Whoever said April was the cruelest month never met June/July 2010...

This is a post I wrote back in April, for blogger Kristin Tennant, (@ktwrites on Twitter) who started the idea of a Love List on her blog a while back. She asked for interviews, and I agreed. This is the post I wrote. I thought I'd publish it now to inject some joie de vivre back into these pink walls.

Kristen: So, Sarah Louise, you're going through a lot of changes these days. New church, new career goals, new friends. How is your life different today than it was a year ago?

Sarah Louise: Well, Kristen, I'm so glad you asked. It is amazing how life can change in such a short time. Last year, this time, I was beginning to mourn the loss of my best friend Sally, who would be moving soon to Michigan (She moved last July.) I was still attending the Open Door Presbyterian Church, a church plant where I was a charter member, and I was seriously considering a Master's of Fine Art in Creative Writing. My life has changed in so many ways since then--instead of talking to Sally once a day, I talk to her once a week. I'm getting to know people at my new church, forming new relationships. Instead of dreaming about an MFA in writing, I'm getting ready to start the application process for a Ph.d in Library Science (with an emphasis in Children's Literature.) I'm excited about growing professionally.

Kristen: How is your life today different than say, ten years ago?

Sarah Louise: Ten years ago, I was 28, living in Northern Virginia, finishing up my stint as a bookseller at Big Box Books. My main focus every day was to make sure my departments were correctly shelved, alphabetized, and well displayed. My "baby" was the cookbook table, which I changed up daily, highlighting the big glossy cookbooks by celebrities and celebrity chefs. I lived with my parents, and I had a monthly subscription to Harper's, which I read, cover to cover. I facilitated a book group that met once a month. I had a wide range of single friends. We often went to lunch or the movies. And I ate dinner with my family almost every night. Writing all that, it sounds like heaven. I had time to read, time for friends, and time for family. But it was a life that had an end in sight--I wasn't moving forward professionally, so I applied and got in to library school, which meant a move back to Pittsburgh.

The past ten years have been really hard. Creating new relationships can be like pulling teeth in a town like Pittsburgh, where everyone knows everybody since before kindergarten. Families stay put, and it is not uncommon to meet people in their early twenties who are married and already starting their families. So, as a single woman in her early to mid to late thirties with no family nearby, I have been swimming against a very strong current. Even though I had lived in Pittsburgh twice before, moving back this time was one of the hardest things I've ever done, though I didn't know it at the time. Only now do I feel that I'm beginning to realize some of the benefits of that golden place where I resided ten years ago.

Kristen: What kinds of things have been showing up on your love list these days?

Sarah Louise: My new church. I've been going there for about two months. The people there have embraced me, and I just want to get to know them better. My new friends. I have been making lunch, dinner and coffee dates in an effort to repopulate my social life. So far, I don't have a movie buddy, but I'm working on it. The Pittsburgh Penguins. We're in playoff season, and I love the energy. All of a sudden, everyone is a hockey fan.

Kristen: Do you have any wisdom or advice to share with others?

Sarah Louise: It is never to late to dream a new dream.

Pictures and more pictures...

Parking chairs, circa WINTER 2010.



Valentimes flowers from Dad, circa WINTER 2010.


Sunset, circa, WINTER 2010
Crocuses, circa the lawn is melted, can it be spring? 2010
More crocuses, circa, YES, SPRING HAS SPRUNG, 2010.

I have actually done some weeding on the lawn. The crocuses are long gone, but now we have weeds intermixed with the grass and tulips.

More later, I promise.

Birds in the sky, you know how I feel...

(Standard)

(and by Standard, I mean everyone, from Michael Buble to Stevie Wonder have covered it...)

My mom gave me a CD a while back. It was free from Ann Taylor and it's pink, so I'm sure it has something to do with curing breast cancer.

I always skip over the first song, some depressing Dido song. The third song is "You can't take that away from me."

Which I always thought was a horrible song. Why would I want to remember things about someone I was no longer with? It's taken me at least ten years and many listens to finally figure it out. "We may never meet again on this bumpy road of love." We may not. But I will always remember seeing you come to work in your suit on Saturdays, crossing Grant St. as I sat eating my lunch at Bruegger's Bagels. I will always remember the fun we had just flicking a rubber band at each other at my kitchen table. I will always remember that first kiss.

My mother and my father are such different people--my father will occasionally tell me about girls he dated. My mother has told me three such stories in the 38 years I've known her, and they've all been negative. My parents didn't exactly "date," they were friends over the course of nine years, with patches of "going out." My mother "broke up" with my father at least five times. My father remembers washing dishes over Christmas break and thinking that he missed my mom more than he missed the girl he was dating at the time. Now that's an image you can't take away from me.

But from my mother, I learned that dating was horrible, and I had to make sure I married a Christian man. Since my father was often at work, when I was young and impressionable (17), I haven't learned until the past 12 years of my life that my dad enjoyed dating. That he was in a lot of weddings, so had a lot of garter belts on his rear view mirror. My dad? My mom knows how to have fun, she does. But in the realm of dating, my mother is the killjoy and my father is out there, having fun.

