Amy's Free Library of Rock!

 Hello, my electronically-accessed friends! I am writing to you today because that's how I organize my thoughts and bounce them off people when I have lots of potentially useless things bouncing around my head and the vague sensation that other important things keep slipping through unnoticed. I think it's that school starts in a few weeks. I'm lucky in that both my kids are twelve-and-up and they're both vaccinated, so I am not as apprehensive about school starting as I imagine parents with younger kids are (or at least should be). No, I'm pretty sure this is all the regular parent-with-executive-function-disorders school-is-starting-soon-so-what-are-you-forgetting-your-kids-need-to-do-first apprehension. Like my oldest who insists he's doing cross-country again but now he'll be in the high school (THE HIGH SCHOOL!) and the high school cross country coaches do a lot less hand-holding and the kid hasn't been running at all this summer and I have a feeling school will start and it will be WHY DIDN'T YOU DO ALL THESE THINGS FOR CROSS-COUNTRY FIRST and I'm already overwhelmed. Then there's the youngest with their currently untreated anxiety disorder, who is on a waiting list for therapy and refuses to take any sort of medicine in the meanwhile, and I'm like IS THERE SOMETHING I'M MISSING THERE, and then those are only the thoughts that HAVEN'T escaped me, so there's also AND WHAT ABOUT THE THING YOU FORGOT ABOUT???? WHAT THING IS THAT???? I reply. I DON'T KNOW, YOU FORGOT ABOUT IT.

Sometimes I feel like I should be crying, without any trigger. But it's not depression as much as Hello, The World Is a Mess and Everyone Is Just Trying to Hold It Together, Doubly So When Your Executive Functions Sucked To Begin With.

But that sounds moderately depressing, and I'm not depressed. I would actually be quite amused with my life if I had no responsibilities or potential-responsibilities-I-probably-forgot-about. 

(Also, I just looked down at myself and noticed I'm wearing this t-shirt, which is appropriate. But then, this t-shirt is always appropriate for me. That's why I bought it). 

For the past ...since April of 2020, I've been channeling my Sesame Street Staff Wannabe into my Mundo Monday storytime videos. Here's the whole playlist! Check them out! BUT, despite the Delta Variant and the fact that our audience can't get vaccinated, the plan is, still, to return to in-person storytimes at the library next month. Yeah, just typing that out feels weird. I will have you know that not only am I vaxxed, but I plan to invest in some clear face masks, to mitigate at least what I can? Anyway, though, but that means, as I say in my most recent and, for now, last video, I won't have as much time to devote to Mundo Mondays, so that's dropping back to, say, one episode a month. 

Thing is, Mundo has been sucking up most of my creative energy for the past year. And now it ISN'T. So guess what. NOW I CAN WRITE LOTS AND LOTS. 

I mean, theoretically. 

It's been almost a year since I've written for GeekMom, and recently I started thinking of actual GeekMom articles to write. I have several. They have several disconnected paragraphs each. It was a little over a month ago that I announced on GeekMom Slack that I think I might be coming back. I am, right? I think so?

And then I've got fanfiction. WAYYYYY back in my first few months on LiveJournal, I posted a whole thing wondering why I'd never gotten into fanfiction (this is the DreamWidth copy of the LiveJournal post). Well, it's 16 years later, and apparently I am now Into fanfiction. I kind of wrote about THAT before, a couple years ago on GeekMom, but I feel like this summer it's exploded. It used to be just a fairly focused compulsion to chronicle the coming-of-age of the Loudermilk Twins, with the occasional detailed rant explanation of why the writers of the MCU don't understand their own time travel rules, not to mention a few bits and pieces I'd written for my own amusement but never shared...or, for that matter, finished. And also, I didn't really READ fics. I mean I had enough trouble making time to read actual published books. 

Okay, so you note the past tense there? Yes, I've been reading a lot of fanfic this year. It's easy to get sucked into. And, being online, it's harder to notice just how long something is-- oh sure, the word count is there, but that's not the same as holding a big thick book, you know? And writing? I've been writing a lot. I just...haven't been finishing. 

For crying out loud. Now this blog post has the same problem. What was I talking about, again? What was my goal in writing this? Oh. To make my scattered thoughts more concrete and have other people look at them and say, "Yes, you have thoughts here, it isn't just your imagination." 

I have approximately 11 fanfics in progress. That isn't a wild and-possibly-exaggerated guess, that was me counting but being unsure how to count several things, which is the only reason it's "approximately." 

The majority of them remain Legion FX based, most massively two multi-chapter fics that are both being irregularly serialized on AO3 as we speak:

• "Exploration of the Astral Plane: An Immersive, Multidimensional Study, by Cary Loudermilk, PhD, and Oliver Anthony Bird," which is basically the story of how Oliver got himself lost on the Astral Plane to begin with (for those not familiar with the show, Oliver is a character we only hear about, at first-- before he arrives in all his glory I love Oliver so much you have no idea-- because he's already been lost on the Astral Plane for 21 years). I have four of six chapters posted. Both chapters five and six are nearly done, except for the very end of chapter five, because the very end of chapter five is the moment Oliver finally goes and doesn't come back (for 21 years) and it's heartbreaking and perhaps that's why I'm avoiding writing it down. (THAT PART is. It's a story with a sad ending but honestly getting to that part is a lot of fun, not a downer at all).
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• But much less heartbreaking is "A Strictly Scholarly Collaboration: the Original Romance of the Mind," which is the story of how Oliver learned to control his telepathic powers and fell in love with the help of his eventual wife, Melanie. It's a delightful bantery and actual-friendship-based rom-com that you really don't need any show-familiarity to appreciate, being that it's an origin story. There's only one chapter up yet, because somebody commented on one of my other fics and said Melanie is their favorite, and I was like, well, I'm almost done with chapter one of this Melanie-POVed fic, let's polish that up and post it! But chapter 2 is when we really start to dig into Oliver's psyche and that thing is COMPLICATED (by "that thing," I am of course referring to Oliver's psyche), so it's taking awhile, too. But that isn't to say I haven't written a lot of the stuff to come already, and I am so in love with Oliver, I'm serious, I can't wait to share this with the world, if I could JUST FINISH.
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• Technically, I still have a bit to fill into "The [aforementioned] Loudermilk Chronicles," although that's a series of interconnected fics rather than one work with multiple chapters. I even have a placeholder for it in the series that says "Unwritten College Story." I must assure you that this story is more than theoretical! It has its own Scrivener file as well, with 681 words in it! It's going to tell about that period of time when Cary started taking Being a Grownup seriously while Kerry was still like, but wait, I'm developmentally 11, why can't you just be a kid like me still. But I don't actually have a plot to go with it, yet.
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• So briefly, earlier this year, I thought, "So, when I finish these three, will I be done with Legion fics? I mean, it's not like it's still on the air, why would I keep getting inspired?" My muse immediately laughed at me and said, "But what if Cary and Oliver met when they were KIDS?" And so I had to start a whole Alternate Universe thread going down THAT path, which begins with one of my favorite fics I've ever written because it's basically just a story of two neurodivergent little nerds who also happen to be mutants (and the one's secret sister/alter/other-half) making friends-- you totally need no show preknowledge to appreciate it-- and yet it has gotten the LEAST number of hits of all my posted fics, which still makes me sad, so you should read that one. So anyway, I wrote them meeting, then I looked at adolescence and noted that their extreme distance from each other on the asexual spectrum might be a source of potential conflict in high school so I wrote THAT one, and then I said, "How does MELANIE fit into this timeline?" and as I'd already started writing "Strictly Scholarly Collaboration" I couldn't see that playing out any other way, but then I thought, well, it's the opposite now, I have to figure out how Cary and Kerry would fit into THAT story, and so I wrote a series of extra scenes that will slot INTO "Strictly Scholarly Collaboration," but of course I actually have to FINISH that story before I can finish the bonus scenes, no?
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• And then I had a couple of Legion dreams that I thought would actually make decent fics, so I started jotting them down, too.
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• And then out of nowhere I started jotting down a couple unseen scenes from within the show proper, too. So no, I'm not running out of Legion fics anytime soon. I just have to finish them.
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BUT. My taste for opening my gmail and seeing a notification from AO3 awakened a need for MORE. If you recall, in my End of Year Roundup I listed my works in progress (including the two multichapter Legion fics already mentioned here), I mentioned a Back to the Future backstory that I was only literally two sentences from finishing. It turned out to be two PARAGRAPHS (short ones, though), but still I DID manage to finish them and that became the first fic I posted this year. It had, as I said, been based on the headcanon backstory that had been living in my brain for years (and I had started to write down several times). And being that it's the most mainstream IP I've ever written about, it keeps getting read and racking up kudos (and some really nice comments, too-- I love comments. HINT, HINT). So I was like, "This is great! I have lots of other headcanons that could possibly be turned into stories! Maybe I should write THEM down, too!"

