Book Review-On Chesil Beach

On Chesil Beach
Ian McEwen
203 pages

Yes, I read another book today. You SHOULD be impressed about this one. Because I did it in about 3 hours. I didn't have so much time today because I spent all day at Lisa's house to celebrate her birthday. In case you care, you should know that we only got through about 2/3rds of the songs before the wicks ran out and we had to end so that there was eventually SOMETHING to blow out. We should've done more songs. Happy Birthday Lisa!!!

Anyway, even though this one was only 203 pages, you should still be impressed. I also made breakfast for my husband and fixed the TV. I rock. Begin praising now.

So this book is a little "racy." By "racy" I mean that the main theme is sex. It's all about sex. Or rather the miscommunication that happens between husbands and wives about sex. See, it's about this newly married couple and they are in their honeymoon suite and the guy is READY to go, and the girl not so much. They are both virgins, inexperienced, nervous. You know what I'm talking about. I think most (if not ALL) of my readers have TOTALLY been there.

But there is a little more then just "nerves" on her part. But I'll get to that in a minute. The main part of the book is a nice set of flashbacks about how they met, and their families and things like that. The boy is a history major and the girl is a musician and in a string quartet. And they meet and fall in love and get married. And the guy is ready to go.

And the girl is terrified. More then terrified, she realizes that she really has no desire for sex. She wants kids, she likes kids. But she wants to have them "immaculately conceived" like Jesus. She's not looking forward to the act. She wants nothing to do with it and never wants to think about it if possible.

But she decides she needs to do her "wifely duties" and buck up and just do it. She loves her husband and wants to make him happy and it's been obvious in their courtship that they love each other lots. And it's obvious also that the husband has NO IDEA that she's feeling this way and he fully expects things to go great on the wedding night. Sure, she's been a little modest (AKA prude) before the wedding but he figures that's just her being chaste. He never things that will happen after they are married.

I actually thought that there would be more to the story. Like maybe she had been abused as a child, or that she had walked in on her parents in some sort of weird sex act and that is why she doesn't want anything to do with it. But no. That's no the case. She just doesn't have a desire, the thought scares her, and she's just not interested.

So back to what I said about it being racy. It goes quite in detail about the very limited amount of foreplay that goes on in the honeymoon suite. TMI if you ask me. But that's not what the story is about, so you quickly move through that to get to the real story. Which starts when she eventually runs out on him after some over excitement on his part (You know what I'm talking about here. Don't make me say it) and that's where the story gets upsetting.

They both blame each other for the mes they are in. He thinks she's been deceiving him. Why didn't she bring this up before? Why has this become a problem now? Why did she let him even touch her if she didn't want that?

And for her part, she's pissed that he's pushing for it. She's pissed knowing that if they go back in the bedroom, it will just be more of the same: him wanting it and she not. And she's mad that he can't see that she's just not comfortable doing it. She just wants to be with him and love him and be his wife and not have to do THAT.

But here's the aggravating part: THEY NEVER SAY THESE THOUGHTS AND FEELINGS TO EACH OTHER OUT LOUD!! You, the reader are the only ones that get to see their full thoughts and feelings, their fears and worries. To each other, they get frustrated, angry and then start accusing each other of irrelevant things. She talks about how she wants to play music, and that is her goal. And he talks about how she comes from all this money, and how that's so important to her so she forced him to take a job with her father and he never wanted it.

What? Money? Music? What? No!! You aren't mad at him about music and you aren't mad at her about money! You are feeling frustrated about what just happened ind in the room 10 min ago, TALK ABOUT THAT, YOU IDIOTS!! And you are mentally screaming those things to the characters in the book. But they don't listen. Morons

And so what happens? It's not good. Like the book Atonement that I finished yesterday, this book does not have a super happy ending. I'm going to spoil it for yo and and tell you that they break up. And 8 hour marriage in the crapper because of some lousy communication. And as the years go by, they both never marry again. They live their separate lives and accomplish things alone, but they never get married. And in the end, they both lament that they didn't go back and talk on the beach. He laments the beautiful girl he never got to grow old with, the children they might have had, and the life they might have lived. She laments that he didn't call after her when she walked away form him. She would've gone back to him if he had just called for her. And it would've been all different.

