So It Goes

Starting in January, the book group I’m in will be reading four books by four different Indiana authors. I’m getting a head start, since I’m still an anxious nerd at heart (in elementary school, I would wake up hours before school started, just to make sure I wouldn’t be late; I could see my school from my bedroom window because it was right across the street).  I always carry a book around with me in my purse, because I never know when I’m going to be standing in a long line, stuck in traffic, or just really really bored at work. If you are my employer and you’re reading this, I’m just kidding about the reading at work thing! Seriously, that was a joke. Please don’t fire me. I think you’re the best and I respect you! Let’s move on!

I just finished reading Slaughterhouse-Five by the Indiana native, Kurt Vonnegut. So, over the past week, I have been reading Slaughterhouse-Five in various public places – coffee shops, the long line at the post office, and at work (on my lunch break, when it’s totally appropriate for me to be reading). I have never read a book in public that has caused such a reaction as Slaughterhouse-Five. All the young people who saw me reading the book commented on how much they enjoyed reading it themselves. All the older people who saw me reading the book gave knowing chuckles, shook their heads at me, and said something annoying like, “Oh yes, I read that when I was young, too.” What they really meant was, “You’ll grow out of that phase soon enough, you immature youngster, you.”

What I wanted to say was, “Listen, Gramps. I’m not some Hot-Topic-shopping, self-proclaimed literature lover who actually only reads teenage vampire erotica, Dan Brown ‘books,’ and ‘books’ based on Dan Brown ‘books.’  I’m a professional, and I’m only reading this book for a book group discussion. I cut my teeth on Joyce, Maugham, and T.S. Eliot, and make my bones on Tolstoy, just for kicks.”

Even so, I’m going to have to side with the older generation on this one because by the time I finished the book, I was embarrassed that anyone had seen me reading it. It’s very Catcher in the Rye, if you know what I mean. I felt like Vonnegut tried a little too hard to be controversial and vulgar, and it seemed disingenuous to me.  As one older adult told me, “You expect to read that kind of thing from a writer who is in his twenties, but Vonnegut kept writing that kind of thing into his old age.”

Part of my dislike of the book probably stems from the fact that I recently read Catch-22, and I think that novel deals with similar issues and topics in a far superior manner to that of Vonnegut. Also, Catch-22 was funnier and it didn’t make me want to eat my own head.

Final verdict: I may have read too many 19th century novels. Any novel compared with a Dickens novel seems crass and inappropriate, but Slaughterhouse-Five just didn’t seem worth all the blushing I did while reading it. Catch-22, on the other hand, was worth the blushing, I think. And now I need to go cleanse my palate with something saccharine. Does the Socialist Hoosier, Theodore Dreiser, count? Probably not…

What’s a Christmas Gram? I Want One!

First off, can we all just agree that the Muppets’ “Christmas Carol” is the best adaptation of that story, and America should stop trying to make new versions? In my opinion,  it doesn’t get much better than Kermit singing, “There’s Only One More Sleep ‘Til Christmas.”

Christmas has always been my favorite time of year. I love the coziness of sitting and reading by a Christmas tree; I love that people try to be more friendly than usual; I love wishing everyone a “Merry Christmas,” perhaps especially now that it’s politically incorrect to do so. It’s a holiday that hasn’t lost its charm for me, even now that I’m technically a jaded adult. Like many people, I do find the holidays stressful at times, but I still enjoy the magic and wonder of it all. I particularly enjoy dwelling on the wonder of Jesus’ birth and life on earth.