Do you know how many little headcanons I have for Diana Wynne Jones' Howl and Sophie? LOTS. That, also, is one of the many stories that fell victim to my Fictional Wedding Planning phase I had as a teenager (although I read it as an adult. Old habits die hard, okay?)-- but it was a delightfully madcap Fictional Wedding. I decided there would have been no engagement, and the wedding itself would have happened directly after the end of Howl's Moving Castle, because everyone was already there, including a Prince who could do all the legal stuff, and Howl wouldn't trust himself not to try to slither out of it if he put it off any longer. But I couldn't see him not wanting his sister and family at his wedding-- he loves them very much even if they fight all the time-- and they were the only people NOT there, for obvious reasons, so GETTING them there would be-- well, that would be a story in itself! Which is why THAT was the NEXT headcanon I decided to write down, and posted just the other week. 

And THAT was what got me addicted to READING fic lately. I mean, I was already reading more than I have been this year, but ever since I clicked through to see what else had been written about Howl and Sophie? Okay, it takes some filtering to avoid the ones from people who only know the movie-- because in that case they're writing about different characters entirely, let's be honest-- but once you find the book fans, you find a lot of DElightful little twists sometimes even worthy of DWJ herself. Also, even better, Howl and Chrestomanci crossovers! I love Chrestomanci, remember-- he's one of my top fictional crushes (hmm, have to add Oliver Bird to that list)*-- and good in-character fanfics remind me of that fact!-- and those crossovers also reminded me that I've always had another headcanon that Chrestomanci eventually wanted to take on Morgan Jenkins-Pendragon as a potential Chrestomanci, so then I started writing THAT fic. I haven't read the Chrestomanci books as recently or as often as the Howl books, though, so I really have to go back to that to make sure I'm getting the voices right, though some lines seem to be writing themselves --"“Why’s he a he?” “I’ve never known him by any other pronouns, and it’s not my place to inquire further.” “I mean why does the Chrestomanci always have to be a he? Why can’t Cat find a girl apprentice?”" You can tell that's an exchange between Janet and Chrestomanci, can't you? I could. I was very pleased that a Janet line popped into my head unbidden-- I don't think I could have defined A Janet Line directly. And then I thought of that and said, "Oh, that's very Janet. And also very Chrestomanci." Also there's this exchange:

I MEAN. I can't help thinking of my feelings when DWJ died, that I had to somehow keep the flame alive, that I was being called to Keep Writing In My Own Unique Way because it's the uniqueness that's needed. Which may actually be a little bit of an awkward thing to point out when I'm talking about people channeling HER style? But no, it still feels kind of appropriate. Like she'd be proud of me for writing these silly little fics. Do you know what that writing prompt was that I mentioned, in that post, getting carried away with on the day she died? Ye old "you get into a fender bender with your favorite actor and discover he has a dead body in his trunk." A few of you already know the significance of that (the few of you who have actually read the results), but, DO YOU KNOW THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THAT? THAT, my friends, was the prompt that launched the Pipeweed Mafia stories, another unfinished epic of fanfiction.

I thought of putting the Pipeweed Mafia stories on AO3 recently, too, but on reread decided that no, I am still uncomfortable posting fanfic of Real Living People online for the public** (I mean, at least I didn't write SMUT about Real Living People. But I did put Andy Serkis in a coma, and I'M SORRY, ANDY). And also, they're still not finished, either. It's amazing how attached I still am to Fictional Billy Boyd when it turns out I only have like half a page of him written. 

ANYWAY, so, before I started spitting out a Howl/Chrestomanci crossover, I'd already started another of my solo-Howl headcanon stories, too, ie, what happened at the Rugby League reunion the night before-- I've just always found amusing what kind of weird seemingly-nonsensical things a drunk How[el]l might let slip to his Welsh mates in his current state of high agitation. So there's that.

And when I started writing "The Invitation," I was thinking, you know, I should just embrace my tendency toward Imagining The Wedding and make a whole collection of fics called "How They Got To Married," although the actual interesting stories tend to be the How They Got There and not the Wedding itself. I can even put the "Strictly Scholarly Collaboration" in there, and maybe that'll inspire me to finish "A Guy That Can Make Her Laugh," my Zoe/Wash Firefly fic, too. And I remembered another such story that has actually survived in my head since my adolescence because it's just so complicated-- that would be How Blossom and Alexander from the Ghosts I have Been books Got To Married-- though so far that makes them the only couple in my How They Got To Married that DIDN'T canonically actually get married, although there are hints throughout the books that they COULD end up there eventually. But it's still far enough off that my path to get them there was REALLY complicated, which made me extra proud of it, which is why it has survived in my head for decades, so I started writing THAT one, too, or at least a scene that tied it all together. Extra fun because it's in Blossom's voice. I haven't really done a lot of first person fiction since I was a kid (and those I've done as an adult, such as certain scenes of the Pipeweed Mafia Stories, are first person AS MYSELF), so, fun! And then I decided to tell another bit from Alexander's side.

And yeah, if you looked at the list of WIPs in the End of Year Roundup, yes, I still have yet to finish "The Fall of [Spoilers Redacted]," which I'm totally leaving that "[spoilers redacted]" part in the final title because it's amusing to me, which is the ballad written by APOLLO THE GOD OF POETRY in the fourth Trials of Apollo book, because I am NOT Apollo and poetry is HARD. But I will do it someday, I promise. 

And if anyone's offering, I am still very willing to write the novelization of The Good Place. I've written a lot of that one in my head, but not down on paper. I'm not sure what the legality of that would be to share online, anyway. I mean I used real dialogue in my retelling of Legion episodes 6-8, but that wasn't the ENTIRETY of episodes 6-8 and was from a different pov and had a lot of made-up-by-me dialogue in it, too. Whereas my mental novelization of The Good Place is pretty much just The Good Place. 