Point simple: It was a depressing way to spend 3 hours. The moral of the story is this: most people are nervous about sex so you have to talk about it. Silence can ruin everything between two people. And I think that holds true for everything, not just sex: Silence can ruin anything in a relationships if you let it. So talk to each other people!! And don't let misunderstandings ruin your relationships and wonderful times that could be.

Book Review- Atonement

Atonement
by Ian McEwan
480 pages
Rating: Tragic and Melancholy. Makes me happy that I don't live in England during World War II. And that I was never falsely imprisoned.

Yes, I read this book in one day. But I think you need to know somethings about me before you are horrible impressed:

1. I still don't have TV. We have it all hooked up, but our old house and faulty wiring doesn't allow the TV to be plugged into a breaker with any other electronics. So I kept tripping the breaker all day today when I was trying to get it to work. So with no TV I had to waste some time. Turns out I can get a lot of reading done when I don't watch TV!!

2. My baby slept so much today. Last night we had a late night going to bed because we were finishing moving the last of the things from the old apartment. We were probably awake until 1:20 in the morning, and then we had to give her a bath, and then feeding, and then bed. So she slept in and then continued to sleep the whole day. I don't know if the heat had something to do with this. Like she wanted to get away from the heat and sleep was the only way to do this. I know I feel that way sometimes. So that is the other reason I had so much time to read.

3. And finally, I'm just a fast reader. I don't know what it is about me. I like sense the words before I actually see them. And I don't really read the words, I let them come into my brain visually. I think everyone does this, but I'm a visual person ANYWAY, so that's how I read. That's why I pronounce words so incorrectly (Lynn, I know you are thinking about the "admonent" situation) I just saw the word for so long, and never had to pronounce it till that day.

Anyway, that's why I was able to read this book so quickly. Plus the fact that it was awesome. I saw the movie that was made out of this book, and for some reason I read the book hoping it would end differently. I don't want to give too much away, but let's just say that it doesn't have the wonderful happy ending that everyone wants.

It's about a young girl who sees her sister and the son of their house lady (who has been her childhood friend forever-he grew up in a house living on their property) involved in a little, um flirtation? Can you call it that? It's more like they were fighting and they didn't know that they liked each other. Which I think is literary bull crap. Of COURSE you know if you like someone!! They just put that in there to be more "romantic" and "English" :)

Anyway the little girl is 13, and she sees her sister of 23 get in a fight with the boy and this vase is broken and a piece drops in the big fountain and the girl in her "unthinking state" strips down to her 1935 underwear (which you can assume is pretty modest compared to underwear these days) and gets in the fountain to get the piece that is lost. She still feels like she's mad at the neighbor boy and only does it to "show" him. Show him what? That she doesn't "need him" or that she's "immodest?" Anyway, in her mind at that time it was a bold move to show him that he may have graduated first in his class at Cambridge (where they both went) but he wasn't better than her.

Why does she think getting in a cold fountain will do this? I don't' know, and neither does she after she thinks about it. She immediately regrets it and is embarrassed to see him again. Well he has been thinking about her in a different way for some time, and the little fountain incident
(actually, I think we can call it an EPISODE) makes him want to tell her how he feels.

He writes a letter. His first draft is somewhat crude. He laughs to himself as he imagines her reading it. He decides to write out the revised letter again. You can guess what happens: He picks up the wrong letter. He doesn't realize it until he asks the young 13 year old to run ahead of him and give the letter to her sister before he gets there. She reads the crude letter. She thinks he's a "maniac" and a sexual deviant and this prejudices her and makes her make a HUGE mistake.

I'm taking too long in this summary, but it's just a great book. It's told from the point of view of the 3 principle characters: Briony, the 13 year old, Robbie the housekeeper's son and Cecelia, the sister of Briony. It's a story about mis-understanding and how "out of the mouth of babes" isn't always a reliable source when someone's life is on the line.

The book takes place in England during the second world war, so right there you know it will be sad. And it is. And I didn't want it to end. Again, I was hoping that it ended differently than the movie. But the movie and the book are very different similar. The movie does a GREAT job of telling the story from the different perspectives of every major character, and we can see how misunderstandings happen. The book does this even more diving into the thoughts of the characters as these things are happening.

