I probably need more horseshoes and clover.

I have been having just a little more than my fair share of bad luck lately. Nothing devastating, but it is starting to add up and get annoying. I maintain good humor throughout by assuring myself that at the other end of this I will win the lottery or have some other stroke of fantastic good fortune.

Yesterday my husband was in our attic trying to track down the source of our bad luck roof leak. He couldn't find it, came down, and went about his day. He didn't notice the furry, moronic stowaway. Last night I am putting our son to sleep when I hear sad cat noises coming from the ceiling.

Now, Mr. Bolamas is a mostly great cat. He does cute stuff and has soft fur. But we got him from a shelter, and I often wonder if his early years of living on the street didn't short out some of his synapses, as he seems barely equipped to deal with the not-at-all rigorous life of an indoor cat.

So we drag out the ladder and Nort springs from his bed yelling, "I can help you!! I'll get the flashlight!!" Clearly, bedtime will not be going smoothly this evening.

Eventually I coax the cat over to the trapdoor and pick him up. All is fine until I try to get step back on the ladder. Bolamas gets a war flashback look in his eyes and starts making terrified noises like GLAAARGHH GLAAAARGGGHHH as he rips pieces of my shoulder out trying to claw his way back into the attic. He then runs around freaking out and creating clouds of fiberglass insulation and cat fur.

It is during Mike's turn at cat extraction that things go from bad and scratchy to horribly wrong. Bolamas is cornered and caught, and I hear Mike walking toward the ladder. Then I hear crashing, yelling, more GLAAARGGGHHH! and the thunderous noise of what I immediately assume are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse descending on our upstairs landing. Turns out it was just huge pieces of our ceiling falling down. Wait, is that better?

Mike has fallen through our attic floor. His legs dangle down next to the smoke detector like a creepy chandelier. Bolamas claws him in the face and runs away again. It is at once awful (Mike hurt himself, but more importantly we just got the damn hallway painted! ) and hilarious (self explanatory).

In the end, I wrapped our cat in a towel and we taped garbage bags over the hole. Problem solved.

The Great Gatsby

This book is beautiful. The words themselves are stunning.

Like everyone else, I read this book for the first time in high school, under duress. The only thing I remember was that I was glad it was short. I picked it back up again because my best friend suggested I read F. Scott Fitzgerald's short stories. I found those to be almost personal affronts, because every single story seemed to be about people bursting with youth and vitality. In fact, their defining characteristics were naivete, beauty and wealth. Since I was at the time feeling particularly old, homely and broke, I didn't feel like reading about those rich young bastards.

Almost everyone in the Great Gatsby is around 30, so I immediately felt better.

The writing is so elegant and effortless. Every descriptive phrase Fitzgerald uses feels fresh. There is no trite "inky black night" or "laughter like bells" here. There is a kind of magic to his words.

Since I don't get a lot of sleep, I'm having trouble articulating exactly what it is about this book that I found so enchanting. I will tell you one thing, the next book I read will most definitely not be about ill fated love. I'm going to read some non fiction about whales or physics principles, because this is emotionally draining.

Gist: Gatsby has loved Daisy since his youth and plots to reconnect/impress her/win her love. Spoiler: It does not go as planned.

These desperate, selfish people made me sad. Things are going in a horrible, awkward direction but clearly there will be no changing course. You are embarrassed FOR the characters... this has never happened to me as a reader before. It made me literally uncomfortable. Like I was seeing something I shouldn't be seeing.

Read it if you like lovely sentence structure and aren't looking for a happy ending.

Brief conversations with folks I meet.

Scene: a yard sale, where there is a bookcase for sale that is exactly like one we already have.

Players: me, and some guy with a poor idea about how to price things at a yard sale.

Hanna: Hi! Is the bookcase still for sale?

Seller: Oh, this lovely library? It was handmade in India, you know. We paid $1,200 for it. Handmade in India.

This is bad news. Nobody tells you they paid over a thousand dollars for something, reminds you twice that it was handmade in another country, and calls it by a fancy name if they are planning to sell it for $20 at a yard sale.

Hanna: How much are you asking?

Seller: It was handmade in India, and cost us $1,200. We want $600.

At a yard sale! And let's not forget that I already have the same bookcase at home, and know he is full of crap.

Long pause.

Hanna: Did you get this at Ikea?

Longer pause.

Seller: Yes.





Scene Two: Halloween. My porch.

Players: Me, some kid dressed like a pirate.

Kid: *silently digging around our candy bowl picking the best stuff out*

Hanna: That's a cool sword!

Kid: *looks up like I just said "that's a cool princess costume you have on"*

Hanna: Cool sword?

