First Chapter, Tuesday Teaser -- And Laughter Fell From the Sky

Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posts the first paragraph of her current read. Anyone can join in. Go to Diane's website for the image and share the first paragraph of the current book you are reading.
I love the title of this book, And Laughter Fell From the Sky by Jyotsna Sreenivasan. It makes me feel hopeful. Let's see about the opening:

On a humid Friday afternoon in August, twenty-four-year-old Abhay Setty sat cross-legged on the grass in front of the Fox and Hound restaurant and bar in the tired college town of Kent, Ohio. He took occasional bites of a floppy slice of pizza while writing in a little notebook balanced on one knee. Next to him on the grass was a stack of books, the top one open, at which he occasionally glanced as he wrote. He didn't want to be inside the noisy, dim bar, and Kent seemed not to have heard of outdoor dining. A steady stream of cars drove past on the five-lane highway. Across the highway at the entrance to campus, was a metal archway, spelling out Kent State University in blue letters. The campus itself was quiet. It was happy hour time, which to Abhay was a misnomer, because it seemed the saddest part of the day. The air was heavy and still.
 

Well, I like the very beginning of this paragraph and the image of the floppy pizza, but then she loses me a bit.


 Also this week is Teaser Tuesdays.
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along!
Open to a random page of your current read and share a teaser sentence from somewhere on that page.
BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS!
Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers.
Here's mine from page 44:

"He is not interested in a girl who is too forward." Mrs. Shankar had a way of lifting her upper lip when she talked, which exposed her long front teeth and made her look like a rodent. "She must be able to adapt to his way of life. He was raised to be decent. He will treat his wife like a queen. But he will her king. And she must know that."
 

I guess I'll find out if I like it. What do you think?

Running Fail

I was making fairly good time during my run this morning. It wasn't 6 a.m. yet and I had finished half of my five mile run. I turned onto a dark side street and wondered whether the headlamp I was wearing over my hat really helped me see the road better.
But I didn't have time to ponder it for long because my foot landed in a pothole, my ankle turned and the momentum propelled my body forward to a landing with a crunch, on my nose.
I heard the bones crack.
My nose? Who lands on their nose?
I didn't stay on the ground for a second because I could feel the blood gushing. My nose grew thick with blood and mucous, and I coughed to catch a breath. I picked up the fallen hat and headlamp, but stayed bent over at the waist so the blood would not pour down my front. I let the thick, red drops pool on the asphalt as I reached for my phone.
I carry my phone with me on runs because it has my music and it keeps track of my miles. Today, it offered me rescue.
About two miles from home and bleeding profusely, I dialed someone who I knew would have his phone close by no matter the time -- my 16-year-old Tucker.
"Hello?" his sleepy voice went up on the end in a question.
"I think I broke my nose. Can you come get me?" I said, my voice clogged as I tried to breath and talk at the same time.
"You broke your arm?" he asked.
"No, my nose."
I told him my general location then said I would go back to the closest main street so he could find me. I stood on the corner, still bent over dripping blood.
An early morning walker passed by.
"Did you lose something?" she asked in the darkness. I must have looked like a basketball player searching for a lost contact lens on the court.
I told her an abbreviated version of my accident and she handed me a tissue to wipe up some of the blood. That little tissue didn't stand a chance.
Then the woman walked on.
I kept glancing down at my hand, my knuckles. They felt sore, but I didn't see any blood where I had scraped them.
Within minutes, the knuckles had swollen to a walnut-sized bump.
"Oh..." was all I could say. I felt miserable but refused to give in to moaning in pain.
The bleeding subsided enough to allow me to sit down on the curb without coating my shirt in red.
I saw a car a block away slow at the intersection then creep forward. I swung the headlamp I held in my hand as a kind of signal light. My phone rang, and I told Tucker to turn toward the light, but not in a death and dying kind of way.
The car raced down the block then and I limped into it. My knee was skinned and bleeding too.
I climbed in the car and Tucker recoiled in shock.
He handed me towels. "Can you wipe that off?" he asked. I'm sure he meant to be concerned rather than disgusted.
I didn't realize at the time that I had scraped the skin off my nose, so bleeding from the outside and inside.
"I think I might have broken my hand too," I said motioning toward the swollen knuckles.
"Oh, God," he said. Right then, I ruled out any sort of medical career for him. He drove home like I was in labor and might give birth in the car.
My poor husband had just pulled the car in the garage 4 hours before, having driven home from New York. Still he pulled on clothes and accompanied me to the Ohio State emergency room, all the while predicting he would be accused of spousal abuse.
About a dozen xrays and five hours later, the doctor sent me home with some pain killers, antibiotics, a wrapped hand (just bruised not broken), and a referral to an Ear Nose and Throat doctor for follow up on my broken nose.
 So I'm here at home now, with a black scrape of asphalt on my thumb reminding me of the tumble I took this morning and a pounding headache
What have I learned from this experience? Maybe not as much as I should have. I asked the doctor before we left, "So, I don't usually fall on my nose. How long until I can run again?"
"Give it at least today," he said with a pat on my arm. "Truthfully, it's all going to depend on when you can breath well enough to run again."

