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.