The title of this post? Sometimes you have to listen to a CD many times before you hear all the songs. And I mean that in the sense that some songs go out into the air until your heart and ears are ready for them. That is how it has been with this CD. At first, I needed the message of the first song "Rome wasn't built in a day." And then I really really got the message of "You can't take that away from me." And yesterday, as if for the first time, I heard the words to "Birds in the sky, you know how I feel."

Fish in the sea you know how I feel
River running free you know how I feel
Blossom in the trees you know how I feel

It's a new dawn
It's a new day
It's a new life
For me
And I'm feeling good

(I just realized I'm doing a song lyrics Saturday. Hi, Badger!!)

So of course, I have to embed it... (and hey, it's Nina Simone, which is the version I have on my CD)



And the freedom...I am getting there. My staycation starts today after 2pm. Not a lot got done yesterday what with getting pansies from our favorite volunteer, talking for a long time with E about books about Germany...

But I am getting up and writing. And I am coming back here. (GRIN.)

I don't know why I stopped, I love this bully pulpit/soap box. Doing my "morning pages" is different, but this too, this writing for you, writing for an audience, I love it. I eat it up. And I need more things to love in this life.

Pictures this week, I promise.

A blocked artist isn't lazy.

(Julia Cameron, The Artist's Way.)

So all this time, I've been motivated by two things: the fear of dying, and"is it fun?"

And my married with children friends (some of them) have looked at my single life and its somewhat aimless path and said, you are lazy. What are you doing with your life? Because no, I'm not raising children so they can go off to school and eat paste. I'm not doing loads of laundry for four or six hundred people. I'm not cooking dinner every night for people that want to feed the floor or the family pet.

So it looks, pretty much, like I'm lazy. I watch a lot of TV, I procrastinate, I go to work, I come home, and watch more TV. I live in an apartment of unfinished projects, piles of laundry, piles of dishes.

But if I had remembered what I learned in Black Women Writers, my senior year of college, I would have remembered Remita Weems, who said, "Madness is never just madness. It is a way of coping when sanity will no longer do." (Home Girls, 103)

Madness. Yes. A 38 year old woman in Pittsburgh that is single? That is madness. This city? Where everyone has nieces and nephews out the wazoo? Where early marriage is the norm? It wants to make you run into the woods. (Or put your heads under the cover and watch those four ladies in New York walk around in their Manolo Blahniks and talk about how hard it is to find a good man.)

And then, well, it looks like she's lazy. But maybe she's just SCARED.

I remember sitting on the steps of the porch, waiting for the airport shuttle, talking with a man I thought I was going to marry, and saying, "Are we nuts? Is this going to work?" And me saying, as I had said time and time before, "scared is just sacred with the words in the wrong order." But somewhere between THAT heartbreak and the rest, I forgot. This is the year of remembering. And it is the year of healing.

to be continued...

What I'm learning these days about health...

This is from a book I've been devouring, All I did was ask, by the host of NPR's Fresh Air, Terry Gross. It's from Sonny Rollins.

Terry Gross: You're a virtuoso performer, but you're known for practicing nearly every day.

Sonny Rollins: Monk said to me one time that if it wasn't for music, life wouldn't be worth living. You know, if I don't play my horn for a while, I actually get sick. I wonder, "Well, gee, what's the matter with me?" And I realize that I haven't played my horn for a few days.

I haven't been blogging so much, so you don't know that I have been catching every kind of infection known to man (or woman.) I will not bore (or gross you out) with the details, but I spend a lot of time on the internet looking for home remedies, or talking to friends, or actually at the doctor or pharmacy. Right now I have a nasty cold. It's Day-Quil resistant. I mean I'm taking Day-Quil, but whereas that usually takes care of the symptoms, I still have them. They're just WORSE when the four hours is up. Yesterday I was supposed to doctor up at 4:30 and at 5:30 I had the worse sneeze attack.

But here's the thing: in the past year (or two) I have not been walking daily, or taking pictures daily, or blogging daily. And my health has suffered.

I've never read Dr. Zviago, because those Russian novels, I cannot keep track of all the characters with all the nicknames...I wonder if it's on audio!! But somewhere along the road, I found a quote that was attributed to that book (or the movie). If you wake up every morning and go to a job you hate, you will get sick.

Well, I don't hate my job. But there are difficult people that I have to deal with (yes, bullies) on a fairly daily basis, and for a lot of reasons it is time to move on.

More later. I'm hitting publish even though this isn't nearly done because blogging is a time-driven medium. We'll come back to it.

So get used to it--your RSS feeds are going to be getting more from Sarah Louise on a more daily basis.

Mwah!

"Do you think you look like Colin Farrell?"

(Charlotte, to Anthony Marentino, in the last episode of Sex and the City)

In this moment, Charlotte has gone into Chanel to find something to wear to meet the biological parents of the baby she and Harry are intending to adopt. And Anthony says, it's so "TV movie," because the parents are from, guess where? Charlotte! And in the movie, he would be played by Colin Farrell. Charlotte pauses, and says kindly, "Do you think you look like Colin Farrell?"

I had one of those moments today. (Or I think it was today.) (Sorry, the cold is making me all fuzzy.) I was g-chatting with someone and shared that I have a crush. And I shared the age of that crush. And there was a HUGE pause. And finally she said, "Do you think he's interested in you in that way?" And, um, NO. There is no indication that he sees me as anything but this older woman that he is friends with in a class that will be ending in five weeks. Which is why it is a crush. (The thing is, there are no available men in my life that are my age.) (Currently.) (Hoping that will change.) But what I said to g-chat friend was this: the fact that I have a crush (and baby lust? moi?) is letting me know that I am still alive, there is still some kick left.