Saturday Snapshot -- Coffee Love

To participate in the Saturday Snapshot meme post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken then leave a direct link to your post on Alyce's blog At Home With Books. Photos can be old or new, and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don’t post random photos that you find online.
I was sipping my coffee the other morning when I looked down and saw a heart in the foam.

 

What are the odds?

It must be a sign that I'm loved.

Teenage Puzzles

My mom called one night this week. "I just wanted to find out how Tucker was," she said.
Tucker, our remaining child at home with his two older siblings at college. He's 16 and frequently sullen, but sometimes buoyantly friendly. There's no predicting which one he'll be.
"He's fine," I said. "He got a 97 on his chemistry test."
He works out three days a week after school to get ready for swim season. He spends a lot of evenings fetching his girlfriend from her college dorm 15 minutes away and bringing her back to our house. She's probably here for dinner three or four nights a week.
"I saw that they'd broken up and didn't know who did the breaking up, but wanted to make sure he was okay," Mom said.
She's friends with Tucker on Facebook. I'm not. I never know his status in relationships or otherwise, unless he volunteers it.
"Really?" I asked. "She was just here last night. She was going to take the bus back to school and we told Tucker to drive her."
After I talked to Mom for awhile, I called down the basement to Tucker. He spends a lot of time playing  Xbox or watching TV in his man cave.
"Who broke up with whom?" I asked.
"Don't worry about it, Mom," he said.
"But you're okay?" I called.
"Yeah," he said, with that tone that includes the word "Duh!" even though he didn't say it. "We're not dating but we're still together."
"Oh..." I had no idea what that meant.
But I do know that when I got home from running errands last night, she was here again. She's a sweet girl, but the bridge between a girl in college and a boy in high school is pretty great, even if they're only 15 minutes apart.
Still, maybe they've figured out how to take the sting out of break ups. On Facebook, they're not a couple any more. In real life, she was here three nights this week.
I can't figure it out, so I'll just make dinner for the both of them and stop trying to solve the puzzle.

Flattery and Flirting

Every woman loves a compliment.
I'm lucky that I'm married to a man who continues to compliment me, but sometimes I'm suspicious that his compliments are colored by the fact that he loves me.
My husband would also tell you that I'm fairly oblivious to men who flirt. That's what he told me when I came home from the library a few weeks ago and told him the librarian had erased a missing book on CD from my library card.
I couldn't find the book on CD anywhere in the car, so I asked the librarian to see if it had been returned and not checked in. He looked on the shelves and told me that, although it wasn't there, he'd take it off my card.
"Just return it if you find it," he said.
When I went home, I told Earl about the interaction and commented that the librarian was very kind.
"Uh-huh," Earl said.
"What?" I asked.
"Nothing," he said.
The next week, Earl cleaned the car and found the missing book on CD. I returned it and felt kind of sheepish. The librarian who had helped me wasn't around so I didn't have to confess my mistake. But when I went to the library again this week, he was there.
"Oh, hello," he said as he walked past me while I was browsing the shelves.
I might not have interacted with him again, except the computer popped up a warning that I needed to pay my fines before I could check out.
I moved to the main desk with my stack of books and started to sign in on a different computer where I could pay my fines. The librarian stood behind the desk.
"You know," I said, "I found that book on CD that you took off my card."
"That always happens," he said.
"I was glad you weren't here when I returned it. I would've been embarassed," I said. "I peeked to make sure you weren't here before I came in with it."
"Yeah, cause I would've held it up and told everyone," he said.
He turned to a computer behind the desk and said he could help me with my fines and checking out. He remembered my name and already had my account up on his computer.
I stepped over to the other part of the desk.
"I remembered your name from last time," he said.
"Oh." I was surprised.
"I remember because I wanted to tell you that you're one of the most beautiful women I've seen."
He turned to run my credit card through the machine to pay off my fees.
"Is there a 'vote-for-your-favorite-librarian contest' going on?" I teased, looking around.
"No, really. I mean it. I'm sure you hear that all the time."
Well, surprisingly, other than my husband, people don't tell me I'm beautiful. And although I didn't say that, it did make me realize that I'm not wearing a wedding ring, not since my ring finger started breaking out this summer.
That would have been a perfect chance for me to mention my husband to the librarian. But, I have a book coming out soon and I would love to have a librarian on my side when it comes time to recommend buying copies of the book.
So instead, I said, "Ahh, I'm too old to hear that any more."
"Well, I'll remind you every time you come in because you should hear it," he said.
And I left the library with my books, feeling a little awkward, but my spirits slightly buoyed.
It's not everyday a woman gets told she's beautiful. But maybe we all should.

