I will talk to you about books, but don't ask me to join your book club

PLEASE don't make me join a book club.

I recently finished reading The Help.  In the back of the book, there were 10 questions or so that you might want to discuss in your book club.  I found them offensive.  I wish I had the book with me so I could post them, but generally, they insulted my intelligence while being boring at the same time.  These questions reminded me that I don't want to join a book club.

Once upon a time, far far away, I joined a book club.  It was with the ladies at work and we were reading Madame Bovary.  WHAT A MISTAKE.  Problem 1:  Madame Bovary is a terrible book.  It is boring and whiny.  I couldn't finish it.  It is supposed to be about infidelity or something, but I couldn't get that far, the whining was too much.  Problem 2:  When people talk about literature, they want to talk about how it was written and character development and what the writer was trying to say.  BOOOOOOORING.  When I read a book, I want to get caught up in the story.  I want to forget that I am reading and I just want to explore the new world I have joined.  If I even notice the writing style, I can't finish the book.  I only want to notice the pictures in my head.

Most of the books I have read lately, have been turned into movies.  For most of them, I saw the movie after reading the book.  I think this isn't working for me, I might have to switch the order of my movie viewing. 

If I were leading a discussion about the books I have read, I would like to also bring the movies into the discussion.  Here are the questions we would discuss:

1. In the hunger games, am I supposed to be on a team like Twilight?  Team Peeta or team Gale?  My team alliance changed with each book.
2. Don't you think Peeta in the movie should have been bigger?  I am thinking someone that looks more like the oldest kid on Home Improvement.
3. What did the wives from "The Help" do all day?  They didn't work and they had employees to take care of the house and the children.  Wheren't they bored?  No wonder they were catty gossips.
4. In the movie, I thought the actresses playing the two main maids would have been switched.  What do you think?
5. Do not read "The Help" while staying at a hotel.  You will suddenly feel guilty for having housekeeping come in to tidy your room.  Agree or Disagree?
6. Walt Disney did an awesome job of giving a plot to Pollyanna.  Agree or Disagree?

Do you have any other good discussion questions?

I read

When I was younger I was a nerd.  I read a lot.  I found that I missed out on a lot of real life experiences because I was off by myself reading a book.  I decided to stop reading and get a life.  I think it worked out pretty well.

Recently, I received some books as gifts and got a mobile device that allows me to read ebooks.  I decided to start reading again.  So far I have almost finished reading all three Hunger Games books, The Help, and Pollyanna.

I have rediscovered the problems of reading interesting books.  Somehow they get into your head deeper than TV or Movies.  If I had just seen the movies of all of these, they would have been interesting, but I wouldn't have thought about them that much after I saw them.  With the books, the stories started infiltrating every thought and took over my dreams.  I found myself making sure that I had a book to read during the 10 minutes it takes to give the baby her bottle.  I now understand why the hubby takes forever in the bathroom (He reads there.  I am not trying to suggest that reading gives me intestinal problems.).  I was neglecting my children and boring my husband by talking about the stories non stop.  The hubby reads all the time, and he is constantly telling me the details of his books, so I don't feel bad about paying him back.  I do feel guilty about neglecting the children.

I have even started listening to audio books.  I know, this is not technically the same as reading, but it does get the story stuck in your head for a while.

So the only question is, who has a suggestion for my next addiction?  Warning:  I don't want to read 50 shades of gray or any horror books.

Slurpee fiasco

I am from Grand Blanc.  In Grand Blanc, everyone lives within walking distance of a 7-11.  During the peak years, we lived within walking distance of two.  This was an important factor in buying my own home as an adult.  Luckily, we found a home close to a 7-11.  However, we did not consider that the road that leads to the 7-11 is Michigan Ave.  This stretch of Michigan Ave has no sidewalks, so we had to drive to 7-11 like suckers.

