I just didn’t have a better title for this post. Because I’m not sure where it’s going. I’m pretty sure I’m going to start talking about my personal problems, though. Not personal like “TMI,” just personal like “not that interesting to you.” But here you are anyway, so let’s begin.

Here’s a dilemma: Princess Zurg wants to join an after-school club. It’s called the Girls Club. I don’t actually know what it’s all about, except that probably only girls belong to it. I know that they put on a fashion show every year. We went to it last year because one of PZ’s BFFs is in the club, and she was in the fashion show. I think the point of the fashion show is for the girls to use their creativity–take something old and make it new, create ensembles, blah blah, whatever. It’s kind of cute, if a bit uncomfortable. Maybe it’s just me. Anyway, I think PZ would enjoy participating in the fashion show, if nothing else because, in case I’ve never told you–and it’s possible I never have, even though it seems absurd that I never have, but I can be absurdly negligent in my information-dispensing–PZ is really into fashion. Like, “alternative” fashion. I think she would rock a fashion show. She would also be among the minority of participants whose bra straps are not visible. Seriously, when did it become okay for middle-schoolers (as opposed to Madonna or grown-up slutty types) to exhibit their bras to general public? Clearly it is not accidental or incidental bra-showing. I don’t see any ratty, gray-and-dingy bras hanging out. They’re all colorful and in good repair, and definitely out there. Is the new retail variety in bras a cause or an effect of this trend? In any case, I don’t think I like it. I mean, I appreciate a bright-green polka-dot bra as much as the next person, but I really think bras should stay semi-private. Only your lovers, doctors and community-dressing-room compadres should get to see them. Unless you are a bra model. And middle-school girls should not have lovers or be bra models. Call me an old crank. I am an old crank. And I make an end.

So back to the dilemma. PZ wants to join this club, but as the ever-contrary universe would have it, the club meets Wednesdays after school, which is when PZ has her standing appointment with her psychologist. Are you aware of how difficult it is to secure a regular, after-school appointment with anyone, let alone a psychologist who treats adolescents? I’m sure you’re aware, now that you’ve thought about it for two seconds. Anyway, we’ve discussed this dilemma with her psychologist, who has been encouraging PZ to get involved with more extracurricular activities. Predictably, her only other after-school opening is on Tuesday, at exactly the same time I have to take Elvis to his social group, ten miles away, during rush hour. I’ve tried to wrap my brain around how I can get each of these children to their respective appointments at the same time on Tuesday during rush hour, but I just…can’t…quite…reach…No, there’s no way I can do this. Not without human cloning, and a) the science isn’t there yet and b) I have some ethical problems with that anyway.

Here are my options, as I see it:

Option A. Continue taking PZ to this psychologist weekly, on Wednesdays, and forget about the Girls Club.
Option B. Switch to taking PZ to this psychologist on an every-other-week basis, at an appointment time that is during school hours, possibly jumping the appointment time around so that she doesn’t miss the same class period every time (bearing in mind that the psychologist is in Freaking Tigard and there’s a 30-60 minute round-trip commute time, depending on traffic, to factor in).
Option C. Find a different therapist.

An Option D that isn’t science fiction has thusfar eluded me, but I’m open to suggestions.

This morning I asked PZ to rank these different options, and she ordered them Option B, Option C, Option A (Option A being the least appealing). We have (finally–finally) gotten PZ in to see a psychiatrist, and as of this morning we are increasing her medication dosage, which we hope will eventually result in a drastic improvement. However, she still needs the support of regular counseling, at least for now. Certainly while she’s transitioning to a therapeutic medication level. I’m not 100 percent certain that it needs to be weekly. Maybe biweekly is sufficient. But I hesitate. The current appointment time is not totally convenient (because we don’t get home until almost six, and Elvis has basketball practice at 6:15, and PZ has youth group at 7, bleeeeeaaahhhhhh), but it is nevertheless so precious (regular after-school appointment slots being so very rare) that I am loath to let it go. Bird in the hand, you know? I’d feel a fool to forsake it. And what if biweekly turns out not to be good enough. And I don’t want to be taking her out of school on a regular basis, but I don’t want her to miss a good social opportunity and I don’t want to change therapists when the current one is working so well.

And then there’s this other factor: What if she ends up hating Girls Club? She’s been known to want to do stuff and then turn out to hate it once she’s doing it. I’m going to give up a sweet after-school appointment slot for that? My brain is exploding with (negative) possibilities.

But does PZ deserve to be deprived of an opportunity because of what I’m afraid she’ll do? Possibly. But if we all got what we deserved, we’d all be pretty much screwed, wouldn’t we?

Tell me what to do, internet!

Well. That’s one moral dilemma down.

In other news, my laptop continues to work intermittently, so long as I don’t make it work too hard. As of now and for the foreseeable future, it is the only (semi-)operational computer in the house, so I have to share it. Well, technically, I don’t, but unless I want my life to be completely miserable, I have to share it. It’s okay. I mean, it’s not like I mean to be living on it or anything, but it does kind of suck when I want/need to use it and some rotten kid WHO HASN’T HAD A TURN ALL DAY is on it. Blerg. But that’s neither here nor there. I was going somewhere with this. Oh. I have been writing more, and very often I am doing it longhand because when the mood/opportunity strikes, someone else is on my laptop. Which kind of sucks, as I mentioned. But that brings me to where I was going. This laptop is certainly on its way out. It is losing the will to live. I’m not sure what’s keeping it holding on. It certainly isn’t so I can update our family blog because uploading pictures to Blogger = Working Too Hard. But whatever. Someday it’s going to just go gentle into that good night, and I need to be prepared. Which brings me to where I was going.

My husband bought this laptop for me a few years ago, to celebrate my first national publication. As it happens, that was also my last national publication–well, my last for money, anyway. (Not that it was a lot of money, but it was the principle of the thing.) I don’t want to think about how many years ago that was. Enough years ago that my laptop is now wearing out. (In fairness, I’ve used the crap out of it. I just haven’t published the crap out of anything. Not for money, anyway.) As a result of these circumstances and my contemplation thereof, I feel like I don’t really deserve a new laptop. I’ll take one, mind you–don’t misunderstand me. And I’ll complain about not having one. But on the occasion of receiving this particular laptop, I felt that I was on the cusp of a new stage of my career, and in retrospect I see that I was just on the crest of a random wave in my career. It is somewhat depressing. Did I already say that? I’m sure it bears repeating, even if I’ve said it a million times (which I’m sure I have, if not all in this one specific post). I need a new narrative surrounding my laptop ownership, but I’m too busy worrying about the PZ therapist/club thing and also the fact that she has an eye infection that won’t go away and I need to take her back to the doctor but there’s no TIME.