Kid: It's a machete.

As in- it's a machete, you idiot. The "you idiot" was just dangling unsaid in the air between us.

Hanna: *snatches candy bowl away from snotty pirate* One Butterfinger per customer, pal.

I do not like people knowing my business.

Unfortunately, sometimes this is unavoidable. Obviously the checkout person at the grocery store knows a vast amount about my business, in the one specific area of my eating habits. She knows I can't cook, and I'm probably the only person in the entire area to buy pickled beets every week. But at least she has the decorum not to say anything!

I was in the library yesterday returning some books, paying my fine, and getting out some other books. You know, typical library activities. The librarian inspected each book like she was making notes in the mental file she keeps on me. Then she looks me right in the face and says, "Do you like this author, or are you doing a report on him?"

Immediately, my stomach started hurting. I love this series, but I never recommend it to people because the subject matter is a little dicey. To start: the author wears an eye patch. The main character, who I always pictured as looking like an old friend of mine, is a private eye/total criminal who investigates stuff with his "family" (also criminals) and kills people.

I'm 32 years old. The last report I remember writing and submitting in a clear plastic binder was on Henry Hudson. What the hell kind of report does she think I may be writing as a grown up and based on these books? "10 Ways to Kill People" by Hanna. "Fashion Ideas: Eyepatches and Guns". Or, "Making Your Own Family Out of Criminal Associates".

As it happens, I do have some ideas of my own: "How to Make Nosy Librarians Dissapear" is at the top of the "future reports I might write" list. So what I like to read books about bad guys? I bet her reading list is all bodice rippers about pirates ravaging peasant girls.

It was like a clown teapot.

I thought I would make some nice tea this afternoon. Then I noticed my teapot was making a funny noise.

Items removed from teapot:

Toy airplane propeller
Wine bottle cork
Yogurt covered raisins (7)
Hairclip
Pretzel rods (3)
Unidentified chewed up plastic thing
Crushed Oreo (approx. 2 tablespoons)

I'm not sure if my son has been putting one thing in the teapot every day for two weeks, or if he decided to cram this variety of gross things in there one magical afternoon.

Can you imagine the other magpie-like collections that are at this very moment waiting to be discovered? Tweezers and a button in the camera case! Eight pens, a washcloth, and a pickle in my shoe! The possibilities are endless.

Instead of tea, I had juice.

Parenting. Maybe I should take some sort of class.

Me: Hey Nort, what's in your mouth?

Nort: Just a battery.

!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Team Jacob

Yeah, I read Twilight. And New Moon. And Eclipse.

I read the first one because my sister recommended it, the second because some girls from my new neighborhood invited me to see the movie, and the third because the second one ends on kind of a cliffhanger.

I'm done now though. This isn't necessarily a bad review, because the books are certainly entertaining. But this series is messing with my emotions. There is so much teenage angst that it is making my stomach hurt. Two people so in love they can't function without the other. The searing pain of unrequited love. Choosing between two men who love you equally but offer very different futures. ENOUGH.

If I want to read more emotional disaster bullshit like this I'll dig out my diary from high school.

All the Pretty Horses

I almost gave up on this book. It's a little heavy handed with the dramatic descriptive phrasing, which always drives me crazy (hello, White Oleander).

But I'm glad I hung in there, because I ended up loving the story.

Two friends leave their home in Texas on horseback, and ride to Mexico in search of a new life. Along the way they meet some folks and have some adventures.

I was very moved by the spare writing style. There is not a lot of dialogue, and much is put into describing the landscape. Textures and sounds. The mood of the book is hard to describe, but I'll say it is kind of like an ache. There clearly won't be an ending with white doves and balloons, and I kept waiting for someone to die. It's the kind of book where you just know someone is going to die. Despite my somber description, there is something of a happy ending, and I felt it suited the story and characters well.

The book reads very masculine to me. Living off the land, using your wits to survive, working and sweating in the sun... it struck me as being the kind of thing a man would wish for. Especially a man who currently wears a suit to work and spends 50 hours a week in an office toiling under a florescent light. This book is the opposite of that.

At its heart, this is an adventure book. Love, friendship, adventure. And horses. Thumbs up.

Books. I'm going to read some.

Sooo, I used to be quite the reading fanatic. In grade school I spent approximately 70% of my time reading books under my desk and not paying attention. The other 30% I spent daydreaming and not paying attention. This is probably why today I am terrible at Trivial Pursuit.


I've fallen off the book bandwagon pretty hard lately because I'm busy. HOWEVER, I have a whole shelf of books that survived the move (as in, I didn't give them away) just waiting to be read. I have decided to force myself to at least start all of them. If they are still boring by page 50 I'm not slogging through the whole thing.