*********

I realized something today. I used to use blogging as conversation. Instead of talking to people in my life, I blogged for people "living in" computers. Today, instead of blogging about the crazy weekend that included a family wedding, I emailed my sister and told her what really upset me. And she responded with what really upset her. And you know what? Instead of us both stewing, we shared our equally valid strong opinions with each other. We're communicating!! And life is good. She said she liked that I had opinions, it was very Elizabeth Bennett of me. Which, coming from my sister, is a high compliment.

So...it's an adventure, discovering what this blog is going to become, now that I'm back occasionally. I want to go back and read what I wrote, but I want to move forward too.

Time to go to bed.

these are the days of miracle and wonder, don't cry, baby don't cry....

So.

You know how spring happens? You've trudged through every gray day of this solid snowy winter, a winter that tied you down to parking chairs, to boots every day, to hot tea, to wet woolen socks and double comforters and flannel sheets. Bad driving, near accidents as you slide down (or up) One Wild Way, the street the Zoo is on. Ice on your gutters. Ice on your steps. Too much rock salt, and your landlord will have to fix steps again this spring, as he has to every spring.

And then one day, one day. You happen to look over at the lawn and see out of the corner of your eye something...color? Yes, it is the first crocuses of spring, and you take pictures and your friends at work, who live in the suburbs where there are trees and colder temperatures and snow still covering their lawns and they are jealous. You take pictures every day, marking the new ones that appear, the tulip leaves that are coming up, defiantly, saying, "na na na na, na na na na, hey hey, winter, goodbye!"

And all at once it is like that in your life. Boom boom boom, the changes in your life are like a box of March Madness basketballs let loose in an empty gym. Ph.d in Children's library work? That makes SO much more sense than the MFA in fiction or non-fiction. It is relief. Your friends say, you are more animated when you talk about it, that's good. And the funny thing is that it took from last spring's crocuses through summer, fall, winter, for the ideas to come back to the first idea you had, last February, last March, when North Hills Sally's husband was thinking to take a job far away.

Some changes are like that--you plant the tulips in late October, or at the latest, early November, and you forget about them. You go on with your life, go to work, get your coffee, start up the computer, shut off the computer, drive to work, drive home. And then, one day, the flowers come up. You go to a new church and you realize it is time to switch churches...which means leaving one. And the changes roll and roll and roll, like the runaway basketballs, blooming, like the early crocuses and the defiant tulips.

And all at once, you want your feet in the sand, you want to see the sun rise and set on the sea, you want to kayak in the marsh. And you are determined, you think, I'm gonna do this, if it costs me my entire income tax refund. (Which it won't, by the way.)

But all of a sudden, you are extravagant, and you want to buy the world a Coke, and you want to hug everyone and in an instant, you want to cry, for the five years, the people you are leaving behind when you get that letter of transfer from the Presbytery. And all of a sudden, it's not scary, it's matter of fact. I'm doing this. You can't stop me, you wouldn't want to. Let's sit and have some tea, and mourn the time we had. I won't forget the way you wear your hat. I won't forget the way you hold your knife. And if I forget your birthday, you'll forgive me, because it is still too painful to embrace you.

of audiobooks and read-alouds...

So...I'm sitting at work reading the first in color edition of Horn Book magazine. WOW! And at once, I'm entranced, drawn in to read a magazine I've loved since I discovered it, who knows when. Any children's librarian worth her mettle knows about Horn Book, but just in case you haven't, it's like the New Yorker. For children's books. It is all about children's books. A lot of its real estate is taken up by reviews, but there are also scholar-level essays about (in this issue) why color is important. Or comparing Anita Curtis Klause's vampire novel, The Silver Kiss, to the Stephenie Meyer Twilight series.

And then I'm sucked into an article called, "What makes a good read-aloud for middle graders?" in the "What makes a good...?" series. And all at once, I'm taken back to fourth grade, when Mrs. Medina read us Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing. Which was the real accelerator to my reading career. I had to read everything Judy Blume had written. It was 1980, and I was living overseas, in Tegucigalpa, Honduras. I had one bookstore that had English language books, and a library with a not so current collection. Judy Blume hadn't even written Tiger Eyes yet. Or Super Fudge. But she had written Starring Sally J. Freedman as herself,* and Deenie, and Then Again, Maybe I won't, and of course, Are you there God, it's me, Margaret. My friends and I gobbled each one, whole. We didn't get all the stuff that parents balk at, because generally, if we didn't understand a bit, we skipped over it. I actually did a research paper on Judy Blume in high school, had to get special permission, because she was a children's author, everyone else was writing about Hemingway, or Dickens. I never got to most of adult reading. I've been stuck in the children's section ever since. (My love for chick lit aside.)

But I've gotten ahead of myself.

I adore audio books. Adore. Sometimes I prefer the audio to the printed copy of the book.

And what is an audio book, but a book read aloud, sometimes by the author?

I must think about this more. But for now, I'll leave you with that. I am dumbfounded that I never made the connection before.