And there’s also no time to keep gabbing about this crap. I have to get Girlfriend on the school bus. Adieu, gentle readers, adieu.

Okay. [Long sigh] Okay. Good-cop mode. I get where people are coming from. It’s understandable. Your choices are Mitt Romney, Ron Paul, and Someone Else We’d Just As Soon Not But Damn The Pickins’ Is Slim. First Rick Perry was Someone Else, then Herman Cain was Someone Else–good grief, even Rick Santorum had fifteen minutes of being Someone Else, so why not Newt Gingrich? I get it. It’s cute in theory, but here’s the thing: NEWT GINGRICH? There’s only one of him, you know. This is not some new and improved Newt Gingrich who isn’t a big-government conservative narcissist with a Buick full of ’90s baggage that makes Hillary Clinton look like Barack Obama circa 2006, who doesn’t make enemies like he makes hash out of his marriage vows—IT’S THE SAME GUY. Do you honestly think this cat has a snowball’s chance in hell to win a general election, or have you just decided to carve a big “up yours” in the school desk of democracy? What’s the matter with you people???

That last part wasn’t very good cop-ish. You see what current events have done to me.

You long-term gentle readers know how I feel about Mitt Romney. Some people have been eager to write off all this Romney rejection as so much anti-Mormon bias, but I haven’t gone there. I’m too aware of Mitt’s shortcomings as a candidate. He’s got that big albatross MassCare, which—you know what, we’re not even going to talk about it. We could go round and round on “Romneycare” or “Obamneycare,” tenth-amendment-lover to tenth-amendment-lover, but the point is that there’s a big chunk of the Republican party who doesn’t trust someone who thinks MassCare is something to be proud of. I sympathize with that argument. Aside from that, though—forgetting that MassCare was his baby—there is the ever-present problem of him not being able to connect with voters, and it’s not because he’s an out-of-touch millionaire but because it’s just really hard to get a read on the guy. Voters don’t necessarily want a president they can sit down and have a beer with. They do want to know that what they’re seeing is what they’re getting, and with Mitt Romney it’s just so hard to believe that what you’re seeing is really all there is.

It’s not so hard for Mormons, I don’t think. To his fellow Mormons, Mitt Romney probably seems like a perfectly normal dude. He looks like he could be our stake president. Not coincidentally, Mitt Romney was a stake president in the LDS church for eight years. He’s that kind of guy. An administrator. Someone who makes sure the trains run on time (in a non-Mussolini sort of way). Not the sort of man you fall in love with, but no one needs to be in love with their stake president; they just have to not hate him. So we see this clearly intelligent, clearly competent, clearly experienced, and clearly not hate-worthy guy running for president and think, “Well, what’s wrong with him (so long as you’re a Republican)?”

Two things you should not expect from Mitt Romney: spontaneity and candor. I think Mona Charen had a column psychoanalyzing Mitt Romney and speculating that watching his father, popular Michigan governor and one-time serious presidential material George Romney, self-destruct in a moment of spontaneity and/or candor (when he said he was “brainwashed” on Vietnam) taught Mitt never to let his guard down and risk saying something he might regret. That seems perfectly plausible, if a tad Freudian/TV movie. There’s also the fact that spontaneity and candor are two things you should never expect from Mormon church leadership, either. Hedging and side-stepping and speaking in platitudes is Salt Lake leadership to a T. To a T. I am sorry to be the one to say it, but it’s true. Mormons are used to it and those of us who stick around realize that it’s not necessarily sinister, even if it is annoying. It’s just politic. I suppose we’ve also learned that shooting your mouth off a la Brigham Young causes its own problems. Maybe we’ve learned to prefer our leaders bland and harmless.

But yeah, it does give Mitt Romney that vague, used-car-salesman-esque vibe that he just can’t shake. He does seem too genteel to be compared to a used-car salesman. I think Jonah Goldberg said it best when he said, “There’s just something about the guy that makes people say, ‘There’s just something about that guy.’”

So I understand that not wanting to vote for Mitt Romney doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ve got a problem with him being a Mormon. As I said, I have never heretofore gone there. I’ve defended Mike Huckabee on that front, for Pete’s sake. However…

Newt Gingrich? I’m starting to wonder.

I’ve never denied that there’s an anti-Mormon element in the anti-Romney camp. I’m not that naive. I’ve just never thought it was as significant as some people say it is. I’ve always argued that it would be almost negligible were it not for Mitt Romney’s other liabilities. Even Newt Gingrich surging ahead in the polls and eventually winning South Carolina I could write off as so many Republicans wanting a candidate that excites them rather than doesn’t-exactly-offend-them. But I can’t just ignore the exit polls; voters who say a candidate’s religious beliefs mattered “a great deal” went for Newt Gingrich by an embarrassingly large margin. (Embarrassing for Mitt Romney, but the voters themselves should probably be embarrassed, too.) It could just be a coincidence, but…Newt Gingrich? Really?

So I’m going to go all identity-politics on you for a moment and give any “values voter” out there who thinks Newt Gingrich is a better choice than Mitt Romney for President simply because he doesn’t believe in gold plates and magic underwear a piece of my mind:

I know why a candidate’s religion is important to you. Being President of the United States is a tough gig. That cat needs all the help he (or she—smirk) can get. And if your president is praying to the wrong Jesus, it could have implications for the whole country. And by “implications” I mean God could just decide to destroy us. (It’s not like he’s never done it before.) Here’s where an ordinary Mormon might try to convince you that our beliefs really aren’t that different from yours, that we believe in the same Jesus you do, and blah blah de blah. But I’m not an ordinary Mormon; I value candor and spontaneity, so I’m just going to come out and tell you—yeah, I do believe in a different Jesus than you do. My Jesus listens to your prayers even if your theology isn’t one hundred percent accurate, and he isn’t going to destroy a whole country because its president wears the wrong kind of underwear. My Jesus is nice, and so’s Mitt Romney’s. But if you’re so particular about your Jesuses, maybe I should remind you that Newt Gingrich is a (converted) Catholic, and as I recall from the “counter-cult” section of your bookstores, his religion is a little fishy, too (even if it is older). And by “a little fishy” I don’t mean what you put on the back of your car.

Enough of that, though. It’s not like it makes any difference.

Mitt Romney’s still a really problematic candidate. As Mark Steyn said in the Corner yesterday, “For a guy running as a chief exec applying proven private-sector solutions, his campaign looks awfully like an unreformable government bureaucracy: big, bloated, overstaffed, burning money, slow to react, and all but impossible to change.” Mitt the Wealthy and Very Competent Administrator should have the best advisors money can buy, and this is the best he can do? He’s losing to Newt Gingrich. NEWT FLIPPING GINGRICH. Holy heck.

