Mommy Brain

The Case of the Mystery Cruise (The Adventures of Mary Kate and Ashley, No 2) by Carol Thompson
The Case of the Summer Camp Caper (The New Adventures of Mary-Kate & Ashley) by Judy Katschke
The Ersatz Elevator (A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book 6) by Lemony Snicket

Making Brothers and Sisters Best Friends by Sarah, Stephen, and Grace Mally
Where the Sidewalk Ends by Shel Silverstein
The Teacher’s Funeral: A Comedy in Three Parts by Richard Peck

The good folks at Special Ops Media are sending me one copy of the DVD Mickey Mouse Clubhouse - Mickey’s Treat for giveaway! Cool, huh?

You can watch the trailer here, and there are clips to watch here and here. Send your kids to the official web site for some fun activities!

If you want to win this fun Halloween DVD for your kids, leave a comment by Sunday, September 2, at 12:00 a.m. Pacific Time. I’ll be receiving the movie in a couple weeks, and I will send it out to the winner whose name I draw.

I loved The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde. I have read several reviews, and it seems to be a book that people either love or hate. I enjoyed it very much, and I will definitely be reading the rest of the Thursday Next series.

I don’t quite know how to describe this book. There are so many literary and historical references that I was constantly on Wikipedia, checking to see if I was missing something. The cover says something about a mixture of Monty Python, Harry Potter, Steven Hawking, and Buffy the Vampire Slayer. There’s also a scene where some characters attend a performance of Shakespeare’s Richard III that rivals the rowdiest midnight showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show. That kind of sums it up. Kind of.

Thursday Next works as a LiteraTec in Special Ops. She’s a specialist in literary crimes. In the world of Thursday, the Brits take literature very, very seriously. Fans of various poets have formed competing factions, people arguing the true authorship of Shakespeare’s plays get into physical altercations, and prosecution of plagiarism is taken to a new level.

Thursday gets embroiled in a plot that involves a murder of a Dickens character, the kidnapping of Jane Eyre herself, and an arch-enemy that is part human, part something else.

It took me a few chapters to get hooked, but once I was, I couldn’t put it down. My only beef is that the ending wrapped up a little too quickly, leaving me a bit jet-lagged. Oh, and that this book made me woefully aware of the depth of my literary ignorance.

4 stars

I don’t get it.

We’re enjoying a date night. The three boys are having a slumber party at Michelle’s with her boys, and Natalie is staying the weekend with Grandmama and Papa. We went out to dinner at a new restaurant in town - wonderful food, good wine - and now he’s playing a game online and I am enjoying some blogging time before I go curl up in the corner of the couch and read the night away.

I finished getting everything ready for Monday, so we’re all set to start year six of our homeschooling adventure. Six years - that just blows me away! I finally feel like I (sort of) know what I’m doing, too.

I’ve been collecting links for so long, with no time to post them, so I’ve got a bunch!

~Amazon has posted their “Best Books of the Year So Far” lists for fiction, children and teens, and non-fiction. Have you read any of them? I haven’t, but I usually get to the newest “it” book a few years late.

~ Katy at Fallible often cracks me up, but I laughed so hard I snorted at “Talk Dirtily to Me.” It’s a must-read if you are an aspiring writer.

~ All of you Austenites, click over here and enter the Jane Austen Book Club contest. Grand prize is a trip to the UK to tour Austen-related sites.

~ For those of you following the election, here are a few videos from my favorite candidate, Ron Paul: on entitlements, on the IRS, on monetary policy, on the second amendment, on healthcare, and on civil liberties. Also, here’s a video of media clips about Dr. Paul that shows that he has strong grass roots support, in spite of the fact that the mainstream media continues to ignore him.

~ If you ever had the pants scared off you in church by all those “Mark of the Beast” movies, like the ones I remember seeing in junior high, you’ll find this video very funny.

~ Lawanda posted this funny video of a Dad’s Lullaby set to Pachelbel’s Canon in D.

