Summer 2012 travelogue

When the kids were smaller and had fewer commitments, I could pack them up and take them to my family’s cottage almost the minute school was out and not return until seconds before school started again. Now that they’re older, they have activities and things that make this impossible although it remains my ideal. Somehow, this year the stars aligned and we had the unheard of amount of 5 weeks in which no tennis tournament was planned (well, not any W. was going to play), no dance competition was scheduled, and no soccer game was happening. 5 weeks! Staggering, really. So I took full advantage of it and we headed to Upper Peninsula Michigan for a long and schedule-free vacation. As per in previous years, DH miraculously couldn’t get away the same day the kids and I could so I was left to do my usual 16 or so hour drive with three children, two dogs, and no other driver to spell me, although W., newly possessed of his permit, offered to help should I need it. (Pretty sure he didn’t hear me mumble “No freakin’ way” under my breath.)

We pulled out of here in the morning, later than I’d planned because I apparently hadn’t factored in the slothlike speed with which teenagers move in the a.m. even when they are heading to the place they love most in the world. Noon would have been a more civilized departure time according to them. But it was lucky we did leave when we did because we encountered terrible, scary storms on our way up through Ohio. The wind and debris swirled all around the car, smacking into the windshield hard and then the rain poured down sideways. It was really a bit apocalyptic driving through it and even once it was over, no one for miles (and I do mean many, many miles) had any electricity. We had to sit on the highway for a while waiting for crews to remove the trees that had blown down and into the road. I had put off stopping for dinner because we don’t make the drive north without having Skyline Chili which we cannot get down by us. The first two Skylines we stopped at on the outskirts of Columbus had no electricity and were therefore closed. The third one was apparently the only one in the metro area to have electricity so we got to stop and I averted total mutiny by my loving children who were threatening to eat my arm by the time we found the open restaurant. Luckily we didn’t plan to stop in Columbus on our way up and so after some very satisfying three-ways and coney dogs we kept driving until we were out of the storm’s swath.

Our second day of driving started off fine as I forced the second car-sickness pill down Gatsby’s throat. Entertainingly, she and R. can both take the same motion sickness stuff (Bonine) which means there’s no worries about giving the dog the kid’s drugs or vice versa. It worked great. Unfortunately, Daisy was the one to get car sick and she hadn’t had any meds. I probably shouldn’t have really hoped that we’d make the trip in the new van without any vomit episodes; I’m sure that jinxed me. But small puke puddle aside, we made it all the way north without any further incident and settled in to our blissful existence up there.

Not many days into vacation, W. discovered that people were in fact not lying when they warned us about the Coast Guard, DNR, and sheriff being very active on the water this year. He and a buddy had gone into town in the boat and on their way back, they were stopped by the Coast Guard. As typical, always ravenous teenaged boys, they had gone into town to pick up pizza and the CG actually asked them “Can we look in that pizza box?” They must have looked shifty or something. Turns out all the boys were smuggling was a meat lover’s pizza.

Gatsby found herself being just as ravenous as the teenaged boys since her diet continued up north. Of course she had many more chances to supplement her meals there than she does at home, digging up a well-seasoned pelvis and spinal column out in the woods to offset the scant amount of food we, her people, were willing to give her. She also managed to eat a few crickets, gnaw on one dead toad, and lick a turtle. This led me to come up with a book idea: The Dog’s Guide to Vomiting. It'll start out with "Step One: Find carpet. The lighter the color the better." See? My family has always maintained that I have a book in me and I’m pretty sure this could be the one.