It’s not like I’m completely blind to Newt’s appeal, either. I understand that he accomplished great things for the party twenty years ago. I know he’s quick and he’s smart and watching him debate Pres. Obama would be like watching the Oregon Ducks play Portland State. I’m not even all that hung up on him being a serial adulterer, aside from the fact that he tried to blame his affairs on the fact that he was just working so darn hard for his country that “things happened.” (Someone should probably warn Newt’s current wife that the American presidency entails a fair amount of hard work. He won’t just be playing golf all day.) I don’t think he’d be a bad president. I think he’d be an unpredictable president because who the crap knows what Newt’s going to come up with next?

But that’s neither here nor there because Newt’s never going to be president. It’s never going to happen. Mitt Romney might never be president, either. I think Barack Obama would have mopped the floor with Mitt in 2008, and he might very well mop the floor with him in 2012. But if the Republicans nominate Newt Gingrich, the President will not only mop the floor with him, he’ll scrub the bathtubs, shower stalls and toilets and possibly clean the second story windows, too. For the love of all that’s holy, my friends—we have to make it look like we’re at least trying.

Okay, I’m done with politics now. D-U-N. On to Florida, God help us all.

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Madhousewife is a possible candidate for VP on a Gingrich ticket–or would be, if she weren’t a Mormon.

* It’s just an expression. I’m not really going to give you ten bucks. I’ll just be awfully impressed.

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Sugar Daddy: So I think this turkey is going to need more time to defrost. I’ll smoke it tomorrow and we can have it on Monday.

Mad: In honor of Dr. King. White meat and dark meat. In the same bird.

SD: Except some people only like the white meat. And the dark meat is always on the bottom.

Mad: Well, we still have a ways to go, SD.

SD: We have not yet achieved Dr. King’s dream.

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SD: I wonder if the kids will have school tomorrow.

Mad: It’s not snowing.

SD: We’re supposed to get 3-4 inches tonight.

Mad: That’s what they always say.

SD: No, that’s what she said.

Mad: Heh heh.

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Our home PC is still broken. My laptop is still only intermittently operational, only the intermissions of operation are lengthier than they once were. It will work, it just doesn’t like to work too hard. Things like uploading pictures from a camera=too hard. Having more than two windows open at once=too hard. Posting a blog=sometimes too hard, sometimes not. We’ll see if you get this message, gentle readers.

So my January micro-resolution to spend less time on the internet is going swimmingly. The fact that I spent the first three days of the month without any computer access whatsoever meant an automatic reduction in my monthly interweb consumption. Since then I have yielded the lion’s share of my computer’s operational time to Princess Zurg, who is in even more dire need of an anti-interweb micro-resolution than I was, but I think “deal with my children’s addictions” doesn’t show up on my micro-resolution list until at least…July.

I’m doing so well with the micro-resolution that I’ve decided to take on an actual, hoping-to-change-my-life-permanently resolution. You’ve probably already noticed. I bet the first thing you thought upon seeing this post was “This blog looks great–has it lost weight?” As a matter of fact, gentle readers, it has. After 27 years of typing two spaces after a period, I have decided to start typing only one. It took about an hour to get into the habit. It took a few hours after that to start thinking that it didn’t look wrong. And now look at me. Look at us. Slimmer, sleeker, more space efficient. And no, I didn’t do it to meet some arbitrary standard of the Copy Editing Gods. They’ve been after me for years to no avail. No, gentle readers, I did it for myself. That’s the only way to be successful in these endeavors. True, lasting change must come from within.

What else can I tell you? It’s been so long since we’ve spoken, i.e. written/read. I’m getting used to my annoying new phone. It still drives me nuts that I have to open it to see what time it is, but I’m working on that. Well, not really working. It’s mostly a passive thing, just waiting for it to stop bothering me. Eventually, eventually.

It did snow quite a bit last night, but then it rained quite a bit this morning, so there’s nothing but slush out there now. Mister Bubby got up at 6:30 in the morning so he could build a snowman before the rain spoiled things entirely.

My back hurts.

That about covers it.

This is the first phone I have bought for myself. My husband bought my last two phones. I have always heard that buying a cell phone is easy. You walk into the store and say, “I would like to buy a cell phone,” and the person behind the counter guides you through the entire process. I suppose that is true, to some extent. I walked into the T-Mobile store and said, “I need to buy a new phone,” and the person behind the counter asked me what kind of phone I wanted, and I said, “One that is like this dead one I am holding right here.” I considered getting a fancier phone than the one that was now dead, but the dead phone, before dying, had always served me well and I really don’t know what I’d do with a phone that was smarter than I was. My husband has owned two Blackberries, and they make me crazy. I can’t stand them. He asks me to look something up on his phone while he is driving (since it is unsafe and also illegal to use your own phone while driving), and I can never do it right, and he gets exasperated, wondering how he ever managed to marry such a big dummy, and I want to throw the phone at his stupid head because to paraphrase Forrest Gump, I may not be a smart man, but I know what user-friendly is. A really smart phone would be idiot-proof, but instead he has a phone that likes to taunt idiots, which I think is kind of mean. I don’t like bullies, never have, but anyway, that’s how I came to be in the T-Mobile store asking for a phone that will at least pretend to respect me.

So the salesman pointed me toward the three phones in the store that were primitive enough to be comparable to my beloved now-dead phone, and I asked him what the difference was between two of them. He said, “This one has bigger numbers and a bigger screen.” Being that I’m old and my eyesight is going, I figured I should opt for bigger, so that’s what I did. I was a little bit sad because my old phone was lime green, which matched my iPod that is lime green and my Kindle cover which is also lime green, and I am just superficial enough that if there had been a lime green phone in that store, I probably would have bought it no matter how smart it thought it was. But there weren’t any green phones, so I settled for this midnight blue one. I felt a little mismatched when I left, but I was still excited to have a new phone because a) presumably this one worked and b) I might just find I liked it better than the old one (no disloyalty intended, but it’s not like the old phone can hear me, being not only merely dead but really most sincerely dead).

You see? I had an open mind.

Anyway, I do not like this midnight blue phone with the bigger numbers and the bigger screen better than my old phone with the adequately-sized numbers and screen. It is not as easy to use as my old phone was. It’s not impossible to use, like a Blackberry, but it’s just not easy. More to the point, I believe it is harder to use than it has any business being, given that it is allegedly not a smart phone. I don’t mean that it is putting on airs, but I think it is being deliberately annoying. I blame myself, because I believed the hype that it is really easy to go into a store and just buy a cell phone. I know better for next time. Next time I will ask the important questions. At the top of the list will be “Which phone requires the fewest steps to access my contacts list? Ideally, I would like something under three. One would be just super. There was this lime-green phone you used to carry that only required one step to access the contacts list. That was so convenient. And intuitive. You opened the phone and the word ‘contacts’ appeared right on the screen, and you pushed a button and there were your contacts, just as if you’d requested them special. Do you have anything along those lines?” I will sound matronly and old-fashioned, but it won’t matter because old ladies don’t care what other people think; they only care about getting what they want. That’s the sort of person I aspire to be.