~ Melanie Hauser’s “Saying Goodbye, at the Grocery Store” is poignant and wonderful.

~ Christopher Walken is one of Kevin’s favorite actors, and this video of him cooking chicken with pears in his own kitchen is priceless. He is such a strange guy. Great actor, but strange guy.

Well, that’s it for this week. I hope you all have wonderful weekends planned!

What do you do when you’re so busy getting read to start school that you can’t think straight? Or when you’re PMS-ing and also have an extra kid in the house? Or when you spent the morning taking said extra kid - plus your own four - to Wal-mart at the busiest time of day for senior citizens who like to glare at rambunctious children? Or when you’re dreading looking forward to taking your children to the fair tonight?

Well, if you’re me, you post a book meme.

What are you reading right now?

I’m still working on The Traveler by John Twelve Hawkes. It’s a good sci-fi novel, I’m just so distracted right now that it’s been hard. Plus I haven’t had a lot of time to read, so when I pick it up, I forget what I’ve already read. I’m also (slowly) reading Pen on Fire, The Man Who Was Thursday, An Incomplete Education, and What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew.

Do you have any idea what you’ll read when you’re done with that?

The Camel Bookmobile by Masha Hamilton - because the library just told me it had turned up on the hold shelf for me. I can’t remember why I put a hold on it. Maybe Sherry at Semicolon reviewed it?

Also, The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde because Michelle is going to loan me her copy that she just read and enjoyed.

What magazines do you have in your bathroom right now?

Family Fun and Reader’s Digest.

What’s the worst thing you were ever forced to read?

The Sun Also Rises by Hemingway. Yuk. I also hated A Farewell to Arms. Not a big Hemingway fan.

What’s the one book you always recommend to just about everyone?

Hmmm. I recommend books to several people - all of whom have very individual tastes. Maybe The Thirteenth Tale or Peace Like a River.

Admit it, the librarians at your library know you on a first name basis, don’t they?

Not only do they know me by name, they know all my children by name, and when they see us coming, they clear out their hold shelf.

Is there a book you absolutely love, but for some reason, people never think it sounds interesting, or maybe they read it and don’t like it at all?

The last book that happened with was I Capture the Castle. I read two negative reviews by bloggers recently - but I absolutely loved it.

Do you read books while you eat? While you bathe? While you watch movies or TV? While you listen to music? While you’re on the computer? While you’re having sex? While you’re driving?

While I eat, while I sit in the hot tub, while my husband is watching TV, while I listen to music. I used to read at stop signs when I drove home from work, but that was a long time ago. And if I was ever tempted to read during sex, that wouldn’t say much about my husband, would it? So no to that one. And I read books online, but not a real book while I’m on the computer. Although I may prop one in front of me to copy a passage onto my blog.

When you were little, did other children tease you about your reading habits?

My sisters used to say “You’re always reading, you never want to play!”

What’s the last thing you stayed up half the night reading because it was so good you couldn’t put it down?

Definitely Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows.

Want to play along?

I just finished listening to Summer of Light by W. Dale Cramer on audiobook, and I can’t say enough about this book. It’s laugh-out-loud funny, lump-in-your-throat poignant, and thought-provoking. How often do you get all of that in one book?

Mick Brannigan is an iron worker. He’s (mostly, like any of us) happily married with three kids. He likes his life - but it gets turned upside down when a string of freak “accidents” puts him out of work and turns him into a stay-at-home Dad.

His wife needs to work for the health insurance, because their youngest son, Dillon, has just been diagnosed with Sensory Integration Disorder. My sister has a son who has a mild case of this, so I know that it is no laughing matter, but I have to say that the passages of the book that describe the way Dillon experiences the world are hilarious.

At first, Mick thinks that this stay-at-home Dad stuff will be a breeze. At first. Then reality sets in, and he experiences many of the same issues we moms are faced with: monotony, being starved for adult conversation, the never-ending pile of laundry, trying to mold the characters of our kids.

