Both Election Day and Joan Didion’s Politcal Fictions are over. Hurray! I do quite seriously recommend the Didion book though. Very clever, very insightful and quite thoughtful. However, I am very happy to be over the politics ‘though pleased at the way the election and my reading coincided.

Home hasn’t been much fun lately…kids are alternately demanding and disgusting (slime from every orifice) and the usual drudgery of cleaning has seemed especially onerous. I *know* that now is when my children need me. I *know* that all work done to the Glory of God is holy. I *know* that being cheerful about it helps. But despite *knowing* these things, some days are just hard to slog through. I’m feeling better this morning, more energetic and more rested with some inspiration to work on other more interesting things than laundry. Which always helps the laundry get done faster too. One day, if I can afford it, I will be happy to hire a housekeeper. Ah! The joys of the aristocracy…

So we had spent the entire day inside. Cooped up, avoiding the cold and damp. Finally we were just too restless, so I dressed the boys up nice and warm, got into jeans and shoes and headed out to the front yard to rake leaves. And the clouds just opened up. We had been outside about 30 seconds and it simply poured on us. The only rain all day. I raked anyway. The boys played in the front seat of the 4Runner while I huddled in my hoodie and scraped the sopping leaves together. They are yet unbagged but the front yard does look better.

We have a gorgeous maple tree in the front yard. It small but vibrant. Unfortunately it only takes about a two weeks for the leaves to turn and fall off. They start out a rusty brown and gradually move through stages of orange to a vibrant, brilliant red. As soon as they turn fully red they begin to fall and a few days later the tree is bare. When they fall you get to see both the gorgeous red of the top and the pearly pink of the underside of the leaves in a mottled blanket on the grass. I should have taken a picture.

I’m in the middle of Joan Didion’s Political Fictions. Quite apt for the season. Speaking of which. Cast a ballot today but do so without worshipping in the temple of the secularist gods. Salvation does not come at the polls and America’s many and deep problems won’t be fixed there. We simply have a civic responsibility to participate in our own government. Oh, for a Monarchy!

Of course Sunday was a busy day as it usually is. This week I did all my weekly baking Sunday afternoon. This meant zucchini bread, amish friendship bread and a pot of minestrone soup, not to mention dinner, all going at once. That means that Monday will be fairly laid back but because of the time change I’ll be up at six instead of seven (children don’t adjust so easily) so I guess that’s more hours to fill instead of more hours to relax. I’m already tired out.

Unusually enough Jared asked for some time to himself this weekend. I ask for time almost every day but somehow he is almost always doing fine. He is definitley not one of those guys that needs a “man cave” or any other cheesy metaphor for personal space and I deeply appreciate this. It is probably partly because he has a job that he enjoys so much and that is so fulfilling and also because it means long stretches of time when he is working by himself, but I know that it is mostly because he is so giving and so kind and so generous with his energy. I really appreciate this about him since it makes him really easy to live with and makes my life so much less draining than it could be. So, I guess what I’m saying is I’m grateful for the dynamic of our marriage.

Hallmark moment over…

I didn’t read very much yesterday. I guess knowing that I am caught up is bad for my motivation. When you run a race it is always good to have a little extra energy at the end so you can “kick” and pass anyone you find in front of you. So I’ve got to find some kick soon so I can pass Thomas Mann (I so don’t want to pick up The Magic Mountain again!) and Toni Morrison (I’m sick, sick, sick, of Beloved) and the any other dragging books still waiting for me. Thanks to Richard, I’m now really looking forward to the Rabbit books instead of being scared of it. Didion isn’t done yet but now I’m getting to my living memory. It is arranged chronologically and now she is writing about nineties politics so even though I’m not interested per se, I’m at least familiar with the subject matter.

We had a great little party. It was not very Halloween-esque but quite fun. Good friends and good conversation. One note, if you invite young men who are neither living at home nor married, I highly recommend having nutritious, filling food on hand. Shepherd’s Pie works well. They will be hungry and you earn a surprising amount of gratitude just by satisfying that.

