The ability to read is the first thing to go

I have always been an avid reader. When a book attracts my attention, I devour it and I can’t do anything else until it is done. The most embarrassing example of this would be Ann Rice’s The Witching Hour with Wally Lamb’s She’s Come Undone in second place. When I worked in public schools, I had audio books for the car. I almost wrecked twice during action packed scenes and lights turning from yellow to red. I hope Kevin isn’t reading this one…

When Harry Potter six and seven were released there was no way I would be able to give Harry the attention he deserved with little ones in the house. Therefore, I did what a normal mom would do. I sent the kids to grandma’s house for the weekend. You can judge all you want, but I got my books read. Now that I live in the wonderful northeast, I don’t have the luxury of grandparents down the road to keep my kids so I can read.

A new book just came out by the Young Adult novelist Natasha Friend. I have been looking forward to it, mostly because I have yet to read a YA novel with a northern setting instead of a southern one. I tried to start it the other day with all three kids around. Yep-read with three kids. That is what I just wrote.

This is what happened:

“I am crouched behind a tower of Meow Mix in the pet-food aisle of Shop-Co, watching my mother hyperventilate….”

“MOM!!!!!!!”
High strung middle child with big ideas comes to me with a box, a magnifying glass, and his ant farm instructions: “Mom! Good, you aren’t busy. Let’s start my ant farm, you know, the one I got for my birthday in November, but guess what; there were no ants to collect in November. Why not start it today?"

Well the main characters are in the pet food aisle. Let’s go hunt for ants. We decide that the best way to trap them would be to place an apple slice outside. Gross, but happy is the four year old.

Back to my book!

An older man picks up a York Peppermint Patty and his wife screeches at him in public, “Put that back!” “No sweets!” The teenager laughs to herself that it is candy and not a crack pipe. Maybe crack would help me finally lose the last of my baby weight….

Speaking of the baby, my third child/toddler /mascot is in full swing with his early interventions. He comes running through the kitchen with a toy car he is pushing on the floor saying, “Ready! Set! Go!” over and over again as he pushes it and laughs. Then I noticed his face is red. He has been helping himself to his sister’s ketchup, but I don’t think he had anything to put it on. Book is down, paper towel is up.

Dishes are done, faces are wiped, and I’m going to try again.

The main character’s mother is two years younger than I am (and I’m not old compared to other Connecticut mothers). When she gets depressed, she pulls out her Beverly Hills 90210 VHS tapes and eats popcorn. Oh hell yes! This is awesome!!!!

My only daughter decides now she wants to care about fashion and her Kindergarten social life. “Mom!! Will you fix my hair-what are you reading?” Then it hits me she will be a teenager one day, but I will be really old and not cool like this lady. She doesn’t notice my pathetic attempts at math in my head.

“If you aren’t doing anything, I need my red shoes and the cape-I want to play Snow White. Hey- where is the play date book? I want a play date with Buffy, Muffy, and Bitsy… can you check Facebook and see if their mommies are there?” How does she know this stuff?

I handle my diva’s princess crisis and go back to my book. I read Stephen King’s The Stand in a weekend. I will confess to Suzanne’s Diary for Nicholas in one afternoon. I really am enjoying For Keeps, it is fun and readable. I looked down at the page number.

I was still on page 19. That was it. I had not broken 20 pages in two hours. I once was teased in the third grade because it took me a week to read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory but it took the gifted kids less than two days. This was not going to happen to me again.

I huddled the kids up on the couch and gave them a talk:

"Now listen you three, I know for a fact that a mother of three wrote this book and if she can write it with three kids, then I can read it."

This speech was returned with blank stares and their own agendas, big surprise.

Frances: Can we order pizza?
Kenneth: Order Pizza?-“Billy’s” mommy makes it, they don’t order it.
Frances: You better sweep the cheerios up before Dad gets home.
Lowell: Cookie! Water! Yes! Please…ready set go…..
I gave up. OK Tash, I’ll get to you later….

(LATER)

Everyone is in bed…Ah, I can curl up and embrace my inner teenage self just like I promised I would.

Then I remembered I was married.

“Hey honey? Honey? Where are you? What are you doing?”

