updates

with MUCHO thanks to abby and rachie, i have abandoned jonathan strange and started moon tiger, which one of the girls i work with let me borrow.  it's a novel where the main character is a woman who is writing a memoir of her life, but she goes off on these crazy and wonderful tangents all the time.  she's an old lady and a little bit senile.  and it is 100,000% better than jonathan strange.  life is so good now.  this is one of those books where i talk out loud to the book because it is saying things that are SO TRUE.  here is a passage for you:

there was a spaniel on board the mayflower.  this little dog, once, was chased by wolves not far from the plantation and ran to crouch between its master's legs "for succour."  smart dog - it knew that muskets are sharper than teeth.  what i find remarkable about this animal is that i should know of its existence at all, that its unimportant passage through time should be recorded.  it becomes one of those vital inessentials that convince one that history is true.
i know about the little spaniel.  i know what the weather was like in massachusetts on wednesday march 7th 1620 (cold but fair, with the wind in the east).  i know the names of those who died that winter and of those who did not.  i know what you ate and drank, how you furnished your houses, which of you were men of conscience and application and which were not.  and i know, also, nothing.  because i cannot shed my skin and put on yours, cannot strip my mind of its knowledge and its prejudices, cannot look cleanly at the world with the eyes of a child, am as imprisoned by my time as you were by yours.


why do i find this so wonderful?  i'm not quite sure.  i think the history teacher in me connects to it.  or something.  whatever the reason, i'm liking it a lot.

(additionally, i cannot lift my arms above my head, and going down stairs is prettttty painful.  growing muscles is hard, i guess.)

(and i'm oddly REALLY sad about the us women losing to japan in the world cup finals.  this is odd because i didn't care about how the team was doing until, oh, today, and now i'm really really invested.  sigh.  hard way to lose.)