In the past I have tried to alternate between brainy books and fun books. I suffer through some long, dusty literary masterpiece (The Sound and The Fury: I thought I would go mad trying to make sense of that book. Suck it, Faulkner.) and then reward myself with a book intended for pre-teens (The Westing Game: Best Book Ever).


I'm starting with National Book Award winner All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy. We'll see. I hope it is about actual horses, because I don't do so well in cases where, say, the horse is a metaphor for something else. I'm thinking, that was a book about nice horses! Meanwhile, the NYTimes book review is all, "the horse figure acts as a stand in for her absent father and indicates that the central character has broken free from her oppressive childhood..."






Keep an eye out for my book review. Probably it will be like, "Whee! Horses!" But I might throw some big words in there just to impress everyone.

Picture dump

Sometimes I draw a picture and then get bored with the subject before I get around to writing about it. Here are those lost souls with crappy truncated explanations. Hey, not every post is going to be gold people.

We were at the playground, and Nort spied some other kid eating eating a lollipop. Of course, he asked me if he could have one, and when I said I didn't have any he threw a fit. So the original lollipop eater came up to us and said, "I have another one, he can have it if he wants." Which is incredibly generous coming from a child. I would think that the instincts of a 7 year old would scream "Keep all the lollipops for yourself!!!" Anyway, he dug a crinkly old sucker out of his sandy pocket and gave it to my son. And I let him eat it, because I am a top notch parent.This is the complete tool at Lowes who tried to sell us a washing machine and dryer. I came in armed with lots of washer/dryer research, and this guy actually announced, "Oh, you can't believe anything you read in Consumer Reports." Then practically said that I was an idiot for believing the non-bias research in Consumer Reports over the information provided by him- a 50 year old fat guy working at Lowes.

I recently developed a caffeine addiction by accident. This is what I look like when I didn't get caffeine. I feel like a dolt, but I didn't realize that iced tea had caffeine in it, and I was drinking like 700 bottles a day. Then I was awake until midnight and couldn't figure out why. It takes me a good long while to connect the dots sometimes. The happy ending is that after a weekend with a miserable headache, I don't drink caffeine any more.

I miss it.

Library, let's go under the bleachers together.

I love the library. I always have. My best friend and I used to spend forever playing on the elevator in our local library. By "forever", I mean as long as we could before the librarian yelled at us for pushing all the buttons and keeping the door open on the second floor. When I move to a new city I run out like a nerd and get a new library card right away. I love how the air smells like newsprint, that people speak in a whisper, and the dewey decimal system. If my library was a person, I would make out with it.

However, lately I am not feeling the love back.

Last week husband, son and I went on vacation. I had a fantastic time, but only managed to hold out a few days before running off to rendezvous with the local library. Like every affair, this one ended badly: I contracted a disease from the library. For real. The guy before me in the computer line had a cold, sneezed on the keyboard, and I caught it. I got sick on my vacation because I couldn't resist the lure of the library.

Also, the library in the neighboring town thinks it is too good for me. I went there this afternoon and brought my book up to the counter...

Octogenarian Librarian: This book is new.

Hanna: I know, I can't wait to read it!

Repetitive Librarian: But, it's new.

Hanna's Head: You just said that. I thought you had to get some sort of advanced degree to become a librarian.

Hanna's Mouth: Right. Yes. New.

Crazy Talk Librarian: You can't check it out.

Hanna: Oh, it's just for reading in the library?

Elitist Librarian: Only people who live in this town can read that book.

What does she think I'm going to do with the book? Burn it for heat? Color on all the pages? Has my town, a mere three miles away, been deemed so unsavory that the residents no longer have access to the Joint Free Public Library? Did I miss some sort of forced illiteracy vote? Is the plan that their town with fancy mansions and rolling green hills hoards all the knowledge while my town slides into anarchy?

Nobody tells me what I can't read, so I just shoved the book under my shirt when she turned around.

Just kidding. But I do think the library should send me some flowers to make up for its recent bad attitude.

Who needs four limbs anyway?

The previous owners of our house had a terrible aversion to yardwork. Possibly stemming from some traumatic lawn mowing accident, but more likely because they had a general distaste for anything that might make this house look like somewhere anyone would want to live. Our yard is teeming with poison ivy, and there are massive piles of branches and sticks everywhere. Like, so big that I think there are probably monsters living in them and I expect to see a pair of glowing eyes peering out at me as I walk by.

