Hijacked by Vampires

Damnit!

Sorry, everyone. It seems that I no longer have time for my family, my work, my friends, AND young adult vampire romance. Forgive me.

So, Audrey (Baby Daddy #2) moved into the house after Bryan left. As I mentioned before, she's been living in Costa Rica where she learned to speak the Espanol, and naturally she doesn't want to lose any fluency she might have acquired, so she's trying to read things in Spanish. Her sister gave her a copy of Crepusculo: Twilight in Spanish. And that led to the vampires establishing the partially benign autocracy that now governs our household.

Now, for as long as I remember, I've really hated the thought of vampires. To me, the idea of someone eating blood is revolting. Gag reflex stuff. So, I've steered pretty clear of the Twilight books in general because I thought they were about vampires. But after reading the first chapter of the first book, I realized something: Twilight isn't about vampires. It's about peddling lady drugs.

I believe it's well documented that I am kind of a for real lady. I like yoga, scented candles, rom coms, Anthropologie catalogs, pretty jewelry, Mr. Darcy, baked goods, being admired, etc. So, it follows that I also like romance, because hey--I'm a lady.

And Twilight's kind of like being hooked up to a romance IV. I'm on the 3rd book right now and EVEN THOUGH the writing itself is truly awful, even though the narrator is a sour, barely animated lump with what appears to be a mild case of cerebral palsy, and even though her smoking hot vampire boyfriend is at the very least bipolar, but definitely approaching a literary public service announcement for the National Domestic Violence hotline.... EVEN THOUGH all these things, the make-out scenes still make me feel kind of swoony. (Whatever, haters--it's romantic.) And I'm all like "fine, jerk vampires--I'll keep reading you and your romantic such and so, but don't think I don't know what you're doing...."

Because what Twilight wants me to believe is that I want a devastatingly handsome vampire to have such a boner for the smell of my blood that he actually climbs into my bedroom every night to watch me sleep. And while what he'd actually like to do is make a nice stroganoff out of my innards, instead, he'll settle for kissing me tenderly on the forehead and saying things like, “If I could dream at all, it would be about you....” Because he's an undead man of principles.

And seriously, if Bryan ever said anything remotely Twilight-style to me, I'd be all "What? Stop mocking me."

Addition, June 3, 2010:
Here: this video says what I cannot.

Conscious Parenting

I subscribe to a list serve called "Conscious Parents" here in my town, and although the name makes me laugh (unconscious parenting seems like it would be more relaxing, but definitely not as effective), perusing it each morning is pleasurable, on many different levels.

One level is that it's genuinely helpful: I can post a question about remedies for Odessa's cough or ask which daycares are good in the area, and a lot of the people in the group have experience with that kind of stuff, so they write back with helpful suggestions. Which is great!

Other people post things like stories about how they feel guilty that they fed their kids Cheez-Its with Scrabble letters on them because they thought it would be educational, but in hindsight, they weren't organic and although the kids don't seem to have died yet, they'd like to get everyone in the whole town's reassurance that Child Protective Services isn't going to come after them in the night for feeding the kids SOYBEAN OIL WITH TBHQ FOR FRESHNESS. Which is great! Conscious Parents is a win-win, really.

So this morning I got my email digest from Conscious Parents and looked through it. Someone was looking for a bath ring (whatever that is), someone was asking for a dentist recommendation, someone else was trying to sell some lumber, etc. And then the following caught my eye: one post was entitled "Little House on the Prairie."

Now, it just so happens that I am currently reading Farmer Boy, which is the book Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote about her husband, Almonzo Wilder's, childhood in upstate New York. Basically, Almonzo's family just did chores and planted/harvested stuff and made "candy" and went to old timey Independence Day celebrations. It's soothing and yet interesting. Plus, I've learned about how to make butter.

Anyway, so this lady posted a message on the listserve about Little House on the Prairie, so I read it. It said that everyone in town should strongly consider "avoiding" (read: banning) Little House books in our homes, since they are not culturally sensitive to Native Americans. That's when I just about lost my shit.

So, I admit I haven't read the entire Little House series in many years, and it may be racier than I remember. However, I've read a couple from the series recently, and--spoiler alert!--they were written about a time in American history that was not very politically correct. Like in Farmer Boy, there's a story about the day the "bad boys" came to school and all the students were worried they were going to beat the teacher to death like they did last year. Everyone in the neighborhood was saying "Well, it would be a shame, but he knew what he was in for taking the job."