But that’s in the future. For now I have to live with this phone, on which it is actually easier for me to just memorize all the numbers I need and punch them in myself than it is to access my contacts list. A phone number is ten digits, eleven if it’s long-distance, and that is about as many buttons as I have to push to access a particular number on my contacts list, and dialing the number my damn self will give me a sense of accomplishment and also have the side benefit of not making me want to kill someone because who the crap invents a phone that is this ridiculous? What’s the main reason anyone owns a phone? To call people! At least that’s what I’ve always assumed. Perhaps the twenty-first century has left me behind. Who knows what the kids are doing with phones these days? I don’t even want to know. (And it’s good that I don’t want to know, because I probably couldn’t figure it out even if I wanted to.)

There is another, secondary function that I like my cell phone to have, and that’s a camera for taking pictures. This phone has a camera, and after an entire afternoon on my part and ten seconds on my husband’s part, I have discovered how to access the camera in fewer than twelve steps. The problem is that there is this additional feature on the camera part that allows you to enhance your photos with these cute backgrounds–like, the actual photo part is this relatively-small circle/square and the rest of the picture is this cute background giving your subject animal ears or putting them on Mount Rushmore. The default background is a milk carton with the slogan “Got Friends?” And when I say that is the default background, what I mean is that that particular background is the default setting for the camera. I have to scroll to get to the no-background option. And there doesn’t appear to be any way to change the default setting. I’m sure there is a way, because it just seems that if there weren’t a way, that would just be too asinine for words. My head would literally explode if someone informed me there was no way to change that setting. But there doesn’t appear to be any way to change it, and if you haven’t gotten the idea yet, that is my number-one requirement for a technology device: there must appear to be a way to change it. Otherwise, there really may as well not be. And that’s where I’m at now. There is no way for me to change this setting. I have to do it manually every single time I want to take a picture, until such time as I want to make it look like I’ve taken a picture of a milk carton.

Naturally, I have some questions. To begin with: Am I SEVEN? Why would I want this feature AT ALL, let alone have it as my DEFAULT SETTING? And to end with: Why? WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY WHY???

That’s my main complaint about the camera. My other complaint–minor by comparison–is that there is no zoom on the camera. My old phone camera had a zoom. Not a great zoom–almost an inconsequential zoom, really, but at least it was there and made me feel like it was at least making an effort. So fine, I have no zoom. I’ll live. Instead of a zoom, I can adjust the brightness. I guess. That appears to be what those controls are for. They’re probably going to be about as consequential as my old phone camera’s zoom, but at least it’s something.

My only other complaint–and this is the last one so far–about the phone in general is that I like to use my phone as a way to tell time because I no longer wear a watch. I used to wear a watch a long time ago–wore watches for years, actually–but one day my watch broke and it took a long time to replace it and by the time I did, I was used to not wearing one, so wearing one now actually bugged. I tried to get used to it, but then the watch stopped working. Then my mother-in-law got me this cute Snoopy watch (I love me some Snoopy), and I was willing to try to get used to wearing it, but that watch never worked. It was only cute. And thus ended the watch-wearing chapter of my life. I would say “but I digress,” but the digression is already over, and I’m back to the phone now. I want my phone to tell me what time it is. My old phone, which was a flip phone, had this button on the side that you could push and light up the clock on the outside. This new phone, also a flip phone because I wanted a phone just like the one I had before, also has a button on the side, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the clock. I have to open the phone up to see what time it is. That bugs. And now I have my number two question for when I go in to buy my next phone.

My number three question will be “Which phone comes with an actual instruction manual, containing actual instructions?” This phone came with a “health and safety manual,” which explains in English and Spanish how to use your phone without causing a car accident or getting brain cancer, and a “start guide,” which is sort of like an instruction manual, except that it’s useless. I will summarize its contents for you: “If you are so STUPID that you can’t figure out how to use a PHONE, here’s a quick tutorial: 1. Open phone. 2. Push the buttons that correspond with the numbers you wish to dial. (Note: If you do not push the buttons in the correct order, the phone may not dial the party you wish to reach.) 3. Talk.” That’s it. Don’t do drugs, stay in school. That’s all it’s got for me.

You know, I don’t mind being condescended to, as long as I receive useful information in the process. Otherwise, have some respect.

Incidentally, I’m sure I can find solutions to all of my phone problems on the internet. Or by letting my husband fiddle with it for 15-25 seconds. But this was more emotionally satisfying. And now I’m going to take a shower.

Here’s what happened to me:  Within a 48-hour period, mid-December, both the MadhouseHomePC and my laptop decided they no longer wanted to work for us.  The PC is dead.  The laptop, it turns out, is only mostly dead.  If I use a bellows, I can get it to cough back to life for 60-980 seconds at a time.  Now, if only we had a wheelbarrow and a holocaust cloak, I’d be in business.  Anyway.  So my internet access has been limited mostly to my Kindle.  I blogged on my Kindle once for you people, and no offense but it wasn’t really worth it.  Hence, my absence.

Even as I write this I have no idea whether the message will eventually get to you.  The laptop has been running for 80+ seconds already, and my time here is necessarily limited.  I type as a voice from the dust.

In other news, my cell phone has also decided that it is dead.  Soon I will be churning my own butter.  Stay tuned.

Conveniently, I have decided that my resolution for 2012 is to spend less time online.  Actually, I have decided to make micro-resolutions for 2012.  I’m going to change twelve things about myself, but only for a month at a time.  In January I will spend less time online.  In February I will stop swearing.  (I purposely picked the shortest month for that one, although it is a leap year.)  In March I will exercise.  In April I will remember to take my medication.  That’s all I have planned so far.  Anyway, our time grows short.

Farewell, gentle readers.  I will see more of you, no doubt, in February, when I will regale you with profanity-free tales of my adventures in real life.  Until then, adieu.

12. Describe your weirdest dream involving a writer, book, or literary character.
I am ashamed to say that I can’t remember any of my dreams involving any of these things. Have I ever dreamed such a dream? I know not. The closest I can get is this dream I had as a little girl (maybe first grade) where I was Little Red Riding Hood running away from the wolf and I fell down in a gravel pit and couldn’t get back up. I still vividly recall that dream. Just as I can vividly recall the dream I had in high school where George Michael was dancing around the principal from Fame wearing only a loincloth. George Michael was wearing the loincloth, I mean; the principal was fully clothed. Thank goodness for small favors. But that dream has nothing to do with books at all.

