Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman

“…You put the lime in the coconut …”

I thought I had seen this movie so long ago that I would have forgotten it  even though it was one of my collage roommates’ favorites.  But that coconut song, which is in the movie ,has been stuck in my head for days!  I don’t think I can actually give this book a fair review because ” ..I said DOCTOR…” between the limes and the coconuts and hearing in my head the narrator of Pushing Daises reading it “...she drank them both up…” I was completely distracted. Clearly this book should be narrated by a woman’s voice, and clearly my head was addled by the “…and call me in the morning…”‘s

This is reason number 15 we no longer have a TV. Movies and TV shows ruined what I think may have been a perfectly good book. As a rule I don’t watch movies of books I have loved. But this is one of the first times a movie and a completely unrelated TV show have ruined a book for me!

Would I recommend it? Ummm no, but my view is completely skewed, don’t trust me on this one.  I have to get it back to the library even looking at it sets off the singing in my head.

“…then you’ll feel better…”

New Respect Part II

If you remember a post awhile back called New Respect you’ll remember I was having a bit of trouble with my lawnmower. The reason I was re-attaching the cutting deck that day was that it had broken and my Dad had fixed it for us. When I got the lawnmower back up and running Dad cautioned me that because of the way he had fixed it I should be extra careful not to run over stumps or rocks.

So I didn’t. I ran over tractor tire chains… Turns out that’s just as bad as stumps and rocks.

Tonight we again unloaded a freshly fixed up lawnmower deck back from my Dad, (thanks Dad!) and needed to put it on the lawnmower.

Tonight the girls were already sleeping.

Tonight John was home.

Tonight it was back in the barn in 10 minutes.


He probably would have done it in five minutes had I not been helping!

Wrinkle by Scott Alan Ross

This book was lent to my by my Granny, it is a book her dermatologist wrote! Wrinkle is  a sort of crazy mystery involving botox, laboratories, plastic surgery, sex, murder, gambling and of course wrinkles.  My favorite part was learning a tiny bit more about botox, plastic surgery, lab mice and drug testing. Not that I have any personal plans for such things I just always like a book that gives you a glimpse into a profession I don’t know anything about. Very starkly different from Blue-Eyed Devil in that Blue-Eyed Devil is very sparse with words and Wrinkle is not. Granny said it’s got quite a few editing errors, I’m bad a noticing those (maybe you’ve noticed that about me) but I did pick up one or two.

Would I recommend it? Conditionally.  Not the best book ever, but certainly not the worst.  Don’t read it if it’s your only book you’ll have time for this summer, but if it sounds interesting and won’t kill three months of your free reading time pick it up!

People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

If you love, religious history in particular Jewish history, old artifacts, particularly books, or book restoration. Then you should defiantly read this book and you will love it. If these topics are only of passing interest to you, then I’m not so sure. The author is a wonderful writer, tons of research must have gone into it, following the life of an ancient book is a really neat story, truly there is nothing wrong with this book, I just didn’t love it.

Would I recommend it? If  you have one of those interests listed above, yes. Otherwise  I’d recommend her book  Year of Wonders (about the plague) to anyone that was a great book!

She Stands, and Stands, and Stands…

My Mom has always said that just when you think you can’t take any more of what a kid is doing, they grow and change and stop whatever was making you pull your hair out and start something new that causes you to pull your hair out.  The new difficult trait is new so it’s a bit different and that somehow makes it a bit better.  Clara’s new challenge has to do with the fact that she is pulling herself up to standing, on everything.  And I mean everything, chairs, couches, small toys, big toys, beds, cats, dogs, sisters and parents, everything! Now most of the time this has not been  a problem, she pulled her self up, stood around plopped back down and went and found something else to stand up with. Every now and then I had to go save a dog she had trapped or comfort her after an especially nasty fall but for the most part we were good.

Then enter the speed crawl and the speed stand. All of a sudden you can’t stop for more than 10 seconds without looking down and seeing this:

and sometimes that’s alright. For instance while outside, watching Ivy play in the sprinkler. It’s  great I can say “hi”, take a picture (like my lawn, it’s green, short, even a baby can stand barefoot in it, and it’s made out of creeping charlie), admire her cuteness, and just stand there so she can keep looking around.

In the house while I’m attempting to work on something it’s  whole different story.  Here are the three ways it can go:

1- She can be occupied elsewhere in the house, usually with Ivy, standing with the assistance of something inanimate which is happy to stay immobile for her.

2- After option 1 gets boring and she comes looking for me, if I’m actively doing things around the house I just start moving faster. When she goes into speed-crawl-hyper-drive-mode (is there a real term for that running crawl?) Clara really flies, but I’ve still got legs more than a foot long and I can out run her around the house. This often requires me pretending that we are actually playing peek-a-boo and not that I’m just trying to run away from her but it get’s the job done. This has the added bonus that sometimes she gets distracted on the way through the house and we end up back at option 1.

3- This is the bad one, and it often happens in the kitchen. This is where I am mostly immobile but need to move, say three feet to the left to get into the fridge and then back. This leaves me with a few options:

A-I can pick her up and carry her.- Bad option when cooking dinner.  She doesn’t want to be carried she wants to stand.