Other things of note this summer? T. earned his boating license. It’s not valid until he’s twelve though so he’s already called driving the boat first in two years. W. borrowed my dad’s gun one Sunday when we went to shoot sporting clays and he managed to hit 40 out of 50 of them his first time ever holding a 12 gauge. He’s already been told he’s out of the will since he can now outshoot his grandfather. He passed me up long ago and R. can sometimes outshoot me too. At least I’ve still got T., for another year anyway. I made my annual donation of sunglasses to appease the lake gods. Thankfully they were cheap but they were my favorite pair. R. tried to learn to waterski. Despite her good sense of her center of gravity from dance, she failed miserably and gave up long before she got up on the skis. Tubing seems to be more my kids’ speed. I had to write some reviews while up there and since we don’t have wi-fi, I had to drag my laptop around to find it. Many of the reviews were written from very lovely and scenic spots but I discovered a drawback of sitting outside under trees. A small, wiggling white worm dived into my keyboard and despite my best efforts, I’m pretty sure the bottom side of my “s” key has worm guts under it. Ew! On a more palatable note, W. had his first summer romance this year. Given the lack of technology where we are (cell phone coverage is dodgy at best and as mentioned before, no wif-fi), we were treated to an old-fashioned summer romance. They had to call each other on land lines and couldn’t get too far from the base without dropping the call so I got to eavesdrop freely and without shame. Entertainingly enough, we went all the way to Upper Peninsula Michigan for him to find a girl who lives a mere 2 hours from us in North Carolina. What are the odds?

But the thing that dominated the summer this year? Bodily elimination. And by that I mean pee and poo. You’d think that as my kids get older, we would move away from all the bodily functions but we seem destined (doomed?) to live in toilet humor land forever. In order to not stress the septic system so badly, the boys have always been told to go outside and pee on a tree. T. was afraid to do this in the full dark of night so he was just walking to the edge of the porch and peeing through the slats onto the newly planted fern bed. My mother put an end to that, insisting that he go further afield, a decision that would come to bite her in the ass later. W. managed to lose his glasses for several days, assuring me that they were in fact somewhere in the cottage but unable to produce them. We all searched for them for days and couldn’t come up with them. W. had already been told that he would have to pay to replace them himself when my sister and her family arrived and my 7 year old niece finally discovered them outside the Rookery (the name of where we stay) on the ground under a tree. Don’t ask. I’m not sure why they were there either. We were off shooting sporting clays (and even blind, the kid managed to shoot 34 of 50 birds) when she found them so she handed them to my mother who promptly licked the lenses to clean them off. Again, don't ask me why she did this. Isn't it clear by now that my family is weird? When we got back from shooting, A. got to give them back to W. as mom told us where they were found. I sort of paused and asked if she knew that that was the tree on which T. was peeing since he wasn’t allowed to pee through the slats anymore. She hadn’t but it was too late and the lens licking had already happened. Sickos that we are, we’re still laughing about it and probably will be for years.

Apparently T. was having major issues with the toilet this year though as his fear of peeing outside in the dark wasn’t his only problem. He came waddling out of the bathroom into my room one night holding his underwear and jammies pinched between two fingers. I asked him what the problem was and he admitted that his stuff might be a little dirty. I sent him to drop the stuff directly in the washer rather than in my laundry basket, which was where he was originally headed. When he got back, he was still walking strangely and I called him on it. He told me that there had been no toilet paper and he hadn’t wanted to “inconvenience” me by telling me. I asked him how he’d wiped his butt and he admitted that he’d used the cardboard paper toilet paper roll! Worse yet, he’d then put it back on the holder. After some shouting on my part, he took the poopy roll down to the trash can in the workshop and tossed it. When he came back, I showed him where exactly the toilet paper was kept so he’d know in future and so he could finally clean himself off. On his third trip out of the bathroom, I made him come over and prove to me that he had cleaned himself off completely because, let’s face it, clearly my kid is gross.

He was clean but I was startled to see that my 10 1/2 year old had started developing a bit of pubic hair. Never a mother to spare her children embarrassment, I pointed it out and asked when that had started. He tried to tell me that it was a year ago. His sense of time has never been strong. So I released him and called W. into my room to ask him because if you can’t mortify one kid, try another, especially a teenager. He was a bit non-plussed when I asked him if he remembered when he started getting pubic hair and suggested that asking him if his brother’s development was normal was a question better suited to a doctor. My kids are so going to get their money’s worth in therapy later in life! I wasn’t finished with the question though and asked a friend about her boys who are slightly older and slightly younger than T. or if she knew what normal was. She had no idea but when I mused that I should probably find out family history, she just about wet her pants laughing hysterically and suggested that she wanted to be there when I asked my dad how old he was when he got hairy testicles. I might have very few filters (duh!) but after practically choking on my own laughter, I did manage to draw the line and not ask dad. (I did ask my husband, who might have thought the question was a come-on if I wasn’t a thousand miles away from him when I asked it, but he’s used to my complete lack of propriety by now and simply admitted he had no earthly idea.) So I still don’t know but whether or not my kid is normal, I suspect it’s pretty clear that I’m not and that is probably genetic too.

