exceeding expectations

New review up at gothamist.com, as per mostly usual: this time it's Dave Eggers and his new "novelized autobiography" (I know.) of a Sudanese Lost Boy and, well, the book is really good. And trust me, it's hard for me to say that.

The story is brilliantly told by Eggers. And it’s done so without gussied nonsense. In face, one forgets it’s Eggers writing for most of the time, so true and unfettered is Valentino’s story. [...] It is the relentless, rapid-fire narrative of traumatized, each event more horrible than the last, each told with the flat unembellished delivery of having lived it. (head here for the full review)

I have to admit, I wasn't altogether looking forward to this weekend. There were some nice things planned - brunch, a great Halloween party - but I knew there was a hell of a lot of chores and admin to take care of before Stuart leaves for England on Friday night (more on that later) and it sort of soured the two days in advance. And since starting teaching, nothing is more valuable to me than beautiful perfect weekends that I can look forward to from Wednesday to Friday and feel the glowing effects of on Monday and Tuesday, you know? It's sustenance, so I was really worried this weekend was going to be the anathema to all that.

But I'm rather proud to say we did pretty well. On Saturday, after driving to brunch in Chinatown because the N trains were too crazy to comtemplate (note: driving in Chinatown was just as bad), we stopped in Roosevelt Island on the way back and who knew? You can actually walk almost right UP to the old smallpox hospital ruins now. There's a fence around the ruins themselves but the whole chunk of land is open during the day, and deserted, with absolutely remarkable views of the city and the East River. It felt like we were at the prow of our very own boat. It was glorious. And me, as they say, without my camera. Drat.

The Halloween party blew my mind. My friends and their friends are so crazy imaginative. My personal favorite, bar none, was Lavina dressed as Bjork at the Oscars - swan and all. But all the Mark Foley jokes and Battlestar Galactica costumes were a close second. I think the Drowned Ophelia went down pretty well but my friends are a geeky, literary bunch so perhaps I just know my audience. A guy on the subway guessed it, though. THAT was cool.

Then yesterday, Stuart and I somehow worked up the energy from where? I don't know, to actually get stuff done. He cleaned the fridge like it's never been cleaned before while I wrote my review, and then we switched out dressers in the bedroom for a bigger one (for me, obvs) and tidied everything. It earned us one huge mug of piping hot apple cider, lemme tell you.

So that was my weekend. Things I don't feel like talking about now: how Stuart is actually going to be gone for ten whole days. Boo!

halloween

My friends are having a Halloween party on Saturday night, and I'm going to be recycling my rather morbid costume [Dead Ophelia] into something more suitable for my kids' Halloween celebration on Tuesday at school [Medieval Princess], but I realized that even if I don't wear the deathly-pale makeup and smeared eyeshadow with my class, there will be another indelible element to the costume that might be questioned...

Krissa: "How am I going to explain the mud-dragged skirt to my students? Do I just say princesses were dirty back then?"
Stuart: "Tell them you fell into the Gowanus on your way to school."
Stuart: "Then casually brush a seal out of your hair."

Man, I LOVE Halloween.

spiesmorespies andevenmorespies!

Over at gothamist, William Boyd's Restless reviewed:

"But somehow, the urgency of the present – Sally’s paranoia that the mistakes and betrayals of the past have come to claim their victim – doesn’t hold a candle to the taut suspense of the past. Sally is afraid of flitting shadows, but Eva had real monsters around each dark corner, and the foggy uncertainty of sleepy Oxfordshire never quite rises to the knife-sharp drama of wartime."

Pop over here for the rest - and this is the second spy novel reviewed in a row! People, I am on a roll. Except I'm not. I wasn't here. You never saw me. Shhhh...

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

Relatedly, I've updated the Books page for the first time in two months so it's a bit spotty - I'd say that's a fair 85% of what I've read this year but I know I'm missing some flotsam and jetsam.

Just in time to acquire more flotsam/jetsam, too. Pocketed at the Rochambeau Book Sale this weekend by Mr. Bridgett and myself:

Terry Pratchett's Equal Rites and Mort
Len Deighton's Mexico Set and London Match
Dorothy L. Sayers' Clouds of Witness and Gaudy Night
Ursula K. LeGuin's The Dispossessed
W. Somerset Maugham's Of Human Bondage
Ford Madox Ford's The Good Soldier
Kazuo Ishiguro's Remains of the Day
Washington Irving's Tales of the Alhambra
Connie Willis' Lincoln's Dreams

Let the building of the new bookshelf BEGIN.

tiny children and the remedies necessary

So, if you haven't noticed, blogging is hard. Mostly because at least three days of every week, I come home too exhausted to do anything but sit on the couch and be waited on hand and foot by Stuart (I know.*) and then sleep really late the next day** because getting up and facing all the non-teacherly things I need to do reminds me of all the teacherly things I need to do and both make me sort of want to cry a little bit.

Sometimes, I do. It's very depressing, constantly feeling overwhelmed. As I'm sure many of you know. My family and friends sure do, it's all I ever talk about. Sick of it yet, guys?

Teaching is hard because I love my kids to distraction and I see so much potential in them begging to be nourished and encouraged and I'm trying so hard to do it but the need to manage and discipline them comes first. I'd say that it was getting better - and it is, and it will - but there are days that feel like two steps forward and one and a half steps back, which is slow progress. I feel unequipped to do what they need from me, and it feels like a huge mountain that I'm trying to climb with a toothpick. I am assured this will get easier. Mostly by fellow teachers and Stuart.

But enough! Short of regaling you with cute stories about little _________ and that INFURIATING ___________ of his, or _________ and how proud I am of her ___________, I should stop talking about teaching now.

How about writing!

Oh, that isn't going so well either. Every day is a new chance, right? Right.