A quote from the Horn Book article:

"Reading picture books aloud to younger children is common practice--teachers during the school day, parents at bedtime. But reading aloud in the middle grades is less widespread. Once children start reading on their own, the demands of curriculum, testing, and the ever more splintered schedule cause teachers to abandon the practice. What a loss! At every age, listening to someone reading aloud is a gift." (66)

____________
*I remember having an argument with a friend about the pronunciation of that title. It's pronounced "staring," I insisted. My friend was from the South, and I said only stuck up people would pronounce it with a long a sound. (This is what comes from NOT reading aloud to your children, people.)

McDonnell, Christine, "What makes a good read-aloud for middle grades," Horn Book Magazine, Jan/Feb 2010: 66-72. Print.

Note (a day later, after this was initially posted): when I shared my epiphany with my boss, a children's librarian of many decades, and a bonified storyteller, she almost but not quite said, well, doy! Which made me realize that it's been FOREVER since someone besides Jim Collins or Malcolm Gladwell or any number of amazing audio book readers have read aloud to me. My favorite audio book as a child was "Mouse Soup" by Arnold Lobel. My dad read many fairy tales to me (my favorite being, no surprise here, Cinderella.) But as I do not have a husband/boyfriend in my life to read to me, and no children to read to (aside from the Mother Goose crowd), for me, it was an epiphany. I said to her, "it's been a long time since someone has read aloud to me." And she said, "That makes me sad." (or similar words.) (Memoir writing--where we don't always remember the words, but the sense of them.)

Le sigh. But we move on.

A man cannot serve two masters...or root for two teams.

Yesterday was a day of mixed allegiances. I went to morning church so I could watch the Gold Medal Hockey team. I cheered for both teams, secretly hoping for Canada to win.

I am a realist, and a traitor. Realistic in that I knew the game would go past the 5 o'clock start of my church. Realistic in that I knew in my heart of hearts that I wanted the other team, the one not called Team USA, to win.

How do we sort out this life? I went to morning church, at a quiet Presbyterian church that I have "a crush" on. Since I'm often tired of my own church, with the people ten to twenty years younger than me, all the babies, all the new couples...it was nice to go to a place where people sat in pews, not chairs, and not everyone sat together, and the music was nice and predictable and I was able to worship because it was familiar. (I often think that our pastors experiment too much.) They had a honest to goodness coffee hour, instead of a "take down the chairs" half hour. People stood around and talked, and some people figured out I was a stranger and talked to me. Does loving W church mean I love the Open Door less? I am invested at the OD, I do visuals once every 5th or 6th Sunday. There are people there that I have relationships with, some going back more than the five years we've been a church. But I tire of it. I guess we all tire of home at some time, that's why we have to go on vacation? So was going to W church a vacation? And like the beaches, the warm air that we know we can't take home, I was tapping into some parts of the service that I miss?

And, by liking W church, was I cheating on the Open Door? Which leads right into why I went to morning church--USA vs. Canada in Olympic hockey. Now, as sports go, I am a Penguins fan first. I did not grow up thinking that the US was a hockey powerhouse, and while I want the American skaters to win, I also want the best skaters to win. So I cheered for Kim Yu-Na, who was amazing and graceful in both the short and free programs in figure skating.

So...if I don't expect USA to be a hockey powerhouse, and it was the miracle of the goalie, Ryan Miller, that got the US team to the Gold medal game, and I am a Penguins fan first, well...I have to say, those things said, I felt a little bit like Benedict Arnold. Traitor. How could I root for the Canadians? But I didn't know the Americans. The Canadian team was full of names I recognized, and two that I loved. Eric Staal, Marc Andre Fleury, and yes, Sidney "Sid the Kid" Crosby. So, faced with rooting for players I didn't know and love vs. rooting for players I did know and love? I was rooting for Canada. But, not outwardly. So it was the most boring hockey game I'd ever watched, because I didn't care who won. When we went to overtime, I flipped a coin and determined that for the OT I would root for the US team. And I did. But when Crosby got that goal, I was dancing in my seat. I could not have been prouder of the 22-year-old Canadian who has skated his way into my heart.

Does that make me a bad person? To some, it does. On FaceBook, a college classmate came out and said that she was rooting for the Canadians. And she was reprimanded again and again, in the comments. I said, hey, you're still fine in my boat, and I'm secretly hoping for O Canada to be sung at the end of the game. Then I sunk my boat. I said, "It's not as if we're playing Russia." To which another friend of my friend (but a stranger to me) wrote, SL, move north, and if we were playing Russia, I'd root for them because of Ovechkin, (the Russian player for the Washington Capitols who has captured so many hearts in and outside of the Beltway.) Which to me pointed out the irony--it was not okay for T to root for Canada, outright, but this person would root for Russia because of Ovechkin, which is essentially why I was rooting for Canada.

Confused yet?

It's easy for me to say, "buck up, it's just a game." I am not a Japanese skater who lives and breathes the rivalry between the countries of Korea and Japan. I am not an American skater who against all odds got to the medal game and lost to the captain of the reigning Stanley Cup team, lost again to Canada, as we have in games before. There are roots that go deeper than one game, or even as many games as it takes to get to the Gold Medal game.