As Mick learns to love his kids, he also discovers his God-given talent for photography. It is a gift, pure and simple, and He begins to wonder about the God who gave it to him.

If you’re wondering just how funny this book is, I could not listen to it at night in bed, because I kept laughing aloud and then muffling my face in the pillow so I wouldn’t wake Kevin. And in the midst of all the hilarity of a red-neck father raising three spitfire kids, there are some great themes of forgiveness, redemption, and just letting go.

5 stars

Wow - I’m really late on this! But since the book doesn’t officially release until tomorrow, I’m not too late. Here are the winners of the copies of Seeing Redd:

Ashley

Renoka

I’ll be e-mailing you for mailing addresses soon. Congratulations!

Thank you for all your kind comments about my short break. The week was wonderful, and went by so fast. As I drove away from Mom and Dad’s house last night with tears in my eyes, I was praying that it won’t be another two years before I see Andrea again. The kids all had so much fun playing together. I wish they were closer!

And our week was also poignant with the knowledge that next June, my youngest sister Marni and her family will be moving to St. Louis so her husband can attend seminary. Since Marni is in Coeur d’Alene - only 2 1/2 hours away - we usually see each other every couple of months or so. Her Peter is six weeks younger than my Josiah - they’re both 5 - and they love each other! I am happy for them that Hans will be fulfilling his dream of attending seminary, but St. Louis is a long way from here.

I received four boxes of school supplies and paper and curriculum and craft supplies yesterday - two from Office Depot, two from Rainbow Resource. Just in time - we start back to school on the 27th. So my next week will be full of planning and sorting and the kids oohing and ahing over new books. Even Jonathan, my most reluctant learner, said, “Can we start tomorrow?” when he saw all those shiny new books.

I have a ton of links saved to share with you - I may get to those later today, I may not. We’ll see! Hope you’re all having a terrific weekend.

My sister Andrea is visting from Boise with her two boys, River and Gabriel. Though we talk on the phone almost every Friday, we have not been together for two years! My youngest sister Marni has also come up from Coeur d’Alene with her two boys. Needless to say, we are over-run with testosterone! We are spending our days at the park, the lake, and Grandma and Papa’s house. I’ll be back to blogging this weekend sometime.

(Wild Hogs was provided to me by Click Communications for the purpose of review.)

Kevin and I saw Wild Hogs in the theater on one of our very rare date nights, and we both walked out with cheeks and stomachs aching from laughing so hard. In fact, I remember saying that I couldn’t remember when a movie had made me laugh like that.

Wild Hogs stars Tim Allen, John Travolta, William H. Macy, and Martin Lawrence as four buddies who are disenchanted with their suburban lives. They decide to throw caution - and their cell phones - to the wind and head out on the road on a cross-country motorcycle trip. Along the way, William Macy falls for Marisa Tomei, and John Travolta really ticks off the leader of the Del Fuegos, a real biker gang. (Played perfectly by Ray Liotta.)

The DVD has special features that I haven’t watched yet, but the titles intrigue me: “Bikes, Brawls, and Burning Bars: The Making of Wild Hogs,” and “How to Get Your Wife to Let You Buy a Motorcycle.” There is also an alternate ending, some deleted scenes, and bloopers - which with this cast I can only imagine are truly hilarious.

Now remember, this is a four-guys-on-a-road-trip movie, so expect the humor to be a little crass in places. My mom didn’t like it. Actually, she thought it was funny, but felt guilty for laughing.

Wild Hogs releases on DVD tomorrow, August 14th.

There is a question in One True Thing by Anna Quindlen: Did Ellen Gulden euthanize her mother? Or maybe, more accurately: Who euthanized Kate Gulden? You don’t get the answer until the end of the book, and yet that is not what kept me reading.