And you know what? SOME times, I jot down random original scenes from completely original stories, often from dreams I had, but fleshed out into a proper scene. They kind of sit in my binder, seeds for something potentially bigger. Some of them are quite intriguing. If only I can just make an actual plot for them. 

So yeah, that's what I'm posting about. All the little threads of unfinished story in my brain. 

---

*Looking at that old post, I have made a few interesting observations: I was talking about GeekMom as if it was all Other People, which it was, at the time; apparently Oliver Bird doesn't belong on this list anyway because I only allowed book characters; I am stunned and delighted that there are so many people in the comments specifically agreeing with me about Chrestomanci; speaking of the comments, it looks like this actually may be when and where E. Louise Bates and I became friends (her saying she had just followed me over from Kate Coombs' blog, which I guess would have been WHERE we met, but STILL-- this is an eventful thing, then! She's still one of my best friends-I-never-actually-met!

**I will share with you directly if you ask. I just don't want them OUT THERE.

It’s time for the yearly roundup, and while 2016 is pretty universally known to have been a pretty crappy year, it’s had its bright spots too. As I’ve done for the past few years, I’ve rounded up events and reviews into Top Five lists for your perusal. It makes for a long post, but I’d love for you to read it, and chime in with comments on anything you see that you agree with, disagree with, or feel enlightened by, because I do these things to talk to people, you know.

( Cut for length and pictures )
So yay! I hope you've stuck with me through this long, long post! Drop me a comment!

Summer Vacation hasn't been treating me well. Sure, I didn't always make the best use of my time while the kids were in school, but now that they're home I'm a zombie staring blankly and mourning my lack of alone time. Also they're addicted to YouTube and video games like Minecraft and Roblox which are only available two places in this house-- my computer and my Nook-- and since there's two of THEM they've been commandeering my online access, so I don't even have you all to whine to about it. Seems the only way I can get them to go out and play is if I go, too-- take them to the pool, let them hang out an hour after Vacation Bible School this morning because they were actually running around with other kids even though I really wanted to get back home and have lunch, whatever. I feel very impotent when it comes to actually running my own life-- everyone else is running it for me. And when they AREN'T, I sit and stare because I can't even figure out what it is I would do if I DID take charge of my own life. I'm not sure how long it took me to actually start typing this, once Sammy decided to go see what his sister was doing instead of playing Roblox and I realized I had my computer to myself and could finally type out all the stuff I've been wanting to put out there all week. Like, wait, what did I want to write about again?

My physical body has been a mess lately. My right knee has been acting goofy* since Disney World and really only getting worse over time. It doesn't like to bend. It doesn't like going up or down stairs, or getting in and out of the car, or bending down and standing up again, and will protest with a scream of pain if I try it. And resting it doesn't even help. It's still mad at me in the morning after a supposed good night's sleep. I finally went to the doctor last week, who determined that nothing was broken and it was something in the joint itself, either tendonitis or arthritis, and all I can do is take lots of ibuprofen and put ice on it occasionally. This past week it's felt like my whole body wanted to follow that knee, finding a million ways to creak and cramp and act up whenever I tried to move OR to stay still, and I was like, seriously? Is my whole body falling apart now? I'm supposed to get into shape but I can't because exercise hurts, but not exercising makes me continue toward entropy? The good news is the x-ray determined my knee issue is not arthritis, which means it's not permanent, supposedly. There's hope for me eventually.

For some reason I have gained 25 pounds in the past two years. Now, before I go any further, you have to understand that I, unlike far too many people in this fat-phobic world, have never had body issues. I was skinny as a kid, so no one fat-shamed me into hating my own body, so instead I devoted all my physical self-loathing to my face, my blotchy, too-square face with the crooked teeth and stupid-vague-EnneaType9 expression-- look okay I still have irrational issues with my face, so I'm not like some miraculously physical-shame-free person. But my body I've always been okay with. I thought my figure was kind of perfect when I was younger. When I was pregnant, while other mothers-to-be fretted about feeling fat, I was like HOLY CRAP I LOOK LIKE A FERTILITY GODDESS, THE EARTH IS MINE! Even now, I'm not disgusted by my figure: it feels properly womanly** to me. But lately the weight gain has brought other problems with it. GIRTH has become a problem vanity-wise only because dresses I made or bought-on-Modcloth-so-they're-expensive-and-pretty just a few years ago NO LONGER ZIP UP. I do not want to get rid of those dresses. Okay, but besides that, I've developed actual health issues that correlate with weight gain: the joint pain, as established. Sleep apnea. Heartburn, which for some reason always hits me at two in the afternoon no matter what I may or may not have eaten. I've never been in good shape, what-my-body-can-do-wise, even when I was skinny, but that's hardly improving now, either.

And my husband ironically makes it worse by needling me about it. He's equal-opportunity about it at any case, going on about how we BOTH need to lose weight, but every little crack he makes makes me feel more stubbornly like NOT doing anything to help improve my weight. I'm just going to NOT exercise now because he said that, right? And food. Food is a real issue. I've always wanted to eat healthier than we eat in this household, with salads and produce of all sorts, experimenting with all kinds of foods, cutting back on meat intake-- in summer, especially, why doesn't my family like SALADS? Why do they insist on COOKED food? But with my family of picky eaters, they're not going to go for it. But my husband, while he won't sacrifice his hearty meat-and-potatoes*** dishes, he thinks snacking is the evil we need to cut. No eating too late in the evening (even though when I work evenings I often CAN'T eat until, like, 9 PM). No eating between meals. Whenever he sees me get a snack he makes some snarky comment about it, and you know what? It just makes me want to eat MORE and WORSE. Whether it's out of spite or just a feeling of DARNIT I WANT SOMETHING FOR MYSELF, I WANT SOME LITTLE BIT OF HAPPINESS JUST FOR ME TO INDULGE IN, DO NOT DENY ME THIS COOKIE. With the objective observer part of my mind, I can see myself doing this, making an unhealthily psychological connection to food, STRESS-EATING. So obviously, the objective observer says, I don't NEED to eat when I feel that way, right? At which point the objective observer gets GLARED AT by the rest of my mind, more determined than ever that NO ONE, NO ONE SHALL TAKE MY SWEET-AND-STARCHY SNACKS FROM ME, INCLUDING ME! When I mentioned this to my psychiatrist she said, "so when you feel this way, how much do you eat?" "I don't know, a few cookies?" "So not, like, two pizzas at a sitting?" "What?!" "People do that," she explained. Well dang, surely I SHOULD be allowed my cookies then, shouldn't I.

But seriously, that's so psychological. I so definitely make sure I always have a chocolate stash just because it's MINE. I'm a grownup and I can have a dang chocolate stash if I want. Because it's nice to feel like SOMETHING is in my control, you know?

Completely psychological.

I was going to write about bigger, more important things probably, but I think this is all I'm getting to today.

*pun not intended
**not that skinny women AREN'T womanly! I do not wish to suggest there is any WRONG way to be womanly! But I do feel my body is in fact properly womanly. Not my face, though, it's still too square. :P
***Granted, I won't sacrifice potatoes, either. It's just, you know, the concept. Meat-and-potatoes. But potatoes are happy. I love potatoes. Shut up anti-starch people.

