Spring!

OK, it's finally really here. Spring has sprung. We have (probably) seen the last of the snow, for the year. Yes, we could still get some (last year it snowed on May 20th), but I don't think we will. It's supposed to be in the 70s all week, or at least high 60s. Several days have chances of rain -- not snow. Hello, Spring! 

It occurred to me after Rocket Boy left to go back to St. Louis that I should have asked him to switch out the glass and put the screens in the storm doors. But I didn't. And since we don't know when he'll be back, the kids and I will probably have to do it ourselves.

Teen A says, "It's easy! Anyone could do it! Even [Teen B] could probably do it!"

So maybe it won't be that hard. I wish Rocket Boy were here to do it, though. 

I'm glad April is ending. I don't like April, try as I might. This past week I kept having these stabbing pains of misery. I tried to ignore them. There isn't anything I can do about them, not really. In some cases it wasn't even possible to avoid making them worse. On Thursday, Rocket Boy called me from the hospital, where he had been admitted the night before. Another bout of cellulitis, which his surgery was supposed to prevent. Oh well. He went home Friday, and last night he told me he might take a short hike today, so he's obviously feeling better. I think also he's afraid of letting his health problems get the upper hand. He has to get right back out there and keep exercising or his body will just give out on him. 

On Thursday afternoon, after I talked to him, I needed to do a bunch of errands, so I went and did them. In retrospect, I probably shouldn't have been on the road. I did my errands and I made it home, but I was so spacey. I hate it when RB has to be in the hospital and I'm a thousand miles away.

Friday, Teen B and I had tickets to see the spring play at the "other" high school in town, because our next-door neighbor was in it. They were doing "The Grapes of Wrath," of all things. What a great play to see when you're feeling sad. I was actually dreading it, and I certainly don't usually feel that way about seeing plays.

I'd gotten seats in the row with the most legroom and was amused to see some of our neighbors (one of whom has very long legs) seated just down the row from us. 

I thought the students did an outstanding job with the play, but it was so depressing. I read the book back in -- 10th grade? my parents gave it to me for Christmas that year, I think, or possibly my birthday, which seems weird, but there you are. Maybe I asked for it, is that possible? I was on a John Steinbeck kick for a while, I remember that. Anyway, the book was of course very depressing, too, but the story seems worse to me now because I'm more knowledgeable about Dust Bowl/Depression days, and also because it's impossible not to compare the situation in the play with problems today. The play specifically made me think of two groups of people: refugees from Syria, Afghanistan, Venezuela, etc., and (homegrown) homeless people. The book and play show how unfairly the Okies were treated, but of course it's possible to look at it from the Californians' point of view too: who are these people? why are they trying to take our jobs? why don't they go back where they came from?

Also, now that I have this new bit of knowledge about my own family history, I thought about the Palatine Germans who came to New York in the early 1700s and were hated and despised. Immigrants, refugees -- nobody ever wants them, nobody ever feels like they have enough to spare for them.

I started to cry at the end of the play, so embarrassing. Of course, Teen B didn't understand what was going on in the last few scenes, so I pulled myself together and explained it to him as we walked to the car. I was so glad the play was over.

But I went on being tender, easily bruised. I was reading The Sentence by Louise Erdrich, which I'd been meaning to read for a while, and it was going along OK, even though the book is set in 2019-2020, so here came the pandemic. But it's also set in Minneapolis, so suddenly here came George Floyd. And I thought, I can't read about this. I can't relive it. I set the book down and did something else. Finally I came back to it and forced my way through the last few chapters. It's over now, and so is (almost) April.

***

I like May. May is when all the flowers start blooming. In our yard, dandelions and grape hyacinth, and in other people's yards, all kinds of lovely things. And other people's lilacs bloom, and toward the end of the month, finally, our lilac, which has started making little green leaves (see photo). May is also the month when I can PLANT things. I'll probably wait until Mother's Day to buy my plants, just to be safe, but it's going to be hard to wait. But I can get everything ready in the meantime. 

This week I tried out my new simple schedule and it worked quite well. In the mornings I have two main tasks: FlyLady and writing. This week I got lots of cleaning done in the living room, and changed out various wintry-looking cat blankets and cloths on furniture for some that looked a little more springlike. I also thought I broke my vacuum cleaner, took it to be repaired, and learned that I just hadn't put it back together properly after changing the bag. They're nice at the vacuum cleaner repair shop and did not make fun of me (or charge me).

I also have ALMOST finished the draft of my novel. I have one chapter to go, so I hope I will be able to finish it this coming week. Regardless, I should be able to finish it before the school year ends. And then I can spend the summer revising and maybe by fall I'll feel ready to (self-)publish it. That's my current thinking -- that I'll get it all fixed up and then self-publish. And not promote it in any way. That way it will be out there, sort of, but I won't have to worry about anyone reading it or criticizing it. Is that, slightly, crazy? I'm not sure.

My two afternoon tasks are working on the files and working on the yard, and I made progress on both this week. The files have been stymieing me for months, so much of a mess that I didn't know where to begin. This week I finally made a map of what I wanted to put in each file drawer -- for three file cabinets, since the goal is to get rid of the fourth -- and started pulling things out and moving them around. Now with the three full weeks I have left before school gets out (that last week of May is finals week, so the twins will be in and out), I plan to tackle one file cabinet per week. Monday through Thursday I can work on one each of the four drawers, and then on Friday I'll work on whatever didn't get done the other days. Part of the plan is to get some of the drawers completely empty, move things over from the fourth cabinet, and then get rid of the fourth cabinet, move some other things around, and add one more desk to the room.

To rearrange the files I first had to jettison Rocket Boy's old system of organization. He had the main file cabinet (back when we didn't have four) organized as follows: 

• Top drawer: monthly stuff (water bills, gas bills, phone bills)
• 2nd drawer: semi-annual stuff (insurance bills, not sure what else)
• 3rd drawer: annual stuff (taxes)
• 4th drawer: empty file folders
  

I never understood this system, and I used to argue with him about it: "Why is this in "semi-annual" when it comes every month?" It made sense to him, but it didn't to me -- but I moved into his house when we got married, so I had to accept his file system. 

However, when we moved back to Boulder from Ridgecrest, he got depressed about not having a job and he stopped filing things. For years nothing got filed, until I started trying to put things back together. My feeling is that he gave up on the files, so it's my turn to organize them. So I am doing that. Even though it makes me a little uncomfortable. After 20 years, this still doesn't feel like my house and the files don't feel like my files.

Part of the job of working on the files is getting rid of things and this also makes me slightly uncomfortable. Rocket Boy used to save everything. He put things in folders with neat labels and put the folders in hanging folders with more neat labels, even though whatever it is shouldn't have been saved in the first place. I'm going through the files and "thinning" them. For example, in his "caving" folder he had perhaps a dozen brochures from various companies, describing what they had for sale (e.g., helmets with lights). In 1987. I know, it's historic, but really, come on. If the companies even still exist, they're not selling the same things in 2023 that they were in 1987, and anyway, Rocket Boy hasn't gone caving since I met him, in 2000, so I doubt if he's going to start up again any time soon.