First Chapter, Tuesday Teaser -- So Far Away

Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posts the first paragraph of her current read. Anyone can join in. Go to Diane's website for the image and share the first paragraph of the current book you are reading.
I'll have to admit that I picked this one up because of the book cover. What do you think? If you aren't sold by the book cover, I guess we should move on to the first paragraph.

It was a Friday when the girl came into the Archives for the first time, the first Friday after they'd changed the clocks. Spring ahead, fall back: Kathleen had once learned some rhyme about that when she was a schoolchild, but she no longer remembered it. It had been some time since she'd been a schoolchild. This was early November, the leaves mostly down, lying wet and slick all over Boston.
 

Also this week is Teaser Tuesdays.
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along!
Open to a random page of your current read and share a teaser sentence from somewhere on that page.
BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS!
Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers.
Here's mine from page 66:

"I'm going to bed. Came to say good night." Her voice was rough in the semidarkenss of the hallway. "Okay," said Natalie, but her mother didn't leave. Natalie didn't look up, just continued typing. Because there are too many secrets. That sounded idiotic. She deleted it. Because my father left us. Worse. Delete. Because I want to know where I came from. She let that one stand and considered it, studiously ignoring her mother's presence in the hallway.

Saturday Snapshot -- Wrapped Up

 

To participate in the Saturday Snapshot meme post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken then leave a direct link to your post on Alyce's blog At Home With Books. Photos can be old or new, and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don’t post random photos that you find online.

Our neighbors have a 16-year-old son, just like we do. One morning this week, as I was walking through the dark to start my run, I noticed the neighbors car looked funny. I thought maybe they had done some work to it then covered it to keep it safe. Until I got closer.

 

 

That's when I saw that the entire car was wrapped in plastic wrap. Whoever had wrapped it, had even left the empty rolls stuck to the car.

 

It made me laugh, because I figured the prank was all in good fun. When it got to be around 6 a.m., I texted the mom to warn her that her son might need a little extra time getting out of the driveway that morning since some friends had decorated his car. "Bring scissors," I warned.

 

 

I saw the neighbor at the football game last night. He said the scissors cut right through the plastic wrap and they had it cleaned up in minute. That makes it a bad prank, he explained, because it was so easy to clean up. Now those strands of toilet papers in trees, those drive him crazy.

Pizza Crawl

It started when Sheila and I went to our regular place for coffee. A yellow paper stuck to the wall announced a pizza crawl.
We'd heard of pub crawls, but I'd never been on one. The pizza crawl was the same kind of thing but we would go from pizza place to pizza place then vote at the end for the one we liked best.
"That sounds like fun," I commented last week.
This week, we were back at the coffee shop with another friend who pointed out the pizza crawl. "Yeah, we were thinking about doing that," I said.
So when I got home, Sheila had sent a message to our group that said she and I were going to take part in the pizza crawl.
"Wait. I don't think I committed to that," I responded by email.
"I think you did," she replied.
So that how I ended up walking to our small downtown on Thursday evening.
I stopped by Sheila's house first where she blended up a couple of margaritas and put them in to-go cups, those cups people use to get iced coffee drinks, with lids and straws. I like to think of myself as a rule breaker, but I was pretty nervous about walking around with an alcoholic drink. We have open-container laws here, which means you can't walk the streets with an open drink. Sheila pointed out the drinks were closed cause they had lids.
I warned Tucker that he would need to come bail me out of jail if I got arrested.
Our first stop was right around the corner. A thin crust white pizza, which meant no red sauce. We picked one that had tomato slices with dots of spinach. I liked the flavor of olive oil and that the pizza wasn't overwhelming.
At the very first place, Sheila and I agreed that if we tried to eat a whole slice of pizza each, we wouldn't make it very far. So we decided to buy one slice of pizza at each restaurant and split it in two. That way we could try more.
Each slice of pizza was $1. By the time we had finished, we had visited 6 pizza places and spent $3 each. Not bad.
After the first nearby place, Sheila suggested we try some of the farther flung pizza places that we wouldn't usually visit, so we began hiking along the road and hit the two farthest ones.
One of them was in a bar. We walked in to head-banger music. Sheila called it 80s hair band music. She admitted that she used to hang out in this bar and do her homework when she was in high school because they were lax about checking IDs. She pointed out the bathrooms: "One was for using the bathroom and the other was for doing drugs."
After we got our slice of pizza, she texted her youngest, 14-year-old Thomas, and told him and his friends not to walk all the way to this bar for pizza. It didn't seem like a good idea for the unaccompanied teenagers to come to the bar. Of course, Sheila didn't have that rule for herself when she was a teenager.
The pizza in the bar was saucy and cheesy, but not too spicy. When we finished, that was our 4th shared piece of pizza, equivalent to two whole pieces. I was starting to get full. We decided to head to the farthest place in the opposite direction to try a piece of pizza another friend had recommended.
So we started walking. Throughout the evening, we walked 4. 6 miles, according to Gmaps pedometer. Walking in my Birkenstocks, after running 4.5 miles that morning and working 8 to 3, I felt the day wearing on me.
We sat down at the last place to a piece of pizza with artichoke hearts, black olives and dried tomatoes. The toppings were tasty. I ended up eating the toppings and leaving the end of the crust.
Finally, Sheila and I walked toward her house. We stopped at one last place and grabbed $1 slices of pizza to take home for our kids. I bought two very heavy meat lovers slices to take home to Tucker, covered with pepperoni, sausage, bacon and meatballs -- holy cow.
It was worth it though, cause he was happy, and I could finally put my feet up -- full of pizza and maragarita and enough exercise to not feel guilty about it.
Next time, I think I'll try a pub crawl.

