Amy's Free Library of Rock!

Hello, faithful reader of this annual really long thing! (You are allowed to skim. But then you might miss something that actually only I find interesting but I like to think you would also find interesting). Here’s my year, split up into Real Life and Media, and then further split up into categories, and then put in lists, some of which are ranked and some of which are not! It’s so organized! And remember, I am extremely needy and would absolutely love for you to comment on any of this, just so I know you actually cared!

STUFF THAT HAPPENED  
Life Events in no particular order
Sam got his license, and a car, and a vo-tech co-op position/part-time job my baby is all growing up and stuff. Did you know I've had this blog longer than he's been alive? Technically it was on LiveJournal before and it's been TRANSFERRED to Dreamwidth, but the post announcing his arrival is still here! Anyway, and he had his last football season as a band geek (on flags but still) and I was sappy and missed my dad a lot. And both kids are very involved in drama club, but on crews, which is funny for me because I always loved being on stage, but Sam prefers lights and Maddie prefers costumes and sets.

In related news, we are Old. No, let me not be so glib, although Jason did turn 50 this year. We both have Old People Health Issues rearing their heads this year. Jason has to go on a low-fat-low-cholesterol diet. And I now have a CPAP machine, which is less annoying than I feared but still kind of sucks. Not literally. It blows, not sucks. Either way works.

I also got tested for allergies, because I've been noting a rather extreme uptake in seasonal allergic reactions lately. It turns out I'm highly allergic to all types of grass. That's grass pollen and stuff, not just, like, a lawn. I remember a kid in elementary school saying they were allergic to grass and that seemed impossible to me, like being allergic to water. Anyway, I'm also slightly less allergic to dust mites— not a good thing with my cleaning habits— and cats, for which the blame lays on my exposure to my pets in the first place, because that's definitely new. And luckily isn't bad, because Sir Ralphie still likes to sit on me. Good news, when he sleeps on me in the middle of the night, I have a CPAP machine to filter out his dander! :P

So anyway, now I'm on two allergy meds (one morning one bedtime), a pill for restless leg syndrome, a pill for acid reflux, and my usual sertraline and adderall— which, yes, luckily the adderall no longer gives me heart palpitations, because I swear my ADHD is getting worse. Which fits with the getting old! Because apparently when your estrogen levels start dipping, it makes ADHD worse! Whoooo!

I have been struggling with burnout lately, and I don't think it's so much burnout with, say, work or household chores (though they certainly don't help), I've described it as burnout from trying to be normal. It's absolutely just too much dealing with my silly brain and too much masking of all the struggles. I've actually noticed, like, the triumphant return of my autistic symptoms, which I'd been dealing with so well for so long that I really had talked myself into believing all my social struggles were JUST the ADHD, but apparently I was just masking them from MYSELF as well, and when I got too tired of, you know, Trying to be Normal, I can't do it as well, and people catch me being autistic and think I'm being bored or uncaring or antisocial! I did find a really helpful video on how ADHD and ASD interact with each other in girls (and actually end up masking each other) that made me go OH, now THAT makes sense, and is so much more helpful than things that just list the similarities and overlaps. So I officially identify as AuDHD again now. I do wonder if it would be worth it to get a formal ASD diagnosis just to have it in my back pocket in case it causes problems at work (it ALREADY causes problems at work, but in case it causes POTENTIALLY LOSING MY JOB problems and I need ADA legal protection. I do have the ADHD diagnosis but I don't think it would necessarily be as useful. But that could be the internalized ableism talking. Or the familiarity with externalized ableism. You know, because ADHD symptoms are just widely regarded as bad work ethic! It's too ingrained in the culture! I'm just saying, autism gets more sympathy!)

So yeah, most of my Events of the Year are weirdly health-related. Struggling to think of more…oh, we painted Maddie's room a collection of bright colors and it's very happy in there! And Jason went archery hunting for the first time and got a nine-point buck his first day out and came home with a freezer-load of venison, and then my mom sent us Omaha Steaks for Christmas, so like WE HAVE THE MEATS as Arby’s says, although Jason is supposed to be cutting back on red meat. So if you want some meat, come over for dinner sometime! But ask ahead of time to make sure I'm not working evenings. And you're just going to have to deal with the wreck of a house. Unless you want to come over and clean it for me. That would be helpful.

OH, we also have a buttload of hot peppers. I totally struck out with my hot pepper harvest last year so maybe I overcompensated by planting more this year? I also planted them in a better location so they actually grew. So! Meat and hot peppers! What do you want for dinner, I'll cook! I do like cooking for people, I just don't like deciding what to make!

Library Happenings

So, my second year as head of the children's department! Work/Life balance is a lot harder when you work full-time and commute a bit. But at least I LIKE my job!

My part-time coworkers in the children's department are starting to feel like the Defense Against the Dark Arts position. Haley, who I worked with the first year, left to have a baby, and Vicki took her place: a retired teacher who is loud, energetic, and politically conservative, but she ALSO has ADHD, which we bonded over with much laughter and constant helping-to-find-whatever-each-other-misplaced. We had lots of fun despite our differences! But then, right around Thanksgiving, Vicki broke her foot, and was ordered to stay home for the rest of the year (being, you know, hyperactive-type, she was VERY BAD about staying off of it at first, ended up breaking it WORSE, and the doctor had to put her foot down. The doctor put the DOCTOR’S foot down about Vicki’s need to put Vicki’s foot UP, I mean). Now, I just found out, she's found a position working for a cyberschool (which she can do OFF her feet), so we'll be looking for another part-time early childhood specialist again! Meanwhile, we've been through MULTIPLE Family Literacy specialists since I've been here, who do mainly tutoring and Outreach but also help with summer programs— but now we've had Sarah for the longest we've had any of them in my time here… so knock on wood…

Special Events and New Programs:

Mock Caldecott! Not technically a new program, but it IS new to have my boss and coworkers excited about it!

Take Your Child to the Library Day! Happens the first weekend in February! We had exactly one week of prep from when the boss said she really wanted to do it, and we threw together a scavenger hunt, button-making supplies, and Lunar New Year activities, and it was a pretty cool day!

Build It Make It Do It! A Maker/STEAM program for elementary kids, and they were really into it, too! We did papier mache, made slime, built non-electric robots and definitely-electric Squishy Circuits, and what else? Paper airplanes, too!

Rotating Thursday morning programming for early childhood, so they didn't have just the typical storytimes: I resurrected yoga storytime, dance party, block party, and Messy Art— the week before Halloween Messy Art scooped out jack-o-lanterns and BOY was that a treat! The Thursday that actually WAS Halloween we had a pretty rollicking Halloween party that went way overtime!

Christmas Around the World! The after-hours Holiday Party went over so well last year with Polar Express Night, but I didn't want to do Polar Express again so soon because that's boring, so Sarah suggested Christmas Around the World, and I did way too much research because that's me— my pride and joy was the Christmas in the Southern Hemisphere room, which was kept warmer than all the other rooms, and had sand play for the Australian Christmas Beach Party, and trees to decorate with cotton balls which is a South American thing, and this AWESOME baobab tree made of a folded room divider wrapped in table paper and topped with paper tubes, and glow sticks and fiber optic light toys. There was ornament making in the craft room: Ukrainian beaded spiders, Filipino parol— star lanterns, Danish woven hearts, and cinnamon scented cookie cutter ornaments we said were German but were kind of stretching it! And in the food room we had a tamale-stuffing station, and also a chocolate Yule log and a Three Kings bread and wassail and hot-chocolate. And the centerpiece of the evening was a (secular-as-possible) posadas procession, which was mainly everyone making a lot of noise from room to room (we even dropped in on the grown-ups' Bingo Night) until we ended up in the front room with a pinata, which was definitely exciting!
Next year I'm thinking I want to make it Nutcracker-themed, but ask me again in December.

Themes and Activities In Regular Programming!

For regular storytimes this year, most of the time Vicki came up with the themes, and often changed her mind at the last minute, so not too many are really sticking out for me.

1. The one exception was International Children’s Book Day, which sounds like a clunky not-kid-friendly title, but we read books from all over that all ages from toddler to grandparent really enjoyed, including Herve Tulle's latest, Tap! Tap! Tap! Dance! Dance! Dance! which inspired our art project of the week— fingerpainting to music!

2. Speaking of messy projects, the next week was time for the PA One Book which was Slug in Love, so we played with Metamucil slime, which is very sluglike.

3. Then Vicki found a way to make "mud" by adding cocoa powder to oobleck, and we used this so many times that our boss got sick of it and told us it was too messy, stop it.

I completely forget what theme we used that for. Oh, I think it was cars and trucks, and they played with cars and trucks in the mud.

4. For Bunnies we did the Bunny Hop, which was memorable enough that kids were still singing it weeks later. And they had an egg hunt that week, too.

5. Sarah had a template for an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly game, we put it on a box and kids would feed the Old Lady. With all the variations on that story out there (most by Lucille Colandro), we ended up using that poor Old Lady OVER and OVER.

Summer Quest Activities and/or Themes!

The Collaborative Summer Library Program theme this year was "Adventure Begins At Your Library!" so each week of Summer Quest (for ages 6-12) centered around a different kind of adventure!

1. Movie Making: for "Adventure In Your Own Backyard" week, I thought of storytelling/make-believe, and then I had the bright idea to have them make their own movies. It went so well (or I at least talked it up so well in my End of Summer Report for the State) that the project was selected for the Showcase of Awesome Programs (it has a more professional name that I can’t think of at the moment) that the Pennsylvania Education and Libraries Department puts out as training videos for the rest of the librarians in the state, so I feel like I’ve already described this extensively, because I have, so… anyway, let’s just look at the results, shall we? Everybody’s got their clearances signed. Here’s the 6-8 year old class’s, and here’s the 9-12 year olds’. They’re each about 8 minutes long and they are genuinely really enjoyable, despite some sound and other technical issues (like, if you’re going to use a blue screen, better warn your kids not to wear blue that day ahead of time).

2. “House of Danger” Choose Your Own Adventure Game: We had this game among our supplies that’s basically a Choose Your Own Adventure book adapted onto cards so it can be played as a collaborative game, and I said That would be excellent to use with the older group for "Adventure In the Dark" week. And it was! They got so into it that we ended up forgoing a lot of the other activities we might have done that day (even recess) just because everyone wanted to keep going to find out what happened next! We never did actually finish the entire game... I just looked at that link and it says "1 hour play time," HAH. Well, maybe if you split it into five one-hour sessions...?

3. Practically everything else from "Adventure in the Dark" Week: It’s funny, when I first started brainstorming for Summer Quest, I had doubts about devoting a whole week to "Adventure in the Dark," because I didn’t think I had enough activity ideas. Well, I was wrong! To start, the director mentioned to us, “You know, we have a fake ‘campfire’ around somewhere that you might want to use this summer,” so we found it and set it up in the storytime room (so add that bit of atmosphere to your imagining of the House of Danger game, too)! And we made s’mores (in the oven, not over the fake campfire), and one of our volunteers brought in her guitar to play camp songs! We played no-peek games like Guess the Smell and Guess the Sound in the dark, and ended the day with a glowstick party. And in the (properly lit and with tables) Activity Room we made glow in the dark art!

4. "Treasure Hunt" Week was full of good stuff, too: a Follow the Clues hunt around the Library, including secret codes; Digging for and identifying gemstones (in that cocoa oobleck mud from earlier in the year, see above—that was the moment our director couldn’t take it anymore and made us stop with it already); an obstacle course inspired by Indiana Jones; and, for the older group, very basic Orienteering with compasses to take steps around the park to where treasure was stashed, which happened to be small smash-your-own geodes.

5. I really wasn’t there for most of this, but when the older kids played Oregon Trail. July 4th fell on the older group’s weekly meeting day, so I said, ah, there will be a lot of people on vacation that week, let’s just invite EVERYONE to come on WEDNESDAY instead. It was, to say the least, chaotic. BUT, we had found a card game version of Oregon Trail (the 80s computer game) on the same shelf as the House of Danger game, and knew it would be too much for the younger groups, but when the OLDER group rotated to the Wild West room (it was "Adventure in the Past" week—the other rooms were Medieval Europe, where they made heraldic banners, and Ancient China, where they did printmaking and papermaking—that was my station, which is why I only caught the tail end of the Oregon Trail thing) we thought we could play that with them. The mechanics of the game were too confusing to figure out though, but luckily one of our teen volunteers—the same one who brought the guitar the other week, she was definitely a treasure—knew where to find the original computer game online, AND how to play it, and she loaded it up on the big smart TV and led the kids in a game they were THOROUGHLY into. When we brought the younger kids back to that room for our final activities, THEY got sucked in just as observers. The kids quite enjoyed dying of dysentery, really!


So speaking of adventures you can view safely from the outside, now it’s time for:

MEDIA REVIEWS

Books!

Top 5 2024 Picture Books

1. Up High, by Matt Hunt. It's funny, recently I'd forgotten I read this one, just looking at a list of new books we'd gotten in the past few months, but once I read the notes I wrote in the Book Riot book log — and saw how high I'd rated it!— I said "OH! THAT one!" As unmemorable as the title may be, there really isn't anything more appropriate. It's just a story about a little boy walking with his dad, but the pictures are full of really interesting exaggerated perspectives to show the boy's perspective feeling dwarfed by adults, then riding dad's shoulders, then being a giant compared to bugs and such.