I considered getting rid of the "caving" folder altogether, but settled for getting rid of the old brochures. And the multiple extra copies of maps to caves that he's never going to visit again. The file is now half its previous width.

Importantly, I am not going to tell him I'm doing this. I also plan to play dumb if he happens to look in the folder and ask what happened to all the brochures. I can just see that happening, ten years from now when he's retired and the twins are off on their own. At the age of nearly 80 he'll decide to get into caving again and ask me what happened to all his brochures. Hopefully by then I'll have dementia and be unable to answer.

Also this week, I worked on the yard. I didn't do it every day -- maybe three days? One day I weeded the side yard and one day I hacked away at a juniper in the back yard. And maybe one day I picked up branches. Our big compost bin was completely full by Friday morning. The problem is that compost is only picked up every two weeks (including this past Friday). Once the bin is full (which it already is again, due to the work I did Friday afternoon), I will have to resort to putting stuff in leaf bags. I have some leaf bags, so I can do that, but for some reason that makes me nervous. I will have to get over that.

Our yard is in such bad shape that I find it very hard to work on. It's just so depressing and overwhelming. But I keep telling myself, baby steps. Just like FlyLady inside the house. Keep on hacking at those overgrown bushes, and someday there won't be as many of them. 

***

So, here comes May, the pink month. I don't have any special plans for the month other than to work along on these four continuing projects (FlyLady, writing, files, and yardwork). Tomorrow I have to go pick up the equipment for my sleep study, which I will do that night and then return the equipment on Tuesday. Wednesday evening, Teen B has a concert for which he says he is not prepared, but I'm sure it'll be fine. I think that's everything, except for whatever pops up.

I'm ready to attack the next bookcase -- I'll post about that tomorrow, probably, or maybe Tuesday. I'm going to read some library books first and then I'll get started on the next round of unread, unloved books from the shelves. I need to read the book group book (On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous by Ocean Vuong). I'm postponing the next president until June.

Rocket Boy wants me to start planning our next trip -- he wants to go to Yellowstone this summer, along with everyone else in the country, I think. I just finished paying off my credit card for our last trip, and I have one more property tax bill to pay, so maybe after that's all done, I'll think about our next adventure.

Springtime snow

Well, I think I said last week that we had an interesting week ahead of us, and we did. The big things were probably Teen B's band trip, the funeral I attended, and the snow.  

But the week began with my online appointment with the Colorado Sleep Institute. The PA who interviewed me was nice, but he said it sounded as though there was enough evidence to justify a sleep study, and I had to agree. So a week from tomorrow I will go to their office in Boulder and pick up the equipment to do a sleep study at home. Since then I have vacillated between thinking that I probably do have sleep apnea and getting fixed up with a CPAP will change my life -- I'll have more energy, I'll lose weight, I won't be so foggy-headed all the time -- and thinking that I probably don't have sleep apnea, in which case what's my problem, Alzheimer's?

I would rather have a fixable problem than an unfixable problem, so CPAP here we come. I hope.

I shouldn't write too much about Teen B's trip since I've been making a conscious effort to have this blog be about me now, not the kids (making it so much less interesting, but there you are). I'll just say that I stressed out about it nonstop until I dropped him off at school Wednesday morning, and then stressed out about it nonstop until I picked him up at school around 11 pm Thursday night. 

Also, he didn't wear the black dress shoes I'd gotten him. He wore sneakers instead and no one cared. I think I should probably just return the dress shoes to Target. They seem unharmed.

I had hoped that Teen A and I would have some quality time together while Teen B was gone, but he was rather hostile most of the time. I think -- but am not sure -- that it would have been different if Teen A had been the one to go away and Teen B had been the one to stay home.

It's hard to have your kids grow up after holding them so close to you for so long. The pandemic exacerbated that. How am I going to let them go for real? How are they going to feel strong enough to go? (And where will they go, with housing so expensive?)

The kids had Friday off (and will have Monday off too -- conference exchange days, even though there were no conferences, due to the fake shooting). They both slept late -- I'm not sure Teen B was even up by the time I left, around 10:40. But I had this funeral to go to, so I had to get up.

The funeral was for the 93-year-old mother of an old friend of Rocket Boy's. I saw it in the paper and told RB I would go to it, "representing" him, as people sometimes do in Barbara Pym novels (An Academic Question, A Few Green Leaves). As I prepared to go, I of course began to feel nervous. For one thing, I don't have good funeral clothes. I don't have good clothes, period -- I spend the least amount of money possible on my clothes. It occurred to me, as it has before, that I should buy something that could be worn at a funeral. But there are different types of funerals: serious religious ones, like this one, and more cheerful memorial services where they often request that people not wear black, and then of course there are funerals in both winter and summer. I'd have to have a whole wardrobe of funeral clothes.

In the end, I wore black capri pants, sandals (because it's APRIL, I don't care if it's going to snow tonight), a black and white print shirt that fits over my large belly, and a black sweater. Nobody is going to be looking at you, I told myself.

I drove to the church successfully, parked, and followed some other older women into a part of the church that wasn't the sanctuary, some sort of meeting room. I saw people who I vaguely remembered as being family members, and one of them spotted me. Her eyes widened, her arms went out: "I know you," she said enthusiastically. But of course I didn't know her. "Jennifer?" I tried. "Jessica," she corrected me. "Oh yes," I said, nodding, wondering who the heck Jessica was. It took my brain a while, but eventually it found the storage area where it keeps information about this family and I remembered who Jessica was. It helped that I spotted her very distinctive husband whose hair had turned snow white. I'm pretty sure the last time I saw them was at some family party in the summer of 2007, when I was pregnant with the twins and feeling nauseated. So, you know, a long time ago. The brain needed some help.

It turned out that several people at the funeral remembered me and wanted to talk to me (and wanted to hear about Rocket Boy). So, in fact, it probably did matter what I was wearing, and maybe I should invest in a funeral wardrobe. 

Or maybe it doesn't matter. The world does not expect me to be well dressed. Or maybe there's a compromise I could come up with. Anyway, whatever.

It was a nice funeral -- not my style at all, too formal and religious, but the pastor clearly had known the deceased and could talk about her intelligently. There weren't very many people there besides family and almost no one sang the hymns -- I tried to help out. I much prefer memorial services where people sit around and talk about the person who's just died, but I'm sure this was RB's friend's mom's choice, so it was right. I suppose most of her old friends had already died, but it was clear that her extended family was very fond of her and would miss her intensely.

I told Rocket Boy all about it that night and we spent a good 30-40 minutes remembering people. He said (not understanding what sort of funeral it was) that if he had been there he would have told a story about his old friend's father-in-law and a skunk. He told me the story -- it was amusing, but it had absolutely nothing to do with his old friend's mother, i.e., the deceased. I pointed this out. He felt it wasn't important. I thought it was for the best that he hadn't been there. But maybe that was mean of me. Rocket Boy's old friends know what he's like and don't mind.

Attending a funeral probably inevitably leads to thoughts of one's own demise, and also the value of one's life, whether or not one is doing what one should do on earth, that sort of thing. "Brief life is here our portion" and all that.

