The Naked Chef

Here's my favorite nudist preparing a dinosaur to go in the microwave. I put the camera away before he "beatered" the dumplings for our chicken and dumplings.

We have photos of Madame 6-year-old when she was about Tuey's age being a naked chef. Except she wasn't entirely naked. She was wearing a red hooded jacket and hiking shoes and she had a wicker basket on her head (her "umbelda").

Tuey doesn't accessorize.

The Pertinent Facts of My Evening

It's a good thing that AJ is smelling impaired, because I have filled our house with the stench of brussels sprouts. I discovered a good recipe for them and they are delicious. I just got back from a meeting, though, (a 2 hour meeting) and the house still smells all sprouty. My meeting was at a neighbor's house and I couldn't find the neighbor's address and I haaaate the phone, so I decided I would just go to the neighbor's street, pick a house, knock on that door and hope for the best. Because it is better to knock on a stranger's door and ask them if they know where the correct home is than it is to make a phone call to my neighbor and ask her for her address. Really. I also discovered today that when I do my special workout hair (two tiny, sprouty pony tails and a headband), there's no recovery from that without a shower. A hat will be absolutely necessary to attend a meeting after sporting workout hair.

Creepy Shakespeare

Anybody watched this film? It's a 1930s-style musical adaptation of the Shakespeare play with songs by Gershwin.


I like "Love's Labour's Lost."

The production by the Utah Shakespearean Festival with David Ivers was one of the very best plays I've ever seen in Cedar City. (Although I recalled Brian Vaughn starring in it. If photographic evidence can be believed, though, he was not part of the production at all.)

And I like Kenneth Branagh (who is the brains behind this production).


And I like Alessandro Nivola


who, if you're unsuccessfully trying to identify, you probably recognize from this film, in which he plays Henry Crawford:


This is one of my favorite parts of the film, when Henry is lovely and kind. Of course, immediately after this scene is the scene I only watch in fast forward, because I feel so bad for Henry. And then, of course, we discover that Henry's a terrible cad, so he deserves the scene I can't bear to watch.

I've now attempted to watch this version of "Love's Labour's Lost" about six times and I still haven't made it past the 15 minute mark. I don't think Alicia Silverstone was meant to do Shakespeare, and it turns out that Shakespeare and Gershwin together make for a bizarre cinematic experience (and not in the good way). I'll admit that I'm prejudiced against musicals, though, so if you've watched and enjoyed this film, I'm amenable to having my opinion changed.

On Today's Agenda

Item #1
Today the sun rose at 7:09 am and set at 6:13 pm. That's 2 minutes and 37 seconds more sunlight than yesterday. And tomorrow we get 2 minutes and 38 seconds MORE daylight. Hoo.ray.

Item #2
I read this book last week. I liked it. It's a good travel memoir.


Also terrified me a little bit, which was probably not one of the author's aims, but you can only read about the smog and pollution in one of the largest countries in the world for so long before you determine that your best bet is to saddle up one of the cats and go build yourself a cabin off the grid. I think the really disturbing part of the book (at least from the pollution angle, the Chinese quality of life angle is a whole different kettle of fish) is the Chinese reaction to it, which is that progress (and progress equals the production of cheap toys with which to stock the shelves of Wal-Mart) necessitates air quality that poses an immediate, visible danger to one's health. The author reported that several times when he mentioned the air quality to locals, they replied, "There's pollution in LA too." It's like reading about the violence in Afghanistan in The Storyteller's Daughter. The author travels with Afghan fighters who have never known their country in a time of peace. They have no concept of what peace time would be like and no conception of themselves as anything but warriors. Disturbing. As far as pollution goes, you could also just go to one of my city's council meetings to hear distressing statements about pollution in Utah from the elected representatives I voted against, who still don't seem to notice that we spent several weeks locked into our homes this winter to keep from shortening our lives sucking down the nasty air trapped in the inversions. Read Lost on Planet China. And then go get yourself a cat and a cabin.

Item #3
I heard the theme song to the TV show Cheers today and it made me want to cry. It reminds me of my childhood. (But I didn't cry, because I knew the sun was going to stay up until almost 6:15. Happy day.)

