Appealing to Those with More June Cleaver in Them than I

I sliced open two fingers while cooking today. (they're both still attached, don't worry!) Now that the pain has subsided - and one hurt so bad I'm telling myself it must rival childbirth because that helps me believe I'll be able to survive it . . . childbirth, not the cut. Anyway. Now that I'm no longer in pain I'm not sure whether to be -

A ~ embarrassed that neither happened while I was chopping onions with a rather sharp knife.

B ~ ashamed that one was on a canned corn can lid and the other was on the dishwasher . . . still haven't figured out how I managed that one.

C ~ insane for admitting my incredible talent for hurting myself in ways that would make Bella Swan mock me.

So I'm asking everyone out there who can manage to make taco soup without seasoning it with blood (which I didn't!) - A, B, or C?



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Want a peek into where Luke and I live? Here you go! A few fun facts:
~ Apparently I should have gone shopping on black Friday this year.
~ This building gives new definition to "mini mall." It is seriously MINIATURE. In fact, you see it all here, pretty much.
~ At least 95% of the audience was planted there for the video. There are NEVER that many people there - not even on black Friday!
~ Pretty sure I saw at least half a dozen people I know.

Celebrating (Imminent) Success

End of the year blog meme time, yay! I've seen this one around a bit lately, and since I'm within single digits of reaching my only tangible goal for the year - reading 150 books - this shall be my reward party.

And since you've all totally been watching my little ticker over there >>>>>>>>>>>> with baited breath all year - yep, I am down to nine more . . . woo hoo!!! There were times when I wondered if I'd pull it off.

Anyway. Meme time.

1) What author do you own the most books by?

Tough call. Rick Riordan and L.M. Montgomery are both up there. Does my collected works of Jane Austen book count for each novel? Because then she'd probably take the title when you include the duplicate copies.

2) What book do you own the most copies of?

I only own double copies of three Jane Austens.

3) Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?

I usually don't notice until it's pointed out. So . . . thanks for that.

4) What fictional character are you secretly in love with?

Character? As in . . . singular? Can I just say "all of them" and have it count as one? Seriously:

Marius Pontmercy
Gilbert Blythe
Fitzwilliam Darcy
Colonel Brandon
Sir Percival Blakeney
Heathcliff
Rhett Butler
. . . and any others who might slightly resemble any of the above

5) What book have you read the most times in your life (excluding picture books read to children; i.e., Goodnight Moon does not count)?

Probably Tuck Everlasting . . . but I reread books a lot, so it's hard to say.

6) What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?

You really have to be more specific - I've never had consistent favorites. Favorite book on my tenth birthday? Favorite fantasy book when I was ten that I read that summer? Those I could answer.

7) What is the worst book you’ve read in the past year?

Hard to say. In an attempt to make a dent in my massive to-read list I've found myself reading a lot of vanity/self-published stuff lately. I'm sure there are some gems in that pile, but most of what I've found epitomizes why that was the route those people took. These, however, fall into the category of worst-of-the-worst.

9) If you could force everyone to read one book, what would it be?

Again, hard to say. The Happiness Project comes to mind, but I think I'd prefer to tailor my recommendation to each person.

10) Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature?

Me. Totally. :-)

11) What book would you most like to see made into a movie?

Do I really need to get into my do-not-turn-books-into-movies-ever rant again?

12) What book would you least like to see made into a movie?

See above.

13) Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.

I don't generally recognize people in my dreams. I know I know them, and I know where I know them from (high school, Florida, books, etc.) but I don't usually know who they actually are.

14) What is the most lowbrow book you’ve read as an adult?

Ummmmm . . . what part of "vanity press" strikes anyone as high brow?! Anyway . . . yeah. I totally read fluffy stuff. Gotta balance out Austen and Milton and Wilde and Dickens and such somehow.

15) What is the most difficult book you’ve ever read?

Define difficult. While I speak it pretty well (or, at least I used to) I can't read French to save my life, so the stuff in my French lit classes were brutal. (and yet I hold on to the more than slightly insane goal of reading Les Mis in french someday. Unabridged.) I've never had to much trouble with Shakespeare or any "old school" stuff - if you go a little slower it's really not that hard. That said, I struggled with Wuthering Heights the first time . . . I think I was a little too young for the writing style. Also, somehow I ended up with a copy of Canterbury Tales in the original Middle English for a concurrent enrollment class my senior year. Kind of hard to read a book that is literally in a different language . . . especially when you think it's in yours.

16) What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you’ve seen?

Sadly, the only one I've seen is Macbeth - kind of shameful when you consider where I went to college, eh?

