Amaryllis sillyramA

C. is so great. And she has wonderful books, and we trust each other, and so we trade-lend books with each other. It’s a good arrangement, since I am not really allowed into bookstores any more.

Lately she has lent me the first few of Laura Ingalls Wilder’s books. I never understood until now why so many people love them. They are really quite amazing and I can’t wait to read them all.

Also read lately:

No Touch Monkey! (Halliday) — omg, Ayun is coming to speak here next month! Yay!
The Calligrapher (Docx) — if you want to enjoy this book most fully, don’t read the back cover, and don’t read the front cover either.
Fluke — Christopher Moore, mm-mm-good. I keep hoping to run into him around here someday. Probably best not to — I’d end up speechless and embarrassed and barfing or crying or something. He just makes awesome books.
Little Children (Perrotta) — hrm. It’s a good book, but most of the children in it are dumb as rocks, which bothered me enough to distract from the story. But then my nieces and nephews are all brilliant, so I suppose I should give the poor characters a break.
Dry — more Augusten Burroughs. I’m glad I read the most recent of his books first. So I know he’s okay.
Pobby and Dingan (Rice) — recommended.
The Final Solution (Chabon) — and now I must read The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay.

And currently reading:

Shopgirl — very different from the other Steve Martin book I’ve read (the pleasure of my company)
The Sorcerer’s Apprentice (Shah) — really great so far, but just started.
Anything You Say Can and Will Be Used Against You (Drummond) — good stuff, but difficult to read at night what with the violence and all.

And next up:

Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life (Rosenthal) — Looks hilarious. I’ve only looked at the cover and the first few pages, but so far it makes me wish I’d come up with all of it.
Bel Canto (Patchett)
The Remains of the Day (Ishiguro)
Foul Matter (Grimes)
The Lust Lizard of Melancholy Cove (Moore)
The Partly Cloudy Patriot (Vowell) — I love Sarah Vowell!

Edit:
Finished Shop Girl this morning, couldn’t put it down. Steve Martin is a strange man. With a firm grasp on a certain — uncommon? — kind of cruelty.

Last night at the grocery store I remembered that I’ve been wanting to cook a big pot of beans. So I got some bulk pinto beans. Pinto beans are the best because they remind me of Mama, my Dad’s mother. She would have been 107 this year. She had a funny story involving pinto beans, according to one of her daughters, but I never heard the story. Maybe I’ll ask my Dad if he knows.

Later I dreamt about the beans. Someone had decided to cook them, but there wasn’t time enough. Luckily they didn’t use them all up.

I haven’t cooked the beans yet but I did finally do the beets last night. Suddenly I love beets, don’t know why, always was repulsed by them before. So I cooked some for the first time, and they turned out beautifully. Beautiful beets.

Then I saved the beautiful beet water and I’m dying a pair of white undies. I’d forgotten about them until just now. They’re still sitting in the beet water on the kitchen counter. They ought to be pretty darn pink by now.

Our apple tree is getting a major haircut. All the highest branches are going, and it is bound to be funny-looking.

Here are some of those high vertical branches on a dramatic spring backdrop.

They’re immortal now. And famous.

M. and I were talking with our friend John the other night, and it came out that he’d only had three jobs, ever. Whereas M. and I have each had quite a few.. so we started trying to remember all the jobs we’ve had. It was hard! I still don’t believe I’ve remembered all of mine.

Babysitting was first, of course.

Chrissy and Lissy, for oh so many years. They’re both married now. (Help me.)

The infant from next door with the nutball TMer mom.

Jennifer and Adam across the street (oh dear, that poor hamster). Occasionally I would babysit them across town at their dad’s house. He had them a couple days a month. And he had to hire a sitter. Nice.

Valerie, the ten-year-old who caught me watching scrambled porn.

The two-year-old who wanted to play with a big kitchen knife. There were a lot of bees in the yard, and I had to figure out how to not freak out about that.

Crystal’s little cousin. Spent most of that job watering the lawn by hand.

I can’t remember any more of those gigs at the moment.

The other jobs:

Picking blueberries — awesome job since I wasn’t doing it for a living

Flipping burgers at Gulliver’s (back when they operated out of a shack on one of the busiest corners in town — there’s an enormous hotel there now)

Cold calling for a market research company — only job I’ve ever walked out on

Packaging software — I think it was r:base but not 100% sure. They were competing with Microsoft (there was indeed a time when MS had competition)

The undergraduate library

Temporary jobs:

KC records and elections — a place full of silly-sounding legalese and lawyers with great big cell phones

Filing at a car dealership — after one day, decided not to subject myself to the harassment and declined to go back

Filing at a very tall building downtown

Inventory research for a recall at a major truck company — I was way young, poorly trained, and afraid to ask questions, and I did a horrible job. Fortunately the defect was not a life-threatening one

Doing something at an office park near my house — the job is completely forgotten, but the lunch hour was awesome. I’d sit on the curb in the parking lot and listen to the red-winged blackbirds singing their heads off, looking for mates.

Microsoft — some kind of warehouse work, not quite sure what. The supervisor was dating one of the other temps.

Microdi*k — software duplication company, entirely dependent on microsoft. Signed on for only three weeks, learned a great deal about how not to treat employees. Heh: just found an interesting article about how the company went under:
http://www.inc.com/magazine/19971101/1349.html

Next: a large but independent book store, counting money all day — lasted over a year there, but finally couldn’t stand the co-workers any longer (there being but two varieties: crazy or cruel)

A short break, then the undergraduate library again (went back to school)

And the current library — ten years so far, woo hoo!

For each job, I will elaborate further in future posts.

I dreamt my sister and her girlfriend were splitting up because the girlfriend got Oprah pregnant.

Terrible.