In the case of my Darling M. Cranky-Face, his glaring cranial inadequacy lies not in the social, but in the spatial. I don’t mean his ability to look at something and see clearly whether or not it will be too big or small for a space, such as a couch that needs to be wedged between a doorway and a bookcase, or parallel parking; in this aspect he has little to no difficulties. (I must admit, in the course of fairness, that his ability to parallel park is far more consistently reliable than my own, even though I am always the one trying to wedge in the couch.) No, his spatial faults are specific to objects he wishes to put his hands on, especially if he’s about to walk out the door to an appointment.

I have studied this phenomenon in some detail, and found it to be a family trait. We call it, fondly, Reverse Kleptomania. Kleptomania being the unreasonable impulse to take something that belongs to someone else, Reverse Kleptomania is the unreasonable instinct to take something that does belong to you, and hide it from yourself. Unwittingly.

For example, the other day he procured a rather important document from the credit union, brought it home in his special men’s inner coat pocket (why we ladies don’t have them is a mystery to me), showed it to me with a flourish of manly triumph, and stood for a moment perplexed in the middle of the living room while he considered what to do with it. I could see the wheels turning in his behind his eyes. He didn’t want to take it into the kitchen, to the paper mountain that devoured anything it touched, even though that was the proper place for all important paperwork. He didn’t want to leave it in his coat pocket, as he is in the habit of switching between heavy coat, light trench, and outer sweater day-to-day depending upon Ohio’s extremely changeable weather, and he might forget which pocket it was in until he was already at his destination, that not-too-far-off day in the future. With a nearly imperceptible nod to himself, he made his decision, strode to the jam-packed bookshelves next to the couch (I wasn’t kidding about the couch-wedging; it’s a very small place), opened up a random book, stuffed the envelope inside, and put it back on the shelf. If you didn’t know it was there, you would never, ever see it again. Satisfied, he tossed his coat on the couch and marched into the kitchen to have cheese toast.

That was about the point that I put down my knitting, got up, retrieved the very important envelope, and put it in my handbag with the rent check and student loans. You see, I am the Keeper Of The Stuff. I’ve always had a knack for knowing where my things are, and now I must know where his things are as well. Otherwise, that document would have been lost until the next time we moved, or one of us felt like reading Gilgamesh, which I can tell you has not happened since it stared gloomily back at me from my World Literature 101 syllabus.

It’s all right, though. I have adjusted to fill the need. He’s growing accustomed to me moving his things about. He’d have to ask for my help to find it anyway; if I’ve moved his stuff to where I think it should be, I can tell him where it is without getting up and searching with him for ten minutes. It saves a lot of time for us both.

There are occasions when his general lack of awareness of his surroundings and Reverse Kleptomania do become a problem. You see, in addition to Reverse Kleptomania, he is also prone to not finishing whatever it is he is doing, but only barely. He’ll make dinner, but he’ll forget to put away unused ingredients. He’ll take out the garbage, but not put a new liner in the bin. He’ll open the cupboard door to fetch a bowl or glass, then leave it open (and then I’ll bang my head on the frickin’ corner because it’s at just the right height to be above my line of sight but well in range of my towering forehead).

What is one to do? The answer is; follow him around after he’s finished in the kitchen, the bathroom, or whatever his project is. Put away the eggs*, close all the cupboards*, make sure the oven is off, put away the leftovers*, turn off the faucet, let the cat out of the pantry*, fish the balled-up dishcloth out of the garbage disposal and turn off the light.

He’s a good man, after all. He made a leek and mushroom quiche for dinner, before he sat down to a well-earned round of Skyrim. He puts the children through their bedtime routine every night, and whenever I need help with my knitting math, I don’t even have to wait for him to finish killing a dragon before he answers – correctly!

I can live with a little picking-up after and questionably safe eggs. (The cat, on the other hand, is still pretty miffed about the pantry.)

*I did all of these things in the last half-hour alone.

It took some plugging away, and more than one session of bribery to get there, and afterward I felt a bit sullied and unusual, but that’s NOT THE POINT. It’s done. Now I know why I gave up on Anna Karenina. Oh, Tolstoy.