I like a church with a coffee hour. I like a church with a small vocal ensemble. I like sermons that tell a story, so beautifully written that I can't take notes, but the images stay in my head for days after. We are a collection of our experiences, of our childhood memories. And my childhood memory is of coffee hour. My childhood memory is not of hockey--I only became a fan in 1997, and it was automatically the Penguin nation that I adhered to, not the American city where it's played, the American country where it resides.

I grew up all over. I rooted for Honduras in the World Cup in 1982. My personality is not one of severe traditional jealousy for the home team. What is the home team? If you were to take it literally, my home team would be the Washington Capitols. But I wasn't a hockey fan when I lived in the DC area as a teen. And there is a strange phenomenon in geographic allegiance: once a Pittsburgher, always a Pittsburgher. If you've lived here long enough to pass the Pittsburghese quiz, use a parking chair in a major snowstorm, see the Pens go for the Stanley Cup and win, see the Steelers go for the Heisman trophy and win, you may move, but Pittsburgh will always be a part of you. I bleed black and gold.

I don't know. This is convoluted thinking that I'm not going to try to fully sort out here.

and the days go by...

These are strange days, strange days indeed.

We are driving strangely in Pittsburgh these days.

We have gotten used to passing stopped cars, as long as we can get past them. They wait for us to drive by so they can back into their dug out parking spot, the one that has been saved by a "parking chair" all day.

We are driving below the speed limit, especially when white stuff is falling from the sky, and coating the road. In defense of our cars' transmissions, we drive to avoid potholes, even if that means crossing the median line for a minute.

And speaking of potholes, where does the macadam go? The road gets a hole, but surely the macadam has to go somewhere...

****

I drove into Oakland today, and driving out, I hoped to take the Crosstown Blvd. on my way to the North Hills. Instead, I was in the wrong lane at the wrong time and ended up driving through town. At one point I followed a car up a street I'd never been up before (because there was traffic stoppage ahead that I didn't want to contribute to.)

It was the first time in what felt like months that I crossed the river on the Veteran's Bridge instead of the RD Fleming or the Highland Park Bridges.

Driving to work wasn't that bad. I was in a foul mood, but beyond that, the roads were decent. Driving home was another story. The parking lot was a few inches deep of soupy slush, and my boots were soaked through before I had even finished clearing the snow off my car. I got drive-thru McD's, ate it in the Staples parking lot (the McD's parking lot was too treacherous, as it had not been well plowed from previous snows.) I ate every last golden fry, licked the ketchup off my fingers, and got back on the road, driving at 20 in a 25 zone, where drivers generally drive 30, 35 mph. It took me an hour, crawling through the snow, not caring if SUV's passed me by (though few did.)

When I got home, I forgot that I hadn't moved my parking chair into my space, so I parked my car in the middle of the road and went to remove...oh, it's still on the sidewalk. I got back in the car, parked it, and greeted Max, who has taken to shoveling and salting our walks as if he owned the house we live in.

Me: "Thank you for doing that."
Max: "Sure." (I know he takes a masculine pride in it.)

We have such bittersweet history, and my heart pounded as I walked up the stairs to my apartment and put my key in the lock, going over the sentences we'd spoken:

Me: "It took me an hour to get home."
Max: "I'm glad you're home"
Me: "Yeah, me too." (I was already out of visual sight by the time the last two sentences were spoken, we spoke them as if we were characters in a play, these were the words we should say to to each other.)

If you didn't know better, you'd say it sounded like a conversation amongst intimates, not repartee between two people who live on different floors, people who rarely if ever pass each other in the hall. And yet we were intimates two years ago for about six months. I was his first girl, and I know the weight of that, since my first boy, more than twenty years ago, still impacts how I see men, and that ain't good.

Two years have passed, and only now am I realizing that part of me died in the last embers of our days as boy and girl. And though I am back, I'm me, there are parts of me that never regenerated, parts of me that I have survived these two years without, that only now I realize I miss, and I want them back. And I have no idea where they are, where to look for them.

It wasn't just him--it was the end of an era. I finally realized that this was the last boy I would ever date who didn't share my values. I had always dated attractive, fun, somewhat pompous boys who thought it was cute that I went to church, but had no desire to join me, or if they joined me, it was merely to support me, not for any spiritual reason of their own. And while dating Max, I realized that I needed someone who had their own spiritual reasons. So as Max and I were dating, I was coming to conclusions about all the boys I had dated in my twenties. Just as I was Max's first girl, Max was my last boy. The next date I go on will be with a man. Which is a really scary thought, since I am still very much girl.

I don't know where I'm going. But I know I can't stay here. And so I travel on.

Books I didn't read as of January

...that need to go back to their respective libraries:

Today I will: a year of quotes, notes, and promises to myself by Eileen & Jerry Spinelli
(found that it was more of a "literary devotional" than what I wanted, with a quote, a homily, and an affirmation.)

Girl Group Confidential: the ultimate guide to starting, running, and enjoying your own women's group by Jennifer Worick. (I find that I want to be that person that starts something but in the end, right now, for better or for worse, I prefer to just show up.) But it looks like a good book. Not sure I even opened it...

the amazing adventures of working girl: real life career advice you can actually use by Karen Burns
I wish this book had been available to me sixteen years ago, and it's the sort of book I would recommend to my sister, who is ten years behind me in her journeys, though her journey at work is so different from mine. the hold slip in this book is in the chapter called, "boss from hell." Let's not go there.

