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The Many Faces of my TBR

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Like many bookworms, I basically live and die by my TBR (“To Be Read”) list.  Even in the midst of one read, I’m wondering – in the back of my mind, yes, but wondering – what’ll I read next?  And where will it come from?  My own shelves, a friend’s shelf, the bookstore, the library?  I’m both exhilerated and intimidated by the fact that, though I may go through ten books every month, I’ll never come close to scratching the surface of everything that’s out there.

Now, some bookworms have a meticulously curated TBR.  They have spreadsheets and goals, and they methodically log information as they go along.  Yeah.  I don’t do that.  Oddly enough, although I’m quite organized in other areas of my life (have you seen my pantry?), I like to take a more relaxed, go-with-the-flow approach to my TBR.  As a result, it resides in several places, all in incomplete form:

  • Goodreads – This is my primary list.  I try to add to my “to-read” list on the site whenever there’s a book I really want to read.  That way, I know that my list is always accessible, and I can just whip out my iPhone in the middle of the library stacks if I’m having trouble choosing a book.  That said, sometimes I bypass Goodreads and go straight to…
  • Library Holds – If I want to read a new release, I often cruise right to the library website and reserve it, skipping Goodreads altogether.  (With some popular new books, I can’t waste the precious seconds adding the book to Goodreads – I must get on the library reserve list IMMEDIATELY.  Yes, I realize this might be a touch crazy.)  This has the effect of creating a secondary TBR for me on the library website.  And also, I get the fun of checking to see where I fall in the queue for my next borrows.
  • This blog – Some time ago, I posted about TBR Insanity and told you all about the silliness that ensued when I wrote down a list of the books I wanted to get to “next” (in some nebulous way).  Every so often, I go back and look at that post to remind myself… oh, right, I meant to read that book ASAP, hahaha.
  •  Challenge lists – I keep Word documents with lists of various reading challenges – Rory Gilmore’s reading list, The Guardian‘s top 100 books of all time, and the 1,001 Books to Read Before You Die list, and I cross them off as I go along.  I don’t make conscious efforts to get through these lists quickly – especially not the 1,001 Books list; that’s a darn lot of books – but if a book on one of these lists happens to pop up on another TBR, I happily cross it off the list.
  • A piece of paper – At one point, I kept a TBR on several sheets of looseleaf paper.  It was quite an extensive list.  I think it’s in one of my purses, but I haven’t seen it for a long time.  It is entirely possible that it came to life and ate my box of fluourescent paper clips, which has been missing for roughly the same amount of time.
  • My head – I can’t even tell you how many mental notes I’ve made to read something.  The funny thing is, this is one of my more reliable TBRs.  Once I get the idea in my head that I need to read a book, especially when I decide it’s urgent, I don’t let go easily.  I usually last about three days with an idea before I either buy or borrow the book.

Do you have a TBR?  Is it all organized in a central location, or is it scattered to the winds like mine?

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ANNE OF GREEN GABLES

Anne of Green GablesAnne, my much-loved Anne.  Anne of Green Gables was one of my favorite books when I was a little girl.  My grandmother had a beautiful hardcover copy, and I spent hours pouring over it whenever I visited her.  Over time, Anne and I became very good friends.  I acquired a complete set of all eight “Anne” books (there are also the Chronicles of Avonlea, in which Anne appears, but I’m just referring to the original series here) and I was – and remain – convinced that if I had known Anne in real life, we’d have been kindred spirits.

Anne of Green Gables is the story of young Anne Shirley, a dreamy orphan girl with fiery red hair and a temper to match.  When the story opens, she has just arrived on Prince Edward Island and is waiting for Mr. Matthew Cuthbert to bring her to the first home she’s ever known.  There’s been a mistake, though: Matthew and his sister Marilla had intended to adopt a boy to help with the farm work.  They have no need of a girl, and no desire to adopt one.  Anne immediately charms shy Matthew, who becomes determined to keep her.  And as Anne works her way into Matthew and Marilla’s hearts, Green Gables works its way into hers.

The last time I visited with Anne, I think, was back in college, over a summer break.  So it had been quite a few years.  I can’t remember what my thoughts were the last time I read Anne’s story, but I’m sure they were very different from my feelings upon this reading.  This reading, after all, is the first time I’ve read Anne since becoming a mom, and it was the first time I really comprehended just how lonely and starved for love little Anne was in the beginning.  Every time Anne found herself in a scrape, every time she was in “the depths of despair,” all I wanted to do was scoop her up, tell her everything would be okay, and remind her that she was loved.  All I wanted to do was mother her.

When I read Anne of Green Gables as a young reader, I thought that Anne would be the perfect friend.  I imagined rambling through Violet Vale and Lover’s Lane and the Haunted Wood with Anne and Diana, giving names to the trees and dreaming up romantic adventures for ourselves.  (My grandmother and I named different places near my parents’ lake house after Anne’s haunts – we had our own Violet Vale, our own Haunted Wood, our own Lake of Shining Waters.)  I was indignant when Gilbert Blythe called Anne “Carrots,” I worshipped Miss Stacy along with her, and I thrilled when she received her first set of puffed sleeves or when she attended her first concert.  But that was when (this) Anne and I were roughly the same age.  Now, I’m old enough to be her mama, and I considered (this) Anne less of a friend and more of a lost little girl whose life until this point has left her desperately in need of mothering.  (As Anne grows up throughout the next volumes, I expect I’ll feel more like her friend again, and less like her mom.)

I loved Anne of Green Gables just as much on this umpteenth re-read as I have every time I’ve read it before.  I still love Anne’s romanticism and I still chuckle at her penchant for getting herself into scrapes.  (The scene in which she “confesses” to losing Marilla’s amethyst brooch is one of my favorite parts of the entire series.)  But I found myself more conscious of the adult characters – adults other than Matthew, that is – this time.  There was Marilla, who loved Anne fiercely, and whom never got much credit for that from me before.  And the minor adult characters, like Miss Stacy and Mrs. Allan, who colored the Avonlea landscape so beautifully for Anne – on past reads, I enjoyed them, but this time, I could see Anne a bit more through their eyes and it was fascinating.

