People who love books: a note of caution to Summer Reading Programs

This is me at Chaucer's Bookstore in Santa Barbara, CA. I worked there for 2 years in college - second best job I ever had for the job itself, best one when you consider that I met Chris there. Bookstores are great and terrible places to work when you love books. I don't think I need to explain that.

It turns out that Cora is also a lover of books and stories and really anything that has the smallest shred of narrative attached to it. She is starting to read a little for herself, and she loves looking at books by herself, and of course we read to her. Lots. Sometimes more than we might choose on our own.

On library trips, she maxes out her card. Her Intro to Kindergarten class goes to the school library every morning and each child checks out a book. Yesterday, the boy she shares a locker with accidentally took her book home. Oh, the tears! I asked her what the title was, thinking we could find it at the municipal library, and she cried, "I don't know! I can't read that well yet!" Do you know how hard it is to try to find the title for a book that has a purple cover with a cat whose tail makes a C on it? I sincerely hope that boy brings the book back on Monday!

So, it seemed like a natural thing to do, to sign her up for the Summer Reading Program at the local library.

Except that Summer Reading Programs are largely designed for kids who don't read or whose parents don't read to them much.

For example, a child can earn a coupon for a dish of ice cream for every five books they read or that parents read to them. Cora could be earning a coupon every day, were I to fill out her sheet honestly. On another sheet, you cross out an icon for every 15 minutes the child reads or you read to your child. Every 16 icons you earn a button, at 32 you win a ticket in the toy prize lottery (there are Barbie dolls at stake!). Again, if our sheet were an accurate reflection, we could cross off at least 12 icons a week.

So, why not fill out the sheets accurately, honestly? I remember doing a March of Dimes read-a-thon one summer. I must have been about 11 years old, give or take a year. I canvassed neighbors (who had no idea and pledged x amount of money per book I would read) and relatives (who knew better and pledged a flat dollar amount). I read lots of books. Some neighbors were appalled, some quizzed me on the titles, some were so aghast that I changed the sign-up sheet so they could give a flat amount (the $5 they anticipated shelling out instead of the $50 it turned out to be).

When it comes to reporting on reading, sometimes it is better to be modest. Especially if at the same time you keep your own list, in all its lengthy glory, to show off to people who will appreciate it, such as fellow readers and grandparents!

No blueberry-picking, but plenty of Snow White and fairy tale musings

But I wish this were a post about blueberry picking - I have read so many blog posts about blueberry picking in the last weeks, seen so many luscious photos of berries in boxes and baskets and pies and jam jars and cakes and ice cream bowls! I have been beset with terrible blueberry-picking envy. I thought of it too late to pull it together, which is a shame. I really love blueberries. Cora and Chris love blueberries, too, and we are certainly eating our share of retail berries. Mostly in cobblers and pancakes and yogurt and just fresh-washed out of a bowl. And now the peaches are threatening to eclipse the blueberries in our hearts. Such is the fickle nature of summer.

I finally got around to downloading the Flip camera. We had movies on there going back to early May. Yikes. But I think perhaps my favorite movies are a two-part sequence of Chris and Cora re-enacting Snow White. I think you will agree that Chris earns his Daddy stripes by participating in this, knowing it would be filmed and (of course!) posted. I only wish I had caught on camera the effort that went into Cora perfecting her technique for the "apple rolling away from my dead hand" move.

Last fall, in class we read fairy tales and academic essays on fairy tales and folklore. I was really surprised that none of my students, all first-year college students, *none* of the 40 students, were at all familiar with any of the more traditional versions of the tales. They knew nothing about red-hot iron dancing shoes, eyes pecked out by doves, walking on knives, etc. None knew the Bluebeard story, even! (I feel like I did pop culture a service by teaching these tales, the oldest and the newer reimaginings.) And over and over what they said was, "Who would let their kid read these?! Who would tell these stories to children?!" They were scandalized as only 18-year-olds can be.

Imagine their horror when I confessed that not only did I read and tell these stories to my girl, but that she really liked them.

