This Side of Paradise

I just finished reading This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald.

Imagine you are hearing a huge rasberry. Plthththththb!

I am reading "classics" in order to continue my education, and this one was on the list. What a disappointment! It started out fairly interesting, but went downhill fast.

The main character, Amory (what kind of a name is that?), is rich, extremely handsome, bright, verging on genius. But mostly he is idle, lazy, unmotivated, uncaring, selfish and cruel. The book follows his life from childhood through adolescence into the beginning of manhood (if you can call it that). He is spoiled and privileged. He thinks a lot, but it's mostly rot. He contemplates himself unendingly. Will he be great? Accomplish great things? Win the respect and love of his fellow man? Bleah...bleah...bleah....

Women he views primarily as a reflection of his own vices and virtues. Once he kisses a girl he can't tolerate being near her or ever seeing her again. She is conquered, so now who cares? His love affairs are neurotic and disastrous.

Worst of all, at the end of the novel, he espouses socialism. Not so much because he altruistically believes its a fairer system, but because he hopes that with a new system, he might end up on top. Ugh! Barf! This guy is selfcentered, egocentric and, in my opinion, an idiot!

I'll admit that many of the erudite references went right over my head. Clearly, I have not read the American novels of the era. And the poetry the characters wrote to each other....snore! Why would I care about poetry written by such a loser? To be honest, I just skipped most of the poems.

The characters were all so self-aware. They were conscious of their flaws and their virtues and talked all about them. I don't think people are really like that. Or maybe they were different back then? Or perhaps I know different kinds of people?

I haven't read any reviews, so I'm not sure why this novel is supposed to be such a classic. Aside from getting a glimpse into the lives of angst-filled boys at Princeton during the 1910's, I just don't see the value.

Why, you may ask, did I finish this book?

I'm really not sure. Duty, I guess. A book has to be stupendously bad for me to put it down. And Fitzgerald does have some lovely, poignant descriptions. I suppose I'll have to read The Great Gatsby (again - read it in high school but I'm not sure that really counts as reading) to see if there is any redemption for F. Scott Fitzgerald in Sue's judgement.

This Week's Likes & Dislikes

Dislikes:
- when my 3 year old daughter comes into my room at 4am saying she's "tired" of sleeping in her room.
- when my 8 year old daughter vomits at 4:30am off the side of her bed onto the carpet.
- when my husband's (God bless his soul for working so hard!) alarm goes off at 5:30am, and then he forgets things and has to come back into the room about five more times.
- when my roots grow in (Hello Carla)
- property taxes (Goodbye money)
- when I spend an hour taking my stove top apart to clean and scrub off the grime that accumulates, then my son fries something that afternoon, spattering oil everywhere, and DOESN'T clean it off!
- not drinking coffee every morning (Hello roasted dandelion tea)
- studying basic electronics with my daughter for two weeks and being unable to comprehend (to my satisfaction) the meaning of: integrated circuit (I guess it's just a bunch of components all working together on a chip?) and transistor (something that does something?).
- back pain (Hello Physical Therapist - Goodbye Money)
- ending a good book (goodbye Three Cups of Tea)
- correcting chemistry homework
- when my son asks, "When are you going to let me......(restricted activity of choice).....?"
- not having enough time to blog properly

Likes:
- when my Mom comes and watches the kids for me so I can go out, OUT, OUT! (Hello exercise, friends & errands)
- watching my daughters swim.
- discussing time travel and the space time continuum with my son (Hello Star Trek!)
- a good cup of Peet's coffee in the morning (6 days to go!)
- sunny days on the coast
- when my youngest crawls into my lap, grabs my arms and puts them around her, and lays her head on my chest and sucks her thumb.
- reading a great book (Hello, This Side of Paradise)
- going #2 regularly
- eating whatever I want (Hello tight jeans)
- losing weight (Hello comfy jeans)
- walking on Montara Mountain and the bluffs in Moss Beach with a friend.
- watching Star Trek movies with my kiddos and hubby (consensus: Data and Worf - funniest characters)
- when my daughter shrieks, "Mommy!!!" as I pick her up from preschool and sprints into my arms.
- when Joe sings (Hello good mood!)
- cheap daffodils from Trader Joe's
- writing this blog.