Movies and France

Earl works evenings, so most evenings I'm home alone or chaperoning Tucker and his girlfriend.
On Earl's two evenings off a week, we try to find something fun to do. Tuesday night, we walked down to the library and borrowed a couple of movies then went to a local coffee shop. We sat at tables along the sidewalk and enjoyed the beautiful September night.

When we had walked home, we watched one of the movies. Made in 1995, French Kiss with Meg Ryan and Kevin Kline is a great romantic comedy for anyone who loves France, like I do.
Earl had never seen it before, and I only fell asleep for a small part of the movie. Kevin Kline plays a Frenchman, Luc, who is a thief. I wondered why they had chosen him to play a Frenchman and when I searched it online, I found that the role was originally written for Gerard Depardieu. I like Depardieu, but I can't imagine Meg Ryan falling for him.  Kline has since played other French-speaking parts. The plot is that Meg Ryan is petrified of flying so she doesn't go overseas with her fiance. He meets a French woman and falls in love. She gets up her nerve to fly over and win back the fiance, but meets Luc on the plane. He hides some contraband in her bag and they are thrown together.
Although I love France, I still prefer to watch American movies made in France. The problem is that comedies in France aren't generally  funny. Someone almost always dies. But the other movie we watched on Earl's night off was French, billed as a romantic comedy. We were prepared for bodies to start stacking up as the hilarity ensued.

The movie was called Heartbreaker with Vanessa Paradis and Romain Duris, French actors. The premise is that Duris plays Alex who, with his sister and brother-in-law, runs an elaborate business to break up couples. The examples they gave were a brother who paid them to break up his sister and her lame boyfriend, and a father who hired them to keep his daughter from marrying someone boring.
The beginning was fun as Alex and his crew went to elaborate lengths to convince a woman that she deserved more than the man who preferred to stay by the pool and watch a wet t-shirt contest.
Of course, Alex meets his match when he is asked to stop the marriage of Juliette, an independent woman, to a British philanthropist. Alex takes the job because he needs the money, even though it goes against his principles. He usually only breaks up couples who are unhappy or a bad fit. Juliette puts up quite a fight, which makes Alex fall in love with her. I won't tell you how it ends, but surprisingly, no one dies, which makes it 'ilarious, as the French say.
Both movies were full of lovely French scenes.

Mahjong in the Morning

On Wednesdays, I don't have to go to campus to teach. I hesitate to say I don't have to work, because I still do plenty of work; I can just do it in my pajamas if I want to.

But this morning, I planned to meet Sheila and Tracie for coffee. Since the three of us were meeting, I suggested that Sheila bring her Mahjong set. And she did, even though the case looks like a machine gun case.

If you haven't played mahjong with tiles instead of on the computer, you're missing out. We have these nice ceramic tiles. They're smooth and satisfying to hold in your hands. The goal is to choose a hand and try to get the tiles to create that hand. It looks complicated, but after a couple of games, everyone gets the hang of it.

 

This morning, Sheila won three games in a row, before Tracie and I had really figured out what we were doing. She looks very satisfied in this photo doesn't she?

 

 

It felt pretty decadent to spend a glorious September morning sitting outside the coffee shop playing mahjong. A number of people stopped by to watch us and comment. One woman went so far to ask, "Do you have kids in school or something?" as if there could be no other excuse for sitting and "wasting" our time on a weekday. Of course, I work and Tracie works and Sheila is still homeschooling, so we made no excuses for our fun.

Mahjong with coffee, not quite as fun as mahjong with wine. But time spent with friends -- priceless.

First Chapter, Tuesday Teaser -- Queen Bee of Mimosa Branch

Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posts the first paragraph of her current read. Anyone can join in. Go to Diane's website for the image and share the first paragraph of the current book you are reading.
I'm still having a hard time finding a book that grabs me. I'm going to try one recommended by anotherblog's  First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday a few weeks ago -- Queen Bee of Mimosa Branch by Haywood Smith.

