Archive for April, 2010

I like to read.  A lot.  I have a book “in progress” at any moment. I even have different books stashed in all areas of my house in case I happen to have a free moment, at which point, I’ll pick up that book and start reading. I even have a book in my car for times when I’m waiting for people or stuck at trains.  I can’t help it, this has always been my habit.  Right now, I’ve just finished a few terrific ones.

I say this all the time, even though I’m a  school librarian, I try not to review books (unless I find them terribly horrible and even then, I try to be polite about it.)  I don’t want to push a student (or anyone) away from a book just because I don’t like it, or think it’s subpar. Think about it, how else are you supposed to be able to distinguish between poor, ok, good and excellent literature if you aren’t exposed to all kinds?  I read my share of books that are OK and that’s fine with me.  Each book serves a purpose and I’m just as thankful for light, entertaining, mindless fun books, and the intense, suspenseful, life-changing books as I am for the nostalgic, old friend, comfortable couch like books.

Having said that….here are some recent books that I have found to be terrific and dare I say spectacular:

After Ever After by Jordan Sonnenblick.  I love this author. I love all of his books. I love that he used to be a middle school teacher.  Here’s a bit of history about the author.  The story goes (I heard him give this speech, so I know it’s accurate) that he had a student who was going through a rough time at home.  Her brother had just been diagnosed with cancer.  He asked the student’s mother if he could recommend some books for her to read, to help her cope with what was happening, but he couldn’t find any books that would help this particular student.  Sooo, he wrote one for her.  How amazing is that?  That book was called Drums, Girls and Dangerous Pie.  It was funny, moving, emotional and pretty incredible.  He’s written a few more since then and I’ve enjoyed them all.  In February, his latest book, a follow up to Drums, was released and it’s called After Ever After.  I laughed out loud at parts, cried at others and found it very satisfying overall. I know I’m be vague about the actual story, but I don’t want to give anything away.  Go to your local library, check it out, give it a read, and let me know what you think.

The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins.  I’m not sure I’m able to speak coherently about this book yet.  It was so spectacular that I’m still recovering from the read.  It’s been on my “List” for a while because it’s been the rave of middle school and high school librarians for about two years, but I just haven’t gotten around to it.  This year it’s one of the 20 books nominated for the Rebecca Caudill Young Readers’ Book Award for grades 4-8. My school participates in this award, and it’s about this time of year that I start reading the nominees and figuring out which ones are appropriate for my 4/5th graders.  (Two years ago The Lightning Thief by Rick Riordan won….incredible book…another special treat.)

While The Hunger Games is not quite appropriate for my students, for anyone older than 13 or 14  I say go for it!  (side note: this is a perfect book for a parent to read with a teenager…lots of deep discussion material here and I promise you’ll find it exciting, fascinating and thought provoking). It’s about the US in the not so distant future, which has become a dystopian society divided into 12 districts.  Districts vary in jobs, wealth, resources and life is not pleasant.  In an effort to control and oppress the citizens, the Capitol hosts the annual Hunger Games where 2 tributes from each district (one boy and one girl from 12-18) are chosen lottery style and dumped into an arena competing to become the last one standing.  It’s brutal, intense, ridiculously addictive (I stayed up all night to finish reading and then I finally took a breath) and a fascinating story.  I’m so glad I finally read it, annoyed it took me so long and really want to share it with others.  The characters are well-developed, rounded, unpredictable and very believable.  Highly recommended.

Books I’m reading right now:
Heat Wave by Richard Castle — I’m a big fan of the TV show and I just borrowed the book from a coworker.
To Kill a Mockingbird – This is my “car read” right now  – loaded on my ipod

Books I’m looking forward to reading soon:
Dead in the Family by Charlaine Harris — out in early May
The Gregor series (by Suzanne Collins)

Happy reading!

So do you remember that post I wrote last year about working on some projects in my yard?  Remember, I showed you this picture?