Despite my love of all things Christmas, I have not decorated for the holiday for at least five years. DH and I always travel to see family in December, and we’re never home long enough to warrant buying a Christmas tree. On top of that, we have very few Christmas decorations. And on top of that, I am not the most artsy of people. The first year we were married, I tried to decorate for the holidays a little, although our budget was fairly limited. I popped in a movie (“Home Alone” to be precise) and decided to string some popcorn like in the olden days. I hung the popcorn along the bookshelves. The result was embarrassingly pathetic, and I also had to deal with the popcorn crumbs that had found their way into every nook and cranny in our living room. It was not unlike going to the beach and then finding sand everywhere in your house, car, and clothes for weeks afterwards. In addition to the strung popcorn, I cut out paper snowflakes and hung them on the wall and from the ceiling. The snowflakes, in combination with the strung popcorn, gave the distinct feeling that an unusually dim-witted eight-year-old had broken into our apartment and decorated as a practical joke.

Since that first year of marriage, I mostly gave up on Christmas decorating because I just didn’t have the skills to pull it off on the cheap. But this year, a Christmas miracle happened! On my weekly Goodwill visit, I happened to wander over to the home-goods section, and what did I find? I found a lot of people fighting over some still-in-the-original-packaging Target Christmas decorations. There were Christmas tree decorations, stockings, garlands, and wreaths, all thrown in together on the shelf. It was necessary to be aggressive, but thanks to my extensive training in how to be aggressive and obnoxious, Russian style, I was able to elbow people out of the way in the true spirit of Christmas. I came home with vases, Christmas baubles, garlands, two stockings, and two black eyes. Okay, it was actually just one barely bruised elbow, but I want you to understand how TENSE and AGGRESSIVE the whole situation was. I ended up with a bunch of decorations, and a lot of them required a tree in order to be displayed, but we had no tree. Enter one wonderful co-worker who mentions in passing that she has a 4ft artificial tree that she’s taking to Goodwill, since she finally bought a bigger tree that will look lovely in her house. Do you see where this is going?

Over the weekend, we put up the tree that my wonderful co-worker donated (thanks, wonderful co-worker!), put out our Nutcracker, and wrapped presents as we watched “Elf.” It was lovely. My pictures don’t do it justice, so you’ll just have to believe me when I describe how Christmas-sy our apartment looks and feels. And now I’m going to spend the rest of the evening sticking to the four main food groups: candy, candy canes, candy corns and syrup.

Behold, the Man Who Is a Bean!

We’ve been re-discovering Mr. Bean over the last few days. I remember watching Mr. Bean when we lived in England, but I’d kind of forgotten about him until now. DH and I especially like these two scenes:

According to our research, the song in the opening and closing credits contains Latin which translates to mean: “Behold, the man who is a bean.” Finally, DH’s study of Latin has proven useful!

Reviewing the Situation

A few days before our family moved to Russia for the first time in 1995, my mother took me to see the “Oliver” musical on the London stage. It was a perfect mother-daughter activity and a great way to say goodbye to England. I moved to Russia armed with the “Oliver” soundtrack and an indelible love for cockney accents, musicals, and food. I guess the latter doesn’t have much to do with “Oliver,” except that the musical confirmed my belief that food is, indeed, “glorious.”

Since then, I’ve seen a few of the Oliver Twist movie versions, including the 2005 Roman Polanski re-make. When I finally got around to reading the book a few weeks ago, it was difficult to separate the musical and the movies from the book. It turns out that in the book, Oliver doesn’t spontaneously break into a soliloquy about the existence of love, The Dodger doesn’t tell Oliver to consider himself at home while performing a choreographed dance around London, and Nancy doesn’t sing rowdy songs about her fine life with her prostitute friends in a seedy bar. I felt let down by Charles Dickens. I also felt slightly bored, because Oliver is a lot more interesting when he sings, dances, and speaks with a cute English accent.

So for the first half the book, I was all, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, Dickens, tell me something I DON’T know.” Then at some point about half way through, Dickens started to introduce new characters who had no part in the movies or the musical. My first instinct was to feel cheated by the entertainment industry for never giving me the full story, but my second instinct was to be happy that my experience of the musical and my experience of the book could be distinct from one another. I did come around to enjoy the original version of the story, even though it will never fill the place of Great Expectations in my heart. It remains my firm belief, though, that you can never go wrong reading a Dickens book in the winter time.