2. Time to Make Art, by Jeff Mack. I just bought this for Jason's art-loving (and Maddie-idolizing) little nephew for Christmas, but it will be handy at the library next summer for the “Color My World” CSLP theme; it's a bit of a guessing game if you know the artists that make cameos throughout to answer questions about what exactly art is*— and if you don't, it's an introduction!
(*And I JUST got thrown 25ish years back in time to this Core Question— for the couple of people reading this who know what I'm talking about— man, wouldn't it have been interesting to explore the question from an "Elementary Education" perspective, and used a book like this as a reference?! …like I said, that's an iykyk comment. How many of you are reading this, anyway? I remember Tracie saying she looked forward to these once, and I can kind of see Brian reading it. Feel like Angie and Jen have commented on these in the past. But anyway, enough of that sidebar only a limited number of readers will understand! To the next title!)

3. Being Home, by Traci Sorell, illustrated by Michaela Goade. I do adore Michaela Goade SO MUCH, but I don't really feel this is her best work. The story doesn't give her as much opportunity for her sweeping beautiful landscapes. It doesn't stop her from doing nice (though less stunning as in, say, Remember, see below) things though. And it IS a nice story in general about moving to the country (a reservation) though. Happy and peaceful.

4.The Spaceman, by Randy Cecil. Another fun story about perspective, experiencing an ordinary park on Earth from the point of view of a tiny space explorer, who sees what's ordinary to us as something very extraordinary indeed.

5. Santa's First Christmas, by Mac Barnett, illustrated by Sydney Smith. Your obligatory Barnett for the year, though much less silly than the ones he does with, say, Klassen or Rex. But this story, right now: I feel this! My teenagers need to read it and really take it in: Santa needs time to relax and have Christmas, too! The actual target audience of the book probably will not make the connection to giving their mothers a nice post-Christmas break, though. But Mac Barnett dedicated it to his mother, so I have a feeling he knows what's up.

Top 5 2023 Books Crammed Right before the Mock Caldecott

1. Remember, by Joy Harjo, illustrated by Michaela Goade. I am such a Michaela Goade fanatic that I couldn't even look at this objectively for the Mock Caldecott. Halfway through part of my brain was like "you need to evaluate by CALDECOTT features" but the rest of me was like "NO! PRETTY! JUST FLOAT AWAY IN THE PRETTY!" This MAY be my favorite of her art yet. It leans further into the abstract (less on people's faces), and there's some very cool formline effects of Raven flying white over everything.

2. Simon and the Better Bone, by Corey R. Tabor. Built sideways like Mel Fell, but it doesn't turn: the book spine just marks the line of the pond/reflection. It doesn't have quite as much energy as Mel (who makes a cameo appearance!), and I wasn't sure if it's that award-worthy-- but the mirroring technique is fun, as is the whole book, and it DID end up winning our Mock Caldecott!

3.An American Story, by Kwame Alexander, illustrated by Dare Coulter. The text is a bit intense, because it seems to be intended to be used in a classroom to introduce the topic of slavery— as opposed to just a nice pleasant everyday read like Simon and the Better Bone, which is probably why I was the only one to give it much attention at the Mock Caldecott. But the art is really fascinating: mixed media, there are sculptures and paintings and, notably, the bits that take part in a modern classroom learning the history are just simple charcoal drawings on yellow, so the history parts stand out as far more real. There's a spread at the end where a sculpted woman is holding the chin of a drawn girl and it's totally seamless-- that was my wow pic that sold me on its award-worthiness.

4.Big, by Vashti Harrison. This turned out to be the real Caldecott winner, and good for it! At first glance it doesn't seem THAT impressive, but it sneaks up on you, the way she uses space (and the lack thereof) to show the girl's self-concept as the story goes along. And a good use of a gatefold! Also I'm not sure I'd ever seen this concept—a large child worrying about taking up too much space— explored quite so straightforward but tenderly.

5. Stars of the Night: the Courageous Children of the Czech Kindertransport, by Caren Stelson, illustrated by Selina Alko. More intense topics! This one made me cry, all the parents sending their children away in desperation. But making one cry isn't what wins Caldecotts, so shout out to the art, which is collage and somehow captures the feeling of this terrible time without being, like, too disturbing for children.

Other 2023 Picture Books (including easy readers), because my "Older Than" list was very long so I figured I'd give some more STILL newER books a little more spotlight:

1. The Skull, by Jon Klassen. Since he didn't illustrate the Barnett selection this year, he squeezes on with his own story instead! This is— really more of a very easy chapter book than a picture book? But I still read it aloud to the younger Summer Quest kids in one session (this is the story they got instead of the House of Danger game), so I'll count it here. And I love this one! Eerie and happy at the same time! Spooky but not scary! Klassen has just such a wonderful dry sense of humor that comes across through the simplest pictures and simplest word choices-- he's really perfected Less Is More!

2. I Will Read to You, by Gideon Sterer, illustrated by Charles Santoso. This one came and hit me out of nowhere— I hadn't heard of it ahead of time, my boss just bought it with a pile of other "Halloween" books to put on display. It's not so much a Halloween book, though, as a bedtime book that happens to have monsters in it. And it's so sweet! And the poetry flows really well, which is great because you want a story about reading all the monsters a bedtime story to actually be pleasant to read aloud!

3. Fox Has a Problem, by Corey R. Tabor. Dang, Corey R. Tabor, stop being so good at writing all-ages-accessible high quality books already! I opened this one up and laughed immediately. That's why it won the Geisel. Super easy and yet super entertaining!

4. Mr. S, by Monica Arnaldo. Very silly story about a teacher who is a sandwich. That's a spoiler. Sorry. Because you're left to assume through most of the book that it's just a misunderstanding. Dang, I should have gotten THIS one for J's nephews, this is just their sense of humor!

5. Once Upon a Book, by Grace Lin and Kate Messner. Pretty sure the art is straight up Lin's but they worked together on the rest of it? It's a fun trip through various settings, and the girl's dress blends with the surroundings like in Big Mooncake (the moon is very familiar too!) I like how the art starts as line drawings but becomes realistic as she enters each setting.

Top 11 Older Than That Picture Books, listed in order from newest to oldest because that's how I picked out the above 5, and I'd rated them all 4 stars and have no idea which one to kick off the list to make it an even 10:

Going Places: Victor Hugo Green and His Glorious Book, by Tonya Bolden, illustrated by Eric Velasquez, 2022. Interesting and readable, and strangely uplifting for a story that wouldn't have happened without depressing reasons.

Where is Bina Bear? by Mike Curato, 2022.  Sweet and funny! I like Bina's creative hiding places, and how she isn't shamed for being shy, but has her own quiet party with the friend that missed her.

The Circles in the Sky, by Karl James Mountford, 2022. Beautiful look at grief. It does make me wonder if it's one of those books that is really more for grownups, but I don't know. I don't think so, with the right kid at the right time.

Thao, by Thao Lam, 2021. Oh this is very fun! She combines photos (of herself as a child) with cut paper collage and a lot of word art. I wish I'd had it when I did my "Celebrate Your Name" Mundo video, but I definitely put it to good use in my "What's Your Name?" storytime!

Hugo and the Impossible Thing, by Renee Felice Smith and Sydney Hanson, 2021. I liked this way more than I thought I would when I saw it was by people who normally work in television and, like, wrote a picture book on a lark. It's saved from being overly simplistic by it's fresh take on the "nothing is impossible if you try" theme: that everyone has their own unique talents and can help each other with them, so the impossible thing isn't impossible when you try AND you have teamwork!

Every Little Kindness, by Marta Bartolj, 2018. A good wordless one for teaching cause and effect and illustration-reading. Also it's just so bright and happy.

My Name is Sangoel, by Karen Lynn Williams and Khadra Mohammed, illustrated by Catherine Stock, 2009. Another one I found for the "What's Your Name?" storytime, but just a bit too hard for preschoolers. It would be cool to use with older kids to make rebus breakdowns of their names, though!

Welcome to Zanzibar Road, by Niki Daly, 2006. Which by the way, who was going to tell me "Niki Daly" is a guy? All this time I just assumed it was short for Nicole until he went and died and I saw his obituaries! And on top of that, he was married to illustrator Jude Daly, who I'd always thought was a guy, but no that IS short for Judith! Anyway, though, this book is so much fun! Definitely more of a beginning chapter than a straight-up picture book, but I laughed out loud several times.

Dear Bunny: a bunny love story, by Michaela Morgan, illustrated by Caroline Jane Church, 2006. Aww, this is a sweet little age-(and ace-) appropriate love story. It's not QUITE overtly a Valentines day book but I'll have to remember it for Valentines day, since it's about love letters.

My Penguin Osbert, by Elizabeth Cody Kimmel, illustrated by H. B. Lewis, 2004. Speaking of not-quite-overtly-holiday books, this is kind of the opposite, a good Christmas book that isn't really a Christmas book— it's mostly a penguin book that happens to start off at Christmastime. It was a hit at storytime. I'd stuck it up on display back in the holiday section after we used it, and one kid came in with his grandma a week later and she said, "aren't these pretty pictures?" and he got really excited and said, "That was our storytime book! It was really good!" and that was heartening to overhear! Because pretty pictures it may have, but it also has a fun and slightly rollicking story!  

Rose Meets Mr. Wintergarten, by Bob Graham, 1992. One thing I appreciate about Bob Graham's books is he always throws in these matter of fact bits of realism, where you can see all his grownups are their own people who have lives beyond just what the kids see. In this book you've got the difference between the kids seeing their neighbor in a sort of fairy-tale monster way while their hippie mom's obliviously (yet accurately) all "just go ask him" about it!


Top Longer-than-Picture Books:

Okay, so, this year we fell out of our reading-together-in-the-evenings habit. I think it started when both the kids were on crews for the high school musical, but after that it seemed like Sam was always just too busy. Maddie has mentioned that WE could read, just the two of us, but somehow we never picked the habit back up. And since it's HARD for me to make time to read for MYSELF, this list is much shorter and can't be separated by new vs. not. Though I'll list these ones by date backwards, too, so I don't need to decide on an order.

The Tenth Mistake of Hank Hooperman, by Gennifer Choldenko, 2024. Made the mistake of opening to the first page while reshelving it in the "Best Books of the Year?" display and then couldn't put it down. So yeah, I see why it's making all the Best Books lists! It's totally award-bait-- it's Voigt's Homecoming for the 21st century— though personally I thought the middle dragged a little. But even with a slightly draggy middle I still couldn't put it down, and it's definitely a tear-jerker. And even just in this past month while that display has been up, I overheard at LEAST one young patron recommending it to another.

Enigma Girls: how ten teenagers broke ciphers, kept secrets, and helped win World War II, by Candace Fleming, 2024. I got sucked in pretty fast: it's an easy read and an interesting history. I'm disappointed in the author's choice not to share any pics of her protagonists since she couldn't find pics of all of them though.

The Mona Lisa Vanishes, by Nicholas Day, illustrated by Brett Helquist, 2023. This is one we read before we stopped reading in the evenings! We thought we'd mix up our mystery reading with a bit of True Crime. It's interesting history with a strong narrative voice (though he likes to repeat things too much for my taste which docked it half a star in my ratings). And we read this in January, but just the other day when Maddie was reading their cousin's new copy of Time to Make Art (see above), they broke in with "Oh, oh, they must say that because [facts we picked up from this book]" at daVinci's cameo.

The Clackity, by Lora Senf, 2022. This was a very Alice sort of fantasy-- very dreamlike, more eerie than horror, and kind of different, which really worked for us! One of the last books we actually finished together!

And then I have, hmm, a bunch of partially reads and cookbooks. Okay:

Quick & Easy Cookbook, 2nd Edition, by the American Heart Association, 2012. Because it happens to be the cookbook I haven’t returned to the library yet. Shout out to the Grilled Chicken Burgers on page 127, which we quite liked, although we did use turkey instead of chicken. Also, don’t skimp and use onion powder if you’re out of green onions, it’s not the same at ALL.   


Nothing for the Most interesting Rereads category this year, because I didn’t reread any novels or nonfiction, and none of the picture books I reread are standing out. So let us leave books for:


Moving Pictures

As with last year, I barely watched anything. I don't even know how to rank these so I'm just going to list them in the order I watched them:

Headless: a Sleepy Hollow Story (YouTube). Maddie is really into Team Starkid musicals, and I was like OHHH that gives me even more excuse to make you watch Edgar Allan Poe’s Murder Mystery Dinner Party, because they have overlapping cast members! And then Maddie sought out all the Shipwrecked Comedy videos and came back like “MOM! Did you know they have a NEW one out? I already watched it but I’ll watch it again with you!” So we did. If you’ve never experienced Shipwrecked Comedy, they basically produce extremely funny indie movies for English majors. This particular one is a modernization of The Headless Horseman, Sort Of. Tip: watch it with closed captions on. They were having entirely too much fun with the closed captions.

