Sic transit gloria

What we have here is a total breakdown of law and order. It's Monday, and I haven't even MADE a to-do list yet. Now, I'm debating whether or not to even bother. I just finished a chore that I had particularly dreaded, and didn't even have the fun of crossing it off my list, because I don't have a list. TOTAL BREAKDOWN! Civilization is dead.

Why didn't I make a list? I'm sure that's what you're wondering. Well, I'm glad you asked. I didn't make a list because the list would have been so long that I couldn't even stand to think about it. This time of year, which already induces daily panic attacks for different reasons altogether, is also extremely busy. Yes, I know that's tiresome. You can't swing a cat without hitting some suburban mother who thinks she's the busiest person in the world.  Maybe you're one of those people who wouldn't swing a cat under any circumstances. It takes all kinds, I suppose. But I really am a little busy. A full-time job, three volunteer jobs, and a house that's not going to compulsively clean itself leave little time for list-making and blogging about nothing.

Why do I have three volunteer jobs? I'm glad you asked that, too. It's because I'm an idiot.

*****
It's Tuesday. I finally wrote a to-do list, because I can't seem to breathe without one. Then, in a distinct violation of the to-do list end user license agreement, I wrote down a task that I had already finished, and then crossed it off. I'm pretty sure that I got nailed by a red light camera on my way home from work, too. Coincidence? Maybe. Or maybe just and deserved retribution for my unethical to-do list practices. I needed a red light camera ticket anyway; that is, if I want to make a Rosary out of my camera-issued traffic tickets, using speeding tickets as Hail Mary beads and red light tickets for the Our Fathers. I'll be almost two decades in after this latest ticket arrives in my mailbox. I got your Sorrowful Mysteries, right here.

And now I'm going to Hell, too. Damn it.

Or maybe not. I might have redeemed myself. I teach 8th grade catechism. Did I mention that? It's one of my volunteer jobs. I like 8th graders; I like adolescents in general. This group, however, is a little challenging, and one girl in particular can be very challenging. Often disruptive and occasionally disrespectful, she is also very bright and full of fun. It's hard not to like her.

This girl obviously likes one of the boys in the class, who obviously likes her in return. He is, I have learned (because people tell me stuff), one of the popular boys at the middle school that they both attend, and because the girl is not conventionally pretty, I think that his obvious attraction to her confuses him. He doesn't understand yet that he might not ever meet another girl as lively and fearless as she is.

But how does the redemption come in? Again, I'm glad you asked. When she came into class last night, I said hello, as I always do, and told her that I liked her hoodie. She smiled happily and said "Thanks! It's my favorite thing right now!" And that's when I decided not to tell her the whole truth, which is that I, her 51-year-old catechism teacher, have the same hoodie. That should be ten years off my purgatory sentence, at least.

"OMG! Twinsies! Wear it again next Tuesday--I'll totally wear mine, too!"

*****

Wednesday. I left work early today for a doctor's appointment. It was weird to be at large at 3:30 in the afternoon.

After the doctor, I went grocery shopping. My husband called me as I was loading the groceries into the back of my car. As usual, he said "Safeway? You're at Safeway again? Didn't you just go to Safeway?" And as usual, I wondered how this could possibly be cause for questioning, because he and I both live with the same two teenage boys who eat is if it's their job, as if it's the actual profession for which they studied and trained. Blissfully unaware that the food that my sons consume in vast quantities will not replenish itself, he persists in asking me why I must return to the store, when I was just there.

My husband is a police detective, and speaking of vast quantities of food, he interviewed a crime victim today whose girlfriend is a competitive eater. As the man told my husband, this woman came in second in a recent competition to the woman who defeated Kobayashi. And so speaking of questions, this prompted several:

1. Competitive eating. Why? Why does this exist?
2. Why did I not need to ask "Who's Kobayashi?" Why did I know who he is?
3. WHAT AM I DOING WITH MY LIFE? Oh my God.

*****
Friday. Yes, I skipped Thursday. Well, except for one thing. Apparently, the rules no longer apply, and hockey players can now just throw their bodies onto the puck as if it was a football. Maybe they can just kick it into the net, now, too. Or toss it in, like a basketball. It's a damn free-for-all. Anything goes.

I'm home sick today. I can't stand being sick. But I did get two watch two episodes of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show," and one of them featured Rhoda's mother, played by the brilliant Nancy Walker.  There's always a silver lining.

*****

I was flipping channels one night last week (yeah, I know--too busy to make a list, but not too busy to watch TV), and even though I've seen it a dozen times, I was delighted to find that "Rushmore" was on HBO (we had a free preview).

"Rushmore" is one of a small group of movies that I'll watch whenever they're on. These movies don't have to be good (for example, "The American President" and "Stepmom" are both really terrible movies that I can't seem to look away from when they're on) but "Rushmore" is really good. In fact, it's as good as movies get. There are movies that make me laugh really hard, and movies that make me cry, but there are only a small handful that make me both laugh and cry, over and over again. I'll laugh my head off every time Jason Schwartzman sneers "oh are they?" at clueless Luke Wilson, as Bill Murray nearly spits out his drink. And I'll cry happy happy tears every time Max offers his punctuality award to Herman, and then finally introduces him to his dad (the barber and not the neurosurgeon). A really good day for me is a day when I have an opportunity to say "Oh yeah? Well you tell that mick that he just made my list of things to do." I'm from an Irish-Catholic family, so that happens more often than you might think.

*****
Saturday: I don't have the strep that I thought I had, but I do have bronchitis, the cure for which is apparently nothing. The sun came out and I feel capable of doing something other than lying down, so I guess I'm getting better.  My list is about 75% crossed off, and I don't care (that much) if I finish it or not. I'll start over again on Monday.

Home and native land

For the second week in a row, I'm blogging on a day other than Friday. But it'll take me at least three days to finish this post, whatever it's going to be about.

It's 9:45 PM now, and I'm watching the round-robin slapping scene in "The First Wives Club." I think I'll be up for a while. I had more coffee than usual today, including a rare Starbucks. It tasted like 1996.

Wait, J.K. Simmons was in "TFWC?" Who would have predicted that he's the one who'd eventually win an Oscar? Ivana (not Ivanka) Trump, too. "Don't get mad--get everything." I wonder what she's doing now. She would probably have LOVED to be First Lady.

*****

I'm on book 4 of The Cazalet Chronicles now. Spoiler alert, if you're planning to read the books, as you certainly should, Rupert is alive! Of course, I suspected that he was. The surprise was in how it was revealed, and in what he was doing during the time that he was missing in action, not so much in the fact that he had actually survived.