Also: donations for Lacey's ABSOLUTELY NECESSARY trip to Cedar next summer are being accepted starting . . . wait for it . . . now. Because with front page news like that . . . yeah. I have to go.

17) Do you prefer the French or the Russians?

Oh! Oh! New answer for most difficult!! I've never finished anything by a Russian - and heaven knows I've tried. I will get through Anna Karenina someday, dangit!

Hugo? Is my hero. One of them.

18) Roth or Updike?

Haven't read either, actually. I probably should fix that.

19) David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?

Neither.

20) Shakespeare, Milton, or Chaucer?

Okay, I haven't actually read any Milton yet . . . I said I was working on my to-read list, not that it was done. Tough call - Shakespeare is a bit easier to read un-translated, but Chaucer's dirty jokes are easier to get.

What? You didn't know that those are two of the dirtiest writers in the history of writing?

21) Austen or Eliot?

I shall echo others' answers: which Eliot? And why Eliot? Because when I think of authors similar to Austen, Eliot doesn't even make the top, like, 100.

22) What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?

I don't know that there are any large gaps in my collected readings, but there are a few that would make me feel like I should turn in my degree if I admitted to them.

23) What is your favorite novel?

Today? The FitzOsbournes in Exile. Mostly because it's the last one I finished . . . well, the last good one anyway. Can't wait for the third one.

24) Play?

Ummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm . . . Much Ado. But mostly just because I've got Shakespeare on the brain from all these questions.

25) Poem?

I'm not a huge poetry person, but I do have a bit of a thing for "Dover Beach" by Matthew Arnold.

26) Essay?

Really don't do essays. Montaigne, I guess. Since I've read him.

27) Short story?

Again, not so much with the short stories. That said, a former professor of mine has a great collection out there (umm . . . shameless plug alert!) And I am a bit of a junkie of anything Millhauser.

28) Work of nonfiction?

I almost never read it so this is easy - The Happiness Project.

29) Who is your favorite writer?

Today? Ummmmmmm . . . Jane Austen, Jo Rowling, Jasper Fforde, and Emily Bronte

30) Who is the most overrated writer alive today?

Stephenie Meyer . . . Jack Weyland . . . oh! - Jodi Picoult! I really don't get why she's so huge. I wanted to like her since I'm practically the only person who doesn't, but all her books are the same - sex and violence that serves no real purpose beyond shock value to get people talking about her books.

31) What is your desert island book?

If ever I find myself on a desert island, it will be the chunk of land that castle from Beauty and the Beast is on, which mysteriously floated away from . . . ummm . . . all the land surrounding it . . . and I shall never leave.

32) And … what are you reading right now?

Dreams of Joy. I read Shanghai Girls this summer and really liked it, so I have high hopes for this one, but I haven't gotten very far yet.



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Totally fitting. Also totally awesome. And totally spot on.

No Rest For The Grammar Nazi

The Santa Clause. Clever movie. You've seen it, don't lie. (feel free to lie about seeing the sequels though) It came out in 1994. I was . . . well, since this is the internet I shall just say that my age had two digits and I was not a teenager. Even then I thought it was an immensely clever title. Because you see, the mythical fat man in a red suit is named Santa Claus. No e on the end. There's an e on the end in the title of the movie because the movie isn't talking about the Bearded Dude (or Jeff Bridges . . . ten points!). No, the title was referencing the legal definition of the word clause, which is a stipulation or article in a legal document. As in "if you put on the red suit you are contractually obligated to keep it on blah, blah, blah." The clause pertaining to being Santa, if you will. And they even made the e a different color to emphasize what they were going for. And maybe I'm being a little arrogant here, but as a child still in elementary school I recognized that, got it, and enjoyed the pun.

So it breaks my heart a little to see that now, 17 years later, somehow everyone has come to believe that the jolly old elf's name is Santa Clause. Because you can hardly find it in writing anywhere properly any more. I think I die a little inside every time I see it spelled wrong. And you know Santa's gotta be pretty ticked by now. I hate it when people misspell my name, and I haven't been around for a century or two. I think this shall be my battle in the "war" on Christmas. Team CLAUS, y'all.

I would hide everyone in my facebook feed who spells it wrong . . . but I don't think I'd have many people left unhidden by the end of the month.

Let the Christmas blogging begin - happy holidays folks!


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Talk about a movie that just won't end - I much prefer this version!!

How I've Done

Last week a facebook friend posted asking if anyone else was thinking about New Year's resolutions yet. I wasn't (but now I am), but unlike pretty much every other year ever, I actually remembered the one I made this year. And actually thought about it throughout the year. I'd originally intended to keep myself really accountable by posting about how I was doing every month or six weeks or so . . . which, obviously, didn't happen. But I still think I've done a pretty good job at being myself. Some days better than others, naturally.

