Collected readings

A few things of interest, pulled from my feeds, stuff shared by friends on Google Reader:

Wii As Liberator from The Daily Dish

My Bed Is Empty from Aiming Low

Some Types of Candles May Pollute Indoor Air from CNN

Getting Real About the High Cost of Cheap Food from Time

How to increase consumer responsibility from super eco

Every Green Mom Needs Someone In Her Corner from 7Gen blog

Bullying

Four year old girls are bullies. And victims of bullies. And it's not just "the way girls act" and the girls who are threatened emotionally and/or psychologically - which is the preferred methodology among girls, as opposed to threats of physical violence - are not to blame. Teachers who ignore this problem or deny that it is a problem need to change their ways of thinking and acting.

I'm doing a good bit of reading up on the topic, and recognizing and identifying some baggage from my past in the process. I'll try to report more once I finish reading Odd Girl Out, which, by the way, is quite a fascinating book.

Delightfully fun reading

I picked up a copy of Dead Until Dark several weeks ago, but I haven't had the chance to read it until recently. I finished it this evening and really enjoyed it: fun, fast-paced, and not too formulaic. I may even pick up the second book in the series, Living Dead in Dallas, tomorrow - Hubs will grumble about me reading and "shutting out the whole family" but since I don't buy into his whining on that topic, I'll just keep reading anyway. ;) I like the combination of naivete and experience in the main character, Sookie Stackhouse, and I think there are currently eight titles in the series, with a ninth due for publication next year. For those of you lucky enough to have HBO, these are the novels on which the show True Blood is based. I'm very interested to see the television series, but I'll wait for it to come to DVD.

Great new read

Thanks to a tip from a dear friend, I stopped by Margaret and Helen this morning. Maybe you've already heard of them? They're a pair of octogenarians who've been best friends for sixty years. Helen's grandson set up a blog for the two of them, although Helen seems to post more frequently than Margaret. So far in my reading, I've discovered that Helen has a lot to say about politics and current events, and she's not shy about it. Her language is even a bit colorful at times - my sweet Southern grandmama, she isn't. For those of you leaning toward the old white dude in the election, you may find that Helen disagrees with your proclivities, vociferously. I'm looking forward to hearing more from these fun ladies.

Recent reading

See that box over there? ----->
The one that says, "Recently Read"? I'm a bit trigger-happy with the Share button on Google Reader, and the many articles, blog posts, and lolcats that I mark show up over there. Here are a few highlights from this evening's reading, just for some bonus fun:

The Sarah Palin pity party (Salon), which my bff shared first with me, raises the question: Do you feel sorry for Sarah Palin's obvious ineptitude? And yes, I'm poised with the mute button, and I've snarked about her a bit on Twitter during this "debate."

Ig Nobels honor weird science: Coca-Cola as contraceptive (CNN) discusses the sperm-killing powers of my favorite carbonated beverage.

FDA Considers Banning OTC Cough Medicines For All Children Under 6 (Consumerist) and FDA Urged to Recall Cold Medicines for Youngsters (AP)

Mmmmm, books! Yummy!

I'm still sick, as I mentioned in my post last week, but whilst laying about feeling like crap, I have devoured all four of the books in Stephanie Meyer's Twilight series. I think I'll take Avitable's suggestion and grab a copy of The Host on my next trip to Wallyworld, since my book buying options are so limited in this town. I really enjoyed the series - not perfect, but very engaging. I got kind of annoyed with Bella and Edward at times. But I'll post a more coherent review when I have less sinus pain and more mental strength to pull my thoughts together.

Wow.

I finished reading Twilight. Good thing I picked up copies of New Moon, Eclipse, and Breaking Dawn so I can keep going!

As expected, Hubs was very jealous of my close relationship with a book this afternoon. He thought my sinuses and I should be doing something more "productive." Whatever.

more animals

Currently reading...