Oh, and it's a quick read. Well, if you have a sleeping baby, nothing to distract you and you are a lightning fast reader. Otherwise you can slow-poke it out with the other "average" readers. :)

Oh, and congratulations to Jen (Delahunt) Sanders who got "Love Story" right on the last book review blog. Has no one read that book before? Go and read it, right now. It will make you bawl. If it doesn't, you are heartless and we can't be friends.

Book Review-100 Years of Solitude

417 Pages
Author: Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Rating: Fanciful, Awesome and Magical

"What do you say about a 25 year old girl who died? That she was beautiful. And brilliant. That she loved Mozart and Bach. And the Beatles. And me."

Who can name that book that I just quoted? You get a prize if you can name that book, and NO CHEATING. No Googling it or anything. Anyway, like the "Mystery" book i just quoted above, One Hundred Years of Solitude has the awesome habit of telling the end of the story before it actually tells the story. This is actually a great habit of Marquez that he repeats in lots of his other books. In "Love in the time of Cholera" he talks about the heroine's husband's death that day. But before he talks about how he dies, he goes on about a parrot, and suicide and a mulatto woman and her kids and, well, you get the idea.

But I LOVED this book. BAAAAAA!!! It talks about the history of a family for 100 years and how they are just destined for destruction and solitude and sadness. The book ends with the total destruction of their line. There are no more descendants to further their family name but I think that's a good thing. Why? BECAUSE THEY KEEP NAMING EVERY KID THAT COMES OUT AURELIANO!!

One Aureliano is a soldier and he is referred to as "Colonel Aureliano Buendia" (you know, to keep him distinct from the other ba-zillion Aurelianos) and sews his wild oats all over the country. And one by one the women come and bring them his sons. . .there are 17 of them. And they are all named Aureliano.

That is just one of the crazy things that happens in this book. I really loved how the author weaved magic into the story and didn't make a big production about it. Like he will be talking about how Aureliano Segundo was upset about something, so he went into the study of his father, where the ghost of the gypsy waited for him and had a conversation with him. And it was just normal. Actually, at the end, the two last surviving members of the family are happy to be walking around with so many ghosts because they know that when they die they will not be gone but will continue to inhabit the house walking around still together. Just magical stuff like that happened all the time.

Oh, and one more thing. Hey Beth, remember when you were taking that history class (I know, I need to be more specific that that, right?) and you talked about how millions of Chinese died and how the government lied and said it never happened? Or am I making that up? Anyway, that happens in this book. There is a whole deal with a Banana Plantation being set up, and then they get mad when the workers revolt, and they call them into the town square and kill over 3,000 of them and haul them away in trains.. And then they lie and said it never happened. Not only that, they say that there never was a plantation there. And for some reason, everyone kind of accepts it, because they change the history books to say that it never happened. Of course, it makes no sense, right? That's part of the magic.

Anyway, I loved this book. It took me a really long time to finish it because I got so confused with all the Jose Arcadios and the Aurelianos and the Remedios. But mostly with the Aurelianos. Actually the women in this book usually were a lot better off then the men. They almost always lasted longer than their male counterparts. But that might've been because the men kept running off with the gypsies and to go to war. Who knows?

Anyway, I give this book 5 out of 5 stars. It's a classic. Go read it now. You'll thank me later.

Sweatin' to the Oldies

The reason I have been off the map lately is because we have been moving to another apartment. And we don't have Internet there yet until Thursday. So I have to some back to the old apartment to do my email, fill out forms online, look for jobs and watch TiVo. I do miss Tivo. I'll be so excited to get my TV and internet all set up for good. (I feel like Miranda in that one episode where she needs her DSL installed and as soon as she gets it, she's desperate to look at her Tattler online. I have no desire to look at the Tattler. My needs are Blog based)

The good news is that with all that non-TV time, I have finally made it through "100 Years of Solitude" which was much longer than I thought. I'll have a review for you soon. Let's just say it was awesome and fanciful and full of magic. Not like the lame kind of magic where they make a rabbit come out of a hat. But the awesome life lengthening, sleep preventing, ghost seeing type of magic.

Anyway, I just wanted to post a quick blog and tell you that my apartment is hotter than Satan's Balls. I'm sorry if that image is tough for you to take, but it IS. I know some of you say, "oh, I live in Arizona, It's 115 degrees out today" or others say, "In Texas it's been about 100 for 3 months now AND we have 88% humidity" To you people I say the following: Do you have A/C? Do you stay indoors most of the time? And do you have a car with functioning A/C? If you can answer yes to any of these questions, then I win.