Ellen Gulden is a journalist living in New York City. She was raised in a small Northeastern college town by her homemaker mother and literature professor father. All her life, she has tried to gain the approval of her father and disregarded her mother for choosing domestic, rather than academic, life.

When she is home for a short visit, her father tells her and her two brothers that her mother is dying of cancer. He is a cold, distant man, and expects Ellen to come home to care for Kate. Because everyone has always told her that she is just like her father, Ellen believes this is so - and doesn’t think she has the heart or character to care for her dying mom. She discovers that she is wrong. Anna Quindlen has written a beautiful book - one that deals with death, family dynamics, and most of all the complicated relationship between a mother and her daughter.

The last year or so, the reality of the fact that I am in my mid-thirties has hit me. Not because I am afraid of aging - I still feel young. But because it means my parents are nearing sixty. It has become real to me that, most likely, my parents will die before I will; that I will have to deal with the grief of losing one of my parents.

In some ways, I know how blessed I am. I have a father who thinks I can do no wrong - or, at least, has made me believe he thinks so. My mother feels this way, too - but our relationship is more complicated. I still assume she has motives and thoughts that she no longer thinks or feels, and I can’t seem to help it. My heart knows she loves me just as I am, and yet I find myself cringing when she stops by and the house is a disaster, or when we have a disagreement over an issue. Other times, I disagree with her just to assert my otherness, to show that I am not my mother, in spite of the fact that she is a lovely, kind woman. Because she is a pastor and very involved in the community, I am continually told, “I just love your mom; she’s such a wonderful woman.” Who wouldn’t want to be like that? Knowing that I am different from her - less disciplined, less organized, less compassionate - at times makes me feel inadequate, at other times makes me relieved. What a strange relationship mothers and daughters have! And yet at the foundation of all of this tangled complication is the fact that I love my mom very, very much, and want her to be proud of me.

I am beginning to experience some of these same relationship muddles with my own daughter. She is ten and a half, and beginning to change physically and emotionally. No more Barbies and Polly Pockets - the last time she had spending money, she bought earrings and a shirt. She is becoming a young lady - and in doing so, is starting to assert her otherness from me. It is so hard and scary and yet inevitable.

Anyone who has a mother or a daughter will “get” this book. Just be sure to read it with tissues handy.

As a side note, not only is the story emotionally brilliant, Quindlen’s prose is beautiful:

The night they lit the Christmas trees on the green was a perfect night of its kind in Langhorne. In summer there would be those dark nights with a cool breeze blowing faintly and the passing scent of petunias in the air, nights that veered between hot and not so hot so that when you went skinny-dipping in the reservoir you would get out and then jump back in because the water felt warmer than the air.

In fall there were the sweater days, football days, when the sun shone clear but light yellow, the color of white corn, and as you walked down the street a leaf would pirouette to the sidewalk right before your eyes, almost brushing your nose, and late at night the rumble of the furnace would suddenly shake the house like a snore.

And spring, what there ever was of it, was all beautiful, the pure smell of wet and fresh and the daffodils sashaying on the green, in our yards, in hidden wild patches on the hillside sloping down to the river amid the damp grass.

And in winter there were nights like the one when they lit the trees that year, when the sky hung down like black silk punched full of holes so that the bright light behind could shine out in tiny points, thousands of them. The air burnt your tongue a bit with its cold, and the bony fingers of the bare tree branches reached up to lay hands on a full moon. It was bright outdoors, silver-bright, with the long black shadows of shrubs, houses, people walking down the sidewalk and staring up at the moon as though it was moving the tides of their lives and they could feel the ebb and flow inside them.

5 out of 5 stars

Monday afternoon, I took the kids to the pool, where I sat reading The Jane Austen Book Club while they swam. After we had been there an hour or so, an elderly lady came in with her granddaughter. I didn’t remember having seen her before.

Before she got in the water, she came over and said, “Did you finish Harry Potter?”

I looked up, and she said, “Last time I was in here, it looked like you had just started Deathly Hallows.”