Anne of Green Gables will always be one of my favorite books, I think.  I love the whole series, really (and look for more posts about the books over the coming weeks).  But this reading illustrates for me the real value in re-reading: when we dust off an old favorite and read it again, at a different time in life and with a different perspective, we find so much that is new and different.  I’ll always love Anne for her starry-eyed tendency to give “poetical” names to her pet environments, and for her true love of nature, but now I have a new love for Marilla, Miss Stacy, and Mrs. Allen… and even for Mrs. Rachel Lynde (I’d forgotten what a delightful character she is, and what a good friend to Anne).  I wonder, if I read this in ten years’ time, what I’ll find?

Anne of Green Gables, by Lucy Maud Montgomery: buy it here (not an affiliate link), or support your local indie bookstore!

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Weekend in Niagara-on-the-Lake

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Oh, my friends, do I have an adventure to share with you: Peanut’s first international travel!  Last weekend (which happened to include my birthday), hubby and the kid and I hopped across the border for a few relaxing days in Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ontario.  This trip was my anniversary present from hubby, and I was so excited; I’ve been wanting to visit Niagara-on-the-Lake for at least five years.  And now that we live so close (it’s about 40 minutes from the border, which is less than ten minutes from our house) it seemed like the perfect opportunity.

We headed up mid-day on Saturday, after Peanut woke up from her morning nap, and we arrived just in time to feed her and put her down for the afternoon nap.  (It was a bit of a scramble, because I realized I had forgotten the sleepsacks, and Peanut doesn’t sleep without a sleepsack.  But hubby found a Wal-Mart and was able to run out and pick up some emergency sleepsacks without crossing the border again, which he really didn’t want to do – the line to get into the States was loooooooong.)  Saturday afternoon was low-key; when Peanut finished her nap, we headed out of the B&B and explored the town of Niagara-on-the-Lake for a bit (it’s a gorgeous, meticulously preserved nineteenth-century town in the heart of the Niagara wine country) and then had dinner in a pub.  We shared an order of fried pickles, which were amazing, and I had the turkey burger I’d been craving for weeks.

The next morning, we got up early for a walk down the Niagara Waterfront Trail.

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Peanut enjoyed checking out the boats and the wildlife.  We walked for about 45 minutes, then headed back to the B&B for breakfast – which was out of this world good.

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I wasn’t really hungry for lunch, after such a big breakfast, but I knew I wanted to try out the Irish Tea Room.  After Peanut woke up from her morning nap, we headed back into town for tea and a scone (with real Devon cream! oh, yes) and even though it felt as though I was trying to stuff an already-full tummy, it was worth it for this:

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Come to Mama.

I had Earl Grey and a raisin scone with cream and jam, and hubby had a cappuccino.  I’m picky about scones – I can’t stand scones that taste like doorstops, which is most American scones.  This one was perfect.  Light and fluffy, with perfectly chewy raisins and a sweet crust.  Yum.

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Fortified by tea and scones, we headed out for an afternoon of wine tasting.  I knew better than to set too ambitious of a schedule – even without a baby in tow, four wineries is pushing it for me.  I decided we’d try to visit Konzelmann, Palatine Hills, and Small Talk, but that if we didn’t make it to all three I’d be perfectly okay with that, too.  (I want to visit every winery in the region, but that’s going to take some time, and quite a few trips.)  Well, we made it to Konzelmann and Palatine Hills, and I was happy to check two off my list.  (We probably could have squeezed Small Talk in, too, but I got to chatting with the winery folks who were pouring my tastes – it happens – and lost track of time.  So it was my fault, not Peanut’s, that we didn’t get to our third winery.)

We started at Konzelmann, which was absolutely beautiful.  The building looks like a castle on the outside, and the tasting room inside was breathtaking.  I tried quite a few of their dry reds and whites, which were all spectacular, but it was the sparking rose that really blew me away.  I have a thing for rose wines, and for sparkling wines, and especially for sparkling roses, and this one was magnificent.  I bought two bottles and will buy more the next time I’m up Canada way.

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After tasting, my inhibitions were lowered just enough for me to poke around and take a few pictures.  This is a shot of some of the vines, and of the working part of the winery – where the magic happens – taken from a cute observation deck off the parking lot.  I am fascinated by viticulture and oenology – have been since I took “Introduction to Wines” at Cornell – and I love seeing the business end of a winery.  (Fun fact: did you know that women make better winemakers than men?  Our noses tend to be more sensitive.  I capitalize on this factoid when I imagine myself as the hottest new winemaker in Sonoma as I drift off to sleep at night.)

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Here are some grapes ripening on the vine at Konzelmann.  (This was also right off the parking lot.  I said I poked around a little, and I mean a little.  I didn’t actually stray more than three feet from the parking lot.  Darn my goody-two-shoes tendencies.)  The employee who did my pours told us that they’re just starting to harvest the white grapes, and the reds will be coming off the vines in a few weeks.  Wish I was there for that – I love watching harvest.  We saw a little bit of the beginning when we visited Napa and Sonoma in September of 2009.

I don’t have any shots from Palatine Hills, because my wine-student memory muscle was working overtime as the tasting room manager made me guess what each wine he poured was.  (And then I got into a discussion about terroir with the trainee.)  Their wines were fabulous too, and I brought home two bottles: a steel-barrel Chardonnay and a Pinot Noir.  I was so relieved to find that, at both Konzelmann and Palatine Hills, I was able to get a full tasting in, just on the “dry” side.  I’m not a fan of sweet wines, and I expected Niagara to be all Riesling, Gewurztraminer, and Icewine, which I can appreciate but which I don’t particularly enjoy.  The region is famous for those, and I’m sure justifiably so, but I had more than I could handle just sticking to Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Cabernet Franc, Merlot, and Pinot Noir, and those were absolutely delicious.  I’m glad to know that the Niagara region makes superb dry wines as well as sweet – now I’m even more enthusiastic about my project of tasting my way around the region.

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We headed back into town for dinner at a yummy, casual bistro (casual is the word for us right now – white tablecloths are out until a certain member of our party can eat without smearing sweet potatoes on everything).  After dinner, we found ourselves caught in a chilly Canadian October downpour… but I really wanted gelato.  (For some reason, Niagara-on-the-Lake is lousy with gelato places, and they’re all raking in the stars on Trip Advisor.)  We were wet and cold, but it was my birthday, so we went with it.  We popped into Il Gelato di Carlotta (ranked #1 out of all of the restaurants in Niagara-on-the-Lake on Trip Advisor) and I had a dish of half hazelnut, half caffe.  Perfection.