Then came the new subdivision.  With the new subdivision came a new road that cut through to the next main road.  The new subdivision had sidewalks and so does the other main road.  This was wonderful.  When the new subdivision went in, my sister came over, we put baby Charles in the bike trailer and we headed to the 7-11.  The new route was great as far as sidewalks go, but it was definitely the long way to get there.  I swear it was up hill both ways.  We rode our bikes to the 7-11 once and then realized that there were alternatives.  The new route to 7-11 led us paste a movie theater and a Meijer gas station.  Both have frozen cokes.

I would like to be a snob, but the truth is, I can't tell the difference between a frozen coke and a slurpee.  Our remaining bike rides have gone past the movie theater (no one wants to pay 4 bucks for a frozen coke), and onward to the Meijer gas station. 

Odessa is still a little young for the bike trailer.  Today I thought it would be a good idea to walk with a 4 year old and a baby in a stroller to the Meijer gas station.  I am stupid.  In Grand Blanc this would have been easy.  It was not easy from our house.  It turns out it is way farther than I imagined.  Half way to the gas station I had to send Nathan back to get the car.  I figured we might be able to make it there, but no way were we making it back.  That left me alone to cross the major roads with the children.  We did pretty well, but I almost considered stopping to get the 4 dollar frozen coke at the movie theater.  Amazingly, Nathan saved the day and pulled into the movie theater to pick us up.  He took us right to the Meijer gas station.

To top off the fiasco, I didn't even get a frozen coke.  I am trying to give up pop.

Wrestling is very much like Glee

One of the great things about the type of work I do is that I get to work with wonderful people.  One of the downsides of the kind of work I do is that we get moved around a lot so the wonderful people I get to know don't work with me forever.

One of the wonderful people I have worked with is named Tom.  Tom and I worked together for years with a great team of people.  The situation was horrendous, but the team was amazing.  It has been a while since I have worked with Tom.  Luckily, with my new job being in Downtown Detroit, Tom and I can meet for lunch occasionally.

Tom is a wrestling Ref and recently he couldn't meet me for lunch because he would be at Regionals.  I had to ask if it was the same as Regionals on Glee.  Tom is hilarious and this is his response.

"Yes, those wrestling boys like to think of it as being very much like Glee. Except their uniforms aren’t so much like costumes. They do have regionals too.


At one meet that I reffed, this kid who wasn’t very good at wrestling, and everyone knew it, except his mom who thought he was good (but she wasn’t very knowledgeable about anything anyway) tried to wrestle the champ. When I blew the whistle to start the match, the kid started running around the wrestling mat snapping his fingers and singing that song from West Side Story, you know the one:


"When you’re a Jet, you’re the top cat in town, you’re the gold-medal kid, with the heavyweight crown!...”


The champ looked at him like he was a weirdo (which he was in fact) and the kid’s Mom was yelling, “…take him down, Snowboy, take him down…”, which also didn’t make sense to those watching since the kid was clearly dancing like a Puerto Rican and not really a Jet. Suddenly, his teammates too started dancing, as did everyone in the gym.

The champ, yelling and cursing, chased the dancer/wrestler into the hallway wanting to beat this kid’s ass, but stopped short because now there were like 200 people in the hallway doing the same Puerto Rican-like dance. The look on the champ’s face was priceless—he didn’t know what the hell was going on, he was scared. He just stared with a panicked look on his face. Out of nowhere, the weirdo wrestler who was also a bad dancer but could sing pretty good, walked up to the champ and, in a falsetto voice, sang, “Don’t be angry, I am your brother.” The champ immediately puked, and while everyone started laughing at him, Howie Mandel walked from out of the crowd and said, “Champ, this isn’t a real wrestling meet, or even an episode of Glee. You’ve been mobbed. The champ started crying while everyone clapped and cheered. The weirdo tried to kiss his brother but was quickly punched unconscious.

That’s why I like reffing, but I digress. In wrestling, it starts with eight Districts. If you make it out of Districts, you advance to one of four Regionals.

