Ten-pages-in book review: The Unwritten Girl

I’m trying to diversify my 10-pages-in book reviews a little bit. I’ve worked in some memoirs, a travelogue, plenty of CanLit, some anthologies and a pulp mystery. Today, we venture into the world of young-adult oriented fantasy in a charming book called The Unwritten Girl.

It’s a classic quest tale with a literary twist. Protagonist Rosemary Watson is a bookish sort, teased by the more popular kids in school. When her brother Theo becomes lost in a book – literally – she and the vaguely mysterious but kindly new kid in town, Peter McAllister, are drawn into a quest through the Land of Fiction to rescue him. In the Land of Fiction, they must overcome challenges based on the books Rosemary has started but was unable to finish.

It’s a simple story, cleanly (perhaps even sparsely) written and with little depth to the characters, but it’s entirely engaging. I planned to stop after the first 60 pages or so to write this review, but I kept creeping forward, devouring a few more pages and then a few more, until I’d devoured most of it over the course of a few rides home on the bus.

The Canadian blogosphere is not a huge space, and it’s through that connection that I “know” first-time author James Bow. He is, among other things, the organizing force behind the Canadian Alliance of Non-Partisan Bloggers. I had seen he had a book coming out, and had received an invitation to the Ottawa launch a few weeks back, which I couldn’t attend. But my curiousity was piqued enough to want to take a look at a book by someone roughly in my demographic, from Ontario to boot, who actually managed to write a book. I was, quite honestly, pleasantly surprised by what a clever, charming little book it is.

The book is by turns adventurous, spooky and laugh-out-loud funny. I love the sense of fun James brings to this story. For example, in the Land of Fiction, Rosemary and Peter are escorted by a wise character called Puck (yes, the Shakespearean one) and they have the following exchange:

“What is that?” asked Peter.
“An idea—the fruit of an idea tree.” Puck grinned.
“Ideas grow on trees?” said Rosemary.
“Where else would they be?” said Puck. “Tis a shame they are not more common.” He bounced the ball once and twirled it to Peter and Rosemary. Written in black text on a white stripe were the words, “What if rugs could fly?”
(…)
“Ideas fall from the trees and are blown across this beach,” said Puck, “and into the great black sea that surrounds the Land of Fiction. In time, they build the land itself.”
(…)
“Neat,” said Peter, “But why is this ‘fruit’ made of rubber?’”
“So I can do this,” said Puck. He snatched up the ball and bounced it off Peter’s head.“I am bouncing an idea off you!”

Reading this book reminds me very much of how I feel when I’m reading the Harry Potter books. A detached, older me is impressed by the creativity, the ideas, and how the book comes together, but mostly my (barely repressed) inner-fourteen-year-old is blissfully wrapped up in a rollicking good tale.

The one with too much information

I’m standing in the ‘family planning’ aisle of the drug store, ostensibly to buy my ovulation predictor kit, except I’m distracted by – did you know they make condoms with little disposable vibrating rings on them? God bless technology.

I shake myself from a bit of a daydream, the details of which I decline at this moment to share with the Interweb, and go back to scanning the shelves for my OPK. Nope, don’t need a vibrating condom (or do we?), don’t need a pregnancy test (yet), don’t need any gel or foam or sponges. Oh, here they are. HOLY CRAP! $55.99 for a box of five pieces of plastic that I’m going to urinate on and throw in the garbage? That’s $11 a piss!

I see that there is a generic brand, and for a minute my inherently cheap nature (Dutch-Scottish roots) battles with my diva complex (even when choosing things to urinate on, I deserve only the best). What if I buy the generic one but it’s not as good, and somehow I screw up the date of my ovulation? There is a $13 price difference, and since this is only a mock cycle and I still haven’t entirely overcome my ambivalence about this whole ‘getting pregnant and bearing a third child’ thing anyway, I suck it up and pick up the generic box.

I’m still muttering to myself about the price, none of which can be claimed or deducted or in any way reimbursed, when I get to the cash register. I make a comment to the cashier about it being friggin’ expensive, and too bad it’s not a 20x points day (I am a junkie for loyalty programs. Canadian Tire money, Air Miles, HBC points, Esso points… I love ‘em all.) The cashier brightly informs me that Saturday is a 20x points day, if I would like to hold off. I pause, considering various schemes that would allow me to pay for something on Saturday that I must start peeing on by Thursday, but can’t come up with anything. The cashier notes my expression, and says, “You could come back and get a refund and then re-buy it on Saturday.” I try to imagine a conversation that would convince a clerk to refund a half-used ovulation kit, and decide that the points, which would probably only be worth a grand total of $1.17 or so anyway, are probably not worth the stress.

