Sometimes I astound myself...

"I have danced under a darkling moon, and kissed my beloved in the pounding rain. I have danced at a wedding and cried at a funeral. I have experienced birth and death, love and fear, life and loss. Yet still, through all the disappointments, I have hope; under all the joys runs a thread of despair, that this, too, shall pass, and be riven from me."

This just burst out of my brain, fully formed, about 10 minutes ago.

Now I just need to figure out what it is. Or who, rather, and what else he, she, or it has to say to me.

Huh. Maybe somewhere in there is a muse, after all.

:D

stressful weekends just don't stop

I really feel like I need to read something with an eye to reviewing it, just because I need something to concentrate on that will make me happy. I have a couple of new things I need to load on my reader; maybe one of those will be The One; the next book to inspire me to write about it.

We've had a long and busy weekend, piling new stress up on top of the stress I'm already feeling. My fingers are so crossed that the DH's truck will sell soon that my hands are starting to cramp, but really? We really really need it to happen. The Middle Child had his 8th birthday on Saturday, and he started celebrating on Thursday. He apparently felt that the entire weekend should be All About HIM, and that he should be able to do whatever he wanted, and win everything. Needless to say, that's not the way it went, and there were many tears involved. And that meant many lectures. And when I'm the one giving the lectures, it stresses me, and when I'm just listening to the DH lecture, it stresses me out. On top of that, there was a lovely hate-y rant on FB, which I allowed myself to be drawn into, which culminated in a woman I thought was a friend who knew me fairly well deciding that I was expressing an opinion based on a superficial knowledge of the subject at hand. (I'm trying REALLY HARD not to get into the whole thing on here.)  Anyway, I have no real evidence that she has any more background on the matter than she thinks I have, but I *know* that I have more knowledge than she thinks I do. I don't offer up an opinion on things unless I'm sure of my position and feel VERY strongly on the subject, and to be so dismissed is hurtful. I may not have a degree, and I may stay home with my kids, but I *do* have a fairly thorough education. I do not have a paid job, but that doesn't mean I have no motivation to learn things. I may have primarily reviewed (or commented on, rather) romance and YA novels, but that's not all I read now, and it's certainly not all I've ever read.

Lesson? Don't ever presume to know, especially based on a single conversation on a given subject, that someone does not have the knowledge to support or uphold their opinion. Unless you have been with them for every moment of their life to date, you have no way of knowing what experiences or research are fueling their thoughts and feelings. In other words, Dear Ma'am, you can bite me!

