Cry the Beloved Country - 11/07/2007

"Cry the Beloved Country" by Alan Paton was given to me as one of 9 books I received from a relative, David's Aunt Joan. It was one of the books that she said was one of her most "beloved."

I am going to try and write something, as my daughter runs around yelling for things. She's getting over a 24-hour bug of sorts and has not been pleasant, poor thing. I am afraid I won't do this review justice, but I keep forgetting to do it, and I finished the book 2 weeks ago.

The book tells the story of several people whose lives are intertwined by a murder in racially stunted South Africa. The murder is not really even the core of the book, so I don't want you to think it's what the novel is about. I wish I knew more of the history of South Africa and Apartheid. Separate but Equal does not really make sense to me.

The story is about a Zulu Pastor, Stephen Kumalo, a very humble, God-fearing, obedient, good natured man, going to the big city of Johannesburg to locate his sister and her son, and most importantly, his grown son, who has lost contact with Kumalo and his wife in their very small, very poor, very tight-knit community that is dying a slow death due to the over-tilling and over-planting of their drought-stricken land.

"And some cry for the cutting up of South Africa without delay into separate areas, where white can live without black and black without white..."

The writing style often reminded my of Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath and how Steinbeck would throw in small paragraphs of life of the people around the city or the area affected by the strife affecting our main characters. No one we know; just people in coffee houses, and picket lines and meetings. I liked that in Steinbecks' work and found out later that Paton was a fan of "Grapes of Wrath". There is a lot of the oppression and the racial divide that is present in South Africa in the book. A lot of ideas and no quick solutions. Nothing that will happen within a generation. So many oppressed, so few trying to help. One of those trying to help the natives, a white man named Arthur Jarvis, is killed in his home by Pastor Kumalo's son.

"Cry, the beloved country, for the unborn child that is the inheritor of our fear. Let him not love the earth too deeply. "

The book delves into Pastor Kumalo's shame. His hurt. His not understanding the people and the city of Johannesburg and how they can be so hurtful, thieving, lying. He is so sad. His small-town ideals and faith are slowly stripped away as he deals with the incarceration of his son and the finding of his sister (who ended up in prostitution). But it also shows him hope; the Pastor Msimangu and his devotion & generosity towards Kumalo. Father Vincent, Mrs. Lithebe - all shining places in dark Johannesburg.

The second part of the book deals with Mr. Jarvis, Arthus Jarvis' father. A man of wealth who never even shook the hand of a black man until his son's funeral, where the great outpouring of love, respect and support for his son Arthur got him curious. Who was this son who left their small town (coincidentally, the same town as Kumalo and Kumalo's son!) and came to Johannesburg to be a pioneer for change for the natives? Who was this person he raised , who is now being lauded for his strength and courage? He reads his son's letters and manuscripts and sees the work that his son is trying to accomplish - to educate, to empower, to aid the black man.

"I have one great fear in my heart, that one day when they turn to loving they will find we are turned to hating."

Both Mr. Jarvis and Mr. Kumalo go back to their town. Kumalo to his church, wife and poor tribe, Jarvis to his estate. But you see a transformation in Jarvis. His son he hardly knew changed him. Jarvis sends milk to the church, sends aid to the village in the form of a farming teaching aid, he helps build dams. He understands that he alone cannot change things but someone, somewhere, somehow has to start. The man whose son is killed helps the father of the man who committed the murder. It's a bittersweet story. We end with Kumalo in the mountain, watching the sunrise on the death day of his son, and although those rays signify the death of his child, it also signifies the rebirth of his tribe; not in his life-time, but it's a start.

Business in the Front - 11/07/07

For the past few months, I've had odd encounters with some neighbors. I use the term loosely, because they don't live on my street. They live on one of the streets that my street intersects. This street is the "back" way to the Wal-Mart that's less than a mile away, hidden (for now) by trees. I use the "back way" only when I go to Wal-Mart. In going this way, I often pass by the Burnt Orange Hummer House. (The Hummer's orange, not the house). Often-times I pass the Hummer itself driving on the street. The driver, I can't tell if it's a he or a she, emphatically WAVES at me. Full-on spaztic "HEY THERE" waving. I have no idea who they are. We have never met, never spoken. *I* think they are confusing me with another Silver Jeep like mine whose owner lives somewhere in this neighborhood and I have seen a few times. I'll lamely wave and kind-of shrug. Sometimes, I'll drive by their house, and the lady of the house waves enthusiastically at me as I drive by. I smile and wave back. No clue who they are.