Fasting

I am fasting today. Yesterday I started a cleanse / fast that lasts 9 days:
• Two days of fasting and drinking aloe juice (blech!)
• five days of shakes for breakfast and dinner, with a sensible (ha! ha!) lunch
• two more days of fasting and aloe juice

I've done this particular cleanse two times before. It is pretty good. My energy stays good throughout, which is a big plus for me. Need to stay functional while I'm doing it. Though, I'll admit, I do get a little spacey and the teeniest weeniest bit grumpy on the 2nd day of fasting.

Thankfully, enduring hunger pangs has gotten easier over time. The first time I fasted, I was an emotional wreck. I literally had never gone through a hunger pang with out eating to assuage it. It was the first time I had to just stay hungry. Boy, lots of emotional baggage came out during that fast.

But now I've been through it several times, I know better. I say to myself,
"They're just feelings. They will go away. They do not last forever." It kind of puts them into perspective. Actually, that works with most uncomfortable feelings, not just hunger. When I was fretting about some family issues over the weekend. I repeated my mantra, "They're just feelings. They'll go away." And voila! They did (the next day, sadly. I had to endure them all Sunday).

So, as I smell the fragrant odors of my son's quesadilla waft throughout the house, I'm hanging in there. Strangely, things I don't even really like are appealling to me today. The rice crackers that my kids eat. Mmmmm.... They smell sooooo.... good. But I'm sure if I ate some, they would not be that impressive.

I'm doing this fast / cleanse partly for health reasons and partly to prepare for a seminar I'm doing next week called Cleansing Streams. Its a Christian thing; lots of praying and contemplating and such - for some reason fasting helps deepen that. On the health side, I'm hoping to give my system a break, cleanse impurities (remember the thyroid stuff?) and hey! I won't complain if I lose a few pounds.

Tomorrow I get to eat! eat! eat! Eating sensibly is the challenge. I tend to gorge during my one meal per day. But I'm trying to do it right this time - so we'll see.

A great day

Wow.

Yesterday was a great day.

It was one of those days where you pause many times and think to yourself, "This is great!"

A fit beginning to such a splendid day was me, waking up when I felt like it. Now you moms and dads out there can imagine that after three kiddos stealing my sleep for many years, my relationship with sleep is pretty tight. Me and sleep, we're like two crossed finger. Or two fingers crossed. Whatever - you get the picture.

Now that my youngest has been waking up after I do (yes! it does happen) , I can complete my sleep cycle and wake up when it is light. Ahhhhhh......snuggling in bed for 15 more minutes - ALONE - what a luxury. Love it. Love it. Love it!

So at 7:30ish I roll out of bed. Make my Peet's Decaf Sumatra coffee. Mmmmmmm. Pot of decaf green for the kids. I treated myself to a bowl of ceral, some sugary, fruity, supposed to be good for you kind from Trader Joe's. Usually I am forced to eat very, very branny bran muffins for reasons I won't go into now.

After dropping Marie at preschool, I drove the five blocks back to my house to begin "school time" with Rose and Richard. We sit on the couch, all snuggled together, and I read to them. It is my absolute most favorite part of homeschooling. We are together, we are reading and we have great talks.

Currently we are reading a book called Breadwinner, about a little girl in Afghanistan under the Taliban. You can bet I stopped quite a few times to sputter,

"Can you believe in our times that women are treated like this? It's ridiculous!"

I knew the women had to wear burkas and be totally covered. What I didn't fully realize is that all women were (are?) not allowed to leave their home with out a man. If they did they had to have a permission note from their husband pinned to their burka. PINNED TO THEIR BURKA! Women with degrees. Writers, Teachers. Treated like kindergarten children. In this story, the mother and older sister hadn't left their house for over a year and half! I was fuming.

But it led us into a great conversation about equality and how great our country is and how lucky we are. Man, we are lucky.

So that was reflection moment #1: I really appreciated: being with my kids, talking about important things, and living in the US.