This format worked really nicely last year, so I'll stick to something of the same:
( Long and Full of Pictures )

When I was talking about the GeekMom thing with some relatives on Christmas Eve, I said kind of bashfully that I shouldn't let my writing confidence be affected so much by how many people read and respond, because writers write even if only for themselves, but a couple of them said, No, it makes sense, because while that might be so, a written work technically isn't complete until it has an audience, because it TAKES A READER. So please, indulge me, and chime in in the comments with your opinions on any or all of the things discussed here, because I like being heard!

I've felt a bit of a fraud for a long while. I'm a children's librarian, you know. Part of my job description is "Encourage parents to read to their children because this will improve literacy, empathy, family dynamics, and their entire childhood!" There's a poster on the Youth Services office door of a Mafia-looking baby demanding "Read to me 20 minutes a day or I'll tell the librarians on you!" And reading aloud is one of my personal favorite things to do.

So why is it so hard to do with MY OWN KIDS?

I get jealous, reading online, other parents discussing all the chapter books they're reading as a family. Sometimes I think people DO go too far. When they're like "I'm going to read Harry Potter to my 4 year old now!" I'm like "NO. STOP. You're wasting it. Start with My Father's Dragon. Build UP for crying out loud! Sometimes age appropriateness has a point!" Besideswhich, people give up on picture books too fast. There are brilliant picture books that can really only be appreciated by school-aged kids instead of preschoolers, but everyone's in such a hurry to get to the chapter books that these get lost.

That's all true. But my kids could barely sit still for picture books, let alone chapter books. I DID start with My Father's Dragon, several years ago, when the girl was just a baby and so didn't get nearly as much out of it as her brother. We enjoyed that one. But the boy wasn't much into stories, really. He's a nonfiction reader-- give him a book about trains or Lego or Minecraft and he'll read for hours-- anything else, he's not interested. His sister enjoys stories more, but the same ones about her favorite characters over and over, and even more often she'd rather read what SHE calls "picture books," which are what I call photo albums. And that's great, too, she learns about her extended family and their history and her own past and it's every bit literacy-development.

But a CHAPTER BOOK? When there wasn't a picture on every page? How could they pay attention to that? They jumped around and talked through it so I couldn't read, and we'd try to pick up again a few nights later (a consistent reading schedule is hard, too, when I work until their bedtime several evenings a week) and neither could remember a thing that had happened before then.

When I said "hyperactive" in the title of this post, it wasn't hyperbole. They literally both have ADHD. They literally both CANNOT focus on one thing without interrupting with an unrelated thought, they both CANNOT sit still unless for some reason they're using my Nook and suddenly they're psychically shackled into place for hours without outside intervention. Maybe I was crazy to even THINK they could sit and listen to a long-form story.

So they're 8 1/2 and 6 1/2 now, and in the course of their lives we have completed only four short chapter books together: My Father's Dragon as previously mentioned, and Beverly Cleary's Mouse and the Motorcycle books. The last three I managed by reading during their bath, but since then they've been taking separate showers instead. And we've started and stopped several other Cleary books, and Lois Lowry's All About Sam because obviously, and my Internet friend Kate Coombs' very fun Runaway Princess books, and a lot of Disney fairy easy chapter books my daughter was REALLY EXCITED to check out of the library, but a few chapters in and we'd get distracted and not work our way back until the books were overdue or we'd entirely forgotten what happened and had to start again.

I was FAILING at this family read-aloud thing. How would I ever introduce them to my favorite childhood classics the way my mom had done for me? How would they DEVELOP PROPERLY without them?

But last week I was sorting a box of old paperbacks my parents had found in their house that hadn't managed to travel with me when I moved out because apparently my siblings felt they had a right to read them or something like that, and Maddie became fascinated with the cover of Edward Eager's Half Magic. "Can we read this one sometime?" she asked, and I said, "sure" in that offhand way that meant "Yes in that theoretical SOMETIME in which we read ANYTHING." But she kept asking, again while I was shelving the new-old books, and again when it WASN'T EVEN IN SIGHT. That's the most interested I've EVER seen her in a book that wasn't about Disney characters or My Little Pony. Somehow Katharine in half a suit of armor was nearly as good as a fancy princess!

So I grabbed it down and I sat deliberately in the room where her brother was playing, and we started to read, and by the end of the first chapter they were both asking questions. For the second chapter they both actually sat beside me for awhile, though there was bouncing involved and I occasionally had to stop reading to scold them down from walking behind me on the back edge of the couch. But that's all right-- they can't sit still, okay, but they WERE listening. When they interrupted, it was to DISCUSS THE STORY. If they were going to go off track, it was only to share what THEY would wish if they had a magic nickel. And that was the most I've EVER heard them engage with a chapter book.

Soon Maddie was coming up with all kinds of predictions and other theories, including the rather mind blowing observation that if she wished for two more magic nickels she'd get one more, or two total, and then if she wished BOTH coins would grant half the wish WHICH WOULD MAKE ONE WHOLE so she'd only need to make regular wishes from then on. And Sam? Sam was asking me to read to him.

HE NEVER ASKS ME TO READ TO HIM.

He'd rush to get ready in the morning so we'd have time to read before school! He'd get ready for bed without complaint to we could get on with reading! He'd even FOREGO MINECRAFT to read! What sorcery IS this?

Half magic, apparently.

They both started asking for a sequel even before we finished. Half Magic's the only one I have, in both my personal AND public libraries, but I got on the system's OPAC and ordered Knight's Castle from the next library over and it showed up the next day (that being today). Maybe this is the start of something. Maybe I WILL read them Harry Potter in a year or so and The Secret Garden next spring (that one has to be read in the spring), I'll read them Dahl now and try Cleary again, and eventually in a few more years we WILL sit down for a few months of Lord of the Rings so I can finally show Sam WHY he's named Sam, and THEN I will have succeeded at motherhood.

I hope.

But at least this was fun while it lasted.

Well, after a day and a half or two do you have any idea how long it took me to finally finish typing this up?!?!-- well, I STARTED typing after a day or two of severe stomach issues, when I finally felt comfortable enough to sit at my computer long enough to type,* which is about time, because my brain was all like "I need to type up these reviews! I can't start the next book until I type these up!" Which is kind of amazing when you know how much trouble I've had SITTING DOWN TO RELAX WITH A BOOK over the past 5 years. I think the key factor in this is Diana Wynne Jones. Because if anybody can capture my attention, she can. And it so happens to be #DWJMarch again over with Kristen M, so I said, "Okay, going to finally read Islands of Chaldea, then," which turns out to be an Official Read-along book, and then I ILL'd another of the official read-alouds, The Spellcoats, which I actually turned out to have won my own copy of yesterday. But meanwhile the ILL copy is here, and I've been sick, and reading is such a nice thing to do when you can't sit up. But I didn't want to confuse myself with having too many different DWJ stories floating in my head at once before I wrote out a response!

So first I'll discuss Islands of Chaldea so that all you folks only interested in #dwjmarch can cut out on me right after, but then there's a couple other stories (both paper and film) I've wanted to respond to on here, too, so I'll get to those after.