We headed back across the border as soon as breakfast was over the next morning, and thus ended Peanut’s first international travel experience.  (I still think it’s hilarious that we have to travel about four times as long to get to Peanut’s local grandparents, than we did to get to Canada, a foreign country.)  I loved Niagara-on-the-Lake, and I’m already scrolling through my calendar, trying to figure out when we could get back there for another weekend.

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32 Things To Do Before I Turn 33

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Last year I took a leaf out of my pen pal Katie‘s book and came up with a list of 31 things to do before I turned 32.  I didn’t hit all of them, but I gave it my all and had a great time chasing after the big and small goals I set for myself.  So I’m gearing up for another effort this year and trying to set myself a list of things to do this year.  Updates to come periodically, but for now, here’s the list:

1.  First, a BIG one: Visit my BFF in Germany next summer (and maybe tack a week in Austria on there too).  I know this will be a challenge to pull off with a toddler, but we really want to try.  Hubby, R and I are all super excited.

2.  Write my grandmother at least once a month (I don’t expect replies, just want her to receive letters from me).

3.  Visit Frank Lloyd Wright’s Greycliff.

4.  Run the 2013 Buffalo-Niagara YMCA Turkey Trot on Thanksgiving Day.

5.  Read and blog about 20 classic books for The Classics Club.

6.  Make refrigerator jam.

7.  Re-read Laura Ingalls Wilder’s Little House series.

8.  Join a group at church.

9.  Road-trip to Ithaca for a weekend.

10.  Knit a dress for Peanut.

11.  Learn to play three new piano pieces.

12.  Go to see Shakespeare performed in Delaware Park.

13.  Have a date night with hubby at Rue Franklin.

14.  Knit through 1/4 of my yarn stash.

15.  Write a guest blog (anyone interested?).

16.  Take Peanut for a bike ride in one of those hilarious trailers.

17.  Finish Level I of the Rosetta Stone French course.

18.  Spend a few days (a week if I can swing it) with my high school BFF and our kids.

19.  Knit a lace beret.

20.  Go to a Sabres game!  (Ideally, I’d also like them to win.  C’mon guys, for me?)

21.  Overcome my fear of baking bread – a holdover from last year.

22.  Get in the habit of better skin care – another holdover from last year.

23.  Volunteer with Literacy New York – Buffalo-Niagara.

24.  Knit a cozy shawl for my grandmama.

25.  Go see a movie in the theater.

26.  Read South Riding, by Winifred Holtby.

27.  Buy a Sabres hockey jersey for Peanut.  (She already has a Cornell jersey.)

28.  Learn the Tunisian crochet stitch and make myself a scarf.

29.  Do some charity knitting.  I’m thinking hats for preemies?

30.  Read a book by Umberto Eco.

31.  Try out five new hikes in WNY.

32.  Another BIG one: buy a house.

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Lessons Learned in 31 Years

“By the time she was two, Matilda had learned what most people learn in their early thirties: how to take care of herself.”

~”Matilda,” film (1996)

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I don’t usually have much to say about my birthday.  Usually, it’s “Yeah, so, I had a birthday.  Moving on.  Who wants to talk about Jane Austen?”  But this year, between crossing items off my “31 things” list, coming up with a new “32 things” list, and soon, a recap of a cool road trip we took over my birthday weekend (love when my birthday falls over Columbus Day weekend), I just seem to have more to write about.  Anyway.  Last month, I started thinking about all of the little pieces of wisdom I’ve picked up, either from life experience – I actually have some now – or from family or friends.  Turns out, there are quite a few nuggets in there.  Here are some of the things I’ve learned in my 31 years on the planet:

1.  Habits, once formed, are hard to break.  So form the habits that you actually want to have, like flossing, exercising, and making your bed.  And steer clear of the ones you don’t want – like smoking, a habit I’m glad to say I’ve never had.

2.  You’ll always look stylish if you learn to dress your own figure.  Not your best friend’s, your sister’s, or a model’s in a magazine.  It doesn’t really matter what the trends of the moment are.  If you’re wearing clothes that fit well and flatter you, you’ll look good.  (It took me a long time to learn this.  Related: full skirts are not my friend, unless it’s Halloween and I’m dressing as Tinker Bell.  Clap if you believe!)

3.  Be upfront about what you want.  Once upon a time, I wanted a promotion.  I beat around the bush, complained to hubby, and asked my boss in a very roundabout manner.  I didn’t get the promotion.  The next week, I went out to lunch with my mentor (who I didn’t think had anything to do with my job seniority or position).  I told him why I wanted a promotion, and why I felt I deserved it.  The next day, I got my promotion, and a nice raise to go with it.

4.  Wear earrings.  No outfit really looks complete without them (if you’ve taken the step of piercing your ears, that is).  And trust me – I’ve learned the hard way that you don’t want to go too long without wearing them.  Ouch.

5.  Don’t eat or drink things that make you feel bad.  For example, if coffee makes your head pound and your stomach churn… don’t drink coffee.  Simple as that.

6.  Cut up fruits and veggies the moment you bring them home, and keep them where you can see them.  You’re going to snack (admit it) so you might as well snack on something good.  Plus, produce is expensive, and cleaning out a crisper drawer full of decidedly un-crispy fruits and veg hurts me in the wallet place.

7.  You can’t always choose your circumstances, but you can choose your response.  I’ve learned this several times over, most recently in the NICU.  We didn’t want to have a preemie, and we didn’t expect to have a preemie, but a preemie we had.  I’m not saying it was a joyride, but things did get easier once we strapped ourselves in for the ride and changed our attitudes from self-pity to determination.  Re-writing my response from “This is so unfair!” (it was) to “Let’s do what we need to do so we can get the whole family home,” (we did) got me through some of those long, unpleasant days.

8.  Keep your stuff organized.  You’re more likely to use what you have if you can see it.  This applies to everything from dried beans to yarn to jewelry.

9.  Bloom where you’re planted.  Anne Shirley taught me this lesson.  You won’t always be able to control how or where you live, but you can control what you do with the time you have.  Make friends, create something, volunteer.  There are always opportunities, everywhere.  Plus, if you don’t bloom where you’re planted, what’s the alternative?  To wither.  And who wants to wither?