I don't think I've changed much - I'm still a great big bag of my own neuroses, paranoia, quirks, and silliness. But I feel like I'm more comfortable with the fact that this is who I am (most days, anyway). I still crave acceptance and approval, but I'm growing more okay with not having the accolades constantly pouring in, you know? For some reason my default reaction has always been the worst possible scenario. No one likes my latest facebook status/picture/video? I'm being shunned - by everyone on facebook. No one comments on my blog? Everyone has stopped reading - even the random Iranian(s?) who've popped up a couple dozen times and I couldn't possibly know because I'm pretty sure I don't know anyone in/from Iran.

I've always been pathetically insecure, and for a while a few years ago it was getting steadily worse. In high school I had some friends who . . . well, I don't think they really considered me a friend. I could list dozens of tiny little things that by themselves mean nothing but put together seem to create an ominous pattern - but that would sound melodramatic and to be honest I only remember specifics for a few things and that I saw the pattern a few years after graduating. And the whole situation can really be summed up pretty easily with one story. Our senior year two friends decided to start writing a book together. It got passed around among all of us as they wrote, and it was really funny. It had a ginormous cast - the large group of drama and marching band nerds that hung out together - and we were all secret agents from various countries and all after the same thing. I don't remember at all what it was, but honestly it was pretty irrelevant. The story was mostly about our character versions interacting with each other and inside jokes and that sort of thing. And then came the day that someone asked where these two got the idea in the first place.

"We wanted to kill Lacey."

The very end of the story, which they never reached (to my knowledge), was going to be a fiery plane crash that took out my character, completely bumbling, inept, and never getting a single thing right, and another friend's, the competent spy whose sole assignment was following my character around and cleaning up after "me."

Okay, I will admit that I have my blonde moments - but who doesn't? And that I did sometimes play up the ditz in an unsuccessful attempt to get the attention of . . . well, to be honest, any guy. But on the other hand, I took honors chemistry and managed a decent grade. I took four years of French. I did concurrent enrollment for college level English classes and I aced them. While other people's characters were pretty true to their real life counterparts, mine . . . wasn't. Rather, it magnified all my negative qualities while essentially eliminating any redeeming ones.

The two girls writing the story and some - but not all, thank heaven! - of the other readers found both my characterization and the inspiration for the story hilarious. I told myself it was a joke and all meant in fun, and smiled and laughed when it came up in conversation. I think I may have even believed it sort of, because I spent most of my time in college as the quiet one in the corner, more welcome and more liked than I would realize until it was all over out of fear that I would do something that made my new friends want to kill me too, even if it was only literary. I slowly realized that the story was not really friend behavior, and was able to open up a bit my senior year of college and then a bit more in Florida.

I don't think it's melodramatic to say that I carry what happened in high school with me to this day. Just a little bit. I don't think about it often, but occasionally something will happen that leaves me certain that I'm secretly hated by the people I'm with, and that they're just wishing I would go away. I'm pretty sure I'm just imagining/misinterpreting things, but there's no escaping the way your past colors your present, so I just do my best to work through my personal crazy. And trying to focus on that this year . . . I may not be the best of judges, but I think I've made some progress. And progress is always good.

Best part? This is totally the kind of resolution that's never done, so you can reuse it every year. Woo hoo! :-) However, in the name of variety, I'm thinking I'll start this too. Should be fun . . . eventually!

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How crazy awesome is this?!

Random Take Three

It's Thanksgiving . . . you know, in case you missed that. Or haven't been entirely creeped out to the point of nightmares by that creepy Target Black Friday Commercial Lady. Seriously - she. Is. Creepy. Exactly the sort of ad that makes me want to never EVER come within 20 miles of a Target for the rest of time.

Anyway, here it is folks, the moment you've been waiting all year for, lol. Top ten crazy things to be thankful for!

1. Crock pots. Our baby size turkey comes with crock pot instructions, so we decided to try it out this year. Here's hoping it goes well! It was kind of fun to get up at six to get it started . . . I remember when I was little it seemed like mom had to get up at practically midnight to start cooking. Because, you know, anything earlier than about 7:00 is midnight to a six year old. In fact, at the elementary school I went to every year all the first graders would write an little essay about how to cook a turkey. They generally all go something like "you have to get up at 2:00 in the morning and cook the turkey at 900* for eleven hours" and such. That . . . would make for a rather crispy turkey, no?