Percy Jackson and the Olympians, season 1 (Disney+). Speaking of things Maddie insisted we all watch (though without much protestation) I mentioned this last year because I got the round-up out so late that I nearly’d watched it all already anyway, but I also said, “Maybe I’ll say more about it in the 2024 roundup,” but I would have REMEMBERED more if I’d said it THEN. Or at least taken decent notes. Anyway, loved it. Just asked Maddie (who is following everything about it) when Season 2 will be out and I guess it won’t be until the end of 2025? Those kids are going to be ANCIENT by the time they get to The Last Olympian!

Fargo, season 5: (Hulu). I rank this season 4th out of the 5— it wasn’t exactly a fun watch, and I have no desire to watch it again, but I cared what happened and was much more interested in the characters than I was in season 3 at least. I liked the way it upended a lot of the expectations I’d perhaps unconsciously built based on previous seasons, and I thought the end was sweet. Also I thought it was funny that the guy who played Steve on Stranger Things ALSO played a guy in this one that I hated at first but then...at least gained a bit more sympathy for, in this case.

The Umbrella Academy, season 4: (Netflix). I wrote a six-part series of reactions to this on Tumblr, where I follow a lot of TUA fans (This link goes to part Six, which has links to the previous five parts. You can skip Part 2, because it's a rough draft of a scene that was improved and expanded and is now at the beginning of chapter 3 of #1 in "Fanfic I wrote," below. Which you shouldn't skip because it's my very good fic). Tl;dr I enjoyed it, though with plenty of nitpicks, but I do think they bungled the ending. Unfortunately the reaction from online fandom was a lot more negative, and it made TUA fandom a really uncomfortable place to be for awhile (and still is sometimes). I had to separate myself from the fandom and just enjoy my own fanfic writing on my own terms…anyway as I said, see below!

Only Murders in the Building, season 4: (Hulu) It always takes me by surprise that they keep coming out with new seasons of this every year—I guess because so many of the other shows I watch are effects-heavy so require more turn-around time? Mysteries are quicker! And the fact that it’s full of so many big name actors I guess is another reason it surprises me that it keeps coming out with new seasons! The humorous mystery—still the genre of my heart! I thought the season was kind of lagging toward the end, but still—I loved how many twists and turns it went through. And Steve Martin was breaking my heart with his grief-acting early in the season.

To make up for the brevity of that category, you know what category I haven't done in a few years?

MUSIC!

I did make several music discoveries this year.

First off, I decided to complete my collection of the Legion soundtrack, both proper background music and needle-drops (and the Noah Hawley/Jeff Russo covers in between)— just of the songs I liked, though. And then I got curious about some of the lesser-known artists of songs I liked, and what else they might have done, so I listened further, and I ended up buying entire albums by The Beta Band and Secret Machines. 

And then, after having used Spotify to explore those bands, I was like, you know what band I've always liked and have a feeling their lesser-known work is also good but I only ever hear their radio hits? Tears for Fears. So I went on a Tears for Fears binge. Did you know they are still making new music? And it's good? Here’s their album from 2022 I quite enjoyed, and in looking that up I saw they released one in 2024 I wasn’t even aware of? (What is WRONG with you, Spotify? Get ON these things! Though that may explain why they actually had a “Message from your top played band!” video to include in my Spotify Wrapped)—and the title track from their 2004 album might be my favorite new discovery of theirs.  


Fanfics (that I read)!

Early this year I finally finished browsing the Umbrella Academy tag in alphabetical order, and then I combed through all the Fiktor fics making sure I'd at least bookmarked for later if not read then-and-there all of them that weren't painfully bad, so my TUA reading still vastly outnumbers my every-other-source-material reading, so I'll split them into separate lists again.

Top Ten Umbrella Academy Fics That Aren't Tagged "Five/Vanya|Viktor," Although Admittedly Some May Be Tagged "5+7" In My Bookmarks, It's Just Platonic:

1. "If at first you don't succeed...” by destinyandcoins (The Umbrella Academy (TV), T, 13,421 words) Very fun time loop story! My bookmark noted, "this is up there," which I think was my way of saying I knew it would make this list immediately upon reading. Destinyandcoins writes truly creative and hilarious fics (when not writing complete tearjerkers see #6 in "Stuff I" uh "Wrote," below).

2. "I Don't Know Why I Bite” by acearcanum (The Umbrella Academy (TV), G, 2,723 words) This is very much one that I tagged "5+7." In fact it's practically like someone rewrote chapter 4 of "New World Symphony" (see below, even though I've only published two chapters so far— chapter 4 is mostly drafted, I just have barely anything of chapter 3!) but made it platonic, and I am HERE for it. It is exactly my jam! It is why I'm obsessed with Five-and-Viktor together! But without my inexplicable need to make it not-platonic!

3. "An A-Z Of the End of the World” by historymiss (The Umbrella Academy (TV), G, 7,080 words) An excellent collection of Five-focused-ficlets for each letter of the alphabet. Each of these little scenarios manages to pack a punch in just a few words. High quality throughout!

4. "Reading Between the Lines" by StardustInYourEyes (The Umbrella Academy (TV), G, 5,032 words) Heartwrenching but perfect unreliable narration of Lila getting to know Mom-Grace, her life with the Handler unknowingly tainting every interaction.

5. "Puzzle Pieces” by JBD302020 (The Umbrella Academy (TV), T, 89,045 words) This is my exception to "only including fics with less than 1,000 kudos on my list" (to give lesser-known fics more attention, and to help ME narrow them down a little!),— it's earned like two-and-a-half TIMES that!— because a) I think the fic earned most of those kudos in its early years when more people were reading; and b) JBD has been really supportive of me and my work, but lately has been avoiding social media, and I genuinely miss her, which makes updates to this fic even more exciting; oh and of course c) it's a really twisty time-travel-complicated mystery, so an absolute treat to read.

6. "Eye of the Tiger” by Gin_Juice (The Umbrella Academy (TV), G, 14,633 words) I am highlighting this story in particular from my possibly-favorite-fic-writer's Season 1 era series, "picture book," which I finally got into this year, because a) it DOES have the least number of kudos of all the fics in the series I bookmarked as stand-out; and b) I did also tag it "5+7" for a great if messy (platonic) scene between the two. And yeah, c) it's really funny! But that's also kind of typical for Gin_Juice!

7. "Some Things Just Take Time; Some Things Just Stay Broken” by MyDarlingClementine (The Umbrella Academy (TV), T, 56,376 words) This is actually the sequel to "Same Weird Family - New Weird Timeline,” which made it past 1,000 kudos and is mostly just Five Whump (with a really nice 5+7 chapter in there too), but I'm highlighting THIS story because (while also being a lot of Five Whump and having a nice 5+7 scene toward the end) it takes some very interesting, surprising, and compelling plot twists! Do you have to read the original story first? Might be best, but judging by the dates on my bookmarks, I'm not entirely sure I did to begin with.

8. "If I Fail You One More Time...” by faithfulcat111 (The Umbrella Academy (TV), T, 30,980 words) Excellent platonic 5+7 from the person who wrote the 5+6+7 that inspired one of my own fics (see #4 of Stuff I Wrote)— this is actually V/Sissy, but I can live with that :P (Sissy's very nicely written in this fic, too)! It's a mermaid AU, but it fits well with their powers!

9. "Half a person” by writerfan2013 (The Umbrella Academy (TV), G, 1,524 words) And hey, this is Five/Delores, so see, I'm being equal opportunity with other ships! ;) Delores is a special case anyway, and this story is written from her point of view. But not an AU!human Delores. Just Delores as she is! The wordplay, the double meanings in every choice of phrase, is what absolutely makes this fic. What a delightful point of view!

10. "Free-fall.” by WildfireWriter21 (The Umbrella Academy (TV), T, 6,614 words) A moving aching character moment between Five and Lila circa Season 3 (for clarity). I mean, if you want to you can definitely see the groundwork laid for their relationship in Season 4 (judging from the comments section, don't think the author really wants you to though), but even without that, it's powerful.

BONUS HONORABLE MENTION(S):"[Comic Adaptation] the end of the war" by Undercamel_of_Pluto for for e_va (The Umbrella Academy (TV), M, "0" words only because it's a comic) Pluto made a full-fledged comic of another person's fic for the TUA Masked Author event, and it's both wonderful and totally envy-inducing (if only someone loved "Exploration of the Astral Plane" that much! I say because that's the one I can best imagine as a comic). Pluto is fun to follow on Tumblr because they're always posting mini comics in a variety of creative AUs— they definitely have potential as a flat-out graphic novelist! They even posted a second straight-up-prose fic this year, "Ships That Pass in the Night” (The Umbrella Academy (TV), M, 7,615 words) which is so perfectly crafted it's very easy to forget that words aren't their first medium of choice!


Top Five Fiktor Fics (That Are Actually All Fiveya Fics, Because They're Old Not Because They're Transphobic, Where Have All the Fiktor Writers Gone, I've Almost Exhausted the Archive), That Are Good Enough In General To Be Appreciated By People Who Aren't Obsessed With the Ship

1. "Of Accord and Satisfaction” by luckubus (ghosty) (The Umbrella Academy (TV), M, 12,018 words) Look, I give a lot more leeway to fics that are not the BEST written when I'm plumbing the depths of the archives for my ship (though there IS a limit even there), so to find one that is genuinely SO well-written is downright intoxicating! Technically this WAS completed in 2024, but the author had been toiling away at this final chapter for YEARS (and V had already been firmly established as "Vanya" in it), and finally managed to get it out there, for which I applauded them! Anyway, it's an AU where Five is an obnoxious CEO and V's an employee who called him out once, and they bond together at a conference, and it's great. You can just read it as an unrelated rom-com if you want.

2."a storm you can weather” by rappaccini for fokse (The Umbrella Academy (TV), M, 18,489 words) It's a shame that people will avoid this fic based on the ship, when the ship doesn't even come into play until closer to the end, and they'll miss this truly excellent V character study in the meantime. It's what might've happened if he actually had managed to run away from home as a teenager. It's really sad but there's a happy (and shippy) ending. It's so in character and beautifully written and deserves to be read wider than by just shippers.

3. "Mistakes Are Best Made Moments” by NicePlaceToBe (The Umbrella Academy (TV), NR, 32,356 words) I bookmarked a bunch of NicePlaceToBe's fics, including a perfect Five-Makes-It-Home-From-the-Apocalypse-as-a-Kid-and-Changes-Everything-From-the-Start called "We're taught to live and loathe, but when do we learn to love?”, but I'm choosing to feature this one because it's had a little less attention, and is also another AU, so, more appealing for people who can't get past the pseudo-siblings bit in canon. This is, in fact, another Five is an obnoxious CEO and V is a person of lesser status who calls him out, but in this case that's as a journalist seeking to expose his company's corruption. You gotta love the trope! It all comes back to Pride and Prejudice! And it works so well for these two!

4. "Coffee Beats (series)” by ellaphunt19 (The Umbrella Academy (TV), T, 4 stories, 10,157 words total) The individual stories are more like chapters in the overarching plot, anyway. Ye Olde Coffee Shop AU— Five works at the coffee shop, V works at the music store across the street, they're college students. But it's just really sweet and left me just smiling softly for awhile. Much like Five when he looks at V, in fact.

5. "this time we will definitely be happy” by lowallthetime (The Umbrella Academy (TV), T, 12,015 words) This fic is, alas, incomplete as of years ago, and the author doesn't seem to be around anymore, so it might be too much to hope for an update someday (and it hasn't even gotten to the unequivocal Fiktor stuff yet). But again, a really interesting premise that transcends the ship— what if V's consciousness, after apocalypting, suddenly wakes up in the past in child-Number Seven's body? V's adult consciousness, determined to make everything Right this time around, still has to cohabitate with tiny 7's body and mind, and it's REALLY INTERESTING, and I genuinely hope the author is all right before even longing for more!

On to the REST of the Fics!

First of all, my Yuletide Exchange gifts, unranked with the rest because they’re my PRESENTS! So how can I be unbiased?

"On Families and Homes” by shnuffeluv for Rockinlibrarian (The Mysterious Benedict Society - Trenton Lee Stewart, G, 1,053 words) I’m so fascinated by Kate and Milligan’s relationship, and this fic picks up with them as they’re driving “home” for the first time after rediscovering that it exists. Nearly cried two paragraphs in. It's so sweet --- bittersweet at first and working its way to pure sweet by the end.

"Moose Lips Wink Tips” by misura for Rockinlibrarian (Truly Devious Series - Maureen Johnson, G, 898 words)  I got a bonus treat! Two fics for the price of one! This is pure silliness based on this sort of private joke Maddie and I have since we read Truly Devious—Maddie wanted to know where the moose was, I said That’s what fanfic’s for—so when I saw Truly Devious was among the nominated fandoms I just HAD to prompt the Moose Question. And someone ANSWERED! Or at least wrote a very fun dream sequence! It’s honestly so fun I’ve seen other people not-me put it on their rec lists!

Top Ten Non-Umbrella-Academy Non-Gift-for-Me Fics!

