My Cedar City List of Commendation

In no particular order:

1. Sweet potato fries at Cafe Orleans
Since the Pastry Pub is closed (burned up but reopening in a couple of weeks), we've been forced to branch out when looking for places to eat. I don't really think it's possible to make a bad sweet potato fry, but the ones at Cafe Orleans are particularly fine.

2. The Garden House
Again, new restaurants are required this year. Several people from my London tour group recommended this restaurant to me, but the dinner menu is a bit pricey. We went for lunch today, and my meal was excellent. (The building's lovely too.)

3. Quinn Mattfeld
We saw "The Comedy of Errors" at the Utah Shakespearean Festival last night. "The Comedy of Errors was the first Shakespeare play I saw AND understood. I was 9 or 10-years-old and when I returned to school in the fall, I made a diorama based on the play constructed with Ken dolls wearing turbans. I have no photos of it but I'm sure it was a thing of great beauty. Quinn Mattfeld plays Antipholus of Syracuse in the play this summer and he was completely charming in the role last night.

4. Tarts
I mention the tarts at the Festival often, but they're bigger this year so I figure they deserve another mention. I believe that tonight's dinner is going to consist entirely of tarts.

5. Cedar Breaks
I hadn't been to Cedar Breaks in years and years, but we drove up this morning and it's stunning. Also, the name for the free-standing formations? Hoodoos.

All about the Marmots

My parents are visiting from Tennessee and they were at my sister's house when I arrived to babysit the marmots on Friday.

Tuey: Grandpa, Aunt is here!

My Dad: That's not Aunt. That's my little girl.

Tuey: A look of complete distress.

Tuey: Mommy! Aunt is not a girl. She is Aunt.


Thursday my brother and sister-in-law met up with my other brother and sister-in-law and their kids for a picnic lunch. I tried to teach one brother how to express happiness, which is exhibited thus:

1. Throw your hands up in the air.
2. Wiggle your fingers (spirit fingers).
3. Simultaneously yell, "Whee!"

My brother's super bad at it. He doesn't let the joie de vivre overcome him for the whee part. In fact, he has to be coerced to even mumble whee. I thought perhaps I was just a bad instructor, but then I taught the procedure to Tuey and he's great at it. He stands up on a chair to do it before launching himself onto the floor.


Today I was playing with Madame E(6).

E(6): Aunt, what if you lived here in our house with us?

MBC: Well, that would be fun (and loud). But where would I sleep?

E(6): You could sleep in [M(5)]'s bed.

M(5) has a nice double bed where both she and E(6) often sleep together so I thought it was nice that E(6) would suggest that I could have that bed. Until she continued talking and made her plan clear.

E(6): We could definitely fit three people in that bed.


Marmot Babe has finally decided he loves me again. It only took a solid week of daily contact, but now when I come in the room he waves and says, "Hi, Aunt. Hi, Aunt. Hi, Aunt." It sounds remarkably like, "I, Ya. I, Ya. I, Ya," but we all feel certain that he's talking to me. Good baby.

The Travel Blog

I created a new blog just for the big trip. So far it only has my rough itinerary, but I'll start posting to it next week. There might even be actual photographs of my actual face with my actual eyes showing.

The Monstrosity

My brother is in town and he rented a car at the airport. The rental agency gave him a Hummer. A Hummer! I hate Hummers. A lot. I'm torn, though. On the one hand, I'm morally opposed to Hummers and the people who drive them. On the other hand, I have a lot of boxes to move this week and a huge hummer might come in handy. Hmmm.

Step One

Tomorrow is my last day of work! Wheeee!

I cleaned out my files and discovered that I have five katrillion folders from all my conference-attending.

And I found all kinds of cryptic notes to myself that say things like Check all the Greeks.

And I gave my replacement the tour of my desk, including the area where I keep the cherry pie filling and the vegetable oil.

I am set. Check, check, and check.

Aw-aw-awkward

I have an instinct to say yes anytime anyone asks me anything (except at the library at closing time).

Would you please cover this shift? Yes.
Can you help set up for this event? Sure.
Would you like a fifth slice of chocolate cake? Absolutely.
Could you possibly let these 15 people cut ahead of you in line? Of course.
Would you mind carrying this small bag of unmarked currency through customs for me? Why not?

My natural inclination is to be agreeable. Sometimes it should not be. Like today at church when I was accosted by the wife of this guy I vaguely know from our brief dating experience.

