this book i'm reading

a friend from work invited me to join her book club, so i did. after a couple false starts, i was able to read the book and join the discussion in february. so it's march and we're reading another book and it's got some flaws. 

first of all, it's as if the author believes that L and M are the main two letters names can begin with. libby, lucy, michael, marco, mémé plus then there's a henry jr and henry sr. then she alternately gets fantasticly creative with birdie, phineas, clemency, stella. obviously she has an imagination. i'm telling you, though -- unless libby and lucy turn out to be somehow the same person, it's simply poor form. you're confusing your readers and demonstrating your lack of creativity. 

secondly, the way she's unfolding the mystery is less intriguing than frustrating. it's even like a mystery is unfolding, but more like it's being withheld and parcelled out -- like she doesn't quite have enough mystery to make it to the end, so she's got to be careful how much she gives out. so, it's not a natural development, it's an artificial construct. 

on top of all that, it seems a bit trite. i'm maybe 1/3 of the way in, and what we have so far is a well-to-do british family where the mom has some sort of mental breakdown, invites in some odd/dangerous boarders into the house, and things go downhill from there, culminating in suicides. 

the mystery is, what happened that led up to the suicides. 25 years later, the surviving baby is 25 and, unaware of her origins, inherits the house. the surviving teenagers are (1) narrating in the past tense and (2) destitute in the present. none of them seem to have awareness of the others in any meaningful way. 

so... it's confusing, slow, disjointed, and mechanical. now, in its defense, i have learned some new terms: wolf tone, wooden harboring, and chinese burn. the latter is what we in the states would call an indian burn, altho neither term is politically correct. 

i'll try to remember to let you know how it turns out. 

the baby shower

i had been looking forward to it.

i was invited to a baby shower. it was going to be outside, with safe distances, and people wearing masks. at least, that was what i thought when i RSVP'd, and when i diligently shopped for & found a gently used copy of the 1965 edition of Andrew Henry's Meadow to fulfill the currenlty-very-fashionable practice of asking guests to bring a book instead of a card, and when i carefully crafted then carefully handwrote a heartfelt note on the flyleaf, and when i realized that the book wasn't meant to be the gift - that there would be other gifts - and so i bought something off the registry at target to be shipped to the baby's house, and when i printed the page from the registry to put into an envelope to wrap with the book so that it would be clear i had gotten A Real Gift, and when i wrapped it all in a reusable orange string bag with yellow tissue paper poking out the top like a sunburst, and when i planned to do my taxes in the morning so i could make it to the party in the afternoon, and when i selected an outfit and took a shower and dried my hair and got dressed and in the car and drove over and parked and all the way up to arriving at the decorated concrete driveway with the balloons and cupcakes -- that was what i thought right up until then.

but i was the only one wearing a mask and no one was even pretending to be six feet apart, and i felt alternately like a pariah and like a judgy mcjudgerton, and either way, nobody wanted to talk with me from six feet away, and everyone was all in these really tight groups talking in each other's faces and they were hugging people they never spent any time around, and i finally had to tell the expectant mom that i hoped the party went really well but i had to go.

i think i said something about cognitive dissonance.

so i went to sam's to pick up my zyrtec scrip and everyfreakingbody there was wearing a mask. one guy had his on his chin and one lady had hers hanging from one ear, but everyone else was properly masked up. nobody was too close, everyone was respecting everyone else's personal bubble, and overall it felt much safer than at the baby shower.

i stopped at starbucks for a blonde americano and came home to read my book.

i was really disappointed about the baby shower. i had been looking forward to it. i also felt somewhat betrayed - i had been led to believe it would be safe. these people had put me in the position of being the bad guy - i don't care what anyone says, that's what it is. i left, which means i deemed it unsafe. i judged them and decided they didn't meet my standard. like i am too good for them. or like i am not good enough. either way, it was me that had to be the one to leave, right in front of everyone, but at the same time, trying to be low key because it's not like i had someplace else to be or anything - i just didn't want to be there.

i wish i'd never planned to go at all. i wish i had just dropped off the gift and not acted like i was going to stay. that was the thing - i acted like i was going to stay, and then i had to be like, nope, can't do it. i wished i'd never said i was going to stay at all.

anyway. that's all there is to it.

we'll see how far i get.

tomorrow i plan to do the taxes. we'll see how far i get.

i know it's outdated but i like to do my taxes by hand. i get a cuppa and settle in, download the forms from the IRS and just typpity-type away. i mean, uh... carefully enter precise and well-scoured data. that's what i do, that last thing. 

i always start by pulling out the previous year's as a starting point, and then i gather all the required inputs, and then i download the forms, and then i start filling them out, and then i get about 8 or 9 lines completed, and then i realize i don't have everything i need, and then i realize that it will take several hours or even days to get what i need, and then i get really frustrated and break things. 

so that's my process. we'll see how far i get. 