So other than poor Sybil (cancer), all of the Cazalets survived the war--no one died in combat, or in a bombing raid. Now they have to survive something altogether different.  After the initial joyful relief of the war's end, the Cazalets and the rest of England are war-weary, poverty-stricken, and depressed. 1946 was a bleak year in England.

It's raining today. My son and I spent part of the morning and most of the afternoon delivering mulch for Rockville High School's annual mulch sale. The rain continued; sometimes a drizzle, and sometimes a heavier, steady rain. Everything seemed dirty. Well, we were hauling giant bags of topsoil and mulch in the rain, so everything actually was dirty. And now I'm sick. My eyes are burning and my throat is raw and my body feels like it's been through a fight. Bleak.

*****
But speaking of the opposite of bleak (Were we not speaking of the opposite of bleak? Well, we are now), there are few things more fun than watching your team win a playoff game in overtime, live. I'd never been to a playoff game before. We ended up sitting in what was obviously the section reserved for Maple Leafs fans with anger management issues. Canadians aren't as nice as everyone thinks they are, and the Capitals' overtime win didn't make them any happier. No exaggeration to say that we were lucky to get out of Verizon Center without witnessing off-ice bloodshed. It was awesome.

*****
Sunday. The rain ended, and we had a few hours of thin, chilly spring sunshine. It's gray now at 4 PM, and tomorrow is supposed to be a cold and rainy Monday. I'm going to make a pot of chili.

Son of a birchtree

Monday: It's spring break now. The three male residents of my house are off for the week, but I'm working. It's a busy week, so if I don't start writing this now, then there won't be a post this week.  Too much to contemplate, I know.

I got mad at a writer today. Well that's not quite true. I got mad at a sentence.  A sentence so long and so convoluted, which took so many meandering turns and detours before finally reaching, in its own good time, a not-altogether-clear conclusion, that I had to read it five times before I finally figured out what it was trying to tell me.* And I still wasn't sure.

In a perfect world, I'll only have to read something once. But the fact that it's not a perfect world is one of the reasons that I have a job.  But still--three times is my limit. If I have to read the sentence more than three times in order to discern meaning, then I consider that the author is just having fun at my expense. And I'm not amused.

*****

Tuesday: Scene from the Greek cafe where we're picking up dinner after Confession:

Cashier (on the phone): What? I mopped last night!  I took out the trash, too. Check the camera! What? No, it wasn't my turn to do the bathrooms. Yeah. No, we're pretty slow today.

Cashier (to coworker, having hung up the phone): Yeah, he's all mad and yelling at me about the trash, and then I told him to check the camera, and he got real quiet. Hmpf.

*****

Wednesday: I'm supposed to be writing an article for our neighborhood newsletter. Instead, I'm shopping on Amazon and watching the first round of the Stanley Cup Playoffs (Columbus vs. Pittsburgh).

You know the scene in "Elf" when Buddy befriends the mailroom guy, who confides in Buddy that life in the mailroom isn't as glamorous and high-powered as it looks from the outside?

No? You haven't seen it? That's just ridiculous.

Forget that entire last paragraph. I'm going to just assume that my many readers are decent members  of society, who have seen "Elf." Anyway, when you watch that scene (three times a year, minimum), don't you think to yourself, "Wow. That's the oldest-looking 26-year-old I've ever seen. Sunscreen, you know? Antioxidants. Something." Well, that's what I was thinking about as I watched 29-year-old Phil Kessel and the Pittsburgh Penguins demolish the Columbus Blue Jackets. No particular reason; it just popped into my head.

*****

Thursday: It turns out that Android OS is yet another thing that's more polite than me. The Capitals are playing Toronto tonight in round 1 of the Stanley Cup playoffs. Toronto scored, a minute and 35 seconds into the first period, while I was at the grocery store shopping for Easter dinner ingredients.

Naturally, I was somewhat perturbed, and I tried to text "Son of a bitch" to my husband. You know, when you type the word "son" on an Android device, the predictive text function will suggest "of a" as next words. What do you think should come next? I can tell you what Android OS thinks should come next: "By," "but," or "boy;" but not "bitch."

I added an i, which refined my selections to "bit," "bin," and "bill." Even when I added a t, Android refused to cooperate. It offered me "bite," "bits," and "biting."

If cursing were a crime punishable by fine or imprisonment, then evidence that you typed the letters "son of a bitc," would be enough to convict you, I'm fairly sure. By adding the c, I felt certain that I had made my intentions clear and unambiguous.  So imagine my confusion when predictive text offered me one option, and one option only: Bitcoin. Son of a Bitcoin. This is the expression of dismay and anguish that Android believes is appropriate when your team gives up a goal just over a minute into the first game of the playoffs.  Ridiculous.

All's well that ends well.  The Capitals made the game rather interesting, as they tend to do, but they won in overtime and we're up 1-0 in the series.

*****

Friday:  Good Friday.

Question for Waze and Google Maps: Is "Proceed to highlighted route" meant to be helpful and instructive? I mean, if a person is even remotely capable of navigation using an actual map, would voice-directed satellite navigation apps be even necessary? Asking, as the Internet says, for a friend.

*****

Saturday: I have too much to do today.  This is why I'm sitting on the couch at 10 AM, drinking more coffee than I should and watching "The Hunger Games: Catching Fire." I like to think that I work better under pressure. There's no evidence that this is true, but I continue to procrastinate, telling myself that the adrenaline rush of panic will drive me to accomplish great things. I have no idea why I do the things that I do.  I'm a cotton-headed ninnymuggins.

*****
Later, but still Saturday. Still behind, but I've made some progress. I'm having a little bit of an indecision- and anxiety-fueled panic attack. Not a big deal. Just a little hard to breathe. I hate this time of year. T.S. Eliot was right.

(2 hours later.) That took an unexpected little turn there, didn't it? I'm back to normal now, whatever that means. I still can't decide how to cook the potatoes for tomorrow.  Maybe I'll drop them into a solution of vinegar and food coloring and pass them off as eggs.  Happy Easter.

*****

* That sentence suffered the same fate as the former Yugoslavia.  It's now a bunch of different sentences.

A proportional response

Well, hello, handful of readers.  It must be Friday night, yes?

*****
"There's never an egg timer around when you need one." Nor a pair of scissors, nor a sock that matches the one that you want to wear.

Ovation is airing "The American President" right now.  On MSNBC last night, Brian Williams kept talking about the "proportional response" scene, and maybe someone in the programming department at Ovation was watching. Or maybe it's a coincidence.  "TAP" is an objectively bad movie, but I always watch it when it comes on. I don't understand why.  Another thing that I don't understand is why on earth the President's credit cards would have been "in storage in Wisconsin."  This has never made any sense to me.