10.  The more love you give, the more you will receive.  Time spent cultivating a strong relationship with hubby, soaking up all the special moments of Peanut’s childhood, and chatting for hours over the phone with my mom, my brother, my darling sisters-in-law, or my best friends R (from college) and J (from high school) is time very well spent.

There’s more, but I’ve also learned when enough is enough (except with regard to tea and books, that is).  What lessons have you learned in your time on Earth?

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Homecoming Day: The First Anniversary

October 11, 2012, was our fiftieth day in the NICU.  We had been there all day, every day, since August 21st.  I was there on August 31st, the day I was supposed to be in New York with my family for my baby shower.  I was there on Labor Day weekend, and all through September.  Every day, the routine was the same.  Wake up, grab a quick breakfast, and rush to the hospital.  Fill out our form for the day (attesting to the fact that we are not sick with anything communicable), scrub, and walk through the secured doors into our baby’s world.  Every day, we sat by the isolette, talking to Peanut, singing songs, reading stories, giving her baths, changing her diapers, taking her temperature, talking to her doctor and her nurses about her progress.  We were fixtures in our little corner of the room.  And although she was in a room with about nineteen other babies, we had eyes only for her.

By October 11th, we were tired.  The routine was exhausting and we wanted to go home – which is to say, we wanted everybody to go home.  I’d made no secret of the fact that I did not want to come to the NICU on my birthday: that I wanted to spend the entire day on my couch, in my house, with my baby.  Some of the doctors and nurses had shaken their heads dubiously and told me not to get my hopes up, which is a phrase I hate.  (I’m in the NICU.  I leave my baby here every night.  All I have is hope.  Do you really mean to take that away from me?)

Still, we had seen a light at the end of the tunnel, and we knew that Homecoming Day was not far off.  Peanut had been in an open crib since October 4th, and a few days ago, she had ripped out her feeding tube.  (She’d been trying to do this for months; according to one of the nurses, almost all of the babies rip their feeding tubes out at some point.)  The nurse on duty decided to leave the tube out: since Peanut had evidently decided she was a big girl who could take all of her feedings by mouth, the NICU decided to see if she would put her money where her mouth was.  And she did.  She was almost four and a half pounds and she’d passed the car seat challenge, proving she could sit in her car seat for ninety minutes without any problems.  One of the neonatologists had told us that Peanut may be ready to go home as early as Thursday (October 11th), but she wasn’t Peanut’s regular doctor and we didn’t know if he’d agree.

What happened, I believe, is this: Peanut was tired of the NICU too.  She wanted to go home too.  So she decided it was time.

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That morning, we went through our routine as usual.  We arrived in the NICU, performed Peanut’s morning “hands on” – diaper change and temperature – and relaxed with her for a short time.  I headed off to the mothers’ lounge (not going to get more specific than that; ladies, you know what I mean), and when I returned, hubby was beaming.  “We got the discharge!” he announced.  Peanut’s doctor had stopped by for his rounds and told hubby he was thinking of sending us home.  Peanut was only eating 40-45 ml at each feeding, and he’d like her to eat 50 ml, but he believed she could.  So the only question was, did we want her to prove him right here, or at home?  Hubby promptly responded that we’d like to prove him right at home.  He left to visit his other babies and returned shortly with our discharge papers.  We signed what we needed to sign.  I dressed Peanut in a sweet pink and grey outfit, a gift from her Aunt J, which seems impossibly tiny to me now but which was still a bit baggy at the time.  We hugged the nurses goodbye, and we walked out the door.

And now, a year later, here we are.

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One year later, I can almost forget that we spent fifty harrowing days in the NICU.  Peanut has gone from frighteningly tiny to the twenty-eighth percentile, holding her own among her full-term buddies.  She approaches everything with riotous joy (especially dogs, and the playground).  She says mom, dada, fish, kitty, and book (although she doesn’t pronounce the latter three quite right).  She enjoys eating paper and batting at lighting fixtures.  She’s herself.

What a year.

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Old Town Alexandria

I have loved Old Town since I first moved to DC, back in 2003.  When I was in law school, living in a hot apartment on the crowded GW campus in Foggy Bottom, Old Town was my afternoon escape.  I’d take the Metro to King Street and spend a few happy hours wandering up and down the main drag, licking a cone of frozen custard or coconut ice cream, poking my head into shops and pretending that I was on vacation.  When hubby and I moved out to Arlington, then to East Falls Church, Old Town was an occasional day trip for us.  For the past three years, though, we’ve been living in Mount Vernon (that’s right, I don’t mind telling the world where I lived, since I don’t live there anymore…) and Old Town has become “our place.”  It’s where we would meet for wood-fired pizza after work on many Fridays.  It’s where we would take Peanut for long strolls on a Saturday, or to church and brunch on Sunday.  (We had many favorite brunch places – Fontaine, Vermillion, Hank’s Oyster Bar…)

On our second-to-last night in DC, I headed home from work a little early and met hubby and Peanut out in Old Town.  I got there first and treated myself to a nice browsing (and buying) session at the Torpedo Factory.  For those not in the know, the Torpedo Factory was once an actual torpedo factory – back during World War II.  But today, it’s an art center.  It’s divided into dozens of studios where resident artists work and sell their creations.  You can find everything from oil paintings and digital photographs to pottery, hand-dyed silk scarves and hand-crafted jewelry.

Here’s the interior, shot from the first floor:

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If you haven’t been, and you’re in the area, please go check it out.  The Torpedo Factory is one of the coolest, most unique things to do in the DC area.  Many of my paintings were purchased there, and all of my small but growing collection of pottery and stoneware.  I’ve taken many visitors there: my parents and family friends, my aunt (an artist), and Katie and Jeremiah, to name just a few.

I often go in just to browse, but this time I had a few items on my agenda to purchase – just little things that I’ve wanted for a long time.  (Fortunately, most of the painters’ studios were closed, so circumstances prevented me from doing real damage.)  Here are my purchases:

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I’ve always kept half an eye out for a handmade mug from the Torpedo Factory, and this time, I found the perfect one: a handmade, smoky grey-and-blue stoneware mug from David Norton Pottery.  The artist wasn’t there, but one of his studiomates was, and she told me she always saw seascapes in David’s work.  I’d been thinking it looked like the night sky after sunset, but now I can’t not see a seascape.  One of my favorite details is the little indentation at the top of the handle – perfectly sized for my thumb to rest.  Now that’s some thought that went into this mug.  I love it, and I’ve been drinking my tea from it many mornings.