A few hours later, I was sitting at the kitchen counter. Rose was at the computer getting all excited about the progress she had made memorizing her multiplication tables. Now, the fact that she is excited is enough to make my whole year. For at least two years she has been fighting and dreading any kind of timed multiplication quiz. So the fact that this new computer class she's taking has got her enthusiastic is BIG in itself. As she typed away, she would occassionally turn and say,

"Look at the progress I've made!" with a big smile on her face. Melt. Melt. Melt. (maybe only homeschool moms will understand that).

So, I'm sitting next to Richard who was taking a pretty difficult chemistry test. I looked out the window and had my reflection moment #2:

I'm doing it. I'm really doing it. My kids are really learning. Rose is making huge strides this year in reading and math. Richard, for goodness sakes, is converting grams to atoms with conversion factors and Avogadro's Number and back again. This is something I don't think I ever mastered in high school. And he's 11. We are really homeschooling! Hooray!

In the afternoon, my dearest, bestest friend from high school came over with her two kids. The one who was supposed to move to Germany, then lived in SoCal, has now moved about 4 miles away from me. And her kids and 2/3 of my kids play really well together.

We sat on my front balcony and watched them zoom around on scooters, bikes, tricyles and feet. I turned to her and said,

"Our kids are playing together. Who would have thought in high school, that we would be sitting here twenty plus years later, watching our kids play together?"

How cool is that? That was reflection moment #3.

I don't think I had any more major reflection moments that evening. We just had a nice dinner of homemade lentil soup and mmmmm...fresh french bread - lots of it. I put littlest one to bed. Then to top it all off - we indulged in ice cream with chocolate sauce! My jeans may rebuke me, but I couldn't resist.

We ended the lovely day watching the 2nd half of The Hindinberg, a surprisingly good movie about, you guessed it, the Hindenberg. Turns out (Joe looked it all up at work - is that what he does all day?) there was never any conclusion about why that German blimp exploded. The movie postulates that it was sabotage by the resistance to the Nazi's. A bomb. Yikes! It was so exciting.

But since the ending was so sad (36/90ish people died), we had to watch a few minutes of Monte Python and the Holy Grail to perk up. "Bring out your dead!" never fails to brighten my outlook. And the kids could go to bed happy.

Before knocking off, I read a bit. A fascinating book, Three Cups of Tea, is about a mountain climber who ends up building schools in northern Pakistan and Afghanistan. And girls can even go to them! A pretty cool way to end the day, especially considering the book I'd been reading to the kids in the morning.

This kind of day doesn't come often. Today, as I carried my screaming, kicking three year old to her room for various and sundry infractions, I longed for yesterday.

I did my best to savor it.

Blogisms

There is a word that has been rattling around my head for the last few days: TRUTHINESS.

I have only encountered this word in the blogosphere. Sounds a lot like truthFULness, and that's how I am taking it. But it sounds so much cuter. And full of pizazz. And joie de vivre. I hope I can find an opportunity to employ that yummy word soon.

Another term I enjoy, which I've only found on blogs is: FACEHOLE. As in mouth. I'm not sure if I love this term as much as the other, but it has a certain edginess and hipness about it that I like.

Facehole stuffing. Facehole cramming. Seems like a lot of people relish doing this.

See...I'm pretty out of touch with the world. I am not HIP to the new JIVE. Ya know? The first time Joe said something about giving someone his "props" I corrected him in his incorrect usage of the word. He had to fill me in on this new lingo - and what it meant. Duh....

I don't watch TV. I am not out in the work world. I read a few things online, but can't stand too much news. I suppose NPR and Joe are my biggest links to the outside world. I'll never forget the incredulity on an acquantance's face when I didn't know who Clay Aiken was.

"You don't know who Clay Aiken is?" with big intake of breath.....

So, learning a new word or two is a nice connection for me with the world "out there". You know, the world that isn't all about snacks, and laundry, and dividing fractions, and unvoiced consonants, and playdates, and ballet, and fencing, and cooking...well, you get the picture.

I have been skipping around quite a few blogs lately. Peering into other folks' lives can be darn interesting, if the writing is good. But it is bumming me out - because so many people are so much funnier and write so much better than I do! And man! People put all kinds of personal pictures in their blogs.