I spent some time today thinking about all the ways in which I haven't "achieved my potential." When I was 14, I won the English award for my junior high school (at graduation they gave out awards to the 9th graders who were best in science, math, English, the various foreign languages, music, I'm not sure what else). I also won the Latin award, but that was nonsense. Winning one of these awards meant that your photograph was displayed in the main hallway for the whole next year. Ever since 7th grade I had been looking at those photos and hoping I would win the English award at the end of 9th grade. And then I did. It was magic. I remember walking down the grassy amphitheater toward the stage to get my award, feeling like I'd won the Nobel Prize.

It's been pretty much all downhill since then. For example,

• In 10th grade I took English with a student teacher. At the end of the year she gave me a copy of Bartlett's Familiar Quotations which I still have. On the flyleaf she wrote "I hope I'll be seeing your name on title pages in the future." If she's still alive, I hope she's not still waiting. (I looked her up: she's alive and kicking, on Twitter, a retired English teacher now, married with twin girls, a cat lover, Trump hater. We'd probably get along famously, other than the fact that I've disappointed her.)
  
• In 11th grade I tried to drop out of honors English, second semester, because I hated writing essays. To keep me in the class, my teacher said I could do some creative writing in place of each essay assignment. Thus I did not learn how to write an essay.
• In 12th grade, faced with having to write essays, I dropped out of honors English after the first week and took Film Study instead ("intended for those who don't read well").
• My high school didn't give out an English award, but obviously I wouldn't have won it if it had.
  
• I was a National Merit Scholar (based on my test scores -- I've always been a good test-taker), but didn't win any scholarships.
  
• I didn't get into the college of my choice and had to go to my safety school (UC Davis) instead.
  
• I got a C in chemistry my freshman year and dropped out of science classes forever.
  
• I transferred to UC Berkeley and decided to major in Rhetoric. To do this, I had to take the intro courses, Rhetoric 1A and Rhetoric 1B. 1A was OK, but I was seriously lost in 1B. I didn't understand the discussions, I didn't know how to write the papers. I had never learned how to write an essay (see above). I remember telling the grad student who taught 1B that I planned to major in Rhetoric. He looked displeased. I got a C in the class.
• I made it through the major, but I didn't understand the discussions in most of my classes. I almost never got A's, it was all A- or B+. In other words, I did the work, but I didn't really know what I was doing. I spent most of my free time reading novels (I was the only person I knew at Cal who had a Berkeley PUBLIC library card).
  
• I had wanted to do an honors project, but my grades were just slightly too low to qualify (they changed the requirements right before my senior year).
• I graduated without any plans: no job, no internship, no acceptance to graduate school, no marriage proposal or live-in boyfriend, no nothing.
• I lived at home for the next few years.
• Eventually I decided to go to graduate school in linguistics. As noted above, I've always been a good test-taker, so my stellar scores got me into some schools and I went to Michigan because they offered me a great fellowship (all based on my test scores).
• I was not, however, a stellar grad student. 

Well, I could go on and on. The point is, it's been all "potential" and very few results. I feel as though I've spent my life trying to move on from that junior high school English award -- either live up to it or forget about it. I've done neither.

Which is OK. I've had a fairly enjoyable life, the usual ups and downs, but mostly good. I know if someone were to write my obituary they could spin it so it sounded impressive. But the truth is that I've mostly just done a lot of reading. Is that a bad life -- a life of reading? I know I was supposed to do a lot of wonderful writing instead, but it hasn't worked out that way.

On the other hand, I still think about writing all the time, and it isn't just because of feeling like a failure. It's still what I want to do with my life, despite my total failure to write all those novels I was supposed to write and generally become a professional writer. Actually, I should clarify that: I have figured out over the years that I don't want to be a "professional writer." I just want to write. That's what the blog is, that's what all my writing is.

I've failed entirely at doing what I was supposed to do with my life, but I love to read and write. That's me in a nutshell. That's what it could say in my obituary, though I'm sure it won't.

It's now Sunday, April 23rd. April has just whizzed by.  As you can see from the photos, we got more snow: 3.5 inches, according to weather.gov, but that was a reading taken at 7 am Saturday morning, and it kept on snowing most of the day. Very very light snow, though, with breaks, so maybe another half inch or so, 4 inches total perhaps?

And it's almost all gone already -- it's in the 50s today. I wore sandals when Teen B and I made our Starbucks run.

It's supposed to rain on Tuesday, with possibly a little snow thrown in, and again next weekend, again with possibly a little snow. Next Sunday is the last day of April, so I HOPE the weather remembers that and does not continue to snow on Monday, May 1st. Snow in April (in Colorado) is to be expected; snow in May is just not OK (though not unusual).

Realizing that it is late April has reminded me that -- eek -- it's only a month until school gets out. That means I need to think hard about how I want to spend my time over the next four-and-a-bit weeks. 

When the kids are out of school, there are some things I can still do, like cleaning and reading, and other things that it becomes very hard to do, like working on the files (because the file cabinets are inches away from where they sit to play video games) and writing (because my desk is in the same room with them, and it's hard for me to write with two teenagers sitting a few feet away from me, fighting).

Therefore, over the next month I should prioritize the files, not just work on them for half an hour twice a week, as I've been doing. I also should try to finish the first draft of my novel, so that I can print it out and work on editing it by hand over the summer, away from the room with the quarreling twins in it. I'm close to the end -- maybe one or two more chapters to go.

I also came to the realization that despite my good intentions to earn money on Mechanical Turk, I've mostly failed on that and it's a huge waste of my time. I've never figured out how to get beyond filling out surveys, and it takes me an hour to earn even $1 from those surveys. I've been spending two or three hours a day on Mechanical Turk in order to earn 2 or 3 dollars. That's just silly. I need to set MT aside and do work that means something, even if it doesn't earn money.

So, my schedule for the last month of the school year is going to look something like this:

• Morning: get kids off to school, do FlyLady cleaning stuff, work on my writing
• Afternoon: do errands, work on the files, work in the yard
  

I wish that had been my schedule for the past month, but I guess I had to figure this out first. Also, it's just starting to be pleasant enough to work in the yard (and there will be lots of days when it still won't be, especially this coming week).

Here we go with the last week of April.

Typical April

Despite the changes brought by climate change, April was and is the most aggravating month (Eliot's "cruelest month," same thing). The difference between the old days and now is that in the old days (in Colorado) we had more snow. But the month was still always a mix of warm and cold, wet snow with greening branches poking through.

This past week we had it all: a couple of horrible hot days, in the 80s, and then on Friday it snowed. Rained first, and then snowed, and then rained some more, and then snowed some more. When I got up Saturday morning we had a dusting only, and I didn't get out with my camera until almost all of it had melted, but at one point Friday evening the snow was coming down hard. My automatic response was "oh no!" but I tried to quell that, reminding myself that this could be our last snow of the year. What, do I want it to be hot and humid all the time? Wednesday and Thursday were awful. Enjoy the snow, I told myself, and so I did, sort of. But I didn't want to go out in it.