1. "known now in part, to be known in full” by raspberryhunter for hidden_variable (Kairos (O'Keefe) Series - Madeleine L'Engle, Austin & Murry-O'Keefe Families - Madeleine L'Engle , G, 7,155 words) You know, I offered to write this fandom for Yuletide, but I’m glad raspberryhunter* got this instead of me, because I don’t think I could achieve the sheer L'Engle-ness of this. It is SO. RIGHT. It left me in tears. It might as well have been a gift for me, too! Adult Meg meets an alternate universe version of herself whose life took a very different path—and you know, I’m a bit wary of people judging Meg for her adult choices, but this exploration is not like that at all—it’s very deep and thoughtful and did I mention RIGHT. It is just absolutely RIGHT.
*holy heck, I just clicked on their AO3 for the first time now that Yuletide authors are revealed, and this is the ONLY L'Engle they've written! How? It feels like they've been bathing in her style for years!

2. "Quartet for the End of Time”  by republic for laughingpineapple (I saw three cities - Kay Sage (Painting), Unspecified Fandom, G, 400 words) One of the most interesting things about Yuletide is that it’s not limited to what people think of as “fandoms”—not just people writing about the particular blorbos they always write about: people can request fics for songs, commercials, internet shorts, historical figure RPF, you name it. And someone can go, “Hey, check out this cool surrealist painting, what can you write about it?” and in return they get not only their assigned fic but three additional treats—including this amazing quadruple-drabble/poem that I have not stopped thinking about since I read it.  READ IT. NOW. It’s 400 words long and all the canon knowledge you require is to look at a painting. Actually, you probably don’t even need to look at the painting to appreciate it.

3. "Wander Everywhere” by Emily_grant (Chronicles of Narnia - C. S. Lewis, Midsummer Night's Dream - Shakespeare, G, 9,998 words) “Emily_grant” is the AO3 name of my friend E. Louise Bates, who is much too busy with her original writing nowadays to be writing much fanfic. But she’d uploaded this old fic, and it was hanging around in my to-be-reads for AGES until I stumbled on it again and FIXED that. Anyway, the Midsummer Night’s Dream element is Puck, who’s hanging out in Narnia being mischievous, and it’s a delightful story that made me smile and laugh and go “oh!”, and I need to keep chapter 4 on hand for whenever the misunderstood Problem of Susan comes up in conversation, because it’s definitely the best rebuttal I’ve ever heard.  

4. "The Real Actual Human Life of Michael Realman” by C-chan (1001paperboxes) for Kindness (The Good Place (TV), T, 1,726 words) This was one of the OTHER Good Place fics from LAST Yuletide, and it’s a really sweet and perfect look at Michael as a human, and come to think of it my Yuletide recipient this year would LOVE this fic, I wonder if he’s read it.

5. "The More Things Change” by UrbanAmazon for Venetia5 (The Mummy (Movies 1999-2008), G, 3,936 words) This Yuletide fic from last year has a spot-on and hilarious Jonathan-narrative-voice and an intriguing adventure that reminds me of one of J's pre-WWII-set Call of Cthulhu campaigns. I could see this being the start of a whole new movie to be honest!

6. "Human Resources" by scarvenartist (for the inklings-challenge on Tumblr, 3,370 words). I haven't had time to participate in the Inklings Challenge since the first year, and I haven't had time to read other people's entries, either. Some Octobers I scroll past so many entries that I'll never read that I wonder if I should perhaps unfollow the Inklings Challenge Tumblr and save the scrolling time. But something about this one caught my eye last year, and I opened it in a separate tab, and when I finally read it after a couple months (enough for it to be THIS year now) I loved it enough to say "Remember this for Best Fics of the Year, even if it's not TECHNICALLY a fanfic!" This is a story about making actual human connections in a mechanized megacorporation and it just feels nice!

7. "Replay” by curtaincall for heartofwinterfell (Only Murders in the Building (TV), T, 2,758 words) Only Murders makes for fun fics—this is a time loop story that manages to feel exactly in-character and is a quick, delightful read.  

8. "Things Janet Knows” by AngstBlanket for izzybeth (The Good Place (TV), G, 1,208 words) Another of last year’s Other Good Place fics (I think there are Others this year as well but I haven’t looked closely at them yet!). I love fics that play with format to attempt to translate what Janet’s “brain” looks like to our puny human perceptions.

9. "Let the Sun Set, Let the Day End" by Leng-m (for the inklings-challenge on Tumblr, don't have the wordcount)—another one from last year’s Inklings Challenge. I'm not sure what caught my eye about it since I didn't save the Tumblr post, but it was probably the voice. It's a Filipino-Canadian middle-grade about a curse brought on by tomb-robbing! It's basically a Rick Riordan Presents story in short story form!

This just reminded me that there was a really short Inklings Challenge story I read from THIS fall's event that absolutely should be on this list but I didn't save the link to that.

Well in the meantime:
10. "Pussy cat, pussy cat, where have you been?” by GlassHeadcanon for twistedchick (Alice In Wonderland - Lewis Carroll, G, 2,049 words) This “sequel” feels like it could blend right in to Wonderland seamlessly.

BONUS HONORABLE MENTION: I found the one from this year's Inklings Challenge:
"Warning Signs" by bookshelf-in-progress (for the inklings-challenge on Tumblr, no exact wordcount but it's really short, a ficlet really) It's just a bite of delightful time-travel paradox weirdness, which is one of my favorite tropes…if you couldn't tell from the several time loop fics on these lists already!


Stuff I wrote!
 
Stuff I Wrote, Here on Dreamwidth Edition:

I actually have TWO other posts besides last year’s roundup!

There is of course my Yuletide Requests letter.

There’s also “You Should,” another prose poem thing that is me expressing my neurodivergent burnout. I wrote a similar one right before I was officially diagnosed with ADHD, and I’d brought it to my shrink to share with her, so maybe if I go for that ASD diagnosis I’ll bring this one along.

Stuff I Wrote, GeekMom Edition:
I’m just leaving this category in here on the off-chance I ever write for them again. They haven’t taken me off the masthead yet.

Stuff I Wrote, Fanfic Edition:

1. "The Beginning of Something Else Entirely" (The Umbrella Academy (TV), Legion (TV), M, 18,377 words) I started noodling around with this crossover early in the year, after seeing a comment on someone else’s fic suggesting that the Hargreeves should have been taken in at Xavier’s School for the Gifted. But then, the second TUA S4 ended, my brain went “Oh that’s a letdown GOOD THING THEY ENDED UP AT SUMMERLAND!” and it became a S4 fix-it—and a bit of a Legion fix-it, too, though I thought that one pulled off its ending better. But these two groups of characters were always meant to meet—they have so much in common and can help each other grow! And are fun together! And admittedly a good portion of why this is my favorite fic of the year is just I really enjoy getting to write Legion characters again so much.
1.5 "Did Anyone Ever Tell You You Look Just Like Aubrey Plaza?" (Legion (TV), The Umbrella Academy (TV), NR, 332 words) This is a cracky bonus scene taking place in the same crossover, and it’s just Klaus and Lenny (who yes are definitely new best friends) watching TV while Klaus comments about how practically everyone at Summerland looks like somebody he’d seen on TV or movies.  Really just me amusing myself. I also might eventually share the proof-of-concept scene I wrote of Five and Kerry meeting on the astral plane, and I probably will write a bonus optional chapter to “Beginning” that makes it Fiktor because I can’t help myself; but who knows, I could keep throwing up random scenes of these two groups of characters hanging out indefinitely, because they really do mesh so well.

2. "New World Symphony" (The Umbrella Academy (TV), T, 12,655 words) Honestly this is how I would have wished the show to go after Season 3, if it was reasonable for Fiktor to become canon at least (and if it had much less of a plot—this is more like adjusting to a happy ending than an actual potential TV season). I think what I decided would happen to the characters between seasons makes a lot more sense than what happened to them in canon. Oh, and also it turns out that, in a universe where they’d never been adopted, Five and Viktor would have been married. Because. I really love this fic though! And it actually turned out to be my most popular fic of the year so I’m justified!

3. "The Contractualism of Fair Play and Hot Wings" (The Good Place (TV), G, 3,084 words) I got The Good Place for my Yuletide assignment again this year! And as long as it keeps qualifying (it still only qualifies because so many of its fics on AO3 are less than 1000 words), I will keep offering to write it, because I love writing in this universe SO MUCH, I just don’t have any really pressing story ideas for it! This year my recipient was a Michael fanatic so was looking for something highlighting his fascination and often misunderstanding of humans, so I was out harvesting all my hot peppers (see way back at the beginning of this roundup) and pondering ideas and I thought, “Hey, hot peppers! That’s something seemingly nonsensical that humans like!”  This is yet another Reboot fic that takes place during Season 2 Episode 3, because you can canonically write like 800 completely different stories that fit there.

4. "What's in a Name?" (The Umbrella Academy (TV), G, 1,876 words) The TUA Masked Author event theme was Remixes, so everyone was encouraged to write (or draw) something inspired by an old fic. I browsed through all the works by people who’d volunteered their works for remixing, sorted them by the ones that had gotten the least attention in the past, and started picking out the ones that caught my attention now. faithfulcat111 had written a drabble called “What If?” that wondered what would have happened if Five Ben and Viktor had never been adopted but managed to meet by chance and bond anyway, and this image of an international conference for gifted teenagers popped into my head. I noted it as a possibility and continued my browsing, but my brain kept trying to work out the details of this conference, so I realized my decision had been MADE, and so I wrote their AU meeting there. (The title is because being frustrated with their given names is the first main thing they bond over).

5. "Brother and Also Brother Home For Christmas" (The Umbrella Academy (TV), NR, 319 words)  Emmett had prompted a dare on the TUA Discord: "five/viktor but as that one folgers incest christmas coffee commercial" which IS indeed practically a ready-made Season 1-era Fiveya fic; and being the only Fiktor shipper there just then I took that dare and wrote this in an hour. It’s just silly. Also I should point out that this happened in July.

6, technically "happy birthday" (The Umbrella Academy (TV), G, 0 words) Remember how the TUA Masked Author event theme was Remixes? It occurred to me that typically one has to be able to draw characters to make fanart, but if I drew something based on a specific FIC, I COULD potentially pick something to draw that was NOT characters and therefore I could do it. I’d always found this image from destinyandcoins' "Notes from Nowhere" haunting, and it only required drawing bricks! So I entered a fanart, too!

If you’d like to read more about the stuff I wrote (though I really appreciate it if you just plain read the stuff I wrote, and comment on it!) I also have an “AO3 Writer Wrapped” year-end write up just about that on Tumblr!



 And that’s it! Comment on something! Anything! You know!

Allow me to be frank—I know I'm on the internet, which means *gasp* anyone can see me being frank—but I'm going to have to get a little ugly-personal. Don't freak out.

It's been a rough week. It's hard to say how much you, my reader, already know me, when some know me in real life but just in passing, some know me in real life quite well, some have never met me but are closer to me than all but a few of the people I have met in real life, some know me in passing on the internet, and some just stumbled here randomly hi I don't know what you're doing here but you're perfectly welcome. So I don't know if you know that I'm an utter mess, both figuratively and literally. I am NOT a together person.

But one thing I have always felt confident about? I'm a dang fine librarian. Being at work is for me is a BREAK from feeling lost and incompetent. It keeps me steady, and smart, and productive.

Until last Saturday. See, my literal mess caught up with me, and I guess it hit on my coworkers' last nerves? This is hard to explain, because I'm honestly so confused and I guess not quite so shaken as I was last Saturday, but still just...broken. Like I can't piece it together in my brain. I didn't get completely cleaned up after my program Tuesday night-- to be fair, we were pulp painting, it's quite complex, and I DID clean up MOST of it-- but, maybe it was my lackadaisical attitude toward finishing up that they didn't appreciate? Maybe, but the thing that got me lost was that this somehow earned me a week suspension. A week and a day, actually, as I didn't end up working last Saturday and here I am still off today. Now, Jason points out that I really should have been given a written warning or something instead, that the punishment far outweighs the crime and he is SO TEMPTED to march down to the library and give everyone a piece of his mind but he won't because that's totally something his mother would do and he doesn't want to do something she'd do; and there's a rational part of me that definitely agrees it's all out of proportion.

But the problem is it triggered something, shattered me further. Work was the one place I felt competent, the one thing my literal-and-figurative mess wasn't tainting. For the first time since I've been in this particular job, the thought of going back to work on Monday gives me a jolt of anxiety. I have lost that little piece of confidence. And, talk about an out-of-proportion reaction, I'm just BROKEN.

I don't want you to think I'm being melodramatic. I very nearly checked myself into the hospital that day. Because obviously I'm not good at ANYTHING anymore so there's no point trying until I can get myself FIXED. I didn't, because I figured it would be cheaper to just go home and go to bed, while telling everyone to leave me alone. That didn't work so great either, because except for Maddie, who came in and just hugged me and said "I love you" for awhile, nobody else could manage to talk to me without increasing my stress. In the middle of the night I wrote this poem-- cleaned it up and put it on Tumblr in the morning just because Tumblr seemed like the best format for it. It pretty well describes "how I'm doing," kind of perfectly, if you're asking and want to know the truth.

Well wait, copying and pasting so you don't have to click:

"EFFORT"
I’m not okay

though if you ask

I’ll say

I am

because I pull myself together

I smile, I laugh, I sing

I cook, I eat

I hug and say I love you

I go through the backpacks and take-home folders and

usually

remember to sign things

I pay the bills

eventually

I get where I need to go

eventually

But then you notice the cracks and say
Why don’t you pick up after yourself?

Why have you let yourself go?