2. Laundry facilities I don't have to go outside to get to. AMAZING!!!!

3. A kitchen I can actually walk around in. AMAZING!!!!

4. Learning new things all the time. For example, do any of you know what tomorrow is? Totally had no idea until Tuesday, and neither did the teacher who told his class about it until a few days before that. But apparently Evacuation Day was a pretty big deal until Thanksgiving basically replaced it. The stuff you didn't know you didn't know, eh?

5. Tradition. I'm watching the Macy's parade at the moment. Mom's always complaining about how it;s not the same as when she was a kid, and I'll admit there's a lot more show numbers and stuff than I remember from when I was younger - but I still love it. What can I say, I'm a junkie for parades.

6. Aglets. Mostly that I know what they're called now. And because Phineas and Ferb rocks.

7. Pinterest. I've found tons of cool recipes and smart ideas to try - I've even tried a couple, and so far so fabulous. :-)

8. Getting all the Christmas stuff out tomorrow. So. Excited.

9. Thanksgiving dinners for two. Simple and pleasant. Every year I'm a bigger fan.

10. A slight carry over from last year - having projects to work on. They give me something to do in my copious amounts of alone/down time. And make me feel accomplished. Also - having so many people to give them to that I just can't keep up? Awesome.


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A slight change up today - I took this video a little while ago because Luke has been cracking me up all month with this. Happy Thanksgiving!!

Feeling Guilty

I think working with older kids is either making me heartless or bringing out my mean and vicious personality. Or maybe I'm doing this right and it just feels like I'm being mean. (feel free to loudly and vehemently support that third option, lol.)

So. Fourth grade. Math test today. Last day before Thanksgiving break . . . cruel, but it would be crueler to save it for the first day back, no? Anyway, I'm walking around answering questions - and to state the obvious I can clarify a question they don't quite understand but can't tell them what to do if they don't remember.

There is a kid in this class who spends math time either spaced out, doodling, or trying to talk to other kids. Every. Single. Day. I kid you not. Every day someone - the teacher or me - calms him out for not paying attention. I've watched him pull his warning card, right down what he did on the "I had to pull a card" paper, go back to his desk and go right back to the doodling or whatever he just got in trouble for. It kind of boggles my mind. It's so crazy . . . a good chunk of the time the first half of the assignment is done as a class and then they get turned loose to finish it. And this kid freaks out because not only does he not know what to do, everyone else is way ahead of him. And when you ask him why he didn't copy the work down when the teacher was doing everything step by step he never has an answer.

So today when he asked for help my answer, naturally, was "this is a test, you have do it by yourself." This nearly brought him to tears as he tried to explain that it was too hard to do by himself. My answer? "That's what happens when you don't pay attention."

I know that was the right answer. And I wouldn't change it if I could go back. And that by fourth grade he should have figured out the whole connection between paying attention and learning thing. But for a moment I thought this kid was going to have (or perhaps fake) a panic attack. And now I feel evil. Because, you know, I was totally supposed to hold his hand through the whole test and practically do it for him . . . because let's face it, half the time he gets things like "3-1" wrong. Heaven help this kid when he gets to high school.

Woo hoo.

On a lighter note, I told you that you'd be hearing from Georgette again!

So among other things 5th graders do linguistically, they learn a lot of root words and prefixes and how you can combine them and they mean similar things.

For those of you totally not following - recently they did "graph." As in photograph. And "graphy" and "grapher," which can be combined with "photo" to talk about pictures or "carto" to talk about maps. With me now?

The one they're currently working on is ology/ologist/ologic. And they had a worksheet with those roots and prefixes that included bio/herb/geo . . . and arche. Obviously, most of them needed these prefixes defined and from there they could more or less figure things out.

So I'm explaining that "arche" means old, so archeology is the study of old things. And the kid I'm explaining it to says "like what?" and before I can answer Georgette jumps in with "PEOPLE!"

I about died.

Okay, so technically she was right . . . except she wasn't talking about remains of people found at Pompeii, you know? She was thinking people . . . ummmmmmm . . . of ages . . . similar to . . . some people who read this blog. Yeah, we'll put it that way. (take that, dad!) I'm still giggling. She's a really smart girl when she thinks - she just doesn't think until after she's said something, generally speaking. Good times.

So in conclusion: I'm a horrible person and Georgette is not a spaz, she just has no 5-second delay button yet. Yay.


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There are no words for this kind of awesome sauce.

Okay, Burn Her Already. Or Something.

So. Fifth grade. They study US history, as you may recall. And the particular fifth graders who's story I'm telling are covering the Revolutionary War at the moment. (And I am determined to be able to show you all an awesome video of them singing Miley Cyrus' timelessly classic hit "Founders if the USA" . . . which will now be stuck in your head for the rest of the day. You're welcome, lol.)