I am not kidding when I say that it was 100 degrees INSIDE my house yesterday. Inside, under the shade, in my front room, in the bedrooms. There is no relief anywhere I go. I'm not messing around when I say that I wanted to die. There is a thermometer in our kitchen stuck to the fridge and I looked at it yesterday. I was thinking, "It has to be a hundred degrees in here!!" and then I looked at the thermometer and it confirmed my wild postulations. There is no A/C in the house. The oven is close to the living room and it's "old fashioned" which is a quaint way of saying "no insulation around the metal box pumping out 400 degree heat."

The main part of the house including the living room and the baby's room have windows facing West. That means that from about 3 pm to 8 pm every day, I can cook an egg off my window. And there is no A/C. I did mention that, right? We do have a million fans up and running. But they are only pushing around 100 degree air. We have to suffer in silence until the sun goes down and then the fans can suck in cool air.

But we are looking forward to fall. And I think in winter we'll be toasty warm. Even though the house is old (like our first home. Remember that hell hole, Reagan?) I has better insulation than that, and I think we will be really happy there. And we do have 2 of those window A/C units. But we were just trying to do without them for a while. I think the time has come when we need to suck it up and put them up, however. My poor baby was covered head to toe with a heat rash yesterday. I can't let that happen again.

Anyway, It's hot. My baby is suffering and it's time to fix this.

Oh, on another note, it's Education Week around here. I think I might go to some classes while my mom watches the baby. We'll see.

And finally, I need to tell you about how I've been waking up at 6 am to exercise. I'm too tired to talk about it right now. Good Night!

My Baby's Silky Smooth Coat

To answer Reagan's comment on my last blog, the move is going slow. And how many houses have we lived in? Well, we have lived in 5 houses in the last 12 months. Take into account the 3 houses we lived in before that, and we have had 8 houses since being married. Averaging to 2 moves a year. I want to vomit just reading that. I don't want to move again. EVER.

Anyway, back to our anniversary. We almost forgot. There was just so much going on, and for the past few days none of us have been real aware of the actual date. And so I realized almost too late what time it was. Mom volunteered to watch Evi so we could go out and I took her up on it.

Evi has had lots of mocos the last few days, and it's been hard for her to breathe. Nursing has been hard, and she didn't take a long nap all day yesterday. I mean she would crash for like 20 min or a hour at the longest. But mostly she was just awake and fighting to breathe. It was rough listening to her breath fighting to get out, but those darned mocos wouldn't come out with the snot sucker.

Well, I feed Evi and then we left. I called from the restaurant and mom said she had given her a bath and she was OUT. She said she was so tired that her eyes were closed even before she laid down. I was happy and we finished our date and came home.

Just so you know, we did do something fun for our anniversary. We went to La Carreta. It's a Peruvian restaurant. It's the closest thing we can get to Ecuadorian food around here. Anyway, we got there very late and we were the only ones there. It was fun to just sit and talk to each other and not have a baby screaming.

Well, the next morning I noticed that there were some strange bottles on the floor of my shower. Some body wash, the dog shampoo, my shampoo, shaving cream, etc. I thought that was weird until I realized that the baby shampoo was over at the new house.

Then a horrible thought hit me. What did my mom use to wash my baby? I asked her and she said, "oh, you had some 'soothing oatmeal' shampoo so I used that." I went to the shower and pulled out a bottle and said, "is this the stuff you used?" and she said, yes. Yeah, it was the dog shampoo. My mom washed my baby with dog shampoo.

I don't blame her. Here is a picture of the shampoo bottle:


So do you see the word DOG stamped anywhere on this bottle in BIG BOLD letters? I totally can understand her confusion. There is no picture of a dog, and the only place it says dog is in teeny tiny letters right under the "G" logo. It says "For Dogs" really tiny and then it talks about "coat hydrating" properties in the box below. That could be for humans, right? If you are crazy and refer to your hair as your "Head coat" or "chrome pelt" as I like to call it. Then this bottle might work for you.

As it is, it's just funny. What ISN'T funny is the box on the back that says "keep out of reach of children so as to avoid consumption." And my mom said that she put the baby in that to swim around. Great! Awesome!! My kid was covered head to toe with horrible flea and tick killing, yet still nourishing, toxins. (I think all this oatmeal talk is terribly hyped up. Does the oatmeal neutralize the skin burning effects of the chemicals? Discuss) I am a horrible mother that bathes her child in dog shampoo toxins. I'll be accepting my mother of the year award this weekend. Thank you for all attending the ceremony held at Utah County Jail.