One problem with April is that I have started to wear lighter clothes. I'm so tired of my winter pants, I don't want to put them on one more time, even if it does snow. So I'm wearing capri pants and sandals -- and I'm cold. Also, I opened my bedroom window -- after keeping it closed for most of the last four months -- and now my bedroom is cold. I know, I know, I could close it again. But it's April! The window should be open! And thus I'm cold.

This week we are going to have more heat (though only 70s, thankfully), and wind, i.e., fire weather. And then, starting on Wednesday, chances for rain and snow the rest of the week. Typical April.

I didn't walk at all this week, and the bad weather is not really an excuse. I mean, it was an excuse on Friday, but that's it. I could easily have gone out on the hot days, but I didn't. (I did lift weights one day. The goal was two days, but one day is better than zero days.)

I keep telling myself I'll exercise "next week." So weird, a lifetime of walking and then now, in my early old age? late middle age? (what are the 60s called?) I don't seem to want to walk anymore at all, unless I have a family member with me. There's always an excuse. Here are some of my excuses (real live excuses that I have used with myself more than once):

1. I'm too fat, people will look at me
2. Too many other people out walking (they'll look at me, might even say hello)
3. People will think I'm a homeless person because my clothes are so awful
4. People will think I'm a porch pirate because I'm not walking a dog
5. People will think I'm odd
6. (are you sensing a theme here?)
7. I'm tired of the same old walk, there's nothing interesting to look at
   
8. If I glance over at things in people's yards (flowers in the spring and summer, leaves in the fall), people will think I'm actually looking at their front porches (because I'm a porch pirate) or their cars (because I'm going to come back later and steal their catalytic converters)
9. If I stop for a couple of minutes to look at things (birds in trees) people will think I'm odd or homeless, or they may even stop too and try to figure out what I'm looking at, possibly engaging me in conversation
   
10. If I walk past the same houses every day, their residents will think "oh there goes that fat odd possibly homeless person again, what's her problem?"

Well, that was useful. I never realized that almost all my negative feelings about walking have to do with other people's supposed opinions. I mean, I knew it was part of the problem, but this is pretty intense. Huh. It's basically the opposite of what older women are said to experience: that people don't notice them, that they're nearly invisible. I seem to think I'm the most visible thing out there.

When I was talking to my doctor about exercise, she said something about how she thought in Boulder, if a fat person goes to a gym, other people will be encouraging, like, hey, good for you, you're exercising. I just looked at her like she was crazy. (She's very skinny.) I know what it's like to be a fat person in Boulder. Other people are NOT encouraging, they are disdainful. Still, I wonder if I'm exaggerating their interest here.

...

Well, it's now 7:30, so even with that bit of illumination above, I didn't go for a walk. I guess I'll try again tomorrow.

We have an unusual week ahead of us. Teen B is going on a band trip, Wednesday and Thursday. I had to buy him black dress shoes (I got some at Target) and other accoutrements. I'm worried that he'll back out at the last minute, but he probably won't. He's pretty good about doing what's expected of him. Still, I'm a bit concerned.

Monday, I have an online appointment with a doctor from the Colorado Sleep Institute. I am so not looking forward to that. Either they'll say, well, you probably have sleep apnea, here's a CPAP machine to wear every night for the rest of your life, or they'll say, you need to come to our lab and stay overnight while we study you (in which case, what will I do with the twins?), or -- I don't know if there's another possibility. It all seems bad. 

Tuesday I see the orthodontist, and that night is the book group meeting which will include a new potential member, which makes me nervous. Instead of just being myself, I will have to be on my best behavior so that the new potential member doesn't think I'm weird.

Wednesday I send Teen B off on his trip, at least I hope I do, and deal with only Teen A at night and the next morning.

Thursday night Teen B will come back, and I'll have to pick him up late at night and it will probably be raining and snowing.

Friday the kids have off and I have to go to a funeral that morning (the mother of an old friend of Rocket Boy's).

And at some point during the week I'll need to go in and pick up my new glasses. Probably the kids' glasses too.

With all that to look forward to, I don't know if I'll get much else done, but I'll make the usual plans and do the best I can.

And now, very quickly, Easter and the rest of April

I usually write a post to welcome in a new month, with my plans and goals and all that. But April feels like it's half over already! And it's a short month, to boot.

In fact, it's not half over, it's 1/4 over. We still have three weeks left. Still, they are unusual weeks.

• Week 2, the one that's about to begin, has only two days of normal school, because it's testing week. The twins are off entirely on Wednesday and Thursday, and on Friday they go in for just the morning, to take the PSAT-9, a test which did not exist when I was young.
• Week 3, Teen B is going on an overnight trip to Grand Junction with the band on Wednesday and Thursday, and then both kids have Friday off.
• Week 4, the kids have Monday off. 
• And then it's May -- three full weeks of school, plus finals week. 
• And then it's summer. Ack!
   

So the only "normal" week this month was the one just past, and that was hardly normal, since we were recovering from Spring Break and Rocket Boy was trying to get things done and then I had to take him to the airport to fly back to St. Louis. Plus, the kids and I all had eye appointments and the kids had their yearly physicals. It was a complicated week.

It seemed very odd to have Easter pop up all of a sudden. Last Sunday, when we were just back from our trip, I was vaguely aware that it was Palm Sunday, but that was all. As the week progressed, I just didn't think about it -- Passover, Maundy Thursday, all that. When I talked to Rocket Boy on Friday he mentioned that it was Good Friday. These days used to be important to me, when I went to church regularly (in grad school), and I still like to acknowledge them. 

Well, I did acknowledge Easter, but it didn't go as planned. Last year Rocket Boy was with us, but this year it was just me, so I decided to do as much ahead of time as possible. On Thursday and Friday morning, when the twins were at school, I filled all the plastic eggs with jelly beans and even assembled the baskets. And discovered, like the last couple of years, that I had bought way way way too much candy. Why do I do this? Well, it doesn't really matter, we'll eat it eventually. Jelly beans don't go bad.

But then on Saturday, I was depressed. I can't really explain it, although it was cloudy, and clouds do send my mood south. Maybe I was missing Rocket Boy or maybe I was just tired. Teen A was yelling at his video games, the way he always does, and Teen B was yelling at me because I wasn't yelling at Teen A, and finally I blew up at both of them. And then gave myself a time out in my room, because I obviously wasn't at my best.

We normally eat out on Saturday night and it was Teen A's turn to choose the restaurant, but he was in a bad mood (probably partly because of my bad mood) and kept saying "I don't know, I'll choose it later." Finally, around 5:30 pm or so, he chose Subway, and I said NO, we just went there the last time you chose, I am sick of Subway, NO. Choose something else. And he wouldn't and so we didn't go out.

I went to the grocery store and got them some sushi, and I had leftover quiche. I haven't been feeling hungry at all this week, so the fridge is full of stuff that I'm supposed to be eating for lunch but am not.

Anyway, I finally got them to bed and then I did the dishes and then I got out the Easter stuff and hid it here and there. I'm not very good at hiding the plastic eggs and I wasn't in the mood to hide anything, so it was all pretty lame.