The Islands of Chaldea, by Diana Wynne Jones and Ursula Jones

This is the book she was working on when she died, leaving it unfinished; and, according to her sister's afterword, everyone sat around like "BUT WHAT HAPPENED NEXT? HOW WILL WE EVER KNOW WHAT HAPPENED NEXT?" until they finally decided they'd have to write the end themselves. So the task went to her sister Ursula, who did a decent job, and you can't pinpoint exactly where she picked the story up. But to be honest? There IS a subtle difference between the first part of the book and the last. The characters and settings and details are just so much more VIVID earlier on. No offense to Ursula Jones, because the last part of the book was perfectly fine, even good, but who CAN compare to her sister Diana when it comes to making a story spring vividly to life?

It's a pretty basic fantasy-adventure, made special thanks to DWJ's way with details. Our herione, Aileen, is a Wise Woman in training who thinks she failed her initiation, but before she can worry too much about that, she's swept up on a quest to rescue a kidnapped prince from beyond a magical barrier, which can only be breached with the help of a few special folks from each island of Chaldea. But the characters jump out at you with only a few words of introduction, and their adventures are never straightforward.

The titular islands are basically your typical quasi-medieval British Isles, except perhaps more so: Skarr, the heroine's home island, is clearly this world's Scotland, and the next stop on this island-hopping adventure, Bernica, clearly stands in for Ireland. But I'm not sure about the final two islands, not knowing enough about Wales I suppose to tell if: a) the third island, Gallis, is meant to represent Wales, while the final, magically-barriered island Logra is England; or if b) Gallis is meant to represent Wales AND England while Logra is, say France (because sometimes it seems like Chaldea refers only to the first three islands and Logra is something separate, besides the fact that there's literally a magical barrier separating it from the others); or if c) Gallis is where Ursula picked up the story and she decided to veer away from the overt British Isles parallels entirely.

Actually, I'm pretty sure Ursula DOES pick up the story somewhere in Gallis. That's about when the details and new characters stop feeling QUITE as vivid as they did on the first two islands. Also I somehow feel like Diana would have thrown a lot more complications at her characters before the end!

But I didn't actually notice the break while reading, I just kept enjoying it to the end. The ending DID feel a little rushed and haphazard, but that's a pretty common fault I find with DWJ's books (as much as I can find faults!) so it's only fitting.** But I'm overcome with wondering where the story would really have gone, had Diana finished it. As I said, I'm SURE there would have been more complications. And who can imagine how SHE intended the characters to breach the barrier. Or what secret conspiracies were really in place. Or what if this is yet another of her stories that involve parallel universes and Gallis DOES parallel Wales and in fact they were going to meet Howl and Sophie in Gallis because only their magic/world-hopping knowledge could take down the barrier?!?!?! But WE CAN'T KNOW, SO WE'RE JUST GOING TO HAVE TO LIVE WITH IT.

And that's really all I have to say about that one. I recommend it for any light-hearted high fantasy lover, and certainly any DWJ fan. It's not her most memorable work, but definitely is a pleasant, fun read. As long as you don't get too hung up grieving over how you'll never know what was REALLY supposed to happen.

So now it's time to discuss a completely different, but excellent, middle grade book:

The Crossover, by Kwame Alexander

Remember how I said, in my Youth Media Awards*** roundup, that I COULD probably read the Newbery winners I hadn't read (I mean, THIS year's, not ALL of them) in no time flat? That was totally true, because I read The Crossover at work, in bits and pieces, picking it up here and there and only putting it down when I realized I had other things I was SUPPOSED to be working on. Because it was easy to get sucked into, and that might be what's so brilliant about it.

And I feel like talking about this book BECAUSE the brilliance may appear deceptive, at first glance. You have a narrator with a very strong voice, and that voice is a 13-year-old boy who likes to rap and is obsessed with basketball (granted, he's very GOOD at basketball, too). It doesn't SOUND like a stodgy and-incidentally-white academic's definition of "distinguished." But to be prejudiced by that is like believing an easy reader must be equally easy to WRITE (SPOILERS: IT ISN'T). First, it HAS a strong voice-- a strong, consistent voice. You believe this is Josh's story, that this is how Josh tells his story, that he thinks in poetry and basketball terminology. And yes, it's written in verse, which just highlights how carefully each bit of character development and each bit of foreshadowing is woven in-- a lot is said in just a few perfect words. And it grabs you emotionally before you even realize it, and you're aching with Josh as he and his twin brother are growing apart and their dad's health is taking a downturn, and you forget that, at the beginning, this SEEMED to be just a book about a kid who loves basketball.

I have absolutely no interest in basketball, but this book still grabbed me. But what really tickles me is the thought that a sports-lover who's a reluctant reader WILL want to pick up this book, and WILL get sucked in, and before they know it they'll have EXPERIENCED LITERATURE. HAH! And I'm really glad to see that trick recognized with an award for distinguished writing, because that's an important and underappreciated trick-- to be able to write so reluctant readers can get lost in the story. AND heavily-experienced readers can appreciate it just as much? That's a super-distinguished book, thanks. Big kudos, Mr. Alexander!

Moving on to Television, let's talk Agent Carter:

Announcing my favorite TV of 2015 already! Like I did with Fargo last year, I've saved this announcement until it's all over so you can (if you've missed it) go marathon the whole thing! Or I saved it until the end because I didn't realize exactly how badly I wanted to gush about it until it was over. Honestly, I prefer the miniseries format of storytelling-- or the BBC short-season (series) format for returning series, you know, like Sherlock. You can get the intensity, the solid arc-building, and the general quality of a movie with MORE TIME TO GET INTO IT ALL. And then you've got a complete whole there that you CAN marathon, as opposed to the average TV show which goes on and on indefinitely unless it gets cancelled, so you either are left unsatisfied because it ended with too many loose ends hanging OR it goes on and on and on and STILL doesn't feel like a complete whole. I like getting a story I can take as a whole-- but if I get another season about the same characters with a NEW story arc, I certainly won't complain.

So, while Agents of SHIELD was on winter hiatus, Marvel/ABC decided to fill the gap with an 8-episode miniseries about the woman primarily known as Captain America's Girlfriend but more PROPERLY known as one of the founders of SHIELD, Peggy Carter. Now, I love Agents of SHIELD, and I was on edge at the end of the midseason finale, unwilling to wait two months to find out how things turned out, but now that it's back I'm kind of worried, because it just cannot live up to the complete awesomeness that was Agent Carter.****

This was a show that even LOOKED gorgeous. The colors, the lighting, the cinematography, the 1940s costumes and props and sets, all added up to something that felt slightly noir and yet very true to its comic book roots. It felt like a movie, which is something else you can do with a miniseries I guess, though "it felt like a movie" was my exact reaction to the first episode of The X-Files I ever saw years ago, too, so it's about something more than brevity. Anyway, you need substance to make style worth anything, and luckily Agent Carter had that, too.

The writing is funny and exciting and twisty and basically everything you could ask for in a historical espionage adventure with occasional sci-fi elements. And the character development is so smooth and well-rounded: EVERYONE is deeper than they first appear, everyone has both strengths and faults, even the most awful people sometimes inspire sympathy and the best people sometimes make you angry. Peggy herself is a fabulous heroine-- brilliant, funny, tough, yet sensitive, able to stand with (and exceed) the Men yet feminine, both a product of and ahead of her time, having epiphanies and making mistakes, thoughtful and sometimes rash. In other words, a fully-realized character rather than a Type, heroic and human at once. And her actress, Hayley Atwell, is absolutely brilliant at conveying ALL of it. I hope they recognize her come Emmy-time and don't overlook her out of anti-comic-book snobbery-- but the miniseries category pool is relatively small, she might have a chance.