I always go back in my mind to my good memories of tucking myself away in the back (the back-back) of the family station wagon and reading and rereading the volumes of Grimm and Andersen tales on family trips. I so loved those stories (my favorite is "The Goose Girl")! They were pretty accurate old-time translations, too. With the occasional illustration. I especially remember one of the end of a story wherein the evil character was turned into a giant black poodle that was forced to eat hot coals for the rest of its (presumably short) life. That thrill of revulsion and shock was delicious.

I also remember doing a paper on Maurice Sendak and all that he said about children and what adults think is too scary for kids is probably not half as scary as what already exists in the child's mind and fears. I agree with that. I read those tales now, and I think they are scarier for an adult - because as adults, we know that while we would like to think that people don't abandon their children in the woods when times are tough, a casual read through a newspaper will tell you such things do in fact happen today.

I also read something my cousin Traci wrote recently about why she identifies with Ariel from The Little Mermaid (Disney version) - how she feels born to sing (and sings beautifully), but struggles with losing her voice due to recurrent throat health issues. That she is also curious and sometimes naive. And that reminded me again about how we find ourselves in literature. Just as that poor goose girl ended up finally whispering her troubles to an old stove, here I am talking to the internet.

And, finally, at least in fairy tales, we do still get the happy endings we crave after all the trauma and tension.

Now reading: Bad Mother, by Ayelet Waldman

Yesterday I found myself with an hour and a half between when a meeting ended and when I needed to pick up Cora. Not quite long enough to go home and accomplish anything before having to be right back in the same part of town. My meeting had been at a coffeeshop, so the last thing I needed to do was to go somewhere and have another cup of coffee. So, of course, I ended up in a bookstore. I can always kill some time in a bookstore, though there is the substantial risk of purchasing something.

Needless to say, I succumbed. I walked out of the store with a copy of Ayelet Waldman’s Bad Mother, a nonfiction book. I’ve read most Waldman’s other books, the MommyTrack mysteries and also the novels, and I remember when she was branded a “bad mother”. It is always nice (if you ask me) to see good work come out of something like that, and Bad Mother is definitely good work.

The book caught my eye because this very subject has weighed on my mind quite a bit in the last year or so. One of the questions Waldman asks in the first chapter is “Is there really no other way to be a mother in contemporary American society than to be locked into the cultural zero-sum game of ‘I’m Okay, You Suck’?” (19). She looks at those tropes of society, the Good Mother and the Bad Mother (and wonders why the bar is set so low for Good Fathers: “a reasonable, attainable goal; you need only be present and supportive” (11)). She looks at judgment, the judgments we pass on ourselves as mothers and on each other.

I’ve only read through the first chapter, but I am hooked. I knew I would like Waldman’s voice, but I also like the way she lays out the playing field, the way she ropes in modern references (Andrea Yates, Brittany Spears) and literary ones (Anna Karenina, late-Victorian poster girl for Bad Mothers, and Medea). I like the way she is both very funny and very serious – that this is serious business is never obscured.

While I’ve never been held up for public excoriation, as Waldman has, I know that I have felt the weight of judgment from other mothers. And I know that even though my mantra with Cora is “different families have different rules” (different needs, different challenges, different ideals), I do sometimes wonder if in some cases different actually is wrong.

Of course, there are different rules which are wrong – abuse is wrong, I think we can all agree on. Shame is wrong, many would agree on. And so on. But between the clearly wrong and the lofty ideal, there is a lot of open space. There is a lot of room for difference, for comparison, for jockeying for position to be closest to Good.

I’m looking forward to the rest of the book; I may come back to talk more about it (fair warning!)

Waking up

As part of getting our house ready to go on the market and be shown, we took down the curtains in the bathroom. These are curtains that the previous owners had made, roman shade style things, and it had been a long time since they'd last been washed. So...they tore in the dryer. We needed new curtains. Quick. Cheap. I was going to have to make replacements.

The week before I had, reluctantly, packed up my sewing machine. It was in a big box somewhere in the garage.

But I had kept out a couple needles and pins.

