What's the What ...

I haven't been a total slacker. Although I haven't been hanging around these parts much, June and July were busy, and mostly fulfilling. Only moderate patches of deep anxiety and the occasional freak-out.

Soccer continued until mid-June, which was so much fun for all of us. Although The Young Man was the one huffing and puffing around the field (not really, he never seemed to tire!), we all enjoyed going to the practices and games to watch and support him. It did make me realize that we hadn't really been dedicating any significant time to plain old family relaxing. Although I would say that we make our little family unit central to our lives, it was so good for us to have to sit for an hour or so and not be doing anything else. Well, obviously Miles was up to something, but even then, he was the focus of the rest of the family. For the two months of soccer, we were a friendlier, more relaxed, and more connected family.

The end of June brought a lovely visit from my mother, including her little dog Chloe, an out-sized rescued Pomeranian. Ten days of Grandma time spoiled the kids! We picked strawberries, finished off the school year, and celebrated Miles' sixth birthday a few days early.


July 2nd was his big day, although somehow he's managed to stretch it out so that he has his two best buds from school joining him tomorrow for a friends' birthday hang-out. No big party this year, as it just didn't fit into our schedule, and I wanted to head off some of the birthday frenzy at the pass.

Amongst all of this, the garden is somehow thriving, although deer, bunnies and a certain groundhog that may just prompt me to finally learn how to shoot have all taken a toll. If we ever get some warm weather, we'll be swimming in tomatoes. Until then kale, peas, beets and beans are all doing very well. (The chard just tries to hide from the varmints).

And joy of joys, I am knitting again. A few modifications to daily life have reduced the pain in my wrists, and soccer gave me great swaths of (mostly) uninterrupted knitting time. I've revived my Ravelry account (dhautaniemi, if you'd like to find me), and although I'm a bit stalled on a boring bit of an exciting project, I'm pretty happy with my progress.

How could I almost forget?! There was also a crazy wonderful day with my Dad, youngest brother, and Miles at the Watkins Glen Indy Car race. It was Miles' first race, and while it wasn't the most exciting race ever, it wasn't dull. Motorsports ... yum.


Other parts of life have been less positive and more stressful, but I'm not going to devote more time than I already have to those bits.

I hope I still have a few readers, and that all is well for you and yours.

My Baby Turned Two ...

Why is two such a milestone birthday?



She had a wonderful time, and delighted in all of the attention. Then got a cold. She was better in time for the family birthday on the weekend.





She's in a serious baby doll phase right now, which seems so at odds (to me) with her personality. However, who am I to say? Her disregard for my confusion is spot-on.



Just ignore the state of the house ... May was a killer month. Here's to June!

Who, Me?

Has it really been over a whole freaking month since my last post? Obviously, I do not live to blog. And I will admit that this post just *might* coincide with finishing the last available Battlestar Gallactica DVD. Damn obsessive personality.

On a not-so-fun note, I've also been having some trouble with carpal tunnel syndrome, or repetitive stress injury. This makes me pretty unwilling to type in the evenings. I'm trying to find some low-key therapeutic approaches to the problem, but I'm still in pain by the end of the day. Knitting has also taken a hit.

So I'm not gone, just resting. I do plan on doing the next 1% Challenge, and I need to finish my final review from last year. Until then, you can find me in the trashy mystery section of the library.

And if I don't get to it, a Joyous Passover and Happy Easter. Or just enjoy the coming Spring.

1% Well-Read: The Inheritance of Loss

Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss was another substitute title of the 1% Well-Read Challenge, found in the last week on the shelf of the local library. To be honest, reading Loss took up the majority of the last week, as I found it to be a more dense and contrary read than I had anticipated.

I was surprised, because normally (and be forewarned, this is a broad statement), I do pretty well with literature from the Indian Diaspora. It probably serves me right then, to get bogged down in my own arrogance and assumptions! Loss was a fine read, but it was not what I expected. Much like the mist that featured prominently in the book, story lines materialized and faded away when I least expected, and I never felt that I had a firm grasp on the plot or the motivations of the characters. In the end, I felt unsatisfied and like the main questions posed by the novel were left unanswered. I think this is more my hang-up than a fault in the novel, however. Probably it comes from reading too many mysteries, and a love of traditional plot and narrative devices. Everything Is Illuminated was hell for me, I tell you. My greatest disappointment was not getting to know Sai, the young heroine, better that I did.

Because I am typing one-handed with a sleeping baby, this will be a short review, Suffice it to say, this was another title that I had been meaning to get to, but may not have without the impetus of the 1% Well-Read Challenge. I'm glad I read it, even if it wasn't my favorite book.

1% Well-Read: The Optimist's Daughter

In my attempt to finish the 2008-09 1% Well-Read Challenge, I made a desperate run to our small local library to see what they might have on the shelves. Normally I rely on inter-library loans through our extended regional system to find specific titles, but with a week or so left in the challenge, I had run out of time for that option. It was a remarkably successful trip, and one that netted me Rabbit Redux, two other titles that shall be discussed later, and an American Library volume of Eudora Welty's complete novels. Of all of Ms. Welty's works, The Optimist's Daughter was the one chosen for the 1% Well-Read Challenge source list (or at least one of them).

Although I enjoyed The Optimist's Daughter, it struck me as an odd choice. It felt much more like a novella, and was the only work I read that felt like something that would have been assigned for an AP English course in high school. I don't mean to be derogatory; East of Eden, a high school assignment many years ago, remains one of my favorite novels. However, The Optimist's Daughter was that sort of fast-paced, clear-eyed observation of society that is so favored in high-school curricula. The characterizations and dialogue, however, were very witty. I understand that Ms. Welty was an acute observer of her milieu, and her perception shows.

One of the things that made this work such an interesting read was that the culture and setting of the main characters, rather than the characters themselves, filled out the story and provided the orientation for the reader. In my read, each character was actually rather one-dimensional, but it was the ambiguity of their interactions and positions in society that gave complexity and depth to the story. It was hard to feel close to Laurel, the protagonist, but it was easy to become engaged in her actions and choices as she navigated her father's death, the social rituals of her home-town, and interactions with her father's wholly inappropriate second wife.

I liked Ms. Welty's style and prose, and would probably enjoy other works even more. She wrote female characters well, even if there was very little mercy at times. I don't think I will carry the story with me for any great length of time, but in my mind, it would make a very acceptable substitute for many standard titles in lit intro classes.

I had not realized that Ms. Welty enjoyed such a long life, and was alive until 2001. Strange that this fact should alter my perception of her, and in my mind render her less bounded by 2oth Century literature, but it does. How little know about American writers; as a reader I read for pleasure, but in doing so, sometimes I miss important bits of context.