I finally broke down. I've wanted to read it for many weeks, but I knew that, if I started, I would probably be hooked and have a hard time putting it down. So I didn't buy a copy until Friday. And now, this afternoon, since I'm sick anyway, I'm going to start reading it. Twilight (The Twilight Saga, Book 1)

Rosemary Wells' McDuff books

Big Girl and I went to the bookstore at the local dirt mall on Friday, and we picked up some new books for her and her brother to enjoy. Both of them are big fans of Rosemary Wells' McDuff series, which depicts the adventures of a cute white West Highland terrier named McDuff and his owners, Lucy and Fred. The illustrations are fun and well-executed, and the stories are accessible and cute. Both kids really love the McDuff character, and each story has a light-hearted message that we can discuss together. Big Girl likes to examine all of the details in Susan Jeffers' illustrations and discuss them, while Two prefers to focus on the "doggie" and read the stories again and again.

Fun toys for nerds

Among today's stuff:

The Oxford English Dictionary has a word of the day feed!

President McKinley was shot on this day in 1901 (just one of the tidbits from History.com's This Day in History) - I've known about this forever but still enjoy checking it.

Project Gutenberg is amassing quite a nice collection of audio books, some read by humans and others computer-generated.

Little Golden Books

I'm a big fan of Little Golden Books, in part because I remember loving them so much as a child. And now I love to get them for my kids! Unfortunately, sometimes they don't seem to be as well-made as the ones I remember, so that, combined with my kids' rough treatment of some books, can be problematic. But If you get the books that combine several stories in a single volume, the construction tends to be better, in my experience. With that in mind, I recommend:

• 65 Years of Little Golden Books, which includes The Poky Little Puppy, Tootle, The Saggy Baggy Elephant, Tawny Scrawny Lion, Scuffy the Tugboat, and The Shy Little Kitten.
  
  
• Little Golden Book Boxed Set Classic Collection (no repeats from the one above!)
  
  
• Sleepytime Tales, including The Poky Little Puppy, Baby Dear, The Color Kittens, Good Night Little Bear, The Wonderful House, The Friendly Book, The Three Bears, The Sailor Dog, The Boy and the Tigers, I Can Fly, The Sleepy Book, and How The Turtle Got Its Shell
  
  
• Little Golden Book Collection: Farm Tales
  
  
• Little Golden Book Collection: Animal Tales
  
  
• Little Golden Book Collection: Inspirational Tales, which includes Prayers for Children, with lovely old-fashioned illustrations
  
  
• A Family Treasury of Little Golden Books: 46 Best-Loved Stories
  
  
• Butterfly Kisses, a sweet story about a father and daughter that Big Girl just loves.

Yeah, yeah. It's Friday, but I think I was sufficiently vague about posting book recs on or around Thursday...

New plan...

I've been a bit disorganized and lackadaisical in my approach to blogging, and so I've decided to develop a plan, a schedule, as it were (I had a professor in college who used to say "as it were" all the time and it cracked me up). So, I'm going to incorporate a couple of regularly scheduled features into my blogging, in addition to my random stream-of-consciousness posts. Once a week, generally on Tuesdays, I'm going to start posting a recipe. And on Thursdays, I'll post about a book, either one I've read/am reading/want to read, or one that I like for the younger set. Since things are getting increaingly hectic IRL, and I'm trying to impose a little more order to that chaos, I'll bring a little more order to this place too. Feedback welcomed!

Tales from church and other musings

Two walks into the church office with me, and I stop to speak with the Director of Christian Education. Two's getting a bit antsy, so I turn to him and try to engage him:

Me: Two, can you say hi to Mrs. DCE?
Two, loudly: COW POOP!
Mrs. DCE: Did he just say what I thought he said?
Two: Cow poop, cow poop, cow poop. Cow! Poop!
Me: Yes. His grandfather would be so proud - he taught Two to say that.

Fortunately Mrs. DCE has known me for most of my life and knows my family well. She knows of Two's obsession with all things cow-related. And she thought it was pretty darn funny.