B-I can squat down, get her interested in something else, quick move once she’s off and try to grab everything I need on the other side of my kitchen before she notices. – Bad option while cooking dinner. Unless its OK that it takes twice as long, which is not OK ever. When describing myself I don’t throw procrastinator in there lightly!

C-I can plop her down on the floor and listen to her scream about it. -Bad option while cooking dinner.  If I’m having a Clara limpet problem while cooking that means I have most likely been on my own with the two girls for 11-12 hours.  Screaming at this point makes me insane and causes me to yell at the dogs far more than they deserve.

D-I can walk reeeaaaalllyyyy ssslllooooooowwwllyyy, then she can walk with me. – Bad option while cooking dinner see option B

Anyone seeing a trend here?

The solution, I think she needs to discover stairs, or walking, or something!  I’m really tired of this stage and I’d like a new one… before I have to cook dinner tonight…

*Don’t leave me a comment saying that they grow up quick and I should enjoy every minute, I hate that.  I think one day soon I’ll elaborate on why I hate that, and then if you do leave a comment like that you’ll end up feeling bad so lets just not go there!*

Aszani and The Madison Birth Center

The  Madison Birth Center is a free standing birth center in Middleton that draws from the best of both the hospital world and the world of midwives and home births. It is a place where a girl like me who hates hospitals can feel at home. Where everyone knows your name by the time you are approaching your due date. Where Ivy loved to visit because  she could help find Clara’s heartbeat and when that got old, visit with the staff and play with baskets full of toys. Where the birthing suites have real beds with real bedding and both are nicer than what we have in our house. Where the showers are huge and the bathtubs even bigger. Where they help you deal with insurance companies, and where you are welcome to stop by for a visit at lunch just to say hi. Where they send you home soon after you have a baby but then have home visits so you don’t have to leave once you get there. Where the  same small staff you have appointments with is there at your birth. Where your birth assistant and her small son sleep down the hall, and the boy asks to meet the new baby before he goes to school. Where my two girls were born with no regrets.

And then there is Aszani, the lady who was the founder of the birth center. Who knew all the right things to say at the scary times of the pregnancy, and all the right things to say at the fun times. Who teased my husband unmercifully during check-ups, and who yelled at him when he left the exam room door open.  Who will send you to acupuncturist or an obstetrician for consulting depending on the circumstances, and who will use herbal inductions to get a labor started, but grab the pitocin first for excessive bleeding after. Who gives the best hugs.  Who caught both my girls.  And who is moving to Minneapolis next month.

Aszani is moving to be closer to her family and will be working at a birth center in the cites. The Madison Birth Center will stay open with new midwifery team. Sadly the other midwives we also grew to love and trust will be moving on as well, and I wish them all the best. I’m sure the new midwives will be wonderful,  but I will always miss the women who where there for me.   Things wouldn’t have been the same without  Anastasia and  Mary, but most of all Aszani.   She was the woman who caught my babies, but she was so much more than that. As I write this through my tears I know the woman in her new practice will realize what a gift they have in her, and I’m sure she will earn a special place in their hearts as she has in ours.

Scattered Thunderstorms

It was a day of scattered thunderstorms, and not just the weather. The weed-whacker broke, the lawn mower broke, realized the tractor dump box was broke, final touches on the remodeling of Clara’s room went poorly, and rain came and went interrupting an already unproductive day even further. Fortunately like the weather the sun came out tonight. Clara went to bed early and John, Ivy and I had dinner together.  It was delicious, grilled pork tenderloin from our own pig,  Andy’s asparagus, potatoes and schaum tortes with strawberries for dessert!  A great end to a rotten day.

Blue-Eyed Devil by Robert B. Parker

As you can see the pre-screening process is still working out!

Book four of the Virgil Cole books by Robert B. Parker was just as good as the first three.  Still short on words and long on action it was another quick read!  This was the final book with these characters and I really liked how the author ended things, to say more would be to give away too much you’ll just have to trust me!

Would I recommend it? Yes sir! Start with Appaloosa, Resolution, Brimstone and then finish up with Blue-Eyed Devil!

Stella, Fairy of the Forest by Marie-Louise Gay

Ivy in her best Reading Rainbow pose!

First off I will say that the illustrations in this book are really wonderful, I love the soft colors and all the detail. Ivy likes the book and I think it’s mostly because she likes to find all the hidden animals and bugs in the pictures.

There I said something nice, now lets talk about the text. There is nothing wrong with it exactly, just that yellow butterflies don’t eat butter, blue butterflies don’t eat sky, and please don’t make me accidentally read a book to my girl that says little snakes only swallow little people and that sheep are scary. Granted, Stella is trying to reassure her younger brother who is apprehensive about sheep and snakes but Ivy and I still had to have a talk about how sheep were nice and snakes are cool, and that butterflies drink nectar from flowers.  I also think this book has poor word flow.  Add to that two kids named Stella and Sam and the combination creates something that is both challenging to read out loud (almost a tongue twister) and that misses the lyrical quality that many books have when spoken.

The back flap says that “Marie-Louise Gay is one of Canada’s leading children’s book author-illustrators.” and that her first two books about Stella “…have been sold in more than ten countries.”  This lead me to wonder if I’m just a grump about books sometimes but in quick online search I found a few people who said that the first two were much better than this one. Maybe so but I hope the publisher spared the eight other countries!

Would I recommend it? Nope. I’d love to know if anyone has read her other books and liked them.