Part of me is inclined to think that the airstrikes against Syria are right and justified, Trump notwithstanding. I don't trust his motives (on this or anything else), but even a broken clock is right twice a day.*  Not that I'm comparing Trump to a broken clock. Because he's not right anywhere near as often as twice a day.

My favorite line: "I hope so. Because if that was an undecided, then we need to work on our people skills."

*****
It's Saturday now. My 12yo had baseball practice this morning, and I was actually going to sit in my car and write and read. It was still a little cold, and it's a new season and a new team, so I don't really know anyone yet. I'm not the most outgoing person in the world. I'll talk to anyone, but it wouldn't occur to me to just walk right up to a group of people whom I've never met and introduce myself and join the conversation. So if there are little clusters of women who all appear to be friends, deep in conversation, and none of them make any welcoming gestures, then I'm likely to just stand or sit by myself.

I like to sit (or stand, as the case may be) by myself, so this isn't a problem. This is not one of those tiresome rants about bitchy mean girl suburban sports mom cliques. It's not that complicated. Because I'm just as likely to be standing and chatting with people I know, and to not notice and welcome the person standing by herself.  I don't do that intentionally, and so I'll assume that other women don't do it intentionally, either.  But today, two very friendly women waved me into their group and introduced themselves, and I spent a pleasant hour and a half talking about the same things that I always talk to other mothers about.

*****
One day last week, I came into the kitchen to find my son scrubbing his sneakers with the brush that I use to scrub pots and pans. I threw the brush away. But then I realized that we had probably been eating out of pots washed with the dirty shoe brush for at least several weeks. Gross.

*****

On Wednesday and Thursday, I worked at HHS headquarters, the Hubert Humphrey Building.  It looks East Germany circa 1971-ugly from the outside (though it does have a really nice view of the Capitol and the U.S. Botanic Garden), but it's rather impressive inside; well, at least the lobby is.  You might think of a huge government ministry, housed in a huge mid-20th century building, and picture a bloated, inefficient, and agonizingly slow bureaucracy. And maybe that's a little bit true of HHS.  From the video displays in the lobby, I learned, for example, that March is both National Nutrition Month and Save Your Vision Month, but March was five days gone, and I guess that no one had thought to look up the awareness months for April.

On the other hand, the place was crackling with energy. You can argue all day about whether or not government should do whatever it's doing, but it's doing stuff.  I have tons of neighbors and friends who work for the Federal government, and I've worked for government contractors for most of the last 18 years or so.  Government people work, and they care about what they're doing, and they believe in what they're doing.  They just need to look at a calendar once in a while.

There's a Metro stop, Federal Center, right around the corner from HHS, but on a beautiful day, I'd rather walk a bit.  Plus, I hate to change trains.  As far as I'm concerned, if it's not on the Red Line, then it doesn't exist. Union Station is exactly a mile from HHS--not long, but long enough when you're wearing work shoes and carrying a computer and a bunch of paperwork.  I walked with my colleague, who lives in DC.  She is a native Washingtonian, and I've lived in the DC suburbs for 18 years, but we snapped pictures and pointed fingers like tourists. The light was perfect at 6:15 PM. We walked on the Capitol grounds, and Dana Bash of CNN rushed right past us. (She's very pretty. And very tiny.)

It's nice that even in the security state (it took me no less than fifteen minutes to get through security at HHS), you can still walk around on the Capitol grounds. Lots of people were out--tourists, runners, government employees just off work, Capitol Hill residents--and no one had to go through a metal detector, or submit to a search.

I took this picture of the Capitol on Wednesday evening. The lady on the lower right might have been a tourist, but not necessarily.  With her anorak and her canvas tote and her hair up, she reminded me of someone.  OK, it was me. She reminded me of me. I don't normally use filters, but I tried one and liked the color effect; the creamy soft shine of the dome against the pale turquoise hazy sky is very 1959 postcard, which is a good thing.

Kodachrome. 

*****
Later today:

3YO: AUNT CLAIRE!  YOU CAN'T CATCH ME!

Aunt Claire: You're probably right. (Sits down.)

(Scene.)












So that's all for now.  Once again, I was trying to use a movie line as a funny title; and once again, I ran out of post before I could make the metaphoric connection.  I have things to do, and I need to bring this train into the station.  Until next week, avoid Dupont Circle--it's a mess.

*****

* The one I'm wearing on my wrist, for example. Daylight Savings Time commenced about a month ago, and I just haven't gotten around to setting my watch to the correct time.  Five more months and I'll have the correct time again.

The end of the rainbow

I should go to bed now.  I'll be tired tomorrow.  But I don't feel like going to bed. There aren't many things that I miss about being young and single. Staying up late, in fact, might be the only thing. Well, staying up late, and eating whatever I wanted with near-impunity. Those two things.

I used to stay up until all hours. If I was reading a book that I didn't want to put down (and I was almost always reading a book that I didn't want to put down), then I'd stay up until 3 or so.  I worked later hours then, and I seldom had to get up before 8, so I'd still get five hours of sleep, give or take. It was enough.

*****
I still don't get much more than five or so hours a night, and it's not really enough anymore.  But it's OK. I will catch up, when I'm (really) old, or dead.  By the way, that first part was a rare Thursday night entry.  I'm unpredictable.  But it's Friday night now, my normal start-to-cobble-together-a-post time, and so I'm starting to cobble together a post.  I'm also waiting for eggs to boil.  Lent can't end soon enough.

I'm approaching the halfway mark with the Cazalets. There are actually five books in the series: The Light Years, Marking Time, Confusion, Casting Off, and All Change. I'm just starting Confusion now, and I'm finding it hard to avoid the temptation to read ahead (or to look up plot summaries on Wikipedia, just to see what happens.)

I still can't imagine how I never heard of Elizabeth Jane Howard or these books until this year. No other novels I've read have conveyed the heroism and romance of England during World War 2, without sparing the truth about the fear, privation, grief, and (often) terrible boredom of war. Right about now, the Cazalets and all of their friends and their remaining servants (most of whom have joined the armed forces) are obsessed with food, which makes me feel a little guilty for complaining about eating eggs again.

*****

Social media and hip-hop artists share a preoccupation with fake people. They must be everywhere.  The fake people, that is.

