My Reading Obsession

Monday wasn’t even that hard to face to tell the truth.  Although I didn’t get everything done and I wasn’t really looking forward to it.  Next week I’m going to a training in San Diego, so I will have nearly a week off from the office, so I guess it’s easier to face.

No reading this weekend.  Mom’s quilt top is together, but, it’s too small so we are going to add another border. It’s really turned out to look good. I lost the ‘back’ pattern for the pajamas, and so didn’t get any of those made.  Jeez!  I’m going to be right up to the line on those- again.  Especially since I have my niece and nephew all weekend.  I guess I could sew the pajamas of OTHER nieces and nephews. 

On the good side, Thanksgiving dinner was beautiful.  I cooked for 12, but there were only four, so we had Turkey Tetrazzini Friday, Turkey Bundles on Saturday, and Turkey Enchiladas on Sunday. K says he’s making soup with the rest today. I hate to tell him, but here is a whole bowl of dark meat he doesn’t even know about. The soup will not be the end of it.  We, the four of us, hung out all day on Thanksgiving, playing games, watching movies, etc.  Then on Friday night we went up to Salt Lake to Temple Square to see the lights. I was soooo busy, but great.  We found an area across the walkway and over by the church office buildings we’d never seen before. They had a huge Japanese style nativity (among others) that was my favorite.  So cute!  I want to carve some sheep now. I loved the Angel hanging up behind the stable.  We rode Traxx up, and it was standing room only.  I nearly killed myself! Not to mention the little boy next to me.  I haven’t hurt a child like that since that one haunted house when the psycho with the chainsaw came after me and I ‘accidentally’ knocked over that…well I won’t get into that!

What am I going to take to read on my trip?  Help!  I need soemthing good, or several things good.

It’s hard to remember if I have admitted my HP obsession yet.  Probably.  Post or Pre Hack, I don’t know.  But here I am, about to do it again.

One of the saddest things in our world is when Jude will suddenly look all depressed, turn to me, and say, “I just remembered again that there are no new Harry Potter books coming out.”  Sigh.  We’re so dramatic, I know!  Does it make you want to set your hair on fire?

The last book, ‘Harry Potter and The Deathly Hallows’, came when we were on our way to Idaho for Kimball to rip out his parents kitchen.  Jude and I had waited, with my sister Amy and her daughter Kiki, in line until midnight the night before, and allowed ourselves to read one chapter before going to bed. The next morning we headed to Idaho, a three plus hour drive.  We decided to take turns reading aloud.  Chantel wasn’t with us, I don’t remember why.  So K was listening and even started taking turns reading. Then we read off and on while we were there and all the way home.  By that time we still had several chapters left. 

I was just bawling, and anyone who knows me won’t even blink an eye at that, so K started reading to us. We finished very late.  That was the only Harry Potter K had ever read.  He’s seen the movies, and really liked them, but I’ve always felt how much he missed by not reading the books, so this fall I started forcing him to read them.  He’s on ‘Harry Potter and the Prisoner Azkaban’ (or Ass Can) as he in his crude way insists on calling it.  Still, he likes them, I can tell!  He will always read for awhile and then say something like, “That Tom Riddle is up to no good,” or “Harry is in trouble now!”  Obvious things he knows from the movies.  It makes us laugh though.

The only thing that drives him nutty is how she explains things over again at the beginning of each book.  At least it seems to be less with each one.  I’m so excited he’s reading them because books are one topic we don’t discuss much.  I’m a reader; he isn’t.  He can read, but usually its some philosophical or sociological treatise that I’m completely uninterested in. 

Chantel claims to have read them, but I’m not too sure. And she’d just not as excited as Jude an I are.  So now that K’s reading them, it’s time to work on her!

Well, it’s not really sticking, but it is white.  And since it’s melting, the cars aren’t making it all muddy.  It’s just pure and white on the grass and trees.  Looks like Christmas.

I finished ‘Life Before Man’ on Thursday.  It’s just an interconnected bunch of character studies.  Atwood really knows how to bring people to life, that is for sure. Some of them, you wish would just die. These people!  It’s amazing how you look at other people’s lives, jobs, children, etc. and know just what they should do to make them right isn’t it?  But look at your own, and what do you see?  Ah, you may realize and recognize things aren’t perfect, but being involved and emotional makes it pretty hard to decide exactly what should be done about it.  The frustration, or continuing question in this novel is this; Can’t they see that all they have to do is this one thing and it would work out? 