If you would

Just

Try to

lose some weight

exercise a little more
make the kids behave

(no, MAKE them)

get her hair brushed

get YOUR hair brushed

make them make their beds

make YOUR bed

watch what you’re wearing

watch what they’re wearing

do the dishes from the start

organize your time better

leave a little earlier

make those phone calls

communicate better

pay attention to your surroundings

don’t leave things lying around

go to bed on time

tell us what you need

If you would

JUST

put in a

LITTLE EFFORT.

Good to know

that’s all I need to do

Just

put in

a LITTLE

EFFORT

If only I hadn’t used up all my Effort

pretending

i’m

okay

The thing is I usually AM okay because I'm holding together and getting through contently enough, it's just I can't take any MORE than that. Technically I SHOULD be capable of more, because more is required of me, and, like, maybe life should be more than just hanging together?

So at counseling on Wednesday I got some interesting news: I now, officially, on my medical records, have indeed been diagnosed with ADHD-light-on-the-H. See back in the day they just called that ADD but now no matter how nonexistent the H they call it ADHD-Inattentive Type instead. I slipped through all these years because of the complete lack of H, because I was well-behaved and smart enough to ace tests even if I couldn't stay on top of my homework and was only half paying attention in class. My brain was good at school. It's not so good at practical life. But practical life is what adulthood is about. You know I've said this before, lots of times, it's just now I've got an official label saying it's real, my brain really DOES work differently than normal. "You've been struggling with this all your life without even knowing why," my therapist said, having just read the above poem. 

So, somewhat tangentally (it's my ADHD! It all becomes clear!), last week we upgraded our cable to take advantage of their Triple Play, which includes phone service, since the main reason we never had before was our home and cell phone accounts were tied together, but now we get cell through J's work, so we were like, hey, and WE NOW HAVE CALLER ID AND AN ANTI-ROBO-CALL SERVICE AND I AM NEVER GOING BACK. But, also, we now get more TV channels, including FX. I'd bought access to FX's Fargo because it was awesome before, but look! Now we have FX just in time for Fargo-showrunner Noah Hawley's new show, Legion, which is a friggin' X-Men spinoff! I love Noah Hawley's storytelling (at least if Fargo is any indication) and I love X-Men, so can it get any better? The answer is, yes, it can, because Legion is also FRIGGIN' PSYCHEDELIC. 

Now I've been thinking of writing a whole post about me and psychedelia-- I've had a draft in the GeekMom Wordpress for about a month now, because I started writing it and then it turned into something else, and it might be really two posts, or it might not, but anyrate. Started when I finally got a chance to listen to the United States of America album I got for Christmas and it totally out me back in touch with a part of myself I'd been neglecting. I've been giving my psych rock collection a workout lately. Anyway, the short story about why I love psychedelia is that it reminds me of my own mind, but ever so slightly more orderly. 

So the main character of Legion has been diagnosed schizophrenic, although it turns out his hallucinatons are really telepathy. So you see the show from inside his head, which is tripped out...but strangely familiar. Me and psychedelia. I've never had to deal with hallucinations (or telepathy as far as I know), but my brain is always RUNNING and tumbling and jumping from track to track and it IS a lot to keep up with, and my dreams-- my dreamworld is nuts, y'all, and I love it--Legion really reminded me of my dreams (also the soundtrack is awesome) (maybe because there's a lot of psychedelia) (also it's made the Stones' "She's a Rainbow" stuck in my head since Thursday and I don't mind a bit).

Anyway, but the point I'm really getting to is that part of the reason he struggles so much with his mental illness is he's been fighting the wrong thing-- he thinks he needs to stop the hallucinations when really he needs to learn to control the input from his psychic powers. I keep thinking of it in relation to myself, how my brain works differently, but I've been expending so much energy trying to compensate for it instead of trying to work WITH it. It's funny, I used to know I was pretty smart as a kid, but most of the time as an adult my self-talk immediately goes to "you're an idiot." Since Wednesday it's occured to me, wow, if so much of my brainpower has gone to trying to compensate for my attention issues... maybe I actually am a genius. If I wasn't constantly trying to fight my own brain, what else could I be putting that power to? If I wasn't using up all my effort on being okay?

There was more on the end here, but somehow it got erased....

My dad is a big genealogist, and when I say big, I mean he was into it WAY before Ancestry.com, when you had to do serious legwork, travelling all around the country and even world to pour over decades of paper church registries and the like. By chance I eventually settled in the town that one of his favorite ancestors had lived in, my great-great-great* grandfather on my dad's mom's side, a blacksmith, guardsman, and Civil War hero. My dad wrote a (self-pubbed and extremely limited in distribution) book on the guy and his squadron's history, which supposedly once was in the Local History collection of the library I now work for, though I can't find it there now. I have to smile every time I drive past the corner where this several-greats grandfather's blacksmith shop had been, just because I can hear the enthusiasm in my dad's voice as he once pointed it out to me, every single time.

Ancestry.com has certainly added new ways to track genealogy, though. And recently, through DNA testing, it unearthed an unpleasant truth: the man he so admired, who'd done so many great things, wasn't his great-great-grandfather after all.

My great-great-great (or however many) grandmother had been 15 when she married this man. And five months pregnant. And according to the DNA trail, the father of that boy she carried (my g-g-grandfather) was one of three brothers, one of whom was a teacher, another of whom was eventually locked up in an insane asylum, and all of whom were at least twice her age. Was it the teacher, taking advantage of one of his students? Was it his younger brother, and they locked him up for being a serial rapist or something? Does it matter? Whatever happened, it was at LEAST a STATUTORY rape, if not full-blown. The blacksmith/war-hero was a family friend, who married the girl to save her from what in that era would surely have been scandal and ruin. "It makes me admire him even more," my dad said sadly, "to have raised this boy as his own even though he knew he wasn't actually his."

I wondered a little at my dad's disappointment when he said that. So this hero's blood didn't run in our veins after all. But he still RAISED our however-many-greats grandfather. Did it matter that our DNA came from a rapist, or did it matter more that the boy ended up calling a good man Dad?

(It's a bit like the part of the Gospel of Matthew they read on Christmas Eve, which always makes me roll my eyes. Ol' St. Matt goes off on this long, long genealogical report, tracing the genealogy of Jesus from Abraham all the way up to Joseph. To JOSEPH. Who, in the very next verse, he explains is NOT ACTUALLY JESUS'S BIOLOGICAL FATHER, ANYWAY. Like SERIOUSLY, Matt, what was your point?! UNLESS it's more important that this man, who happens to have serious Jewish blood going way back, RAISED the boy Jesus as his own. Because maybe that's more important than the bloodline after all? I don't know, don't lecture me on theology, I'm just observing. Anyway, this is only tangentally related, because this post is about bad stuff in the past, which makes this story very different depending on whether you believe Mary had been raped like my g-g-g grandmother or she had indeed conceived the child via the Holy Spirit. Or you believe the whole story was made up period which makes it moot. But in that case, the Holy Spirit answer's the one in the story so it is still good).

I got onto this subject today because I started puzzling over something I'd seen on social media (ah, social media). The other night the First Lady spoke at the Democratic National Convention, a lovely speech full of hope and integrity, and she noted that now two little black girls lived in a mansion that had been built by slaves-- look how far we've come! Think how much farther we can go! And for some reason a bunch of people, instead of hearing the message of progress, got stuck on "wait, did she just say the White House was built by slaves? How DARE she say the White House was built by slaves!" and I'm like, "uh, because it WAS? It's not like you can't learn this information through a picture book. Or even just, you know, ASSUME, based on the history of the region." But these folks were really riled up about this. If they couldn't deny that there were a lot of dang slaves "employed" in the building of our nation's capital, they had to start insisting that well, they were slaves, but they really weren't treated that badly.

I'm like what is your ISSUE? She wasn't trying to slander the holy edifice that is the White House by referring to a negative-but-well-documented fact about its history, she was trying to say Isn't it GREAT, that once people that looked like my family were enslaved and would they ever have imagined a family that looked like them would be living here as the Family in Chief but here we are? Hooray! Our country is getting better all the time! Is it really that important that the history of our country is far from perfect?

It got me pondering the ways history is told, and how a lot of these people are the same ones who complain about "revisionist history," and how they want to stick with the TRUE history, which is the history they learned growing up. You know, like how George Washington chopped down a cherry tree as a boy? So what these people are looking for, I guess, is Golden, Gleaming History, History that is a role model for us to look up to.

I finally got my ears on the Hamilton musical a couple months ago. 1) gosh it is SO GOOD; 2) one thing that struck me is how much it put the lie to the idea that the founding of America was some stately, well-organized thing like the back of a two-dollar bill. That's another thing people who like Golden Gleaming History like to talk about: "The Founding Fathers thought THIS" and "The Founding Fathers did THAT" and "WHAT would the Founding Fathers say?!" And yet, listening to this, it reminds me that the last thing the Founding Fathers were was a unanimous monolyth on the issues we would face as a nation. SOME Founding Fathers wanted stronger state governments, weaker federal; SOME wanted a stronger federal and weaker states. SOME Founding Fathers did indeed keep slaves; but SOME Founding Fathers were outspoken abolitionists. The notion that the Founding Fathers were the last word on every issue is based on this Gleaming concept of History, a History that has no room for Cabinet Battles and dirty deals and blackmail, because that would mean we COULDN'T use it as the final word in an argument.

It's literally part of the conservative mindset-- not just politically conservative, but the whole idea of conservative-- to want to hold the past up as ideal. That's what conservatism is about: change is bad, the good old days were good. If you hold this mindset, it's a little earthshattering to face up to the not-so-good parts of the past. If your ancestors came out of history on top, it can feel like a personal affront to hear that they weren't perfect. But it's not just political: we all have a little conservative side of us, a part that holds tight to stories of how things ought to have been and believes in them. My dad's a pretty progressive guy, but it did upset him to learn of the smudge in his family tree that seemed to take away his claim to good blood. And me-- as a kid I had a really hard time with this concept. To find out anyone great had a not-so-great side? To uncover the dirty laundry of history? Heck, to find out how many of my favorite musicians were "druggies"? Frustrated me, man. I couldn't reconcile it. If these things were BAD, why were we learning about how GREAT they were?

But I was younger then. I've learned about shades of gray. Which is why it's surprising when so many people my age and older are still stuck in this black-and-white mindset.

A thing I've always hated since I discovered it is the Your Fave Is Problematic thing. It's almost like the opposite of the History Was Great and Never Dare Say Otherwise mindset, but is the exact same thing, really. You think something's or someone's so great? I'm going to POKE AS MANY HOLES IN THEM AS I CAN. SEE, NOT GREAT. So a fan says YOU ARE SO WRONG, THEY ARE GREAT, YOU SUCK, and the "problematic" folks are like "NO, THEY SUCK, AND IF YOU LIKE THEM STILL THEN YOU SUCK." WHAT, people. Why does everything have to be perfect or terrible? Why can't things just BE with all their nuances?

Back to the topic of dark spots in ones ancestry. I've always felt uncomfortable with the use of the word "we" to describe anything that I, personally, was not involved with-- "we won" or "we lost" or "we did this historical thing because...." I don't like my sports teams referred to as "we" unless I'm on them (ha). I don't like my country referred to as "we" if it's something out of my control-- like, back to sports teams, Olympians-- "we" do not get so many gold medals, those people who are way better athletes than most of us could ever imagine being got them; and I especially don't like it when referring to events that happened before I was even born. We settled in America. We drove off most of the native people. We defeated the British. We nuked Japan. Our ancestors, maybe. And maybe we've even benefitted from horrible things our ancestors did.

But we don't have to take it personally. It happened. And who cares whether it was your ancestors or not. What are YOU going to do? Who are YOU going to follow? I've got a great-great-great grandfather who was a rapist, but my great-great grandfather was raised to be a good man by a good man, instead. You're not bound by the past, so you don't have to fear it.

What happens NOW, is the question. That's what Mrs. Obama was saying the other night, not "feel ashamed of your history" but "look back on history and how we have improved and how we can keep on improving!" Look back to look forward.

I think I've made sense here, it's hard to tell because I've been super distracted by our library Harry Potter party happening on Saturday and I've been making chocolate frogs all day, which involves a lot of back and forth while waiting for things to set. But anyway.

*I THINK I have the right number of greats

Back in the day I could write an entire post JUST ABOUT THE BOOKS of the year. Not happening anymore. But I can write about the WHOLE year in small Top FIVE lists, so I'll do that instead:

Top 5 Real Life Things That Happened. In My Life. Not The Outside World. You Can Go Read About the Outside World Anywhere Else

1. A tree fell on our house. This isn't exactly a TOP thing that happened, as in "Best," but it was certainly the BIGGEST thing that happened, and we did end up with all new roof and siding, which insurance covered MOST of, though paying the difference did knock out our budget for the rest of the year. But now that we've gotten that out of the way, let's move onto the actual GOOD stuff:
2. Seeing FREAKIN' SIR PAUL FREAKIN' MCCARTNEY IN FREAKIN' CONCERT, FINALLY! Just read the post if you don't understand.
3. I actually managed to complete an entire draft of an early-chapter-book. Granted, I haven't managed to get around to REVISING it yet. At all. But it's better than I've done in a long time.
4. I successfully Outreached to loads of small children, who excitedly pointed me out to their parents in public while squealing about the "library lady" and lots of their favorite stories. This is the best kind of famous, you know. If I'm going to be accosted by fans every time I go out in public, I much prefer to be hugged around the knees by a three-year-old than shoved about by paparazzi.
5. My son brought home a couple of guppies from the class fish tank on his last day of first grade. I never expected them to last as long as they did, but now they are officially our first family pets. Actually, one of them died a couple months in, but the other one turned out to be pregnant, and gave birth to eleven more. She ate all but one of these. The survivor got by on her (we think it's another her) speed, so earned the name Zippy. Her mother never actually got a name, so is now Mama Fish. We also have two snails now. One is growing. We think it might turn into a monster and take over the tank.

