy and I know it" after school, I freaked out a little bit, contacted a couple people in the school district, had a talk with Adelaide about how it was inappropriate, then forgot about it.  I didn't even know she was actually saying "I'm sixty and I know it" until she very clearly and very loudly declared so at church.  Thirty seconds later Caedmon, who had been staring at a young father sporting a really quite impressive moustache began to hold forth in a carrying voice about said facial hair:  "LOOK AT THAT GUY'S MOUSTACHE.  DO YOU SEE IT MOMMY?  MOMMY?  THAT GUY.  HE HAS A MOUSTACHE.  A BIG HUGE MOUSTACHE.  RIGHT THERE MOMMY.  DO YOU SEE THE MOUSTACHE?"  That evening we had decided to eat supper in an actual restaurant where they serve you food and you don't have to clean up afterward (aren't restaurants amazing?).  Caedmon asked Derek what was in the yellow bottle next to the ketchup.  I didn't hear Derek's answer, but I did hear Caedmon incredulously repeat "MOUSE TURDS?"  As did everyone with a 100 foot radius.  You're welcome, adoring public.  Enjoy your food.

• Monday morning it snowed around three inches, on top of however many inches we still had on the ground.  That afternoon the temp climbed up to around 40 (40 degrees!  It was like summer around here!), plus Derek didn't have to work, so we all went to a nearby park to sled and throw snow at each other.  I can't really call it a snowball fight because the only person in this family who can a) throw a snowball more than ten feet and additionally b) throw with any kind of accuracy is Derek, so it was really more Derek hitting the rest of us with snowballs while we all flailed around.  I took half a dozen pictures that all look pretty much like this one:

Guess where that snowball ended up?  The same place the other thirty did:  splatted somewhere on Adelaide's person.

A List For Your Thursday Viewing Pleasure

• Last Saturday's lunchtime conversation:  

Adelaide:  "I can't wait for this afternoon."

Derek:  "Why is that, Adelaide?"

Adelaide:  "Because I'm going to do the Winter Cleaning Of My Mind.  It's stocked full and I can't put any new thoughts in there because it's so clogged up."

Obviously what she needs is a pensieve, but I knew better than to bring that up, as I have not yet allowed her to read Harry Potter.  I have also said no to The Hunger Games and The Lord of the Rings.  According to Adelaide, this is unfair and overly strict- this from the girl who had an emotional break down after reading Old Yeller.  I stand by my edicts... but can I just say how hard it is to tell her she can't read such good books?  One of the pleasures of our children getting older is when they finally reach the various maturity levels required for assorted novels, don't you think?

• Caedmon has been talking an awful lot about prison lately.  It's a trifle worrisome.  Even Atticus commented on it the other day:  "Caedmon, why are you always putting your Lego guys in jail?"  He runs around the house, talking about all the different people he's just put in jail (usually "bad guys," but not always), he talks about who he would call with his one phone call (he asked me what would happen if he were ever put in jail, and between fingerprinting and the one phone call my knowledge of incarceration was exhausted), he builds little jails out of Legos.  I am comforted by his statement the other day- "I'm going to be a police officer when I'm an adult!"- because that's less worrisome than just about any alternative outcome to all this imaginary play.

• Atticus has been doing this a lot lately:

I'll be making supper, folding laundry, reading, whatever, then turn around and find the business end of a foam sword pointed at my chest.  I'm not sure what to make of it.

Caedmon, of course, wants to do whatever Atticus is doing, so he tries to mimic his big brother.

He has trouble keeping the smile off his face when he's doing it, however.  I wonder how that will translate to his life as an upholder of the law.  And yes, they are both wearing beach towels as capes.

The end.

4-H Crafts for Grown Ups

See this?

Right away, let me assure you I did not come up with this idea.  I first saw this monster Valentine box idea on Pinterest a long time ago, and it has since mated and reproduced and made many, many monster babies.  Also?  I did not think that analogy through.

Backing off of the reproductive practices of monster boxes and onto the advent of Valentine boxes:  If you have school-age children, you know that it is not longer enough to send your child to school with a plain old Valentine.  They must now have a small treat with their standard Valentine (something that was only reserved for the over-achievers when I was young), half of their classmates' Valentines won't even be those cheap, perforated, store-bought numbers; they will be beautifully crafted, hand-made creations you'll feel guilty about throwing away (oh, but you'll still do it), and you will be expected to create some kind of receptacle for all those gorgeous Valentines and treats and other guilt-inspiring doodads ("guilt" because I don't generally do those things).

Enter the Valentine box.

Somehow, when you see those amazing Valentine boxes on Pinterest, you believe that it's just that: something that that one mom on Pinterest does, while the rest of us are content to wrap old Kleenex boxes in butcher paper and hand our kid a crayon to decorate it (this was my actual plan, FYI).  Then you walk into your kid's preschool and see glittering castle Valentine boxes and Lego Valentine boxes and boxes that are covered in real chicken feathers (don't even ask).  At this point you realize that your slacker parenting methods aren't going to work this time.

I know how this all works, okay?  I was in 4-H.  I competed in the fair every summer and won my share of ribbons.  (And not those lame reds or, God forbid, white ribbons, just so we're clear)  I can lose sleep and cry real tears over meaningless crafts with the best of them, making these Valentine boxes right up my alley.

Still, it's been a long time since I was in 4-H, and there are no ribbons on the line here (soccer moms prefer to deal in guilt and shame), so I find myself veering toward the ideas on Pinterest with key words like "Under 10 Minutes!" and "So easy I was able to do it in the middle of the daily ten-mile run!"  Unfortunately, Pinterest moms are dirty, dirty liars, as this box took me approximately one and a half episodes of Doctor Who to complete (although, to be fair, one of the episodes was Angels Take Manhattan which I absolutely recommend if you want to have a panic attack every time you see a statue for the rest of your natural life- it may or may not have slowed me down a teensy bit), and involved around half a roll of tape.

It also seemed really plain when I was done, so I twisted up and added some random sparkly pipe cleaners to the top.  I thought this jazzed it up nicely enough, until our children woke up and saw it this morning.

Adelaide's verdict was "It's funny," but Atticus looked at it, smiled, then turned to me and asked, "Why did you make my Valentine box look like Ms. Hollie?"

Ms. Hollie is one of Atticus's preschool teachers.  She is not red.  She does not have the shape of a Kleenex box.  She does not have blue eyes, nor does she have three eyes, nor does she have lazy or wandering eyes.  She does not have a gaping maw of nightmare teeth.  So I asked, "What do you mean, Bud?"

"It looks like Ms. Hollie.  You know," he gestured to the top of his head, "crazy hair."

Ah.  Ms. Hollie does have a head full of curly, corkscrewy hair.

This all gave me an idea for a terrific new reality show:  The 4-H'ers of [Washington, Cowley, Story, whatever] County, where you follow young 4-H kids as they get ready for the fair.  The tears!  The drama!  The animal excrement!  The sewing machine-induced injuries!  And- plot twist!- all the 4-H judges are preschoolers.

Makes about as much sense as anything that's on tv now.