13. What is the most lowbrow book you’ve read as an adult?
This is like asking me who my favorite child is. Come on!

14. What is the most difficult book you’ve ever read?
I found William Faulkner’s Absalom! Absalom! very difficult. But I chose to write my Modern Literature 410 term paper on it because I knew no one else in the class would touch it and I wouldn’t have to compete for checking out secondary sources in the library. That was the only reason. But I ended up reading it two or three times and once I finally figured out what was going on, it was a pretty awesome book. I’m not particularly keen on reading anything else of his, though. (Except I do enjoy his short stories, which are slightly less…difficult.)

15. What is the most obscure Shakespeare play you’ve seen?
I don’t know that I’ve seen any obscure Shakespeare plays. I’ve seen very few Shakespeare plays, period. I think I’ve only seen one onstage (as opposed to a movie version), and that was Taming of the Shrew. Not obscure. I’d pay cash money to see Henry IV Part One, though. Especially if the actor playing Hotspur was hot. Ha ha. (But I’m not kidding.)

16. Do you prefer the French or the Russians?
I’ve certainly read more French authors. I don’t know that I’ve ever finished anything Russian. I keep meaning to. Not that I’ve read or plan to read any of these books in their original language. That would be too hard.

17. Roth or Updike?
I’ve never read either. Oh, no, I’ve read Roth’s “Defender of the Faith.” That was good. So does that make it Roth by default? I don’t know.  (Wayne, recommend an Updike book for me.)

18. David Sedaris or Dave Eggers?
I know even less about these cats than I do about Roth and Updike.

19. Shakespeare, Milton or Chaucer?
Shakespeare.  I like Milton okay.  I never really got into Chaucer, probably because I was never forced to take a whole class on him.

20. Austen or Eliot?
Austen.  But I like Eliot.

21. What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
That I’ve never finished any Russian novels? That would automatically be a huge gap because Russian novels are so thick.  Ha ha.  Do you know how many good books there are in the world that I will never read?  Too many to count, I imagine.  Well, I could, but then I wouldn’t have time to read any of them.

22. What is your favorite novel?
It’s really hard to choose just one, don’t you think? I don’t think I will ever love another book the way I love Little Women, so I should just say Little Women. But if we don’t count Little Women, maybe it’s Life of Pi.  (I don’t care what you haters say.)

23. Play?
I don’t know.  Do musicals count?  It seems like they shouldn’t.  I’ve always liked that Man of La Mancha.  It’s based on Don Quixote, so that’s kind of literary, don’t you think?  And Les Miserables was a book once.  (Technically, it still is.)  But I’ve already decided that musicals don’t count (and anyway, my favorite musical is 1776).  Plays are hard for me to judge, since so much depends on the performance, and performances vary.  I do really like Henry IV Part One, but how well does it stand on its own without Henry IV Part Two and Henry V? (And Henry V I think is only okay. It’s like the Return of the Jedi of the Henriad, if you ask me.)  You know what’s a good play?  I Never Sang for My Father.  But I may only think that because I like the Gene Hackman movie so well.  Who doesn’t love Gene Hackman?  Come on.

24. Poem?
Poem.  Poem.  I’m just going to come out and say I don’t read a lot of poetry anymore.  I used to, when I was younger.  I don’t mean for school either.  When I was a teenager, I used to read Nikki Giovanni and Anne Sexton just for giggles.  I think that tells you all you need to know about my pretentious teenage ass.  Am I implying that people who read poetry are pretentious?  No, not at all.  It’s just that as I grow older, I make a conscious effort to be less of a poser.  Or, to the extent that I still am a poser, I try to be self-conscious about it.  When I was studying Yeats, I grew very fond of “Cuchulain Comforted” and “In Tara’s Halls.”  I just like the way they sound.

25. Essay?
I guess that would have to be George Orwell’s “Politics and the English Language.”

26. Short story?
Probably Flannery O’Connor’s “Good Country People.”

27. Work of nonfiction?
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote.

28. Who is your favorite writer?
Flannery O’Connor.

29. Who is the most overrated writer alive today?
I really can’t think of one.  I tend to miss a lot of the over-hyped books, or books I perceive as over-hyped.  And being that I’m as far removed from the world of hype as one with an internet connection can be, if I suspect someone’s over-hyped, they’re probably over-hyped.  (Not that over-hyped = overrated, but they tend to go hand in hand.)  I don’t necessarily skip those authors on purpose, but I just don’t get around to them.  And sometimes I’m just not interested.

30. What is your desert island book?
I guess at this point it would be kind of silly not to say Little Women, wouldn’t it?  I mean, I’ve read it a dozen times.  I could probably read it another dozen.  It’s reasonably long, and that’s a must for desert-island reading.  Maybe I should bring Ulysses, though.  If it were the only book on the island, I’m sure I would read it.

31. And…what are you reading right now?
I’m currently reading three books:  Mockingbird: A Portrait of Harper Lee by Charles J. Shields, The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman, and Darkness on the Edge of Town by J. Carson Black.

Mockingbird was a birthday gift from Princess Zurg, and I’m just now getting around to it.  It’s pretty interesting for a book about someone who only wrote one book, but Harper Lee was chummy with Truman Capote and worked as his research assistant for In Cold Blood, so that makes a difference.  I suppose I am interested in Southern writers in general.  It’s a sickness or an eccentricity or something.

I’m enjoying The Imperfectionists, but it’s a library loan and I have to finish it, like, tomorrow, and I’m only 65% of the way through and I’m really too busy doing this blog post to read right now.

Darkness on the Edge of Town I bought on the cheap just because I wanted a psycho killer book for my Kindle, and it looked promising initially, but for a book about a serial killer, it just isn’t that interesting.  The writing is okay, but the story is really boring, I’m afraid.  Actually, it’s not the story, it’s the main character who’s boring.  A humorless female detective–who doesn’t enjoy that sort of thing?  Here’s a mistake people make with female protagonists:  giving them a boyfriend/husband with whom they have limited interaction and about whom they think so seldom that when he does get mentioned, the reader has forgotten who he is.  Why give her a boyfriend/husband at all?  To humanize her?  Because it doesn’t work.  The boyfriend/husband has to be part of the story, or he’s just one more boring thing about your boring character.  I would just stop reading the book–if it were a library loan, I’d stop–but I paid for it, so…you know.  I feel obligated.  It’s silly, though.  I’ve certainly made more expensive mistakes than this book.  Why can’t I just write it off?  I guess I just want to believe that you can get a decent book for $2.99 or less on Kindle.  I don’t think I have high standards, but apparently they are higher than I thought they were.

1. What author do you own the most books by?
Probably Toni Morrison, which is funny because I have a sort of love-hate relationship with Toni Morrison. I got a really good deal on six of her books at once, though, so…that’s probably the main reason I ended up reading as much Toni Morrison as I have.