So, we went to the quilt store - not the cheapest fabric, but my best chance of finding a fabric I liked - bought a print for the bathroom side and a solid for the window side. I love the print. It just so happens I bought enough to be able to make Cora a little dress sometime. I don't know how that happened. And that night I sat and sewed the new shade by hand.

That was about two weeks ago. Now, I have itchy fingers. I want to make something. I'm wishing I had some scraps of fabric - I am thinking about making a little old-school doll quilt. Something handsewn. From templates. Something scrappy and sweet.

I've also been reading, finally. During the year I kept up with what my classes were reading, and I would read an article online now and then, some other blogs, but not what I would call real reading. I mean, for the last several years I've averaged between 65-70 books a year, and last year it was far fewer than that. And it has taken a while for me to feel ready to take a book back up in a serious way - a novel, not just a "candy bar" (don't get me wrong, I love the candy bars). But in the last week...I've read three good novels (thank you, public library!). Atwood's The Year of the Flood, Dan Chaon's Await Your Reply, and Walter Mosley's The Man in My Basement.

And, now it feels like my brain is settling back into place. I'm thinking about writing again. I'm thinking about what else I want to read. I'm thinking about who I am, who I want to be. I feel like the last ten months have been about being who I needed to be - similar to the time right after Cora was born, actually, though that felt more biologically-driven, and this more recent experience felt more driven by logic, by what I knew rather than felt had to be done. I'm still thinking through all this, still feeling out the shape of it, but it's good to have a start at the distance to see it more clearly.

Thoughts on reading and picture books

Last night, after stories and songs and settling Cora into bed, I came downstairs and turned the monitor on. All was quiet, her bedtime music faint in the background, for about 15 minutes. Then, some stirring. Then, she said loudly, "I am tired of your tricks! I am coming down the chimney to eat you up!"

We've been reading various versions of The Three Little Pigs and the Big Bad Wolf. We've read the original story, we've read The Three Little Fish and the Big Bad Shark, and we've read the particularly delightful The Three Little Wolves and the Big Bad Pig. Now the original, you might remember, has the wolf actually gobbling up the first two pigs, coming down the third pig's chimney and falling into a pot of boiling soup, and being eaten up in turn by the third pig. The other two revision versions do not feature much gobbling of anyone - the little fishes escape, the little wolves all live together and the pig learns to be nice.

A friend asked me the other day how I handle scary things in stories with Cora - things like wolves swallowing little girls whole, wolves gobbling little pigs and then being cooked, stepmothers demanding the lungs and liver of beautiful girls, and the ever-popular red-hot-iron-dancing shoes. Scary stuff indeed, and stuff I absolutely gobbled up as a child myself. I mostly handle it through these multiple versions, showing that stories can change and be changed - this removes some of the power of authority from the originals, and gives some of that power to Cora. She can choose which version to hear, or to think about, or she can create a new one that is somewhere in between (she is a big fan of having the wolf vomit up Little Red and Grandma - not, I think, a version you will find in a picture book anytime soon). So, I told my friend about this.

Then, another friend who was there mentioned that in the Waldorf philosophy - the educational world her children were raised in - there is a bias against picture books, even for very young children. As my friend explained it, the idea is that you only read aloud to your child without showing the pictures, or from books that have no pictures. This approach, the philosophy says, allows your child to create his or her own pictures and learn to rely on and exercise her imagination.

"I don't think my daughter would stand for that," my friend replied.

I didn't really say anything at the time, because I was surprised at how horrified I felt! On the one hand, I see the Waldorf point. On the other hand, I don't see Cora's imagination being fenced in by the pictures she sees. She likes it when we get to the end of a book and there's a picture of the person who wrote the story and the person who drew and colored the pictures. She likes studying the pictures and talking about them - we both like the books where there are things happening in the pictures that aren't part of the text. A recurrent element for example, like the chipmunk in each picture of When Will It Be Spring?, always doing something different, always near the main character Alfie, a small bear cub. Or the details of a dress, a castle, the way the only color in the Olivia books is red, and so on.