Stress is what you feel when you try to figure out exactly when you are going to pee on the sticks, because the directions tell you that you must pee on the sticks at roughly the same time every day, preferably between 10 am and 8 pm, but not with first morning urine. (Their bold, not mine.) And yes, I did read the entire package insert. Twice. Because even though I’ve used these infernal things before, I’m just like that. I read the entire sheet of directions and cautions in the tampon box every couple of years, too.

So back to my scheduling dilemma. I have to start peeing on the stick on Thursday, and probably for the five days subsequent. That’s two work days, two weekend days, and another work day. There is no reliable routine anywhere that I can follow. I’m strongly drawn to peeing on the sticks in the morning, simply because I can then call the clinic early in the day when my LH surges. Except that means peeing on the stick at work.

The directions (yep, not only did I read them, but I’ve pretty much committed them to memory) say that I have to leave the peed-on stick horizontal, little windows facing up, for three to ten minutes before reading the results. So do I sit there in the public stall, test balanced on my knee, waiting for the results? Ten minutes is an awfully. long. time. to be sitting in a stall at work. They may send in a search party. Or should I wrap it in paper and carefully bring it back to my cube, leaving it on my desk until I am ready to read the results? Will my colleagues, who read this blog, ever come into my cube again? Would you borrow a pen from, or drop by for a consult with, or have coffee with a co-worker if you knew she had at any time brought urinated-on objects into her cubicle?

Fun though it is to speculate, my colleagues will be relieved to know this is all a moot point, because I have in fact forgotten to bring with me a test on which to pee. (Oh, how I cringe at the google traffic this post is going to attract.) So at home it is. By default, I now have to remember to find some time during the arsenic hours between 5 and 8 pm to remember to take the damn test for the next five days.

You think this dithering is painful? Wait until we get to the whole “Is this a line?” frenzy of indecision. I remember the first time I used an OPK, during our (ultimately unsuccessful) intrauterine inseminations. After dozens (that felt like hundreds) of negative pregnancy tests, at least seeing a little line appear felt like a victory. “Hooray, my pee too can make a line appear!” (Aha, maybe this is why guys pee in the snow?)

Excuse me, all this talk of bodily functions has triggered a need to make some water. I’d best pee now, while the peeing is good, because starting at noon I’m going to be holding it to make sure I have a good reservoir built up to pee on that stick by 5 pm. It’s going to be a long day…

This is true love – you think this happens every day?

Filched from Angry Pregnant Lawyer and Phantom Scribbler:

Buttercup

Which Princess Bride Character are You?
this quiz was made by mysti

Isn’t The Princess Bride just one of the best movies ever? Certainly, it’s one of the most quote-worthy ones. I was in high school when it came out in theatres, and we were so blown away we went back to see it the next night, too. I’ve seen it dozens of times since then – when we learned in our prenatal classes that the labour and delivery rooms at our hospital had VCRs, this is the movie we chose to bring with us. Sadly, we couldn’t get the VCR to work. Too bad, too, because with a 27 hour labour, during which I didn’t sleep at all, there were a few lulls that I would have loved to pass with this wonderful movie!

Coincidence? Yesterday, they released two new DVD sets of The Princess Bride – the Buttercup Edition, and the Dread Pirate Roberts Edition. From what I can tell, they’re the same set with different covers. Given my score above, I guess it will have to be the Buttercup Edition I add to my wish list, because this is one movie that I must own on DVD.

There are only a few movies I’d buy in DVD format to duplicate my VHS copy – Star Wars, Bull Durham, and this one are the only ones so far, and I’ll invest to upgrade the Indiana Jones series some day.

What movie favourites will you continue to modernize as technology progresses?

Family vacation!

We’re in the midst of planning our first real family vacation. We’ve done plenty of road trips, staying with friends or relatives for a weekend, and of course we had a few camping trips with varying degrees of luxury. But this will be the first time we go to a city where we know no one, just for the heck of it, and actually stay in a hotel. Believe it or not, it’ll be the first time since our honeymoon (in Paris, bien sûr) seven years ago that Beloved and I have stayed in a hotel together.

We’re going to Québec City for three whole days, and I can’t wait! We’re also going to Montreal for a day, where we have an all-day playdate inked in with my frequent co-conspirator and favourite blogger, Nancy and her boys.

Beloved is teaching a course on Québec art this fall, so he’s doing a gallery and museum tour to familiarize himself with the subject matter. While I would absolutely love to tag along with him, I’m thinking that preschoolers and art galleries do not make a good mix. We’ll probably do something as a family early in the day, and either I’ll retreat to the hotel for Simon’s (ha!) nap, or I’ll drop Beloved off at a museum and drive big loops around the city for a couple of hours while the boys snooze in the back.