2. What book do you own the most copies of?
It used to be To Kill a Mockingbird. I think at one point we owned three copies of that book, but we got rid of at least one. I own duplicates of several books. I have the complete works of James Joyce–which I have not read–in this cute little green box that my husband brought home from Ireland several years ago, but I also have the Penguin paperback of A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man that I read in college, and it has all my notes in it, so I’m not going to throw away either of those. I also have a paperback copy of Ulysses (that I started and never finished) that Joyce-in-the-Box has rendered redundant, but I’m not going to get rid of it because I keep thinking I’m actually going to read Ulysses, but which version will I want to read–the cute, itty-bitty green one that comes in three cute, itty-bitty volumes, or the big fat paperback with slightly larger print? Probably when I get really serious about reading Ulysses I will buy it on Kindle. And then I will own three copies of Ulysses that I’ve never read.

3. Did it bother you that both those questions ended with prepositions?
Not at all. I’m notoriously unfussy about ending sentences with prepositions. I considered saying, “Ending sentences with prepositions is something I’m notoriously unfussy about,” but not only is that an awkwardly-constructed sentence but it also was just too cute. And too easy.

4. What fictional character are you secretly in love with?
I should probably be all highbrow and say Mr. Darcy or something, but I think I might be in love with Special Agent Will Trent in Karin Slaughter’s books. I’m not sure what it says about me. That I have a thing for emotionally damaged law-enforcement officers? I don’t think that’s true in real life. But he’s the only character I can think of right now that I could use the L-word with. (I did have kind of a thing for Hotspur in Henry IV Part One, back in the day. But I’m pretty much over it now.)

5. What book have you read the most times in your life (excluding picture books read to children, i.e. Goodnight Moon does not count)?
Little Women, hands down. But I’ve read Gone with the Wind a fair number of times, too.

6. What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?
Little Women. Still is.

7. What is the worst book you’ve read in the past year?
Technically, the worst is this 99cent book I got for my Kindle. It started off promising, but went downhill around chapter…three? Seriously, it was like she hired an editor only for the chapters that would be downloaded for a free sample and wrote most of the rest of the book in an all-nighter right before the deadline. It was ghastly. Appallingly amateurish. And for that reason, I feel like it shouldn’t really count. I’m not even going to tell you the name of the book because a) I don’t remember offhand and b) I feel sorry for the author, who is probably just a frustrated housewife trying to live her dream and anyway, what did I expect for 99 cents, Little Women? (Of course, on Kindle Little Women would have been free.)

So instead I will tell you about the worst “real” book I’ve read this year, which is Rick Moody’s The Ice Storm. I feel free to judge Rick Moody more harshly because Rick Moody can actually write and a lot of people apparently think The Ice Storm is a good book, but I pretty much hated it, and I’ll tell you why. The book is not about sex, but sex is a metaphor for…I guess everything. The characters all think about sex, all the time. Everything is sex. Sex is everything. Trust me, mes enfants, I have nothing against reading books with sex in them, even books with a lot of sex in them. I’ve read some pretty sick crap in my life, too. Read it and not batted an eyelid (except maybe to note, casually, “That was sure some sick crap”). With The Ice Storm, all the sex stuff was initially…provocative (I’m trying not to say “titillating,” because “titillating” makes me feel like giggling), but after a while it just got boring and then it just got annoying. And then it just made me want to scream, “What kind of pervy bastard is this cat???” Not because any of it was particularly beyond the pale–mostly garden-variety sex acts, if you’re really curious–but because it was just. seriously. too. much. And in the end I didn’t really get the point. Fortunately, I borrowed that book from the library, for free.

8. If you could force everyone to read one book, what would it be?
Probably Life of Pi. Because that book is freaking awesome.

9. Who deserves to win the next Nobel Prize for Literature?
I don’t know. I don’t pay attention to this stuff. I’m not particularly up on all the big literary big shots. Also, I kind of think these prizes are stupid (although the money that comes with them is not stupid). I like Kazuo Ishiguro. He should probably win a prize.

10. What book would you most like to see made into a movie?
Most of the books I would like to see made into movies have already been made into movies. Bad ones. I used to say I wanted to see Atlas Shrugged made into a TV miniseries, but now someone’s gone and made it into movies (or started to). I’d still like to see a better version of The Fountainhead, but that isn’t apt to ever happen. (Did it bother you that I split that infinitive?) When I read Left Behind, I found it reasonably cheesy but also thought it would make a pretty awesome movie. Unfortunately, the movie is terrible. Really not at all good. Probably because it was made on a shoestring by Kirk Cameron. But I still imagine what a big-budget Hollywood director could do with that story and think that would be so badass.

11. What book would you least like to see made into a movie?
I don’t know. Probably The Book of Mormon. Oh no, they already did it!

.

To be continued 

Actually, I’m pretty bad at remembering to call people on their birthdays.  You might have noticed, if you’re related to me, that I forget it frequently.  And don’t even send a card.  Because I’m a terrible human being.  This self-flagellation is meant as a belated birthday gift to everyone I’ve accidentally slighted.  Except Bythelbs, for whom it is meant to be a timely birthday gift.  Because today is her birthday!  This very day!

I won’t tell you how old she is, except to say that she’s younger than I am.  Also, I can’t remember.  Just kidding!  That was a joke–like, I can’t remember because I’m so old, unlike her.

Random Number of Fun Facts about Bythelbs, Which Number Has Nothing To Do with Her Age

1. She was my favorite pen pal when we were in college.  She was at BYU, I was at a small Baptist school in Virginia, and I always looked forward to getting her letters in the mail because they were so funny.  This was before e-mail killed the letter-writing tradition.  We wrote each other long letters.  I’m not sure how I managed to write so many pages about my incredibly boring life–well, actually, I do know how I do it.  It’s the same way I write this blog.  I guess I’m not sure how I managed to write so many pages longhand without getting a cramp.  I was addressing Christmas cards last night and I woke up this morning with a really sore arm.  Clearly I had not used those muscles in quite some time.  But here I am making this all about me.  Expect more of that, probably.

2.  I was really sad when she got engaged–not because she was getting married before I was (I kind of expected her to do that), but because I was afraid that everything would change and we wouldn’t be as close anymore.  Actually, what happened is that she got married, we still wrote each other letters, but when we both started having kids, we did drift apart somewhat.  Partly because I became very bad at calling people on their birthdays.  Or ever.

