872 pages of greatness…

….finished off with 25 pages of feel-good, too-perfect crap.  That’s how I would describe Wally Lamb’s I Know This Much is True. It’s 997 pages that I devoured in just over a week (at one time in my life, this would have been slow, but a full time job and 2 kids will change that) and it was so great – until it wasn’t.

So here’s my beef.  I related so much with a lot of the book.  Not in actual fact – I had a very happy, pleasant childhood, and I’ve never dealt with any of the more extreme drama that the protagonist, Dominick Birdsey, dealt with – but in the fact that the past few years of my life have been really tough.  Really, really tough.  And there have been times where I’ve simply felt the world was out to get me.

Dominick feels the same way.  And, like me, he loses his faith in God.  Like me, he also struggles a lot with anger.  (Although I’d say I’m better at controlling mine.  But it’s always there, beneath the surface.)  And so I could really relate to his struggle to come to terms with his life and to let go of his anger.  To realize that the world ISN’T out to get him, and that his anger isn’t helping anything.

I appreciated how messy and complex life was, and the ways in which he began to take small steps forward.  But the problem was the end.  Or actually, the problem was that there were NO problems at the end.  Every bad thing in his life is suddenly (and sometimes incredibly unrealistically) resolved.  In fact, things that weren’t even a problem were resolved – he’s suddenly a rich man!  And he suddenly has a cultural identity he didn’t even know he had!

I don’t know.  I’m not being very articulate here.  All I know is that for the last week or so, I’ve eagerly picked up that book at every opportunity.  And although I’ll still treasure the book for the first 872 pages, I did not anticipate that the last time I put it down, I’d be so utterly disappointed.

Edited: I’ve been skimming through the 3 star reviews on Amazon.com to see if other people agree (they do – it’s one of the top two critiques of the book, but there are a vast preponderance of 5 star reviews over any other rating).  And I found one reviewer, by C.S. Junker, who managed to say it far better than I did in two short sentences:

“If a writer wants to say something profound about life, he should avoid facile conclusions. He doesn’t have to end it like “Hamlet”, but it doesn’t have to be a fairy tale, either.”

A chuckle for the morning

I was driving home from dropping something off at Nate’s office earlier, and I passed a McDonald’s.  It has one of those electronic marquees with a scrolling/changing message, and it is HORRIBLE.  It can only fit two short lines of text, and it seems like something is always being broken up between screens at an odd place.  (This is a McDonald’s I drive by regularly.)  However, today took the cake.

Screen 1:

Play Monopoly

Win $1

Screen 2:

Million

I had a revelation

I think I’ve figured out just why I like history so much and why I prefer to read about history over modern day affairs.  Although I have very strong political ideals and am very interested in what happens in the political arena, I find that I actually avoid reading too much about it.  I’m not one of those people who soaks up blogs and books and newspapers and radio shows about politics.  Perhaps I should be, but I’m not.

See, the thing is, I’m a very empathetic person – empathetic to a fault, perhaps.  The suffering of other people actually makes my heart hurt.  This empathy is absolutely the foundation of my political beliefs, but it’s also why it’s often difficult for me to read about modern day issues.  Reading about people dying in Darfur or children starving in our own streets makes me want to cry.  It actually hurts, physically; when I say that it makes my heart hurt, I mean that literally.  I feel a squeezing in my heart and an ache in my guts when I read these things.  And other news just makes me angry, so much so that I clench my fists and grit my teeth.  Reading about avaricious pharmaceutical companies or lying CEOs just makes me want to scream.

On the other hand, history is calming and even uplifting for me because history is already fixed.  Problems of the past have been made better.  (I’m of the camp who firmly believes that human belief systems have evolved mostly for the better over time.)  We repudiated slavery.  Women can now vote, own property, choose to divorce, etc.  Children aren’t forced to labor in unsafe working conditions.  (Although I recognize that even today, these things still occur in other parts of the world.)  I think it makes me feel good and, more importantly, optimistic to see how humanity has progressed.  It gives me hope that all of the other social ills I see can one day be fixed as well.  I doubt we can ever reach “perfection,” because I also believe that while humans are inherently good, we are also inherently flawed.  But reading about history provides a bit of a balm for the sadness and anger that I feel about too many things that happen today.

Happy 1st Birthday, Gus the Bus!

As much as I still can’t wrap my mind around it, my baby boy turned 1 today.  And I was so proud of myself.  I did really well all day.  No tears, good spirits…yay!  We had a simple, fun day.  No big party, just dinner and cake as a family. 

After devouring cake – his first sugar ever! – and making a thorough mess in the process, he got a bath, and we put our big boy to bed.  Nate and I watched some TV, and then he headed to bed, too.  I decided to stay up just a bit longer because I was trying to remove all the tags from the MASSIVE amount of clothes his Grandma gave him. 

When I was done, I hopped online for a few minutes.  I had posted birthday threads on a couple of my favorite message boards, including a brief retrospective of pictures: hours old, 3 months, 6 months, 9 months, and 2 from today.  I checked the threads to read the new replies, and again I had to go back to my original post and look at the pictures.

And suddenly, it just washed over me.  My chin started to tremble, and my eyes welled up.  And I just knew that I needed to have a good cry.  So rather than try to gather myself back together, I succumbed to the inevitable.  I went to my online photo album and perused all the pictures from Gus’s first month and cried my eyes out. 