Wife: Hey, I know this is kind of weird, because I don't really know you at all, but I know [my husband] knows you some, and I wanted to ask you something.

MBC (in head): Please don't ask me something weird and ludicrous like whether or not I'm secretly carrying a torch for your husband.

MBC: Oh, sure.

Wife: There's this guy I want to set you up with. I mean, I don't know you but you seem really cute and I've known him my whole life and he's the nicest guy and really likes to have fun . . . So, would you be interested?

See, this is where the lying should have started. This is where I should have mentioned that my boyfriend Jack doesn't like it when I date other people.

MBC: Oh, well, I'm going to Europe in 12 days.
And I'm not coming back for four months.
And then I'm moving across the country.

Wife: So, would you be interested in doing something with him this week?

And THIS is where the saying NO should have started.

MBC: Um, I guess you could give him my contact information as long as he's okay with the fact that I'm leaving the country.

And then I was giving her my phone number and it was very deja vu from when her husband was asking for my phone number and the whole situation was weird but here's the main thing: I have NO time before I leave. My family's coming to visit this week, I have to store all my stuff across town at my friend's house, I have to figure out how to fit four months of clothing and supplies for a trip that includes both being vomited on by babies and attending Mozart's Requiem at St. Martin-in-the-Fields across two seasons into two carry-on size bags, and I have to play, play, play with marmots and teach Tuey his new special mantra: I will take care of Aunt in her old age even if she misses my 3rd birthday.

Really must learn to say no.

Look What It Is!

The book about the librarian which is now the movie about the librarian finally has an official trailer and release date. I didn't love The Time Traveler's Wife quite as much as the rest of the world did (I've got consistency issues with time travel stories that go forward AND backward in time), but I'm still a fan of both the book and the Eric Bana. I hope it doesn't turn out to be schmarmy.

Oh, Good, It's Another Big Long One

When I was in graduate school my roommates and I were friends with a freshman boy who absolutely thought he was the same age we were. I was always accidentally offending him but noting his youth (and he was offending us left, right, and center by noting all kinds of things that ought not to be noted and offering us his unsolicited wisdom on what we should be doing to find ourselves spouses). One day we ran into one another on campus and talked for about half an hour before he realized what time it was and that he was supposed to be somewhere.

The Young ‘Un: Oh, man, I can’t believe I just wasted half an hour. I’ve gotta go.

MBC: You didn’t waste half an hour. You were having a conversation with me. That’s not a waste.

The Young ‘Un: Yes, it is. I’m not going to marry you.

At the time, I thought his comment was idiotic (not to mention rude). I still do, but now I realize that a lot of people think that way about conversation—that its purpose is to get something and if the conversation is simply conversation for its own sake, it’s worthless. I feel like I particularly bump up against this a lot because I’m single. Married men rarely speak to me outside of a professional capacity and single men (not that I run into many of them) most often talk to me (as far as I can tell) to determine whether or not they want to date me. A guy I went out with briefly in the fall turned up at church with his wife a few weeks ago. We were passing each other in the hall on Sunday so I smiled and said hi and he looked. away. He doesn’t want to date me anymore and we didn’t date long enough to become good friends, so he’s not going to talk to me at all. It’s a waste of time.

I’m not the kind of person who enjoys chatting with my hairdresser or making friendly small talk at the grocery store and when library patrons try to use my name and engage me in conversation, they usually get shut right down, but I do believe in conversation. I think one of the reasons I adore public radio is that so many of the programs I listen to are conversations between a host and subject and the point of listening is to understand someone or something better and to appreciate the experience of an individual and to recognize our shared humanity and all kinds of highfalutin idealistic junk that I absolutely believe in! I love that. I love good conversations with my friends and family. And occasionally I’m surprised by conversations with people I don’t know well but who take a brief interest in me and what I have to say with no expectation outside of that single interaction. They aren’t talking to me to assess my datability and they aren’t talking to me because they want anything from me. I truly find those conversations life-affirming. They make me feel connected to the world at large and I’m pleased that the conversation can exist for its own sake without an agenda.

I had one of these conversations yesterday. A co-worker asked me to speak to a man who was researching trends in young adult literature. I talked to him about books and then the conversation wandered off into other topics until he was getting my contact information to send me a copy of his screenplay. He’s at least a decade older than I am and he’s married with a child and I never expect to see him again or to be his friend, but I’m so grateful that he took an interest in what I had to say yesterday and had an interesting conversation with me.