FREEDOM!

We spent our last day in Philadelphia visiting all of the historical sights and suppressing the urge to yell things like, “They can take our lives, but they can never take our freedom!” “Give me liberty or give me death!” and “Where can I find a good bathroom?!” To start things off, we stood in line to see the Liberty Bell.

We learned that the Liberty Bell was more of a symbolic venture than an actual bell that rang out for liberty when the Declaration of Independence was signed. It seems like it was more of an after-thought that people went crazy over. Then it cracked, which seems to indicate that it was poorly constructed. How embarrassing for Liberty. My favorite part about visiting the Liberty Bell was seeing all the international visitors who were excited about it. Seeing their enthusiasm made me tone down my sarcasm for a brief moment and embrace my patriotic feelings. It was hard work. Here’s a great shot of me and DH standing in front of a bunch of people who were blocking the Liberty Bell with their enthusiasm:

There was almost too much happiness surrounding the Liberty Bell, so we balanced those feelings out by visiting the Edgar Allen Poe National Historical Site. I find that it’s always a good idea to follow joy and optimism with a dose of stories about people being buried alive. The back part of the house is the original house where Poe lived with his wife and mother-in-law for a about a year:

The Historical site was free and very informative. There was a movie room where they showed a short film about Poe’s life, a reading room, and some very interesting exhibits. My favorite Poe story is “The Fall of the House of Usher,” and he wrote that during his time in Philadelphia, which makes me like him even more. I appreciated that they left his actual house empty, and didn’t try to figure out what it might have looked like when he lived there. They also had some cool Poe finger puppets in their gift shop, and we all know that finger puppets are pretty neat, possibly even awesome. This is the creepy basement where “The Black Cat” was set:

And this is DH, demonstrating the possible emotions one might feel if one was buried alive:

The Poe house is located right next to the German Society, which elicited lots of jokes about how Germans are all like, “Ve awr Nihilists.” We’re a pretty funny crowd – you should roll with us sometime.

Next on our list was lunch, and of course we had to try a Philly Cheese Steak, because we were hungry and whatnot. We chose Campo’s for our maiden cheese steak voyage:

The cheese steak was a success! And speaking of success, our next top was Independence Hall, where the Founding Fathers successfully declared their Independence from the British. Our tour guide gave a rousing speech about liberty that gave me goosebumps (she reminded me of Kevin Costner’s wife in “Field of Dreams” during her speech about censorship, if that gives you any ideas), but that may have been because Independence Hall is not heated very efficiently. My pictures of the inside of Independence Hall didn’t turn out very well, but it was pretty neat-o.

Lastly, we visited the First National Bank Portrait Gallery, which was also free. I was excited to see portraits of Lewis and Clark, two heroes of mine, and stars of the PBS documentary, “Lewis and Clark.” Rumor has it that I am related to William Clark, but I am too lazy to call my parents right now to confirm said rumors. Related or not, I think William Clark was pretty cool:

But I’ve always been partial to Meriweather Lewis myself. You’ve got to respect a guy who suffered from severe depression and still managed to lead an expedition across the country with that jerk Charbonneau.

That’s about it for our Philadelphia trip. Of course, we took many many more pictures, which you can look at in all their glory here. Just thinking about everything we did on this trip makes me want to take a nap, and I mean that in a good way.