And I think that when it comes to scary things, illustrations can help to make the scary manageable - it delineates it, the same way talking about fear puts it in a linguistic container, instead of letting it spill all over your mind. One of the pages Cora particularly likes to look at in the three pigs book is a close up of the wolf's slavering face - she sits and traces his teeth with her finger and stares into his eyes. Then she closes him up in the book. Safe. And then she pretends to be the Big Bad Wolf, and tells me how much she loves him.*

Right now I'm reading a new book by Maria Tatar called Enchanted Hunters: the Power of Stories in Childhood. In this book she explores "how literature touches us when we are young, moving and transforming us with its intoxicating, enthralling, and occasionally terrifying energy." She writes mainly about the books we read to ourselves as children, but also about picture books and the stories that are read to us.

At one point she quotes the poet Dana Gioia as saying, "The books we read are no different from the people we meet and the cities we visit. Some books, people, or places hardly matter, others change our lives, and still others plant some idea or sentiment that influences our future."

At the end of the introduction she says something I really love: "Words have not just the astonishing capacity to banish boredom and create wonders. They also enable contact with the lives of others and with story worlds, arousing endless curiosity about ourselves and the places we inhabit." I believe this is also true of art, of the stories visually told.

*I admit to being particularly pleased about her affection for the Big Bad Wolf, as he was my invisible friend for much of my childhood.

Square One: in which bad news and good news are received mere hours apart

So, we know one place we're definitely not moving to this year. (Bad news)
Chris has another phone interview this week. (Good news.)

I know, I know. Maybe it isn't bad news! Maybe the good news is that we're not moving to TX this year, because it would have been disastrous. Who knows but that the universe has spared us misery and sunshine in the interests of something much better still to turn up. It is supposed to be a comforting idea, and it is, really. Most of the time.

The rest of the time I can't help but think about those poor characters in novels who really suffer some drastic setbacks and misery, while the novelist toils away toward some happy ending, or some meaningful ending, or just an ending that could have been worse, so we decide it is happy. You know what I mean?

If my life is a novel, I hope it is more along the lines of Jane Eyre, say, than The Road.

I really, really hope my life is not a postmodern novel.

Sick again! No fair!

After finally beating the mammoth illness of post-Thanksgiving through days before Christmas, I thought I was free and clear. Surely teaching without a voice for a week brought me some good health karma? (Incidentally, several students mentioned that the two things they would remember most from my class was when I got sick and lost my voice, and when my daughter was sick and came to class with me. Uh huh. Totally what I was hoping for.) But, alas, no. Here I am sick again, completely exhausted by standing up for 45 minutes while Cora ran circles around me lost in a free-association miasma of Wonder Pets, fairy tales, and ballet. Or, I was lost, she knew exactly what she was talking about.

I'm not as good at being sick as I used to be. I can't really read much. I'm not up for knitting. Don't even think about writing. I watched the Golden Globes last night, mesmerized by sparkly dresses and edgy hair-dos, but I really can't tell you much about the winners.

But, just before I got sick, I'd started reading Sara Paretsky's book Writing in an Age of Silence. It's been a while since I read one of her mysteries, but on one of my nomadic searches for inspiration at the library, this book caught my eye. It is part memoir, part historic look at Chicago in the 60s and now, and part meditation on writing. Early on, in the introduction, she says:

"[This] book deals with the dominant question of my own life, the effort to find a voice, the effort to help others on the margins find a voice, the effort to understand and come to terms with questions of power and powerlessness."

This sentence just snapped her other books into an entirely new light for me and made me eager to go back and reread some of them. It also led me to ponder (something I have time for when I am sick, but not much ability to hold onto a chain of thought) what I would say is the dominant question of *my* own life, and how is it (if it is) reflected in my writing. I haven't a lot of insights on this right now, but I am finding it interesting to think about. Once I have a better idea, I'll come back to this topic.

***
I know - it has been awhile for pictures. I will download and post some soon!

Magazines, another sign of the season

The other day I picked up the latest issue of Brain, Child - my favorite magazine for mothers - and as usual it was packed with articles I was interested in reading, especially the one on "eco-parenting". So the other night, while Cora colored and watched her PBS shows, I sat on the couch reading my magazine. (Oh the bliss of having reached a stage where she can do something and I can do something, and they can be two different things!)