And then, a few days later, on Sunday no less:

I was leading a group of little kids, ages 3-7 or so, in a discussion. We were talking about how God can heal you, and I asked each child to share a story about a time when s/he was hurt, and then tell us what or who made them feel better. As we went around the circle, kids shares stories of skinned knees, bike wrecks, scraped elbows, and other wounds which were typically cleaned up by a parent. A band-aid, a kiss, and sometimes a small treat made the injured party feel better. Then we got to Big Girl.

Me: Big Girl, would you like to tell us a story about a time when you were hurt?

Big Girl: Sure! Once upon a time, an alligator bit me, and then-

Me: An alligator? You're making this up, aren't you, Big Girl?

BG: Yep!

Me: What about a real story? Instead of a pretend story, can you think of a real story to tell us?

BG: Ummmm...

At this point, I stepped in and prompted her to recount details of a fall off her trike in the grass at my parents' house, and the group moved on. Here are the key details to take from this story:

Big Girl is obsessed with alligators now and mentions them several times per day. As a consequence of her phobia/fascination with them, we have implemented a strict no-alligator policy at our home. My mother has enacted a similar rule at her house. So Big Girl needn't worry - we won't allow alligators to come in to our houses.

Big Girl loves to make up stories, usually wildly imaginative ones. Her toys often have extended conversations and enact complex dramas under her guidance. I think she may have an imaginary friend or two, but I'm not sure.

Big Girl doesn't always distinguish between reality and imagination, and doesn't really understand why we need to be so strict about that all of the time. And I love that about her. That's why, when she and I picked out a book to start reading chapter-by-chapter at bedtime, I chose Anne of Green Gables, whose wild imagination makes me think of my own girl.

Fascinating article on trolls

The New York Times Magazine has a great piece on trolls. "The Trolls Among Us" features interviews with a few trolls, offering some insight into their motivations and actions. I found this suggestion particularly interesting: "The willingness of trolling 'victims' to be hurt by words, he argued, makes them complicit, and trolling will end as soon as we all get over it." It's an interesting read. You may need to register in order to access the article, if you're not already signed up with NYTimes.com.

Fun Read

I raced through a book yesterday, and it was a fun, easy read. Academy X: A Novel is written from the perspective of a male English teacher at an elite private prep school in New York, and while I couldn't exactly relate, a lot of the themes - academic politics, grade-grubbing students, sex-obsessed teenage students who wear skimpy clothing - sounded very familiar. Some of the classroom descriptions sounded a lot like the groups I encountered at my last teaching job, and the academic politics, while a bit more sinister that most of what I encountered, were pretty amusing. It's a short, fun read, and there were a lot of allusions, to Jane Austen and Charles Dickens novels as well as others, that made things fun for me. I have a bit of a weakness for postmodern novels that recycle and/or reimagine classic novels, and while this wasn't the finest of that genre, the way that the central character taught his students Emma while simultaneously using it to question the events in his life, to see if there were parallels, was a neat device. On the whole, I recommend it to anyone with a passing interest in any of the themes I've mentioned.

I wept my way through a book today.

After all of the flurry of cleaning before the party, I decided I deserved a break. So I spent much of the afternoon reading, at the usual rapid pace that I achieve whenever I'm reading anything that doesn't pertain to my dissertation, and I wept my way through The Time Traveler's Wife. I was in that fabulous reading zone that I love, where I become completely submerged in a book and devour it. Hubs hates it. I honestly think he's jealous of my capacity to tune out the world and read like that, because he always tries to get me to watch stupid things on television or talk about non-pressing issues at the most dramatic points in any given book. Anyway, I enjoyed the fragmented, postmodern qualities of The Time Traveler's Wife. The style was approachable and yet allusive and rich, and I honestly cried for most of the second half, almost continuously. The romance between the two main characters was very well developed, and the plot was unusual and deployed effectively. On one level, I could anticipate some developments, and yet on other levels, even when I reached moments that I saw coming, I didn't find the writing or the plot predictable, and I was still surprised by nuances. I'm interested to check out some of the author's subsequent works, which apparently blend tinted etchings with prose to tell stories.

Mornin', y'all!