Joan Didion continues apace. Miami in the eighties doesn’t sound like a fun place but her reportage is clear and interesting. At around eleven though, I find the information just starting to blur together. I got my copy of The Analects and think I’ll start it today too. I love taking a big stack of books with me to a coffee house and having people stare at me like I’m a freak. Nerd joy.

More Didion made for dense, slow reading! Despite a concentrated effort I only managed to get about 200 pages in. The only thing is, this book is actually a collection of seven books! Slouching Towards Bethlehem, The White Album, Salvador, Miami, After Henry, Political Fictions and Where I Was From. UnfortunatelyI didn’t know that it was seven books, I counted it as one on my list. I feel used.

No apples today. I didn’t even look at them. Yay.

Instead I decided to remodel…okay, not really. I just took the cupboard doors off of the upper cabinets in the kitchen. Today I well be repainting the face frames and not replacing the doors. I’ll post pictures if Jared brings the camera home. What do you think of pinky-purple?

I read a lot of books. I read them pretty fast; about 1/2 a book a day. I read them not just as recreation but to learn and understand more. Fortunately reading to learn is not a matter of volume. You can linger over a book for months and ferret out every little detail and nuance and understand it thoroughly. This is a healthy practice for certain books and for certain conditions of life. This year I am reading for an overview of a large quantity of literature. I do have a pretty high retention rate but at this pace I can only remember a certain level of detail from day to day. One huge advantage of my current lifestyle - taking care of little ones all day - is that I can spend the time I’m taking care of them to refer to my notes and think about what I’ve read. This is not peaceful meditation but it is meditation. Caring for small children taxes physical energy and one’s virtue but doesn’t do much for the intellect.

Speaking of taxing one’s energy…I fell asleep while reading last night…at 8:30! I guess I was pretty tired but I feel half-ashamed, that was a good hour-and-a-half I could have been reading or blogging. Alex got up at 6:30 this morning so I sat on the floor of his room and cuddled with him while I finished Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man. I’ve often heard this book praised (growing up in circles that revered the Founding Fathers as the greater saints) but I found it dull. As I was reading I thought that some of his arguments were pretty thin and some of them little more than bald assertions but given his place in history, I’ll defer until if and when I have the inclination to study out the history of commerce and democracy a bit more.

56 more books to read…

The Stranger by Albert Camus Page: 117 Finished

The Woman Warrior, China Men by Maxine Hong Kingston Page:113

The Stranger was a quick and easy read. The bleakness and the heartlessness of the book may have been meant as an indictment of modern life but it seemed more to be a symptom than a diagnosis. I tend to think that beauty is the best indictment of ugliness not imitation.

Speaking of beauty, Maxine Hong Kingston has it. Not only does she describe it but it seems to me that she understands both how to show it and how to find it. She describes Chinese legend and folklore, tales and culture and whe is imaginative and creative with it. she also accepts American culture and is enriched by it. I think I’m a fan.

I’m sad that the more I post about food the more comments I get. Isn’t this supposed to be a book blog? Anyway, on the menu for this week is chili. My recipe is simple and developed from my mom’s recipe (too beany) and a recipe out of the Bride and Groom Cookbook (too complicated). The proportions are derived from the packaging sizes I find at the grocery store. One pound ground beef, one pound sausage, cooked together and drained. One onion finely chopped, one bell pepper also finely chopped sauteed together in a couple tablespoons olive oil (I use super cheap olive oil for anything that it is not a major ingredient of. Extra virgin is only necessary for things like pesto or salad dressing). Two 28 oz cans of diced tomatoes and one small can of tomato paste to thicken. Two cans (16oz?)of pinto beans (or whatever other beans you like and one large can of baked beans like Bush’s Baked Beans. A tablespoon of chili powder and salt to taste. Now here is the fun part, you can shake this up any way you want. In a hurry? don’t sautee the onions and the pepper and cook it on the stovetop for about an hour on medium high (stir often). Going to be gone all day? throw it all in the crockpot on low. Want to be extra penny pinching? Buy dry beans in bulk instead of the canned ones and soak them overnight; add brown sugar, a little pepper and some ketchup to compensate for the baked beans. Feeling extra gourmet? Add a few garlic cloves to the sauteeing onions and peppers and add some freshly chopped tomatoes to the canned ones. Serve it with grated cheese on top. With corn chips to dip. With cornbread and butter and honey. Over baked potatoes with melted cheese and steamed broccolli. With fry bread. This makes a small vat of chili that is meaty and filling and everyone should enjoy.