Then suddenly the story ends. I kept getting closer and closer to the end, waiting for some climax, or some resolution–closure, right?  Well, don’t expect it here. It ends and no one is fixed, nothing is better, and no insight is given as to whether it ever will be.  It’s like when my mother, in September, says, “I bought your Christmas present today!  You are going to love it!”  What!?  She knows that I hate to be waiting and wondering.  ‘Life Before Man’ leaves you waiting and wondering forever.  Good thing I have a real life or it might have bothered me endlessly.

Okay, no new pajamas completed.  I bought material and thread though, so does that count for something?

Did I talk about The Nook?  The big competition for Amazon’s Kindle?  Barnes and Noble is releasing there own digital reader, and guess what?  You can access all the free books on Google Books as well. I’m sputtering I’m so excited. I’ve been wanting a Kindle, but you do have to buy all the books from them. With The Nook, you don’t.  Amazon lowered their price to match The Nook too!  I hate to buy the first version, but I’m hoping they’ve learned all they needed to from The Kindle and all the other ones out there.  Very exciting stuff.  K hinted that one was coming my way at Christmastime, so we’ll see. I really am having a hard time waiting. Of course it’s release date 11/30, so I couldn’t have it now if I wanted to.  Enough blabbering. There is a message beeping on my phone. Drat.

Yes, I’ve finished one pair of the 10 pajamas I want to do by Christmas.  Yeah!  They are so cute!!  I hope she likes the fabric.  I spent the weekend, as expected, quilting, sewing, crocheting, watching movies and shopping.  A good one all in all.   I have four days of work this week, and then time off next for Thanksgiving, which will be nice.  I love my three day weekends and when we get an extra day off, it is just so great.

The cold really seems to have settled in to stay. It’s chilly!  Even in a sweater on the way to Costco this afternoon I felt cold.  Sigh. Oh well, I guess we had it good for longer than normal, and it’s time to pay the piper.

I guess I’d better go start getting things together for tomorrow.  I like to get up as late as possible, so I do everything I can at night.  Lunch, clothes, shower, etc, etc, etc.

Well, first snow that sticks anyway. Barely. 

We woke up to white and little sprinklings still coming down.  It’s not too cold out–last night when I went to the movie and this morning on my shopping trip I did still wear just a sweater. My concession was sneakers with socks instead of flats.

I wonder what the Indian thinks?  K has a programmer that has come to town from India for 3 months to finish up his program.  K rented him a room in a house and got a bed and everything set up for him–he even shopped for sheets and pillows and towels and stuff himself!  Anyway, after the first night, the guy–don’t know his name yet– said he couldn’t sleep because he was freezing, so K got him a couple more blankets.  It wasn’t even cold!  I wonder what he thought of last night. Even I shut our bedroom window for once, though Kimball would have opened it if he’d noticed.  Anyway, the fun part of our visiting Indian is that his wife and son are coming for Christmas and it looks like we’ll have three extra guests!  I love people at Christmas!  They’re even vegetarians, so it will be fun to make sure I have enough for them. 

I did not read yesterday.  Although I’m still reading ‘Life Before Man’ by Margaret Atwood on the bus, yesterday I spent most of the day cutting out fabric for the quilt I’m doing for my mom and some organizing projects I had around the house.  Then we went to the movie and I was crocheting again last night on the dreaded ’snuggie’.  I found a mistake two rows back.  Not huge or anything, but K could see it.  He forbid me tearing out the rows and redoing it. I’m torn. I hate it, but it’s taking so much time I’m just dreading re-crocheting anything!  I guess a few little mistakes are what make homemade things homemade, right?  Right?

Over the next 6 weeks, my reading adventures will most likely be curtailed as they give way to baking, sewing, shopping, and enjoying the chaos of the holidays.

So I ‘mooched’ a paperback copy of ‘Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban’ for Kimball to read.  He’s seen all the movies, but only read the final book–with Jude and I since we read it aloud to each other. Now I’ve forced him into it. He seemed to like the first two, but I couldn’t find my copy of the third.  Anyway, I went on Bookmooch.com to get a copy. 

Has anyone used it?  You offer up your spare books and then when someone mooches from you, you send it out media mail, cheap, right? Then you get a point on the website and can use it to mooch from other people. I’ve used it a lot in the past and it’s really actually fun. I need to put some more books on though, because I’m almost out of points.

The person I mooched from says they sent it on the 6th, but it’s not here yet. And so K has picked up another book, which is exactly what I was trying to avoid. He’s reading faster than usual. He must like that. Anyway, I’ll just take it away and hide it when ‘Prisoner’ comes. Am I a meany?  Probably!  Go watch my daughter’s new video this week and you’ll see just how I act. 

Here is the link:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7v5LG4DlX9I

Now you have to guess whether I am a real biatch or if Chantel wishes I would use my (non-existent)  political clout to get her free dinners and homework.