I can't. Nope. Made an agreement with Safety Man: no real names (except mine) and no pics in the blog. Sometimes I fudge the rules a little bit. But not too much. Marital peace is important to me.

And on another completely unrelated topic: did you know that LBJ was afraid of sleeping alone? If Ladybird wasn't there to keep him safe and sound, he'd have a secret service agent sleep in the room with him. Guess he'd had a heart attack, and was afraid of having another and dying in his sleep. The things you learn when your kid reads a lot. I learn the oddest things when when he says,

"Hey Mom, did you know......?"

Like, did you know it costs $40,000 per hour for Air Force One to operate? Betcha didn't.

How about this? At the start of WWI there were no guns on planes. So after flying reconnaisance and waving when they saw each other, the Brits and the Germans started carrying bricks to drop on each other (they aimed for the engine). Then they graduated to hand guns, with which they shot at each other. Mounted machine guns didn't come until well into the war. Imagine.....bricks. Pretty astounding when you consider how far planes have come in a hundred years in terms of speed, maneuverability and firepower.

Well, time to go prepare dinner so I and the fam can STUFF OUR FACEHOLES! hee hee

Safety Man

My hubby is Safety MAN!

He works hard to ensure the security of his family. He makes certain that no dangerous activities occur.

I appreciate his love and desire to protect. Though, sometimes it can be a bit....stifling.

Safety Man's Rules:
- no beds under or near windows (earthquake might shatter glass, sending shards of crystalline death down upon our progeny). "But honey," I argue, "they are shatter-proof windows!" Uh uh. That's a no go.

- no kids' names or pictures on the internet. Period. OK - he's got a point on that one.

- kids must wear helmets if they come within five feet of a bike, skateboard or scooter. I agree with this one, though sometimes I let my three year old toddle around on her tricycle with out one - don't tell!

- children under 5 not allowed in hot tub / spa / my hot bath: yes, it's true that babies under six months or a year or something can't regulate their body temp very well - but once they're two or so I say they're good to go.

- me not allowed to go door to door canvassing for my main man Ron Paul: as if I would!

I can't remember now all the many times Safety Man has restricted or otherwise quashed my plans due to their dangerosity. But I know there have been lots of them. My friend, anonymous, can attest to that.

But I love him and all his eye protection. Though I'm not a reckless person, and I'm not sure how much protection I need, I am grateful for how much he loves me and kiddos.

Yeah Safety Man!

Toddlerisms

My three and a half year old daughter, Marie, is entering into the transformative phase from toddler to little girl. It is magical, funny and heartwarming to witness. But it is also a bit sad. No, really sad. My baby is disappearring. No matter how wonderfully cute and funny the little girl she is becoming is, my baby is still going away.

I remember the first night she slept in a big girl bed. I was so happy to get her beautiful pink bed. And she went into it perfectly - no residual missing of the crib - no getting out in the middle of the night. But that first night after I put her to sleep in her new bed, I shut the door behind me and unexpectedly burst into tears. My baby was growing up!

I think it is especially poignant for me as she is my third, and last, little one. I'm never going to go through the magical gauntlet that is babyhood of one of my babies again - ever. I know I'm wierd, but I'm already starting to think about grandchildren. I know! I know! My oldest kid is 11. So I'm reaching a bit. But it consoles me to think that someday in the next twenty or so years I'll get to hold and smell another snuggly bundle of smooshy cuteness.

In honor of Marie transitioning into her little girl self, I am sharing some of her collected toddler "gems". You know, those so-cute-you-practically-fall-off-your-chair things that toddlers say?

Here are a few of her best:

When something fell on the floor...
"It can't break because it's not glassable."

One time at dinner, Joe had just nailed Richard for disrepectfully interrupting and then rolling his eyes when corrected. Into the tense silence at the table, Marie blurts,
"Mama, everyone has a bottom!"

Her description of boogers:
"Hard nose roller things"

Trying to avoid getting in trouble for name calling:
"Rose, you're STU–"

Her interesting sense of the aging process:
"When you're little again, and I'm big......"

Hugging me tightly:
"Mama, I want to be with you ALL OF DA TIME"

Waving goodbye:
"See you later crocodile!"

sigh.....