Sometimes I Play Along

I got tagged to display the 6th picture in my 6th file. Then I have to go find the 7th son of the 7th son and perform the 12 Herculean tasks. No, I'm kidding. It doesn't have to be the seventh son. Usually I ignore tags, but today I want to go finish reading Olive Kitteridge more than I want to blog (it looks like it's going to be one of those vaguely heartbreaking and yet, somehow, hopeful literary novels), AND the Annie, she is so nice that I cannot deny her when she makes requests.

It was harder than you might imagine to determine what my sixth file was, so here are two pictures from two files, both of which could technically be the sixth picture in a sixth file.


Here I am at the Spiral Jetty. The spiral was almost completely submerged when we were there a few summers ago, but it's still a little bit visible in the photograph and it was still impressive to visit.


Here Alice and I are at a pinewood derby with the Barbie car Alice, Moo, and I made many years ago, completing the task that brought us together in friendship and devotion--hacking the head off a Barbie doll. I'm wearing my fancy feather boa for the occasion to match Barbie.

Why I Like the Coordinatrix

And now we will continue the posts on the excellentness of MBC's friends.

Some of the many reasons I am so fond of the Coordinatrix:

1. She is interested in pretty much everything in the world. She recently moved to NC, so of course she went out and found herself some soul food and a gospel concert right away. When we lived in Indiana, she was the one who accompanied me to the revolving jail museum. When the two of us were in London, we read the free newspapers on the train every morning, and she was genuinely thrilled upon reading one morning that a new type of water vole had been discovered. The Coordinatrix is full of wonder.

2. She is so good. She has an unerring moral compass and is always a good example to me.

3. She is very amusing herself and finds other people amusing.

4. She's great at making plans (any kind of plan--travel plan, man plan, you name it). And I've never seen such neatly organized computer files. Or handwriting that looks like it came from a machine. Remarkable.

5. She gives exemplary lessons and talks. Possibly my favorite church talk of all time was given by the Coordinatrix. She presented the congregation with examples of Old Testament women and explained why each of them was worthy of emulation. So she talked about Hannah and her faith and the Hebrew midwives and their integrity and then she told the story of Jael, who you probably don't recall because I feel certain that no one else has ever dragged her from the Book of Judges and held her up as an example of anything. During a battle Jael's enemy took refuge in her tent. While the enemy slept, Jael sent a nail through his head, killing him to deliver Israel. The Coordinatrix told us all about it and then praised Jael's initiative. It was awesome.

I was thinking about the Coordinatrix and her many talents, because I'm speaking in church on Sunday (MBC, Didn't you just speak in church to the same congregation 3 months ago? Why, yes, I did.) and I've been considering whether or not Jael needs to be included in my comments. She just might.

Legitimate Work

These are all tasks I performed at work today, for which I was paid, that were directly related to my job and completely legitimate activities for me to be engaged in while on the clock. This should sufficiently demonstrate that being a librarian is way better than being, for example, an accountant. If you had any doubts.

1. Browsed around on Instructables, a DIY website. I particularly like the projects using recycled water bottles and the office supplies trebuchet. I was looking for teen summer reading projects (which I will schedule so that I'm available to participate in the ones I really like and will schedule the ones that I think might be hard or unpleasant for the time when I'm kickin' it in Florence), but I think the craft we'll be doing this summer that I'm most pleased about is diskette notebooks, which is not from Instructables.

2. Watched YouTube videos of songs with the word magazine in the lyrics. I think "Shiny Magazine" by Jet was the best.

3. Ripped apart a cell phone with my bare hands (I used my bare hands after almost sending a screwdriver through my wrist and deciding that I needed a new strategy for dismantling electronics). Must get my hands on a tiny screwdriver so that I can destroy computers next week. I don't really care for Teen Tech Week, but I appreciate the excuse it gives me to destroy stuff.

Staff Training Day

Yesterday was our annual staff training day. It's held on a holiday each year, because it's the only time the entire staff can gather. The best part about staff training day (especially now that our lunch isn't catered by the good caterers due to budget cuts) is that our HR risk manager brings these 10 minute videos on topics like harassment, workplace violence (that was a good one), and customer service (we watch that one but we don't absorb). This year we watched five HR videos and my favorite was entitled Dealing with Difficult Citizens, starring city employees from several locations in California. It should not surprise you that the city employees of California are not particularly inspiring actors, even with Arnold as their governor. Still, the city requires us to watch them and I paid special attention so that we could all learn to be better city employees. I took notes. Here they are:

• No Horse Play
• Be Sober (seriously, it was printed in big letters across the screen while an office worker in California feigned drunkenness; there was also a section about being moral in which a mailman hit on someone while the voice-over instructed us about locations where it's illegal to have intimate relations)
• Bright Colors, Not Good
• Don't Be Moody
• No Running in City Facilities
  

After watching the HR videos, we also watched this video. It's pretty amusing (try to ignore the cheesiness at the end) and the acting's a step up from the HR video instruction.