*****

We just returned from an overnight road trip to Philadelphia. I drove, because my husband was on call and couldn't leave town.  I like to drive; the only problem is that I can't read in the car when I'm driving it (as far as you know), so I didn't make much more progress with Confusion.  It was a very good drive--both ways--except that I panicked a bit midway through the Fort McHenry Tunnel.  The tunnel hasn't bothered me in years. Perhaps my 12-year-old's questions had something to do with the panic this time. "Wait--does this really go underwater?  Like we're driving a car, under the Harbor? So there's water on top of us, right now?"  And the answer was yes. We're driving underwater through a dimly lit dark tunnel that feels five miles long. But we did emerge from the tunnel, and the rest of the drive was quite easy and pleasant.

*****

The 12-year-old is the one who notices things, and remembers things.  We were driving last night from my brother's house (where my nephew's birthday party had just ended) to my sister's house (where we were staying) and he said "you know the bench, Mom?  The one with the sign next to it, that says The End of the Rainbow? Ever since I was little, that's how I knew we were getting close to Aunt Carole's."  I always like to hear my kids' reminiscences, though it reminds me that they're getting older. A 12-year-old has long memories; he remembers his childhood in segments, and thinks of himself as quite old, relative to when he was little.

And again, he notices things.  I actually have no idea what bench he's talking about.  I must have driven past it no fewer than 100 times, and I couldn't pick it out of a lineup.

*****
I have things in common with both of my children. Although I don't notice things like my 12-year-old does, I have the same long, encyclopedic, and detailed memory.  Although my 15-year-old is fortunately free of my tendency to borrow trouble at high rates of interest (in fact, he probably worries far less than he should), he shares my scatterbrained distractibility.  (Blogger is flagging that word as either misspelled or not a word. I assure you, Blogger, that it is a word, and a correctly spelled one.)  They're both really good company, and great traveling companions, and I'm glad we got to ride together this weekend, tunnels of terror and nonexistent rainbow benches notwithstanding.

*****
We're watching hockey now. The Capitals are winning a very important game against the Columbus Blue Jackets.  In the perfect world, the Penguins will also lose to Carolina (because in a perfect world, the Penguins will always lose), but the win over Columbus will leave us nicely positioned to let Columbus and Pittsburgh face one another in the first round of the playoffs. I'm not going to jinx anything. The less said, the better.

*****

Normally, I try to make sure that these long and winding roads actually lead somewhere.  But not tonight. I'm flat out of words for now.  The Penguins won, but the Capitals are beating Columbus 3-0. Let's go Caps.

August 1914

Oh, hello. It's Friday night, so you must be waiting for me to start writing about the ephemera of my daily life. I won't disappoint you. Or maybe I will.  Who knows.

*****

One thing that perhaps I've never mentioned is that I'm obsessed with my Fitbit, and will sometimes go to absurd lengths to get my daily steps in.  And this is why I always walk around when I'm talking on the phone.

You already know where this is going, don't you?

So I wondered, as I paced the house while talking on the phone with my husband, if I was anywhere near 10,000 steps.  I walked, and I talked, and I looked everywhere--in my handbag, in my coat pocket, in my car--for my phone, so that I could check the Fitbit app.  How many steps do I have, I wondered; and more importantly, where on earth is my phone? I knew that I had brought it home, because I had heard it ringing. And then I had answered it, and had a whole conversation. And that's why I couldn't find the phone in my car, or my handbag--because I was holding it in my hand.

Stuff like that?  All the damn time.

*****

It's Saturday now, and a beautiful day. We've had little to complain of this winter, cold-wise, but that has not stopped me from complaining, because I'd prefer for the temperature not to drop below 45 or so, at any time of the year, day or night. Freezing cold and snow in March after a warm and pleasant February seems like an insult, but the world probably deserves to be insulted right about now. And I don't even know what the weather has been like anywhere other than Maryland and the mid-Atlantic states. Everywhere else in the world might have had an entirely normal, seasonal winter, for all I know.

*****

I'm still reading Math Squared. Among the many things that don't make any sense is Hyperbolic Geometry, in which there are triangles whose three angles do not add up to 180 degrees. Except that the so-called triangles are stretched onto a curved surface, which means that they're not really triangles--they're loosely triangular things with curved sides. That's a shape, but it's not a triangle. Euclid's Fifth Axiom still holds, as far as I'm concerned. Too bad that I'm too old for the Fields Medal. Because that's the kind of brilliant mathematical insight that should win me a major award. Age discrimination is all too hideously real.

*****
I've avoided, thus far, writing about what's really important. A 14-year-old girl was raped at my son's high school last week, in a boys' bathroom, smack dab in the middle of the damn school day. Perhaps you have heard about it. It made national news, because the two perpetrators, 17 and 18 years old, were recent immigrants from Central America.  Sean Spicer even mentioned it during the White House daily press briefing on Tuesday, because why waste a crisis? Why miss an opportunity to use someone's unbearable suffering to advance an agenda? Not that the Democrats are any better. But this isn't about politics; not really, anyway.

My son's school is a nice, clean, well-run suburban high school, in a nice neighborhood, with nice, involved, caring parents. So the natural shock and outrage and grief that does (and should) accompany such a horrible event was followed by a week and a half of listserv discussion and Facebook hand-wringing and accusations--against the school administration, against politicians, against conservative anti-immigration activists, against pro-immigration liberals, and against anyone who questions whatever political orthodoxy happens to be correct at the moment.  It's hard to keep up.

(Side note: Our school system is one of the best in the country, but it's also a large bureaucracy, because we're humans and we haven't figured out yet how to run an endeavor  that must serve so many people, rich and poor, of every conceivable ethnic background, from every imaginable variety of family, without quite a bit of bureaucracy. I believe in public school, but you have to accept that it is what it is. If you expect highly trained and professionalized school administrators to respond to parent concerns about anything at all, much less something so awful, in any terms other than carefully prepared statements and tightly organized meetings, then you're barking up the wrong tree.  They can't be what they're not.)

*****
There's way more to this, of course.  The town banded together.  The anger and outrage subsided, replaced by expressions of support for the family, and declarations of unity and togetherness as a school and community.  Not that this is a bad thing, necessarily. I just don't know how supported the poor girl and her family feel by a hashtag campaign and banners and posters and a school-wide wear-your-colors spirit day. This hideous crime has hurt the school and its students, but it's still a crime against only one young girl.  She is the victim, not Rockville High School.  And I wonder: Does she feel empowered by the stream of social media posts tagged #rockvillestrong? Does she see the hand-lettered bedsheet banners, and the giant #rockvillestrong made of plastic cups inserted into the chain link fence, and feel cared for and protected? Does she see the pictures of students clad in orange and black, and know that her fellow students stood up together to defend her? Or does she feel that the worst day of her life has been turned into a block party?