In the morning, when I got up (around 8:30 am), it was as though it was any old Sunday. Teen B had gotten up before me and found most of the eggs I "hid" in the bathroom, but then he'd stopped, to wait for his brother. But when Teen A got up, he wasn't interested. I finally got him to come out (from the desk room, where he was playing his endless video games) to the living room and find his baskets, but he was so bored with the whole thing. We stopped after they found their big baskets. The house is full of candy and nobody's eating it. The only beings showing any interest in the Easter paraphernalia are the cats.

So it finally dawned on me that they're too old for this. They've crossed a line. Last year they had fun looking for eggs, and maybe if Rocket Boy were here they'd get into it a little more, but I think the bottom line is that they're past it. They're 15 -- it's not at all surprising.

From now on -- if I remember, and that's a big IF -- I'm going to go easier on Easter. I'll buy some candy and set out some Easter baskets, but I'm not going to do this big hiding thing (that I don't enjoy anyway). If Rocket Boy is here, he can hide the plastic eggs, but I'm not going to do it. We've crossed the Rubicon. They've outgrown Easter.

I'm sad about that, but I'm also OK with it. It's hard not to think about when they were little boos and it was all so exciting -- but they aren't little boos anymore. Someday maybe they'll have little boos of their own to hide eggs for. I wonder if they will.

And now for the rest of April and the spring quarter of the year. OK, some plans. 

Month of April (and 2nd Quarter of 2023):

• April's theme is probably something like "welcome spring." I think of it as the month when light green things pop up everywhere. It can still snow -- it snowed this past week, 3-4 inches -- but we probably won't get a lot more. Also, the end of April is when we might first see a hummingbird.
  
  
• I should choose a new 2nd Quarter project, but I'm inclined to go on working on the files. That's a big, big project. However, I'll also choose the yard. Our back yard, as well as both side yards, is/are a disaster, and we can't afford to hire anyone to work on them right now. I'll go on with the schedule that I made last month, where I work on the files two days a week and the yard two days a week. If I actually do that, I should start to see results.
  
  
• Socializing: I told a friend of mine that I would invite her for coffee in April, but at the moment I'm not feeling like it. Maybe later in April, when things calm down, I'll feel more like seeing people. I can't be a hermit forever. (Or can I?)
  
  
• Reading: I'm working along on my books from the shelves by my bed. I've read the book group book but we'll choose another at our meeting on the 18th. I'm thinking I might get started on a biography of Theodore Roosevelt, maybe Mornings on Horseback by David McCullough or The Rise of Theodore Roosevelt by Edmund Morris. We'll see. I also might just want to read something fun after I finish my "books from the shelves" assignment.
  

For dinner tonight we're having a recipe from the NY Times food section. It's called "Buttery Breakfast Casserole" and it calls for sausage, but I substituted mushrooms, as recommended by some of the readers. It has to sit in the fridge for at least four hours, so it's doing that now. So all I have to do for the rest of the day is...

• Put away the kids' laundry.
• Help Teen B write his Romeo & Juliet paper and study for a math quiz.
  
• Help Teen A with his Spanish homework.
• Call Rocket Boy to talk about financial stuff. We're dealing with a lot right now. It's fine -- it's going to all work out and we'll be in good shape when it's over, but I have some big things to do to make that happen. I hate financial stuff.
  

A walk might be nice, since it's a pretty day. But I don't know. I'm thinking I might take a nap.

Spring Break is over...

...but we had a wonderful time. I'm going to write this post all about our trip this past week, so that I can remember it.

Monday

We left Boulder around 10:30 Monday morning, March 27th, driving the minivan that Rocket Boy had rented. He tried to get me to practice driving it in our neighborhood before we left, but I refused, too scared. I finally took the wheel somewhere in southern Colorado. The car (a Chrysler Pacifica) turned out to be very easy to drive, with a lot of power, and it got surprisingly good gas mileage. Even loaded up the way it was, we got close to 30 mph on the highway, which is better than my Subaru.

We headed straight down I-25, stopping for lunch in Pueblo at a Country Kitchen (a chain that we weren't familiar with). The food was OK, but I was struck by the bill: with tip, it was $93. Oh my goodness. I realized I'd better get used to it. We can always spend the next 6 months (or more?) paying off my credit card.

I had the idea that New Mexico is very beautiful, and all along this drive (from the border south to near Albuquerque and then south to near Las Cruces and then east to the Arizona border) I kept waiting for beauty. I think the problem was that (a) we weren't in the prettiest areas, (b) it was a little early in the year, and (c) I live in Colorado, so I have ridiculously high standards. 

We got to our Best Western in Moriarty around 7 pm. We knew that their hot tub was broken, but we were distressed to learn that the POOL was also out of commission! I took a photo of it anyway. Doesn't that look appealing? The front desk clerk told us that a lot of people had used it over the weekend and "messed up the pH." 

So we drove to a nearby casual restaurant called Chili Hills for dinner. They specialize in New Mexico cuisine, but I'm not sure we really had any except for Teen A's bowl of New Mexico style chili. He ate some of it and we all tried it, but it was way too hot and spicy for me. (I had a loaded baked potato.) Since we couldn't go swimming, we all ordered dessert too (very good pie!).

Our room had two queen beds and a sleeper sofa, which Teen A claimed. It seemed like a nice hotel, if it hadn't had that problem with the pool.

Tuesday

On Tuesday, after a good free breakfast (TWO waffle makers), we left the hotel pretty early because we knew we had a lot of driving to do before we got to Tucson. We got into a rhythm where Rocket Boy drove in the mornings and I drove in the afternoons.

On road trips I always look for interesting signs, and one I saw outside of Albuquerque amused me. It said

Hill
Blocks
View

OK, I realize this means that you can't see oncoming traffic because it's coming up the other side of the hill you're going up, so you shouldn't try to pass. But in this case there was also a hill to the right of us, blocking the view, and it seemed like that was what the sign was referring to. It just struck me funny, like -- I couldn't figure that out for myself? Yes, the hill is blocking the view. Thank you for pointing that out. 

Maybe you had to be there. But the kids and I laughed about it for a long time.

We stopped for lunch in Truth or Consequences, New Mexico, the town named after the game show. Many of their restaurants are only open on the weekends -- at least this time of year? -- but we found something called Johnny B's Restaurant, kind of a diner and ice cream shop combined, that looked as though it was popular with the locals. We didn't sample the ice cream, but the food was good. I had a fish sandwich with sweet potato fries.

On and on we drove. It was dry and dusty and windy. There were mountains in the distance, but they were hard to see through the blowing dust. Saw this nice sign at a rest stop -- this might have been in Arizona, I don't remember. We looked for poisonous snakes and insects but didn't see a one -- anywhere on the trip, except in a zoo.

What struck me the most about New Mexico was that it seemed very undeveloped. Lots and lots of wide open spaces. Room to breathe! I kept thinking it would be a good place to move, and then I had to remind myself that I am 62 and I don't want to start over. But it looked like it had potential. If I were a young person, I think I would consider New Mexico. I'm not sure why I didn't consider it back in the 1990s -- oh, I know, magpies. There are magpies in northern New Mexico, but I'm not sure they get as far south as Albuquerque.