Top 5 Presents I Got For Christmas

1. A New Dishwasher. Our old dishwasher sprung a major leak that we weren't able to fix, and it never cleaned very well anyway, so our two sets of parents went in together to get us a new one. It's AMAZING. It makes things not only CLEAN, but SHINY! And it does so QUIETLY, and WHILE KEEPING ALL THE WATER INSIDE IT!
2. A Good Set of Kitchen Knives. While we were camping this summer, I went to chop up a potato only to realize I hadn't brought a knife, so J whipped out his hunting knife, and WOW could that thing slice. "It's not because it's a hunting knife," he said, "it's just because you're used to using those crappy knives that won't hold an edge." "Oh," I said. But this exchange inspired him, and he bought a set of GOOD kitchen knives actually made by the same company that made his hunting knife. THEY CUT WITHOUT YOU HAVING TO PUT PRESSURE ON THEM. Which means I really have to watch my aim.
3. A bunch of other kitchen supplies I never would have suspected, back in the day, would one day make me so excited to get. I got a big tub of storage containers, a couple of chopping boards, and a new spoon spatula. Granted, I bought that spoon spatula for myself and just stuck it in my stocking, but it was still exciting.
4. This scarf. Appropriate, no? Also a much cheaper leopard-print scarf from Old Navy that EVERYONE got-- okay, at least four people in my extended family-- so now we might start a cult.
5. My sister saved the day and got me Desolation of Smaug, because for some reason Jason didn't. Actually he didn't get a single thing off of my wish list. For me. I've had the complete set of Animaniacs on there for years, so he did get that, but he gave it to Maddie, our own Dot Warner. That was actually a very appropriate move on his part, though.

Top 5 Presents I Gave Other People For Christmas

1. My daughter wanted an Ariel costume. I looked it up: all the Officially Licensed costumes kind of sucked, so I decided to make one myself (note: sometime in October I also got a new sewing machine on account of my old one kind of breaking beyond repair. I thought of considering THIS a Christmas present, but Jason said, no, you just need a new sewing machine, you can have OTHER presents!) I found THE most PERFECT fabric at Jo-Ann's, so LOOK:
I did not make the wig, though.
2. Also for Maddie: her artistic expression CANNOT be hemmed in by silly things like Personal Property. Not only does she draw in my journals, she's also always absconding with my camera to take pictures and video. Well, among Amazon's Cyber-Monday deals I spotted it: a kids' camera/camcorder. With Hello Kitty on it. For thirty bucks. It was MEANT TO BE.
3. The boy needed pajamas, and I found a pattern for boys' pajamas in his size among my grandmother-in-law's sewing stuffs, so I bought some appropriate fabric along with the mermaid fabric. Well, almost appropriate. It's a train print, and trains are still Sam's Favorite Thing Ever, but I didn't know if it was SLIGHTLY babyish for an almost-8-yo? But it was the most insanely soft material, so I figured, eh, he's just wearing it to bed, anyway. Then, the last day of school before break, they had Pajama Day. "Okay, Sam, I'm going to give you a present early, just in case you might want to use it tomorrow. But I won't be offended if you don't." Well, he did. He's pretty much been living in those pajamas ever since. He's only put on clothes when we've had to go someplace.

4. In other things I sewed, I also found some insanely soft fleece, so made some cute sweatshirts. I'd tried making a sweatshirt for my brother last year but made it too small, so this year I tried again:
I was so paranoid about making the KIDS' too small that I actually made them too big, but they'll grow.
5. I got J an Agents of SHIELD (see below for more) wallet as a sort of joke, because we started playing a SHIELD RPG campaign and I said this way he has proper identification. He loved it way more than I expected him to.

One Present Other People Gave Other People That Is Notable
A funny thing happened to presents people bought for Jason this year: they kept getting lost in the mail. Actually, ONE of those incidents turned out to be a misunderstanding: his sister, who lives in Spain, had bought him something and shipped it here under my name, but this happened to be one of the things I'd strongly considered getting him myself, to the point that I FORGOT I hadn't actually purchased it even though I bought something ELSE to go along WITH it, so when the thing from his sister arrived I thought I'D ordered it even though it came way before everything else in the order, so I wrapped it up for Santa, and... anyway, that's where that confusion came from. My sister ordered him a few things that never showed up, as well, and printed him a copy of the order which she stuck on a pack of beer. He would have been happy with the beer. My brother had bought each of us these little figure thingies to go with our Wii U which we don't actually understand yet, but for some reason only Jason's, again, didn't show up. So my brother called and asked if I thought it would be all right if he gave Jason something he'd originally bought for himself, only to decide he didn't really want it after all. "Does he like Back to the Future?" he asked me. "Uh, yeah, but... okay, whatever you want to do, Dan." So he ended up giving J this model DeLorean. Of the time-machine variety. And it's really detailed and awesome and kind of insane of my brother to buy only to decide he didn't want it and yet NOT send it back for a refund. BUT it came with a card with information about the real DeLorean Motor Company, which Jason looked up, and contrary to popular belief it actually IS still in existence, and now he won't stop talking about how he wants a real DeLorean. So the substituted gift was actually WAY more appreciated than the intended gift, in the end.

Top 5 Programs I Did At The Library
Because it's my calling and junk.
1.The Beatles Family Night!
2. Marble run!
3.The Spontaneous Time-Travel Program
4. Magic-- as detailed a bit toward the end of this post, because it impressed people, had a good turnout, and everyone learned something, so yay.
5. Rory's Story Cubes-- that wasn't the name of the program. It was just one of the Grimm brothers' birthdays, so I decided to do a storytelling theme for Library Explorers. And we'd been kicked out of our usual room for a special event, so we didn't have much space, so I grabbed these cubes I had never before actually tried, to see what we could make of them, making up stories in a circle. And they were such a huge hit I needed to write down what they were called for all the grownups there, who wanted to buy their own sets.
Bonus: Chocolate Covered Anything Day. There wasn't really anything all that creative about it as a program, and I didn't have any great tie-in books or stories, but WE GOT TO DIP THINGS IN CHOCOLATE, so surely this belongs among the top programs of the year, no?

Top 5 New Picture Books
My new regret in life is that I'm not a decent illustrator. Picture books are my new favorite kind of book and now I want to make them. I suppose I can still WRITE them, but my heart wants to be able to do it all! Anyway, here's my favorites of the stuff we got in at the library this year:

1. Rules of Summer, by Shaun Tan. I WANT TO LIVE IN SHAUN TAN'S BRAIN. Have I mentioned that? I probably have, because it doesn't stop being true. Here's a nice interview about the making of this book, too.
2. Battle Bunny, by Jon Scieszka, Mac Barnett, and Matt Myers. Technically this came out last year but we only got it at the library THIS year. And it's just notable, because you would think it'd be a one-joke book and get old after awhile, but somehow it only got BETTER as it went, and it's ready-made for creative spin-off activities that really work with kids. That might have made my Best Library Programs list if MY kids hadn't been there that day to drive me nuts. ("I AM NOT YOUR MOMMY RIGHT NOW I AM THE LIBRARIAN PLEASE SIT DOWN AND BE QUIET.")
3. Quest, by Aaron Becker. I actually bought Journey for myself at my kids' book fair this year. Sure, kids, I'll buy you each a book, too, but this one's Mommy's. Anyway, I smuggled this out of the tech room as soon as it came in. I don't love it QUITE as much as Journey but it's still dreamy-perfect and we had fun exploring it together. I think my "Too bad I'm not an illustrator" problem is that WORDLESS picture books are REALLY my favorite thing.
4. Flashlight, by Lizi Boyd, speaking of which. Like on the surface this is so much simpler than, for example, Quest, but there's still so much going on, so much to see, so many little surprises. I JUST LOVE WORDLESS PICTURE BOOKS SO MUCH GUYS I CAN'T DEAL WITH IT.
5. Sam and Dave Dig a Hole, by Mac Barnett (again) and Jon Klassen. Barnett and Klassen came to speak at the Carnegie the other month, and I'm almost embarrassed to admit how long I fretted about having no one to come with me to see them, only to realize at the last minute that I HAVE KIDS IN THEIR TARGET AGE GROUP. It was great for all of us! And it was much more fun listening to the KIDS talk to them than it would have been for me to think of something halfway interesting to say. Mac Barnett enjoyed meeting someone with the same name as one of his heroes (both the BOOK'S "hero" Sam, AND the original Sam-and-Dave-the-blues-duo!) And Maddie told Jon Klassen all about our cannibal fish! It didn't occur to me until later that this was fitting, as she WAS talking to the man who wrote This Is Not My Hat They were awesome. I've always had a crush on Mac Barnett, but in person I liked Jon Klassen best-- he totally seemed like a guy I could hang out with. If I was in the habit of hanging out with Caldecott Medalists.

Top 5 Older (than this year) Picture Books I Only Just Discovered Are Awesome for Reading Aloud This Year

1. Chloe and the Lion, by Mac Barnett DARNIT MAC BARNETT STOP BEING SO ENTERTAINING YOU'RE HOGGING THE LISTS and Adam Rex. I just really like Meta. And Mac Barnett likes meta too, which is why he keeps writing books I like. But please let's not ignore Adam Rex in this discussion because the illustrations really make the book. And that's also kind of the point of this book. They're two great tastes that taste way greater together.
2. What Floats in a Moat? by Lynne Berry. Some very handy blog post about Books You Might Want For a Fizz Boom Read Summer Program Storytime alerted me to this fine title, which INDEED fit with a Things That Float program I had planned. Funny and clever AND educational! Thank you, fine blog post!
3. My Lucky Day, by Keiko Kasza. A different blog post somewhere named this a sure-winner for read-alouds, and it happened to be in one of my outreach bags, so I said, Hey, I'll read THAT one to this group! And guess what. It IS a sure-winner.
4. The Really Really Really Big Dinosaur, by Richard Byrne. I mentioned this one in the above-linked all-the-programs-I-did-in-October post. I just enjoyed me and the mom and the little sister cracking up while the older sister rolled her eyes and tried not to laugh while complaining that she wanted a SERIOUS dinosaur book instead.
5. The Buzz Beaker series by Cari Meister. It looks like there's also some older titles by a Scott Nickel but I haven't read those ones so as to guarantee their quality. These are, as possibly evidenced by their having multiple authors over time, leveled readers out of one of them there book packagers in Mankato Minnesota. Which means I wasn't expecting them to be nearly as entertaining as they are. Again I stumbled upon them for summer reading programs, because they're a treasure trove for actually-fun-stuff-to-read-aloud on STEM topics!

Top 5 Longer-Than-Picture-Books Books I Read This Year, aka The Only 5 Longer-Than-Picture-Books Books I Finished Reading This Year

1. Dangerous, by Shannon Hale. As indicated by my movie list (see below), I love a good superhero story, but I can't get into comic books. Shannon Hale, who is truly one of my very favorite people on the Internet btw, decided to address this-- people who read better in paragraphs than in panels-- by actually writing a great superhero story entirely in prose. It is EVERYTHING I love about, say, watching a Marvel movie-- and even better, solid female representation!-- but in novel form!
OH I FORGOT TO MENTION-- we'll make this 1.5, though it's not much longer than a Buzz Beaker book-- Hale's The Princess in Black, an easy-chapter book about a princess who sneaks out to battle monsters in her spare time, because this is SO MADE for my daughter, and that's why I bought it for her for Christmas:

2. Brown Girl Dreaming, by Jacqueline Woodson. It's the Young People's National Book Award winner, which me being on top of things actually read before then! Mostly because Woodson's editor kept tweeting the most beautiful lines from it, so when it showed up with our Junior Library Guild subscription I said, "I've got to give this a try." It's a verse memoir, and it's LYRICAL. It IS dreaming!
3. A Corner of White, AND
4. The Cracks in the Kingdom, by Jaclyn Moriarty. Apparently pronouncing your first name like that gave you a better than average chance of getting your book read by me this year. But Jaclyn Moriarty gets special attention for being just so dang unique. She's done some crazy worldbuilding for this series (which in a dear-to-my-heart way is called The Colors of Madeleine, AWWWW) about a couple of kids who start to communicate through a crack between their two parallel worlds, and I have to say there have been several twists that I absolutely did not see coming, only to look back and find the evidence had been there all along, and I quite appreciate that. I think the next author would have appreciated that, also:
5. Dogsbody, Diana Wynne Jones. Only last because it's not new like the others. I did buy The Islands of Chaldea for the library, but I haven't gotten around to reading it, yet. It may be HER last, but I still have lots of DWJ to track down still, so that isn't what's keeping me away. More like my usual reading problems.