So, without further ado:

For Week 4, I read Android Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy and Ben Winters. One of the several mash-ups of classic literature and fantasy or science fiction, this one…well. For starters, its base is in Russian literature, something I never did learn to fully appreciate, despite the exhortations of several professors. Not that they were huge fans either; it was the principle of the thing.

Here’s the trouble, for those of you who have never read Russian literature; it’s about suffering. It might be suffering of the body, but usually it’s about the mind, the soul, that je ne sais quoi that tortures us in the dark of the night. Or, in the case of Tolstoy, all the freaking time. It’s a bit of a downer. Adding robots and aliens didn’t change that much.

My first obstacle was really that there were clearly two different stories here, one layered on the other, and the second layer distracted me so much that I couldn’t pay attention to either one. The second obstacle was, of course, that it’s depressing. Watching someone spiral to suicide is never exactly cheerful.

It is finished. I might need some Terry Pratchett after this as a palate-cleanser.

The problem is changing, as well. It used to be that trying to use an OpenID account meant a never-ending rejection of every Captcha I typed. Now, and more accurately, it simply says “OpenID error.” But there’s no way to fix it. No alternative other than using a Google ID, which unfortunately requires you to sign up for Blogger using your Google ID. I don’t want to do that. I don’t need another blog.

There USED to be an “other” option, an “anonymous” option that didn’t verify you instantly, but allowed you to add an email address or a website as way of identification. I don’t see that option anymore. Is that something the individual site owner can turn on and off? Not having a Blogger blog, I don’t know.

It’s sad. As much as I don’t like to participate in anything, especially when it involves interacting with other people, the blogging world is quite a community. What does a blogger do without comments?

CRIES, that’s what. Big, fat, gooshy tears of despair. All bloggers, even those fierce, independent, loner types we all love to watch swear indignantly at life, the universe and everything. Swearing to an audience is entertainment; swearing to an empty room is a sign of mental deterioration.

So, all you lovely bloggers using Blogger, I really AM reading your posts. I want to tell you about it – I do! Your hosting service just won’t let me.

Jerks.

I’m trying not to be mad. Here, look – a kitty!

Yeeeesss…fluffy….ahhhh….

I’ve been stuck, you see. To be fair, I’m still stuck, but at least now I can see a bit better what’s going on, and there’s only one way to fix it – to wrench myself loose, instead of waiting for something to fix itself. Amazingly, no matter how much hoping and wishing you have, things usually take some sort of effort to get to where you want them to be, don’t they?

So, here goes.

We lost this guy last year, quite unexpectedly.

RIP, you loveable jerkface.

In addition to being an emotional blow, it was a big financial blow at a bad time. Add to that trouble at Nyte’s job, lots of red flags in that area, and the realization that there was no way the big project he was working on (and hoping to turn into something very profitable) was going to even get off the ground, and even if it did he had the sneaking suspicion that certain agreements regarding the distribution of profits and credit would not be honored. That led to a job hunt of some semi-desperation, which led to several trips to distant places for interviews, including Silicon Valley. We moved (NOT to Silicon Valley, but to another state), it was very stressful, I got very sick the day before the move, the landlord is a flake and didn’t have anything ready for us, and the list just goes on and on.

Very good friends and relatives helped us get our crap and kids and cats where we needed them to be. The very next morning, the Podling woke up, got himself dressed and decided to wander off outside by himself, and predictably, got himself quite lost. I hadn’t had coffee yet, the decongestant I was relying on (too heavily, I should add) to get myself out of bed and start making sense of the unbelievable mess hadn’t kicked in yet, and it was a good ten minutes before we realized he wasn’t in the house. Cue two frantic parents running through the new neighborhood, hardly knowing the area any better than the 3-year-old, one of us sans shoes. We found him, suffice to say, and that afternoon childproofed every damn door in the new rented condo.