Well, this is what my yard looked like this morning. (minus all the grass, which we killed last year with copious amounts of weed killer – you can tell someone went a little crazy with the spray bottle and killed some of the lawn, too)

No, you’re not missing something…I didn’t do diddily squat with my yard in the past year, but after 3 hours of work today, this is what that little section (not so little, it was 18X2) looks like now…….

TaaaaDaaa!!  It’s amazing how one project can make you feel so much better about the state of your yard.  We pulled up all the dead branches, replaced the gross wooden border planks with new concrete edging and removed some of the rocks. I was going to take out all of the rocks until I realized how many of them we had and how heavy they are.  There are now three layers of landscaping, but we’re only responsible for this layer. I didn’t know there was one underneath until we had half of this done. Instead, we just added another layer of weed cover and put down some rubber mulch, which I love! It was about twice the price as the cedar mulch we used in the front of the house, but it’s supposed to keep  it’s color for 12 years.  We’ve already added 10 additional bags of mulch in the front over the past two years, easily equaling what we spent today.  We’ll see how it holds up.  I like the idea of using something recycled, too and I’m hoping the strong rubber smell will dissipate with time.

I still have to figure out what I’m planting in those pots (there will be one more). I was thinking about roses, but I’ve heard they are temperamental and I don’t have a great track record.  I think I may just put some begonias or lilies or even some geraniums.

Off to rest my sore arms and plan my container garden.  I’m open to any plant suggestions, but the area gets mostly full sun and I need plants that are hardy.

For the next stage of my organizational frenzy, I decided to clean out our (mostly my) closet for once and for all!  I have clothes in there from high school, which haven’t fit me in a very long time.  Some from college and some I bought on a whim, which is not how I usually buy clothes and every time I do it, I regret it.   I also figured it was time our closet had some rhyme and reason.  We don’t have a door on the closet, just curtains.  I removed the door a few years ago and never got around to putting  a new one up. I’d like a slider door, but they all seem to be covered in mirrors or look really cheap. Neither of those options are going to work for me.

After a really enjoyable Spring Break, I decided that I had to clean out the closet RIGHT THEN and we had to go to Sam’s to buy a closet organizer so I could make the closet shiny and pretty.

I should stop listening to myself.

This is the view of the closet before doing anything. Yes, I know it’s a disaster.  Let  me comment on a few items.  The box in the top left corner of the first picture is full of cable wires, computer cords and other technical miscellanea. In the top right corner of the last picture, that’s a big container of cat toys that I’ve completely forgotten about.  Poor Billy and Nina are so deprived.  The stack of clothes next to the Poor, Forgotten Cat Toys are some of Jose’s old clothes that are too big for him.

Now onto the fun part  — identifying and sorting what’s in the closet and figuring out what to keep, what to trash and what to donate to Goodwill.

One of the first things I found was my Painting shirt.  This shirt, as you can tell, is covered with all the colors of my house.  I can look at it and see which rooms I painted in this shirt.  The big yellowish hand is The Pumpkin-colored Hand of Jason – ala the White Hand of Saruman from Lord of the Rings.

Of course this was a Keep.

This is a close up look at Jose’s Far Side t-shirt collection. They don’t fit anymore, so after years and years they are finally leaving the house.   Goodwill pile.

In the picture on the right, my donate pile is in the center and my keep pile is on the far right, almost everything else on the bed is either donate or trash.  Not bad.

Views of the sad, empty closet.  It’s also ugly.

Finally, after 1 hour of sorting and 45 minutes of building THIS is my new, organized closet!  What do you think?  I have some more things to put in here that will clean out my dresser drawers a bit, but I’m very happy.

Took a car load (2 giant bags and a box) of clothes to Goodwill and threw away some things that really needed to be tossed.  I put the old clothes that I wanted to keep but no longer fit into a storage bin in the attic.

Feels good. Looks better.