Now, this I had no apprehension about. If Absolutely Normal Chaos isn't at the level of Walk Two Moons or even Chasing Redbird, well, how many books of that calibre can one author have in her? However, for her to be a step or two down from there is still better than most.
The protagonist is 13 again, and a girl again, but also this time a boy. Twins, though, so while two different people not exactly independent. She set up the Dickensian antagonists in an I hope impossible fairy-taley way, so their comeuppance would be entirely satisfying.
I would love to live in Ruby Holler, so I could chase a redbird and befriend Salamanca, or so I like to think. I loved Sal's grandparents, but I know details like the grandfather's driving and the grandmother's Peeby would drive me round the bend, since I'm intolerant like that. And even without them I would stand no chance against the accents. But I really want to know Sairy and Tiller in real life. (Of Tiller, of course, I was immediately fond in an automatic, Cynthia-Voigt-reflex, way.) But of course I already do, in Nisou's parents.
My cockatiel is better than your cockatiel. Also, this bathrobe is better than yours. Unfortunately, it's not mine. It's RDC's; since he's not here I get to wear it. When I gave it to him, I thought I was bringing him up to my standard, not surpassing it. But this terrycloth is heavier and warmer than my robe's and the skirt reaches the floor instead of mid-calf. And it won't be in stock again until next winter--the only color Lands' End had left when I, in a fit of jealousy, decided I needed one too was orchid, which turned out to be pink not lavender. So for the next six months I have to steal. Or the next two, because by May I'll want a summerweight robe again.
Also, Blake's oatmeal box is better than anyone's. We used to buy boxes of 40 packets of Quaker instant oatmeal, until the company started including foul flavors like Cinnamon Danish or whatever it was. These boxes, we discovered, were an excellent size for a Buddy Cave. It's been so long since we've bought such a perfect box--food grade, not too thick to gnaw on, a good size for the top of his cage or the table in front of the couch in the den--that he's destroyed, in proper cockatiel fashion, these caves. He has chewed the doorways so much that now anyone can look right in, depriving him of that wonderful I'm Running Away to My Secret Cave feeling. The cardboard's collapsing.
Well, Mommy's coworker saved the day. Tex eats a mixing bowl (I'm serious, a glass mixing bowl, way bigger than a cereal bowl) of plain oatmeal every day at work, in the hopes it will slough off the cholesterol in his arteries. When I spotted that nice big oatmeal box--fitting two 3.5 pound bags--I asked if I could have it when it was empty. Friday he gave me two such boxes (and this is a man with very little pet-tolerance at all, who thinks I'm insane for living with a bird, which I don't contest).
Now Blake has two new caves, a cage-top one and a downstairs in front of tv one. He spent most of the weekend in his new cave, seasoning or tempering it as one would a wok, except that instead of oil and heat he used song. He playing in his box all weekend, singing. He's such a good boy buddy.
The photograph is from a new angle, facing me in the chair with the fireplace end of the living room behind me. The chair is blissfully comfortable. Blake is right now in his cage having a snack, but the great thing about this chair is that his cage is right around the corner. It can contain his mess but when he or I get lonely, I can just reach up and around for him. And although we are officially in Separate Rooms, which is Very Wrong and Bad, we are actually closer with me here than when I'm sitting at the dining table.
He just loves being in his box. He wants you to talk to him and tell him he's a good boy and invite him to snuggle and have his head pet, so that he can prance into his box with an audience, but he doesn't want to be watched while in his box and he doesn't want you to leave the room. If you do, he'll come out and call for you, but as soon as you return to his line of sight and he confirms you're watching, he turns tail and retreats, prance stamp waddle, into his sanctuary. I don't see why it's a surprise that bird-humans are insane. It's the company we keep.
Yesterday was not a good bus day: first I missed my usual going-home one and then when the later one approached, it pulled over and put its hazards on. I threw up my hands and waited in the library for RDC to fetch me. There I found my two latest books, Crutcher and Creech. Which only postponed my immediate What Next after Saramago question. I haven't started Little Friend yet.
I'm listening to David Denby's Great Books, and I'd be pleased for him to stop at any time his whining about how stupid the freshling are. I acknowledge that a wisdom might come with age that cannot, or seldom can, come by any other means, but being 18 doesn't make you stupid therefore. It makes you 18. This is why I hate grown-ups.
I also started Stupid White Men and got partway through the prologue. I don't read Dave Barry either. Someone sent me a column about his main dog and his auxiliary dog once (summer after freshling year, probably, making me 19 and therefore unwise and puerile), and I read it to my parents (who are 30 years older than I but still amused), and because of that I tried to read some other Dave Barry, but it was all the same. I had expected or hoped Michael Moore to be more like Al Franken--funny but not juvenile. RDC suggests I soldier (ahem) on through the prologue because the actual chapters are better.
I'll do that, but Denby reminded me I've never read The Aeneid.
Or The Lysistrata. Or The Frogs or The Clouds. Or the entire Oedipus trilogy. Cycle? When he mentioned Euripedes and Aristophanes and Sophocles, I remembered doing reports on ancient Greek culture in ninth grade (I did mythology, natch) and being impressed with how interesting my classmates made the plays seem. Twenty years later (holy shit), I have still read only Oedipus Rex and Medea.
20' Precor elliptical, level 12 incline 15. I didn't drink my half-gallon today or remember a water bottle for the gym so after the one 20' stint I didn't wait for another round but moved on to weights.
Iso lat thingie. Incline press. Overhead press. Lateral raise. I haven't written them down yet because I suck. I know one of them was 80 pounds, which impressed me. It hurt to get through 3 sets of 15, but I managed. On another, 3x10 ending with a lower weight than I started with (very bad! write it down!) was a real struggle. I really like the overhead press and the lateral raise. They're the kind of thing that--in an alternate universe, granted--might make my shoulders start at the ear, but they'll improve my swimming, oh yes.
PSA reproved me in high school, for pity's sake, for liking depressing music. (The pity being that it's been that long: doesn't everyone like depressing music in high school?) I don't even remember which song I suggested to him, but he countered, "My favorite song right now is 'Walking on Sunshine'!" I know he was exaggerating, but he's still right. I mean, the Cowboy Junkies? Beth said their "Sweet Jane" makes her want to slit her wrists (approximately).
Today toward the end of my workout I let Dandelion play all its songs in alphabetical order. It's not a crime for music not to be workout music, but lordy lordy lordy. From the top, the Junkies "200 More Miles," Junkies "A Common Disaster," Waterboys "A Bang on the Ear," Godspell "All Good Things," Kate "And So Is Love," along with some Cocteau Twins and Passion and other tracks I now forget but which were all depressing as hell. Innocence Mission, probably. Roxy Music "Avalon." And I haven't even mentioned my current favorite album, Aimee Mann's Bachelor No. 2.
That is in fact why I stopped lifting weights. I have got almost as sick of selected tracks from Oil and Gold as I am of Ten, and I had Shriekback with me only for weeks instead of the years I've used Pearl Jam. But I can't remember Pearl Jam as anything but exercise music while Shriekback is fraught with other associations.
Part of the problem is that I have thus far copied only my favorites into Dandelion--Kate, Pete, the Junkies, Innocence Mission, Fumbling Toward Ecstacy (not really a favorite, but I think RDC thinks Sarah McLachlan would poison him should he touch her work, so it lives among my particular favorites), Godspell, Tim Easton (also not really a favorite, but he belongs with the Junkies, as does Animal Logic only because it backed Caution Horses until the tape died). I need to go through the main CD library. After which the situation will not improve: Little Earthquakes and Diva and Jagged Little Pill.