Planning a vacation with preschoolers is not exactly the same as planning a trip for yourself, I’m learning. When I went to Europe in 1995, I travelled by myself and chose places to stay based first on the cool factor, then on the safety factor, and finally on the cost factor. If I were travelling to Québec without the kids, I’d stay in the old city in a little B&B with period furniture and lots of charm and character. Where we’re actually booked is a Holiday Inn about a 20-minute walk outside the old city, with a pool, wi-fi, cable and lots of Internet reviews that say things like “family friendly” and “boring but serviceable”. Because Simon the Terrible and period furniture just don’t seem to be a good mix, ya know?

I’ve never been to Québec City before, and I’m looking forward to it. Everyone who has been there tells me it’s the closest thing to a European city this side of the pond. I absolutely love the idea of letting the boys run rampant on the Plains of Abraham, and I think there will be more than enough to keep everyone busy for a few days. And who knows, I might even get to practice my French.

Any thoughts on vacationing with preschoolers? You guys were positively inspiring on the whole “what should we eat when camping” issue, so now I’m not making a move without consulting you first!

Crying it out

Simon, at the grand age of 28 months, has decided to go from one three-hour nap in the afternoon to no nap. In a classic case of bad timing, this is coinciding with Beloved being home with the boys almost full-time. I’m not even going to bother with a description – you can imagine what it’s like.

Saturday and Sunday, I tried all the tricks in my arsenal to get him to take his nap. A tiny, childish part of me figured that Beloved just wasn’t trying hard enough to get Simon down, that’s why he couldn’t get him to nap. Right. Not so much.

For at least two hours each day, Simon was in his crib (yes, we’re still dragging our heels on that transition, too – give me a break, we just retired the highchair yesterday) in varying states of wakeful agitation. He would lie peacefully for stretches, which I realize in retrospect was to lull us into a false sense of accomplishment, and then move through the spectrum of annoyance all the way to raging tantrum and back again.

Sitting on the top stair, listening to him pitch a wailing tantrum on the other side of his door and hoping it was a short-lived prelude to an actual nap (idealist to the end, I am), I was thinking back to the early days, and the first times I had to let the boys cry themselves to sleep. Letting my tender, innocent ten month old baby cry for five minutes seemed like such a horrendously hard thing to do, but in retrospect teaching the boys to fall asleep on their own was one of the best things we could have done. (Hmmm, best choice = hardest road. Who knew?)

Tristan, always my good sleeper, was outraged at being left to cry for the first few nights but was happily falling asleep on his own within a week. Simon, who taught me what sleep deprivation really means by not sleeping more than three hours at a stretch well past his first year, was a lot more reluctant to be ‘sleep trained’. The first few nights that he cried himself to sleep, he continued to do that post-hysterical-crying hitching thing long after he fell asleep, and it took many days of heart-hardening resolve to convince him to fall asleep on his own.

I give a lot of credence to our eventual success with the infamous “cry it out” method to Richard Ferber’s classic sleep book, Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems. I hated the idea of letting the babies cry at the time (anybody remember that episode of Mad About You on this? I thought they were nuts.) but after reading everything on the market at the time, Ferber was the only thing that made sense, and it worked for us.

The weekend Citizen carried a great reprint from Slate magazine (click through and read it, it’s a great piece) about the re-issuance Solve Your Child’s Sleep Problems, where Ferber clarifies his position on sleep training. I loved this article, mostly because it perfectly encapsulates everything I learned from Ferber. And I’m hugely relieved that he has not, in fact, recanted his original advice. In retrospect I realize that my own personal discipline style is strongly rooted in his “you might not like it but I’m the boss and I know best” style. From Ferber I learned to stand up to my children’s willfulness, and that’s probably one of the most valuable parenting lessons I’ve learned.

Two little monkeys…

When I heard Tristan upstairs ‘reading’ to Simon, I thought I’d creep upstairs with the camera and catch the moment. I should have known it wouldn’t last, but it was cute for the half a second or so before they started misbehaving.

Or click through to view it on YouTube.

Actually, it’s a good capture of life with the boys in a microcosm – adorable blending seamlessly with mischevious, until they get caught. The book they are ‘reading’ is, appropriately enough, Five Little Monkeys Jumping on the Bed.

Free books!

Have you heard about Project Gutenberg? They’re one of the oldest purveyors of free online books on the Internet, and to celebrate their anniversary this year, they’ve teamed with the World eBook Library Consortia to create the World eBook Fair. Starting in July, they’ll be providing free (FREE!) access to over 300,000 e-books.