Of course, it wasn't long before she was climbing into my lap, wanting to see what I was reading. There aren't a lot of flashy pictures in Brain, Child, but we looked at some and talked about how there were a lot of words on the pages, and eventually she went back to coloring and Super Why.

Then, last night after dinner, while we were all still sitting at the table, she reached over to the pile of mail beside her placemat and said, matter-of-factly, "I'm going to read my magazine now." She'd pulled out a Hanna Andersson catalog (such beautiful clothes! such out of reach prices!), opened it up, and began poring over every page. And on every page she did the same thing. She would point to each clothing item in turn and say, "That's my pink shirt. That's my blue shirt. That's my black shirt." And so on.

One of the things this reminded me of was my own childhood fascination with the big JCPenney catalogs we used to get. I can remember going through the old ones and cutting out "my clothes" and toys. My stepgrandmother was a travel agent and she would send me brochures about cruises - I loved to pretend I was going on a cruise, and pick out which cabin I would be in, and then all the clothes I would take with me. What is so very odd about this, is that while I like having clothes that fit me and that I find comfortable, I really don't think of myself as being obsessed with clothes. But, perhaps I am a tiny bit obsessed with clothing options.

And I know I am obsessed with reading - about anything. One difficult thing this fall has been having very little time to read, and having to give books back to the library half-read or barely started, only to put them on my request list again and hope I remember where I was. I just had to do this today with Mary Roach's Bonk. I tried to skim a few chapters at lunch today - a completely dangerous and reckless activity as one should never laugh so hard that hot feta nearly comes out one's nose. I think I'll have about another three months to wait to get it again. Maybe by then there will be time to settle in with a book. Until then, though, I have been reading a lot of magazines and a lot of craft books. And maybe Cora is noticing this, too, and wanting to get in on whatever kind of seasonal reading plan her mama is following.

When she finished with the catalog, she set it aside with a sigh, looked around and asked, "Where's my other magazine?"

Toddler Reading

I meant to post this before, but Under the Mad Hat has a terrific reading list up for July. Many of the books on it are favorites of Cora's, and we will be getting some others from the library. Mad Hat Mommy's reading lists are great - check the labels for the others, and spread the word.

Book lovers, unite! (But you can finish your chapter first.)

Happy Birthday, Beatrix Potter!

I think I've written before about Cora's love for Potter's books, especially for any of them that involve a naughty rabbit or an animal in search of its mommy. She loves her Peter Rabbit dinner plate and bowl. She loves it when Benjamin Bunny's daddy takes his switch to the naughty boys - I find this particular fascination a little questionable.

While I don't think I was ever quite as big a Peter Rabbit fan as Cora, I did become a Potter fan in college, when I started researching her other drawings and learned more about her life. One thing that she has in common with many of my other heroes - like Marie Curie and Barbara McClintock (I know, what is a poet doing with so many scientist heroes?) - is an unconventional education in her early life. In Potter's case she never went to school. The Writer's Almanac had a great quote from her today: "Thank goodness I was never sent to school; it would have rubbed off some of the originality."

Maybe it is a little ironic that, as a teacher, this is something that I think about. I think there can be something about grade school that can "rub off" some of a child's originality - though there can also be teachers and classmates and activities that shine up that originality. But I think that is harder to come by. If I were ever going to consider homeschooling, this would be my reason. I don't think it is something I would do - I think there's value in a kid spending time with kids and developing that common experience base - but I can see maybe doing a year at some point, or searching out the kind of school that I think will value and recognize Cora's originality.

And, I also have to wonder how long it took Potter to see her lack of standard education in this light. I think she was someone who was sensitive to not being allowed to do something (her brother was sent to school; she wasn't allowed to give her paper to the Royal Botanical Society because of her gender, etc.). I imagine that there were times when it rankled that she was never sent to school, when it wasn't always a stroke of luck.