I took the long way home that fateful midsummer day last July, maybe because I still couldn't quite believe what I was about to do.

I could still hear Miss Mamie -- that's my mother; everybody calls her Miss Mamie, including my brother and me -- telling me, on the eve of my wedding, that if I insisted on marrying Phil at nineteen, I shouldn't even think of turning up on her doorstep again. "You make your bed, you lie in it," she'd said with absolute conviction. (Miss Mamie says everything with absolute conviction.)
 

So traditional southern matriarch. I hope these are characters I fall in love with.

Also this week is Teaser Tuesdays.
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along!
Open to a random page of your current read and share a teaser sentence from somewhere on that page.
BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS!
Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers.
Here's mine from page 36:

"Now, honey," she said in that same singsong she'd used when I was ten. "You know how you get when you don't have your protein with your carbohydrates. Eleven o'clock and there goes the blood sugar, under the basement. I'll just scramble up a few, shiny, like you've always liked 'em."

What do you think?
Maybe you all will have some suggestions for me.

Ignorance is Bliss

Yes, I know that the title is a cliche, but I've found that I wish I were ignorant about some things during this political season.
Whether you're liberal or conservative, don't you wish you didn't know the politics of the companies you buy food and laundry detergent from?
Recently, company leaders have been coming out in support of one politician or another.
The owner of Papa Johns pizza complained that under the new health care law, he would have to charge 12 to 14 cents more per pizza. (To me, that seems a small price to pay for health care. It sure wouldn't dissuade me from buying a pizza.) But truthfully, I'd rather not know Papa Johns' politics. I enjoyed their pizzas. Notice that is past tense. Now I feel like I don't want to support a company that automatically plans to push any costs onto the customers rather than the shareholders and doesn't see its employees worth insuring.
Same thing with Chick Fil A. They have delicious chicken sandwiches, but I don't feel like I should go to a restaurant that openly discriminates against gay people. There are no laws they are being forced to follow, so why did the owner share his feelings on it? Religious beliefs? Plenty of people in the 60s thought it was antiChristian for blacks and whites to marry. Would we have supported them? Taking a stand pro-discrimination is always the wrong side of history.
So now I'm getting hungry just because of politics.
Warren Buffett, CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, makes no secret of his politics either. He thinks he and other rich people should pay more taxes. If people are conservative, are they taking their business away from Geico and Fruit of the Loom and other companies owned by Berkshire Hathaway?
Companies should be smarter. They may want to complain about taxes or regulation or policies, but speaking out can lose them 50 percent of their customers, which seems like its a greater financial hardship.
Keep your politics to yourself, companies, and let me keep eating your delicious food.  

Worry Lines

Last February, when I had my birthday, I got a facial at the local Aveda shop. Pattie, the woman who does facials at Aveda, has seen me about once a year for the past 10 years, so we always catch up.
This year, as she smoothed my hair off my forehead and attached a velcro headband to hold it in place she asked me my secret.
"How have you avoided worry lines between your eyebrows?" she asked, pointing to her own parentheses just above the bridge of her nose.
I shrugged. I hadn't really thought about it.
Until Friday, when I looked in the car mirror and yikes! I didn't have two parentheses between my eyebrows, I had parentheses plus a dash. That space above my nose, right before my forehead begins is now crowded with punctuation marks.

How has this happened in seven months?

I know I've been juggling funds recently with two kids in college, and, face it, money worries make some of the biggest impacts on our beauty.

Also, this whole teenager, young adult thing is having a huge impact. I used to think if I could just get a full night's sleep that everything would be wonderful. Now I know that bigger worries awaited me than getting the kids to sleep through the night.

But, with two kids away in college, my day-to-day worries about them should lessen. The one child left at home goes to school each day, works out three days a week, picks his girlfriend up from college to spend the evening at our house, and gets home by his curfew on weekends.

Okay, he did have a minor fender bender Thursday night, the night before I noticed these new marks. No damage to our car and nothing to the other car, except a loose bolt on the license plate. But the young man he bumped blew up at Tucker and made the whole scenario worse.

I'm hopeful that these parentheses will fade rather than deepen, as the year of college payments reaches its end in March, and maybe I'll have two months of a line free forehead, before the payments begin again.

Saturday Snapshot -- Hitchhiker

To participate in the Saturday Snapshot meme post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken then leave a direct link to your post on Alyce's blog At Home With Books. Photos can be old or new, and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don’t post random photos that you find online.
In Florida last month, we hopped in the car and took off. We hadn't gone far when we noticed a hitchhiker.

Can you see him?

Just in case you had trouble spotting him, here's a close up.

I like to think that he climbed off the car when we were stopped. I'm going to stick with that story.