not sorry

ducky ducky rubber ducky

floating in the tub

someone pulled the drain plug out

glub glub glub 

a million channels and nothing to watch

every truck around here has a trailer hitch

whether it hauls anything or it don't

cause everyone around here wants the top of the line

whether they plan to use it or they don't

it's the sheer number of channels that's to blame. there are so many channels that there is simply not enough quality - or even anything close to quality - to go around. just pages and pages and pages of OMG IT'S THE SAME THING thumbnail after thumbnail just paging and paging through the thumbnails. 

good stuff is incredibly hard to come by. we watched anne with an e, longmire, hell on wheels, blacklist, yellowstone, arrow, queen's gambit, the komisky method, plus most of jane the virgin, some of the 4400, and a metric shit-ton of others i am forgetting. we have recently watched a dozen or so movies - spenser confidential, 6 underground, kodachrome, the highwaymen, the take, fisherman's friends, the fundamentals of caring, homefront, redemption, and who knows what else because who remembers all that -- but they were mostly-good to really-very-good, but that's like a dozen out of a million. oh, and we are watching one right now called behind her eyes. it's pretty creepy in a mysterious good way. 

it's the paging through the pages that just wears you the fock out. you get numb to the excess. blinded by the deluge. can't see the trees for the forest. 

yes, this is obviously a metaphor for life in the states, but we will take your netflix recs, so bring it on.

dr seuss would have understood

read across america is a year-round program of events, resources, and partnerships which was launched by the national education association in 1998 with the goal of encouraging kids and teens to read. in the beginning, read across america was just a one-day celebration. the NEA chose march 2 as the one day to celebrate reading because it is dr seuss's birthday. 

today is read across america 2021, and to celebrate, the organization dedicated to preserving dr seuss's legacy - dr seuss enterprises - announced that six of his books will no longer be publised. woo! happy b-day dr s!!

the reason these books won't be published is that they, according to dr seuss enterprises: "portray people in ways that are hurtful and wrong". two of the books on the list were ones that were a big part of my childhood: on beyond zebra and scrambled eggs super. they were read to me, i read them to my younger brothers, i wrote my name in the family copy, and still have those very editions with me. of course, both are missing their covers - WEIRD. don't know how that happened, but the pages are intact and bound, and if you were here, i could take you right to them on the shelf. this morning when i heard they were now VERBOTEN, i took myself right to them on the shelf and picked them up and looked through them and here's my analysis: they are nonsense. the words, that is. in keeping with most of dr seuss, the words are loosely held together by a bit of a plot which is simply a framework from which to hang non-sense words and ludicrous situations. there is nothing offensive about the words, unless you are a stickler that your words not be completely made up out of thin air and comprised of sing-songy rhymes. 

as far as plot goes... on beyond zebra is a twist on the alphabet book. in it a younger boy is learning his alphabet and an older boy shows him the wonders of 20 letters that come after Z. nonsense. scrambled eggs super is - i think? - the same boys. they travel to far flung and obscure places to collect unique eggs for their meal. non. sense. nonnnnnn. sensssssssse. 

the problem is the pictures. dr seuss drew these fantastical illustrations, and there are one or two per book that purport to portray humanness. most everything he draws are animalish beings of which most resemble muppets. the humans are rare, but as is his tendency, he aims for the exotic. unfortunately, what was deemed exotic in 1955, and apparently every day since then up to yesterday, is now racist. 

i know that perceptions change plus people get tired of being inaccurately portrayed plus people get woke. i know all that, and really, you know what? that's life and change and progress and that's all good. all good. what i wonder is why didn't they go about this in a different way. they could have taken the existing books out of print and issued new versions with new illustrations. i realize the words and the pictures together are THE THING - it's a creation the the good doctor created to go together. however, times change and it's time for new illustrations. the existing ones are really tired and horribly outdated. even putting they offensiveness aside, they have a sadness to them that screams 1950s suburbia.

there is a joy to imagining letters beyond Z. there is a whimsy to collecting eggs from odd places. childhood needs joy and whimsy, now more than ever. dr seuss would have understood.

nb255

i have lately been working to organize my home office, which is also now my office office, so i spend a good bit of time in there. for years it has also been a sort of catch-all room. like the junk drawer in the kitchen, it's actually filled with useful stuff, but everything has been all jumbled in there together. 

i get uncomfortable in a cluttered room. it makes me anxious. i have been coping these past months... er, this past year! by just staring at the people on the screen and doing my work, then leaving the room. there is just so long you can ignore all that tho. so, i got some paper trays for the paper and some decorative storage boxes for the keepsakes and have been generally sorting and straightening. 

one of the things i ran across is the toshiba netbook i used to pound out everything from bill payments to blog entries to old navy orders. hey, little buddy! it's a toshiba nb255, which apparently was introduced in 2010. a few years ago, windows was bogging it down so badly, i installed peppermint, a lightweight linux. i don't know why i gave it up... not exactly... i mean, i started using my laptop from work to pay the bills and this little buddy is pretty slow at loading web pages. but it seems to work fine for blogging - much better than typpie typing on my phone. 

welcome back, nb255. i kind of missed you!