Braving the Wind in the Name of Tourism

We visited Philadelphia for the first time ever in our lives this past weekend, so, naturally, we spent much of our time playing the part of predictable tourists. First, we ate at a diner for breakfast, where the waitress asked us if we wanted “k0rfee.” Next, we walked around the city so that we could experience the native Philadelphia biting wind. Later, we wandered over to one of the many Philadelphia attractions dedicated to Benjamin Franklin. We chose the Benjamin Franklin Institute. On the way there, DH discovered some kindred spirits:

I’m a city person, which means I enjoy weird sculptures and big buildings. We gratified my love for both of these things on our walk to the Benjamin Franklin Institute:

The Benjamin Franklin Institute, aside from being featured in the classic Philadelphia movie, “National Treasure” (which we all watched on Saturday night so that we could make fun of Nicholas Cage), is also super cool in its own right. It’s a little pricey, and it costs extra for special exhibits, but I think it was worth it. We witnessed a live dissection of a cow’s eye, walked through a giant replica of the human heart, and saw a Planetarium show called “Moon-Shots.” It was not, as we had hoped, a show about astronauts taking jello shots on the moon, but it was still very informative.

The most frustrating part about visiting museums that have a lot of attractions for kids is that you have to compete with them for all the great stuff. We had to stand behind a long line of kids before we could get a chance to sit in this plane:

All the slow walking through the museum made us tired and we were exhausted by the time we hit up the gift shop. The gift shop had some great hats for kids. Here’s DH doing his Benjamin Franklin impression:

We also practiced our “fat head in a little helmet” routine:

After the Benjamin Franklin Institute, we walked around town for a little while longer. We lingered in a lovely used bookstore that smelled pleasantly of pipe tobacco, people-watched on Market Street, and had the opportunity to peruse numerous tracts that people handed to us (we learned about when the world is going to end, along with other, similarly valuable information). For dinner, we met up with two old friends and their significant others, and introduced them to our two newer friends. One of these said friends made us a wonderful meal and also made me covet her brick fireplace. It’s a commonly-known fact that the best place to read a book is in front of a fireplace. DH took one picture of the evening, and the picture happens to make me look like I’m pointing and making fun of the Mean Sister. Despite appearances to the contrary, I promise that no feelings were hurt in the taking of this picture:

In the spirit of thanksgiving, I would like to thank the waitress at the breakfast diner, the Benjamin Franklin Institute, the clothes-pin sculpture, the people who hand out tracts on Chestnut Street, our tour guide friends, our dinner-preparing friends, and pretty much all of our other friends, for a memorable Black Friday.

My Favorite Part Was the Eating

On Wednesday we spent 14 hours driving to Philadelphia, where we proceeded to eat a lot in the name of patriotism and freedom. In the glorious tradition of Thanksgiving, we spent Thursday morning cooking and then we stuffed ourselves silly at 3 in the afternoon. To be fair, I actually didn’t do much cooking. While our hosts cooked turkey, stuffing, mashed potatoes, gravy, sweet potatoes, cranberry sauce, a pumpkin pie, and an apple pie, I lounged around on the couch and called all of my family members. “Family First” is my motto – especially when it means that I don’t have to cook. Our hosts seemed to have a lot of fun in the kitchen, though, and fun is really what it’s all about. If anything, I did them a favor by letting them brine and cook the turkey by themselves.

We had quite the Thanksgiving spread. I think Martha Stewart would have been proud, but I don’t know for sure because she refuses to answer my phone calls, e-mails, and text messages. Maybe she’s just a jerk with no Thanksgiving spirit after all. Prison has made her bitter and calloused.

The Death’s Head/Sickly Child contribution to dinner was a lot of butter masquerading as green been casserole. It was delicious for a few bites, and then we avoided it for the rest of the weekend because the mere thought of that much butter made us all nauseous. DH accepts full responsibility for the green bean casserole fiasco. Despite our contribution, dinner was a success, as evidenced by DH immediately falling asleep on the couch afterwards from the sheer satisfaction/pain of it all. When we finally roused him from his Thanksgiving stupor, we headed out for a walk, during which we groaned about our bellies hurting and being full. It was extremely cliché.

We walked along the path at Wissahickon Valley Park, and despite our stomach aches, the smell of horse poo, and the freakishly short benches that lined the walking path, it was a lovely stroll, and a great way to appease our guilty consciences for being such gluttons.

