NO Reading?!?

I'm using the book The Artist's Way, and so is my mom), to help me let loose my creativity and feel more confident. It's like creativity rehab. So far it's felt pretty useful. I'm writing in a journal every morning, to expel any crapola that might hold me back during the day. I'm thinking about what I was like as a child, and what I was like pre-lawschool, and what I'd like to be like tomorrow. It's a good experience.

Well, the INSANE assignment for this week is NO READING. Wha?? How will I -- What will I -- WHAT the WHAT?

Okay, I see her point. If I stop immersing myself in someone else's imaginary world, or their real world, or their perspective, maybe I'll DO things in real life. Maybe I'll work on my own book or finish that Giant Squid crochet pattern I've been sitting on for maybe a year. Maybe I'll use some fabric and patterns that are already in my house, waiting to be made into cute clothes!

So, I guess I get it. It does seem worthwhile. That said, I read 7 pages of a paperback today -- I couldn't help it! I'll try to do better the rest of the week. Only 6 more days. And tonight. And right now.

Am I allowed to proofread this post, JULIA CAMERON, you big jerk???
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Yes, Sew! Blanket

A couple of Christmases ago, my sister-in-common-law, Patti, made me this No-Sew fleece blanket.




We use it all the time in the winter, when we're watching TV in our chilly living room. I decided to make one myself, since there are two of us. But I turned the idea on its head and sewed the heck out of it.




I pieced together several colors of fleece and sewed them into two big rectangles. I sewed the two big rectangles together, with the seams on the inside (though it could look cool to leave them on the outside).

I quilted the whole thing about 6 inches from the edges, pinked the edges, and voila!



Looks like it's cat-approved.

Samosa Pot Pie

I found this recipe here on The Women's Colony blog. Isn't it pretty? Wouldn't it have been prettier if I'd taken a picture before I cut into it??



I added a little cooked chicken, and I forgot to buy frozen peas, so they were omitted. I thought it was really good. Indian-y and a little spicy. Homey and comforting. It smelled great while cooking. You could spice it up a little more if you like spicy Indian food (add more curry and red pepper).

After some initial suspicion, it turned out that Jason liked it, too, and he ate two pieces. It probably won't be something that I'll make every month, but I do plan to make it again some time.

Book 3: The Little Giant of Aberdeen County

by Tiffany Baker. The little giant is a woman named Truly, who has some sort of glandular irregularity and grows big, big, big. She and her friends are all a little odd, and they often get pushed around, stepped on, and abused by other, "normal" people. It makes you wish for them to get some kind of violent super revenge on the jerks.

It's a nice, light-ish novel, interesting and well-told. There are some pretty poetic moments in the prose, like this: "'I like the color green,' and then her tongue loosened and gave way to an unbroken wailing pouring from her throat, a noise like a cat bleeding in the rain." How do you like that?? It's describing the actions of a woman in the midst of giving birth.

Try this one: "'A type of cancer. My white blood cells are multiplying too quickly. They're choking out the red ones.' I hadn't realized you could divide blood into opposing colors, but I supposed if anyone could turn something as elemental as his own blood into something that seethed and fought, it would be [him]."

I will definitely be interested in reading anything else Baker writes.

Book 2: Half Broke Horses

Now THIS is a memoir! Okay, it's not even really a memoir, but it's still a hell of a lot better memoir than Cleaving.

Jeannette Walls, author of The Glass Castle, tells her grandmother's story in Half Broke Horses. Because Walls could not absolutely verify all the facts, and because she wanted to tell the story in the first person, she calls it a novel rather than a memoir or biography.

Lily Casey Smith grew up as a rancher, teacher, and mother (she was Jeannette's mother's mother). In case you read The Glass Castle and wonder about how Jeannette's mother was raised, Lily had many, many regrets about how her daughter turned out and what a wild life she chose to live. Lily always tried to teach practical lessons, but her daughter rebelled and became as impractical a person as possible: a wandering artist with no interest in stability or predictability (like making sure there was always food for the kids to eat).

Just as in The Glass Castle, Walls tells the story in a straightforward manner, with no pity requested, no matter how bad things got. It's a really readable and intriguing story of a tough, resourceful, funny woman.