David and I are driving the back way from Wal-Mart one day and it reminds me to tell him about Hummer people. Right as I start to say "Oh, yea. There's these people in a Hummer...." the Hummer drives by and arms wave happily. I wave and finish my story with a "See?? See?? Who are they?" David doesn't know them either.

This Saturday, as I come back from buying something I am sure we needed, I pass by Hummer House. Never again shall it be called "Hummer House," because...as I drove by and waved back at the man riding the lawn mower, all I could think was...."Business in the Front, Party in the Back."



The man possessed the most perfect, most fantastic, most mulletastical mullet EVER. Pin straight LONG black hair, stopping right at his lower back. Oh, yes indeed there is a party in the back. Spikey short hair up front, for those board meetings.

Mullet Mansion man and I, waving emphatically back, will share that memory forever.

Ghosts of Halloweens Past - 10/24/2007

Back before I had Isabel, and when Jake was younger, I was very much a hands-on Halloween person. We were involved in Cub Scouts and I was a Den Leader for over 5 years. We went to a lot of parties and camp-outs and I went all-out on Jake (and my) costumes.

2002 - I am pretty sure I shocked many a Cub Scout parents when I showed up in this get-up. BUT!!! I bought a super-ling cape & pretty much kept my lower half covered the entire time. Jake went as Harry Potter, but I have no pictures on computer. I need to scan some.

2003 - I went all-out this year. We went camping for Halloween with the scouts. Here's what I did.

Click on it to make it bigger. Jake was a dresser! His head is the lamp! There are clothes and underwear hanging from his drawers! Me? I am a bag of groceries! I totally rocked this costume.

2003 - I was pregnant with Isabel. I made the most awesome costume ever....and I can't find the picture!!!! I made an oven out of a box covered in white contact paper. I put knobs on it, I made burners and put a toy pan on the burner. I made a clock. I made a door, with clear door...that opened! And when you opened the door, I was wearing a T-shirt that said "Bun." Get it?? BUN in the OVEN?? I loved that costume. I have searched high & low for those pictures and cannot find them. Waahhhh.

Jake? He was....




A head.....on a platter.....on a table! He won prizes!

I wish I had a better copy. Maybe I can scan the one I have so you can see the dead rats and animals on the gold plate.

2004 - I had Isabel and was TIRED, so I did not dress up, but I did work on Jake's costume.

He has small cereal boxes glued to his shirt. They have knives stuck in them and red paint around the knives. He was....A CEREAL KILLER!




This next picture is not from Halloween, but I thought was cute. It was for our Cub Scout Blue & Gold Ceremony. The theme was the Circus, and being the Den Leader extraordinaire, I went all out.

2005 & Jake was kind-of over costumes. He got a store-bought costume and *I* discovered E-Bay, where I got Isabel's Fairy Costume.

2006 - Jake did not want to go out but I made him. LOL He HAD to take his little sister around. He was Napoleon Dynamite and Isabel was Red Riding Hood.

Raise You Hand if EW! - 10/20/2007

My poor, poor boy has had an ingrown toenail for a while. Months. We thought nothing of it, even when he would YELL if anyone accidentally stepped on his toe, or he hit his toe on something. Even then, I thought "Overreact much?" Then, Isabel stepped on it, and pus came out. That caught my attention. I scheduled an appointment with my doctor (Jake & Iz's doc moved to Apopka, way too far away for us).

The first visit was pretty much just to say, yea he needs to have that cut off by our doctors, please pay your $25 co-pay. We scheduled "surgery" for 3 days later (please pay another $25 co-pay. Losers.)

On Friday, the 4 of us went to the doc (David brought him from school because I was not driving from work in Seminole county, to get him in Volusia county, to take him back to Seminole county for the appointment).

Let me preface this by saying, Jake's dad is an $%^&+*. (I don't care who reads this; you know who you are!) WHY the heck would anyone tell their child about to have surgery "You make sure they knock you out. I had that surgery and it was the worst pain in my life. The needle they stick in your toe to numb you hurt like hell. The worst pain I ever felt!" Who does that?!?!? He is not your "buddy," he is your son. Your job is to protect him, not scare the crap out of him. SERIOUSLY.

That's what I was dealing with as I went into the room with him; terror. He started to freak a little, and I told him: "The thing about pain is, you have to breathe through it. You cannot freak out. You have to breathe and stay calm. Freaking out is only going to make it last longer. Just get through it and it will be done." He asked me when did I become a Zen Master.