Now we’re home without further antics or embarrassing questions and our unscheduled time is over. I’m finally unpacked although not everything has found its way to exactly where it belongs yet. The heat and humidity down here are killing me and I’m pretty sure if my parents call me to tell me that they are having another evening in the 50’s and they are having a fire on yet another night up there without me, I might just crack and ask my dad after all.

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme is hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on.

Where'd You Go, Bernadette by Maria Semple. The book is being released by Little, Brown and Company on August 14, 2012.

Amazon says this about the book: Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she's a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she's a disgrace; to design mavens, she's a revolutionary architect, and to 15-year-old Bee, she is a best friend and, simply, Mom.

Then Bernadette disappears. It began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette's intensifying allergy to Seattle--and people in general--has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most basic errands. A trip to the end of the earth is problematic.

To find her mother, Bee compiles email messages, official documents, secret correspondence--creating a compulsively readable and touching novel about misplaced genius and a mother and daughter's role in an absurd world.

It's Monday! What Are You Reading?

Heading home today, I suspect my post-vacation reading is going to plumet precipitously. Oh well. The real world awaits! This meme is hosted by Sheila at Book Journey.

Books I completed this past week are:

An Age of Madness by David Maine
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
The Absolutist by John Boyne

Bookmarks are still living in the middle of:

Let the Great World Spin by Colm McCann
Triangles by Ellen Hopkins
The Right-Hand Shore by Christopher Tilghman
The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman
The Mercury Fountain by Eliza Factor

Reviews posted this week:

Equal of the Sun by Anita Amirrezvani
History of a Pleasure Seeker by Richard Mason
I'm Not the Biggest Bitch in This Relationship edited by Wade Rouse
A Simple Thing by Kathleen McCleary

Books still needing to have reviews written (as opposed to the ones that are simply awaiting posting):

Stranger Here Below by Joyce Hinnefeld
Gathering of Waters by Bernice McFadden
The Cat's Table by Michael Ondaatje
Little Century by Anna Keesey
All Roads Lead to Austen by Amy Elizabeth Smith
Running the Rift by Naomi Benaron
An Age of Madness by David Maine
Salvage the Bones by Jesmyn Ward
The Absolutist by John Boyne

Review: A Simple Thing by Kathleen McCleary

Kids don't come with a manual.  Frankly, even if they did, they wouldn't have read it so it wouldn't matter anyway.  Marriages and relationships also don't come with a manual.  I'd make a crack about husbands not reading one either but that's just too easy.  Since there's no right answer to raising children or being a good partner, most of us just muddle along the best way we know how. 

Susannah Delaney, in Kathleen McCleary's newest novel, is trying to do just that, even while she deals with her own complicated childhood history.  Susannah's young teenaged daughter Katie seems to be going off the rails, running with the wrong sorts of people at school, drinking, and becoming closed off and sullen with family.  Son Quinn, a quirky kid interested in animals and science and other things most kids don't care much about is being bullied unmercifully at school.  Both of these things combine to drive Susannah to a desperate act: pulling the kids from school and their Virginia home to spend the rest of the year living on remote Sounder Island, one of the San Juan Islands off the coast of Washington, an island without electricity and only a handful of residents.  In doing this, Susannah leaves behind her husband Matt, a man she has loved since she was a child and whom she risks losing completely as she struggles to do the best thing she can for her children. 

But Susannah isn't just trying to rescue her chidren by moving to Sounder Island, she's also trying to face the long ago drowning death of her baby sister Jane, to forgive herself for not being able to protect Jane, and to forgive her mother for putting her child in harm's way.  Susannah has spent her entire motherhood trying to protect her own children from all the things that could be dangerous to them, to shelter them from her worst nightmares, to be the mother that she blames her own mother for not being.  But Katie, at least, is now rebelling against her mother's intense and worried love and the fears that have driven them all the way across the country to this remote place.