3.  My blog used to be a complete secret from everyone except my husband, until circumstances conspired to allow Bythelbs to discover it quite by accident.  I won’t lie to you, kids.  When she told me she’d found my blog, I was like, “Oh…[crap].”  Let’s just say it could have been ugly.  But instead it brought us close together again because once she’d read my blog–psh, what was left to hide from her?  I even convinced her to start her own blog.  (And by “convinced” I mean “said, ‘that’s a great idea!’ when she brought it up all on her own.”)  Initially I tried to direct some traffic her way–you know, to be the supportive sister–but since I didn’t have much traffic coming my way, there wasn’t much to direct anywhere else.  In the end, I think I got about ten times more readers from her than she ever did from me.  (And by that I mean I think I got about ten readers from her.  Which more than doubled my total readership.  So that was awesome.)

4.  She has always been the funniest person I know.  I don’t know how many people get to see her hilarious side in real life, but she has always been able to make me laugh.  During times of my life that were incredibly difficult and dark, she would call just to check up on me and sooner or later I would be cracking up.  (In the sense of laughing, not of having a nervous breakdown.)  She doesn’t even mean to make me do it, she just does.  (And by that I do not mean that I laugh at her…although sometimes I guess technically it is laughing at her…but fortunately she has a good sense of humor about it!)

So–happy birthday, Bythelbs!  I hope you’re celebrating in style (though how you will top this Very Special Blog Post, I do not know).

And by that I mean “I hope a cop comes to bust up your party and ends up singing and dancing (not in a creepy way, like a stripper, but just like in this video).”

Seriously, I think I should have majored in math in college. I remember our senior…golly, what did they call that? Some special evening they had for graduating seniors at my college. What did they call it? It was a thing. All I remember is that my calculus professor introduced me to his wife (who happened to be the Dean of Students and may have met me before but wouldn’t have had any reason to remember me), and he said, “Pat, this is Mad Maidenname. She’s an English major, but she could have been a math major.” And I said, “Dr. E, I wish you had told me that three years ago.” Seriously, I did (wish and say so). (Totally irrelevant aside: I then found out that Dr. E had majored in both math and English as an undergraduate, and that made me like him even more. I have so many regrets about not majoring in math in college.)

I also remember I was wearing white shoes that night, even though it was after Labor Day (and before Easter). Which makes a perfect segue to the business end of my “Seven Stylish Things about Me” post.

Thing 1

Sometime during my sophomore year of college, I was in my friend’s dorm room, where she was getting ready for a thing. She turned to me and said, “Is it too early to wear white?” And I said, “I dunno. What time is it?” I had never heard that you shouldn’t wear white after Labor Day. Never! I think it was because I was born and raised on the West coast–not just the “West,” but the West Coast, where people are much less formal about their dress (and just about everything).  Especially in Oregon, where I was born and raised during my formative years.  So yes, I had never heard this rule, and I actually thought it was kind of dumb.  I mean, says who?  Why not?  What’s so offensive about white after Labor Day?  And I still think it’s a dumb rule.  I think it’s a dumb rule, and yet ever since I learned it, I can’t help but be aware of it.  I was aware of it that Senior-Something-Evening, when I was wearing the white shoes.  I didn’t really want to wear the white shoes, because it was after Labor Day and this was Virginia and I didn’t want to look foolish, but they were the only shoes that went with my dress.  I pretty much had two pairs of dress shoes–a black pair and a white pair, and the black pair would not have done, in my opinion.  But perhaps I was wrong.  I’m still second-guessing my decision after all these years.

Thing 2

I no longer own any white shoes.  It’s not worth the angst.  Also, they might be passe.  Or so passe that they’re stylish again.  I don’t know, but either way, I can’t deal.

Thing 3

As long as we’re on the topic of shoes, this is as good a time as any to tell you that although I don’t own many shoes, I really, really like shoes.  I will pass by a shoe display just to see what’s there, even though I don’t need shoes and can’t really bring myself to purchase shoes that I don’t particularly need (because I’m a little cheap that way).  But I appreciate stylish shoes.  My daughter doesn’t like shopping with me because I am guaranteed at some point–or perhaps several points–to say, “Aren’t these shoes adorable???”  And she’s like, “Whatever, Mom.”

What keeps me from being a shoe-a-holic is a) I’m kind of cheap and b) I always think, “What can I wear these shoes with, and where?” and c) I’m a size 9.  If you’re a woman of large feet, you have also probably noticed that most of the cute shoes stop at size 7.  Or, alternatively, that once you move past size 7, the shoes don’t look cute anymore.  But I appreciate shoe style.  I’m not an outgoing person at all–I’m the opposite of an outgoing person–but I have been known to exclaim to total strangers, “I love your shoes!”  Because I love their shoes more than I love my dignity.

I took this picture because I knew I wouldn't buy them, but seriously, aren't they so crazy they're awesome? Now every time I see this picture on my phone, I have regrets. Especially since they were only $5. But where would I have worn them? Or where wouldn't I have worn them???

Thing 4

I am beginning to think this entire post could be about shoes, if I wanted it to be.  I haven’t decided yet.  But here’s another thing about me and shoes:  My brain loves shoes.  My feet insists that shoes be comfortable.  Most of the time I wear sneakers, or “athletic shoes,” or whatever they’re called.  I’ve decided that the best athletic shoes for my feet are Nikes.  I don’t think I will buy any other kind from now on.  I will endure discomfort for the sake of style on occasion.  I wear heels even though they are no longer comfortable (either because I’ve gotten old or I spent too many years wearing flats because I didn’t want to tower over my 5’7″ husband) because they look so much better (especially on my large-ish feet).  But one thing I will not wear is flip-flops.  Not because I find them tacky, but because I find them uncomfortable.  I can’t stand having things between my toes.  (It’s the same reason I will never wear divided-toe socks.)  And those flip-flop toe-thingies can be murder, depending on what they’re made out of.  I honestly think you chronic flip-flop wearers must have callouses between your toes.  I don’t know how you manage otherwise.

Thing 5

Last shoe-related thing, I promise (maybe):  Just out of curiosity, how did you learn how to tie your shoes?  Bunny-ear method, or squirrel-and-tree method?  My dad taught me squirrel-and-tree in a single session, and I was shoelace-independent for life.  My children couldn’t learn to tie their shoes for the life of them until someone (not me) taught them bunny-ear method, and then, voila.  It was like when three separate members of my family tried to teach me to drive using a stick shift, but I could never do it–and then I got put behind the wheel of an automatic and I was like, “Really?  Driving can be this easy?  Why would anyone do it the other way???”  I’m sure that’s what my kids were thinking about me and my esoteric shoe-tying ways.  It wasn’t that I was prejudiced against the bunny-ear method; it just never occurred to me to use it because that’s not how I tie shoes (and once a child learned to do it for him or herself, I washed my brains of the whole affair).  But after having three children fail to grasp the concept of squirrel and tree, I was determined to teach Girlfriend to tie her shoes the bunny-ear way.  And guess what.  SHE DOESN’T GET IT.  Which leads me to believe it isn’t the method, it’s just me.