Bread: the new soft porn

Have I raved enough about the bread book? Have you bought your own yet? Here are a few more photos to push you over the edge. (Plus, a totally gratuitous cheese shot.)

This is just the basic recipe! It's so good we've barely tried anything else!

Cheeeeeeeeese.....

Put it all together with a nice wine and a nice patio and a nice evening and you've got a hell of a lot of nice going on.

Finally, we tried a new recipe - the challah dough. I made this loaf Wednesday. I think we have an inch and a half left. Next time, this dough is going to get filled with raisins and cinnamon and sugar, rolled up, and cut into little delicious snails.

Thoughts on work and attendance

I just finished reading a book called Why Work Sucks and How to Fix It; I heard the authors interviewed on the radio a couple weeks ago. The interview was exciting to me to hear, because the type of work environment they describe - one where results matter more than putting in your obligatory 8 hours at a desk - rang so true, and is so close to what I tried to manufacture within my own department. My own experiment failed, of course, because the larger corporate structure had little faith in my ideas or department and was not ready for massive culture change.

Now, as a professor, I can indeed work in a way that is closer to the ideas in this book. I have a lot of autonomy. Not so much money. A lot of people are talking these days about "the three currencies" - money, time, autonomy; or some similar variation. I have a lot of the last two.

One thing that struck me in reading the book was, in the list of Guidelines the authors give, guidelines that are the backbone of this culture change, one is "all meetings are optional." And they see this as a totally non-negotiable point. If the meeting feels superfluous to you, you don't have to go. If your input is needed only for the first five minutes, go for those minutes, or call it in, or whatever. It's beautiful!

My husband is also a professor, and one thing he struggles with is the question of an attendance policy. He feels strongly that college students should be treated as adults, that attendance should be up to them, that if they choose not to attend class, they should be prepared for the consequences.

I have a attendance policy that is an echo of my institution's: if you miss more than a week of class, you may not pass the class. I tend to think of my students as still being in training for adulthood (I mostly teach first-year students). Many of them believe that old story about how in college no one cares whether you go to class or not. Maybe not at a big university. But, we are a small liberal arts college with small classes and we notice if students are missing. We are asked to notice.

Still, every semester some students do make the decision, at some level, to see class as optional.

Something else the book mentions is that under the kind of culture they advocate for work, it immediately becomes apparent who the slackers are, because they can't produce results. And, they end up fired. The authors say that in the beginning stages, involuntary turnover (firings) go up, but voluntary turnover (people choosing to go to other companies) goes way down.

This is true on the academic level as well, except that instead of being fired, they don't pass, or they barely pass. College students occupy an unusual position, I think. They are being encouraged to think for themselves and to take responsibility, often in ways they never have before. In a way, I think of my attendance policy as a kind of safety net. I can't really enforce it except by pointing out the consequences - I can't go down to the dorms and pull them out of bed; I won't spend my time reminding them of everything via email.

My hope, though, is that they don't see my class as a meeting that has no purpose or relation for them. My hope is that my meetings are ones they don't want to miss - that there is something about the hour and a half we spend together talking about literature that compells them to come. Something other than an administrative policy. It's a shared responsibility, but it's a responsibility that I must model first.

Pictures and a book report

I haven't posted pictures for a while, so I will scatter a few throughout this otherwise non-picture realted post!

The book I meant to write about earlier is Animal, Vegetable, Miracle, by Barbara Kingsolver. Unfortunately, I returned it to the library without remembering to copy out the quotes I wanted to. Rats! But, it is okay, because eventually I am going to buy my own copy, because I LOVED this book. Why do I love it? Here's the list:

* It is by one of my favorite fiction authors, and she brings the same gifts to her nonfiction writing: humor, honesty, kindness, and thought-provoking intensity

* It tells the story of a grand experiment: she and her husband and daughters live for a year on food they either grow themselves or that they can buy locally - the term locavore is more widely known now than when they began.

* They are not over-the-top fanatical: yes, they have a lot of good land to farm in a Virginia hollow, but they aren't willing to give up coffee and non-native spices but they find an acceptable way to buy these things (via fair trade sources).