And then when you TAKE a bunch of fully-realized characters, played well, and throw them together, you get brilliant chemistry, too. The chemistry is electric, complex, and refreshingly almost entirely not romantic (and the very small hints of romance are ENTIRELY complicated by the plot to the point that the farthest it ever gets is a turned-down asking-out-for-drinks at the very end-- but to be honest, I still ship it). See, Peggy's last boyfriend's airplane just went down in the ocean not too long ago, so she's not INTERESTED in romance at this point in time-- so it doesn't have to get in the way of the story! And for future reference-- you know I just possibly confusingly said "I still ship it" in the last parenthesis?-- yes, I totally ship Peggy with Agent Sousa, her cute sweet smart noble amputee-vet coworker with a crush on her, but SHOULD they ever get together, the romance shouldn't dominate then, either-- it shouldn't be one of those things where the couple is constantly BANTERING and having PASSION. Sousa's more of a steady rock type. Peggy gets to BANTER with everyone ELSE. Like her partner in crime/or anti-crime/or whatever, Jarvis, Howard Stark's loyal butler, who is happily married-- their totally-platonic chemistry is an absolute delight. I know, when characters have delightful chemistry, people want to ship them, and Jarvis is awesome and adorable and I go back and forth on whether I have more of a crush on him or Sousa*****, but in this case I cannot see anything other than a beautiful bantery friendship and it's so REFRESHING that way! And then you get Peggy and HOWARD, who is in fact a deplorable womanizer, but she won't stand for that and he respects her too much to resent her not standing for that, so you even have this wonderful bantery yet-totally-platonic friendship with a guy who tends to be anything BUT platonic. With all this platonic female-male interaction it's almost no wonder that a lot of people DO ship Peggy with her best girl friend, Angie, to which I say, hah, go nuts you crazy kids, but to me that's just yet another refreshingly platonic relationship. Angie serves as Peggy's link to "normal" life. She's a grounding character.

Anyway, people are all freaking out that the ratings weren't good enough to be renewed, but I don't really understand this. First, I don't really get how it could possibly have worse ratings than Agents of SHIELD, because I don't understand why everyone who watched that wouldn't also watch this, BUT Agent Carter is the sort of show that could attract people who not only gave up on AoS, but also people who normally don't have any interest in comic-book properties, because there's something just more mainstream about historical spy hijinks as opposed to superhero stories. Don't ask me why that is, but it is. As is, my mom watched and loved Agent Carter and the rest of the Marvel Universe loses her. Apparently the actual numbers don't support my theory, but I think I SHOULD be right. Never mind, my next theory IS evidence-based: Marvel and ABC are BOTH Disney companies, so it's all internal maneuvering, not some plucky outside talent begging the network to give them another chance. If they want to make more, they'll BROADCAST more. Agents of SHIELD keeps getting renewed even when ratings say it shouldn't. Thirdly, it's a SELF-CONTAINED MINISERIES. It's not like a show that can get CANCELLED or RENEWED. They can just make ANOTHER miniseries at any other time and show it again, whether during next year's AoS break or a few years down the line, like a BBC show. And sure, great ratings would make the network more LIKELY to buy another miniseries, but so will a devoted fan base, a lot of after-the-fact streaming or DVD buying, or future Marvel movie tie-in opportunities. Which I think this show is very likely to get if it doesn't have it already. There are so many individual opportunities for self-contained stories about the early days of SHIELD, and I will be thrilled to see Agent Carter tackle them at whatever schedule of recurring mini-series it's able to pull off. AND IT WILL.

SO I think it's about time I posted this, considering I've finally managed to type it. Seek these recommendations out! Enjoy them! Tell me about them in the comments! (Have I mentioned lately that I really like comments? I do. They let me know you're listening. Don't be shy!)

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A Large Mass of Footnotes:

*A story of fun times with stomach viruses! I wake up Sunday morning with a sharp pain in my abdomen, and moments later the boy bursts in to announce that his sister has thrown up FIVE TIMES all over his room-- including a rather impressive projectile-spraying of four feet of doorjamb. By the time I get that cleaned up, I'm feeling sick, too, but is it merely sympathetic or am I likewise contaminated? Clearly, it is the latter. Anyway, I finally feel like sitting upright long enough to start typing this monday evening, a time I normally should be at work, but that's not happening. Tuesday on the other hand, I and everyone else feels okay enough for work/school/whatever, which means I don't have all that much time for typing. Wednesday morning at 3 AM the boy joins the throwing up party. But that morning his sister is acting funny, too: "My HEART HURTS, Mommy, it's beating too fast, and my legs don't work," and she's drowsy and falling asleep where she sits. Aware that she did NOT take in enough fluids during her illness, I suspect dehydration and call the doctor, who-- well, the triage nurse-- suspects the same and says YOU MUST GO TO THE EMERGENCY ROOM IMMEDIATELY, so I bundle up two sicky kids, including one who is still clutching the throw-up-bucket to his chest, and off we go. But by the time we get there, the girl has perked up, and her brother looks like death, so I take them up to the check in desk and point to the one that's bouncing around and say "Believe it or not, we're here for that one," and she explains to the emergency room doctor that she DID feel sick this morning but now just her knee hurts, while meanwhile her brother is nearly passed out on my lap. The doctor grins and says it probably WAS a little bit of dehydration but not enough to worry about now, so let's get the BOY home and everyone get plenty of fluids. She also writes a prescription for an anti-nausea med, technically in Maddie's name because she's the patient, but she (the doctor) says, "it's actually for HIM-- or anyone else in the family who comes down with it." By the time we're done it's too late for Maddie to go to school, so they're both home the rest of the day, and Sam goes to bed early with a mild fever. I figure he won't go to school today, too. But then school gets cancelled anyway. So here we are.

**SPOILERS: My only real disappointment with the ending is that Aileen's reunion with her father seemed completely glossed over. You'd think it would have a LITTLE more affect on, if not the plot, at least the character development, but besides the initial embarrassed recognition, he could have been any other rescued kidnappee.

***Random thing I just noticed today: YMA is my name backwards. ALL THE MORE REASON TO LOVE THEM.

****Having seen the new AoS since I started typing this, I'm pleased to report that I can enjoy it just fine after all, thanks. Agent Carter is in another league entirely, sure, but that doesn't make AoS NOT fun as its own thing. And I love Fitz so much, so there.

*****It's funny, one of accusations lobbied against "Fake Geek Girls" is they only know Marvel characters from the movies and they only LOVE the movies because they have crushes on the guys in them, but for all the Tumblrs devoted to Tony Stark and Thor and Loki and Captain America, Agent Carter is probably the FIRST Marvel show where I'VE crushed on anybody (except maybe a little bit on Cap because he's so noble-- Peggy and I share taste; and possibly James McAvoy as young Charles Xavier, if you count all Marvel CHARACTERS even if it's not technically Marvel MOVIES, and that's basically just because James McAvoy is a beautiful, beautiful man anyway), and it's given me TWO somebodies to crush on. Heh. BUT, yes, I do admit that I am a huge fan of Marvel movies, but I don't know squat about the comics. But this is only because I don't really like long-form panel-based reading, not because I'm not truly interested! I've actually always fallen on the Marvel end of the Marvel-vs-DC argument, mostly because I DID follow the Spider-man comic in the NEWSPAPER, oh, and I watched the Spider-man cartoon too that Stan Lee always introduced in voiceover, which absolutely fascinated me (who WAS this Stan Lee guy? Wait, he INVENTED Spider-man? And he's talking on the CARTOON? COOL!), so Spider-man was always my favorite superhero, and I watched other Marvel cartoons too. Then again, I also watched Batman, but still, I liked the Marvel characters more. I always found them more nuanced and interesting.