And just when we stopped feeling bloated and gross, we went home and ate two different kinds of pie – both prepared with love and care by The Mean Sister. Again, most of the awesome things at this Thanksgiving feast were not our brainchildren.

If I had the chance to do it over again, I would do it all the same – disgustingly rich green bean casserole and all. Okay, maybe one fewer stick of butter in the casserole, and it would have been perfecto. Our sincere thanks to the Mean Sister and That Guy for cooking for us and putting up with us. We love you guys, but would probably never say that to your faces because of our commitment to our “tough guy” personas. Thanks for putting up with us for four days!

Road Trip!

We are currently en route to Philadelphia, baby! Our good friends moved there in August and we decided to check in on them for Thanksgiving. Big cities can be a corrupting influence, and we just want to make sure that they haven’t made any new friends. If they have gone against our express wishes to remain faithful, then we plan to obtain the contact information of these new “friends” through trickery and bamboozlery, if necessary. What we do with this information is currently up in the air.

It takes twelve hours, give or take, to drive to Philadelphia from Bloomington. Last night we got in bed at 7, watched some 30 Rock episodes, and tried to get to sleep early. After about 6 hours of sleep for me and 4 for DH (it’s not much of a breach of tradition for me to fall asleep at 9pm, but it took DH some time and some Benadryl to get tired), we both lay in bed at 2:45am wide awake. We talked about just getting up and getting on the road, and I made what I’m sure was some very important observation, when DH cut me off to chide me on my morning breath. “You have the worst morning breath I have ever smelled,” he said matter-of-factly between various retchings and gaggings. “Although,” he continued, “I did rub a dead animal in your face last night. That’s the only thing that could explain the smell. I think the animal must have been dead for several days.” I made some witty retort along the lines of, “YOU’RE the one with the bad breath,” and then we called it even and got up to brush our teeth.

 

 

 

Recipe for the Best Sunday Afternoon Ever

Walk downtown. Enjoy the beautiful Fall weather.

Eat lunch. Walk to local bookstore to browse in a leisurely fashion. Proceed to the library. Check out books on CD for upcoming road trip to Philadelphia. Move on to coffee shop in the Memorial Union. Purchase caramel latte. Sip on latte as you read in a room that looks like this:

Spend the next few hours reading Oliver Twist in comfortable armchair while your spouse alternately reads and dozes in the armchair next to yours. Listen to the faint sounds of Dave Brubeck coming from the coffee shop down the hallway.

Walk home as the sun sets. Spend the rest of your evening reading. Try not to think about going back to work on Monday morning where, unfortunately, you do not get paid to read Oliver Twist.

Minor Dickens

With the weather getting colder and the holidays approaching, it’s a good time to read a Dickens novel. For various, boringly cliché reasons, I’ve had a stressful month, and I wanted to read something heartwarming and funny, something to read while I dream of Christmas in England – sipping cocoa, reading by candlelight, roasting chestnuts, and maybe even firing up a yule log. I’ve recently had several conversations with friends  in which we all take pot shots at Dickens, judging his books for being too obvious, too moralistic, and populated with people either wholly good or wholly bad. We like to mock the so-called “minor Dickens” novels, and then compare him to authors like Thomas Hardy and other novelists who had something interesting to say, i.e., other authors whose novels are more depressing and less redemptive.

Nevertheless, I secretly like Dickens better than Hardy and most other 19th-century novelists. I like reading about a world populated with the token comic characters, the token evil characters, and the good-hearted protagonists. It reminds me of my childhood when everything was a little bit simpler, when Christmas really felt like Christmas, and when I was convinced that I could be as morally upright as, say, David Copperfield, or Esther Summerson – and that I certainly couldn’t be as awful, terrible, or malicious as Bill Sikes or Ralph Nickleby (*shudders down the spine*). Also, nothing says “the holidays” like reading about some poor wretch being beaten, starved, and then starved and beaten. Did I mention there are lots of beatings? HO HO HO!