I have every intention of writing a wonderful book review on this blog eventually. But you know what? To do that, I have to read the freaking book. I’ll try again tomorrow…..

Goodnight Moon

It has been a while since my darlings and I have butchered story time. Since the toddler has now joined us in this bedtime ritual, we recently did Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown. Who didn’t get a copy of Goodnight Moon at a baby shower, if not two or three? This book is going to be around forever. Whether your kids sleep with you until they are eight or you put them in the crib from day one, we lull the little munchkins to sleep with the stars, the air, and the noises everywhere. I don't know if whoever wrote the Waltons was a Goodnight Moon fan, but the only time I hear "Goodnight" over and over again is in this children's book and the end of that television show. We even have the book in Spanish and French. Here is how we read it, and once again, I have written it "Skit style."

P: In the great green room…
F: Green? How ugly. I want a pink room.
K: Oh!!!! Can I paint my room black?
P: There was a telephone….
K: Blackberry or iPhone? It doesn’t look like Dad’s…
P: And a red balloon
F: (singing) 99 red balloons…
P: Don’t do it Franny
K: I want a yellow one, Frances do you remember that time you let mine go and it got caught in at tree?
P: And a picture of
F: A cow jumping over the moon.
K: Where is the rest of the nursery rhyme? Why the cow? My favorite part is the dish and the spoon.
F: That isn’t real-but a dog could probably laugh.
P: And a comb and a brush and a bowl full of mush…..
K: Didn’t he brush his teeth? He is going to get a cavity
L: Night Night! Night Night!
P: Goodnight nobody, Goodnight mush
K: Why say goodnight to nobody?
F: Why not?
K: Let’s say goodnight to everything in our rooms. Goodnight Harry Potter books, goodnight violin, hey mom, I don’t have any clothes drying out. Did you do the laundry?
F: Daddy won’t let us have stuff lying around to say goodnight to.
K: Oh right
F: Goodnight princesses, goodnight wiggle sheets.
L: Night night! Night night!

This one is so special to me. Because I will always cherish my babies being rocked and read to.... Ha ha ha just kidding. I love it because Christopher Walken read it on the Simpsons. Forget his scenes in Pulp Fiction. Never mind the brilliance that was the Deer Hunter. He read to children on the iconic cartoon television show. Way to go Walken-could you handle my three as a crowd?

What classic shall we read next?

Juliet, Naked: A reflection

I love anything by Nick Hornby. You can imagine my shock that one slipped by me when I saw Juliet, Naked in a store window as the kids were trying to run away from me. Why do I love him? He is brutally honest, throws in pop culture a lot of people could care less about, and he is the only person on this earth, and I mean the only one that can make me roll on the floor laughing until I choke and need to change clothes. I saw the book-but did I have time or energy to take three kids into the tiny little bookstore where old ladies have no patience? Did I have the time to read anything other than Caps for Sale? So it had to wait until Christmas break, and I just finished it. Before kids I knocked out the entire Hannibal Lecter series in one weekend, or it might have been the Mitford series-same difference, right? Hornby didn’t disappoint. He never does.

Because I am a freak, I have read Q&As by him several times. Therefore I know he doesn’t read reviews by anybody, be they written by a professional or freak fan. The good news is I can say whatever I want, like I would have changed what I was going to say anyway. He says he doesn’t read them because reviews are, for the most part, just summaries of books plus adjectives. Ouch. Brilliant and true, but all the same, ouch. I haven’t read any reviews of Juliet, Naked either. I haven’t because I wanted to write my own and I don’t like other people’s words and opinions in my head.

At the risk of being accused of a summary with some adjectives, the gist of the novel is a couple in England, Duncan and Annie, have been together for fifteen years by habit. They haven’t left each other but they never made it permanent. Duncan is obsessed with Tucker Crowe, an old (by old I mean popular in the 80s, ha) singer that abruptly left the music world. Annie is a fan by osmosis. I have been there before, trust me. The couple gets a hold of a new album of old stuff. The original album was Juliet; the new one is Juliet, Naked. Duncan immediately writes a review for his website, and his girlfriend decides to write a review of her own. Duncan rolls his eyes, pats her head, and posts it for her. It’s her review that, of course, gets a secret email response from Tucker himself. From there we go into the ups, downs, and heartaches of these three people in what is their real life versus the one that has been created for them by fans and acquaintances. Any guesses on which one is more interesting?