According to an article in the Chicago Tribune, “The Gutenberg books, typed and scanned into computers by thousands of volunteers, mostly are those that are no longer protected by copyright. They include fiction, nonfiction and reference books and will be available for worldwide readers in about 100 languages.” You can also download audio e-books read by a human or computer, and (for some reason I love this the best) digitized sheet music.

The Gutenberg site lists the top 100 downloaded books and authors in the last day, last week and last month. Here are the most downloaded books this month (parentheses are the actual number of downloads):

1. The Notebooks of Leonardo Da Vinci — Complete by Leonardo da Vinci (16365)
2. Little Journeys to the Homes of the Great – Volume 01 by Elbert Hubbard (9540)
3. Hand Shadows to Be Thrown upon the Wall by Henry Bursill (8950)
4. Kamasutra by Vatsyayana (8649)
5. Fifteen Thousand Useful Phrases by Grenville Kleiser (8637)
6. The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (7589)
7. Great Britain and Her Queen by Annie E. Keeling (7463)
8. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen (7457)
9. How to Speak and Write Correctly by Joseph Devlin (6534)
10. The Art of War by 6th cent. B.C. Sunzi (6163)

While I think the whole project is most excellent in theory, I’m not sure about the whole “e-book” thing. I’m a very tactile person. I judge a book not just by its cover but also by its font, by its paperweight, and its heft. And the idea of reading through a palm pilot or a crackberry or on the computer monitor doesn’t have much appeal to me. I may, in fact, be the most tech savvy of the Luddite clan.

What do you think? Have you tried e-books? Would you pay for a subscrition or for access to e-books, or like me, are you suspicious of even the free kind? Could lying on the beach with an e-book ever rival doing it with a tattered paperback? And if we all move to e-books eventually, where will I stash all my Canadian Tire money – my summertime bookmark of choice?

The one about babysitters

Talk to me about babysitters.

The only babysitters we’ve ever left the boys with have been my mother, our daycare provider, the daughter of my cousin (while her mother was in the house) and once, I think, an adult friend of ours. I’ve never hired the teenager from down the street, or even used a (fee-based) referral service like www.canadiansitters.ca. While the boys love to visit their Granny, I am always afraid of imposing, or that they are too much to handle. (Sidebar: how strange is it that we get to a certain age and begin to mother our parents?)

The eleven year old girl next door told me about five times last summer that she had completed her babysitting course, but I’m just not confident in her ability to keep my boys out of trouble, let alone do something like put them to bed. There’s a family situation back story, too, but mostly she just seems so … so… so young!

This seems hypocritical even to me. I was babysitting at that age. Heck, when I was 13 I not only babysat a two- and four-year old sibling set for the March break, but brought them downtown on the bus and bought some shoes for them, all at the mother’s request. I was maybe 11 or 12 the few times I babysat a six-month-old baby down the street – I remember calling my parents because no matter what I did, that baby would not stop crying.

Even though we live in a family-friendly community, aside from the young girl next door I don’t know anybody in the babysitting demographic. I guess I could put up a poster on the mailbox. How do you find a babysitter?

And then there is the minefield of compensation. The registration page for the Canadian Sitters service says, “A three month subscription to access the Canadiansitter.ca database costs $39.95. This approximately equates to the expense of a baby sitter for just one night.” Yowza! Is that right? Forty bucks just to get a babysitter for the night? Sure, it was 20 years ago, but I used to get two dollars an hour!

(Pardon me, I ‘m still reeling a bit that my babysitting days are 20 years behind me. Crap, I’m old.)

I’ve heard of babysitting cooperatives, where the parents trade nights out, but I don’t really know too many families with kids in my neighbourhood. (Yes, we live in the most family-friendly neighbourhood in the city. Yes, we are social recluses. All my friends live in the computer. I’m hoping being part of Tristan’s school community will forge at least a few new ties for us.)

What’s it like where you are? What’s the right age for a babysitter and how do you find one? How much is this going to cost? Should we just resign ourselves to waiting for the new releases on DVD until the boys are old enough to fend for themselves?

The church, the choice, the coincidences

Yesterday was just so jam-packed that even with two posts, I didn’t have a chance to reflect on everything worth saying. Consider this the spill-over post.

Thank you for your votes on how we should spend our summer vacation. Ya know, living my life according to Interweb plebiscite has a certain appeal. I’ll be consulting you for input on our life decisions much more frequently.

In the end, Beloved and I decided to skip the road trip to St Thomas and TtFTE in July. I am, quite frankly, hugely relieved. If anybody out there would like a deal on four great tickets to see the sold-out Thomas the Tank live in St Thomas (20 minutes from London) on July 22, drop me a note.