*****
Maybe that's not fair.  Neither is life. I get that all of the social media outpouring and the orange and black spirit wear and the parents declaring how proud they are of our kids and our school and our community are all well-meaning gestures, born of good intentions.  And that reminds me of something; a road somewhere, or something.

*****
That took something of a turn, didn't it? I'm much better at ephemera than politics or social criticism. Who am I to criticize? It's Sunday night now, which feels very different from Friday night.  Some days or weeks change everything and you're never the same again. That happened to me, a long time ago, and now there's a 14-year-old girl who is maybe just now realizing that she'll never be the same again, either.  I know her name, though of course I won't repeat it, not to anyone. I hope she'll be OK. I'll think of her often.

Current events

This has become a Friday night routine. I tentatively approach a thing that resembles an idea for a post, and then I circle it for a while, poking it with a stick, to see if it tries to bite me or anything. And then I just write about whatever nonsense pops into my head. Like a week in review.  Yes, that's it!  Week in review! Why didn't I think of that before?

*****

Monday: Sadly, Amy Krouse Rosenthal died on Monday, after a long illness. I wrote about her Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life on my 2016 book list. I had no idea that she was sick (or that she had written children's books) until the New York Times published her "You May Want to Marry My Husband" essay on March 3.  She was a great writer and, obviously and more importantly, a great person.
Monday night: A tense evening as the heavily hyped forecast of snow appeared for a while to have been mistaken (or a hoax). The snow finally began to fall, prompting an early snow day call from the school district--the first one this winter. All-out Lord of the Flies rebellion: Narrowly averted. 

Tuesday: Snow day. 

Tuesday night: You know, Rachel, I turned off a hockey game to watch that, nearly sparking an another potential uprising. These are revolutionary times at my house. I'm not sure that "Donald Trump paid some taxes in 2005" was quite the truth-to-power Watergate-level scoop that we all hoped for.  PS--I think Trump leaked the return himself. 

Wednesday: I don't even remember.  It was four days ago! Oh wait, I remember.  I worked from home on Tuesday.  Snow and whatnot. So I sent myself some files, because my work computer is huge and unwieldy, and no matter how many times I readjust my hands on the keyboard, I can't type on the thing.  I worked like a madwoman all day.  Then, on Wednesday morning, I got to my desk and realized that I didn't have the computer that I had used on Tuesday, and that I had forgotten to email the file back to myself. Kind of a problem, because it was kind of an important thing with kind of a hard, immovable, drop-dead, not one minute late deadline.  Something of a dilemma.

All's well that ends well. My husband was on the late shift this week, and being home, he was able to email the file to me.  Then, I stopped at the grocery store on the way home, only to realize that I'd left my wallet at home, too. At least I hadn't actually shopped yet. Because I'd have been SO MAD.

Thursday:  A long work day, but I didn't mind.  The Friday deadline still looming, I stayed at my desk until 6:30, and then came home and worked until a little after 10.

Friday: Deadline met.

Saturday: I hate to shop, as I mentioned here.  The benefit of working full-time is that I can afford to shop; the disadvantage, of course, is that I don't have time to shop.  Or rather, I do have time, but my time is limited, and shopping is my very least favorite way to spend it.  So I buy clothes online. And then I wear them, and hate them, and end up with a pile of nearly new stuff that languishes in my closet, while I tear my hair out every morning because I have nothing to wear.

But wait.  We're not talking about every morning.  We're talking about today. I went shopping, in a real store, where I tried some things on, and even bought a few items. Or articles.  We'll see what happens. That was the least fun thing that I did all week.  Note that this was a week that included floor mopping, snow shoveling, tax paying, and insomnia, so do the proverbial math.

*****
It's still Saturday, a few hours later.  Do you know what's happening right now? My son, who is 15  years and 9 months old today, is watching the Maryland Motor Vehicles Administration's how to get your driver's license video. No matter what time it is, it's always later than you think. Or later than I think, anyway.

And speaking of math? 100 Concepts is veering off the rails into pure ridiculousness .  Now I'm supposed to believe that there's such a thing as a three-dimensional one-sided shape. Fiction, I tell you.

Early in the evening, we went to our favorite neighborhood Mexican restaurant, with this boy and his mother (my sister-in-law) and his baby sister, who slept through the entire meal. The hostess was the senior co-captain of my son's high school swim team, and as high school kids often do when they see each other in non-school settings, they pretended that they didn't know each other.  Perhaps my son, who had ridden with my sister-in-law so that he could help with the children, was embarrassed to be seen carrying a sleeping infant in a forty-pound carrier.  Perhaps the girl, who is normally rather stylish, was embarrassed to be seen in her work uniform of khaki pants and a polo shirt.

I'm glad I'm not in high school anymore. Because it would be awkward to be the teenage mother of two teenage boys.

*****
It's Sunday morning now. I'm the only person awake, and I'm watching "Stranger than Fiction," a movie that I really love. I might like Will Ferrell even better in dramatic roles than in comedies. His "Stranger than Fiction's" character's favorite is work, not smiling. And Emma Thompson, Queen Latifah, and Maggie Gyllenhaal (sp?) are great as they always are.  It's good to be up early.

Did you not get the work/smiling reference?  Then go and watch "Elf," right away.

After Mass, I'll be attending a Lularoe home boutique show with some friends. No good will come of this, I promise you. With money in my pocket and the encouragement of well-meaning but misguided friends (both of whom are teachers, which means that actual toddler clothing is acceptable work attire for them), I'll end up with a pile of stretchy polka-dotted sack dresses, peacock-feather printed leggings, and a floppy hat.  With the right pair of Birkenstocks, I can show up at my job as a technical writer at a federal government contractor looking like a jewelry vendor at Lollapalooza, circa 1994.

Maybe I should leave my wallet at home.

I look ridiculous? You're wearing
cupcake-patterned
 leggings. Dumb ass. 

Later, I'm making chicken for dinner, using a video recipe recommended by another friend. The recipe involves a chicken and a Bundt pan, and like every other Internet chicken recipe, it suggests an insanely optimistic cooking time. (Hey!  That was exactly a year ago!) A food writer who believes that a whole chicken stuffed into a Bundt pan and surrounded by lemons and vegetables can go into a 425 degree oven and then come out ready to eat just 55 minutes later has obviously never cooked a chicken, but the friend who recommended the recipe is usually a dependable source of household and cooking advice. Only one way to find out.  Maybe I'll post a cooking diary next week. Don't say you weren't warned.

How do you take down a dictator?

I just finished reading, and looking at, Jason Polan's Every Person in New York, with foreword by Kristen Wiig. She writes that Polan finds and captures the "spark" in ordinary people.  That's why I love this book and these drawings so much. It's why I love to look at people and how they push their hair back and dig in their pockets or their bags for their keys or their phones and laugh at their kids and prop their sunglasses on their heads and all of the other little and ordinary things that people do.  No two are ever alike.