Another thing I’ve always wanted was a pair of earrings from Potomac Fiber Arts Gallery.  They make these gorgeous knitted wire earrings, many of which have freshwater pearls embedded in them.  R bought a pair years ago, but I’ve never been able to pull the trigger, although I love them.  Last time I was there, I’d passed on a pair with black freshwater pearls and regretted it.  So when I saw the above pair, with creamy pearls, I jumped.  I also grabbed a pair of funky, but still understated, beaded earrings, and I’ve been wearing them quite a lot since I picked them up.  And from the same gallery, I bought this pretty blue, green and gold woven bookmark.  I sent a rainbow version in the mail to my pen pal Katie some time ago and have wanted my own ever since, but never saw a color combination I liked.  Until this time – well, this is a color combination I love.  So I grabbed it.  Worth.  Every.  Penny.

Hubby and Peanut met me in the Torpedo Factory and we had a nice browsing session (being careful to watch Peanut’s wingspan and keep her away from breakables.)  Then we nipped up to the Spice and Tea Exchange, where I stocked up on some of my favorite spices and bought a stoneware salt pig, and headed to dinner.  We had pizza at Pizzeria Paradiso, our favorite local pizza joint, and then split up to head back to our cars and meet up at home.

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On my way back to my car, I meandered through the waterfront and snapped the above picture.  It’s the perfect shot of the OT docks – serene at the end of the day.  Just looking at it relaxes me.  Much like a visit to Old Town itself.  It’s not my backyard anymore, but rest assured – I’ll return there.

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31 Things: Update 3

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Well, with my 32nd birthday on the horizon, I suppose it’s time to step back and take stock of the year.  (After all, isn’t stepping back and taking stock what bloggers do best?)  Items completed or postponed/cancelled are crossed out.

1. Spend lots of time snuggling and loving Peanut while she’s still tiny.  Most important thing on my list!  Motherhood is magical, and I’m soaking up every moment of it.  This is one loveable kid:

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2. Get into the habit of better skin care.  I haven’t done as good of a job creating a skin care routine as I’d hoped to.  I’ll be continuing to work on this next year.

3. Read the Lord of the Rings trilogy (long overdue).   Done.  Read about my impressions of the trilogy here.

4. Run the GW Parkway Classic 2013.   Calling this one done.  I revised this goal because what I really wanted was to get back into road racing.  My sister-in-law and I ran the Healthy Strides Community 5K in April, and I called it “my icebreaker race” because I was breaking back into this hobby after a long hiatus.  (I ran consistently until January 2012, when I injured my foot.  Then in February 2012, I got pregnant and running felt wrong, so I shelved it for the good of the baby – which I later learned was a very smart thing to do, since I was put first on activity restrictions and later on strict bed rest due to some very uncool, scary complications.)  I’m currently in the midst of training for the Buffalo-Niagara YMCA Turkey Trot (an 8K, or roughly 5 miles).

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5. Take plenty of family hikes with hubby and the little miss.  We’ve definitely done this.  Peanut’s been on several hikes in the BOB stroller and most recently in the Baby Bjorn, on Daddy.  She loves to be worn!  We’ve had so much fun showing her around our favorite trails, including Great Falls.  Can’t wait to explore our new area with our little sidekick in the upcoming year.

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6. Overcome my fear of baking bread.  Um, yeah, this didn’t happen this year.  Maybe next year.

7. See Book of Mormon at the Kennedy Center, summer 2013.  Had to let go of this one.  Maybe next year, on Broadway?

8. Give Peanut a magical first Christmas!  (I can’t wait to be Santa.)  Done!  Read all about Peanut’s first Christmas here.

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9. Finish reading Miss Read’s Fairacre series. Done!  I’ve been meaning to post about the series after finishing it (I did write about binging on Fairacre last year), so look for that soon.

10. Buy myself a Longchamp bag and a new wallet. — Got the wallet; waiting on the bag for awhile.  There are other things I’d rather have right now, so I’m saving my pennies for those instead.

11. Plant a successful herb garden.  This one went out the window when we sold our house and moved to Buffalo.  Maybe in a future year I’ll get it together enough to do this.

12. Read Winnie-the-Pooh to Peanut.  Done!  I can’t even describe how much it has meant to me to share one of my favorite children’s books with Peanut.  Look for a “Peanut’s Picks” post on this in the next couple of months.  ;-)

13. Take up Zumba.  I started going to a class that met during my lunch hour on Tuesdays in DC, and it was a lot of fun.  Now I need to find a class in Buffalo.  My cousin tipped me off to one that I may check out, if it works with the schedule.

14. Knit a sweater for Peanut and a hat for myself.  Made two sweaters for Peanut (including the one pictured below – so sweet) and a sweater for a (former) colleague’s little guy, also a NICU kid.  Didn’t get to the hat, though.  I cast on and then realized that it wouldn’t fit, so I had to frog.  I’m planning to try again as soon as I locate my circular needles.  They’re in a box somewhere.

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15. Toss or donate the clothes that I don’t like but that are still hanging in my closet.  Did this in connection with packing for our big Buffalo move, and it felt great.  I took a carful to Goodwill and was so glad.  I have a few more piles of stuff that made the move because I ran out of time for errands, but that’s all destined for Goodwill soon, too.  The process was cathartic, but it did lead to some “What was I thinking?” moments.  Like the white blazer; very “optometrist chic.” #yesthatisarealthing #actuallynoitisnt

16. Attend Potomac Paddle 2013.  This didn’t happen, and I’m disappointed about that.

17. Reconnect with an old friend.  I did this.  I actually had someone else in mind when I wrote that goal, and I still need to reach out to her.  But the person I did manage to reconnect with is also special to me, and I’m glad that we re-kindled our friendship.

18. Have a playdate with NICU mom friends. Did this!  Two of my mom friends from our NICU brought their little guys over and Peanut had a blast playing with her friends.  It was so much fun to have little boys in the house, and I loved catching up with their moms.  We didn’t manage to get together again before I moved, so I’m extra glad we made it happen once.