Life continued. We made the new place work, even though it’s kind of crummy, too small, and we still have too much stuff. We made it through kids being sick, us being sick, stress with the new job, a ridiculously hot spring and summer (and fall and winter), my post-partum hormones and adjustments, financial and emotional challenges. Nothing serious, mind, but still challenging. Trying (and failing) to get healthy. Trying (and succeeding) to win NaNoWriMo. Dealing with parenthood, married life, and wondering who we are now, as individuals (or maybe that’s just me?). Meeting new people, getting back in touch with old friends. Living. Sort of. Surviving, really. One kid turns a year old. The other one will shortly turn four. The remaining cats, in the meantime, are quickly approaching eight.

Now what? Where do we find time to be everything we need to be? I’m not even talking about what we want to be, but what we NEED to be. Everybody seems to have an idea of what the should be, but nobody has a satisfactory answer about how to get there. Have you ever noticed that?

I’m noticing it lately. Keenly.

Week 3: American Gods by Neil Gaiman.

Point 1: I love this book. It’s dark and full of fairy tales, history, mythology, philosophy, sociology, and nonsense, while also being utterly serious when it’s joking. A lot of books these days try to play on clichés and stereotypes by being campy, but Gaiman manages to avoid all that while still using stereotypes and clichés, sometimes as they were intended, sometimes not. He keeps you on your toes, this one.

Point 2: This is the second time I’ve read this book. It won’t be the last. I definitely recommend reading it more than once. Read it, put it down for a few months/a year, then read it again; especially if you’re like me and you rush through in a mad dash to find out what happens. American Gods is one of those books you want to pay attention to while you read; little clues about each character open up all sorts of possibilities about their origins. Some characters he explains sufficiently, but many he leaves vague, as is appropriate for the themes inherent in the book. What are gods, really? Can we ever properly define them if they are amalgamations of our beliefs?

Point 3: (Could really be a sub-point of 2) This is not a nice, neat plot and ending. Let me be clear, here; Gaiman doesn’t leave a bunch of plot holes dangling in the wind. He’s a better writer than that. He does, however, allow you to interpret some of the specifics to your own satisfaction. Being American, I’m accustomed to being bludgeoned over the head with themes, characters’ thoughts, moralities, etc. Gaiman prefers to leave things a bit vague, which annoys me just the tiniest bit, as I want to know everything about everything and have all my questions answered. Given the subject, the vagueness is thematically appropriate, and it simply makes me think I’ve missed something and ought to re-read it. Again.

Point 4: If you haven’t read anything by Neil Gaiman, you should. Soon.

Point 5: (Reiteration.) I love this book. I love this author.
Anansi Boys just made it onto my list for the challenge, as I’ve only read it once. I think there might be a number of Gaiman’s books crossing my path this year. Again.

Week 2: A Christmas Carol And Other Christmas Writings, by Charles Dickens.

I realize my sentence structure is a little fractured and hard to follow, but Messr. Dickens has me thoroughly trounced in that regard. I’m glad I finally read A Christmas Carol, having watched various adaptations of it so many times over the years.

As for the “other Christmas writings,” they are a smattering of short stories and opinion pieces, really. “A Haunted Man and a Ghost’s Bargain” is definitely an interesting piece, and can be a bit hard to follow at times. Perhaps that is simply a quality of Dickens? You really have to pay attention.

I don’t know that I’ll be reading it again anytime soon, especially since the subject matter is Christmas. Still, I’m glad I read it.

Next up, I’m going for Android Karenina. Wish me luck.

This year, I noticed that quite a few of the blogs I follow are talking quite a lot about books. Oh, books. I miss books. I have a bajillion of them, many of them as yet unread, crowding my insufficient shelving units. Many, but still insufficient, shelving units. I still buy them, though at a substantially reduced rate (knowing I won’t make time to read them very quickly), but I can’t help myself. I still love books. I still love reading; so why don’t I read more?

I could blame it on the kids, but that’s a cheap out. I could cut back my tv-watching and mindless internet browsing and not noticeably diminish my online presence or even miss anything important. Truth is, I just…don’t. No reason. It’s easier to stare mindlessly at the tv or pop open the laptop and browse, especially when you want to read something and not have to think about it too hard. Or, if you want to read something and have to think about it, but want to wait until that magical opportunity when you won’t be interrupted every two minutes. (With a 3- an 1-year-old, that does not happen.)