I had a similar experience last year with a guy with whom I was casually acquainted. We found ourselves thrown together at an event and started a conversation that I still think of as that I one time I talked to Mike and had the most honest discussion of my life. A few days later Mike moved to Alaska but it doesn’t matter because we didn’t want anything from one another. I remember that experience so fondly.

I in no way want people to start attempting deep and meaningful conversations with me everywhere I go and I still plan to be hairdresser-conversation-resistant, but I think the art of conversation deserves a more honored place than it usually receives. Someone other than Ira Glass ought to regularly interest himself in the thoughts of the people around him.

Happy Wednesday

I had such a nice day today!

1. My boss found $15,000 dollars in the budget and assigned it to the YA collection. Yay! That means a shopping trip to the bookstore on Friday to spend thousands of city dollars on books. I so love being a librarian.

2. My bon voyage party at work was today. I received lovely travel gifts. I ate lovely foods. I repeated 15,000 times, Italy, Austria, Switzerland, France, England, Scotland, Greece, Turkey, Romania, Wales. I have delightful, thoughtful, well-wishing co-workers.

3. I spent the afternoon playing The Great Dalmuti with teenage boys. I totally whomped them in the game, but I reigned as a benevolent Dalmuti.

4. I had a great conversation with a stranger.

5. Marmot Babe learned to use a spray bottle. He walks around grinning and spraying water here and there about the house (my sister assures me he's developing his gross motor skills). While I was visiting, he handed me the bottle, so I sprayed him (gently) in the face with the water and that made him happy too. Funny baby.

Mostly Librarians are Nice

Once upon a time when I was in college I worked as a secretary in an academic office. In addition to showing Dr. Rogers the magic of the Internet, eating DELICIOUS breakfast sandwiches from the Tanner Building, and exchanging dating stories with the TAs, my job included caring for a small plant on my desk. This was perhaps not the best task for me. I discovered that if I didn't water my plant friend for a long time he would droop, but as soon as I watered him, he perked right back up. The change was so sudden and marked that I liked to keep him close to death's door so that I could revive him and watch his dramatic transformation whenever I chose to exercise my incredible plant powers. It wasn't always intentional. Sometimes I just forgot about him until someone came in and mentioned what a sad-looking plant I had. Years later I was visiting the office where I worked and the plant was HUGE. Apparently the secretary they hired after I left was a good plant-waterer.

I recently recalled this story when two separate co-workers on two separate occasions mentioned to me that they enjoyed denying interlibrary loan requests. We librarians are a mean lot.

I Am the Food Storage Queen

I've been trying to eat up my food storage before I go to the Land of Good Bread.

If anyone has fantastic recipes that include any of the following items (particularly if they require few additional ingredients), I'd be thrilled to have them:

polenta
quick oats (didn't realize the oats in my food storage were quick--very, very sad)
dry and/or canned beans
diced canned tomatoes
macaroni noodles
barley

The Any Muffin recipe from the Tightwad Gazette has been particularly helpful in using up my food odds and ends. It's a really basic recipe that provides rough, modifiable proportions for any type of muffin you might want to attempt. Quick oats taste just fine when baked up in a muffin, sunflower seeds and almond extract are lovely in muffins made with pineapple and carrots, and I think my canned pumpkin is going to become chocolate chip pumpkin muffins (if I can stop indulging in my oh, so happy-making snack of chocolate chip Cheerios). The generic recipe is particularly nice for those of us who are chemistry challenged and curious about food in all the wrong ways, thinking, "I wonder what would happen if I added vanilla to this chicken?"

In Which I Change My Future Plans

My parents are coming to visit next week and the marmots have an activity the Saturday that they'll be here.

Sister: We may not go to the activity on Saturday. We may stay home and play with Grandma that day.

E(6): Or we could go and Grandma could come with us.

Sister: That's a good idea.

M(5): Or we could go and while we were gone, Grandma could stay home and do jobs.

So, that's what you have to look forward to, Mom. Jobs.

Up until this conversation, I'd always imagined that M(5) would be the best child to live with in my old age, but now I see which way the wind really blows. When I'm elderly, I don't want to stay home performing hard labor while M(5) goes out on the town. It looks like Tuey's my new hope for the future.