This is just to say that living in 1868 on the frontier was tough, and one of the difficult things about it was having to deal with the people whose land it was, aka, the Indians. So yes, Pa might have uttered some disparaging remarks about the Natives driving the wagon across the prairie while worried about getting shot at, and unfortunately the Indians lost their land to people like Pa. Does that mean I shouldn't let Odessa read an otherwise excellent firsthand account of life on the American frontier? I'm not sure it does, lady. And I consider myself a pretty conscious parent.

Why?

I'm reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows right now, so I can't talk long.

Seriously, why? Why are those books so absorbing? When I was 18, I quit eating desserts for an entire year and a half. No sugary anything at all--my birthday cake was a sugar-free banana bread. Anyway, towards the end of the year and a half (actually, AT the end of the year and a half, as you shall see), I was waitressing at an Italian restaurant, and someone ordered a brownie sundae, but when I brought it out to them, they were rushing out saying they had to go and had left the money on the table. They were last table of the night, and what was I going to do with this ice cream? So I sat down and ate it, and there aren't even any English words for how good it was. Maybe the Eskimos have a word for brownie-sundae-after-not-having-eaten-sugar-in-a-year-and-a-half good, but us gringos don't have one.

And that's what Harry Potter is like. It's not good for you--it's just good in a way that makes your heart feel like it's wearing a little fleece jacket.

Also: J.K Rowling always has this brazenly smug look on her face (Exhibit A, above). I wonder if it's just her photo face, or she's made that face so much in her life that it stuck that way. Or maybe she makes it because the alternative is that she looks like a kind of harried normal British lady (See Exhibit B).

Exhibit B

The Water Closet

I'm reading a book right now called Possession by A.S. Byatt. It's good--I've been meaning to read it for ages because several of my loved ones have recommended it over the years. It's name is actually "Possession: A Romance," which I think is a little bit silly because it's a "Romance" kind of like Jim Lehrer is an "Entertainer." Technically yes, many, many people watch The NewsHour on PBS every Sunday, and they enjoy it. But it's not entertaining, per sey. "Enriching" might be a better word. What I'm trying to say is that Possession is a "Romance" if you call endless talk about literary criticism romantic.

But enough about that.

What lead me to write about this is that last night I started thinking, "what is this book about? Because it's sure as sugar not very romantic." And as far as I can tell, Possession is really about Bathrooms. Every character's bathroom is described in the minutest detail. And Boy Howdy are there some fabulous bathrooms! My favorite is the bathroom in the castle with the mahogany toilet seat, hand carved and painted with woodland flowers--swoon! Anyway, once I discovered that the book should be called Possession: Some Bathrooms, I got really into it, because I love bathrooms.

I believe that in a bathroom, you glimpse the interior of a soul. Strong language, I know, but in my mind, taking a look around someone's loo is as telling as going through their garbage. What is their toothpaste management system? Do they clean their bathtub regularly? Close their shower curtain? Do they leave their toiletries out or squirrel them away in a drawer? Products can tell you a lot about how beautiful someone thinks they are vs. how beautiful they believe they may potentially become. A closed toilet seat means they might have pets.

So, thank you A.S. Byatt for validating my long-held belief that you get to know a person--really get to know them--through their bathroom. And as far as Romance is concerned, on a grey day in January, I begin to have romantic feelings about my bathtub, too.

I now have a weblog

Well, I'll be. For some reason, I now have a weblog. I woke up this morning and didn't have a blog, and now I do. My best friend's 70 year old father has a blog, and now I have a blog. Blog.

It happened like this. This morning was Sunday, and I woke up and thought, "this is the kind of day it was when Gatsby got shot." I read The Great Gatsby this spring for the second time (or if you don't count high school, for the first time--or if you believe reading something in high school cancels out the adult reading of the book, the 0th time). One of the things I like about The Great Gatsby is that, like early Bruce Springsteen records, it provides mile markers for the summertime. For instance, I'll think to myself, say around the first of June, "this is a good night for a Gatsby party," or on a rainy day in midsummer, "this is a nice day for Gatsby and Daisy to meet," or in late August "this is the night Myrtle Wilson gets hit by Tom's big yellow convertible." This morning, I decided was the sort of day to find Gatsby floating face down in his swimming pool (kind of warm, but not confidently so, a bit overcast, but not the robust haze of August).

Anyway, I wanted to write that down, and so I decided to start a blog.

Other things happened today: Odessa was cranky and teething, an appointment was cancelled, I went downtown after the Georgia-LSU football game to smell the barf and look at the blond lady handcuffed by the police outside the UGA t-shirt store. I went to the library to get a bunch of Dr. Seuss books and paid the librarian $12 in late fees. I thought for about an hour on what to call this blog, and I decided to write down every one of my ideas and pick one at random. Not the best one, in retrospect, but better than "res ipsa loquiter."

Good Night.