So, I’m not reading. Not books, at any rate. This is ridiculous. They’re right there! What’s the problem? Priority. I can knit a mini-shawl in a week without breaking a sweat; surely I can read a book in that same amount of time and not be taking time away from anything important. Possibly housecleaning, but that’s a Sisyphean task, so that’s not even really in the same category as “important.”

Therefore, my goal is to read 52 books this year. Maybe more, who knows? No genre specifications, no restrictions on re-reading, other than once read for the challenge, it doesn’t count a second time. Whatever I feel like reading, so long as it’s a book. Who knows, maybe I’ll start on one shelf and see if I can read my way through it. (Probably not. Most of my bookshelves are stacked two books tall as well as two deep. One shelf could have as many as 120 books on it. I bet several do. I do still want to be able to knit now and then this year.)

The goal is not necessarily one book a week. Some books are longer than others, and some weeks tend to be shorter than others. The goal is 52 in a year, so as long as I stay somewhere around one a week, I’ll be fine. Nothing says I can’t pick up the Tao of Pooh or Gilgamesh for a quick catch-up read.

What do you say we do this thing on Friday? (She asked, as if this was some sort of democracy.) And since one week of the year has already passed, let’s not dilly-dally any longer, eh?

Week 1: Murder on the Links, a Hercule Poirot novel by Agatha Christie.

I love Poirot. I love Christie. There will be more of these, you can count on it. Just when you think you have it figured out, well…Poirot’s little gray cells prove you wrong. I’m don’t generally like being wrong, but when Poirot tells you you’re wrong, somehow it doesn’t sting quite as badly.

I finished my novel the night before (technically the last day, but I hadn’t been to sleep yet so I count it as 11/29) with a hundred or so words to spare, just in case Open Office decided to do something funny with the word count. I couldn’t risk it after the Curly Quotes debacle that cost me over two hundred words, and that was after only a few days in. Can you imagine all the non-existent progress I would have lost and suffered through had I gone blithely on for a full thirty days? There would have been a heart attack. First me, then everyone associated with Open Office after I send my legal ninjas to do what ninjas do best, then me again.

I finished it, validated my novel, updated Facebook (it’s not official unless it’s on le Facebook), and had absolutely no idea what to do next. So I went to bed. It was nearly 2am by that point; it seemed prudent, considering the 30th was a Wednesday and the rest of the world would be irritatingly unaware of my amazing achievement and the day of rest and celebration that was in order, and I’d have to be a Mom all day. You know, feeding and watering of small children and not allowing them to murder themselves, though they seem quite keen on doing just that.

The next day, I had the compulsion to write. I didn’t even know exactly where the story was going, but the point of it had been to finish the damn thing and have a completed story, for the first time ever. There were word-building scenes (i.e., completely genre-inappropriate sex scenes) that would definitely have to be cut, a number of smaller plot-thickening scenes to be fleshed out, and I was nowhere near the end of my book when I reached 50k.

I thought about where I wanted to go. I thought about how I wanted to handle it. Going at the rate I was, it would be another 50k before the first draft was even close to completion. I knew I couldn’t handle a second NaNo right after this first one, and that was strongly seconded by poor Mr. Cranky-Face, and the sorry state of my house. The novel needed to be finished, and I had run out of time.

So, while the Mr. put the kids in the bath and to bed, I sat and pounded out a detailed outline. 3,500 words later, I went to bed.

I have no idea if I’ll get to writing out the proper ending. (I call it an ending, but it’s really the second half of the book.) I hope to do so, because despite going into it with the Solemnest Of Vows to make it silly and just go for the word count, I find I rather like the concept. I rather like some of the characters. It fits into the alternate world I created, as a standalone or as a series of its own. There is potential, and I am nothing if not appreciative of potential. It’s the execution wherein I am perpetually lacking.

I get the concept of fashion. I live in Ohio, and while it’s not New York or California, it’s not like I’m hailing from the city of Backwoodstownville, BFE. Columbus is urban. It’s edgy. It has various scenes. I may not be a part of any of them, but I’m not living in a vacuum, despite what my MomJeans might imply. Maybe I’m not hip, but I’m at least thigh. Knee, maybe.