As a surprise, my husband rented a wood chipper. By surprise, I mean he told me about it like this:

Mike: Hey guess what? I rented a wood chipper and it will be here in an hour.

Hanna: ???

It arrived, my son thought it was awesome, and my husband chipped a lot of wood and probably damaged his hearing, because that thing is crazy loud. It is also crazy dangerous. People die in chipper accidents every year. I tried to find out exactly how many, but ten seconds of lazily searching the internet didn't reap any results, so let's just wildly guess around five.

Apparently, if a log gets stuck, some people try and kick it free, like a ninja. A ninja who is also a moron. Because what follows is the log becomes unstuck, and zips right into the chipper, dragging your ninja foot along with it. And two seconds later you are dead and unceremoniously sprayed all over your own yard. This, I did learn via the glorious internet, is called "morselization." Which: gross.

The washing machine repair man is upstairs right this minute.

Just in time too, as yesterday I had to wear mens socks and my bathing suit cover-up as a shirt.

First, he arrived early (yay!) then parked his car by my mailbox and sat in it smoking a cigarette and talking on the phone for twenty minutes (boo). Second, he asked if this was "Mike's house" (if he later asks if it is "Hanna's washing machine" I am going to kill him). Third, here is a little dialogue we had that does not fill me with confidence:

Hanna: Thank you so much for coming out; I sure hope you can fix the washer!

Washing Machine Man: I wish so too!

Um.

Is that his general first step when fixing things? Making a wish? Shit, if I knew that was all there was to fixing washing machines, I would have wished mine was fixed last week instead of sweating over the manual trying to figure out what "nD" stands for and following all the unhelpful steps suggested by the Samsung company.

I am now going to walk around Mike's house pointing at various appliances and making wishes. Freezer, I WISH YOU HAD ICE CREAM IN YOU! I'll let you know about my results.

I am not "expressing myself"

Our brand new washing machine, which I was already not on good terms with, broke last week. Low blow, washing machine, low blow. Now I hate it something decent, but I don't know how to retaliate. Give it the cold shoulder? Pee in its cornflakes? I'll just write nasty things about it on the internet and call it even.

The deal is: we call the manufacturer, they call some local repair company, and this local joint sends someone out to fix our hateful washer whenever they feel like it. Which may or may not be some time in the next two weeks. I don't have enough clothes to last me until then! I'm already wearing things from my drawer of clothes that do not really fit me or look nice. Today it was an american gothic style blouse (yeah, a blouse) and jeans that look amazing when I put them on and ten seconds later are baggy in the ass and knees. My last pair of normal socks are on my feet right now. In two weeks I'll be deep into the bag of completely out of style and weird clothes I meant to donate to the salvation army in 1998.

So, who wants to hang out in two weeks? I'll be wearing this cat sweater and green hot pants. Let's go somewhere public.

I am full of good ideas. This is perhaps not one of them though.

My mother is getting married this weekend. A lovely Sunday morning brunch wedding. Most of the female guests, I imagine, are going to be wearing floaty dresses in a summery pastel palate. I am going to be wearing a skanky black cocktail dress that makes me look like possibly I am the paid escort of one of the other guests.

I hardly ever wear makeup, but whenever I get a big zit I feel compelled to wear an enormous amount of eyeliner; like, amounts comparable to Alice Cooper. My hope is that people will be so distracted by my insane raccoon eyes that they won't notice my skin issues.

I am putting this same delusional concept into play for the wedding. A few days ago my son leapt onto our bed while I was sleeping, bounced across the mattress, and dove into my prone face in an enthusiastic and painful attempt to give me a hug at 5:45 a.m. I got a big hug, a toddler yelling, "Hello mommy! WAKE UP!" in my ear, and a fat lip.

So my thinking is that if I dress like a hooker on my mother's wedding day, everyone will be staring at my inappropriate clothes, and nobody will notice my swollen, purple face. Good plan, yes/yes? Just please don't let me get a zit too, because lord knows what kind of next-level distraction tactics I will have to employ in that case.

Turns out, it wasn't allergies

(this is pretty much a cut and paste from an e-mail, but I thought others might be interested...)

So, score one in the DOG column in the eternal debate: should I have a kid or get a dog? I think it is unlikely that a dog would secretly shove a peanut up his own nose in MAY necessitating multiple doctor visits in JULY to find out what the hell is going on. Yes, Nort has had a peanut living in his nose for over a month.

A PEANUT in his NOSE for a MONTH.