19. Paint my bedroom purple. Didn’t happen.

20. Break in and wear my silver ballet flats. Done!  Well, not my silver ones, but I broke in my black ballet flats and they’re now my go-anywhere, do-anything shoes.  In fact, I wore them so much that I now need them resoled.

21. Re-read the Anne of Green Gables series.  Done – or will be by the time my birthday rolls around in a week!  Look for posts about each individual book, and then about the series, coming over the next couple of months.

22. Climb Old Rag.  (This one: maybe not so realistic.  I’d need to train a lot and find a babysitter.)  Didn’t happen.  I need to find a good, challenging hike for next year.  Maybe one of the Adirondack 46 hikes?

23. Knit another pair of socks.

24. Buy a fabulous pair of shoes at a great price. I found these gorgeous ladies on the 70% off rack at Shoes by Lara, an independent shoe store near my office in DC.  Don’t mind if I do!

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25. Bake a pumpkin spice cake.  Delicious.  I had originally planned to make this my birthday cake, but hubby has something else in mind.  🙂  So I made it in honor of his first week of work at the new job and we took it over to share with the grandparents after a day of apple-picking.  Yum.

26. Take Peanut to the beach.  Another one I let go of this year.  Maybe next year.

27. Get to know the women in my neighborhood better.  Lots of stop-and-chats on walks, and I definitely felt part of the neighborhood.  Just in time to move.

28. Get back into a regular yoga practice.  Didn’t do this, but I’m hoping to be better going forward.  Moving has made me really tight, so I need yoga in my life again.

29. Start a baby box for Peanut.   Done!  I have an adorable baby box and I’ve been keeping up with it as Peanut has special milestones.  I’m also faithfully filling in her baby book.

30. Start a frame wall in my foyer.  Not going to happen in our rental.  Maybe this will be something I can do when we buy a house again.

31.  Lots and lots of family time with hubby and Peanut.  Did this.  We were lucky in that we had some time together in Buffalo right after we moved, before hubby started his new job.  And before (and after) he went back to work, we enjoyed plenty of weekend outings and morning and evening snuggles together.  I love those two nuts.

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What a fun year it’s been!  I can’t believe how many of these items I’ve actually crossed off.  My first full year of parenting, a big move, and lots of family time.  I’m lucky for sure.  Next week, check back for my “32 things” list.  There’ll be two items on there that are BIG (don’t get too excited, though – they have nothing to do with babies).

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Reading Round-Up: September 2013

Reading is my oldest and favorite hobby.  I literally can’t remember a time in my life when I didn’t love to curl up with a good book.  Here are my reads for September, 2013…

The Weed that Strings the Hangman’s Bag (Flavia de Luce #2), by Alan Bradley – I love Flavia!  This second installment in the mystery series about an eleven-year-old diabolical chemist who helps the police solve murders (whether they like it or not) was such fun.  It was even better than the first (The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie), because there was no need to spend time introducing the characters.  Even so, Bradley takes his time setting up the mystery.  This might be irritating in another series, but I just enjoyed the ride here, chuckling over Flavia’s antics and her spats with her older sisters.  Of course, once the murder took place, the pace of the story picked up accordingly.  This was a perfect choice for moving weekend – light and funny reading over an emotional, tiring few days.  I’m looking forward to picking up the next in the series soon.

Anne of Green Gables (Anne of Green Gables #1), by L. M. Montgomery – Ah, Anne.  How I love thee.  Let me count the ways: your fiery red hair and your temper to match; your flights of imagination; your penchant for giving “poetical” names to every place you encounter; your talent for getting into “scrapes”; your thirst for pretty clothes; your energetic rivalry with Gilbert Blythe… Anne is an old, old friend from my childhood and I’ve been meaning to visit with her again for a very long time.  I’m working my way through the series, so look for posts about each of the eight Anne books coming soon.

Anne of Avonlea (Anne of Green Gables #2), by L. M. Montgomery – Oh, what fun.  Anne is teaching at the Avonlea school, struggling with her pupil Anthony Pye, who is convinced that a “girl teacher” can’t possibly be any good.  Anne is determined to make Anthony love her, even though the rest of Avonlea advises her not to waste her time – he’s a Pye, after all.  But other than her travails with Anthony, Anne’s life is sweet.  She’s enjoying her old friends (Diana) and new (Gilbert) alike, she’s found kindred spirits in little Paul Irving (another one of her students) and Miss Lavender Lewis (a recluse who lives in a quaint stone house).  And she and Marilla have adopted a pair of twins – no, Anne can’t get away from twins.  But these twins, Davy and Dora Keith, are full of sweetness (both) and mischief (just Davy), and they bring all kinds of additional joy to Green Gables.  Anne of Avonlea is, I think, my second favorite installment in this series.

Oryx and Crake (MaddAddam Trilogy #1), by Margaret Atwood – I couldn’t be the only person out of the loop when it comes to this trilogy, and with the third volume (MaddAddam) just released, I decided now was the time to get with the program.  Oryx and Crake opens with a scene of its main character, Snowman, sleeping in a tree.  As far as Snowman (who used to be called Jimmy) knows, he’s the only human being left on the planet after a plague has wiped out his species.  He’s surrounded by prowling animals – pigoons, wolvogs and rakunks – and has been cast in the role of protector of the Children of Crake, a tribe genetically engineered to replace humanity.  In need of supplies, Snowman travels to the Paradice Dome, the one-time domain of his erstwhile friend Crake, and Oryx, the beautiful, elusive woman beloved of both Snowman and Crake.  As he travels, Snowman reflects on his memories of Oryx and Crake and the chain of events which led to the near-extinction of humanity.  So.  That’s a long recap, but it’s a weird book, so it’s necessary.  This being Margaret Atwood, it was incredibly well-written and incredibly disturbing.  Atwood’s point is that we don’t know what will be the consequences of our current rage for scientific “improvements,” and she sprinkles in enough reality to make this a recognizable – and therefore scarier – world.  It was a page-turner, and I was up late reading it.  My only complaint: I could have done without the scenes of child abuse.  They weren’t necessary to the story, in my opinion.  (I understand the point she was trying to make: humanity was so desensitized, at this point, that it was normal.  But she could have stuck to the descriptions of televised violence that she also included, and made the point just as strongly.)  Anyway, I knew it was coming, so that helped a little (and if you want to read this book, be forewarned: you can’t avoid these parts), but it was still upsetting.  I guess that means Atwood did her job, but… Anyway, the rest of the book was just scary-disturbing enough, and provided plenty of food for thought, so I did like it.  It would have been a five-star book for me, but for the child abuse.  Prospective readers, beware.

