Good Grief

I know of fewer phrases in the English language that are as oxymoronic as this one. Is there such a thing as "Good" Grief? Ever? I know that when someone is griev-ing, it's good to let it all out and cry and hit pillows and throw tantrums or whatever you have to do to relieve your feelings, but it's not exactly fun. In fact, it's rather painful.

So is watching hours and hours of miniseries inspired by the fiction of Mr. Charles Dickens. I think I have finally made up my mind about Dickens: I really don't like him all that much. Is that a terrible thing to admit? Will my former English literature professors and classmates renounce me as an intellectual rebel?

Maybe.

But please, it's all so DEPRESSING!! Isn't ANYONE EVER HAPPY in nineteenth century England? Nicholas Nickleby certainly wasn't. Neither was Pip. Or any other character of his invention, with the rare exception of Bob Cratchit, who seems to have found the solution this great mystery.

{{Sigh}}

I'm not totally unreasonable. I understand that the entire world cannot be happy all the time. But when I read a book, I want to escape into another world that is enlightening or entertaining, but always uplifting. Dickens certainly isn't that. Much. At all.

So can someone please tell me why I couldn't turn off Masterpiece Theater's "Great Expectations" last night which I had to stay up until 1:00 to finish because I absolutely had to find out if Pip ever found any spark of happiness in his poor miserable life? I'm glad he didn't marry Estella -- I think he might have taught her how to love, but it would have been a difficult marriage in any case -- and I'm glad Biddy marries Joe after all -- but leaving the story unfinished (which is supposed to be a trick of literary genius, leaving the reader to finish the story themselves) JUST BUGS ME.

Which means I stayed awake for at least another hour trying to make sense of the whole thing, and imagining some sort of happy ending. Which, of course, was impossible because I have no idea how Dickens imagined it in the first place. Which bugs me even more, because I'd like to think I can read author's minds. Which is ridiculous.

Having said all of this....I have to admit the show was wonderfully done. I am addicted to Masterpiece Theater, and I love Justine Waddell of Wives and Daughters DVD fame (own it -- LOVE it) and Ioan Gruffud is a great actor as well.

But now, I think I better go get this all out of my system with a good dose of happy, uplifting and educational Sesame Street.

Doo-hickey bobs

I've been wanting to devote a post to this subject for quite some time, and last week's post got me thinking about it.

For those of you who are not "Great Brain" aficionados, the first chapter of the first book in the series introduces us to one of the main characters, Mr. Fitzgerald, who is a consummate collector of gadgets and devices and all kinds of crazy inventions that never worked. In fact, the opening chapter also introduces us to the most recent, new-fangled contraption of the time -- the water closet, or as we more lovingly call it, the Toilet. The whole community didn't believe it would work, but of course it did, and we are now the lucky benefactors of this wonderful, hygienic and probably one of the most convenient inventions the world has ever appreciated. As much as I hate cleaning it, I certainly would not prefer the alternative.

The book was set at the turn of the nineteenth century when the age of invention was at it's peak, supposedly. We recently watched "Around the World in Eighty Days" with Jackie Chan, which we loved, but we couldn't help thinking how sad it would have been if people stopped inventing stuff after all the 'worthwhile' inventions were complete.

We wouldn't have this little gadget, for example:
What the heck? You may well ask. This delightful little tool has saved my sanity over the past two months. You may have to zoom in to read the words on the handle, but for those of you don't read pidgin english, you are looking at a bona-fide Fly Swatter of the highest magnitude. I swear, this gimmicky tourist souvenir (given to me by a very dear friend who had the wonderful fortune of spending her fiftieth birthday in the islands) has completely renovated the fine art of swatting flies. My old, boring fly swatter is absolutely useless -- flies would see it coming a mile away and buzz off. This little baby, however, is such a novelty that my swatting success rate has improved to a 100% success rate. I'm sure the flies see this coming and think, "Ooo! Yummy, smelly feet! BRING IT ON!!" My swattah is a black one, but as you can see, they come in a range of tropical colors and styles. Shop now for a fantastic stocking stuffer for your fly-hating loved ones!

One more doo-hickey bob for today:

I have to say, with all the knick knacks and paddy whacks and whozits and whatzits all over our house, this one has proven to be the most useful. Roy discovered it one day at the hardware store -- incidentally, I can't help but chuckle when I go to the hardware store with Roy. Instead of racks of candy bars at the check-out counter, they have shelves of little gadgets like this one, ready to be picked up on the spur of the moment by Mr. Fitzgerald wannabes. Needless to say, when Roy first brought this home, I thought it would break the first time we used it. It looked so flimsy and silly, and I thought, when am I ever going to use a thing like this? Not to mention, what the heck IS it?

O, ME OF LITTLE FAITH.