It was funny seeing how much he has changed, and yet how essentially Gus-like he was from the very outset.  Even as a days- or weeks-old newborn, he had certain expressions and habits that he still has now.  So often, people think that all newborns look alike, and most of the time I wouldn’t really disagree.  They just don’t really seem to have individual personalities at that age.  And yet here was photographic evidence that Gus was Gus long before we all thought he was Gus.

So there are my birthday ponderings.  It’s hard for me to wrap my mind around the fact that this is likely my last 1st birthday.  Even though lately I feel more and more comfortable with the idea of being done with two, much moreso than I ever expected to, that also means coming to terms with the idea that all of Gus’s firsts are now the last firsts I’ll ever experience.  I want to hang on to these baby days as long as possible, but I’m inexorably swept along by time.  Everyday, he changes a bit more, becomes his own person a bit more.  And although it’s delightful to see, I won’t pretend it’s not bittersweet.

In closing, I’ll post the photo retrospective I mentioned earlier, as well as a few wonderful pictures from present time and cake time.

Day 1

3 months

6 months (and hatching a plot to rule the world…)

9 months

1 year!!!

With all his gifts:

Loving his brand new playsilks:

Kisses from Mama:

My horribly embarrassing attempt at cake decorating (I swear, it looked even worse in person), including Gus’s own little personal cupcake:

Clearly enjoying his first taste of sugar!

The aftermath:

So, what’s new?

I’m sure I could write a novel here, but I’ll try to keep it brief.

Dereliction of duty, shmereliction of duty

So it’s been pointed out to me that it’s been almost 6 months since I blogged here.

Oops.

What can I say?  I’ll try to be better.  Can I just say, “Lots of things happened,” and call it all good?  No?  You want more than that?  Sheesh.  Demanding much?

Alright, alright.  I’ll try to come back after the kiddos are in bed and update my blog.  Nate is gone all this week helping his family out in CA, and since I have no plans to throw a wild house party (wait a minute, maybe I should….), I should have plenty of downtime. 

Until later.  (I know the excitement will just consume you in the meantime.)

In which I reveal myself as the melodramatic person that I really am

Regarding my last post, in my defense, I’d like to say that it was entirely true.  I really could see in Gus’s eyes that something was different and he knew it.  And frankly, he seemed to behave differently for a couple of days.

But the good news is that he has the lovely short memory of a 6 month old, and he’s forgotten all about it.  I’ve made up for it as best as I could with lots of love and snuggles, and he’s back to his old self.  I’m sure having tons of family in town all of last week for his baptism – family who doted all over him, of course – didn’t hurt matters.

In which I reveal myself as the terrible person (and hypocrite) that I really am

As you may recall, I’ve complained before about how Gus’s naps and Maggie’s preschool always seem to conflict.  I believe I’ve also mentioned the problem I have many mornings when I drive Nate to work, which is that Gus falls asleep in the car (inevitably within 2 miles of home) and then won’t go back to sleep.  Once he’s good and out, it doesn’t matter how long it’s for; if he wakes up, he thinks he’s had a nap.

Well, today, for once, I was going to get a break.  Due to a convergence of several different coincidences, Gus was going to get the perfect nap schedule in.  First, he woke up earlier than normal, at 7.  This meant he’d be ready for a nap between 9 and 9:30.  Still recovering from my stomach bug, I’m not yet up to driving Nate all the way into work, so instead, I just took him to the bus stop today.  Perfect.  He needed to be at the bus at 9, and the stop is close enough to home that Gus wouldn’t fall asleep in the car, so I knew he’d nap at home.  Hopefully, he’d sleep for a couple of hours, waking around 11, which would make him due for his next nap around 1.  Perfect again.  Maggie’s preschool starts at 12:45, and again, it’s so close to home that he wouldn’t fall asleep in the car.  Then we’d come home, he’d nap again until 3-ish and be up all on his own for us to get her at 3:45.  And I?  I would have 2 or so blissful hours entirely to myself; I can’t even remember the last time that happened.  And after we picked Maggie up, Gus would be due for a final, short nap around 5, which would mean he’d wake up about 6:30.  Again, perfect.  This is the time we need to leave for Maggie’s dance class.

A random observation

Ya know what I hate the most about blogging?  The pressure to come up with witty titles.  If you haven’t noticed, I mostly suck at it.  Every once in awhile, I come up with a good one.  I think the No one expects the Spanish Panic (Attack) one was pretty good, and Faith and begorrah was a nice little homage to my Irishness.  But for the most part, I come up with pretty boring stuff like On Books.

Be patient.  I’m trying to improve.  And if all else fails, I’ll enlist the services of my husband who, for better or for worse (usually for worse) is the King of the Bad Pun.  It is his gift, it is his curse.

On books

Thanks to my dear friend, Stef, who lent me the book A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore several months ago (and I’ve just now gotten around to reading), I’ve come to an important realization:

The best books tend to be the ones you can’t possibly describe.  If you can fit it into a neat little package, it’s probably lacking a lot in creativity and imagination.  It might still be a decent read, especially if the writing is good, but it’s not going to leave any deep imprint on your brain. 

I think of it sort of like good food.  Sure, I might get a really good burger at a chain joint, but am I going to think of it in again in a week?  Unlikely.  A month?  Probably not.  A year?  Almost certainly not.  But I can still almost taste in my mouth the fabulous lamb chops at a local Middle Eastern restaurant.  The way they almost melt in your mouth.  The hint of garlic.  The buttery rice it’s piled on, loaded with tiny, slivered almonds.   

And I gotta tell you, I’m not even halfway through A Dirty Job, but right now, I’m expecting to remember that melt-in-your-mouth literary flavor and tiny, slivered bibliophile almonds for a long time.