Here is where the pressure builds. Everyone wants to make it out of their respective regional (one of four regions) to the State meet, or “State” for short.

Now, there is much disagreement and discord about whether a wrestler advances to “State” or “States”. I am in the “State” camp. To me, a number of districts make up a number of regionals make up only one state meet. So I say “State”. Others disagree with me. Of course many of them say Fords, Chryslers, K Marts, Wal Marts, Meijers, etc. Not me though."

Semi-successful pinning

I am into mustaches lately. I don't want to grow one myself, or have my husband grow one, but I find them fascinating. Because of this, my friend Cheryl sent me this link. http://www.craftster.org/forum/index.php?topic=304275.0. I pinned it.

The pattern is for knitting, but I wouldn't let that stop me. It seemed so simple. It was so simple I was going to make a ton of them. I was going to hand them out like chicklets. I made one. It was way hard. First of all, you can't just take a knitting pattern and do the same thing with crochet. I don't know why, but it turns out to be completely different. So, I crocheted something that looked terrible and then just filled in the gaps with embroidery. Somehow it turned out way bigger than the one in the pattern. oops.

Adventures in Crochet

Well, I have learned to crochet, but so far the one thing I have not mastered is a hat. I have a lot of hat books with fabulous hat creatures and creations, but they are all sized for little kids. I try to alter the pattern so they will fit me, but so far, no good.

To torture me further, THE gift this Christmas was the creature hat. I so wanted to make these myself.

Here is the hat I tried to crochet.

You are thinking, my goodness, What a great orange Hershey's kiss hat you have crocheted. Why thank you, except it is supposed to be ERNIE. So I ripped this one out and tried another approach. I confess that I knitted the hat part and crocheted the rest. I barely know how to knit and I cannot pearl. Everything I know about knitting is what my hands remember from when I was 6 years old and my Great Grandma taught me how to knit. However, as luck would have it, I own one of those hat knitting looms they make for children. It is amazing. It allows me to make a hat. They all turn out the same size, the perfect size for my family of big heads. Once I knitted the hat, I crocheted Ernie's ears and the ear flaps. I found some big chunky black yarn and it became the magic hair. Originally I bought black fur, that was a big mistake. when you buy fur, it gets everywhere.

Anyway, here is the finished product. I was going to make the rest of the face, but I decided I like it better as a high concept Ernie. It would be condescending to the public to put a face on Ernie, assuming they couldn't figure out that it is Ernie as it is.


Maybe I will finish the Bert hat for Nathan by next winter.

Feel free to pin this.

Dear Hipster, be my friend

Hipster to me: "Ooh, I like your shoes. Saddle shoes are so hard to find."

Me to hipster: "Thank you."



This conversation took place while I was waiting to go up the elevator a few days after I started my new job. I will never be able to make new friends with a lame-o response like "Thank you." However, I didn't know what else to say. Everything else I could think of sounded lame.

• "Thank you, I got them at JCPenney. You can get them there too," Would have been a nice response, but JCPenney is such a middle aged mom store (appropriate for me). It is totally not a hipster store. My cousin Jeff told me that I should have told her that I got them at a resale shop or in an alley. He says hipsters love that stuff. Of course, the perfect response is ready when it is already too late.


• "Thank you, I like your lightly punked out school girl outfit," might have sounded sarcastic, even though I did like her outfit.


• "Thank you, wanna be friends and do lunch?" would have sounded needy and a little too kindergarten.

The other day I saw her on the elevator. She works on the floor below mine. She was wearing green tights. I wanted to compliment her on her green tights, but with an elevator full of women my age, I was afraid it would come off as sarcastic. But I did come up with an idea. I think I need to tape a sign on the door for her floor. This is what it will say:

"Dear hipster with the green tights,

I love your tights and your cool hair. We should be friends and do lunch. Let me know if you are interested.

Sincerely yours,

Middle aged woman with the saddle shoes"

Then I would have to wear the saddle shoes until the next time I see her.

Any other thoughts? Recommendations?