Biggest Loser simple swaps: 100 easy changes to start living a healthier lifestyle by Cheryl Forberg et al. This is the sort of book I would buy if I wanted to admit that I'm not crazy about the fact that I've gone up two jeans sizes. But I never ever opened it, and it is now the item on my library record that would block me from taking anything else out if I didn't know how to override that. The library that owns it wants it back or wants my $28.00. (This is the book that started this exercise.)

You're so money: live rich even when you're not by Farnoosh Torabi. Another book that I would buy if I bought books right now. I started reading it, but I'm still pretty much in denial. Oh, the tax refund will take care of...etc. BLECH!! I got as far as p. 16.

Cooking with all things Trader Joes by Deanna Gunn and Wona Miniati. If I read cook books...This book still has the hold slip in it, which means I never even cracked the spine.

Writing and Publishing: the librarian's handbook. Edited by Carol Smallwood. This is the book I would read if I believed that I could read it at work. (I guess I'm not a committed enough librarian that I want to take my work home...) And since it's an ALA guide, it probably retails at $50. It's the one book I would buy tomorrow if I had an extra $50.

*I apologize to all my Indy book lovers that all my links are Amazon. Unfortunately, it is the easiest way to link to book titles, and give folks the option of reading reviews beyond the tiny ones I'm giving here.

I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free.

So, here we are. The 4th biggest snow fall in Pittsburgh weather history. Breaking all the records for February snowfall.

To commemorate this momentous occasion, I constructed this photo essay...for you!

This is the view from my street at 7 am, taken through the glass door.

Seriously, that is a lot of snow.

Wow, there's a bit of car under there!

Oh, and we can see by its markings that it is a Chevy.

The back window...

It must be my car, it has a "Got Milkweed?" bumper sticker.

It's beginning to look like a car under there...

Across the street, you can see what my car looked like before it looked like THIS.

I am covered in snow, just as dusk is falling. Time to go in and make some dinner.

______________________
*Michelangelo

Girl date!

So...I'm meeting someone for lunch today. A librarian that I "met" through at least two mutual friends. We've been twittering and facebooking and emailing and finally today we're having lunch!

And we're doing brown bag. So I had to go to the grocery store for some things to go with my PB&J and it was like shopping for a date...shall I get pretzels, and what kind? Oh, and I should get some fruit, so I'm all balanced. I ended up getting yogurt, because I actually eat that...

And I got quarters, just in case my usual jammed parking meter is a) not available b) finally fixed.

In other news, my back sprain is probably not just muscle but also ligament. Which takes longer to heal because less blood flows near/around/through them. (Will have to do a Google/Bing/WebMD search.) So 2x weekly chiro visits for a while.

What else? Listening to A long way down (Nick Hornby) for the umpteenth time. I've decided I'm buying the audio soon, as it's one that I get out on a regular basis. It's grumpy enough to be okay when you're having a bad day but funny enough that you might laugh as you whiz through the intersection in Morningside before the Rite Aid.

Speaking of Rite Aid, the price of Epsom Salt has gone up. I bought two boxes for $2/each, but that was the sale price. The regular price seems to be anywhere from 3.39 to 3.99. And it looks like the norm is going away from the milk carton packaging to plastic bags, ick. But, bonus, I got some more tickets for the Life game they are playing/promoting.

See you next time!!

To blog or not to blog, that is the question...

You have surely noticed that I'm barely pretending to keep up this blog. And that I supposedly off working on studying for my GREs, preparing my portfolio for my MFA application, and other "important" work.

Yeah, right.

So I've been contemplating coming back, a bit a week...maybe.

But I couldn't not share this beautiful book with you, it reminds me of Paula's blog. Blogging for Bliss: crafting your own online journal. This is the book I'd read if I had time to really craft and really blog. It's by Tara Frey and features what seems like a hundred blogger profiles. So much of it is the stuff we all learned by trial and error, but it is a beautiful book, one that I would recommend if you are really hoping to make it blogging, for reals, not just piecemeal like yours truly.

It talks about HTML, manners, ads vs. no ads. And at $14.95, it's a bargain.

The best part are the almost 100 blogger profiles. The other stuff is mostly on the job training. (Unless you are a beginner. Then, it is doubly great.)

Tara's blog, typing out loud, is stunning. It is a place I would go every day, (if I trolled the blogosphere daily, which I don't anymore.)

Up up in the air, in my beautiful, my beautiful balloon...

(in which Sarah Louise plays film critic, poorly, and scours Rotten Tomatoes site to find proof that she is correct.)

Someone tell Hollywood that they need better storytellers. Two weeks in a row I've gone to the movies, expecting laughter and a good story. I got the first (I even got tears with today's dish) but story was lacking.

When I was just a girl (to the tune of "Loves me like a Rock" by Paul Simon) in English, we learned about the up and down of a plot. You have the beginning, the climax, and the rest. Sometimes you can get away with having the climax at the very end. But sometimes you can't. Especially if your story isn't strong.

That is what happened with the two vapid movies I saw the past two weeks.

(Spoiler alert: the two movies were "It's Complicated" and "Up in the Air.")

To preface, both had great trailers. And UITA had six actual people that I converse with online or in person tell me, "oh, good movie."

Um.

If you consider a movie that has good acting and makes you laugh enough, okay. But I don't. I want good story, and I will take bad acting if you give me good story.