Meditations by Marcus Aurelius Page: 272

Another good day for the page count. Yay! I might actually catch up…if this trend continues that is.

Ahh…the Stoics. Good old Marcus Aurelius. He is so fascinating to read and important too but he kinda makes me want to go out and indulge in all my favorite parts of creation. Chocolate, coffee, wine, filet mignon, silk, truffles, old leather bound books. I do think that there is a lot of wisdom in this little book and although I’ve read it twice now, I still need to study it a bit more to glean the bits of gold. I’ll be saving further details until book club night since most (all?) of my book club reads my blog at least occasionally.

I can scarcely believe how many more dishes are dirtied each day just because we are home. HOLY CRAP! I have to do them twice a day. Of course I hate a messy kitchen, so while I would just let them build up before, when we were gone all the time, I really can’t stand to do that now. I would so love a dishwasher right about now…

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman Page: 213

Palace Walk by Naguib Mahfouz Page: 171

I finished Mary Wollstonecraft’s feminist treatise today and found the opening of Naguib Mahfouz’s Cairo Trilogy to be a startlingly dissonant note. She insists that women should never be solely dependent on a man for either subsistence or mental life and he opens Palace Walk with a description of a Muslim wife waiting up for her husband and ruminating on her complete absorption in him and submission to his authority. So far I’m enjoying reading the novel though, so let’s hope for the best.

After working this morning at Veritas and running to Cash & Carry for supplies I brought the boys home this evening. We got home around five and started by making some frozen lunches for Jared. I used some leftover elk meat to make a teriyaki bowl with arborio rice. Realizing I was out of vegetables I decided to walk down to Albertson’s to get some and pick up milk. I started a batch of molasses bread before we left, so it could rise. The walk was a little warm but a pleasant diversion, getting the boys out of the house for an hour. When we got back, I punched down the bread and formed it into rolls, diced veggies and steamed them to add to the rice bowls, popped those in the freezer and then started dinner; more chopped veggies, homemade Mac & Cheese and BBQ chicken. The grill is hot, the Mac & Cheese is in the oven and when it’s done the rolls when hop in. I feel so very domestic and productive tonight…except for those four loads of laundry…oh well….

Master and Margarita Mikhail Bulgakov Page: 446

A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft Page: 84

I was prepared for Bulgakov’s novel to be “too much” for me. Maybe it’s the rest of the reading I’ve been doing this year, maybe it’s the natural consequence of high expectations, maybe it’s just because I’m so smart…it wasn’t that difficult a book. Of course if you’ve been reading lots of thrillers, romance novels, or children’s books, it will probably be a bit disorienting.  Still, there are a lot of literary allusions in it and it also provides an emotional atmosphere of life in Stalin’s Russia so it can be well worth your time if you’re willing to invest a bit more than normal.

Speaking of investing more than normal…I’m going on three years without a paycheck now and I’m not sure that I’ll ever see enough compensation from my small business to “pay me back” for all the time and tears I’ve invested. I’m owed so much overtime right now that I could retire on it. Still, the freedom of not working for the man, or anyone else, is pretty much priceless. I miss my paycheck but I don’t miss having someone stare over my shoulder. I miss things like “benefits” “vacation” and “sick leave” but oh how little I miss corporate policies, office “parties” and dress codes. I haven’t worn nylons in years; don’t even own a pair and I do wear flip flops every single day; even in the winter. Of course I can only do this because Jared is able to support our family so well on his income and because he is willing to invest both his time and our time in the hopes of future payoff. If one day I can take home a modest salary and work less than 60 hour weeks I’ll be happy with my job. I’ll always be able to have my sons with me at work and that is worth a lot. Some days I’m insanely jealous of moms that get to have someone else watch their kids all day…and then exhausted and weary, I come to my senses and remember that I wouldn’t change this time with them for the world.