There has not been one week in the eight years that we have owned this $1.99 wonder that we have not used it. It is fabulous for reaching for socks that fall down behind the washer. You can pull anything out of the garbage disposal, or even down the drain. It is ridiculously simple to use... just push the plunger at the end, and out pops the little claws on the other end.

Every household in America--nay, the world --should not be without one. But don't ask me what it's called, because I can't remember, and as far as I can tell, the only tool remotely like this online is about ten times its size, and is good for reaching things off a high shelf, but not small enough to reach into hard-to-reach places. It was a limited time offer kind of promotional thing at the hardware store that day,but we have kept our eyes peeled so that if it ever resurfaces, we're going to buy them out and give them to every one we know for Christmas.

Top Ten Tuesday

Thanks to Barbaloot, I've been stewing over this post for the past week. Or so. Trying to nail down a list of the top ten books that have influenced my life is like asking me to name my ten favorite flavors of ice cream. Thought-provoking, to say the least. I choose my ice cream very carefully. As much as I've been stewing over these, I decided I couldn't wait for Thursday (and besides, Tuesday sounds more alliterative).

These ten books (or series) helped frame my childhood in such a way that I will never forget reading them for the first, second, and even hundredth time. These are all books that I've passed on to my children, and although they have long since passed me up in the book collecting department, it never hurts to fall back on some really good classics.

• 1. Little House on the Prarie - if you have never read these books, you simply have not grasped the great American tradition of The Pioneer. Even though the Ingalls weren't Mormon, I still got a great thrill when I read about everything from making butter to making dresses, traveling across the open prarie, and of course, all the food they stuffed down those little Farmer Boys' throats. Can you imagine pie for breakfast? AND pancakes, and sausages, and oatmeal.... I'm gaining weight just thinking about it.
  
  
• 2. The Great Brain Books - My fourth grade teacher, Mrs. Slater, was a great advocate of reading aloud. She read the entire Great Brain series to us throughout the course of a year, and I loved every minute of it! Catholics living in Utah? In the 1870's? I didn't know such a thing was possible! And of course, I fell in love with J.D. Fitzgerald the day he saved his little adopted brother's life from the clutches of a blood-thirsty escaped convict and cattle rustler. I loved that these books were also based on a real family, and I've since read the adult non-fiction books based on the same family by the same author, "Papa Married a Mormon" and "Mamma's Boarding House." Alas, all of these books are out of print, and my personal collection has been read and re-read so many times that they're falling apart.
  
  
• 3. Encyclopedia Brown - Ten years old and masterminding the neighborhood crime watch? To a fourth grader, nothing gets better than that. My brother collected every single one of these books -- there's got to be at least fifty of them -- and I remember sneaking into his room and stealing temporarily borrowing these books from his shelves. I never did guess the solution to any of his cases -- even though the answers were painfully obvious, once I read them -- and now my Emma is addicted and can't seem to get enough of Encyclopedia Brown!
  
  
• 4. And Both Were Young - Oh, my goodness, this book was very important to me in Junior High. I've already blogged about this book -- here and here (you'll have to scan down to the middles or ends of each post to get to it) -- and I still wish that Somebody Important would discover this book and turn it into a movie. I have it all pictured out in my head -- Anna Sophia Robb would be Flip, and some hot, hunky, brooding European actor would be Paul, but I have yet to discover who that would be. And please don't suggest Robert Pattinson, because frankly, he just gives me the creeps. In any case, this was a great coming of age story about post World War II, mixing cultures and exploring all kinds of issues that real people had to deal with while recovering from the ward. Loved it. Loved it. Loved it!
  
  
• 5. Anne of Green Gables - once you get past the flowery writing style of L.M.Montgomery, you can very easily get hooked on these books. I remember I first started reading them because my sister had read them, and I was getting tired of her quoting the books left and right and I had no clue what she was talking about. It's such a wonderful story! It's better than any Cinderella story ever written-- a young orphan overcomes an incredibly dysfunctional beginning in life and gets adopted and goes on to live a full, happy, normal life. If you can set aside everything you know about Anne from the movie and read the books, you will find that there is so much more to the story!
  
  
• 6. The Secret Garden/A Little Princess -- I don't know much about Frances Hodgson Burnett, but I do know she knows how to entertain little girls. I used to imagine myself as the Little Princess, living in the attic next door to an impossibly rich millionaire, having all my dreams come true. And the Secret Garden has been made into one of my all time favorite musicals ever -- I believe I've mentionned that a time or two before as well.
  
  
• 7. Little Women - do you see a recurring theme here? Stories of girls growing up in difficult times -- another war story, incidentally. I guess I like war stories better than I thought I did. I used to imagine myself as Jo, scribbling away in the attic. (I still scribble, but nowadays it's called "Blogging".) In the meantime, I also love that the story is almost an autobiography of Louisa May Alcott, and despite her difficult beginnings, she, too, made an excellent contribution to the world.
  