I can't help but compare it to Cleaving, since I just read that book, and since I still haven't fully digested that one. Walls tells her story in chronological order, without cliffhangers or other cheap tricks to keep readers interested. Julie Powell scrambles back and forth between present day and the past couple of years, and between her butchering apprenticeship and her relationships. She gives a little taste -- a teaser -- of what happened in her love life and then switches back to graphic descriptions of cutting up cows. Julie and Julia was also pretty scattered, chronologically and in terms of subject matter.

I would really like to read something by Powell that is only about ONE theme, without a heavy-handed metaphor woven throughout. Julie, if you're reading this, please write a travelogue in chronological order, with all your sarcasm and humor and self-deprecation, and don't compare traveling to marriage. Julie, you are great at telling stories, but not so great at telling two or three stories at the same time. And the best part about Cleaving was the descriptions of your Fear Factor-like travels. Thanks.

Book 1: Cleaving

After a year of keeping track of which books I read, I want to keep going. I'm curious about how many books I will read without any number in mind. So, today I want to tell you about Cleaving by Julie Powell.

I already told you that I really like her writing, but I really dislike Julie. I still feel that way now that I'm done with this one. And I can't help thinking, "her parents are reading this book about her S&M dates with her boyfriend, and about her husband having his own girlfriend!" And that's kind of brave and honest, or else it's just a way to write a sensational book to try to stay famous, or else it's just a desperate cry for attention. My feelings toward Julie varied greatly throughout the book. I felt sorry for her, disappointed by her, embarrassed for her, grossed out by her, somewhat sympathetic toward her, and scared for her, but I never felt like I wanted to meet her or hang out with her.

The best part of the book is when she describes traveling to other countries by herself. After she finishes her butchering apprenticeship, she goes to Argentina, the Ukraine, and Tanzania (and Japan, but she doesn't tell us much about it).

Overall, I don't recommend it. It was pretty disappointing.

Books without pressure!

Well, I'm in the middle of a bunch of books! It's so nice to have no self-imposed pressure to finish them quickly. If I were trying to read 2 a week again, I'd be behind already.

And I know I'm reading a lot of books at one time, but believe me when I say I'm holding myself back from about 20 others that are waiting on the shelf. I've wanted to read 2666 by Bolano since about a year ago, and I have the first two of Steig Larsson's trilogy, and a Paul Auster that I haven't read, and one about Darwin, and one about The Great Wall of China, and a bunch more.

My Mom and I are both reading The Artist's Way, which has activities aimed at increasing creativity. The first task is that every morning, you write 3 pages in longhand in a journal. Just stream-of-consciousness stuff that no one will ever see. It helps to get the crap out so you can move on with your day without being bogged down. I'm still struggling to remember to do it in the morning, but I'm doing it every day and I think it is really useful. So far, so good.



Living Your Yoga has suggested practices, too, but so far I'm only reading. And sometimes thinking, "yes, I should do that." There are three main parts, with seven chapters in each part. The parts are:
Awakening Awareness: Yoga within Yourself;
Widening the Circle: Yoga and Relationships; and
Embracing All Life: Yoga in the World

The chapters are entitled things like Courage, Control, Patience, and Nonviolence. It's pretty good for reading a little bit each day and thinking about how to be a better person all the time. It's not woo-woo or New Agey.



The Collected Stories of Lydia Davis is really, really good. It's over 700 pages of (sometimes) amazing short stories. I'm going to try to make it last a long time rather than gulping it all down quickly, because it's so good.




The Origins and Development of the English Language was a textbook in one of my college classes and now I want to read it again. I'm sure I'll skim some parts of it, but I feel really interested in the history of English right now, and I've forgotten a lot of it. I have a habit of re-reading books years later. That's why it is tough for me to get rid of books -- some day I will probably wish that I could read them again and I'll have to BUY them again. But this one, I got used for only a couple bucks. My copy is from 1993, and there are newer editions, but they cost a lot more.



Stranger in a Strange Land is a 1960s sci-fi novel (according to its own cover, "The most famous science fiction novel ever written"). I'll tell you if I think it deserves that honor when I'm done with it. It's sort of cheesy, but for the genre, not that bad.