Yesterday was also a day of weird coincidences and convergences. Some funny, some profound, and some a little sad. For instance, you have to laugh that the calendar date for the first time I wandered back in to a church since (thoughtful pause, head scratching…) well, in at least a couple of years, was 6-6-6. Snicker.

Poor Tristan. In my ongoing crash course on God for preschoolers, I was explaining to him that we were going to the church, and the church is where you talk to God, and that we were going to talk to the priest about making Tristan and Simon a part of God’s family. Then we left him with my parents while we went to the ‘how to have your child baptized’ seminar. Poor Tristan wasted no time telling my mother that he liked his old family, and didn’t want a new one. Oops!

So then we’re driving to the church high school, and you know what song is on the radio? ‘Counting Blue Cars’ by Dishwalla, with this lyric:

And ask many questions
Like children often do
We said,tell me all your thoughts on god?
cause I would really like to meet her.
And ask her why were who we are.
Tell me all your thoughts on god,
Cause I am on my way to see her.

And you know what the strangest part is? By the end of the night, I was feeling pretty keen about the whole Catholic thing. I was relieved to see that for the boys’ baptism, we will be in the company of lots of other lazy and / or indecisive parents of toddlers, preschoolers and even a seven-year old – in fact, not a mewling newborn in the lot.

The priest, Father John, was one of those kindly, soft sorts of fellows to whom you really do want to entrust your spiritual upbringing. I got to thinking maybe we’d even go to church every now and then, and maybe I’d even (gasp!) sign up for one of their committees. I left the church high school feeling warm and fuzzy, but I just about fell out of my shoes when Beloved turned to me and said, ‘You know, maybe I’ll take my confirmation sacrament one of these days.’ You think I’m cynical about the church? I’m PollyAnna compared to him.

And then I wake up today and I hear that yesterday the Catholic Church issued yet another sweeping condemnation of abortion, birth control, same sex marriage and … reproductive technologies like artificial insemination and IVF. More weird convergences – day one of my frostie mock cycle happens the same day I think that maybe I will give the church another try or at least an open mind, and is also the day the Church issues this closed-minded, archaic and out-of-touch epistle.

All I can do is shake my head and shrug my shoulders.

Wheeeeeeee!

It’s day one. Here we go!

(breathe, breathe…)

It’s ‘day one’ of my pre-transfer mock cycle. Aren’t you excited? I’m positively giddy!

For those of you who haven’t been committing this stuff to memory, here’s the plan:

Next Thursday, June 15, I start using a pee-on-the-stick ovulation predictor kit. The OPK detects the surge of luteinizing hormone that occurs just before the ovaries release the follicle into the fallopian tube. When I get a positive indicator for the LH surge, I call the clinic back and go for an ultrasound, probably the next day. They measure my uterine lining, because you need a thick and juicy lining to make a cosy home for an itinerant embryo. Then, six to eight days later, I go back to the clinic for some blood work to check my estrogen and progesterone levels. That’s it for the mock cycle month.

Then I call again next month with my day one, and it’s the real deal. About ten days after my day one, I go in for another ultrasound and they look to see if a good sized follicle is maturing and ready to ovulate. If so, I go in to the clinic every day for a blood test to monitor for the LH surge – no messing with OPKs for the real deal, I guess.

I forgot to ask the exact details, but I think it’s about two days after the surge they start thawing our little frostie in the morning, and they transfer it to my uterus with the same sort of turkey-baster device that they used to place the sperm during the IUIs.

And that’s it, except for the torturous two-week wait between the transfer and the pregnancy test. Gulp.

You know that I’ve already analyzed the hell out of the timing on this, so let’s share the math. Day one of mock cycle = June 6, therefore day one of ‘for keeps’ cycle will likely be approximately July 4 (our wedding anniversary is July 3, which is also five years to the day after I found out I was pregnant for the first time, the pregnancy that ultimately miscarried.) So I’ll start going to the clinic for blood work approximately July 14, and the transfer will likely take place within a week, probably around July 20.

And here’s where it gets dicey: we have tickets to see Thomas the Frickin’ Tank Engine on July 22 in St Thomas, an eight-hour drive away. Oy vey. So do we ditch our tickets ($80 for the four of us) and go ahead with a July cycle? Do we roll the dice, keep the tickets and hope transfer happens before the morning of July 21, so we can hustle on down to Southern Ontario? Do we delay the cycle until August? Can I live with the what-ifs if we delay a month and it doesn’t work out?

Speak, Interweb. What should we do?