Letters to Obama

G's class is writing letters to our new president. As a parent volunteer, I get to type these up and help "publish" them. They will actually get sent to the White House, and I see as I read these that more than one student is anxiously hoping for a reply. 

What's interesting about watching a little boy in early elementary school education is seeing how much and how quickly he develops month to month. A first grader is a kid who still hasto be reminded to flush the toilet and carry a dinner plate to the sink. Don't get me started on the teeth-brushing thing or the idea that dirty clothes go in a hamper. And yet these kids have got a lot on their minds. 

What's especially charming about these letters is that the sentiments in them don't seem to have been coached in any way. The spelling, punctuation and grammar are about as inventive as you'd imagine, and some kids seem to have less trouble figuring out how to spell the big words than they do the little words.

One boy wrote:

Dear Presidentobama in our school we votd you wood wen! I dont no what the vot count wus. And please help the economy and stock market do better!! I bileve your dodr sasha is 7. I am 7 too!!

One girl wrote: 

Dear President Obama, Please exceped this note. Please help cildrins hospitals and parint hospitals. Also help the pet hospitals. And get subs for docters and get cures for a cancer cure and other stuff they don't have.

Here's what G wrote:

Dear Mr president, some pepol need help because the're poor. they mite need you to help them. they need jobs, homes, food, and money. because if they stayd poor they mite die. Sincerely, G.

Little guys. Big, big hearts.

Ireland or Bust

This is where I will be spending the last week in February. No, not at the top of a cliff, but hereabouts. A strange string of coincidences led to an impromptu trip. Can't wait. 

Zane-y History Lesson

One of the perks of having two stay-at-home parents is that we get to share visits to our children's schools. If teachers are used to dealing with just moms, well, now they get both barrels. Too bad for them.

Just last week, Larry and I went to G's first grade class for "beach day." It's a day when the kids wear shorts and t-shirts and sunglasses and flip flops to school and shiver in the inadequately heated rooms while pretending it's summer. We were instructed to send a beach towel to school that day along with beach-y snacks and such to complete the illusion, as it were. The only thing missing was actual heat.  

There was also a party at which the kids ate the aforementioned snacks and made crafts. They made little crabs out of egg cartons and beach scenes on paper and the like. Larry and I were one of a half dozen parents who showed up to chaperone. Larry was the only dad, of course. We ran the "games" section of the party, which was this sad little bingo game with a nautical theme. There were these oversized bingo cards with pictures instead of letters. The pictures were of things like bivalves and the Indian Ocean and scuba gear and coral reefs. At first Larry took the educational part of this very seriously. He would draw a card and call out the name of the picture, say "stingrays" and then read all the information on the back of the card about where they live and what they eat and all that, when the kids just want the next card. They want to win. Also they pretend to know what you're talking about when they don't. First graders are over everything. Over it. And when you try to tell them something, they say, "yeah, we know," even when they clearly, clearly don't. 

So, eventually, the game picked up pace. And the kids were really into it. Seven-year-olds are pretty competitive, it turns out. And they pout when someone else is winning. So, Larry got to the card for the Titanic, and he'd learned his lesson. He didn't read out any of the information. But one of the girls playing said, "We know all about that. We read a book." I said, oh that's great and all. She said, "The boat hit an iceberg and it sank and everybody got on lifeboats." I said, well, that's pretty close. And one of the other girls who was playing said, "Well, not everybody. Just the women and children." And the rest of the kids playing all started nodding. "Yeah, women and children." These kids. They know it all.

And for some strange reason, Larry said, "Yeah, except for that Billy Zane." He was saying it mostly to me, trying to get me to crack up. "Sneakin' on that life boat," said Larry, shaking his head in disappointment. I was holding it together, but then one of the boys shook his head sadly and said, "Yeah, that Billy Zane. Sneaking on the wife boats." And then they all started saying it. And they were serious.

As we were leaving, G's teacher thanked us. She told us that the bingo game looked very intense. Larry said to her. "Um, if you're ever talking about the Titanic and the name Billy Zane comes up, just play along, okay?"

She just stared at him. I don't think we'll be invited back next year.

Just Thrilled

 I have a half dozen books piled next to the bed (as always). They include this and this and this. All important books that I should be devouring in the cold months. 

Not so. I've read nothing but thrillers all winter. Shameful. Among them, are this one and this one. They were both pretty good. Interesting narrative stance, good characters, a few emotional surprises. 

There's no explanation for this neglect of good books, except that our days are filled with hammering and sudden shots from nail guns all fueled by roaring compressors. At night, the blue tarp of doom covers the half finished renovations. We pray that no snow will fall, and wonder how much money we have left. 

Perhaps that's why this book by Morag Joss is such a fun read. In it, the setting of a house is a major character, as our house is for us just now. Also, I think it's ballsy for a thriller to be funny, and this one is. Each clever line is a happy surprise. 

The story is about Jean, an aging house sitter on what she knows will be her last assignment caring for an enormous estate while the owners are away on a summer-long vacation. She has had a tough life and a couple of events just send her right over the edge, where she decides that she owns the house. Then she decides to reclaim a son she gave up for adoption years before, even though she acknowledges that she's never been pregnant. She puts an ad in the paper for this son and attracts Michael, who is a petty thief and my favorite character in the book. He steals from churches, and he's not very good at it. There's an early, hilarious scene in which his getaway car breaks down. "The bloody van! On the way here he had been so busy feeling like Jeff Stevenson coping with a dodgy alternator or gearbox or whatever that he had not stopped to think about the van's next journey; it fell a little short of Criminal Mastermind standard for the getaway vehicle to be on its last legs." Michael acquires a stray character, too, a pregnant young girl on the run from her abusive boyfriend. The three of them make up a sort of family on this estate. And yet the way they manage this is through pretty dark means that get ever darker as the story progresses. 