The plot: astronauts went to Mars and had a baby and then they died. The baby was raised by Martians. When the baby is 25 years old, more Earth astronauts land on Mars and convince him to go to Earth with them. He's totally Martian in terms of culture, thought process, concepts, language, and traditions. Everyone wants a piece of him.



Cleaving is pretty awful. It's by the woman who wrote Julie and Julia, and in this memoir, she tells us all about becoming a butcher AND about cheating on her husband for two years. You'd think the graphic details of chopping up animals would be the gross part, but it isn't. Yet I must read the whole thing. I really like her writing style, but I really dislike HER.


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My New Project

I've been working on a new (slightly terrifying) project: publishing a novel online. I'm writing it as I go, and I'm not 100% certain how the story ends, so I will be finding out along with you.

Here is my description:

Neighborhood Confessions is a novel that is told in three parts, on three different blogs. To get the whole story, read the entries of all three bloggers:

The Meanie is a woman who uses Mean Blog as a place to anonymously and harmlessly complain about her family, friends, and neighbors (who include The Snoop and The Reader).

The Snoop posts all the neighborhood gossip on Neighborhood Watch. She is an unrepentant agent provacateur, busybody, and spy -- even recruiting other neighbors to take part in her hobby. With too much time on her hands and an excess of imagination, she is disliked by all who enjoy a little privacy.

The Reader periodically "borrows" a sister's diary and posts the entries on My Sister's Diary without permission. The Reader sometimes adds a little commentary to the diary entries, filling in a few details for us about the neighborhood.

It is a tale of secrets, accidents, and hastily made bad decisions. I hope you will have as much fun reading it as I am having writing it!

There are two entries up so far, on Mean Blog and My Sister's Diary . I'll attempt to have an entry up almost every day (though probably just on one blog per day). I think it will last for about three months. I haven't seen this style of story-telling yet, and I hope it will be a lot of fun to write and to read.

The return of nice handwriting

Not in general -- this is not a diatribe about how kids these days don't learn to write in cursive. It's only about my own handwriting.

During law school, I lost my handwriting. Instead of my attractive, legible writing, I scrawled and scribbled and sometimes I couldn't even read it myself. You see, we were crowded together like nobody's business and I couldn't get into my correct writing posture. I prefer to put my whole forearm on the desk and turn kind of sideways to write nicely.

No, I'm not lefthanded. I just like to rest my arm on the desk so that my hand can move more freely and possibly boisterously. I need to write flamboyantly!

Plus, I was writing so fast to try not to miss anything, and then I was writing for so LONG -- hours and hours sometimes, and my hand would cramp up and the only thing that could move was my shoulder joint as I desperately clutched my pen Bob Dole-style.



And now I notice that my old handwriting, which I prefer, has made a reappearance, just 2 years and 8 months since graduating. All right!

But, does it have any significance? Does it mean that the Old Me is back??? Who was she and what's she done with the Other Me?

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Finished the Marshmallows

After they sat for a while, I tried to peel off the plastic wrap, which was nearly impossible. This was because I was being too nice to the lump of hoof+sugar. Just TEAR it off! Let them get stretched and torn and misshapen. They will bounce right back.

Cut them into hunks, or whatever shape you can manage. Marshmallows are not particularly well-behaved.



Coat them in powdered sugar ASAP to quell the stickiness. You may even want to coat your fingers in powdered sugar before trying to cut them. It helps.




Then I tried to dip them into melted chocolate to make pretty half-chocolate, half-white rectangular solids. But alas! The powdered sugar made them less dippable. The chocolate just dripped right back off.

So, if you want to dip in chocolate, maybe you should only coat ONE END in powdered sugar and then dip the other end in chocolate. I really needed ten more minutes to play with them but we had to go so they just got clumps of chocolate plopped on top. It worked, but as you can see, they looked ridiculous!

Michele! The bad hoofy smell totally goes away as you furiously mix the gelatin and sugar together. First the gelatin smells like barn animals, then it smells like Jell-O, and then it smells like marshmallows.

They tasted good, and people ate some of them. They got powdered sugar everywhere, which caused a small amount of shouting and recriminations.

And that's the story of the homemade marshmallows.