The woman who rents a cottage to the Delaneys is Betty Pavalak.  She's a long-time widow whose son and grandchildren live on Sounder too.  She is a charming and friendly neighbor who has her own ghosts of the past.  Sounder Island was her own way to try and repair a floundering marriage so many years ago.  She moved to the island so that her husband would be able to  live away from the city and the paper-pushing job that was destroying him and so that he would be less likely to stray from their marriage.  Despite his flaws, Betty stilled loved her husband and didn't want to lose him even starting to accept the idea that they would not be able to have children.  And once on Sounder, she managed to become pregnant and have a son even if she couldn't change the fiber of who her husband was.  But she also managed to come to peace with the path of her life as her husband worked most of the year in Alaska and she stayed behind on Sounder with their son and raised him alone.

The narrative slips seamlessly between both of these women who looked to this small island to heal themselves and their relationships.  It also moves from present to past and back again as both Susannah and Betty's whole histories unfold.  Susannah has to learn to accept her past before she can embrace her present.  As she struggles with Katie's continued rebellion and with Matt's growing emotional distance and hurt at her unilateral decision to disappear for the year, she has to learn truths about herself before she can ease up and let life unfold at its own pace, making not only her family happier but herself as well.  Betty, on the other hand, uses her wisdom and the care that she has spent the years cultivating to help Susannah and to add immeasurably to the lives of all those on the island whom she loves.

This is a novel of not just survival but of coming through hardships stronger than before.  It is about learning to let go when necessary and to let love and trust carry the day, even if doing so is one of the hardest things ever.  The back stories of both the women are engrossing although they are quite disparate in experience.  Some of the issues raised, such as Quinn's being bullied disappear handily and while there's really no chance for him to be bullied on the island, the emotional ramifications of the bullying also disappear pretty easily.  And given that Matt has been privy to Susannah's thoughts and feelings since before the accident that resulted in Susannah's sister Jane's drowning death and then also for so many years afterwards, he seems to have hit his breaking point sort of out of the blue now that she's not at home.  But their marital woes are ultimately fixed fairly easily once Susannah faces her past and absolves herself of responsibility for Jane's death.  Some of the emotionally laden situations are not developed to the extent that they might have been but in general, this novel of two women trying to make the right and best life they can for those they love is a quick and pleasing read.


For more information about Kathleen McCleary and the book visit her website, her Facebook page or follow her on Twitter. Follow the rest of the blog tour or look at the amazon reviews for others' thoughts and opinions on the book.  Also, Kathleen with be discussing A Simple Thing on Book Club Girl on Air on Tuesday, August 21 at 7pm ET if you want to listen in or participate.

Thanks to Trish from TLC Book Tours and the publisher for sending me a copy of this book to review.

Review: I'm Not the Biggest Bitch in This Relationship edited by Wade Rouse

I freely admit it. I am a sucker for great titles. I'm a sucker for dogs on covers. And I am a sucker for collections of essays billed as hilarious. There should have been no doubt in anyone's mind that I would not only buy but almost immediately make short work of a book called I'm Not the Biggest Bitch in This Relationship: Hilarious, Heartwarming Tales About Man's Best Friend From Some of America's Favorite Humorists. And the best thing? It was delightful and funny and sweet and everything it was billed as being. I recognized my own yappers in some of the dogs and I recognized myself in the dog owners. As with the best humor, there were some blindingly fantastic truths presented in literally laugh out loud fashion in several of the essays. There are twenty dog tales here and while all twenty are obviously thematically connected, they were all different. Some were funnier than others but all were touching love letters to the furry, four-legged canines who run the homes of the writers included in the collection. Any and all dog lovers will appreciate this charmer of a book and will love even more the fact that editor Rouse, whose own contribution to the book is wonderful, is donating a portion of the proceeds from the sale of the book to The Humane Society of the United States as well as mentioning all of the contributors' own personal favorite animal charities in their bios.

Waiting on Wednesday

This meme is hosted by Breaking the Spine and is meant to highlight some great pre-publication books we all can't wait to get our grubby little mitts on.