We're experiencing another toast shortage here. I'm not sure what got them started on this toast kick, but both Big Girl and Two ask for buttered toast (or sometimes with jelly or jam) for breakfast, with lunch and dinner, and as a snack. So we go through a lot of loaves of bread, and I haven't had the time to track down the bread machine cookbook and bake my own, and the freezer has been thoroughly cleaned of all partial frozen loaves. I could try to pass off a couple of freezer-burned hot dog buns as toast, but the Toastmasters would likely wrinkle their noses in distaste at the off taste. I think I'm going to become fast friends with the woman who runs the bakery outlet in town. At the rate these two consume it, I have no qualms about getting day old bread from the outlet. Plus they have some granola bars and fruit snacks there that are cheap and tasty additions to my friends' dining repertoire.

In other cute gustatory news, Two has developed the charming habit of begging for roasted peanuts, putting them in his mouth to lick off all of the seasonings, and spitting them back out in his hand and presenting them to me. Punk. He doesn't like peanut butter (yes, I know that's strange in a little kid), but he will eat peanuts sometimes, particularly in a snack mix. Big Girl LOVES all kinds of nuts and begs for them at snack time. She kindly shares her nuts with her bro, and then I end up with personally-cleaned peanuts dumped in my lap by an insistent young man. We need to break this habit promptly.

I've been reading lots of fast food books lately - quick, easy reads, mostly sci-fi and fantasy stuff. This really annoys Hubs, because I sit in the den while he watches crap on tv and I read. He goes to great efforts to involve me in his shows, but I keep going back to my book. Drives him up the wall - he gets deeply offended, and I think he's being silly. I make time to talk to him, but I'm not going to watch the same episodes of The Deadliest Catch multiple times just because he falls asleep before the end and forgets that he has seen them. Anyway, the positive point is that I'm really enjoying reading without the pressure of unpacking the symbolism and identifying allusions and all of that. And yes, I will get back to the scholarly stuff soon enough - lots to do on ye olde dissertation. In a wise move yesterday, Big Girl and I also made a trip to the library, to check out more fast food books - I don't need to pay full price to buy copies of books I'll only read once. Plus I haven't used my library card in years, and I'm on the library board now, so I should make an effort to do that, right? I'll post more about the fast food books at some point - the incredibly curious among you can check out my recent reads through goodreads until then (see link on the right side of the blog somewhere).

Good times at preschool

Two and I went to Big Girl's class at preschool today to read a couple of books to the kids, and had a fantastic time. The kids really seemed to enjoy the books I brought (Don't Let the Pigeon Drive the Bus! and Because a Little Bug Went Ka-Choo! (Beginner Books(R))), and Big Girl was thrilled to have me there. All the kids were wearing pajamas today (so cute!), and the moms-reading-books gig was a part of that. I was one of four moms to read during today's class. The school is having special events all week.

After Big Girl got out of school, she changed into her civvies and we went out for lunch with my mom. Good food, plus it was a mystery shop so I'll get reimbursed for it. Bonus! I think my mom really enjoys doing shops with me, because she likes to make suggestions about things I should include in my report (usually very good insights), and she likes the idea that someone, somewhere, is interested in what she has to say.

Wednesday afternoon and evening activities at work with the herd of young children have left me exhausted - and I'm still not quite finished with my teaching for the semester, either. This two jobs business is a bit overwhelming this week, mostly because there's so much grading for the big kids (my college students) and I have so many ideas and so much excitement about the new job with the younger kids.

I'm also really stoked about one of our upcoming projects for the kids at church. It's called Read to Feed, and it benefits one of my favorite charities, Heifer International. Kids get sponsors who commit to pay them a certain amount for each book they read, and then the kids read and record their books, and then collect the money to support Heifer. I would love to see some of the elementary schools participate in this program next school year. It's not tied to any particular religious group, it's secular and just benefits Heifer, and I think it would be a great way to motivate some of those kids to read more. But I digress. I'm going to do it this summer with my church kids, and I hope they will find it as much fun as I do.