I could begin with my philosophical arguments and generalisms, but let's not bury the lead: please stop giving my children a heap of Oriental Trading-esque junk in the name of good health.

That's it, really. It's ultimately selfish of me. I don't need more garbage toys cluttering up my house. I mean seriously, what do YOU do with all that crap they bring home from school parties now that bringing in birthday cupcakes isn't allowed? Do your children keep all their junk toys neatly in brightly labeled containers on shelves in their rooms? If so, please, share your secret! Or do you just pitch it periodically, because they're just crappy dollar store toys? If so, aren't you concerned about the environmental factors in making and shipping and disposing of all that, or aren't you concerned about the humanitarian factors of the low-wage workers exploited to make them? I mean, you're awfully concerned about junk food.

But let's bring it back to the philosophizing. Junk food's bad for you, right? That's why they call it junk food. But I'm of the everything-in-moderation camp (and yes, not EVERYTHING, don't be pedantic). There's a big difference between eating fast food every day and eating cake at a birthday party. When doctors talk about poor dietary choices they're not talking about an occasional splurge, they're talking about daily habits. And if a kid can't have candy on Halloween, when CAN they have it?

I've heard say that dentists recommend special occasion splurges over, say, eating one piece of candy a day, because you can brush your teeth just once, carefully, after a splurge, and all that horrible sugar is gone! Right, and you trade clean teeth for a bellyache, but I'm just saying.

I like sweets. Sure, maybe that's a vice of mine. But it's a much more controllable vice when I allow myself to have them on special occasions, and can say, "No, you don't need that" the rest of the time. Okay maybe I'm not actually that good about it. But in theory, I believe that's right. You don't turn down a dang piece of cake at a birthday party because you're "trying to watch your figure." Just don't be eating cake after every meal for no REASON. Birthday parties are FOR CAKE! EAT THE DANG CAKE! Unless you don't like cake, then, fine, don't.

The school has this policy of no treats. Combination of being "healthy!" and avoiding allergy issues. Okay then. I can deal with that. I just won't send in treats for holidays and birthdays. But other kids' parents have taken to sending in goody bags of nonedibles instead. For every kid. For every occasion. And not only does it make ME look like the crappy parent because I DON'T, but HOW MANY TINY ERASERS AND CHINTZY STAMPERS DOES ANY HOUSEHOLD REALLY NEED?

I'd prefer it, if people want to be HEALTHY! about their trick-or-treating gifts, if they gave out apples. Apples, the traditional lousy non-candy giveaway! But apples get USED. CONSUMED. And MY kids certainly like them enough. Curse that stupid razor-blade scare of the 1980s! Apples are SO much better than those pencils that don't sharpen properly!

But let's be honest. It's Halloween. It's one time of year-- one of two times if your Easter baskets take this pattern*-- when you're ALLOWED to amass a horde of candy. SO DO IT. FOR HALLOWEEN. LONG LIVE ANNUAL SUGAR OVERLOADS!

And that's all I have to say about that.

*Surprise, ours do.

For as infrequently as I actually post, my brain is often churning over blog-posting possibilities. Apparently-- I've come to accept-- blogging is my writing genre of choice lately, and even IT I can't always make myself sit and do. But I have that thing you get when you're writing fiction, where the story won't leave you alone, and you keep writing it in your head even though you're not writing it on paper... it's just lately I've been doing it with blog posts instead of fiction. Maybe it's because lately I've been READING more blog posts than I've read fiction. INTERNET, WHAT ARE YOU DOING WITH MY BRAIN?

Anyway, all these little posts get backlogged and I find myself stuck, when I actually have TIME to write, just trying to decide which I ACTUALLY want to write about most. Then it occurred to me that that never stopped me in the past, and I could just post them ALL AT ONCE, and nobody would read it because it would be So Friggin' Long, but it would all BE there as opposed to just theoretical. So HERE, with bolded subject headings, so you can skip to the parts you like:

On the Anniversary of US Beatlemania

...a topic I addressed slightly by describing my library program on the Beatles in January. And it's technically a topic I've addressed many times over. You all KNEW already by now I'm a serious Beatles fan, right? I've told you about the Paul McCartney tv concert that changed my life (and how badly I want to go to one in person). I've discussed all my favorite Beatles songs. I've written odes to Paul and George, who, if pressed, I will probably claim as my two favorites. And I've made so many off-hand references that I can't possibly go back and find them all.

But have I ever devoted a post to what being a Beatlemaniac MEANS to me?

It sounds like such a cop-out answer to say the Beatles are your favorite band. It sounds uncreative, like you couldn't be bothered to listen any deeper in the history of music so as to even FIND somebody else. I see the "Beatles are overrated" haters and they always try to argue the superiority of some other band (usually, for some reason, the Kinks. Which I have no argument with. I like the Kinks), but it DOESN'T MATTER. I can't help where my heart goes, and nothing makes me happier than Beatles music. Maybe not "nothing." But very little.

It also seems funny to claim that your biggest Geekdom is the most popular rock band in the history of the world. Aren't people supposed to Geek Out over NON-mainstream things? But no, my love for the Beatles is true Geekishness. I collect books about them. I absorb trivia about them. I am the resident Expert on the subject among all the people I know personally.

The comments section of The A.V. Club is widely regarded as one of the few places on the Wide-Open Internet (as opposed to nice personal blogs like mine) where reading the comments is not only an okay idea, but actually takes the article to a whole new level of awesome and/or fun. And I have to tell you how awesome I felt in the comments section of their review of the Beatles-on-Ed-Sullivan retrospective concert the other week. It was a found my tribe moment, for me to contribute comments and get into discussions where I CLEARLY was on-par in the conversation, to have SO many of my comments upvoted. To be able to converse so geekily and appreciate and be appreciated! Eight strangers upvoted my desire to play drums in an all-girl Beatles tribute band, aka Lovely Rita and the Meter Maids nobody else is allowed that band name I claim it! I felt so accepted. :D

I really don't know if it would have been different in the '60s, if the Screaming Fangirl aspect would have put me off to the extent that I wouldn't have CLAIMED them so completely. So I'm glad I came in after the fact, when it could be just me exploring a band I (and my dad) loved, and worrying about how many other people loved them later.

But they're magic with a melody. With harmonies and countermelodies and chord progressions. With their sheer variety of STYLES. With the WAY THEY MAKE IT ALL COME TOGETHER. (RIGHT NOW. OVER... sorry).