Finally, finally, finally we reached our hotel, another Best Western in Green Valley, Arizona, kind of tucked into the back of a shopping center. I was worried that the pool would be closed, but no, no, everything was open. We had two adjoining rooms, one with two queen beds and the other with a sleeper sofa and a dining table and chairs. Teen B got the sofa this time. The best thing was that each room had a bathroom! When you have four people in your party, and everyone wants to shower, it's really nice to have two bathrooms. 

It would be nice to have two bathrooms at our house, too, come to think of it.

The kids were full from snacking in the car, but Rocket Boy and I walked to something called the Arizona Family Restaurant for a light dinner. It was OK. I had lemon ricotta pancakes. Then we walked back to the hotel and went swimming with the kids. Back and forth between pool and hot tub. We had both to ourselves. Lovely! Of course I forgot to take a picture, so this one is borrowed from the AAA website. It really did look just like this. Our rooms were on the ground floor just to the right of the hot tub in the picture.

Wednesday

Wednesday was supposed to be the easy day, the day we didn't have to drive hundreds of miles and switch hotels. We were just going to hang out in Tucson and do stuff. 

The problem was that the weather was gorgeous -- in the 80s! And we went first to the Sonora Desert Museum, a sort of zoo/botanical garden (NOT a museum) in the hills west of Tucson. And Teen A hadn't believed me when I said, "It's going to be hot, wear shorts and a light-colored shirt." Instead he wore his usual black sweatpants and a black shirt. And neither boy had a hat. And I wanted to walk the Desert Loop Trail and see the javelinas that live there. So we got really hot! Or at least the kids and I did. Rocket Boy admitted, after our time at the "museum," that he probably shouldn't have worn a flannel shirt (those are his arms in the photo), but otherwise he didn't mind the heat.

The kids complained pretty much the whole time we were there, which gave me a chance to practice my parenting skills. I kept thinking: they're teenagers, they didn't really want to come on this trip, they're hot, and even if they're having fun they're not going to admit it. Rocket Boy kept saying to them, "Guys! Isn't this interesting?" That was not the right approach. I did not try to make them have fun. I looked for ways to make them happier (like ducking into the Packrat Playhouse and buying them drinks from the vending machine there -- they adore all vending machines), and I also did what made ME happy. I didn't say, "Oh, you'll love the javelinas!" I said, "I want to see the javelinas," and they followed me, complaining all the way. Then, when we found them, they really liked them too. But I let them come to that realization by themselves.

Rocket Boy wanted them to appreciate how strange the southern Arizona landscape is, with the saguaro cactus and all that. Of course, the twins were determined NOT to appreciate it. I commented that saguaros and other cacti are so dangerous (if you were to bump into one), they should be classified as weapons. Museum staff were driving around in golf carts with small saguaros in pots in the back, and we started saying, "Oh look, here come more weapons!" We talked about how since we're an anti-gun family, perhaps we should obtain some saguaros instead. All that silliness was a way to "appreciate" the landscape without having to admit to your overly enthusiastic father that you are in fact appreciating it.

We went to the aviary and the hummingbird enclosure and the gift shop (I tried to buy Teen B a t-shirt but he refused to choose one) and then it was really time to leave. The twins were completely out of patience. I was glad I'd gone to the aviary, though, because those were the only Arizona birds I saw on the trip except crows, ravens, mourning doves -- things like that. Inside the aviary we saw a Pyrrhuloxia and a Hooded Oriole and some quail. Outside on the trail we saw a Cactus Wren and a Gila Woodpecker. No Vermilion Flycatchers on this trip.

We drove to a restaurant near the University of Arizona campus to have lunch, but couldn't find a place to park, so Rocket Boy gave up on the idea of showing the twins his old building. I said to them as we were driving past the campus, "Look! This is where Dad went to school! Maybe you'd like to go to school here someday."

"No. Too hot."

Which is ridiculous because Teen B lives in shorts and flip flops, and I think he'd be happiest going to school in a place where you can do that all year long. He'll probably end up at the University of North Dakota, just to spite me.

We found a restaurant on our way back to the hotel, a Jerry Bob's that wasn't actually a Jerry Bob's, which was confusing since we'd never heard of Jerry Bob's before. The restaurant we went to had previously been a Jerry Bob's, and the family that bought it kept the name but changed the menu. This seemed a bit shady to me, but the food was quite good, so whatever.

Then we went back to the hotel and the twins said they were done, goodbye. Rocket Boy had about eight other things he wanted to do that day and he was SOOO disappointed that they didn't want to do any of them, but there you are. I was hot and tired too, but I told him I'd go with him to another place he really wanted to go: the Titan Missile Museum. This is a museum on a site where they used to keep a Titan missile, during the Cold War. I guess most Titan missile sites were destroyed, but they kept this one to remember what it was like. The missile in it no longer has a nuclear warhead, of course. 

To go on the tour of the missile silo, you had to be able to walk down and back up 55 steps, and I was a little worried about my ability to do that. But Rocket Boy got very cross with me when I wavered, so I said OK, I would do my best. And of course it was fine (55 steps are not really that many). 

While we waited for the tour to begin, I looked at the t-shirts in the gift shop. I texted this photo to Teen B to see if he would like one, but he texted back "..." which I assumed meant "no."

I was doing the tour just to make Rocket Boy happy, but it turned out to be extremely interesting. They did a simulation of what it would have been like if the crew had gotten orders to set off the missile and Rocket Boy played the part of the Deputy Commander.

After the tour we went by the mine where Rocket Boy did his research when he was at the U of A. The site was closed, but he could see that it had changed a lot since we were last in Tucson (18 years ago, we think). Then we went to a Starbucks in a Safeway and got the twins their favorite drinks and snacks, to serve as dinner. I wasn't hungry, and Rocket Boy had leftovers from lunch that he could eat. When we got back to the hotel, we had our makeshift meal and then went in the pool and hot tub again.

Thursday

On Thursday we checked out of the hotel and headed north toward Phoenix. Rocket Boy told our friends we'd arrive around noon, and I thought we'd allowed enough time to do that, but I hadn't reckoned on his secret plan to visit Casa Grande Ruins National Monument on the way there. Casa Grande is one of these mysterious Indian ruins that nobody really knows what it was for or why it was abandoned. It was quite interesting and I wished we had more time to spend there. Of course the twins thought it was so BORING. I suggested to Teen B that we buy a t-shirt, but he was having none of that.

This was enough of a detour that we didn't reach Goodyear (the suburb where our friends now live) until 1:30 pm or so. But they didn't seem to mind. They had just gotten home from a road trip of their own the day before, so only the husband, Joe, went with us to lunch (the wife needed to rest). Joe took us to a good Mexican restaurant called Arriba Mexican Grill. I had been hoping to eat lots of Mexican food on our trip, but this was the only Mexican meal we ate. With the twins, we always seemed to end up in diners.

After the delicious lunch we went back to their house and hung out, talking, for another hour. Our friends are much more conservative than we are, at least we think they are, so we prepared for seeing them by thinking of things to talk about that have nothing to do with politics. I practiced, in my mind, getting off of difficult topics if we accidentally got onto them. It turned out that they were just as careful as we were, and nothing even vaguely related to politics was mentioned. So we're still friends!