Genius Idea

Sometimes I get the best ideas, but I rarely follow through on them.
This morning as I was running in the dark, I came up with another one.
I run in the street because it's less likely to be uneven and trip me up like the sidewalk does, plus the asphalt is better for my knees and joints than the concrete.
I run against the traffic so I can see those few cars that might be headed my way in my small town at 5:30 in the morning. I consider it my responsibility to get out of the road if a car is coming and it doesn't see me or can't get over.
As I turned onto a street with very few streetlights, I realized cars might not see me since I don't wear any lights. I have reflectors on my water belt and my shoes and my hat, but if a car doesn't have its lights on, it might not see me.
If a car didn't have its lights on, I would hear it, I reassured myself.
Aha, but what if it's an electric car, you can't hear those, the annoying, worrying voice in my head responded.
That is a problem that people have been working on: how to make electric cars louder so the vision impaired, or runners in the dark, aren't surprised by them.
That's when I came up with the genius idea. The tires have to go around for the car to move.
When I was a kid, we had these great plastic straws that went on the tire spokes of our bikes and made the best t-t-t-t-t-t- noise as the wheels rolled down the street. That's just what we need on electric cars.
Here's a photo from Yellow Dog Racing to illustrate the way the tires look.

I think these kinds of colorful accoutrements will spice up the electric car images too.

First Chapter, Tuesday Teaser -- The Vanishers

Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posts the first paragraph of her current read. Anyone can join in. Go to Diane's website for the image and share the first paragraph of the current book you are reading.
I have about three books going right now, but I'm not really satisfied with any of them, so I plucked one off the shelf and here's the intro for The Vanishers by Heidi Julavits.
 

The story I'm about to tell could be judged preposterous. Fine. Judge how you must. Protect yourself by scare quoting me as the so-called psychic, the so-called victim of a psychic attack Quarantine this account however you must so that you can safely hear it. What happened to me could never happen to you.
Tell yourself that. Even though what happened to me happens to people like you all the time.

 Hmmm. That doesn't give me much to work with.

Also this week is Teaser Tuesdays.
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along!
Open to a random page of your current read and share a teaser sentence from somewhere on that page.
BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS!
Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers.
Here's a teaser from  page 27:

I arrived at Madame Ackermann's house to find her in a manic frenzy. Her feet were bare, her hair plumed from a Pucci scarf knotted on the top of her head, her eyes racooned by day-old mascara.

 

 I hope I like this one. I finished In the Bag by Kate Klise yesterday and it met my expectations as a fun, quick read with dabs of foreign travel and emotional characters. I'd recommend it. I'll let you know what I think about The Vanishers.

Book Review -- In the Bag

I was going to save this book for First Paragraph Tuesday, but it's such a quick read that I'm afraid I'll be finished with it today. So I wanted to tell you about In the Bag by Kate Klise.
Truthfully, this has been on my shelf for awhile. The cover says "A tale of two suitcases, three cities, four people and one big mix-up."
I thought it sounded cute. But it didn't compell me to choose it from among all the other books. Yesterday I did and I learned something about the book that would have made me start it much sooner -- it's set in Paris. Hellooooo. That definitely would have hooked me.
Here's the premise: a mother who's a famous chef in Chicago travels to Paris with her teenage daughter to avoid prom weekend at home, since the girl doesn't have a date.
A father, who organizes art exhibits, travels from St. Louis with his teenage son to Madrid. The father is working so he takes the son along to enjoy the atmosphere. They're all on the same plane from St. Louis to Paris and the teenagers accidentally end up with each other's bags.
The teenagers start emailing each other trying to return bags and end up in an online romance.
Each character gets to tell his/her tale. We see the mom and the dad worrying about their teenagers (something I'm familiar with). We see how clueless the parents are from the kids' perspective.
The kids come up with such a stupid plan to meet each other, that it seems genuine. No offense to any teenagers out there, but the more I get to know them, the more I realize many teenage ideas are ridiculous.
And, added to the fun, the dad had accidentally spilled wine on a woman on the plane. Guess who that is? And he can't stop thinking about her.
This is a fun read if you get a chance to pick it up.
I just wish there'd been a little more emphasis on the setting to get me and all the other Francophiles to pick it up.

Saturday Snapshots -- Baby Grins

To participate in the Saturday Snapshot meme post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken then leave a direct link to your post on Alyce's blog At Home With Books. Photos can be old or new, and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don’t post random photos that you find online.
Our niece's baby Regan is two months old now and starting to interact with us. At Grace's going away to college party, she actually smiled a few times.

 

Of course, nothing beats those big-eyed baby photos.

 

 

Hope your day is as restful as snuggling up to a two-month old baby.