What kind of parent am I??? The ear nose throat doctor was super nice (and very cute in that older doctor way) but he had a rack full of what appeared to be his collection of shiny, pointy, medieval torture devices. Turns out it was his array of things-stuck-in-your-nose removal tools. I recommend you never put anything up your nose for fun, because getting it out later (say, a month later) is pretty traumatizing. Did you ever see Total Recall? Pretty much like that. Like a disgusting magic trick, he crammed an Edward Scissorhands like contraption up my son's nose and, with a flourish, came out with a peanut. He said he had already taken a googly eye out of some kid's ear earlier in the day.


Also, he gave me the peanut back! What on earth am I supposed to do with it??? Save it until he is a teenager and show it to girls he wants to date? My sister said I should bronze it and wear it around like a Tiffany bean.

Go play outside, son

One of the major reasons we decided to buy a house was because we wanted to give our son some room to run. We were living in a townhouse and the only patch of grass was about as big as a car, and the neighbor's dog always crapped in it. They only picked it up if we all happened to be outside while the dog was actually going. Otherwise, they would dash back in their house and hide, perhaps hoping that the dog poop fairy would come and clean it up for them. Eventually my husband started picking it up and re-homing it on their porch. Another neighbor bought a box of coctail umbrellas and festively placed one in each lawn crap.

Of all the homes we looked at, this one has the most land. Awesome, you say. Not so, I correct you.

The entire septic system had to be replaced. It was SUPPOSED to be done before we moved in. Naturally, they started right AFTER we moved in, around Christmas. Nothing says "welcome to your new home" more than the melodious sounds of a backhoe grinding up your front yard every day for weeks. I wanted to jump out of a window. In another lucky break for people who hate us, the ground froze, so they had to halt production until APRIL. Leaving us with a front yard that is the exact opposite of the grassy playland we had envisioned for our son:

Also, it reeks of sewer gas.

What, you are wondering about the back yard? That is where they dumped the dirt from the front yard. Great for little children. Mud as far as the eye can see, and hundreds of jagged rocks just holding their breath and waiting for a tender child to trip and land on them:

I still let him play back there.

What's happening, hot stuff?

Make a comment! For real, I don't care what it is, you can tell me about the weather in your town today, or how your paperboy always throws your New York Times into a puddle. I changed the comments filter so anyone can post, you don't need an account. At least, I think I did this. I am like an octogenarian when it comes to computer savvy.

What's up, one eye?

What's that you say? This is the laziest picture I have ever posted here? The perspective is horribly off, the doorknob is on the wrong side, the colors are lame, and the grass looks like a fungus? I respond: suck it, blog critics!

It's hard to give a good description of a house, because most houses are basically the same. There is a roof, door, some windows, and maybe a plant or two by the stoop. There are castles and shacks, but most of us in the suburbs live in some variation of the colonial theme.

HOWEVER, there is one house in this neighborhood that stands out. I hope it goes up for sale just so I can be creepy and poke through the mls pictures of the inside. The realtor would definitely have to use a flash, owing to the particular defining feature of this house: It has ONE window. For real! ONLY ONE. And this is not some huge, modern wall of glass window either, it is about the size of a porthole. Imagine how freaky that looks. Where on other houses are more windows, there is just plain old wall. It makes me feel like this house was in a horrible accident and all its windows were sewn up. It's like a cyclops. (Okay, there is one on the side also, so that makes two total. But one window per side? According to my research, which involves staring at people's homes as I drive down the street, that is grossly below average.)

Go ahead and count how many windows are in your house. If you don't have time to count, just estimate. What? It's more than one? You win!

I have been working up some theories about the occupants. They could be:

1. Running a meth lab.

2. Vampires.

That's pretty much all I've got so far.

Neighbor meeting fail

This weekend was so nice. Husband fired up the grill while son and I took a walk. We were playing near the sewer drain (not the most stellar parenting, but Nort likes to throw little rocks in it) when I see a man power walking up the street. A neighbor! An opportunity to make another connection in this community! He was wearing a University of Connecticut shirt (tucked into very high waisted blue sweatpants, so maybe this failure isn't so devastating).

I smiled and said, "Hi! Big win you guys had last night!" I am referring to the NCAA tournament. For those of you who don't know anything about college basketball, it is the tournament to determine the national championship- 64 teams enter, one team leaves. (I mean, they win. The other 63 teams just lose, they aren't killed or anything.)

Unfortunately, I mixed up UConn and UNC. UNC did have a big win, and UConn had a horrible, embarrassing, season-ending loss to Michigan State. Just the kind of thing you want to bring up in order to endear yourself to a strange UConn fan.

It is the equivalent of saying to someone, "Congratulations on your big promotion!" And they respond, "I just got fired you idiot."

He didn't call me an idiot, but he didn't hang around getting to know me either.