Thing 6

It would have been better–from an artistic point of view–if I’d just stuck with the shoe theme.  But I realized that I actually don’t have anything else to say about shoes.  Sure, later on this evening I’ll probably think of a couple more things and go, “Doh!  Why couldn’t I have thought of that earlier?  Seven Stylish Shoe Things would have been so much awesomer.  But noooooo…”  The only problem is that if I wait to think of another shoe thing, I’ll never think of it.  So I have to just move on, even if it’s wrong.  Which makes me think Thing 6 should be about my writing style.

I had a white-shoes-after-Labor-Day moment in that last paragraph.  I said “go” when I meant “say.”  I do that, and I know I’m doing it because I’m hyper-aware of all the rules I break.  Sometimes I agonize over breaking them.  Because I definitely know better.  But I do it anyway, because to some extent, I do write the way I talk, and sometimes when I’m talking and I mean “I said…,” I’ll say, “I went…” or “I was all…”-  Because sometimes I didn’t say–I went or I was all.  You know?  Sometimes I was even “like.”  I’m not proud, but that’s how I do.

Something that is more analogous to the white-shoes-Labor-Day thing, though, is when I split my infinitives.  Until my British Lit 201 professor brought it to my attention, I had no idea you weren’t supposed to split infinitives.  Really.  And like the white shoes rule, I thought it was really stupid.  I still think it’s stupid.  But from that point onward, I have not been able to split an infinitive without being hyper-aware of it.  I end sentences with prepositions with impunity, but the split infinitive–it’s a much lesser offense and yet I’m very self-conscious about it.  I do it all the time, sure, but self-consciously.  And not ironically.  I think it’s because it was such a rude awakening to discover that I didn’t actually know all the arcane rules of English grammar.  It was humiliating, just like when I was in my friend’s dorm room and suddenly my whole life of wearing shoes between the months of September and April flashed before my eyes.

Thing 7

People who know me before they read me tell me I write just like I talk.  But people who read me before they meet me are usually disappointed.  What’s that about?  I dunno.  But it’s a thing.

1.  For those of you unfamiliar with this popular YA novel, it is about a girl named Hannah who commits suicide, but before she dies she records six-and-a-half audio cassette tapes explaining her “thirteen reasons why” she did it–or rather, describing thirteen incidents with thirteen different people that led up to her committing suicide.  The book is alternately narrated by Hannah’s audiotaped voice and Clay, one of the thirteen people on the tapes, who is listening to Hannah’s audio tapes.  Does this make sense?  I feel like I’m making it more complicated than it is.  The premise is not so complicated:  You’re reading the words of Clay, who is listening to the words of Hannah.  So you alternate between Hannah’s narrative and Clay’s reactions to what he’s hearing.  The concept is simple enough;  the execution is somewhat flawed because it’s not like there’s a section where Hannah speaks and then a section where Clay speaks, but there’s a constant back and forth between the two.  My sister enjoyed the audiobook version of this novel, and I imagine that the audiobook version is superior if only because it is much easier to determine who is talking when, if the different characters’ words are spoken by different actors:  Boy Voice, Girl Voice, Boy Voice again, etc.–what could be clearer?  In the text version it’s Italics, Not Italics, Italics, Not Italics–who’s the Italics again?  Wait, was that one thing in Italics or Not Italics?  Italics.  Not Italics.  It’s more complicated than it sounds, or maybe it’s because I’m coming down with something and my brain is foggy, but I found the narration very confusing for that reason.

2.  Confusing narration is not a deal-breaker for me–I just finished my seventh Toni Morrison novel, and it took much longer than a single evening to read, but I plugged away at it, by golly, because I’m that way–but in addition to being insufficiently differentiated in their respective fonts, the characters in TRW were not particularly fleshed out.  Again, this is where an audiobook version would be really helpful, since actors would be dramatizing everything and making it all…dramatic…you know, making the characters seem more like real people.  Reading the plain old slanty-letters/non-slanty-letters version, I never felt like I really knew these characters, much less cared about them, which brings me to Another Reason Why.

3.  Hannah’s story is very sad.  It’s sad because some kids were mean to her, and she ended up killing herself.  Suicides are almost always inherently sad, or sad by default.  At the same time, because she never seemed like a real person–i.e. I never really understood where she was coming from or what made her tick–her suffering didn’t seem all that real to me either.  Now that’s just cold, isn’t it?  She killed herself and I’m like, “Meh.”  No, it was actually more like this:  Some kids did some mean stuff sometimes, but I did not have a picture of what her daily life was like, at school or at home (there was some technically-non-zero amount of information on her home life, but it was not useful), so although she explained how Incident 1 led to Incident 2 which led to Incident 3 and so on, and certainly all of these incidents sucked, I did not get a sense of their cumulative effect on her life or her psyche.  She told me she was overwhelmed and hopeless, but I didn’t really believe her, even though she was clearly dead now because of it.

4.  But here’s the real thing:  Her suicide was a calculated means of revenge against everyone who had wronged her.  I can see how such a plot would energize and motivate a person, but it still came off as exquisitely cruel.  And yes, I realize I’m talking about a dead girl (albeit a fictional one) who was the victim of bullying.  But it seemed like she gave at least as good as she got.  She would lay traps for people, including, in the end, one completely innocent person she used to render her suicide Totally Justified.  All of which made me think, “Really, Hannah?  Why don’t you just grow up?”  But of course, she can’t.  She’s dead now.  And it’s all everyone else’s fault.

Honestly, it kind of bothered me.  I know how the adolescent mind works.  I have an excruciatingly vivid memory of my own adolescence.  Adolescence sucks.  Feeling like you’d be better off dead, likewise, sucks.  I understand all that, so I feel like I should be more sympathetic.  But I’m just not, and it bothers me.

Before you start getting too worried, let me reassure you that all of this is not over a mere YA novel.  It’s more complicated than that.  Because I have been the mother of a troubled adolescent girl for a few years now, and let me tell you, THAT sucks.  It sucks to have this excruciatingly vivid memory of how much adolescence sucks and how much clinical depression sucks (that last part is not so much a memory, but I remember having clinical depression at that age, too, and it SUCKS), and to know that there is nothing in your power to change that for your child.  You can listen, you can make (lame) suggestions (and know that they’re lame), you can take them to therapy and buy them pharmaceutical support, but the bottom line is that the will to live and the will to keep trying is all on them, not you.  Your adult perspective is all well and good for you, but it’s useless to them.  They have to get their own.  And in the meantime you feel frustrated and helpless, and that makes you angry.  And sometimes just plain annoyed.

That’s how you find yourself thinking things like, “Gah, just grow up already!”

Please.