The doctor came in (she was 12, Indian, pretty and sweet). She explained the procedure while Jake tried not to hyperventilate. When it came time to numb the toe, they placed a rubberband tight around it, and then stuck a 20 gauge needle into his toe, to slowly push in the medicine. I turned my back to them, looked at Jake, held his hand and told him to relax and breathe. I could tell he was in pain. They numbed one side, then it was time for the other. The return of some feeling to my hand led me to believe that the first shot was working. Jake was afraid that he would feel them cutting into his toe and voiced that fear aloud. That's when I told him that they were injecting him a third time. He had no idea.

Last time he had to have an injection to numb something was in Kindergarten. He sliced his finger open & needed stitches. As the doc was putting the injection in his finger and Jacob screamed bloody murder, the room looked a little too white and bright. A nurse said "Mom, are you o.k.?," sat me down on a chair and shoved my head between my knees.

So, yea, the room is getting a little whiter and man, it's hot in here. MY doctor walks in to help out 12-year old doctor. He sees me and says "Are you o.k. mom?" I laugh and sit down.

Jake was listening to his music on his MP3 player so he did not hear the CRACK of the nail coming off, or the doctors laughing about how loud it was. I'm trying to refrain from sticking my head between my knees.

They bandaged the toe before we could see it, showed me the HUGE piece of nail embedded in his toe, and gave us instructions for the next few days.

Water for Elephants - 10/16/2007

I'm so glad my bff Jill Wendy is in a book club. She sends me all the good books once she is done, because she won't check them out of the library. She tends to spill food on them. She sent me "Water for Elephants," by Sara Gruen.

This is the story of a man named Jacob, told by his 90-something year old self; he can't quite remember how old he is. A circus being set up across the street from his nursing home sends his mind back to his youth in the days of the Depression as a student in vet school whose life is turned upside down due to tragedy and ends up acccidentally running away with the circus when he hops on their train.

It's not a story for the prim & proper; It's the story of the underbelly of the circus after all. The cruel treatment of its workers, the vanity and dishonesty of its owner, the strife of a depression. It is also the story of friendship (Walter, Camel), of falling in love with the woman you can't have, of psychotic bosses and Jacob's love of all creatures, great & small. The story switches from past to present often, and you feel sad seeing Jacob so neglected and alone in the nursing home.

I've read that the author made the biblical story of Jacob the backbone of this story. If it's there, I don't see it. Biblical Jacob was a twin who usurped his twin brother Esau's position in the family; who spent 14 years working for the chance to marry the woman he loved, who wrestled with an Angel/God. I don't see the correlation.

"Water for Elephants" was a fast read because it was a good read.

He slides into home...and he's SAFE! - 10/15/2007

We're in the kitchen and Jake's complaining about one of his teachers, who is apparently tone-sensitive ("she's always telling us to stop yelling, but we're not yelling"), cranky and 100 years old. "She's like....50, mom!" (Fifty is like....12 years away for me, dude.) He proceeds to explain how she has these wicked big arms that flap when she waves her arms, while yelling at kids to stop yelling. I flippantly say "Yea, big like mine," and proceed to jiggle my own arm fat. He says "No, her arm fat is WAY bigger than your arm...." He stops, mid-sentence. "You have no arm fat mom. None." Pause. ................ "Nice save, huh mom?"

"Toootally," I say.

The Count of Monte Cristo - 10/12/2007

NOOO, not that Monte Cristo. This one.

Or as some of you may remember:

As I read on a T-shirt and thought was VERY fitting: Never judge a book by its movie. The Jim Caviezel version is NOT the same as the book. It's a good movie, they just.....changed things to make it spicier.

For instance, I do not see Monsieur Alexandre Dumas, the author, writing anything about premarital sex and women getting knocked up. Totally made up for the movie.

The book is the story of revenge and redemption. Our protagonist, Edmond, is 19, just became captain of his own ship in the 1830's and has the love of the beautiful Mercedes. But, one man jealous of Edmond's good fortune and another man, yearning for Mercedes, plot to destroy Edmond. They set him up as a traitor to his country. Just when you think he is about to be let free, a third man, a lawyer, commits Edmond to prison to hide the truth of the crime; that the lawyer's father is involved.

Innocent Edmond spends years in this horrid prison. He is about to kill himself when he meets a most spectacular man. An Abbe who has been digging a tunnel for years & years, only to dig in the wrong direction and end up in Edmond's cell. The two strike up a friendship. This old priest teaches Edmond everything he knows; literature, science, languages. Years and years pass and the old man dies. Edmond uses the dead man's shroud as his escape from the prison island, with a map to riches. The old priest was thought to be mad by the prison guards, because he kept mentioning riches he had hidden. Sure enough, on the small little island of Monte Cristo, Edmond finds his riches.