*****

12YO: Is Lent almost over?

No, sadly, Lent is nowhere near almost over. But now, in an entirely predictable development, the long mild winter actually IS almost over, only to be replaced by a freezing cold early spring. As my 15YO says, What in the actual hell? We're expecting our first real snow of the season, on March bloody 14th. At Mass this morning, the priest reminded us that God has a sense of humor.  I don't think He's very funny just about now.

*****

I'm taking a break from the Cazalets to read a math-for-idiots gift book called Math Squared: 100 Concepts You Should Know.  I'd have made the subtitle 100 Concepts THAT You Should Know, but that's just me. I like the relative pronoun.

Home office and workshop of Ralph Baer, inventor
of "the Brown Box," very early home video game
system.  That's a Simon game on the bottom shelf. 

I have written before about my lack of aptitude for abstract concepts, including such ridiculous things as imaginary numbers (I read that chapter twice--still don't get it.)  I distinguish math from math, in that calculations are fairly simple for me, once I understand the concept behind them. It's the concept that eludes me. I suppose that this is connected in some way to my fearsome lack of aptitude for spatial relations and my hideously bad sense of direction.  But gaping knowledge holes bother me, and I try to fill them whenever I can, as best I can. And again, it's Lent--math is nothing if not penitential.

*****
Just in case, after my failure to grasp the idea of imaginary numbers, I needed another reason to feel inferior, I went (finally) to see "Hidden Figures." I feel insulted, as a graduate of public schools and a state university, that I had never heard of Katherine Johnson, Mary Jackson, and Dorothy Vaughan before this movie was released. The movie itself is wonderful--every performance is true and human, and the story and script and pacing are tremendous.  And now I know the difference between a parabolic and an elliptical orbit. That's information that might come in handy one day. Imaginary numbers, however, are still beyond me.  Frankly, I think some joker at MIT made them up.

*****
My sister-in-law and my three-year-old nephew were at my house when we arrived home from the movie. He's a very active little boy. He makes me fight him. Fists up, or sword lifted, or Nerf gun aimed, he yells "AUNT CLAIRE. LET'S FIGHT."

I mean, it's fine for now. My size advantage is significant, and his hand-eye coordination isn't fully mature, so I remain undefeated. I worry about the future, though. He's going to get older, and grow.  I'm going to get older, and shrink. It won't be long before I'll no longer be able to take him down with  physical strength and agility alone, and I'll have to resort to cunning and treachery. Fortunately, I'm not afraid to fight dirty. Scruples are for suckers.

*****

So three weeks later, I still hate my hair.  But I've learned the hard way (which is the way that I learn most things) that the solution to a bad haircut--particularly a too-short bad haircut--is not another haircut. So I wait.

Julia Child's kitchen, recreated at the Smithsonian's Museum
of American history. I like the paintings hanging right on
the cabinets.  Note the odd placement of the trash can.

*****
Speaking of ordinary life (see first paragraph. No, I don't blame you if you forgot already. This post has taken rather a circuitous route to its conclusion), enjoy these pictures of ordinary life lived by extraordinary people.  Julia Child's kitchen is very appealing to me. I love the color of the cabinets, and the pegboard walls are both pretty in themselves and very useful. What I like best is the imperfection and lack of concern for magazine layout aesthetic.  The trashcan is molded plastic (though maybe she'd have had stainless steel if it had been widely available) and the clock above the sink, which you cannot see in this shot, is shockingly ugly--white with birchwood trim. Very 1984.  Likewise Ralph Baer's home office, above.  I would love to own the green toolboxes with the tiny drawers, and it's clear that he arranged his personal items and mementos in a way that was visually pleasing to himself.  Some of those mementos are hideous, though, and the chair on which he sat is repaired with silver duct tape. People lived in these spaces.  They pushed their hair back and laughed at their friends or their children (Julia Child, famously, didn't have children; Ralph Baer did, I guess, because there are Father's Day cards propped on his shelves.)  Maybe every so often, they thought that they'd like a fancier space; or that they should paint, or organize, or buy a nicer trashcan or a new chair.  But most of the time, they were busy living and working and being themselves, and they didn't have time to worry about what their houses looked like. That's a good way to be.

*****

In my own dojo!

This title makes no sense, does it? I was sick in bed on Friday night, watching "Mean Girls," and I thought I'd use that line as a title, and then let the rest worry about itself.  But I'm going to leave it there. There might be need some day to take down a dictator, and it doesn't hurt to start thinking about it.  Meanwhile, I'm nothing if not oppressed, living under the regime of a three-year-old madman who makes me fight to the death in my own home.   As Bertie Wooster said, sometimes you need to let dictators know where they get off. Pugnacious toddlers: Beware. Sleep with one eye open.

Bravely facing the applause

Lent: 3 days (almost) down.  400 to go. Sigh.

*****

I don't write about pop culture very often. I wrote about the Oscars two years ago, here, and one other time on my old blog--2008, maybe.  Most pop culture bloggers would think it necessary to post an Oscar recap sometime within 24 hours of the actual event, but I just don't roll that way.

I was kind of dreading the telecast; in fact, I almost didn't watch it at all.  Anyone who's been here for five minutes knows how I feel about the 45th President, and I'm also not one of those people who thinks that celebrities shouldn't express political opinions.  I'm just getting so kill-me-now bored with all of Hollywood, and the entire Internet, falling all over themselves to be the biggest of all resisters.  Newsflash: It doesn't take that much courage to stand in front of an auditorium containing the whole entertainment industry, and express your dislike of Donald Trump.  But to my surprise, the stick-it-to-the-man Trump outrage and tedious identity politics were more subdued than usual.  And the show, even without Lady Gaga, was very good.

Highlights:

• Justin Timberlake, in possibly my favorite-ever Oscar opening number.  There's nothing I didn't love about this performance. 
• Jimmy Kimmel, to my great surprise. The Meryl Streep and Matt Damon roasts were hilarious ("Chinese ponytail movie" killed me), and the tour bus visit, though possibly not his idea, was brilliantly executed and so much fun to watch. 
• Sara Bareilles, to my even greater surprise. I'm not a fan of her singing or songwriting, but I loved that performance. In fact, all of the musical performances were very good. 
• Viola Davis!  Finally!  I believe every word that she says on screen, and every look, and every gesture. I'm so happy to see her brilliance recognized. 