Tribute to the Man on the Moon

I don't want to sound like Forrest Gump, always inserting myself in famous situations, but when Neil Armstrong died this week, it reminded me of my childhood.
I'm too young to remember watching the moon landing on TV, although I'm sure my parents plunked me down in front of it to see the historic moment. What I remember about Neil Armstrong was going to school with his son, Mark, who is my age.
Somewhere around 4th or 5th grade, the Armstrongs moved to Lebanon, Ohio, my hometown. They bought a big green farm house on a winding road, and Mark attended the same middle school as me. Well, there was only one middle school for our little town. It's the same school that you can see in the movie Harper Valley PTA which was filmed in our town.
I'm not sure when Mark and I became friends, but my mother later told me that his mother always made sure Mark and I were in the same class, because she thought the competition was good for him. Who would be surprised to learn that I was competitive about getting the best grades in class?
So throughout middle school, Mark and I shared a classroom and around about 6th grade, we started attending boy/girl parties and going on outings to Kings Island amusement park, which was close by.
Apparently, our paths diverged in high school, and I ended up graduating a year early, so I didn't see Mark again, although my dad told me he asked about me one day when Dad saw him at the local YMCA.
Just last month, I found Mark on Facebook. I sent him a message about his complicated science majors at college. I have politics on my Facebook page, and Mark let me know right away that he disagreed with my politics.
I replied: "Yikes. Launching into politics first thing? Can't we talk about Kings Island in 6th grade instead?"
I was afraid my friend Mark was lost to me forever.
Luckily, he messaged back letting me know he retained his wit: "Too soon? But, uh, you did put it out there on your home page which makes it fair game, right? Actually, I'm quite happy to stay away from politics. So, do you prefer the blue or the red Racer. Do you like to ride forwards or backwards?"
The Racer is the original roller coaster at Kings Island, and I'm sure many of our conversations in middle school centered around which was the best.
But the whole idea about politics being "fair game" made me want to retort, "We aren't competing any more."
I was in the midst of delivering kids to school, so I didn't message back, not until this week, when I heard his father had died.
I avoided mentioning the obvious, that it's weird to hear that someone's parent died on the news. Mark's dad didn't just belong to him; he belonged to the whole world as the first man to walk on the moon.
So Mark will always have to share his dad, but right now, he's the one who is suffering the loss.
Tonight, when I look up at the Blue Moon, the second full moon in one month, I'll remember Neil Armstrong, the man who made history, and fathered my middle school friend.

We All Judge a Book By Its....

What kind of book cover draws you in?
I started thinking about this when I saw the cover on Bibliophile by the Sea of The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry. The cover has a cartoonish or art look to it. Not realistic at all, yet I would pick up the book. What artist is this like?

A lot of book covers have people without their heads. I guess the idea is probably to make the reader think: This could be you.
Here's one:

And here's another:

The second cover appeals to me more, maybe because I see action in it.
Sometimes the cover will show a part of someone's head, again, not a clear photo because it could be any reader.

The covers with only words appeal to me too.
Like this one:

 And, of course, I love the Brit  Lit books with cartoonish covers.

When making my own book cover to put on my dream board, I went with a landscape. Too generic? I don't see many covers like this:

What do you think? What kind of book cover draws you in?

The Last Bastion of Civility

In a recent college class, we were talking about cultural differences.
I asked the class to come up with a list of things a student from another country would need to know if they traveled to the United States.
They suggested things, like "Learn English," and "Don't stand too close to someone when you're talking." They also said visitors needed to understand freedom of religion and freedom of speech in the United States.

Is this a line or a clump at the ice cream cart
 in the Tuileries Gardens in Paris?

One woman in the class was from Mali. She had some interesting insights.
"Respect the line," she called from the back of the class.
"What?" I asked.
"The line. Americans always stand in line and they never get in line in front of someone else," she explained. "It is more important than religion to many, that we respect the line."
The other students nodded and talked about how everyone in the line would be upset if someone cut in line. Everyone is expected to uphold the integrity of the line and wait their turn.
To people from other countries, where they clump together and push their way onto a bus or into a store, the idea of standing and waiting in a line may be very foreign. But in America, it's the way of life.
Here, we may disagree on politics and religion, but we all respect the line.

First Paragraph, Tuesday Teaser -- Marrying Up

Every Tuesday, Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea posts the first paragraph of her current read. Anyone can join in. Go to Diane's website for the image and share the first paragraph of the current book you are reading.
This looks like a fun quick read. Marrying Up by Wendy Holden, which describes itself as a romantic comedy. Here's the intro:

"Miss! Miss!" Squinting in the bright sunshine, the little boy with the trowel was waving at Polly. "I've found something, Miss. It's Roman. Definitely Roman."
 

Also this week is Teaser Tuesdays.
Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along!
Open to a random page of your current read and share a teaser sentence from somewhere on that page.
BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS!
Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers.
Here's mine from page 92:

Her husband rounded on her furiously. "All crown princes of Sedona wear military uniform from the age of six. It's --"
"Traditional?" offered the Queen, meeting his gaze boldly.

What do you think?

Melodrama

Grace has such a hard time with change. After packing and hugs and a thousand goodbyes this morning, she climbed into the car and said:

"Have a nice life without me." 