Nine years and MANY intricate details, plots and plans later, he emerges as The Count of Monte Cristo, to exact revenge on the 3 men who kept him incarcerated.

The machinations Edmond went through, YEARS of this, were a lot to take in. Dumas put a lot of detail in the book, and various characters. Sometimes, I got lost with who was who. I read a whole chapter with "bad guy # 1" in my head, only to realize it was "bad guy # 2." I suggest jotting down who is who at the beginning, just to keep the story straight. It does *not* end up like the movie.

The book was exciting though and I found it a quick read because of the intricate details.

Another one to cross of my list of Classics. C'est l'ouevre d'un bon auteur.

We Thought You'd Be Funnier - 10/08/2007

Having heard how extremely funny Laurie Notaro was, I checked out some of her books from the library. I was only able to check out her first and her 4th. Numbers 2 & 3 were checked out.

Book # 1 is called "The Idiot Girl's Action Adventure Club: True Tales of a Magnificent & Clumsy Life."

Ms. Notaro is a writer for newspapers and on-line newspapers. Her first book deals a lot with her insane life, as told through her newspaper posts. Some of the sections had me laughing aloud, but for the most part, she is forever drunk, hung-over, trying to get drunk, get noticed by the opposite sex, or sleeping until 2 p.m. I'm totally over that phase of life, called college, so I was not really impressed. (BTW, I was always the designated drive in college. Why? Drinking just seemed like a complete waste of time and good money that I did not have a lot of. Why would I want to be the girl sobbing in the corner, hair completely a mess, hugging everyone in sight, telling her sob stories to anyone who would listen? And really.....WHY would I want to be that girl who puked on her shoes in the bushes, and then calls me up in the morning asking "Have you seen my shoes?")

The second book (which is really her 4th) is called "We Thought You'd Be Prettier: True Tales of the Dorkiest Girl Alive." This one was a much better read for me, because by now, her stories were a little bit "older." I need to read the books in between, because she got married and lost a grandparent in between. She's talking about promoting her first book, her Nana, ebay, her husband and the "rat," and....the HAIR. The pet-store kid's coif. The Flippy Hair, on a BOY, that drove her to realize, she was no longer cool. The hair that made her want to kick that hair's @$$. This book was MUCH better. I knew she'd be funnier!

Crazy Love - 10/08/2007

• In the 12+ years I have been working where I work, the office has been in the same area. We've moved twice in my 12+ years there, but we've moved exactly 2 streets over from where I started. In my 12 years, on various lunch breaks and such, I have seen an odd couple. They are always walking from various places, running various errands. Sometimes they are pulling a cart full of groceries behind them. Sometimes they are walking their bikes through the intersection. They are always primly dressed. The old man is in his 70's. His midsection is round, his pressed pants held up by suspenders. He wears pressed-long sleeved shirts, regardless of the Florida heat and always wears a baseball cap. His companion is a man in his 50's. He wears nicely pressed slacks, pulled up past his stomach, held firmly by a belt. He is often wearing plaid long sleeved shirts, his hair reaches the nape of his neck, but it is always neatly in place, slicked back by some product. He's a little slow; maybe disabled. The old man takes him everywhere; holds his hand as they cross the streets of our city. I think of them as father & son. Dad taking care of his son. Last week, after 12 years of seeing them, I saw they younger of the two, plaid shirt, slacks pulled too high, belt, sandals & socks....walking alone. Down the street passing the CVS. And my heart hiccuped for just a second. Just one. Where's dad? Is he ok? Is son just out for a walk on his own? Where's dad? Who'll take care of the son? He seems ok, nicely pressed pants. I have to turn left now, I can't see where he's going. Who'll hold his hand when he crosses the street?

Angel - 10/03/2007

Sitting on the floor in Isabel's room, at 9 p.m.-ish yesterday, I was exhausted. Dear God in Heaven above if you love me, PLEASE make this girl be tired already! I can't take it anymore! I must SLEEEEEEEPPPPP! (If only you'd actually go to bed earlier that midnight....shut up, voice of reason!)

I set my elbows on my legs and placed my forehead in my arms, listening to Isabel spinning and making herself dizzy. She stops and notices my posture. "Mommy, are you sad?" she asks in her soft lispy voice. Without thinking, I started to say "Yea, a little." She didn't let me finish. She THREW herself on me at full-force and yelled "Hug!" Flippin' Awesome.