In the Shadow of the Banyan by Vaddey Ratner. The book is being released by Simon and Schuster on August 7, 2012.

Amazon says this about the book: You are about to read an extraordinary story. It will take you to the very depths of despair and show you unspeakable horrors. It will reveal a gorgeously rich culture struggling to survive through a furtive bow, a hidden ankle bracelet, fragments of remembered poetry. It will ensure that the world never forgets the atrocities committed by the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia between 1975 and 1979, when an estimated two million people lost their lives. It will give you hope, and it will confirm the power of storytelling to lift us up and help us not only survive but transcend suffering, cruelty, and loss.

For seven-year-old Raami, the shattering end of childhood begins with the footsteps of her father returning home in the early dawn hours, bringing details of the civil war that has overwhelmed the streets of Phnom Penh, Cambodia’s capital. Soon the family’s world of carefully guarded royal privilege is swept up in the chaos of revolution and forced exodus. Over the next four years, as the Khmer Rouge attempts to strip the population of every shred of individual identity, Raami clings to the only remaining vestige of her childhood— the mythical legends and poems told to her by her father. In a climate of systematic violence where memory is sickness and justification for execution, Raami fights for her improbable survival. Displaying the author’s extraordinary gift for language, In the Shadow of the Banyan is a brilliantly wrought tale of human resilience.

Review: History of a Pleasure Seeker by Richard Mason

I have not yet read Fifty Shade of Grey despite the fact that it seems to have captured the imaginations of housewives far and wide (and I use the term housewife without sarcasm as I certainly fit the description myself). It's not because I'm turned off by the idea of sex, graphic or otherwise in books, it's because the plot, such as it is, doesn't appeal to me. Richard Mason's History of a Pleasure Seeker, on the other hand, has some quite risque scenes in it but it also has a story line that piqued my interest in ways that the other did not.

At the start of the twentieth century in Amsterdam, Piet Barol contrives to get himself hired as the private tutor to a young agoraphobic boy. He is not the most qualified for the job but Piet has something special going for him: he's attractive, charming, and completely appealing to both men and woman. Piet is a hedonist who gives as much pleasure as he takes. He determines that he's not going to push his young charge to overcome his agoraphobia and obsessive-compulsive disorder until Egbert himself shows that he's ready to tackle his fears. In the meantime, he has to fend off the advances of one of the Vermeulen-Sickerts' daughters, he captivates Egbert's mother Jacobina while teaching her to value herself as a sexual being, and he gives Vermeulen-Sickerts father Maarten the joy and appreciation he craves despite his biblical denial of self.

The interpersonal interactions are fantastic here but what really shines is the critique of class distinction. The gulf between upstairs and downstairs is wide but not unbridgeable, as Piet shows through his accumulation of great appreciation for the sensuality of good food, fine furnishings, and other assorted trappings of wealth coupled with his savvy in negotiating belowstairs and captivating the help equally as much as he does the wealthy Vermeulen-Sickerts. There is a real skewering here, biting social satire coupled with a blush-inducing, racy, graphic sexuality and appreciation for carnality.

But Piet's charmed interlude with the Vermeulen-Sickerts' must come to an end and the second part of the novel finds him heading to South Africa via ship and continuing his irrepressible social climbing, still looking to make his fortune and secure the good life for himself. Life on-board the ship again highlights the huge gap between the fantastically wealthy and everyone else and Piet's natural charm and sexual appeal works on his behalf as the bridge between the two worlds once again.

The book feels very episodic and the two parts, while similar in theme, don't hang together particularly well. Piet is not exactly a snake-oil salesman, in other words, he's genuinely likable enough, but I as a reader didn't feel as attracted to him as a character as his fellow characters did. And no matter how pleasurable a read this was (and it was the literary equivalent of a meringue), the ending made me want to throw the book against a wall. Nothing in this world makes me seethe more than the three unexpected little words this book ended with: "To be continued." Had there been more of a resolution, I'd have been perfectly happy reading the next in the series. As it is, I'll have to see if my curiousity about Piet's further adventures trumps my pique.

Thanks to the publisher for sending me a copy of the book to review.