Which brings me to my next little topic:

Sensitive Hard Rockers

Last time I mentioned my Highly Sensitive son, so I want you to start with that image of a timid, high-strung, quiet, shrimpy little kid... which is why it amuses me that he's becoming a Metalhead. His DAD IS a metalhead, but he doesn't really play his music much (or at all) at home (he's even the sort of person who can --*GASP*-- DRIVE LONG DISTANCES WITH THE RADIO OFF), so the kids' musical exposure has been my more eclectic tastes. And of my tastes, he's developed a clear preference for hard driving rock.

THIS IS FUNNY BECAUSE HE'S EXTREMELY SENSITIVE TO LOUD NOISE. But IS it? Funny, I mean. Maybe it makes perfect sense. Music-- yes, even hard rock, old man-- brings order out of chaos. Maybe it's not the VOLUME of noise we're so sensitive to, but the RANDOMNESS of it. When that noise resolves into clear pitches and rhythms, it's like "OH GOOD, you made it all better." Part of my own fascination with/love for psychedelic rock is the way it outright acknowledges chaos-- harnesses it. It takes all the dizzying sensations of the world and thoughts of the universe and... SORTS it. And yet it's still all there, it's just organized! It's like a library versus a pile of books!

I did another video where I eventually started musing about how maybe my sheer lack of Being Rock and Roll was possibly WHY I love rock so much. It's an outlet for the wild side of myself. Which is funny when I just finished saying it's ORDERLY. Maybe that's what makes it a SAFE wild side!

... yeah, I know I started out talking about my SON and hard rock. But it all applies.

Anyway, now that I'm here, maybe I'll just stick to the music subject for today. The rest may work better tomorrow, after all.

My first grader is in there reading a Magic School Bus book to his sister, and I'm bursting with pride.

I don't know why it is, but I honestly think this has been the greatest reward of parenthood so far. I'm not even sure "reward" is the word I want. But you watch them grow and learn and experience so much, and it's all exciting and new, seeing the world through their eyes. You get their excitement, vicariously, when they learn to make their legs take them places (and they RUN, JUST BECAUSE THEY CAN), when they first taste a favorite food. But somehow THIS-- knowing he's decoded this SECRET LANGUAGE-- is a bigger thrill for me than anything else he's done.

Everywhere you look, there's print. Road signs and advertising and junk mail and cereal boxes and menus on electronics and instructions for toys. Even if you never open a single BOOK, there's so much to be READ. For the first five, six years of his life, he was surrounded by these seemingly random symbols, like decorative trim, and now suddenly they MEAN something. "This cereal has a Hint of Brown Sugar!" he announced this morning. Well, sure. Maybe he could have said that just by tasting it, but that's not the point. The point was that the cereal box had been telling him that ALL ALONG, and he'd only just noticed.

The world has opened UP for him in the past year! Everywhere he looks, there's a new story to discover! A few months back his dad and I were about to discuss something using the traditional S-P-E-L-L-I-N-G method, when I looked at Sam and laughed. "There's no hiding it from you, anymore!" I said, and we all laughed. It was like he'd been inducted into the club. HE KNOWS THE PASSWORD.

Sure, you say, I'm a children's librarian, it's my JOB to encourage kids to read, of course I'm happy about it. But it mostly drives home that this is about more than books, stories, school research. This is a WHOLE HUGE NEW WAY TO GATHER INFORMATION FROM ONES ENVIRONMENT. And it's just cool.

Hi folks. It's been awhile, mostly because I had the flu last week and the week before and OH MY GOSH... wait, never mind. I keep forgetting it's only the beginning of February, because I'm planning library events for the end of February, and keep forgetting my events in the middle of February haven't happened yet. Even though it should be fresh in my mind, since I was forced to change my Hobbit movie calendar today, which was very sad, because Mr. January was Bilbo and now it's February, which should delight all the Thorin fangirls but just does NOT fill me with irrepressible smile bubbles every time I walk by the calendar the way Mr. January did. Even Maddie is disappointed in Mr. February in comparison. She said, "He's scary." You know what she said, unprompted, about Mr. January? "That's my favorite guy!" Good taste, that child.

SO ANYWAY, it hasn't been QUITE as long since my last entry as I feared, because I have NOT actually DONE my February library* programs-- WAIT, I NEVER TOLD YOU ABOUT MY NEW LIBRARY PROGRAMS! I picked up some regular weekly program spots because we needed more programs aimed at elementary aged kids. So I'm doing what I call "Library Explorers" on Monday evenings, which is where I pick a fun topic and we find books and do activities and stuff around that topic. The first one is a Mardi Gras party. Elementary-kid-appropriate. Then Thursday evenings are Family Night Story Times, fun for all ages! Stop by!

So, I've been planning programs at work, recuperating at home-- until last weekend, when I started going on Cleaning Sprees. I'm typically blind to clutter, and ignore housework until it becomes Problematic (in my opinion, not the opinion of other people), but every so often I go into BERZERKER CLEANING FRENZIES and dive into thorough, day-long projects of it all (this is actually fairly typical of Type 9s. I AM NOT A FLUKE). That happened this past week. Oh, and I've been reading fiction, occasionally! I bought Terry Pratchett's latest, Dodger, on a whim on my Nook because it was on special, which I was enjoying right and dandy; but then yesterday a girl returned Code Name Verity (by Elizabeth Wein-- look at how "Wein" is just like "Weir" with an extra little line down the end! That's a good name for a writer) and I decided "I said I'd like to read this, but I think I want to read this NOW," so I checked it out and dove right in. Dodger is good, but it can wait. Both those books just won Printz Honors though. Good year for the Printz! Books I'm actually interested in!

But SPEAKING of the Youth Media Awards, that actually brings us to what I was going to tell you about all along. Sort of. See, I was going to get out of blogging by introducing you to my VLOG! but now I've already typed four full paragraphs so I suppose I haven't actually gotten out of anything.

Anyway, a month or so back a few of my Lycoris-Project friends decided to start a group video-blog, just to chat with each other. Or spew opinions at each other. I thought, that sounds crazy! Why would I ever do that? until I said Heck with it and did one. A video I mean. And I said "That was fun! And didn't take THAT much time! And is a new and exciting creative endeavor, and I need to START a new and exciting creative endeavor so as to remind myself that I can, indeed, create! And I am AWESOME when I can edit out my ums and terribly-long-pauses-when-I-can't-think-of-words! It's like WRITING, only out loud!" So I was added into the video rotation and have so far created four videos.

So getting back to speaking of the Youth Media Awards, that's what I did in this week's video. The topic of the week was supposed to be "Movie, Music, and Book Recommendations," but because that seemed like such an endlessly broad topic, I stuck to talking about the Youth Media Awards instead. And reading Elephant and Piggie books out loud:


Isn't that amazing, actually seeing ME in PERSON? YOU ARE DROOLING ALL OVER YOURSELVES WITH LOVE OF THE REAL ME, NOW, AREN'T YOU? Well, assuming you are, my other videos are here: in which I introduce myself, in which I blather about FANDOMS, and in which I respond to questions in what has been erroneously labeled a "Nerd Survey," even though the questions lean far more to "geek" than "nerd." You can also see the videos the others have made, assuming you would want to look at anyone who is not me after this.

So that's how I give you a blog without blogging! Although I blogged anyway! Thank you. Thank you very much.

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*I keep spelling "February" wrong, and I only just realized that's because my fingers keep wanting to type "library." Well, February IS Library Lovers' Month. Probably due to spelling.