 

 That was so melodramatic, we both had to laugh then.

I'll miss her, but once she has transitioned, she'll forget all about her old mom. 

The Perfect Storm

This morning at 7 a.m., I turned on the Weather Channel.
I'm going to have to admit that before yesterday, I didn't know where the Weather Channel was, but talk on the news about Tropical Storm Isaac and the Republican Convention in Tampa led me to search for the Weather Channel. Not because I'm attending or I'm worried about the delegates, but because Spencer is now in college close by.
The first taste of adulthood, a beach, and a hurricane may just add up to the perfect storm.

I first mentioned the storm to Spencer on Saturday while on FaceTime. FaceTime is like Skype except we can do it on our iPhones. I caught him still in bed at 12:30.
"Yeah, we thought we'd just ride out the storm here. Just hunker down," he said, his eyes bleary as he lay shirtless in bed.
I explained that it didn't look like the college was going to allow that. They had an evacuation plan to take the students inland. He had a meeting at 4 on Saturday.
I finally reached him again Saturday evening. Yes, the college was heading toward evacuation, but he and some friends had decided on their own plan. They were going to get a couple of hotel rooms in Orlando.
"What?" I might have screeched.
"I don't want to go to some camp," he said.
He ran through a list of friends he'd known for two weeks now. They planned to drive to Orlando, hang out during the Tropical Storm.
I started adding up costs, gas, hotel, food. No supervision. A bunch of 18-year-olds in a hotel room. This looked like a disaster.
"This might be the shortest college career in history if you run out of money after three weeks," I warned him in a bad mothering moment. "You know you still need to pay for your fall books."
"Some people have already gotten kicked out," he replied.
"Okay, I'm proud that you're working hard," I said, pulling back from the brink of even worse parenting. "I just don't think this is a good decision."
Later that night, another email from the college explained that the students should bring their books for their classes and instruction. I called Spencer again to "reason" with him.
He was quick to cut me off.
"I'm going with the college," he said.
And I exhaled in relief.
The college was busing the students inland to a camp, but they would be together, organized, under someone else's supervision. And the college would pick up the tab.
I don't know if Spencer reconsidered, or maybe the parents of his friends were more persuasive, or maybe the parents of his friends put their foot down. "No! You are not going."
However it happened, this afternoon, Spencer is scheduled to evacuate with the rest of the freshman at his college. Unless the storm changes course. Then, they might get to hunker down and watch the rain, the wind and the surf increase. Well, that will bring a whole other host of worries for me.
Update: Luckily for us, the storm did change course and the college decided around noon not to evacuate. Maybe his first instinct was right.
I hope all of those other college students and residents in the path of the storm are safe too.

Saturday Snapshot -- Big Spider

To participate in the Saturday Snapshot meme post a photo that you (or a friend or family member) have taken then leave a direct link to your post on Alyce's blog At Home With Books. Photos can be old or new, and be of any subject as long as they are clean and appropriate for all eyes to see. How much detail you give in the caption is entirely up to you. Please don’t post random photos that you find online.
Two years ago, when I visited Mom and Dad in Florida, I saw a giant spider with an amazing zipper spider web.

The spider built its web just outside their screened in pool so we could keep an eye on it. It's a banana spider, but not the venomous kind that lives in South America.
Here's a photo of the spider with one of the kids' hands up to the screen so you can compare how big it is.

When I went to Florida a few weeks ago, I saw the spider's familiar web in the corner and I asked where the spider was. Mom said it had been killed by a wasp that got caught in its web. That must have been some powerful wasp.

Daughter Departure

My life is about to get very quiet.
This weekend, Grace is still home. Tucker, a junior in high school, will stick around for a couple more years, but Grace leaves for college on Monday.

Mom and Dad have driven up from Florida and will spend the weekend here to see Grace before she heads off to New York.

We'll all jostle each other in this small house, enjoying the camaraderie and the constant sports on television that comes with a visit from my dad.
Then Earl's family, including preschooler Caroline and baby Regan, will visit on Sunday evening. Lots of family and visits this weekend.
On Monday morning, Earl and Grace will pull out of the driveway with her bicycle attached to the back of the car. And I will be alone.
Grace and I talk about our relationship. We love spending time together -- walking to get coffee, riding bikes, doing P90X, sitting on the couch and watching Toddlers and Tiaras. We talk about our problems and our triumphs. So I'll miss her a lot.

Here's where Grace will sleep in the sorority house.

But we also talked about the fact that we might start to get on each other's nerves if we didn't have this separation of months in school, if we instead spent all of our time together.
Grace and I are lucky that we've transitioned from the mother-child relationship to a grown up relationship. Sometimes I'm still too bossy, like a mother is, and sometimes she's petulant,
My quiet won't last forever though. Everyone will be home again at Thanksgiving, and there's always next summer when my house will be filled with kids, or grownups, again.