My deep dark secret is this;  the more recommended, the more hailed, the more critically loved a book is, the harder time I have actually starting it. Weird, huh?  I mean, sometimes I’ll even have a book from an author I’ve loved before and just dread it. I don’t get it.  At all.  If someone tells me a book is great, then I usually don’t want to read it.  Ridiculous.

So I’ve had a Margaret Atwood book, “Life Before Man’, on my shelf for years and never started it.  Since I’d finished my last ‘bus’ book this weekend, on Monday I needed a new one.   Good thing I remembered!  But with little time I just had to grab one off the shelf, one requirement being it be smaller. Hence ‘Life Before Man’ made it to my backpack, as it’s one of those paperbacks that isn’t small but isn’t big.  After work, I pull it out, noticing the man I’m sitting next too is reading something of about the same size.  We must have looked like twinners. Except he was small and skinny and conservative, even quiet looking, and I’m just, not.  Any of those.  I start to read, and three pages in I was dreading putting it down. I love Atwood.  How her brain works.  How does she even start thinking of these things?  Words, sentences, thoughts and things that happen are just out there, and the way she puts them together–you get a picture of a character without ever having them really described to you.  It’s amazing. So here’s the book I’m dreading, and when the bus sickness kicks in, I keep reading.

Every day I’m fine until we get to Lehi Park and Ride.  So we’re on the freeway puttering away and I feel fine, but when the bus starts to make stops and deal with stoplights, etc, I start feeling a bit of nausea.  I read through it last night.  Finally, we leave American Fork and I’m the last one on the bus, so the bus driver starts talking to me. Since I’m halfway back on the bus, she’s sort of yelling, so I put my beloved new book away and go sit in the front to chat. She was actually really nice–not one of the weird drivers that want to talk to you and you’re avoiding it like the plague. So that was good.  And then when I got off the bus, not only was my beloved K waiting for me, but waiting for me with one of those frothy coffee drinks I love. That took the chill off –both my hands and my heart.  Hehe.  How sentimental and icky was that?  He’s adorable sometimes I can’t help it!

If anyone can explain my aversion to literature with a backing, please do!

All weekend I had to work on repairing a quilt for my nephew. It’s 6 years old and some of the appliques were wearing a bit. It’s a bunch of work! I can’t believe how long that quilt must have taken me in the first place! So basically I watched movies and sewed, parked on the couch.  Crazy.  Yesterday, K asked me to take a walk with him since it was so nice.  I think he was recognizing the fact that I was turning into one of those giant transparent salamanders that never see the light in rivers in Japan and wanted to get me out. It was really nice out. We had a week in the high 60’s. In November.  It was crazy.

Finished the Grisham.  It had the typical ’surprise’ ending that if you didn’t see it coming you probably should go back to Dick and Jane. Oh well, I still had fun.  Started a new book during the week last week.  ‘Lady’s Maid’ by Margaret Forester.  It’s about a true life maid for Elizabeth Barrett Browning, but with a fictional story.  So far I like it.  It’s fun when the classes mix.  If you need more evidence, then watch a little Robert Altman movie called ‘Gosford Park’.  It’s a fave of mine.  Although I loved it the first time, it took a few viewings for me to really get it all.  He basically has no script and just tells the huge group of actors to ad lib, and then follows whichever one seems interesting at any given time, so there are background things going on, which is great. 

Okay, I’m rambling and I know it, but that’s the sort of weekend it was!

My mom brought me some Grishams, and I started reading one on the bus last night. I think I mentioned before that the last one I read bored me a bit.  I was thinking all his good ideas are gone. And they are!  I can’t explain however, why I can’t put this one down!  Can anyone?

‘The Partner’.  He fakes his own death and steals 90 million dollars, is found and tortured 4 years later and everyone wants the money.  How in the heck is he going to get out of this?!  I don’t know, and frankly, I don’t think I can wait to find out.

I came back from lunch and just wanted to finish a paragraph and was surprised to find myself some time later just reading at my desk!  Jeez! 

Three days a week I get to take a half an hour and go walk–a work program to get us healthy.  Do you think that I could ‘read and walk’?  Or do you think I’d be fired?  I just don’t know!  And it’s too warm outside for a coat–how would I sneak the book out?  I’m torn apart.

In other news, I have lunch with girlfriends tomorrow, then Channi comes home, then my nephew Walker is spending the night and  we are going to play video games the whole time–after we go to the movie with Kimball and get ice cream.  Then I am definitely getting started on the pajamas.  For those of you that don’t know, my nieces and nephews and kids get jammy bottoms for Christmas and I am going to start now so the week before Christmas I’m not sewing my brains out (like last year).  Other than that, not many plans for the weekend. 

I love the four day work week!