Top 5 Movies I Saw

1. The LEGO Movie: Officially my son's favorite movie, when the rest of us finally caught up (he'd gone to see it at the theater with his grandparents) we were utterly charmed, too. It really holds up to rewatching and quote-reciting. I don't know why the catchphrase this household has most adopted is "Honey, where are my paaaaaaants?" though.
2. Captain America: The Winter Soldier: We don't get out to the movies much, J and I-- when we do it's usually for a special occasion, like our anniversary (see below). But after seeing a certain episode of Agents of SHIELD (see further below) last March, we decided we needed to go see this AS SOON AS POSSIBLE just to find out what had happened. It was worth it-- I think this is my favorite of the Marvel movies now, and I do like Marvel movies (I think it was watching this that I realized I get a thrill of excitement when the comic-book opener comes on screen, like the opening notes of the Star Wars theme). I particularly like the themes of friendship throughout this movie, I love the friend-chemistry between all the characters-- particularly the platonic friendship between the Cap and Black Widow-- SEE? Platonic CAN BE DONE!
3. Frozen: I know this movie is technically from LAST year but we only just got it for Christmas. We figured we'd watch it as a family sometime this week, and I had a lot of other stuff to do Christmas morning, but my daughter insisted on putting it on, and I found myself sucked onto the couch beside her. I thought the characters were particularly great, and the themes hit on a lot of near-to-my-heart issues, so I was teary-eyed a lot.
4. The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies: We went this weekend for our anniversary, natch, and I feel like I ought to do a longer review than most of the ones in these lists. :P Far from the best of the movies, but hardly a disaster, either. Having seen all three now, I DO think it would have worked better as two movies, just with really really long Extended Editions (with basically, you know, ALL the same footage of the current Extended Editions, just two proper movies for theater viewing). This movie felt a little bit arc-less in a way that I don't think it would have if it had merely been the long climax of a movie that started when they'd first arrived at Laketown. This movie is also made up of the chapters in the book that I always manage to completely forget about, which might be saying something. Still, like any Middle-Earth movie, it's gorgeous-- though this movie seemed to involve a LOT of high and precarious walkways that were making me QUITE nervous thank you-- and, like any Hobbit movie in particular, it features my very favorite actor/Imaginary Husband in the title role, and do I even need to mention anymore that he was brilliant? He was brilliant. As usual. The scene when he was saying goodbye to the dwarves was my very favorite. And I was really glad he spent a lot less of this movie unconscious than he does these chapters in the book. Not that the movie couldn't have still done with more of him.
5. Guardians of the Galaxy: we did slip out to see this one this summer while the kids were at their grandparents' for the week. I didn't think it was as great as a lot of people seemed to think, hailing it the New Star Wars or whatever, but it was a lot of fun, and I appreciate a storyline that weaves a great classic rock mix tape into the plot.

Top 5 Things I Watched On TV, Or At Least Things That Were Aired On TV That I Watched On The Computer

1. Fargo, The Series! GAH I LOVE THIS SHOW. WHY AREN'T MORE PEOPLE TALKING ABOUT THIS SHOW? Every time I think about it, I miss it. I suppose I could watch it again, considering I bought it on iTunes. I had the DVD set on my wishlist but I guess everyone knew I bought it on iTunes and doesn't believe in the power of Bonus Features.
2. Agents of SHIELD, which is formally called MARVEL'S Agents of SHIELD, but half the time we just call it SHIELD anyway so nyah. Jason and I started watching this when it first came on, and even though it wasn't brilliant at first we kept watching because we both enjoyed it enough and it made for a nice little weekly Date Night, to cuddle on the couch watching "our show" each week. Then suddenly, this past spring, it got GOOD. WHOA PLOT TWISTS and WHAT'S GOING TO HAPPEN NEXT WEEK?!?! and sublimely unhinged birth-fathers and heartwrenching brain-damaged Scottish nerds level-good. This fall I've finished each Tuesday evening with the loveliest sense of satisfaction, and a bit of pity for everyone who gave up on the show before it got to be SO MUCH DANG FUN.
3. "Crumby Pictures" on Sesame Street. It's "Monsterpiece Theater" for a new generation, and it's brilliant, and I really wish I worked in children's television yet again.
4. I almost forgot that Community season 5 happened this year, but it did, way back early on. I also always forget how much I love that show until I get reminded. And there were some brilliantly funny bits this season and some perfectly touching bits too. You're a monster if you didn't cry during a certain goodbye scene with a certain absolutely perfect celebrity cameo. Oh, that got me.
5. Okay, okay, Sherlock season 3, even though the fandom drives me crazy. I can't REALLY skip mentioning it out of spite, when "The Sign of Three" was probably my favorite episode of the show ever. And still, Martin. Because he's brilliant. As usual. Which reminds me:
BONUS #5.5. When Martin Freeman hosted Saturday Night Live. Was he awesome? Of course he was awesome. The "Office: Middle Earth" sketch was brilliant, and did seeing him play his two most lovably adorable roles somehow wrapped up in one character make me sappy? Yes maybe. But he was brilliant even in that dumb talk show sketch where he BARELY HAD ANY LINES EVEN, his expressions just made the whole thing. To be honest, though, he wasn't even in one of my favorite sketches of the night, the commercial for going-back-to-your-home-church-for-Christmas, which was so dead-on St. James that I had to love it. Perversely, another of my favorite things about that show was that they DID NOT MAKE A SINGLE REFERENCE TO SHERLOCK OR BUMBLEPANTS CUCUMBERSAUCE. I'm just a little sensitive. Hey, while we're at it:

Top Five Pics of Martin Freeman That The Internet Kindly Gave Me
1. Okay, this isn't the greatest picture of Martin specifically, but it's such an insanely mindblowing circumstance that it has to be #1:

WHO PUT THOSE TWO MEN ON THE SAME COUCH? HOW IS THAT METAPHYSICALLY POSSIBLE? HOW DID THE AWESOME NOT EXPLODE THE WORLD?
2. From that same talk show, here's Martin doing a Paul McCartney impression.

But he can't fool me. I've long suspected he's been doing an extended Paul McCartney impression for most of his life. I'M ONTO YOU, FELLOW MACCA GEEK.
3. Try not to swoon:

4. I love Martin being Martin, but there were lots of lovely in-character pics this year as well. I'm torn between the "Bilbo does Not Approve" shot:

5. ...and the "Lester is a Conniving Weasel" shot:

PLUS! One moving .gif to make your life happy:


Okay, what's left.
Top 5... Music? Um, maybe not a Top 5?

1. I SAW PAUL MCCARTNEY... I may have already mentioned that.
2. Honestly, I have no clue.
3. OH, this year DOES mark the discovery of the [Sarah's] Husband's Stupid Record Collection blog, which has continued to be fun. Also, Sarah-of-said-blog followed me back on Tumblr and sometimes she even Favorites stuff I reblog there, which makes me feel marginally famous.
4. I wish I was still a music geek who actually was on top of musical discoveries.
5. Well, I do find myself exposed to Hit Pop Songs nonetheless, and actually there were several Hit Pop Songs this year that I ACTUALLY LIKE. I'm quite fond of "All About the Bass" and "Shake it Off." There were many more Hit Pop Songs that I DIDN'T care for (and why the heck do Maroon 5 suck so much now? They were so GOOD ten years ago!), but this isn't really news. I think I spend more time listening to PBS Kids songs than I do the radio, anyway.

Top 5 Songs From PBS Kids Shows I Sing Along To Incessantly

1. The Dinosaur Train Theme Song
2. The "Splashing In the Bathtub" song on Peg+Cat
3. The Peg+Cat Theme Song
4. The "Problem Solved" song from Peg+Cat. I really like Peg+Cat songs
5. Anything from Daniel Tiger's Neighborhood, which is sort of cheating because they were mostly all originally from Mister Rogers, anyway.

Anyway.

Let's wrap things up with a little bloggy retrospective.
Finally, Top 5 Blog Posts I Didn't Already Link To In This Post, Which Mostly Leaves The Philosophical Ones
1. In which I finally understand what it means to examine ones privilege
2. A tribute to an influential teacher
3. In which I examine the darkest depths of my soul
4. Humanity's only hope is to stop trying to change the subject
5. EVERYTHING IS REAL!
And bonus: I wrote a poem once.

So... have a lovely new year! We have no plans because we're boring. How about you? What were your Top Whatevers of the year?

This is what I woke up pondering in the middle of the night. I might blame Cat for creating a whole blog for such Lycoris-type questions for us to ponder (and this one I answered is sort of similar). Or I might blame this great post from Cheryl Klein and a series of tweets from Rae Carson I read yesterday, both of which discussed how helpful it is to take an objective look at stuff YOU don't like but other people LOVE just to figure out what it is that it must be somehow doing right. I might blame a chance run-in with one of those Martin-Freeman-haters, who allow the fact that my Imaginary Husband can't stop running his mouth and has said a few stupid things in his day completely sour them and blind them to the far greater amount of AWESOME he has done and said, and I get cranky when people irrationally hate people I love. I might blame violent football players, because we keep hearing about THEM a lot lately, too. Most likely it was all these things swirling together, keeping me up, making me wonder if I should just GET up to write this but then worrying that I'd fall back asleep just when I was SUPPOSED to wake up, instead.*

There's something in online culture I might call the "Your-Fave-Is-Problematic" syndrome. At least, it's most obvious in online culture, but in light of Cat's question about forgiveness, I guess it exists everywhere, in any situation. It's this idea some people have that, if they can see there's something wrong with something that other people like, suddenly it's all "THAT THING IS WRONG! HOW CAN YOU LIKE A WRONG THING! YOU OBVIOUSLY DON'T KNOW THAT THING IS WRONG IF YOU STILL LIKE THAT THING! STOP IT!" That's what Klein** and Carson were talking about in the things I linked above-- instead of immediately tearing down what other people love, you might want to focus on why they love it and you might learn something from it?

But how much wrong IS too wrong? Don't people kind of have a responsibility to point out problems that need to be changed? How much problem negates all the good? Where's the line between forgiveness and letting injustice get away with it?

Let's take our violent football players. These are people who have done things both immoral and criminal, and yet so many people are willing to overlook reprehensible behavior by their favorite players because the game is that important to them. The game's not that important to me, though. I don't feel like football really offers the world anything it can't get elsewhere, and certainly it's not like there aren't other players to take the place of reprehensible players, if necessary, either.

But what happens when you get into ART? Art, where everyone has a unique voice, and one silenced voice can't simply be replaced by another? I know fans-- and or former fans-- of people like Woody Allen and Marion Zimmer Bradley have had to wrestle with these feelings when their artists turned out to have horrible dark sides. And you have artists who've harbored horrible opinions-- like H.P. Lovecraft might be a LEETLE more excused by his time period than Orson Scott Card is today. But I haven't had to wrestle with those things, never having held strong opinions about the art of any of those people.

But shall we discuss John Lennon? John Lennon with his history of domestic violence? John Lennon with his art that IS very important to me? I admit I can sometimes feel conflicted about John, particularly in the face of his many more blind-worshipping fans. Dudes, he was NOT the sole or even main creative force in the Beatles. Dudes, he REALLY wasn't a paragon of peace. But if I'm not playing devil's advocate against his idolizers, I forgive him his faults. For one thing, he DID change his ways, in the end. Surely we can't still hold him bound for sins that he himself came to regret as well? And for another thing-- well, "Across the Universe" will never not make me blissfully happy, and nothing about its author can ever change that. --Could it? WOULD it have been different if he'd remained an unrepentant wifebeater? Maybe people would see him differently. And yet not a note of "Across the Universe" would have changed.***

This wasn't what kept me tossing and turning. Kevin Clash was. This is the one instance where the sins of the artist, uh, clashed so dramatically with my admiration for him that I still can't work it out. It still makes me angry, still feels like a betrayal. WHY, Kevin? Sure, other fallen types have done worse, but you're NOT SUPPOSED to fall. You've done SO MUCH, SO MUCH GOOD for children around the world. You've done so much for early literacy and you've brought so much joy. You should be a hero! You WERE a hero! But heroes are allowed SMALL, PERSONAL vices, like addiction or bad tempers or careless negligence. Statutory rape? Even if technically "consensual"? Can you still be a hero with that taint on you, or not? It DOESN'T erase the millions of people whose lives he's improved through his work with the Sesame Workshop. How can that be erased? And yet, anymore when I see Elmo, I just get sad.

I suppose part of the solution is to stop dealing in absolutes. Stop having heroes or villains. I just wish it was easier for people to accept that in-between place where reality lies.

*So I've also been working on another finding-myself book, Wishcraft, by Barbara Sher, as recced by my dear friend Angie, and the other day the exercise was figuring out the perfect environment for me to thrive in. The most important detail I came up with was NOT HAVING TO DO ANYTHING AT A PARTICULAR TIME in the morning, so I could wake up when I woke up and immediately grab my journal and just write until whenever, without HAVING to get up so as to feed children or get them to school or, on weekends, entertain a husband. I JUST WANT A MORNING JOURNALING TIME THAT WON'T REQUIRE ME TO WAKE UP BEFORE I'M READY.