Oh oh oh! How many of us are waiting for that secret email from JK Rowling, Kevin Smith, or one of the Cohen Brothers? You are the only person who understands where the famous person is coming from. Yeah right. Nick is able to use his gift of knowing “real” people and their need to join message groups, blog, check Wikipedia, and share common interests online. People are listened to on the internet when they find the right fan page or group of crazies that share their interest. I myself am included in this. The fact that he nails us and our internet tendencies does not make me want to shut down my modem and go hide.

Nick is always able to zap a reader with his opening sentence. I know all of them from all of his books because I am a “Duncan.” But this is how he begins Juliet, “They had flown from England to Minneapolis to look at a toilet.” First thought? Who the hell would do that? I don’t know -who goes to London and stands between platforms nine and ten? How many people travel to Memphis for Graceland? Not to be morbid, but I heard tell that in Corpus Christi, the hotel where Selena was killed had to renumber the hotel rooms to keep sick fans from looking for the room she was shot in. People are `crazy. It isn’t new; it is just funnier in Nick’s story. I laughed out loud a lot during the entire reading.

Nick can make a person as serious as a heart attack crack a smile. This time around he is making fun of the fandoms-people who write essays about nothing and think they know everything and the rest of the world is stupid. Here is a scene between Duncan and Annie, after she tells him she wrote her own article:

“You?”
“Yes, Me.”
“And do you think …Well, do you think you’re qualified to write something?”
“Is it a matter of qualifications?”
“Interesting question. I mean, you’re perfectly at liberty to write whatever you want.”
“Thanks.”
“But for the website…People expect a certain level of expertise.”
“In the first paragraph of his post, Jerry Warner says that Tucker Crowe lives in a garage in Portugal. How expert is that (p.66-67)?”

You know, I once got very angry at someone for confusing a Hippogriff with a Thestral. Little did I know that music fans are more arrogant and vicious than those of us that adore Harry Potter. The dialogue and wit of a Hornby book has no comparison to me. I’m laughing so hard at Duncan’s arrogance it makes me forget Annie should have dumped him years ago. I hope I wasn’t rude about my all time favorite seven part series. Don’t anyone tell me if I was….

Nick can also make people cry. When we come full circle and realize why Tucker walked away from the career and the fame to go live on a farm in Pennsylvania, we feel for him. We also feel for all the ex-wives and kids that he wasn’t there for. That phone call with his first daughter, Grace, got me teary and that doesn’t happen very often.

To me what is important throughout the novel is the concept of thinking you know everything when in reality you know nothing. All the discussion groups and die hard fans who shell out a lot of money to go stare at a toilet seat have no idea what really is going on with the real Tucker Crowe. He had to go to the bathroom, so he went. I have been working really hard on this concept with my four year old son. I’m glad an 80s musician mastered it. Hornby presents the internet and what it has done not only to inform, but also to misinform. For all you people know, I am actually single living in L.A. and waiting tables until I get a big break in Hollywood. So are we clothed on the internet and naked in real life, or naked on the internet and clothed in reality? Hmmmmm

If he zaps you with his opening, he seals it with the close. I can just imagine a group of music fans going off when someone dares to prefer a happier, later in the career, my life is fine, album. That cracked me up the most. Like when all the kids in the 90s discovered Santana and all their dads and uncles hit the roof.

If you like to laugh at the good stuff and I don’t mean Jackass, then pick up anything by Nick Hornby. The man really can’t write fast enough-must be all those soccer/football games he watches taking up his time. We know he isn’t reading book reviews.

A Prairie Tale Review

One of my first fandoms was Little House on The Prairie. It should have been a sign of things to come over the years. To this day, I can watch the opening credits or scenes and know which show it is by seeing the guest star list. My college roommates used to threaten to tape my mouth shut if I gave away the plot or quoted the dialogue directly. As a child, I had all the accessories. I was usually Laura or Mary for Halloween, and I had the lunchbox. Man, if I still had that what it would go for on ebay….