I Recommend DIANE REHM

A friend took me to an event hosted by KUER and featuring Diane Rehm last night. It was a lovely evening (not least because of the chocolate covered raspberries at the post-show reception). I so enjoy Diane Rehm. Doug Fabrizio interviewed her and it was interesting to hear her speak as the interviewee rather than the interviewer, particularly when she discussed her childhood. Throughout the interview (and afterwards when we spoke to her briefly), Diane struck me as such a gracious and idealistic woman ,while remaining very much aware of circumstances in life and the world that are not ideal. I find that extremely admirable. The interview was recorded and will air on KUED next Friday night. Watch it if you get the opportunity. And if you can find yourself some chocolate-covered fruits to eat afterwards, so much the better.

My New Secret Weapon

I wore my new red dress to work today. And to the dentist. And out to lunch. And to my exit interview. The dress was my I-have-to-work-on-my-birthday-and-that-makes-me-sad present to myself, not entirely unlike the I-don't-have-a-boyfriend gifts I occasionally buy myself when I'm not dating anyone. I only wore the dress today because I need to do laundry and/or iron all of my professional clothes, but let me tell you that the men in town were very nice and helpful today. Good job, dress.

Birthday 2 of 3 This Week

I forgot to take my camera to Madame M(5)'s birthday party tonight. It's fine, though, because you can just refer back to the photos from my party to get the feel of the evening. The sushi was the same (M(5) wanted what she considered a Chinese party with sushi and egg rolls and M(5) floating about in my sister's silky blue robe, which looks like a kimono if you have a very active imagination) and Tuey's signature dipping style was the same and the little children pumped up on sugar and the thrill of an event was the same. So just picture all of that again and then add a very large cake in the shape of a purple pony head with a flowing red (fruit leather) mane and milk dud nostrils and imagine the marmots and some little neighbors kids whacking a pony pinata in the living room and try to conjure up the image of Tuey enraptured by "pilly pocket" furniture and guarding it very fiercely from his siblings and throw in Marmot Babe wandering around clapping his hands and trying to eat teeny tiny doll shoes and you'll have a fairly clear idea of our evening.

A Stolen Story

My sister told me about this experience with Tuey last week. I will now steal the story (much like she has stolen my gray fleece jacket, which I would like back) and tell it before she has the chance (perhaps she wouldn't post it on her blog anyway, because it does involve nipples).

Tuey was wandering around without a shirt on last week, when he noticed his nipples. He looked down, fingered one of his nipples, and asked, "Mommy, what is this? A kidney?"

happy birthday to me

Friday was my birthday. Friday was a fairly stinky day, but today I attended the Marmot House celebration of my special day and now I feel properly feted. The little marmots sang "A Very Merry Unbirthday" to me 4 or 5 times and we opened presents before dinner, because the anticipation was about to rocket them right off their chairs. I received 2 rocks, a ballpoint pen they found in the street (only slightly dusty), and a pink, yarn hair accessory fashioned by Madame E(6).

We enjoyed delicious sushi for dinner.


E(6) refused to eat any at all. M(4) used her chopsticks to extract all the meat from the middles and ignored the vegetables, rice, and seaweed.

I think Tuey was dipping his in soy sauce and then sucking the soy sauce off.


I love German Chocolate Cake for my birthday. German Chocolate Cake or Italian Cream Cake are the two most festive cakes in my book. My sister makes them both very well. (And she's very kind to make any cake at all, particularly since she's making a purple pony cake for M(4) on Tuesday and Marmot Babe's birthday is on Saturday.)


I ate far too much and had to lie on the floor and moan for about 20 minutes after the meal. M(4) very sweetly joined me and snuggled up with me, seemingly undisturbed by my groaning.

Eventually we went outside (where I could lie in the grass and regret those last few sushi selections). Doesn't Marmot Babe have great toes?

In Case My Reading Options are Limited This Summer

A few weeks ago Yankee Girl asked if I'd still be reading and writing about books while I'm in Europe. I hope I will be, but I don't have room in my bags to bring recreational reading with me. I may have to survive on whatever I can find through BookCrossing and the backs of cereal boxes and maybe by wrestling my traveling companions to the ground and insisting that they allow me to read the books they bring for themselves.

If I had easy access to a library this summer, these are the books I would be reading.