Both of these movies were headed in one direction story wise, and then climaxed, and went in the opposite direction (or, in both cases, took the main character exactly to where they were when the movie started, just with a few more experiences under their belts.)

In "It's Complicated," Meryl Streep's ex-husband Alec Baldwin wants to get back together b/c his current marriage is failing. It sure looks like they're having fun and that this is where the movie is going. But no, we are not given all the information, and Meryl comes to the conclusion that they've been apart too long and it would never work. Now, yes, that is a good story. IF you fill it out with Meryl really wrestling with it. And you show not tell us how it's totally NOT going to work. But no, Nancy Meyers decided that she could just tell us that Meryl would be better off with her architect Steve Martin, who seemed entirely milque toast. Blech.

In "Up in the Air," George Clooney loves his life lived in airports and airplanes. He fires people for a living, he, the man who is kind of married to his job. Two women come into his life, one as a protege, one as a love interest. Wow, maybe George is going to have a chance to see what life is really about, relationships...and then WHAM! We find out that Alex (George's on the road lover) is married, with kids. That she was playing George, and figured George was playing along. OUCH! Now, yes, that is good storytelling. If you give us some foreshadowing. If you show us some character growth. However, if you then don't show George changing at all, and you then put George back up in the air (did I mention he was going to be grounded, the job was changing) and he's back where he was at the beginning. Nothing has changed, not really, except that now George realizes he's lonely. And then the movie ENDS.

Now, I like other work by these directors. Nancy Meyer's movie The Holiday is sheer chick flick smaltz and I eat it up. Yes, we have no idea if these transatlantic romances will work, but we don't care. They dance the night away and tomorrow will take care of itself.

I liked Thank you for not smoking and I adored Juno (Jason Reitman's other two films.)

Some other folks that agree with me on
:

From Dan Jardin's Cinemania: Jardin talks about the contrast of the folks that have lost their jobs (interesting, vibrant) to the boredom of the business travelers (Clooney, Farmigia, and Kendrick)

...these moments of honesty that hover around the fringes of the film serve mainly to highlight the banality of the main plot line and the superciliousness of the lives of the characters we are supposed to care about. I wanted to learn more about the real folks whose lives had been ruined, and would have been quite content had I never met [Clooney, Farmigia, or Kendrick.]

Jay Antani at Cinemawriter.com talks about the depth that could have happened in Reitman's movie:

It’s a movie of missed opportunities, wherein Reitman could have plumbed the dark depths of the betrayal, loneliness, and denial that make up the core of Bingham’s wounded self. He could, thereby, have made the moral payoff of his conclusion feel well-earned and satisfying. As it is, he’s got the right actor for the job, but his movie lacks the guts.

I could go on. But it's late, and this blogger is out of practice writing using other people's words...

I just think that if I'm going to spend good money on popcorn and a movie ticket that I should get a good story along with good acting. Because I care the most about story. I will forgive bad acting for good story, but NOT the other way around.

At least my plate has penguins on it...

Watching the Winter Classic. Learning that I really don't care about hockey if I don't know who is playing. Off to check movie times...

singing...

to babies in 3 minutes. I posted about allergies on the SL gets better blog.

it was better in my mind...

So, in the bath (eureka) this morning, I was thinking about my favorite show of late, The Good Wife. And everybody's dreamboat, Chris Noth. How, if at almost 38, I had a locker, his picture would be up there.

This is such the perfect role for him, and at a perfect time. He's had all this time to be the good guy/bad guy on SATC, and so women are used to him being a cad, but coming out good in the end, and now he's in this role where he is in JAIL and still, looking oh so cute, and...

this is not coming out word perfect like when I was in the bath. Darn. It was all beautiful and it was going to convince you to watch The Good Wife, if you aren't already doing so, Tuesdays at ten, CBS.

Oh, and there's my timer. Gotta get the quiche out of the oven, yum.

Well, I posted. And posting, this month at least, means just that, even if it is warmed over and not so tasty.

I woke up thinking about 8+7

The trouble about this kind of blogging (which is not mommy bloggging, since I have no child, but not niche blogging since I don't blog about old cars or poker) is that I tend to write about myself. Ah, that favorite subject. But since I write about myself, and my ideas, I get personal. And so I forget that this is a computer and I want someone to answer me back. Which happens, sometimes. But not all the times. So my search for approval and friendship on the interwebs brings me right back to the fact that I need more face to face time with people. Which I am working on. Also, writing morning pages (3 pages every morning, a la Julie Cameron and TAW) helps, because instead of blurting out all my ideas to a computer and expecting approval, expecting conversation, I know that I'm writing on a page and that no one will read it until I want them to, and that I'm more having conversations with myself.

Last night, after church, I spent about an hour finishing transcribing the first story that I'm putting in my MFA portfolio. (A fiction portfolio should have 2 stories and equal a total of 20-30 pages.) So I rewarded myself with what I thought was the last 20 minutes of Cold Case. Nope, it was 3 Rivers. Well, I'm not going to start with another show (I already am loyal to The Good Wife and Numb3rs) so I turned the TV off. Moved some furniture around. I got rid of a desk and a bookcase this weekend, and to pull of the getting rid of part, I had to move furniture. I used to have a tiny bookcase at the top of my staircase, where I put my keys, etc. But it was a little tight manuevering. But I never thought about putting it somewhere else...until I got rid of the bookcase that was on the landing. And so all weekend, the landing was NAKED. (The horrors!) So I thought, why don't I put the keys bookcase on the landing? So I did, angled it, and I think it looks lovelier than it did in its original home. Maybe I'll start using it for mail, instead of piling mail on the floor of the landing...