Outside of teaching and writing: I'm not seeing my friends enough, and this is because I am constantly wiped out, every day, and it takes half the weekend to recover from it. Last weekend, I stayed home all day on Saturday and read The End and napped and made apple cake and red beans and rice for dinner and watched LOTR with Stuart. And then after pottering around the house until Sunday late afternoon, we went row-boating in Central Park. We saw a turtle. It was sort of incredibly awesome and beautiful, and it was the nicest thing I've done for weeks.

And today, here in RI, we walked to Seven Star Bakery in the morning for coffee and croissants, scored lots of yummy genre-y paperback fiction at the Rochambeau Branch Book Sale (plus awesome tote bag, sort of making up for this) and plus also, played frisbee in the waning afternoon sunlight.

Oh, and mom gave me the Perfect Red Wool Coat. So, really, I can't complain too much about teaching and writing (comma the terror thereof slash comma the lack thereof) because my weekends have been pretty relaxing.

They have to be, right?

So how are you?

* let it be known that I fully understand that I don't actually have it bad here - I actually have it good. It's just unlike me to feel so incredibly dependent on being taken care of - for which I am very grateful indeed.

** ditto.

still noolieweds

Happy second anniversary, baby. It's all still so beautiful.

cia, nsa, wtf, stfu!

On Saturday, we woke up earlyish and headed out with Erik and Juliet to Eastern Market. I interrupt this narrative right now to tell you:

Eastern Market rocked the face right OFF my face.

We got delicious coffees at Port City Java and then wandered through the stalls, running our hands over fruit and peaking into the display cases inside. We had a delicious breakfast at Bread and Chocolate after deeming Montmartre a little lush for our wallets, and then Erik and Juliet went off on their errands while Stuart and I wandered around the insanely awesome Capitol Hill Books, the flea market, and the fruit stalls.

We bought a few delicious Asian pears and two cups of steaming hot cider for the Metro journey and then took the Metro to Gallery Place/Chinatown only to find that at 3:20, we could only go into the Spy Museum at 5PM. So we bought our tickets ($15 each!) and wandered around the area until 5, whereupon we were unceremoniously directed to a 30 minute line to take the elevator upstairs. We were, at this point, seriously rueing our decision, but all told I really enjoyed the museum - I just didn't like the feeling of being fleeced and herded.

I'm taking a brief pause to wonder if this has to do with the difference between a private museum and the more publicly-minded ones, like the Smiths and the Met. We couldn't take pictures? What, so we could buy exhibition books in the bookstore? I understand why you can't take flash pictures in some museums (damages the artwork) and why you can't photograph priceless artifacts, but most of this stuff was either replicas or cleverly-designed information stations. Why, exactly, couldn't I photograph it?

Also, there were an enormous amount of very interesting interactive aspects to the museum, mostly touch-screens that you could learn how to "train" to spy and stuff, and half of them in any given room were frozen. WTF?

But it was interesting, and informative, and cool. Then we went to Columbia Heights, to Juliet's place, where she cooked us (and our exhausted tired bodies) some awesome dinner - and then she and Erik were both very nice about the fact that Stuart and I pansily bailed on going out to a bar, preferring to drag ourselves back to Erik's place in Capitol Hill and pass out at, like, 10PM. We still, at this point, had not stooped to taking a cab, prefering to spend our money on pears and museums and wine, so we took the metro to the D6 at Union Station (which I really liked, by the way) and tiredly rode home.

So that was Saturday. Tomorrow, there will be some talk of monuments and a lot of opinions about public transit in our great nation's capitol, so DC-ites, consider yourselves warned. Also consider yourselves warned about the whole set of boring generic tourist photos, and be thankful that there are only 40, people.

Tomorrow, also, is a certain someone's birthday. Wee cake and gifts and things!

six foot eight weighs a fucking ton*

So today, we woke up at 9 AM and left Erik's place in Capitol Hill at 10:30 to much rain and empty bellies. We caught the D6 heading to Union Station and grabbed breakfast in the food court, an unsatisfying apple fritter, only to spot the adorable and wonderful-smelling Corner Bakery on our way out.

After that, the rain had calmed down enough for a leisurely walk to the Supreme Court (!) and the Library of Congress (!!). I am not ashamed to say that my first thought on viewing the Main Reading Room was that it puts my beloved Rose to shame, and the sheer breathtaking BOOKINESS of it all put a little tear in my eye. Actual tears, people.

Of course we went to the Air and Space after that, which regressed Stuart about twelve years until I was suddenly married to a geeky plane-obsessed teenager. LOVES. The walk from the LOC was drenching and I kept my chirpiness until we were halfway there and then I got very, very quietly miserable. A bite at the food court (! another FOOD COURT) solved it, without actually sating any of my Good Food Requirements in life. Boston Market, how bleh you can be.

The museum rocked. And the LOC rocked. I've been a little whelmed by the whole Capitol/Mall area simply because in bad weather, it's just huge buildings with huge distances between them - I'm looking forward to hitting the streets for dinner and wine tonight and seeing cuter, more stroll-conducive neighborhoods tonight.

Tomorrow? Eastern Market for breakfast and shopping and then the Spy Museum, baby.

Also: so many pictures that will bore you. Yay for generic tourism.

* what I've been humming in my head all day.

patriotic

We're leaving for D.C. tonight, to spend three days at Erik's place, exploring Our Nation's Capital And Other Capitalized Concepts As Well (like Drinking and Walking and Stuff).

I'm not sure what it says about my frame of mind - i.e. out of it - that this was all I could think to tell you, and basically what I'm really doing is asking for ideas of what you absolutely love to do in D.C., cannot resist doing in D.C., public acts of lewdness excepted.

Sitting in Lincoln's lap, however, is an acceptable suggestion.