And to reply to Judd's comment, I will stop calling my dog "The little girl." I must admit that reading that and the phrase "300 bees" together is enough to stop someone's heart. But this latest debacle tells me that maybe I can start calling Evi "puppy girl" as a term of endearment. HA!

I'm a bad mother. The end

Too Tired to Type

If you have all been wondering where I am, why I haven't posted more. Well, I'll tell you: I'm moving. . . . AGAIN.

Let's just say that I'm a moving masochist and leave it at that, ok?

Also, today is our 4 year wedding anniversary. I must say I still like him, so I'm not sad I married him 4 years ago. Actually, I fell in love with him all over again about a week ago, but I'll tell you about that later. I'm too tired to do anything else tonight.

Talk to you all later.

Happy 14th!

Love you, Angel Loaf!!

Doggy Don't!

Poor Raya! Her day started out really good. My mom woke up at 8:30 am and took her for a walk at the park right by our house. I got up at 9:30 and played with Evi and had breakfast and talked to Marcelo. And then I got ready to get into the shower for church at 11:00 am. As I was about to get in, my mom walked in with Raya.

I immediately noticed a difference. When she shook, there wasn't the usual collar sound that accompanied her shake. I then noticed that her tags were missing!! Her tag circle was stretched to capacity and I instantly realized that my mom had attached her collar to the wrong circle, and when Raya had pulled against her leash, she had pulled the circle and the tags came off.

No worries. They were tags that can be replace for about $3.00. And I thought we could go to the park and look for them and have a good time there another day. My mom was gushing about how Raya was just so good, and how she loved the park and how she loves to take her because she's just a dream dog. I was very proud of my little girl just then. You always get happy when your kids are good for the babysitter.

So I got in the shower, and when I got out I got ready and started dressing Evita. Marcelo was getting ready and so was mom. It was about 10:49, and basically time to start climbing in the car to drive to church. As I'm dressing Evi, I look at Raya and she's rubbing her face and trying to rub her face on the leather couch. The leather couch? How can that be refreshing? Well, my question was soon answered when Raya looked up at me. This is what I saw:






























I'm sorry if you weren't prepared for that. You can imagine MY shock at seeing my little girl so altered. You can see they are all over her face, her muzzle, her legs and the top of her head. For a second, I thought that she had incurred a horrible case of mange overnight. Because dogs that are about to die from mange look just like that, with the skin all puffy and jacked up.

And then I noticed the individual bumps on the top of her head (see picture #4, it shows the bumps the best/worst) And I knew it was bees. I said to my mom, "What happened? Have you seen her?" She said that she didn't notice anything the whole time they were at the park. She said Raya hadn't cried the whole time. I asked where she was sitting at the park and she said she was over by the bathrooms. I happen to know that there is a bees nest living in one of the broken park benches there right by the bathroom. I asked my mom "were there bees there?" and she said, "Yes, there were bees. They didn't come near me, I hardly even noticed them. When would she have been attacked?"

I don't know what my mom was doing, I can only assume she was talking on the phone when what had to be 300 bees attacked my little girl. I was paralyzed. What to do? Take her to the doggie ER? I took her there the night she got hit by a car, and I know how expensive it is. I was pretty sure she wasn't allergic because she would probably already be dead by now if she were. But I didn't know if there would be any other problems in the future. I decided to call the ER (the doggie ER) and find out.

They (of course) suggested we should bring her right in. I told them that I didn't think that she was allergic, but what could happen in the future? She said that if we didn't bring her in, we should watch for signs of shock. I said we were about to go to church, and she asked if anyone could stay home with her during church. Marcelo, my hero, volunteered.

He gave her a soothing bath, and when I got home, this is what greeted me:


Yeah!! All better!! She was almost completely back to normal. Oh, I was so happy. Marcelo she was great during her bath and she was very happy to play with him the whole time. I was just glad her eyes weren't swollen shut.

I'm just going to apologize to Raya right now. Apparently my family is really hard on dogs. I'm just glad this story had a happy ending and that my dog isn't dead. SORRY RAYA!!!