Anne of the Island (Anne of Green Gables #3), by L. M. Montgomery – Now this one is my favorite book in the Anne series, and always has been.  Anne’s been working hard and saving her pennies for the last two years, and she finally gets to go to Redmond College!  With old friends Priscilla Grant and Gilbert Blythe, and new friend Philippa Gordon by her side, Anne learns to navigate the college scene.  She feels countrified and out of place at first, but she soon puts “soul-roots” into her new abode, and the result is four years of friendship, achievement, and… romance!  Loved every moment.

Anne of Windy Poplars (Anne of Green Gables #4), by L. M. Montgomery – In this volume, Anne has taken on the position of principal of Summerside High School, where she plans to serve three years during (spoiler alert!) her engagement to Gilbert Blythe.  She gets off to a rocky start, because the prickly Pringles, “the royal family of Summerside,” oppose her appointment as principal and decide to make her life miserable.  But thanks to kindness and a little bit of confidential information (which never hurts) Anne wins over the Pringle clan and everyone else in Summerside.  She spends three happy years under the roof of “the widows” of Windy Poplars, bantering with their housekeeper Rebecca Dew, communing with the cat, and meddling in other people’s love affairs (sometimes with good results, sometimes not).  And at the end, Anne has a store of memories to take with her into married life.

Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte – Jane Eyre has been my favorite book since I first read it, back in high school, and this read-through was no exception.  I noticed so many more things about the book than I did in previous reads.  For more, see my posts from the Septemb-Eyre readalong, hosted by Kerry of Entomology of a Bookworm, here: Chapters I-XI; Chapters XII-XXI; Chapters XXII-XXIX; Chapters XXX-End.

The Year of the Flood (MaddAddam Trilogy #2), by Margaret Atwood – I’m now completely hooked on the MaddAddam trilogy (I have the third volume, MaddAddam, out from the library right now, because I’ve got to know how this ends).  I actually liked The Year of the Flood better than its predecessor, Oryx and Crake.  It’s not a sequel so much as a companion volume; many of the events of The Year of the Flood take place simultaneously with the events of Oryx and Crake, and while the main characters differ, there is some overlap.  (Characters from Oryx and Crake that appear in The Year of the Flood include Brenda, a.k.a. Ren; Jimmy, a.k.a. Snowman; Glenn, a.k.a. Crake; Amanda; Bernice; Jimmy’s mom; Zeb, a.k.a. Spirit Bear; and Oryx, briefly.)  The Year of the Flood focuses on the God’s Gardeners, a religious sect that was mentioned a few times in Oryx and Crake.  The Gardeners, led by kindly Adam One, have long predicted a “waterless flood” that will wipe out humanity.  Now the flood has happened: a plague has all but obliterated the human race.  A few survive, however, including Toby, a God’s Gardener sheltering in the AnooYoo Spa-in-the-Park, and Ren, a trapeze dancer locked inside a quarantine zone in Scales & Tails, a high-end men’s club.  Both Ren and Toby must figure out how to make their ways through this strange new “garden” they find themselves left in.  Fascinating; still pretty violent, but without the upsetting child abuse from Oryx and Crake, and extremely chilling.  I liked The Year of the Flood much better than Oryx and Crake, and I can’t wait to read the conclusion of the trilogy!

Lexicon, by Max Barry – What a mind-bender… in a good way!  I grabbed this off the “new materials” shelf at the library and read it in just over 24 hours… couldn’t put it down.  It’s two stories going on simultaneously: that of Emily Ruff, who is snatched off the San Francisco streets and sent to a secretive high school, where she learns to “persuade” people using “word voodoo” and where the best students graduate as “poets,” take on a new name and go to work for an anonymous, but very powerful organization; and that of Wil Parke, who is brutally ambushed in an airport bathroom, jabbed in the eye, and told that he is an “outlier” immune to “segmentation” and the key to a shadowy conflict between the organization and its ex-poets.  Wil and his captor, T.S. Eliot, dodge assassins sent by Virginia Woolf.  The reader is left to piece together clues to try to determine the relationship between Eliot and Woolf, and who is really the villain.  Is it Woolf?  Eliot?  Someone else?  Nobody?  Everybody?  I kept telling hubby that I had no freaking clue what was going on in this book, but it was an awesome ride.

Anne’s House of Dreams (Anne of Green Gables #5), by L. M. Montgomery – Some of these later Anne books, I don’t remember as well.  When I was a kid, I loved the first few – telling the story of the young adult Anne – and the last, Rilla of Ingleside, about Anne’s daughter as a young woman.  I didn’t remember much of Anne’s House of Dreams, but now I think it’s going to take its place alongside Anne of the Island as one of my favorites.  There is so much in this book – humor, romance, Island atmosphere, and tragedy.  I was laughing out loud, turning pages feverishly, and soaking tissues multiple times while reading this book.  Loved.

The Rathbones, by Janice Clark – Hmmmm.  I was intrigued by the description of this novel as “The Odyssey by way of Edgar Allan Poe,” but in the end, I wasn’t as blown away as I expected to be.  The story of the Rathbone family’s fall from prominence, which mirrored the gradual disappearance of the sperm whales the Rathbone men hunted, and of the journey that young Mercy Rathbone and her cousin Mordecai take, was very well-written and intensely atmospheric, but it wasn’t as captivating as I had expected it to be.  Liked, but didn’t love.

So, there’s September for you!  I made plenty of time to read this month – even when I should have been unpacking – and I have quite a list to show for it.  Septemb-Eyre took up part of the reading schedule and was time very well spent; I still love Jane Eyre with all my heart.  But I also dove into some other, equally compelling, worlds – the Prince Edward Island of my dear old kindred spirit, Anne Shirley, and the post-apocalyptic world of Margaret Atwood’s Oryx and Crake and The Year of the Flood.  In October, I’m looking forward to cracking open MaddAddam and finishing out the trilogy, and to continuing my blissful stroll through the Anne books.  Fall 2013 is shaping up to be a very good reading season, indeed.