Oh, so where was that train going? Oh, Cold Case. So after I'd done some apartment improvement, I turned on Cold Case, which was 10 minutes in. And soon realized that while it is a cool show and I love seeing the flashbacks, it is not on the same par as The Good Wife and Numb3rs, so maybe I would finish my book instead. Which I did.

Books last week:

The Year of the Rat by Grace Lin, sequel to The Year of the Dog. A nice middle grade book about a first generation Taiwanese-American girl (her parents are immigrants) who lives in upstate New York. It's also illustrated by the author, little whimsical drawings, which won my heart over. A little confusing, since the author says it's fiction, yet she uses her own home names, Pacy (for home, with family) and Grace (for school). So I kept wondering...is this a memoir? Apparently not, according to the author's note at the end, though the part about a friend moving away was true. But why use your own name in a novel? Other than that bizarro twist, I would recommend it, ages 8+

The Grace Livingston Hill Story. Hi, I'm Sarah Louise and I'm a GLH-aholic. I'm better than I was, but I used to tear through her romances like crazy. The first one I read was White Orchids. In a flurry of I'm getting rid of stuff because I'm/we're moving, I got rid of it at the end of high school. I missed it, and now have another copy. Phew! That actually happened with another book, Sparrow Lake, too, which is out of print, so more it's more of a story that I have another copy, just happened upon it one day and said, yes, this is that book that I thought was too sad to ever read again but I want to read it again and be sad. Where was I? Oh yes. I really liked the Grace Livingston Hill bio, because her books can be a little sugary and we're so poor and honest and godly. Her first husband was a morphine addict! At the time when they didn't know morphine was addictive and there were no rehab centers. He was a pastor, so all the more shocking. And her second husband was a musician who was very childish, who she finally told, leave, and don't come back. No word of an actual divorce, since, you know, not godly. While I love her novels, they are sheer escapism and now I understand a little more about why. SHE needed the escape. And I never knew that the books were her bread and butter, since her first husband died at 35, leaving her with two young daughters to raise. So, of course they were a little formulaic, she was pounding them out, 2 or 3 a year.

Oh, and the title. I have always had trouble with 8+7. How in the heck do they make 15? But I was talking to my mother (retired schoolteacher) about it yesterday, and she said they are now teaching about the "doubles" in math. 6+6=12, so go up or down one for 13 or 11. Same with 7+7. It is so much clearer!! My mother goes back to teaching Wednesday. Her former colleague is having a scheduled C-section Tuesday and my mother will teach for the duration of her maternity leave, which is til the end of the quarter, some time in February.

Well, my dearies, off to take a picture, the one you see up there. Ciao for now.

This is it ...(no, really, really not.)

I had completely forgotten about NaNoWriMo and NaBloPoMo. I have decided to participate in the latter.

Stay tuned, I have a post about Nick Hornby's new book, Juliet, Naked, and how I thought about it a lot while watching the movie made from Michael Jackson's rehearsals for his once and no longer future last concerts. But if you want to go see This is it, don't wait for my review, it needs to simmer. And if you're on the fence, go see Amelia. (Next on my list.)

I bet you're wondering where I've been and why I'm not blogging as much anymore...it's that I'm trying to work on a portfolio and it's hard to keep up with daily blogging, Twitter, Facebook, oh, and that pesky thing that pays my bills, work.

I'm also trying to get away from the approval curve. A lot of why I blogged in the beginning was because I thought it was something cool people did and I wanted to be cool. And when I lucked into a sweet community and started getting comments, I felt like I had hit the cool pot of gold. The other night the president of Drew, the first African American and first woman president etc, etc. was on Tavis Smiley. And Tavis asked her about approval. And she said (paraphrased from memory, folks), I work hard to excel, not for approval. This is the way I would do it anyways.

I am SO not there. I want people to like my eggplant spaghetti sauce. I want people to re-tweet my tweets. I want to be a Newbery author. I want to be like Sally Fields and stand up there on stage, "You like me! You really like me!"

And folks, nothing like approval seeking to kill the lust for hard work. Approval seeking wants glitter and glamor and recognition.

So I've been working on very non-glamorous Morning Pages, as a part of my "artist in recovery" work with Julia Cameron's book, The Artist's Way. If you can do it, get some friends to do it with you, it's hard to stay honest if it's just you. I'm in a closed blog with some Twitter friends, and boy is it good to be able to say, no, I did not write today, and for that to be okay, because other people didn't either. Of course, we seek excellence, but we are human, and we will always always always fail.

So, I hereby promise to write most days this month, right here. I do not promise to write every day or to only give you fresh writing every day. But I'll be here, and if you show up, I hope you take a minute to say hi. It's the only way I'll know you stopped by, because I don't have a thing-y that catches visits. See? It's been so long I can't remember the name of that silly thing-a-ma-jig-y, because it was tied in with my own personal am I good enough approval rating.

with x's and o's,
me.