I feel all need-to-blog-y, but I don't know about what, really. Maybe we'll try that whole stream-of-consciousness thing and see where it gets us. Right now, I'm sitting on the sofa on my DH's laptop. In the room with me are two cats: one white, sleeping on the sofa arm beside me, the other grey and sitting in the high-back car booster over by the front door. My cell just beeped, which probably means my DH just texted me from the neighbors' where he went to see what they got our Middle Child for his 8th birthday today. Better go check...

~~~~

Yup, it was him, but to tell me that their puppies are playing with his shoelaces. Those pups are SOOO cute, and I kind of want one, but just can't right now. They're part some sort of terrier (I think) and min-pin, so they're never going to be very big, and we have two large boxer-mixes right now. I just can't think it's a good idea to bring a third dog -- and a small one at that -- into that, especially as the larger of our two is not yet 18 mos old. Also, we just plain can't afford it. But we can't afford much of anything; I hate to admit it bu we're in dire financial straits.  We're hoping to sell the DH's gas-guzzler soon (ad on Craigslist) which would go a long way to making things a lot more comfortable around here, but until that happens, we're hanging on paycheck to paycheck. And just barely managing to keep no more than one month behind on bills and stay on top of the mortgage and all still EAT. And of course, only one vehicle means it's nearly impossible for me to get a job, because I'd be constrained to the maybe half-dozen or so businesses which are within walking distance, all of which would require me to find some sort of childcare for at least the boys -- and none of which would pay anything above the cost of  that childcare.

Life sucks sometimes.  Keep you fingers crossed that the truck sells.

I so need to go back to school eventually. I keep looking at Work-from-home job posting sites, hoping to find something that I can do, but sometimes it just seems hopeless. They want you to have a space with a door you can shut while your kids are home (which makes being home with the kids kind of pointless. They want you to have this degree or that experience, none of which I have. Or to buy special equipment, which I can't afford. There's always something, and for the others, they're scams. Or they might be genuine, but they totally come across as spammy when you click the links. And I'm not going to risk anything on "might be."

The sad thing is, about half the time, I know I have the skills, even if I don't have the piece of paper or the work history. I've spent the last 8 years or so not working at all, just being at home taking care of kids and house and pets. I can organize, I can make phone calls, I can be convincing. I can type, and more importantly, I can WRITE. Not fiction (or I'd be trying to get published instead of looking for a job), but I can write. I can even edit -- Maybe I'm not sure about fictional content editing, but nonfiction almost certainly, and especially looking for errors of spelling, grammar and punctuation. I'm not sure I could sell anything, but I've done customer service before and I was pretty damn good at it.

Here it is almost 5 pm an I've accomplished virtually nothing today. I've folded and put away a couple of loads of laundry, and washed a couple more (one's in the dryer, the other in the washer waiting its turn.) I really need to do dishes and clean the kitchen so that I can help the Darling Daughter with her first foray into birthday-cake-baking -- she wants to make her brother's birthday cake for tomorrow. It's a basic box cake, so not beyond her abilities, but she's never done a cake before, and this is a special silicone dinosaur-shaped pan, so it shall be interesting. I just hate doing dishes. It's not my least favorite thing ever, but it's starting to rank right up there. Less because I don't enjoy the ritual of it, the joy of taking something dirty and making it clean again, and more because I just do it all the time; hardly a day goes by when I'm not doing the freaking dishes. And my hands get all dried out and flaky and itchy and *horrible* and there's nothing that really helps.

*sigh*

Trying to get past this mood, and not sure how well it's working. Will move on from this to some other things; maybe turning on loud, dance-y music will help me get moving and get it all together.

Much love!

The Frustrations of Parenting, pt 1

My three kids, ages 11, 8, and 6, really keep me hopping. In general, this is probably a good thing, as I'm an introvert and would likely, left to my own devices, find myself living in a cave with no outside interaction (possibly not even the internet). However, there are a few -- ok, more than a few -- problems.

To begin with, I *am* an introvert. This means that long stretches of time spent in close contact with other people, all of whom are louder, more active and more aggressive than myself, are difficult at best. This is weekends. Long weekends are progressively harder and long breaks (especially summer vacations) can be downright excruciating, since I'm a stay-at-home Mom. I find myself staying up way too late trying to find some quiet time to recharge, and then having to get up early to make sure the kids don't harm themselves or each other, and by the time I catch up on all that lost sleep, it's time to do it all again with another long school break. We're trained as students and workers to celebrate Fridays and fear Mondays; for me it's the opposite. Perhaps if I were a different personality type I would be less stressed by all the family togetherness (and to be honest, there are plenty of times when I really do love the stuff we do all together) but I'm not, and I refuse to either fake it or apologize. I can't pretend with my family, I won't pretend to myself, and, frankly, if anyone's reading this, I don't care enough about *you,* Dear Reader, to pretend to you.


The Girl Child, 11, is particularly challenging for me. She's in that "tween" time; somewhere between child and young adult, and she's practicing her girly. I've had my moments of girliness, but never a truly concentrated thing. She's taking it to what seems, to me, to be extremes. I don't understand and I'm not entirely sure how to deal. Additionally, she seems to want to be an overachiever but doesn't quite have the innate abilities to do it. The self-confidence, yeah (or else that's a mask she's showing to us all), but not the easy recollection or quick wit (I'm sorry, I love her, but...some people just don't.) Sometimes I feel like part of that, at least, is my fault; I'm a quick reader myself, and she seems to want to be emulating that, but when I read quickly, I am also still able to retain the vast majority of what I read. She, on the other hand, can't. She "read" Christopher Paolini's <i>Eragon</i> last weekend (I use the word guardedly, as she kept the book in her room for roughly 24 hours, and then assured me she had completely read the whole thing). It took *me* several days to finish that book, and I was reading as an adult, without a full-time job (other than parenting, of course). I in no way believe that she finished and retained what she read. And, to be honest, what irks me most is not that she wants me to believe her, but that she won't just be honest about it. I don't care how fast she reads, as I've explained to her. It's more important that she understands and takes in what she's read.