I learned a lot from that show, although over the years they started repeating themselves. There were two different bullies that the kids had to gang up together and kick ass on. A couple of different children had crazy, abusive parents. Albert, who incidentally was written into the show but wasn’t in the books, taught us about drug addiction and rape. If I ever need to cry on demand, I just have to remember the episode when Mary lost her sight and I can’t stop crying. (Try it, “Help me Pa! I can’t see!” ….there it goes.) If you need to learn about compassion, forgiveness, and accepting the things that you can’t change, then watch Little House. I even found it dubbed in Spanish in Ecuador and Spain, man did my host families think I was crazy. Well, they thought that anyway.

So, I was reading People Magazine when I actually went to get my haircut without the kids hanging on me, and there is Melissa Gilbert talking about her new memoir, Prairie Tale. I didn’t go straight home to the sitter, I went to the bookstore on the Town Green and bought it in hardback, and started reading it immediately. One hair appointment and one hardback all on the same day, is there a mother alive more selfish than I am?

I have only read one other memoir, and that was Tatum O’Neal’s at my sister’s insistence. Tatum’s was more of a confessional; you already knew we were crazy, over the top out of control kind of book. Melissa’s is more of a catching up with an old friend read. Her life was not psycho crazy, more of an every day, it could happen to anyone kind of crazy life, and that makes it easier to identify with her.

She starts off with her childhood and looking for work in commercials and parts on shows. Her mother was very supportive of her and she comes from a family in the business. Her mom didn’t impress me as obsessing with her child’s career. She was a consistent manager, but kept a distance somewhat. I liked reading about her friendship with Jodi Foster, it was nice to know that Jodi’s friends were cool with her and she wasn’t fooling anybody over the years.

She talks a lot about the Little House years, those take up a big chunk of the book and are probably the reason, myself included, why most people are going to run out and buy it. Again, she is informative without being “confessional.” Melissa Sue “Mary” was introverted; Alison Arngrim “Nelly” was her best friend. Michael was a phenomenal leader. She was scared to death when they hired Dean Butler to play her love interest on the show and she had to play his pregnant wife while still a virgin. My favorite part was the story of the shows cancellation. I remember watching them blow up the town when I was ten years old. I had no idea Michael Landon did that as a “Screw you” to NBC. He didn’t want them to recycle his sets for another show.

I also liked reading about her love interests and failures. Other women can identify with the relationships, mistakes, your first intimate moments, and letting go of that first serious boyfriend. Unfortunately, not all of us get to claim it as Rob Lowe. I can’t see her with Billy Idol no matter how hard I try, but good for you Melissa, I guess sometimes we need some strange. It was also identifiable when she talked about how her crowd of friends took off in the movie industry but she remained “Half-Pint.” I mean when your friends succeed or move along and things don’t always happen for you in the same way or form. My favorite scene during that time of her life was when she was having dinner with Rob and OLIVER STONE and two girls come up to the table and ask for HER autograph. That so would have been me, not knowing I was stepping over the creator of Platoon to ask what it was like to wear pigtails every day until you turn fifteen.

I commend her for writing honestly about her marriages. I always wondered why she made all of those television movies back to back without a break. It was because her first husband ran her into a debt she really wanted to get out of on her own. She and Bruce Boxleitner are happily married, but it isn’t always easy and there are bumps in any marriage, including their son being a preemie in the NICU and a crazy neighbor recording their phone calls.

She became president of the SAG, something I don’t think you can approach lightly or without common sense. I can only compare it to what I know about teacher unions, so I won’t comment more than that.

It is definitely her story, and it really is the normal story of an actress with an extraordinary television career. Don’t go looking for Michael Landon, except how his divorce affected her friendships with the rest of the family. Don’t go looking for Rob Lowe, except how he would sneak in her window every night for a not-so- Edward Cullen night of snuggling. And don’t go looking for a wild and crazy expose, because while Melissa does throw in some little snippets for us, (like the BIG surprise that Shannen Doherty isn’t nice), Melissa is just a mom, wife, and girl who grew up in the 70s, 80s, and 90s, with problems like the rest of us.

Thanks for sharing Half-Pint. By the way- I love your hair color.