* The book itself is a family effort, with her husband contributing sidebars on scientific and biological ideas, issues, and resources; oldest daughter contributing short columns and recipes; and while the younest daughter doesn't write for the book, she is clearly just as involved in the experiment as anyone else (I loved the stories about her hen flock and her business acumen).

* What could have been guilt-inducing was instead inspiring. I don't have land to farm, the knowledge or inclination to do so, but there are indeed many ways I could adjust our buying habits in order to bring our food purchasing and consumption more in line with what we believe.

To this last end, we've decided to frequent the farmers markets more often - there's one we can get to quite easily on Saturday mornings, and one downtown on Thursdays. Also, more locally grown and organic produce and meats. On our last trip to the grocery store we really noticed the prices being higher than, say, a year ago.

Trying this experiment of our own may not save us much money - though the more we can resist out-of-season produce the better chance it will - but at the same time, maybe I would rather we are good food rather than cheap food. I don't like that this is the choice so many people are faced with in this country. I don't like it that the cheapest food in the grocery stores is the highly-processed, not-good-for-you food!

At the very least, we will do our own grand experiment and see how it turns out.

I'm It - and you can be too!

Nora tagged me for the “10 years ago meme,” but it's taken me a while to piece together the answer to the first item because I don't really remember things by date. So, Chris reminded me of a few things, and then I checked my book log. (Here is where I out myself even further as a big geek because, yes, I write down the title of every book I read and I have since 1993. Every time I catch myself wondering if I should write down magazines and articles too, I know I am about to tip over the edge of obsessive and I take a careful step back.). Armed with this new knowledge I can say with authority that...

10 Years Ago: I spent most of my days in a dark little place, figuratively speaking; literally, it was well and flourescently lit. I'm not sure what exactly I was doing on June 26, 1998, but since it was a Friday I know I spent a good part of the day with Fury, Apathy, and Cynicism (not really nicknames for my co-workers). I was working my corporate job then, it was a good five months before I became the manager of my department, and it was a peak time of disillusionment and dissatisfaction. 1998 was an all time low in terms of reading in my adult life – only 18 books (compare this to last year's more average 90), and in June I read Ursula LeGuin's The Dispossessed (a choice I know find highly symbolic) and just beginning to reread the Laura Ingalls Wilder books (cue the nostalgia and yearning). I think this might also have been around the time I dreamt that I married the devil and we went to Texas in the 1840s for our honeymoon. Consider that this I considered a pleasant dream, and not at all a nightmare. Wow. I really like 2008 a whole lot more!

5 Things on My List Today: Go to Curves, pick up DV camera from campus to borrow for the weekend, stop at Barnes and Noble for a birthday present for Cora's friend, wash up the dishes from yesterday that somehow includes almost every glass we own, type up some poems out of the writing journal.

Snacks I Enjoy: String cheese, okay any cheese, peanut butter toast, berries, brownies, ice cream (I know, not really a snack food, but I think ice cream is actually more enjoyable in the middle of the day than at night, though I'll eat it then, too). I confess I do not like crispy, crunchy food – nuts to nuts, I say.

Things I Would Do If I Were a Millionaire: Oh I am so boring – I would take Chris and Cora and my parents with me to Italy for a month – the rest of the money would go to a cat sitter (just kidding - about the cat sitter). I would give money to my all-time favorite charitable organization, Heifer, which does such good, good work in the world – I've always wanted to give an Ark. I would seek good investment advice so that we could live a long time without ever feeling on the brink again, and so Cora could have the education she desires (hoping, of course, this is one of her desires).

Frankly, I don't know who reads this. If you want to do the meme too, you're officially invited! You can even do it in the comments if you like. Or just do the part that speaks to you.

Baby Grendel

The end of the semester is getting very close, and I decided (hee hee) to end my students' sojourn into poetry with Seamus Heaney's translation of Beowulf. I dearly love Beowulf, perhaps mainly because I never had to read it in high school or in college or in graduate school, but instead came to it in my own time and way. Of course, I am depriving my students of that possibility...oh well.