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In Which I Ponder What My Bookshelf Says About Me

Last week, the bookish internet erupted in the biggest scandal since that Miami mayor tried to close all the libraries.  If you weren’t watching, book reviewer Emily M. Keeler published an article consisting entirely of quotes (long ones, not short-out-of-context quotes capable of being misinterpreted) in which acclaimed Canadian author David Gilmour essentially revealed himself to be a racist misogynist.  I’m not going to go into detail about what he said, but under cover of giving a tour of his personal library, essentially he stated that he only teaches his University of Toronto students books by heterosexual white men, since that’s what he loves and he can only teach what he loves.  (LOLWUT?)  Gilmour disdains other Canadian writers, women, and inexplicably, the Chinese.  (I repeat: LOLWUT?)  Gilmour also, confusingly, explained that he prefers to teach books by heterosexual men, real guys’ guys – which is why he teaches one short story by Virginia Woolf (such a man!), as well as works by Truman Capote and Marcel Proust (so heterosexual!) and F. Scott Fitzgerald (such a guy’s guy!).  (Interestingly, he doesn’t give even a mention to Ernest Hemingway, which is who I think of when I think of heterosexual guy’s guy white male writers.)

Gilmour then made a bad situation worse by issuing an “apology” that in no way apologized.  Instead, he just repeated all of the offensive things he said to begin with, claimed that the (female) reporter was “trying to make a little name for herself,” and then grudgingly concluded that he was sorry if people were offended.  (One more time: LOLWUT?)  Book Riot, one of my favorite bookish websites, published a few responses to this crazy escapade: a hilarious GIF-filled response by Amanda Nelson, and a thoughtful, well-reasoned piece by Brenna Clarke Gray, who incidentally has a Ph.D. – which Gilmour doesn’t – in Canadian literature.  Boom.

It’s Gray’s piece that inspired this post.  In her post, amongst several thought-provoking questions (like: isn’t it interesting that the article was published by Random House, which is not Gilmour’s publisher, a mere two weeks before the short lists are announced for a major Canadian literary prize in which Gilmour is up against several Random House writers?), Gray makes the following statement:

Here’s the thing: David Gilmour has unsavory, but not uncommon, views about literature. I know lots of people who would never voice these opinions but whose bookshelves tell a similar story.

Hmmm.  Amidst a very intelligent, thought-provoking piece, this is probably the sentence that provoked the most thought from me.  I stopped gagging over Gilmour’s sexist philosophies and ran straight to my bookshelf to see what story it would tell, stopping only to snap two Instagram photos of my current shelves (I’m working with the built-ins in my current rental), exactly as they were in that moment, to force me to be honest with myself.  Observe:

Bookshelf 1

(Please ignore the baby toys.  They were just there.  They’re not part of this experiment.)

This is my “fancy bookshelf.”  Meaning: this is the shelf where I keep my prettiest hardcovers.  The forest-green leather Dickens; the complete works of Shakespeare, Austen, and two of the Brontes, and the hardcover classics from Barnes & Noble, Modern Library and Everyman’s Library.  (And a few well-loved mysteries.)  Most of this shelf is given over to English literature: the aforementioned Dickens, Austen, Shakespeare and Brontes, plus Winston Churchill, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, and Agatha Christie.  But I’ve got some other stuff in there too: Americans (Edith Wharton, Herman Melville, Nathaniel Hawthorne…), Russians (Tolstoy, Dostoevsky) and some world lit, like Murasaki Shikibu’s The Tale of Genji (which I haven’t read, but am itching to – it’s long, and that’s all that’s delayed me) and Isak Dinesen’s Out of Africa and Seven Gothic Tales.

Bookshelf 2

Here’s the other built-in.  Comedy on the top left; children’s on the bottom; a mix of non-fiction, paperback classics and literary fiction.  A glance at the shelf reveals a mix of male and female authors (maybe a few more women than men, but I think pretty balanced overall) from the following locales (this is just a sampling):

  • England – Daphne du Maurier; Virginia Woolf; Ian McEwan; Anne Bronte; J.K. Rowling
  • The United States of America – Harper Lee; Dorothy Parker; Toni Morrison; Maya Angelou; Henry James (American-British); Maud Hart Lovelace; Madeleine L’Engle
  • Canada – Margaret Atwood; Yann Martel; L.M. Montgomery
  • Ireland – Edna O’Brien
  • Russia – Leo Tolstoy; Anton Chekhov; Nikolai Gogol; Mikhail Bulgakov
  • France – Collette; Alexandre Dumas
  • Italy – Umberto Eco
  • China – Dai Sijie (actually Chinese-French); Sun Tzu
  • India – Salman Rushdie (British-Indian)
  • Portugal – Jose Saramago
  • Czech – Franz Kafka
  • Brazil – Paolo Coelho

Okay, that’s just at a glance; I’m sure there are more nationalities and ethnicities represented, but I’m squeezing this post into naptime.  I learned two things from this quick exercise: (1) my reading tastes are pretty diverse, and (2) they could be more diverse.  I could do with more African literature (other than Isak Dinesen, who isn’t actually African although she lived in and loved Africa), more books about the African-American experience (I have that experience represented a little bit through Maya Angelou, who I’ve loved since high school, and Toni Morrison, who I have on my shelf but who’s still in the to-read pile), and more books from Asia, the Middle East, and Latin America.  I do tend to read a disproportionate number of American, Canadian, and European writers – as a British lit lover, I’ve always known I had that tendency.  But I’m quite proud that I’ve branched out beyond Austen and the Bronte sisters.  I can do better – we all can – but now I’m not worried that I’m only giving lip service to diversity in reading tastes while my bookshelf speaks otherwise.

I haven’t read any of David Gilmour’s work.  And I’m not saying I never will.  I’ll try to do what Margaret Atwood (a FEMALE, CANADIAN writer!) would advise, and separate the person from the literature.  (He’s not high on my to-read list, though; I have a lot of other books to get through before Gilmour would cycle to the top.)  But I’d encourage anyone who considers him- or herself to be an avid reader to take a look at your bookshelves, do a little soul-searching, and ask yourself: Am I open to new perspectives and experiences in my reading?  And whatever your response is, work on doing a little bit better… because while some of us (cough) can do a lot better, we can all do a little better.