In some ways, having kids has made me a better reader, though. You wouldn't know it to look, because I read a lot more than I remember to review, either here or on <a href="http://www.goodreads.com/user/show/2300063-tracy?ref=header">my Goodreads page</a>, but I've been expanding my YA reads from the classics that I've loved since I was a kid, and reading more recent stuff, because I really feel I need to know what's out there. I have three budding readers (I hope; the First Grader is a bit resistant, but it's coming a little harder to him than to the others) and I want to be sure that I can direct them toward books that are not only the *quality* I wish them to read, but that are also books that they'll enjoy. I want smart characters, male and female, who are able to be strong and make hard choices. I'm actually somewhat OK with a certain amount of moral ambiguity, but certain themes are right out. Definitely no rape, for instance, and bullying is only OK if the character who is bullying learns better and reforms. Or, you know, is at least punished harshly. Hatred is not OK. I would actually like to see more LGBTQ characters, even for my younger readers, more diverse racial backgrounds, more strong secondary characters...I haven't exactly been impressed with a lot of what passes for teen romance these days. Overall, I'm actually find that I'm more and more falling back on my childhood favorites: A Wrinkle in Time (Madeleine L'Engle's Time Quintet), Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing, Emily's Runaway Imagination, and Five Children and It (Puffin Classics) (to name just a few). However, there have been a few standouts that I've loved over the last decade or so: the aforementioned <i>Eragon</i> (although I should note I've only read <i>Eragon</i> and <i>Eldest</i> to date), Artemis Fowl (new cover), and Inkheart (Movie Cover), just for starters.

I remember my mom reading out loud to us as kids. She read all the way through almost all of C.S. Lewis's <i>Narnia</i> books. I remember particulary hearing her read when I was about 8 -- my little sister was still a baby, and in one of the books (I think it was <i>A Horse and His Boy,</i> although I could be wrong) there's a part where one character, a king, is talking to his nephew (stepson? I really must do a re-read) and there's an unfortunate paragraph break. At the end of one paragraph, it goes, "..and the king said," then the break before getting to the actual speech. Anyhoo, just as she reaches that part, the baby stinks up the diaper, and Mom looks over and reads "...and the king said, 'Shew, you stink!'" It just fit so well into the rhythm of the story, it was actually a few years later (when I first read the book for myself) that I finally realized that that was not, in fact, part of the narrative. We still laugh about it, some 25 years later. However, I've tried reading to my kids, and they can't seem to sit still for it, especially as some of the older ones, I know, tend to move more slowly than newer books do.

Another time, I'll get into the frustrations of my beloved but crazy-making sons. And one day, I may even count my blessings! (Don't get me wrong; I really do love my kids. I'm thrilled to be able to share some of the things I love with them -- books, movies, baking -- I just get overwhelmed because they all seem to have a different personality from my own, and it can feel pretty stressful after a while.) In the meantime, peace, love and plenty of good books!!! I think I'm maybe inspired to go poking around my kids' bookshelves for some good re-reads.

The Search for WondLa

Oh, where to begin? This is wonderful juvenile fiction--a post-apocalyptic fantasy with hints of L. Frank Baum's Oz books -- literally, as Eva Nine (our intrepid 11-year-old heroine) sets off on a quest guided only by her desire to find out about a scrap of heavy paper with a picture of "a girl, a robot, and an adult, looking happy" with the words Wond La printed on it. She is also looking for other humans, having been raised underground by a robot called Muthr. What she finds on the surface are strange "trees," some of which can move, which most closely resemble hugely overgrown microscopic organisms; strange, alien beings of various kinds; and animals that are completely unrecognizable to her, including Otto, a "water bear" who is rather an elephantine pill bug type of creature. She is hunted as a unique species, and eventually learns of a ruin in a desert where artifacts similar to her own belongings have been found, and attempts to travel there to see if she can find signs of humans. What she finds is the New York Public Library's Rare Printed Books and Archives Vault. There is a HUGE cliffhanger ending, and the last page says End of Book I. (According to Amazon, A Hero for WondLa (Book II) will be released in hardcover May 8, 2012). The hardback features gorgeous illustrations at the beginning of each chapter, and sprinkled throughout the book. I highly recommend this to...well, everyone, really! Also, check out the website (www.wondla.com)

I read this book as a library borrow while visiting my parents in June, 2011. 

life and randomness

So we're having a bit of financial iffery right now, due to unforseen circumstances (namely the AC dying in the middle of a freaking heatwave). Which means we're living pretty much hand-to-mouth trying to catch up on bills, with a birthday party on Saturday for our Middle Child. Plus, I got a tattoo on Monday. So my ankle hurts like a b*tch. Anyway, all this means I'm on a book-buying moratorium until we're caught up (which with any luck will be, oh, end of October.)

I'm kinda feeling weird about that whole thing, honestly. There's a little part of me that's all, "oh oh OH!!" at all the new releases that some of my autobuy authors are coming out with (even when the blurbs for the books are kinda leaving me "meh"). But at the same time, there's a part of me that's not really interested in reading Anything At All (although that's not really working, because I find myself re-reading a ton of stuff.) As well, I'm really excited about a new publishing venture I'm aware of, but not so much some of the authors involved (some of them are already on my auto-buy, so, yeah, wanna NOM them ASAP.)

All of this has combined to leave me a very mixed-up kitty indeed, and I've been compensating by trolling the web for free reads, none of which I've managed to download to my reader yet. I've been considering doing a massive reorganization of my digital library anyway (at least parts of it; some of my M/M stuff is improperly tagged in Calibre) but it's going to be, as I said, a massive task and I'm not sure I feel up to it. I do need to back up the newer downloads, though, just in case I ever have to completely reset the reader again. Weirdly (or not) a lot of the free reads I've downloaded are Kindle books which have to be read on the computer which gives me headaches. Swear to God, one of these days I'm going to get a cheap, older Kindle just so I can read those in freakin' e-ink. LOL  I'm not sure it's worth the cost of even a refurb'd Kindle, but even tho I know I wouldn't be pirating, I can't deal with the thought of trying to learn how to strip the DRM (yeah, I know, I'm not very technologically advanced. I have my moments, but overall....No.)

And the Oldest Child *just* told me she  has detention after school today for forgetting her ID 2x, and can I pick her up at 4? She's just lucky that I'm gonna have the van today; we're trying to only drive the one vehicle that gets semi-decent gas mileage.