Not so highlights:

• Anousheh Ansari reading Asghar Farhadi's statement after the Iranian filmmaker won the Best Foreign Language Film Oscar for "The Salesman." I hate almost everything that Donald Trump has said and done since January 20, especially the travel ban (both 1.0 and 2.0.) And of course, Mr. Farhadi has every right to say whatever he thinks, either himself or through his representative. But how is it possible that no one in the room recognized the irony of a human rights scolding coming from an Iranian?  Did no one who applauded Ansari's speech consider the welcome that many Hollywood people would receive in the Islamic Republic?  At the risk of sounding xenophobic, I'll just point out that if you're an LGBT person in Iran, uncooperative bakeries and florists are the very least of your worries.  And for women in that country, the term "slut shaming" takes on an entirely new meaning. 
• Denzel?  Kind of a jerk.  He seemed annoyed at the tourists, and would it have been so hard for him to crack a smile at Casey Affleck when Affleck acknowledged him from the stage? I'm not a Casey Affleck fan either, but that was a rather gracious gesture, and Washington didn't give him an inch. Maybe he's just getting crusty with age. 
• I'm glad I don't work at PWC.  Well, I was already glad that I don't work at PWC, but now I'm REALLY glad.  They had one job, as the hashtag goes.  

At some point, I'll comment on the latest Trump scandal. With any luck, he'll have already resigned by the time I get around to it, making yet another post irrelevant.

*****
4 days down, 399 to go. 

Help desk

It always starts with just one little thing, right? You notice a tiny bit of dirt on the floor, and then six hours later, all of your furniture is on the front lawn, because you had to pull up the carpet to vacuum underneath.

No? So that's just me?

Well, anyway, the furniture's not really on the front lawn, because I'm sitting on it. But the point is that I started doing just one thing, and then ended up down a seemed-like-a-good-idea-at-the-time rabbit hole of what could possibly go wrong. It's figurative furniture, on an imaginary lawn. The less said, the better. Nothing to see here.  Move along.

*****
I learned a bunch of new things today, including some of-the-moment Maryland teenage slang that I won't bother to define here, because what is this, Urban Dictionary? We had hoped to see Barry Trotz win his 700th game as an NHL coach, but what we saw instead was a sad beatdown of my beloved Capitals by the Nashville Predators, of all teams. And why is there hockey in Nashville, anyway?  I'm not worried; they're still the best team in the NHL.

Nashville? Whatever.

*****

I'm now on the second volume of The Cazalet Chronicles. At the end of the first book, the extended Cazalet family and all of its servants and connections were breathing a sigh of relief as Neville Chamberlain returned home from Germany, having made a dishonorable agreement with Hitler that forestalled war, which had seemed inevitable. As we all know now (and as most of the Cazalets knew even then), the reprieve was only temporary.  As the first book opens, the reprieve has ended and the family is readying for another terrible war, barely 20 years after the last one, which was supposed to end all wars.

My computer has been behaving strangely.  I cleaned the disk (I don't really know what that means, but I did it) and ran a virus scan, and now everything is fine, but I'm afraid that this too is a temporary reprieve.

*****

Yes, I know exactly how bad that sounded.  That's the point.

Late last week, I went to check my to-do list, and I realized that I just didn't care very much about any of the various tasks and chores that I had assigned to myself. More than that, though--I didn't even care about the list itself. I had actually already done two of the things, and hadn't even bothered to cross them off.  What is wrong with me, I thought.  But I knew what was wrong. The fog had descended again.

Sadness isn't the worst part of the periodic depressive episodes that plague me.  The lethargy and lack of interest in regular normal things is worse.  And worse still is the inward focus and self-absorption that make it quite normal to compare a potential hard drive crash to a world war that killed 50 million people. Thankfully, this episode is coming to an end almost as quickly as it began. Which means that I have some catching up to do. I haven't crossed off a single thing this week.

One thing (or two)

It's stupid to cry over a bad haircut, isn't it?  Yes, I know. But sometimes the stupid things are the things you cry about. And by "you," I mean "me." Or "I." Use the subjective or objective case, as appropriate. 

*****

I had 76 visitors in one day; rather a high number for me. I wasn't going to post anything this week, but I'd hate to disappoint such a huge reading public. But I don't really have much to say, so I'll just share this little collection of pictures that I took yesterday at the National Gallery of Art. I took many more; maybe I'll post them another time.  

I have a weakness for museum gift shops and the NGA's gift shops are the best. I bought a canvas tote bag, because I love canvas tote bags; and a book, Every Person in New York, by the great Jason Polan.  Great art can't fix a bad haircut, but it makes me feel a little better. And my hair will grow.

*****

The Lo Shu: The number of the total is
fifty; of these forty-nine are used. 

Robert Henri, Snow in New York. 

Andy Warhol, A Boy for Meg.
This, I suppose, really is "fake news."

Edouard Vuillard, Child Wearing a Red Scarf. 

George Bellows, New York. 

Jackson Pollock, Number 7

On Kawara, One Thing, 1965, Viet-Nam.
Well, two things, actually--I was born in 1965. 

Pierre Bonnard,
Paris, Rue de Parme on Bastille Day

Alfred Stieglitz. City of Ambition. 

Pierre Bonnard, Work Table

Management not responsible for the next 15 minutes of your life

I have no idea, really, what to write about this week.  I suppose I don't need to write anything, but I've been posting on a more or less weekly basis, and I feel compelled for some reason to keep that up.

*****

It's Friday night. My husband is working. My kids have no plans and are happily hanging out at home.  I cook almost every night, so on Friday nights, we order pizza, or I make some kind of frozen non-food.  Tonight it was chicken taquitos.  I put them in the oven, determined not to touch them myself, but then halfway through my third one, I had to admit: Frozen chicken taquitos are delicious.

*****
Now it's Saturday morning. I watched news for a little while when I got up. I know that I should wean myself from MSNBC, but I can't look away from the daily Trump outrage onslaught.  It's not his policies that bother me so much (although most of them are bad enough); it's the in-your-face contempt for the law, for the opposition, for the citizenry, and for everything and everyone other than Trump and his family and his minions. I'm not surprised, of course.  If I give Trump credit for anything, it's for not ever having pretended to be anything that he isn't (other than fit to hold public office, that is.) His supporters worked really hard to get all of us to believe that Donald Trump the swaggering, bullying, ignorant lout was just an act; all we had to do was vote for him and he'd reveal himself as Donald Trump, statesman and patriotic billionaire, willing to sacrifice his own interests, just to serve his beloved country. And just enough people believed that story. And at 12:01 PM on January 20, he was exactly the same Donald Trump that he'd always been, but now as leader of the free (for now) world.  And we're stuck with him, maybe for four years, maybe even for eight.