But back to the humor. What I love is that the narrator has such wicked fun with the story, and especially the minor characters. Late in the book we meet Shelley, who is Jean's manager at the house-sitting firm and who is not a nice person. She's made an impromptu visit to the estate to check up on Jean and she's likely to learn that Jean has been selling off the furniture and drinking the expensive wine from the cellar. But we slow down as she arrives:

"Jean came out from the back of the house at the sound of Shelley's car on the gravel, patting her tidied hair and intending to give the impression that she knew her place and never used the front door. She had an idea that Shelley would notice and appreciate that sort of observance. But all of Shelley's attention was concentrated on heaving herself out of the hot car. She moved with a sense of grievance, as if she were being made to carry a weight that she considered privately was heavier than anything she could reasonably be expected to shift."

There's a very tense scene in which Jean introduces Michael and his new girlfriend, the runaway, and their ridiculous cover story. Then they walk together into the house as Shelley's phone continually sounds to the tune of Yankee Doodle Dandy.

"But Michael had started to lead the way down the path between the rose beds and Jean rather delicately dropped back and allowed him to. He was striding along rather fast now. Behind Jean, Shelley struggled along last with a lumpy shoulder bag on one arm and a ladylike black briefcase in the other. There was another volley of Yankee Doodle Dandy, which Shelley this time silenced with a couple of exasperated stabs. Jean turned and watched her. She was wearing low-fronted black shoes with heels like short pencils, which gave the impression that her thick legs ended in hooves. With each step her foot sank deep into the gravel, so she was taking dainty little steps, as if doing so would somehow make her lighter. The effect was of a cow trying to tiptoe."

Sometimes as a reader, I'd just rather have fun.

Some Kind of Monster

My second favorite music documentary (after Young@Heart) is this one. Larry and I saw it twice, and pretty much giggled and nudged each other all the way through it. It's named after the Metallica album of the same name, and is ostensibly a documentary about how this band puts together an album. The title should really be: Metallica Goes To Group Therapy. 

That's what it's really about. And further, it's about Phil, their nerdy therapist, who charges $40K per month, per month, to sit on a sectional couch with these guys and get them to talk about their feelings. The fact that filmmakers were allowed in the room at all leaves me speechless. But thank God they were there to catch it all. Pretty soon Phil moves in and pretty much decides he's part of the band. And then they fire him. And if you think you need therapy, this is the film that will cure you of that notion forever.

Two years later, and a half dozen lines from this movie are still standby quotes for Larry, including, "My lifestyle determines my death style, man."

The Blue Tarp of Doom

Larry's comment on this was: If we thought this house couldn't get any uglier, we were so wrong.

It started the night before Christmas. We'd had a snow storm and then warmer weather, then more snow, then rain. And that's when the ice dams on our roof made way for rivers of water to come pouring in. We had leaks in every room of the house. Larry emptied the plastic bins of summer clothes we keep under the kids' beds and put them along one wall of the living room. The plop, plopping kept us on edge for two days. And we got to see how we deal with anxiety. Larry turns wite-faced and paces around trying to find new leaks, cursing to himself about how much he hates the house, our careers, this life. 

Me? I bake. 

I must have made 20 dozen cookies during that one day. Gingerbread men and women with icing and sprinkles. Sugar cookies individually decorated. These chocolate cookies with mint icing (that's really an Andes mint melted on top). I made lemon squares. I made biscotti. Two types of biscotti. I'm a little surprised that Larry didn't slap my face to snap me out of it, but he didn't. He was too busy in his own spiral of panic. 

The day after Christmas we called a contractor who drew up the plans we'd asked about for renovating the house. Of course, we can't afford to renovate the house. Still, we're getting the roof done. We'll have to worry about the interior later.  Step one: Tarp the house against new snow and rain damage. So we spent about ten days in the blue tarp lockdown pictured above. 

S's response was to go outside and refuse to come back into the house. She wouldn't come in here. She took her little sled up the hill and rode down over and over again, squealing her delight. No coat. No hat. No gloves. We told her how cold she must be. We begged her to come in. No dice. She just wanted to sled and sled and keep an eye on the guys with the tarp and the hammers and scrap wood. Finally we carried her in. 

I know how she feels.

Young@Heart

I just watched this documentary this morning. I was so inspired by it in part because of what we're doing with the Memoir Project. Old is the new black, apparently, and that's great. And yet the Memoir Project asks seniors who live in Boston neighborhoods to tell their life stories, which is a more traditional activity for elders. This is celebrating something different. These folks are singing songs written by angry young men, some of them highly privileged, as part of a rather whiny ongoing counterculture. And here are these oldsters singing these songs with real feeling and giving the lyrics all kinds of sly new meanings. They make the Ramones seem insightful, for goodness sake, and they rescue a Coldplay song from its tin-eared emotional entropy and turn it into something poignant. There should be a special grammy for that. 

The other thing I like about this film is that it doesn't get so wrapped up in the cutie pie feeling about old people still being active, and let's cheer for them just for that reason. It does show them struggling to remember lyrics and struggling to get around and fighting the illnesses that are going to kill them. It also touches on the real despair the singers face when they can't participate in the group anymore because their health won't allow it. Many times older people are given activities to occupy them, when in fact they need activities that challenge them. That need doesn't diminish in old age or even with grave illness.  If you give people a community and a goal, their lives improve. We've seen that in the Memoir Project and I think that comes through more than you'd expect in this film.