OctoGirl

Madame 4-year-old has this new thing she does in which she climbs up my back, attaches herself around my neck, and proclaims, "Octopus with eight tiny legs holds onto Aunt forever!" And she does. Except that last night I was cleaning up the kitchen and it's very difficult to clean a kitchen with a sea creature attached to one's back, so I told the octopus with eight tiny legs that she could hold on forever after the dishes were done. The octopus is singular of purpose. She attached herself to my ankle (head under dishwasher), while I unloaded dishes. Then she sat on a stool in the middle of the kitchen, occasionally calling out, "Octopus with eight tiny legs waits patiently," while I washed pots. Some would quibble over her use of the word patiently. She's a funny kid.

My Octopus with Eight Tiny Legs

Valentine Houses

Saturday morning Tuey called me and extended an invitation to come make "gingerman bread houses."

Madame 4-year-old works on her house. She's wearing a dress that I wore as a child and that my sister wore before that, making it about 35 years old.

Madame 6-year-old with her nearly completely decorated house. She's wearing a dress my mom made for me when I was in the first grade. If she'd had her way, Madame wouldn't have been wearing clothes on Saturday, but she had a friend over so her mother prevailed in keeping her dressed.

Tuey was way into artistic expression. He worked on his house longer than anyone else and by the time he was done, he had a gingerbread cut-out glued to his chest with frosting. My favorite part was when he was working with a little gingerbread man cookie, his "gingerman bread kid."

My sister's house is on the left and mine is on the right. I kept the decorations to a minimum, because attaching too much candy to a work of art just makes it a target for scavenging little marmots. As it was, most of the m&ms had been pulled off my house and eaten by little children by the time I left. And I'm pretty sure I saw Tuey licking the side of my house.

The Difference 55 Years Makes

This week I spent a large part of one day with teenagers. I started out at a charter school (I have some things to say about charter schools) teaching a class of seniors about researching with databases (a topic that I cannot figure out how to make interesting and therefore do not try) and ended the day wrangling a group of teen volunteers. Today I spent some quality time with my elderly computer class. Here's the difference between our teen volunteers and our elderly computer class:

1. The elderly do not crawl under tables or pull themselves across floors using only their elbows.
2. The elderly do not giggle like hyenas at everything they or their friends say.
3. The elderly do not whisper that they will tell all the secrets they know about the person sitting next to them if that person will not do as they say.
4. The elderly do not develop violent (vocal) crushes on one another.
4. When I tell the elderly that all cell phones must be turned off before we begin, they do not move. They don't bring cell phones to the library. They bring giant handbags and all the handouts I've ever given them and brand new laptops that they can't figure out how to turn on.
5. When I tell teen volunteers that all electronic devices must be turned off before we begin, they have many gadgets to shove into their pockets.
6. After a computer class, the elderly tell me how smart and helpful and wonderful I am. They tell me that they're so disappointed that I'm leaving the library and that no one else will be able to teach them the mysteries of copying and pasting as well as I just did here in this room tonight.
7. After a teen volunteer experience, the teens ask me why I didn't bring them treats.

It's Late and I'm Tired

Today was a shorter day at work than yesterday but then I had to come home and attend a meeting and watch MI-5, because I get so concerned about the emotional well-being of the MI-5 staff. They only last a season or two before they become dead inside. I didn't know when we started watching this show that it would require so much from me. It's such an emotional strain to worry this much about fictional characters. It doesn't leave as much energy for real people, like blog readers. Really hoping for better posting next week.

Quickly I will tell you, though, that my roommate found me another librarian romance. I haven't read very far yet (because it looked like Adam might not be able to handle the most recent MI-5 death and that he might be dying inside, so I had to be there for him), but these two brief passages from what I have read seem to indicate that the author knows at least a little something about the library world:

If you work in a library, you become used to the bad manners of the public. I don't mean to argue that it's forgivable, because it's not, but the lack of gratitude, the downright meanness and hostility, was an inevitable fact of life.