*****

When I was really young, living on my own in a tiny apartment in West Philadelphia, I used to wash my clothes at the laundromat around the corner. There were signs all over the place--on the washers and dryers, on the machines that dispensed tiny boxes of detergent, on the walls and doors--reminding customers to keep track of their clothes.  "Management not responsible for lost articles." "Please collect all items before you leave." "Management not responsible for damaged articles." My friends and I used to call every piece of clothing an item, or an article. "I like that article,"  you'd say, complimenting a friend on her Benetton sweater; or "I'm broke, but I have to go shopping--I don't have a single item to wear."  I remember this at odd times, like when I'm folding laundry.  Or like when I watched Kellyanne Conway's QVC appearance.  "Go buy Ivanka's articles," I thought, paraphrasing Kellyanne. "It's a wonderful line--I have several items myself."  That was apropos of nothing, of course.  Except that Kellyanne's probably lying, even about that--she probably doesn't own a single Ivanka article.

*****

It's Saturday evening now, and we're all home again, watching the Capitals play the Anaheim Ducks.  Never mind the absurdity of the existence of ice hockey in Southern California nor the ridiculousness of an NHL team named after a Disney movie.  Hockey is awesome, especially Washington Capitals hockey. This is a particularly good time to be a Capitals fan--Alexander Ovechkin's 1,000th career point, Nicklas Backstrom's 500th assist, the NHL's 100th anniversary, and Fatima Al Ali, all in one season.  How improbable that a young woman who plays for the United Arab Emirates' women's national team (itself an improbability) would be discovered by retired Capital Peter Bondra, who would learn that Fatima is a Capitals fan and who would then think to himself that it would be awesome to get the Capitals to fly her to Washington to see a game and to meet Alex Ovechkin, her favorite player? And how much more unlikely that he'd actually propose his idea to the team, who would say "sure, why not?" And so Fatima did come to Washington, and she met her favorite players, and she dropped the ceremonial puck at Thursday night's game against the Red Wings, and took a selfie, right there on center ice, with Alex Ovechkin and Hendrik Zetterberg smiling behind her.

Like most Americans, I have mixed feelings about Islam. It's stupid to pretend that the mass shooting in San Bernardino was just another incident of "gun violence;" or that no-go neighborhoods in Paris and Berlin and Brussels are an invention of far-right Islamophobes, and that the citizens of those cities who live in fear of mass shootings or vehicle assaults are cowardly xenophobes.  But we have to find a way to defend our own freedom, without denying it to others. We can be the country that firmly refuses to allow fanatics of any faith to impose their beliefs on the rest of us, and we can also invite a devout female Muslim hockey fan to share the ice with the greatest hockey player in the world, smiling and radiant in hijab and a Capitals jersey.

*****

It's Sunday now, and a post that started on frozen taquitos ended on radical Islam and world peace through hockey, with a few gratuitous shots at the Trump administration, just for fun. I literally cleaned out a cabinet, right in the middle of writing this very paragraph. Adult ADD is no joke.   The Capitals won (again) last night, and Fatima Al Ali is probably home in the UAE now, and I have plenty of items to wash and fold, and plenty of things to clean.  Stick around; I'll be watching hockey and organizing cabinets until spring.

Peace in our time

I like to finish what I start.  Sometimes it takes longer than one might expect; over 25 years, for example, to finish my bachelor's degree (Summa cum Laude, of course, but still--25 years!)  If I start reading a book, I will usually force myself to finish it, no matter what.

Or rather, I used to force myself to finish it.  In the last six months, I've abandoned four books.  A combination of too-busyness and age have made me hyper-conscious of how relatively little time I have in the world; how relatively little time any of us have, in fact.  I have a lot to do, not just in a day, but forever.  A lot that I need to do before I die.

*****

Well. That took an unexpected turn, didn't it?  Maybe I need to turn off MSNBC for five minutes.  Back to the books.

Walker Percy, of all people,  wrote a satirical self-help book called Lost in the Cosmos, which was published in 1983. I'd never heard of it, and I thought that Walker Percy had died years before 1983, but Lost in the Cosmos ended up on my bookshelf one way or another, and I started to read it.  Maybe my sense of humor is lacking, because despite tons of reviews that describe this book as hilariously funny in a sly tongue-in-cheek way, I just didn't get it.  And I find also (age-related again, probably) that I just don't have any patience with casual sexism, even taking historical context into account. So I bailed on Walker Percy, right in the middle of chapter 2.

That meant that I had to find something else to read.  I started on Christina Stead's House of All Nations, which is the kind of book that I usually love, but I put it down about 10 pages in.  Maybe I'll try to read it again, but not now.  I'm not really sure why I didn't want to finish it in the first place. It's a period novel set in pre-WWII Europe.  What's not to love?  Too French, maybe, in the way that a novel about the French written by an Australian (or any other non-French author) would be. So much jaded upper-class infidelity and intrigue; so much sophisticated elegance and glamour, and all in the first chapter. I couldn't keep up that pace for 300 or more pages.

House of All Nations is set in Paris in the late 1930s, and the late 1930s is an historical period of particular interest to me, especially now.  Two years or so ago, I was sure that the world order that most of us Americans and Europeans have taken for granted for the last 70 years or so was soon to collapse.  I wrote about this here, and here, and here. In fact, I've been preoccupied with political upheaval and the breakdown of civilization for pretty much my whole life, from age 10 or so on. I'm a lot of fun to hang out with.

Part of this is just because I'm a recreational worrier. The worst case scenario is usually the default option for me.  But now, I feel that I have a real, actual reason to worry, based on just looking at and listening to the world. Until very recently, I didn't talk much about the end of the world as we know it (or once knew it, because it's probably already too late), even with my friends. I was sure that they'd think I was crazy. Now, though, I'm right in the mainstream.   It's 1999.  Everyone is waiting for everything to hit the fan.

*****
But again, back to the original problem: What to read?  I didn't want to finish House of All Nations, but I did want want to return to the mid 1930s, and not just because I wanted a how-to manual for history that's about to repeat itself.  A few weeks ago, I bought a Kindle edition of The Cazalet Chronicles, so I started on that, and now I'm pretty sure that I'm going to accomplish nothing until I read all thousand-plus pages.  SO good.  I have no idea how it's possible that I had never heard of either the books (it's a series) or Elizabeth Jane Howard, the author, but for the next few days, I'll be all agog as the Cazelets and all of their servants breeze through 1937 and 1938 without a care in the world, only to be thrown headlong into the cataclysm of 1939.

I almost feel sorry for them, long-dead imaginary people that they are. They have no idea what's coming.