We finally got back on the road around 4 pm, which meant that we had no chance of reaching the museum in Clarkdale we had planned to visit that day. We had to just DRIVE to get to our hotel in Jerome by 7 pm. We drove north through the mountains at top speed, saying goodbye to the saguaros as we left their territory. When we got to the hotel, the clerk seemed very relieved that we'd made it. 

Jerome is an old mining town that's been turned into a sort of artist colony/tourist attraction. Our hotel, the Connor Hotel, was built in 1898, and it's lovely. We had two big rooms, a bedroom and a sitting room -- the sitting room had a sleeping couch with a trundle bed, so the twins each had a sort of bed. 

The weather had turned stormy as we drove, and when we ventured out of the hotel to find a restaurant, it was sleeting. We walked to the Haunted Hamburger, a decent place overall (though Teen B refused to get a t-shirt there), but apparently haunted. The hostess told the diners sitting next to us the WHOLE story of the hauntings she'd experienced, from orbs to mysterious shadows to knees tapped by unseen hands to mediums telling her there was an evil male spirit in the building. To me it just sounded like a mash-up of every ghost hunter show I'd ever seen, but to the twins it was a little worrying.

I didn't realize HOW worrying until we got back to the hotel. The storm intensified at that point, and the sitting room that the twins were going to sleep in got quite noisy. Their windows faced the street, and there were clatters and bangs and a wailing wind and what sounded like someone knocking on the window (since we were on the second floor, this was unlikely). Teen A begged me to let him drag his trundle bed into our bedroom and sleep there. I said no, what would Teen B do then, all alone in the scary room?

The thing is, I believe I'm a little bit "sensitive" to ghostly stuff, and I wasn't getting any bad vibes at all from the hotel. In fact, I was getting very GOOD vibes from it. I felt as though if there were any spirits there, they were friendly. I told the twins that, but they were unimpressed.

Finally, though, the storm stopped, and with it, the scary noises. We all got a good night's sleep.

Friday

Friday was the difficult day. Worse than Wednesday.

Our hotel didn't have breakfast, free or otherwise, so we drove to the nearby town of Cottonwood to go to a Starbucks (the twins' request). Unfortunately, the Starbucks was drive-through only, and Rocket boy didn't want to do that. So we went across the street to the Black Bear Diner -- another new-to-us chain. 

Maybe it was because we'd all slept well, but we had a wonderful breakfast at that diner. Everything struck us funny. I like a lot of cream in my coffee (on the rare occasions when I drink coffee), and so I kept opening more and more little creamers. I don't know what I was doing wrong, but I kept squirting cream on my phone, the table, my shirt -- you name it. Rocket Boy said it looked like a small child was sitting at my place. We kept making bear jokes. And then there were those orbs from the night before. *I* don't know what was so funny. It's hard to recreate. But we just couldn't stop laughing. 

After breakfast we went to the Arizona Copper Art Museum in nearby Clarkdale, which we had been too late for the night before. The museum is owned/run by a second cousin of mine and when Rocket Boy and I brought my mother to Arizona to see the Grand Canyon, back in 2003, we came to Clarkdale to see the old high school where the museum was going to be. So of course we wanted to see what had happened to it. But really, I wasn't very interested in going to a copper museum, even though it had very good reviews online.

I was so wrong! It's an excellent museum. Every room is interesting. The displays and explanations are very professional. It's clean and the copper is beautiful. If you're ever in that area, I highly recommend it.

It was after the copper museum that things went bad. It was late when we left -- maybe 11:30? -- and we were still planning to go to the Grand Canyon AND get all the way to Moab, Utah that night. It wasn't a good plan. We needed one more day to do all of that. We should have stayed somewhere near the Grand Canyon, or possibly in Mexican Hat, where we've stayed before. We shouldn't have tried to get all the way to Moab. Anyway.

It took forever to get to the Grand Canyon. The road to Sedona, the road to Flagstaff, the road to the Grand Canyon -- it was all so slow. Teen A kept saying we should skip the Grand Canyon -- but how could we do that? It's like the major attraction of all of Arizona. Six million people visit it every year. We had to be part of those six million. Didn't we?

We finally got there. We parked in the gigantic parking lot with what seemed like quite a few of the six million. Several of us needed to go to the bathroom, but the bathrooms were crowded and gross. 

Rocket Boy took off for Mather Point, the view that everyone who visits the GC sees. It was a bit of a walk, slightly uphill, and I got slightly out of breath, being an old fat lady who worries about being able to climb 55 stairs. We got to Mather Point and looked out. "There it is!" Rocket Boy announced.

The twins were not impressed.

I knew they weren't going to be. If we could have stayed there overnight, gone on a tour, that kind of thing, maybe they would have gotten something out of it, but just driving up and looking at a view, when everyone's tired and hungry and needs to go to the bathroom...

The Visitor Center was closed, but there was a separate gift shop, and Teen B finally let me buy him a t-shirt.

We drove on. 

There was no time to stop for either lunch or dinner. That's how screwed we were. We just drove. And drove. And drove. It's 300 miles from the Grand Canyon to Moab, and we'd already driven 165 miles that day and it was late. And most of that 300 miles was on little winding roads, little two-lane roads with no passing lanes and stupid people driving RVs who REFUSED to pull over. We were driving through some of the most beautiful country in the world (as far as I know), and it was dark for much of it. That was the saddest part (for me). The twins didn't care.

Before we left the Grand Canyon I had pre-registered for our Moab hotel and checked the box that said we would arrive between 8 and 10 pm. But I'd forgotten about the time change! Arizona stays on standard time but of course Utah was on daylight saving time. At 10 pm my cell phone rang -- it was the hotel. Were we still coming?

"Yes! We're less than 20 miles away!"

We got there about 10:30. The pool and hot tub had just closed, but at least they hadn't sold our room to someone else. 

We had an amazing (read: expensive) room with three beds (two queens and one king), and a living room area and a dining room area and a kitchen area, but it was up a steep outdoor staircase and we had to haul ALL our gear up.

I realized when we'd gotten everything up and it was time for showers that I'd run out of gas. There was nothing left in the tank. I couldn't take a shower (even though I hadn't taken one in the haunted hotel and thus was rather grimy). I just went to bed.

Saturday

Saturday morning, we ate perhaps the best free breakfast of the trip and then Rocket Boy went swimming in the pool. But I couldn't do it. I also couldn't take a shower. I was so tired and stressed that I decided to go home dirty.

We had a nice drive through the canyon that leads to Cisco, Utah, and then continued on to Colorado and Grand Junction. In Grand Junction, Rocket Boy wanted to see the statue of Dalton Trumbo, so we drove to the library and asked them where it was, and then we drove to the statue and looked at it. And I said to Rocket Boy -- "That's it. No more detours. That was the last one." He agreed.

We ate lunch at the Pufferbelly Station Restaurant. I had a Reuben sandwich and sweet potato fries. I love Reuben sandwiches, but they don't go well with braces -- everything gets stuck in them. Also, what am I doing eating beef? But I do love them, and it was the last day of the trip. Might as well go for broke.