AND

I didn't get home until seven o'clock that night, after a day crammed with disagreeable library patrons. If you ever suffer from "Aren't People the Greatest?" syndrome, spend a day working in a library.

I don't think I'm going to love this book, but look at the cover. The cover I love.

Valentine's Day Songs

I had some fairly amusing experiences today, but they were in the midst of an eleven hour work day, so I'm tired and will post about them later. In the meantime, I was listening to Lesser-Known Love Songs on All Songs Considered and recalled how much I like the Magnetic Fields, especially these two songs.

This is "The Book of Love," a love song of theirs that I enjoy. The video's not fantastic, but I like the rhinoceros.

This is "I Don't Want to Get Over You," a break-up song, in case that's what you're into this Valentine's Day week. The video's a little trippy.

My Special Day

I skipped work today. February is a hard, hard month. Winter has gone on for sooo long by February that I'm short-tempered and worn down, and in anticipation of this, I asked for today off about six weeks ago. Good thing, too, because by Saturday night (yeah, I had to work on Saturday), every time someone spoke to me in the library, I had to bite my tongue to resist saying any of the following:

• If you're so smart, why are you asking me for help?
• No, I don't think it's surprising that your girlfriend left you.
• Well, then, please start parenting your children while you're in the library, so I don't have to.
• If I have to tell you one more time to get off that cell phone, I will rip these shelves apart with my bare hands and smash both you and the phone with my improvised weaponry.
• It's true that no one except for me has vocally complained about the volume of your music, but you're wrong in your statement that you're not bothering anyone. You're bothering me very much.

But today I stayed hooome. I stayed home and made red pepper, kale, and white bean pasta. I baked cream cheese brownies. I snuck my recycling over to the neighboring complex, because they have recycling bins and we don't. We hate the planet. I read What I Saw and How I Lied, the YA National Book Award winner. (I'm not sure how I feel about it.) I watched it snow out the window and felt smug that I picked such a fantastic day to stay home.

Let's hope that this lazy day will fortify me for tomorrow's very long work day in which I will teach uninterested high schoolers how to search databases, enable teenage boys in their video game obsession, and develop a new computer class series. At least I'll have brownies to carry in my pocket, in case the going gets tough.

Back to the Romance Genre

Every 2-3 months at work we complete a genre study as part of our readers' advisory training. At staff meeting we review the characteristics, trends, subgenres, and appeal factors of science fiction or westerns or fantasy and then we're required to read and review a couple of books from the genre we're studying. Right now we're in the middle of a romance genre study. I read Outlander for my first romance, because it's well-regarded within the genre, and it was a good read, although LONG and very steamy and containing one scene in which the hero beats his wife when she disobeys him and even though I know that as the reader I'm supposed to feel okay about that because the setting is the Highlands in the 18th century and the hero was raised being beaten by his father, I'm actually a very 21st century reader and I'm not okay with the protagonists of my books being beaten by their lovers. Ever.

Anyway, yesterday I went looking for a second romance to read. A prolific romance writer had been recommended to me, so I turned to my good friend Novelist (check to see if your library has access to it, because it's a looooovely reading recommendation database and if you live in Utah, your library absolutely does have access) and discovered that my author of choice had written a romance about a shy librarian finding love. Well who doesn't want to read about that? While I was at it, I decided to see if there were other romances featuring librarians and yes, yes, there are. I took home two of the many librarian romance options.

There are a number of portrayals of librarians in the popular media that I can get behind--Katherine Hepburn in Desk Set, that guy from Buffy the Vampire Slayer, the husband from The Time Traveler's Wife (and have you seen that he's being portrayed by Eric Bana in the movie? woo hoo!)--and many quite unfortunate portrayals--George's wife in It's a Wonderful Life, that librarian in that one Star Wars movie, Noah Wyle in The Librarian: Quest for the Spear (I get where they were going with that one, but . . . ).


My two romances are completely unacceptable in their portrayals of librarians. They were clearly written by people who have never met or loved librarians. And after reading the first chapter of one book, I realized that no librarian could ever fall for the hero. Librarians are very discerning. It's clear that I'm going to have to start writing romances and appropriately represent my people.