That said, I really hate that I have to ask at all, but: WHY DO THESE EXIST?

Sequined Uggs? WHY ARE UGGS POPULAR? Why are they considered fashionable? I feel like I’m taking crazy pills!

I’m also getting sick. The kids have been sick for over a week now, so that’s hardly surprising. I hope it’s just a cold.

The Mr. is approaching a deadline, so he has been awfully busy with work last week, over the weekend, and will be busy this week, too. Not the best timing, but at least he isn’t facing a deadline due the day after I’m due to expel a human from my innards. (Note: I am not expecting to expel anything remotely human-like from my innards anytime in the future. This was last year.)

Monday was Halloween, and I have to say that trick-or-treating is WAY better than hiding in one’s basement with one’s cousins, dressing up as Bible characters and playing overtly Christian games and looking for candy in the washing machine.

Did you participate in All Hallow’s Read? We did, sort of. I didn’t go all out and buy books for everyone we know, or leave random spooky books around for people to take, but I did hit the bookstore yesterday after the kids’ well-child appointments (for which they were ironically sick with sniffles) and bought each of us a spooky book. The Peanut got a cardboard book (she is chewing everything) called I’m The Scariest Monster In The Castle, the Podling got There’s Something There, Mr. Nyte Cranky-face got Kwaidan, a book of Japanese ghost stories (with a gashadokuro on the cover, something he appreciated mightily, given our running Scion RPG game), and I got The Dead Zone, seeing as how I’m writing a psychic-based novel for NaNo and recently re-discovered the show on Hulu.

After that, we headed home and got the kids dressed up for trick-or-treating. One of them was delighted, the other annoyed. I’ll leave you to guess which was which.

This costume was chosen for its color.

Sick kids don't appreciate dress-up time.

To be fair, Peanut didn’t choose her own costume (not that she really could). The Podling insisted she be a bee, likely because bees are yellow. He chose his own costume based on the fact that it was yellow, a superhero, and the store didn’t have the yellow M&M costume in any form other than a teen mini-dress. I was sure he would have picked a Plex the robot from Yo! Gabba Gabba, but I was clearly wrong. (I was relieved that he decided Wolverine was preferable to “a yellow car with Schubert and Gogger in it” as a costume, Schubert and Gogger being his stuffed frogs.)

Little dude was delighted to go trick-or-treating. It was cold, drizzly and had been raining earlier that day, so I suspect a lot of kids were disappointed and not permitted to go trick-or-treating. By the rate at which people loaded candy into the Podling’s bucket (we had to empty it into the stroller basket at least once, and could easily have done so again and then gone through a few more condo culs-de-sac [thank you, Gilmore Girls, for teaching me the proper pluralization of cul-de-sac] well before the official end of trick-or-treating), there weren’t many kids out and about. Toward the end of the two-hour period, the cold really ratcheted up (down?) and a holiday-appropriate fog rose from the wet, relatively warm ground. Add in a severe lack of street lights in our neighborhood, and I was very glad I’d bought so many glow sticks.

We stopped off at a friend and sort-of-neighbor’s house, knowing he would have other mutual friends over, and warmed ourselves up a bit and indulged in the mountains of leftover candy that nobody had yet claimed. And soda. And pizza (not for me – thanks a lot, sketchy gallbladder). And the end of Casper on tv.

Someone dove into his candy bucket with gusto; you can see a blur on the side of the picture, while somebody else succumbed to a busy day and a warm blanket.

Blur-verine looooooooves candy!

We eventually went home and changed into warm pajamas, made hot tea and I finally got to watch Hocus Pocus, cheesy as it is. While Nyte had the Podling in the bathtub, I took a picture of the light show I had set up in lieu of the pumpkin we never got around to carving.

Not bad for baby food jars.

Those would be baby food jars I’ve been fiddling with, trying to turn into votive holders. Glass paint, puffy paint, mod-podge and tissue paper on some…it’s a work in progress. I think it looks rather nice on our ghetto aloe garden (which badly needs a warmer spot and a grow-light), especially at night.

I hope your Halloween was happy, your All Saint’s Day cheerful, and your All Souls’ Day full of spirit.