Rocket Boy drove the rest of the way -- about 250 miles. We hit terrible traffic on I-70 going up to and beyond the tunnel. But we made it home by 7:30 pm. And there was a voicemail on our home phone from the last hotel telling us that Rocket Boy had left his swim trunks in our room. We called them and they said they'd mail them to St. Louis.

Sunday

And now we are home. Rocket Boy and I took the car back to the rental car place at the airport this morning, so that's done. The twins go back to school tomorrow (yay), and then he flies back to St. Louis on Tuesday. It is supposed to snow on Tuesday, but I think I'll still take him to the airport. Well, I'll see. I want to be a nice person, but I hate to drive in snow and I hate driving to the airport (especially on a weekday). Maybe I'll make him take the bus. I'll see.

Was it worth it, that long crazy trip? Yes, definitely. Even though I'll be paying for it for a very long time. Memories, right? 

And we get to scratch two more states off our map of the U.S. (we've taken a couple of swipes at them but haven't done the full scratching yet). Maybe tomorrow.

Teen A suggested that next year we might want to go to Texas for spring break.

Reading post: Books from the pile by my nightstand, part 3

March has ended and we are back from our spring break trip, so it is time for another reading update. I chose five more books from the pile by my nightstand to read in March, four of which I finished.

1. A River Runs Through It and Other Stories by Norman Maclean. I'd been meaning to read this for a long time, so it was a relief to finally get it over with. The title story is supposed to be the best, but it's all about fishing, and I'm not very interested in fishing. I did like the movie (which I got from the library), especially Brad Pitt as Maclean's doomed brother Paul. I tend to forget that Brad Pitt isn't just a pretty face. And I enjoyed the scenes of people fishing much more than the descriptions in the book. I also loved that at the end of the movie they said no fish were harmed in the making of the movie. The fish may not have enjoyed being caught, but at least they were released.
   
   The story I liked better was the third and last, titled "USFS 1919: The Ranger, the Cook, and a Hole in the Sky." Maclean was terrible with titles (except for the title story), and this story is too long and goes on and on forever, but at the end I was moved by it, more so than by the title story. But I also borrowed the movie, and although it's OK, I thought Sam Elliott was totally miscast as Bill Bell and the movie as a whole was not magical the way the story was.
   
   I am not keeping this book. I'm glad I finally read it, and I would recommend it, in part, but I don't need to have it in my collection. (And if I change my mind, I can always pick up another copy at Goodwill.)
   
   
2. Loving Little Egypt by Thomas McMahon. I can't remember why or where I picked this up, but it probably interested me because it was fiction about scientists, a genre that I kinda sorta like -- kinda sorta because it's usually not done very well. I'd say this novel is middling. The hero, Mourly Vold, is too perfect, and the ending is too happy. But there's a lot of real science mixed in, and the portraits of the real scientists and inventors (Nikola Tesla, Alexander Graham Bell, Thomas Edison) are fun. I would read one of McMahon's other novels (he wrote four). Looking him up, I learned that he died quite young, at 55. He was a professor at Harvard, a successful inventor, and married with two children. That all fits with his generally rosy view of the world in the book. I'm not going to keep this, but I enjoyed it. Since it's our book group book for April, I'll be interested to see what the others think of it.
   
   
3. True Confessions by John Gregory Dunne. Another book that I've had sitting around forever. I wanted to read it, but I'd picked it up a few times and set it down again. Dunne was trying to be Raymond Chandler, and he failed. In fact, his efforts show how hard it is to be Raymond Chandler. I thought there were too many characters, too many Catholic men involved with the church in some way, too many policemen -- I could not keep them straight, and I've never had trouble keeping the characters in a Raymond Chandler novel straight. I didn't find the ending very compelling, though I know I was supposed to. The bottom line, for me, was the interesting fact that Dunne couldn't write as well as his wife, Joan Didion. Didion had her flaws as a writer, but she was the real thing, and I'm not so sure about her husband.
   
   I got the movie from the library and Rocket Boy and I watched it the night before we left on our trip. He'd seen it before, but found it confusing. It IS a confusing movie, but if you've also read the book, it starts to make sense, even though there are a lot of differences between the book and the movie -- including a different murderer.
   
   
4. The Moviegoer by Walker Percy. Yet another book that's been sitting in that pile a LONG time, this is one I didn't really want to read, but thought I should. A blogger I sometimes read is a big fan of Walker Percy and this book, and knowing that was enough to make me think I should read it. Also, it won the National Book Award. I finished it just before we left on our trip, and I'm glad I did -- although I didn't like it at first, it had kind of grown on me by the end. But I'm not going to keep it. My copy is in bad shape, so it'll go back in a little free library, which is where I think I got it.
   

Book #5, the one that didn't get finished, was A Most Wanted Man by John le Carre. I tried and tried to read it and I don't know what was wrong, but I simply could not finish it. I couldn't even read very much of it. I think I read about 20 pages. I brought it on our trip and tried to read it every day and every night and Failed. It's supposed to be very good, and the movie made of it is supposed to be very good. Oh well. Sometimes books just don't work for me. 

Fortunately, on the fourth night of our trip we stayed in an old hotel that had a couple of bookcases in it that were little free libraries. That is, they weren't labeled as such, but one had a note on it that said "Take a book, leave a book," so yeah, they were little free libraries.

And so, I stuck the Le Carre book in one of the bookcases and waved goodbye. Someone else will enjoy it, I'm sure. (I can actually see it in this photo if I zoom in, but I don't think anyone else will be able to spot it. It's on the second shelf from the top, toward the right.)

There were numerous possible replacements for it in the bookcases, including two more Walker Percy books. But I don't think I'm shaping up to be a big Walker Percy fan. Instead I chose The Man Who Knew Too Much: Alan Turing and the Invention of the Computer by David Leavitt. It's a sort of biography, part of a series of books called Great Discoveries that I'd never heard of before. After reading some of this one, I'm thinking I'd like to look for some of the others. It's so far (I'm on page 81) very interesting. So it's going to be my first book for April. I don't know if I'll keep it or not!

For the rest of April, we leave behind the pile by the nightstand (fortunately much smaller now), and move to the shelves close to my bed (see photo). This is a tricky area, because for the most part books end up here only if I love them. The top two shelves contain favorite old children's books: the Betsy-Tacy books, the Anne of Green Gables books, the Little House books, etc., etc.

The third shelf down is half poetry and half ghost stories, and if that combination doesn't make sense to you, well, you're not me.

The fourth shelf down has books that I like to reread a lot: my Barbara Pyms, of course, but others, too, things I turn to when I feel lost: novels by Laurie Colwin, Elizabeth Coatsworth, and Shirley Jackson, and some oddities -- well, anyway, it's a shelf of comfort.

Not very many unread books on these four shelves, in other words.

But occasionally a book makes it onto these shelves without being read, so I thought I'd go after them. Nothing should be allowed here if it's unread. So here is my pile for April: a children's book, a classic poetry collection, a horror novel, and a couple of memoirs. In addition to deciding whether or not to keep these books, I will have to decide whether they belong on these shelves.

My book group didn't meet in March, so I've already read the book for April (see above), and I don't plan to read another presidential biography until May or June. So I may get a little free reading time this month. That would be nice! We'll see how it goes.