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie by C. Alan Bradley - An adult mystery narrated by an eleven-year-old girl. I'm next in line for it at my library. If the person who has it now brings it back on time, I'll get it on my last day of work. If she doesn't bring it back, I will weep. And then look up her contact information and start leaving her threatening voicemail messages.

How to Buy a Love of Reading by Tanya Egan Gibson - Fiction about some girl who does something. And there are some books and a tutor or something. (No time for better descriptions. Must watch So You Think You Can Dance.)

Border Songs by Jim Lynch - Well-reviewed fiction about U.S.-Canadian border patrol from the author of The Highest Tide, which also received great reviews.

North of Beautiful by Justina Headley - A new YA novel about a girl who struggles with an abusive father and image issues resulting from a port-wine stain facial birthmark. YA librarians are liking it.

Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover by Ally Carter - The third book in the Gallagher Girls series about a secret spy school. The first two books were delightful.

Along for the Ride by Sarah Dessen - The newest novel from one of my very favorite contemporary YA authors. Don't know what it's about. Doesn't matter, because her books are always good.

If the Creek Don't Rise by Rita Williams - A memoir from the niece of the last African American Civil War widow who was placed in her aunt's custody at age four.

In the Kitchen by Monica Ali - A new novel from the author of Brick Lane. A London chef struggles with a messy personal life and the discovery of a dead porter in the hotel where he works.

The Help by Kathryn Stockett - Civil rights in 1962. Received starred reviews from Publishers Weekly and Library Journal.

I Just Need to Visualize Myself Taking the Waters in Bath

I know change is a bad thing,
Breaks me down into a sorry, sad thing . . .
-Dar Williams, from "It's Alright"

I've been having just the tiniest nervous breakdown the last few days, as I've been transferring files to other librarians at work and scheduling my exit interview and thinking in my head, "I'll be flying to Milan that day," each time Tuey invites me to his birthday party in September (which he does whenever he sees me--he's having a unicorn cake and he's very excited about it).

I know all the reasons I decided to quit my job and go adventuring and I think they're sound. Among other things (including the fact that I l-l-love to travel!), I wanted to resist a certain inertia in my life and I didn't want to be the kind of person who had it within her power to do the things she dreamed about and then didn't do them. For the past six months, every time someone has asked me why I wanted to go to Europe for so long, I've been surprised that it's not completely self-evident. It's been a long time (relatively) since I've so completely uprooted myself and found myself in a situation with so many potential pathways that I feel overwhelmed, though, and I suddenly understand why they've been asking. It's a little bit frightening to throw myself into the unknown when I'm comfortable here.

I really hope that opening myself up to new opportunities is not the same as being reckless with my life. It's hard to tell today.

A New (to me) Poem

I just bought Essential Pleasures, the new poetry anthology edited by Robert Pinsky, creator of the Favorite Poem Project, for the library. I think Robert Pinsky heads up brilliant poetry projects. The poems he selects are notably accessible and he includes a nice range of time periods and styles. Or maybe he just includes a significant number of my favorites. The new anthology encourages listening to poetry read aloud (http://poemsoutloud.net is promoted in the book) and includes a CD of selected poems.

This is the end of Amy Lowell's poem "The Letter." I discovered it in Essential Pleasures.

I am tired, Beloved, of chafing my heart against
The want of you;
Of squeezing it into little inkdrops,
And posting it.
And I scald alone, here, under the fire
Of the great moon.

Holy cow! Have you ever heard anything as descriptive as chafing my heart against the want of you? I can't get over it. It's too good.

The Bad Bits of Summer

There are similarities between childbirth and the Summer Reading Program. Sometimes my sister says to me, "Aren't these the cutest kids you've ever seen? Don't you think I should have one or two more?" And then I say, "Remember how last time you were pregnant you told me that if you said you wanted another baby I should hit you in the face with a shovel?" And then SHE says, "No." Similarly, I always forget how truly terrible the first week of the Summer Reading Program is. I know in my brain that it will be bad, but until I'm at work with, no kidding (I counted at the busiest point), twenty-one people crowding around the main reference desk and three people holding on the phone, I don't really recall what the beginning of summer is like at the library.

Today the Summer Reading craziness was followed by hanging out at the DMV for an hour, so it's a good thing that I had morning glory muffins to greet me at home. The muffins are very similar to garden harvest bread, except that they're more likely to kill you, being full of delicious fat. They're particularly hazardous to your health if you happen to have made them with really old coconut which may have gone rancid. Try not to do that.