Today we watched a little of the DVD of Benjamin Bagby's performance, which I find completely enthralling and amazing. You can see parts on YouTube, and Netflix has it. :) Some students were not into it, some were, one guy said it freaked him out, and one said he was trying to figure out, "if this guy is great, or is he wasting his life?" (Um, well, I think that really depends, doesn't it? Clearly Bagby doesn't think he is wasting his life, and that's the opinion that matters most.)

Sunday I was watching the part where Beowulf and Grendel fight, and Cora was playing with her puzzle blocks on the floor, but got very interested in Bagby and especially seems to enjoy hearing the Old English. I thought this was weird. Then I remembered that one of the things she really reacted to in the womb was when I would read Beowulf outloud - to myself or to students. Hmm.

So tonight at dinner, when she started making horrible faces, and then asking Chris to reprise his fake-Old English imitation of Bagby, we realized that she is in fact a total Beowulf junkie.

Llama llama red pajama/ feels alone without his mama!

Boy do I know how that llama feels!

Good news: We finally have two of Cora's favorite books back in the house, and copies of her own this time too. Those pesky library people always want their books back!

And sometimes it's just perfect

Tonight, after dinner (quesadillas with dipping sauce - mild salsa), Chris left for choir practice. Cora was still eating her little piece of mint chocolate she got at dance class, and with each bite she said, "mmmmmmmm" and put her hand on her heart and wiggled in her chair. In fact, before he left, Chris asked if he could have a bite, and she said yes, but then looked at her chocolate so sadly, that he decided not to take a bite.

The problem is always, at this point, how do you get the baby into her jammies without a big showdown?

Lotion!

First we put lotion on our hands and arms at the table. We agreed it would be hard to do legs at the table. So, we sat on the rug and put lotion on her feet and legs, and then a new diaper, and jammies. We read a new book from the library - Binky - then we found Cora's binky and baby Tidoo. We went upstairs and read What's Wrong, Little Pookie? and then Yummy, YUCKY, and then The Mitten. We sang "The Riddle Song" ("I gave my love a cherry that had no stone..." aka the cherry-chicken-story-baby song).

I asked her if she was ready to lie down with Tidoo and Buddy Dog and her pillow, and she said yes. I laid her down in the crib and covered her up and said goodnight and stepped towards the door...and she popped up, saying, "Mama!" My heart sank. This is usually how those 45 minute singing marathons start.

But she just stood at her crib and lifted her face up. I said, "Do you need a kiss?" She nodded, we kissed, and she lay back down!! I covered her up again and said good night and that was it! She's asleep! No crying!

So, what was the secret? The lotion? The chocolate? The stories? The order of the stories? Oh, if only I knew!

New in CoraLand

WEATHER REPORT: Spring finally makes a special appearance in Minneapolis! Yesterday it was 65 degrees and sunny and lovely! Over the last few days we have taken walks (Cora now rides in her stroller like a big kid - facing forward!), played outside, touched the disappearing snow, and heard newly returned birds boasting about their tans.

BOOK REPORT: On the floor beside the dining room table I have a pile of library books (well where do you keep yours?). Poetry books, baby development books, mystery books, Chris's music history books, books on other subjects I'm interested in. Cora loves to crawl over there and topple the stack of books and then rummage through them. Every time she pulls out the same book. She finds it, pulls it out in front of her, stares at it, picks it up (right side up!), and touches her forehead to the top of the cover, then smiles. Is it the baby development book? No. It is the memoir by Bill Bass, founder of The Body Farm. Is it because she likes skulls? Is it because the skull bears a resemblance to Mr Froggy? Is it because I read Beowulf to her in the womb?

FOOD REPORT: Cora is excited about two new foods. Macaroni and cheese and oh the ham the ham the ham. More ham please. No, really, more ham now! And pizza. When Chris made us pizza last night I made a little thin crust one for Cora with just sauce and cheese and she loved it. She also really likes playing with the spoon after meals - this picture is from after breakfast this morning.