In the meantime, I do need to find another romance to read. Any suggestions?

Sausages is a Good Word

One of the most amusing things in the world is to hear Tuey say the word sausages. He pronounces it sorshigzhes (I don't know what kind of inner linguistic guidelines he follows that allows him to sometimes pronounce the letter s and sometimes not). It's especially amusing when he commands someone to make his sorshigzhes "go round and round" [translation: warm them up in the microwave] and upon receiving them heated, scowls and scolds, "Them are hot!"

What I Post When I Don't Feel Like Posting

I was looking for some photograph attachments in an old email account and found lots of notes that amused me. I can't tell if they're actually funny or if they just struck me in the right way at the moment I read them. Like this one.

I saw him on Friday in the [campus building], but I was busy playing the kazoo at the time, so we didn't talk.

I hadn't even remembered that I had a kazoo in graduate school, but apparently I did and the playing of it sometimes prevented me from having conversations with boys I'd recently been mean to in relationships.

Find Them and Buy Them

My brother and sister-in-law are always finding the best gifts at Target. It's remarkable. I can't decide if they find such great stuff at Target because they live in the Northeast and the Targets there have hipper stuff than they do here or if my brother and sister-in-law are just way better shoppers than I am. Either theory is completely plausible.

This year for Christmas the good shoppers got the marmots these cookie cutters.

The cookies are 3-D, as illustrated by the picture on the box.


I borrowed the cookie cutters from my sister, because I'm having lunch with a friend on Wednesday and she has a little boy who I think will appreciate jungle animal cookies for dessert. By the time I got around to making a cookie test batch tonight, I was too tired to whip up a batch of royal icing, so the giraffe is completely unadorned and the rhinoceros is just sprinkled with red sugar. I still think they're pretty fantastic. I can't even tell you how thrilling it was to put the little legs on the animals and to realize that they were truly going to stand up as promised on the box.



I love them.

As Requested By Marmot Dad

Tonight the little girl marmots were playing a game that involved their ponies being sucked down into whirlpools, which prompted Marmot Dad to confess that the fear of whirlpools weighed heavily on his mind as a child, causing my sister to pipe up that she (a child raised in the woods of Kentucky) had grown up terrified of quicksand. She demonstrated for us how she practiced throwing her arms out and leaning forward to save herself in case she found herself pulled into quicksand while wandering in the woods.

When I was in elementary school, I was sure my house would be consumed by fire. A friendly firefighter visited my elementary school and apprised the entire third grade of the dangers of being caught in a house fire without a plan. He instructed us that we needed metal ladders near our upstairs windows and fire extinguishers in our closets and a family emergency plan and meeting spot to be agreed upon now, before our homes were all burned to the ground. I took these warnings to heart and sat my mother down to inform her that we were ill-prepared for the great disaster that would surely befall us one day. We had no ladders. We had no fire extinguisher. We had no family meeting spot. What was she going to do about it? She suggested that we perhaps meet at the neighbors' house across the street. She went back to reading her book. She seemed unimpressed with the potential calamity awaiting us.

Fortunately for the family, I was prepared to step up and save us in case of a fire. I spent almost every night of the third grade lying in bed considering escape routes from our house in the event of a fire. I was most concerned with our pets. I figured the cat was smart enough to get out on her own, and the dog would be wherever my mom was. He was heavy, but I was pretty sure we could get him thrown out a bedroom window. His legs would break, but he'd heal okay and not be left in a burning house. We had two fish, though, and the fish were a problem. My brother won the fish somewhere and brought them home for me to raise. I disliked them. Fish are creepy. Fish do not contribute anything to a home. Once I dropped one of the fish into some shag carpeting and had to scoop him up with a sugar bowl, which is really hard, and which did not increase my affection for the icky, prehistoric pet. Still, I was the caretaker of the fish and I felt responsible for them, so I was working on a fire escape plan for them, too. If I left them in the house, they would boil in their bowl, but if I threw them out the window, they'd lie in the dirt sucking air. Which death was more humane? I finally decided that neither was acceptable and I'd have to rush into the bathroom and flush them, wishing them well in the sewage system and hoping they made it into fresh water one day.

It's been a long time since I've thought about fire safety. Max and Sasha are going to have to fend for themselves if we have a fire here. I have no plan.