Apparently this is a yearly thing - the kids come in one day and their desks are gone (out in the hall), their teachers have been "replaced" by "Mr. (/Ms.) Cruel," and overall classroom conditions are sort of vaguely unpleasant. To get things back the way they should be they have to write their own Declaration of Independence from Mr. Cruel, turn it in to the principal, and she has to accept it.

This? Is awesome.

I? May be slightly evil.

I spent most of yesterday trying not to giggle as I watched those kids have to sit straight - no backs touching the chairs! - and use chalkboards - nice cursive, if we couldn't read it they had to do it again. Most of them just kind of took it, but to hear some of them moaning and groaning you'd think the Geneva conventions had been violated or something. But it was really amazing how quiet the classroom was . . . no raising hands or shouting out answers, if they had something to say they stood up and waited. It was kind of weird, but awesome. And no one was allowed to ask for help, so I think a few kids discovered that they actually do know how to add and subtract fractions after all - yay!

Most interesting was watching them alphabetize their spelling list - again, on a chalkboard on their laps and in "elegant" cursive. It took some of them a lot longer than it would have taken with pencil and paper on a table, and a few of them had to do it over and over again because they spelled one word wrong or got to in the wrong order or their handwriting was illegible. I'm sure you all remember my opinion of rosy-tinted everything-today-is-awful internet nostalgia, but I'll never deny that some things were probably better back in the day. It's just too bad we couldn't go really old school and pull out the switches for misbehavior, lol. Instead they have to do push ups . . . which, ultimately, is probably more beneficial than a beating, you know? And I have to admit that I felt a little bit of maniacal glee in making the kid who enjoyed the push ups and was trying to get "punished" with more write lines - "I will not pull Sally's pigtails." style. In cursive. And I made him redo it when I couldn't read it.

(side note - this is a boy who uses text speak in his writing assignments. Pretty sure I created his own personal circle of hell. *insert evil laugh here*)

The best part of the whole project has been the conversations I've had with the kids. They generally start with comments about aren't they glad they didn't live 200 years ago, and was it this hard when I was in school doing it this way? To which I can only respond with a quite incredulous "Just how old do you think I am?!?!"

The good news: they've gone no farther than 9 years too high.

The bad news: they're old enough to realize how close they are to 17, so no one's erred on the ten years too low end. Most of them are actually pretty close.

Anyway, that leads to a conversation about how they started transitioning from chalkboards to white boards when I was in 5th or 6th grade. And did they have phones then. And when I said yes the first assumption was that I had a Zack Morris brick cell. And when I said explained that cell phones weren't very common and we had a regular telephone and one of the kids said "you mean the kind that goes on the wall?" I said yes, but I have to wonder whether the picture in his head was something like this or something like this.

Then there was today. Someone mentioned Mr. Cox, and a couple of others kids jumped on the whole "it's not Mr. Cox, it's Mr. Cruel!" thing and that led to wondering where Mr. Cox has gone. (their teacher is clearly the same, but the story is that he had to leave suddenly, but was very sad and stuff) And that led to silly stories about their teacher being a superhero or some James Bond-esque spy on a secret mission and fun stuff like that. And then along comes (Claudio), who has made a bit of a reputation for himself when it comes to saying off the wall things. And he declares that there can only be two reasons for their old teacher to be missing: "either he's dating, or he's sick."

Because, you know, people who are dating have neither time, inclination, nor reason to do anything else.

Maybe you just had to be there, but I've pretty much given up trying to hold in the giggles when kids say those darndest things. I had him repeat it a couple of times - I couldn't believe I'd heard him right! - and then I was only there to be gawked at for a few minutes. None of the kids got what I found so funny, but they definitely get a kick out of how red my face gets when I laugh that hard.

It's entirely up to the principal whether she accepts the declarations and gives the kids their "freedoms" back or not. (btw, did I mention there's no recess, they have to march around the block instead, and lunch is ten minutes and then it's right back to work?) She's a stickler for grammar and such (yay!) and one missed sentence capital will get the whole thing rejected and they have to do the whole thing again. On unlined yellow-y paper that looks kind of Declaration-y. Clearly spaced, line-wise and paragraph-wise. In nice, legible cursive. My class has already had one (possibly two) drafts rejected. Apparently the longest this has ever gone on is just over a week. I kind of want this to keep going on . . . it's so much fun to watch!

Like I said, I may be slightly evil. :-)


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Talk about begging for Mythbusters to try it! How does this even happen?!?!