  
• 8. The Lion, The Witch, and the Wardrobe - this is the first time I have to say I enjoyed the first book, but for whatever reason, I couldn't get into the rest of the series. I'm not a huge fantasy fiction reader -- well, at all, really -- but this one captured my imagination like very few other books ever did. I loved to draw as a kid, and I remember devoting notebooks after notebooks to my various renditions of what I thought Narnia looked like. I still have my vision of the White Witch clearly etched in my mind, especially the dress she wore. I guess you could say this was the book that began my love for costuming!
  
  
• 9. Pride and Prejudice -- it almost seems cliche to add this one, but what young girl hasn't imagined herself falling in love with the richest man in the country?And oh, how I wished I could insult a guy to his face with the grace and poise and finesse of Elizabeth Bennet!
  
  
  
• 10. Fantastic Mr. Fox -- If I hadn't gone into costuming, I would have gone into architecture, and all because of this book. I bet, if you go back to my house in Hawaii, you might still see the remains of the little animal village I created in my back yard when I read this book. I recreated their tunnels throughout the landscaping, bringing this story to life in my own way. Admittedly, I am not a huge Roald Dahl fan -- I mean, the guy was fairly eccentric. Chocolate factories and big friendly giants were a little -- uh -- creepy. In a British sort of way. And this book has it's share, with the three farmers and all. But the animals were so dang adorable! And inventive! And smart! And FANTASTIC! And I have very high expectations for the movie which is supposed to come out next month. As much as I adore George Clooney, I really have a hard time imagining anyone playing Mr. Fox without a British accent. Sorry, George.

So there you have it. Take some time, think about your own list, and share it with the world!

P.S. -- Picture day went as well as could be expected. Here's a tip if you're planning on taking family pictures any time soon: make sure your four year old child (and forty year old husband) has had a NAP and don't forget to bring SNACKS!

Monday, Monday.../

I have this delightful plaque hanging in my kitchen for a very good reason. It serves to vindicate my imperfections and my tendency to relive Monday mornings.

Yeah. I know it's Thursday. But since I've had four Mondays in a row now, I think I deserve a little break, don't you? I mean, tomorrow is Friday and all, but the herald of a three day weekend no longer has the novelty it once had. Every weekend is a three day weekend around here!

BUT....

This weekend is a Daddy weekend, which means Roy has Monday off, which means WE ARE GETTING OUR FAMILY PICTURES TAKEN. Finally. Sophie is four and a half years old, and the last time we did this she was only one. So, for three and a half years, we've been staring at this darling photo of our little gems on our kitchen wall.

It really is sweet, isn't it? But so much has changed since then. Sara doesn't have braces anymore, and Emma does. Anne's hair is about five inches longer, Sara's is about five inches shorter. Sophie has hair now. Do I rest my case? Have I proven my point? Are you all going to defend me against He Who Hates Having His Picture Taken and Would Rather Have a Root Canal?

Poor Roy. It's not his fault. The last time we had our family picture taken before this one was when Emma was four, and we went to one of those Kid Friendly photo places in the mall that we adored, but.....HEAVEN FORBID.... they made us all take our shoes off. Roy hates having bare feet. HATES it like nothing on this earth. He'd even wear flip flops in the shower if I let him. But bare feet was the latest thing for professional pictures then, and he grudgingly complied because he didn't want to make a scene and embarrass his family in public.

What a sweet guy, right?

Well, imagine his joy when the pictures came out and... guess what? HIS FEET WEREN'T EVEN IN THE PICTURE. At all. You couldn't even his knees, let alone his bare feet. (And in this cropped version of the picture, you can't see anybody's feet, but this is the only copy of the picture I could find. Doesn't Roy look completely overjoyed? And isn't Emma the cutest, most photogenic little bug of a person? I love taking pictures of her! There is no such thing as bad hair days for that child! But more on that later...)

Anyway, back to my kitchen wall: I love that we were able to have our most recent pictures taken at the temple. I love this picture -- and no, that's not the sun glaring down on us. That's just the flash on my camera, but I couldn't take the picture out of the professionally framed frame because I would ruin the beautifully taped backside, not to mention get the hanging wire twisted out of place. Whatever. You'll just have to imagine it without the giant spot in the middle. Sorry.)

Meanwhile, here are the individual shots we took of the girls that same day. I think my kids are a lot prettier than I was when I was a kid!


Even with all the blogging I do, I can't wait to get our "real" pictures from the photographer next week! And I solemnly vow to my parents who've been wondering what their grandchildren look like now, as well as anyone else who cares, that I will never wait three years in between family pictures ever again!