**TECHNICALLY, she was quoting someone else in her post, but she posted it in the first place so as to talk about this, and she's the one whose name I know, so I'm giving her credit here ALTHOUGH TECHNICALLY I KNOW THAT'S NOT PERFECTLY ACCURATE, shut up you Amy's-Posts-are-Problematic folks.

***OR WOULD IT????? WHO REALLY KNOWS THE INTRICACIES OF CHAOS THEORY?!?!

I wanted to catch up on READING this blog I found before I posted about it, but it's taking me longer than I'd like (I'm looking at it as reading a book, and we all know how persistent I've been about THAT process lately), and anyway at the moment I feel a bit annoyed, which is a good way to get me to post something (that actually relates to ANOTHER potential post that's been tumbling around my head lately-- anger=drive-- but I guess I'll get to that one some other time, too), so darnit, here you are anyway, now. I must share! We shall NOW all finish catching up TOGETHER!

Anyhoo, a couple of weeks ago I found a link to this article, about a woman-- a CHILDREN'S LIBRARIAN in fact-- who's started a Tumblr blog called My Husband's Stupid Record Collection, in which she listens to her husband's stupid-only-in-that-it-is-stupidly-LARGE vinyl collection in order and writes about it.

OH-EM-GEE. THIS WOMAN NEEDS TO BE MY NEW BEST FRIEND. That is so totally what I want to DO with my life! Systematically go through a whole stupid record collection and write about it! (It's probably the true ulterior motive behind my imaginary marriage to Martin Freeman! I'm totally imaginarily using him for his record collection!) It only really WORKS with a massive vinyl collection, I'm afraid. Sure, I could write about new-to-me music I find online. I could go through MY husband's CD collection if I thought it contained any hidden treasures (it doesn't). But it's not the same. It's not that I'm a vinyl purist, sound-wise-- it's that there's something ritualistic about listening to a record. The putting-it-on-the-turntable, setting-the-needle-in-place process, and then SITTING, LISTENING.

The annoyance that nudges me to post comes from, apparently, some outsiders' attitudes toward the project. Did you know there's apparently a gender divide to music geekery? And so this blog is either a musically-clueless girl bringing her fresh perspective to the male world of music collection, or it is reinforcing stereotypes ABOUT how girls are clueless about record collecting? (Reading SOME of the comments to this post she wrote in response to the detractors, basically comments in which detractors said "You're still wrong," which is super-annoying but seems sadly to be the fate of Internet discourse, anyway, that was what made me annoyed this time). Where do these ideas COME from? In my house growing up, sure, the music-collection geek of the binary-gendered couple was my dad. In this house right here? The music geek is me. Absolutely not the guy. I certainly never thought of it along gendered lines. Just, you know, individual people and their hobbies lines.*

My dad passed on his music geekery to me from long before conscious memory: playing the piano for me as an infant, offering me music lessons as a given (the way I remember it was he brought some fliers home from some lesson-offering friends and said "Would you like to learn the piano or the violin?" Which, MAYBE he was asking if I'd like to learn either at all, but I definitely HEARD as "You will learn one of these, which will it be?" Luckily I already WANTED to play the piano), quizzing me on singers and songs, getting so involved in the Band Parents that I'm pretty sure HE had more friends at my school than I did, and, yes, digging out his totally massive vinyl collection for my perusal and eventual use on my college radio show. Now, HIS record collection I could definitely write about. The special thing about his collection is that it's mostly 45s instead of LPs-- as a teenager he'd worked for a deejay who paid him in records. LOADS of Promotional-issued 45s. He's got this famous misprint of "Penny Lane" with a few extra trumpet notes at the end, that deejays were SUPPOSED to destroy once they got the official release instead, but hey. Technically, I'VE got it. He officially gave me all his Beatles 45s, but they must be somewhere still at his house... which is funny because now I also have his RECORD player.

My best friend Angie had a record player in college, and her roommate Jen and I would dig up obscure records from our parents' collections just to bring to school and sit around their room, listening. (Okay not JUST-- I DID have my radio show for which I was constantly lugging a bag-and-a-box of vinyl around). My only really great contribution to this was Donovan's "There Is a Mountain," which I made everyone I met listen to at some point, and okay, you can debate if this was a GREAT contribution or not (but if you choose to debate with me on the topic, you ARE wrong). Jen dug up the marvels. She found the "Da Da Da" song that was on a Volkswagen commercial at the time-- not just the song, a whole ALBUM. She introduced us to "Hocus Pocus" by Focus, which is awesome but to be honest we mostly just made excuses to say it aloud. I'm sure there were more, but those are the only specifics I can think of at the moment, beyond that they sampled the Doors' "The Soft Parade" for all the system sounds on their computer, so the computer would announce "THE MONK BOUGHT LUNCH" every time you turned it off, but they had that on CD, not vinyl, so like I said. Not the Same.

I'm really not so off in wanting Sarah-of-her-husband's-stupid-record-collection as a best friend, because she reminds me an AWFUL lot of Jen. Even in looks, they're built alike, with similar smiles, and have the same super-straight banged hair, and glasses when blog-Sarah is wearing glasses. Jen ended up marrying a musician-- a drummer of nearly every possible genre, a true music geek if ever there was one. No one can deny that Jen's husband is a BIGGER music geek than she is, but that doesn't make Jen NOT a music geek, just because she (like Sarah, like me) chose to devote her career to books instead (Jen's a writer/English professor, not a librarian, but basic gist holds).

This is an example of a broader issue of Geekdom. The "what makes a TRUE Geek of Such-and-Such?" question. And there IS a gender thing that comes up in that question, most famously in the "Fake Geek Girl" concept. This title usually refers to girls who like comics and conventions, where a few of the guys who like comics and conventions just can't seem to believe that is possible. But of course GEEKINESS is much more than comics and conventions. The word "geek," used in a neutral-to-positive sense, seems to mean "a person who takes joy in their favorite things to the point of studying, collecting, debating, and otherwise going on and on about them, unselfconsciously and irregardless of those things being seen as 'cool' by the mainstream," most inclusively. But you can't deny that some of those favorite things are considered more "geeky" than others, and "Geek Culture" just generally assumes a love of speculative fiction, comic books and/or superheroes, games of all sorts (but especially NON-MAINSTREAM games), and anything BRAINY or NERDY (I still think "nerd" is a subset of "geek"-- a more academic and outright-uncool geek). I'm an utter nerd, and therefore (subset, you know) a geek. I use big words, not to impress people, but just because they come out that way. I love learning new and weird things, I like to THINK about things, I absorb useless trivia, I'm passionate about my favorite things, and I love "Geek Culture" because it's full of people LIKE that; and I DO love speculative fiction, though mostly as written for younger people, and I love games but video games make me dizzy, and I like superheroes but comics make me dizzy, too... so when people say "Fake Geek Girl" they're usually not talking about ME.

Rock music, in and of itself, is not considered "geeky" that way, but a) it's nonetheless MY biggest Geekdom, and b) the culture surrounding it ALSO tends to assume that This Isn't a Girl Thing. So I relate.
I even did a whole salute to "Fake" Rock Girls last year for our Video Blog. I'm not going to repeat everything I said there here, partially because I want to get us away from the gender issue now. WHAT MAKES SOMEONE A GEEK FOR SOMETHING, male or female? CAN you draw a line, saying Because you are not as Extreme In Your Geekitude as me, you're not a Geek of this topic? Because you direct your passion on this topic in a different WAY than I do, you are not a Geek?

I always think of Star Wars for that last question. Star Wars is very important to me, emotionally. Did a Vlog about that one, too. But I still remember when my aforementioned friend Jen-- I DEDICATE THIS WHOLE POST TO JEN-- first gave me her email address, which incorporated the name "Wedge Antilles," and I was like "What's that mean?" and she was like, "WEDGE WAS THE ONE REBEL BESIDES THE MAIN CHARACTERS WHO MADE IT THROUGH ALL THREE STAR WARS MOVIES!" and I was like, "Oh, really? I don't remember him." Because, unlike most "Star Wars Geeks," I really didn't have every ancillary detail memorized. I was too busy marvelling about life and death and sacrifice and mercy. I'm a BIG PICTURE Star Wars geek-- a forest type instead of a trees type. But there's a certain contingent of Geekery devoted to mapping the bark of every tree in the forest, and a certain contingent of THAT contingent that believes you're not a true Geek unless you, too, are a bark-mapper.

I'm a bark-mapper of the Beatles forest, though, which may be part of why I feel most comfortable claiming that as my biggest Geekdom. But it gets a little scary when your Geekitude is judged on quantity, because there's a LOT of bark in a forest, and even if you SHOULD get through mapping it all, by that time some trees have died and new ones have grown. And sometimes I feel like a sorry excuse for a music geek because I've gotten so BEHIND in the past seven years (as I have with everything. KIDS KILL BRAIN CELLS, in case you were unaware). Plus, I'm on the Internet, surrounded by other bark mappers, who are familiar with so MUCH obscure music and trivia-- my specialized knowledge pales! I mean, come on, "There Is a Mountain" is on Donovan's GREATEST HITS album, for cryin' out loud!

Bringing us back to Sarah-of-her-husband's-stupid-record-collection. If you actually read her blog, it's clear she is NOT a clueless outsider. She LOVES music! She LOVES to listen and to dance and to go to concerts and to discover MORE of it! But a) she loves it in a different WAY than her husband and the other bark-mappers-- a more emotional way, feeling it physically, is how she describes it. And sure, there's lots of DETAILS she doesn't know-- a lot of stuff I knew that she only just learned. But she also knows stuff I don't know (starts off her Blonde Redhead review by saying she listened to them a lot in college-- I've never so much as HEARD of them), and stuff I DO know but I'm fairly sure is really NOT common knowledge (does the average person REALLY have any idea who Syd Barrett is? Also by the way, am I stupidly pleased that she loves Barrett? It's so weird but so wonderful).

The point IS loving it. Or hating it as the case may be. The ENTHUSIASM. Geeking out over records is not a contest to see how much you already know. It's sitting around the turntable making discoveries for the first time, or sharing your underappreciated favorites with your friends, or even gawking over truly horrible things you've dug up, but learning and feeling new things is all PART of it. You lose that vitality if you make it dependent on what you ALREADY know.

Now I really miss Jen and Angie and their record player. Oh well.

--
* In a flip to this, a few weeks ago the 5yo, listening to the radio, out of nowhere said "This is a BOY singing! Boys don't sing!" "SURE they do. Whatever gave you that idea?" I replied, genuinely bewildered. "Well, DADDY doesn't sing..." she said. "Well yeah, but that's DADDY. Not BOYS. The Beatles are boys. And haven't you ever heard Pappap sing?" and I vowed in my head to make sure to get the kids to more of my dad's choral society concerts. He also sang in the church choir at Easter, and I made a point of MAKING SURE THEY KEPT NOTICING THAT the whole time we were there.

Last week, a tree fell on our house. I was in the upstairs bathroom, the room directly under the point of impact. My initial reaction was to burst out laughing at how this had been immediately preceded by one of the guys cutting it down saying "Uh-oh." A few yards and an attic crawl space from being beaned to death by a falling tree,* and all I could do was appreciate the comic timing of that loud "uh-oh," followed by the smack of a huge bunch of branches right outside the window.

A bit later I was able to expand that reaction to laughing at the irony of the entire situation. We have a series of very old, very tall, very rickety pines right on the property line-- on one side or the other, but all a threat to either our house or the neighbors'. So when said neighbor came over to ask permission to work in our yard so as to remove one of those trees that was on their side of the line, I said, "Oh yes, we're concerned about those trees falling on our house, too." So when the first tree being removed instead falls DIRECTLY ON OUR HOUSE IN THE PROCESS... seriously, you have to admit that's funny!

"How are you laughing?" people would ask me later as I tried to tell them what had happened. "How are you TAKING this so well?" Well, no one got hurt. Insurance is handling all the repairs. Sure, we're going to have to pay a lot more, to take this opportunity to replace the entire roof that needed it anyway; and to replace ALL the siding because they don't make the kind we have anymore to match; and to take this opportunity to get the house properly insulated because it turns out it ISN'T (and that will save money in the long run). And that's kind of exciting. Sure, we probably WON'T get to fixing the retaining wall or painting the shed as per the original plans for this summer of having-more-money-than-we-used-to, but hey.

And you know what? We've never been as friendly with those neighbors before as we have since they dropped a tree on our house. The guys at first cowered in terror from my husband, and took some time to get their heads around that he HADN'T come out screaming-- or shooting, everybody knows about his hobbies-- at them, but instead just expressed concern about no one getting hurt. "What good does getting mad do?" he said. And, as it turned out this had been our neighbor and his buddies themselves trying to do this tree removal instead of a professional company-- and they were definitely not going to try again WITHOUT a professional company, J said, "When you do, let me know, we can go in together on it and get the other trees done, too. Talk to you later, we'll have some beers and barbecue!"

All the personality type descriptions of me that come up feel the need to point out that, as an optimist, I need to be careful not to ignore problems or refuse to acknowledge that there's Bad Stuff about even the things and people I love. That was even TODAY'S Type 9 "Enneathought for the Day" in my inbox: "As average Nines accommodate themselves, they idealize the other person, who can do no wrong. Values and beliefs are seldom questioned. Watch for this tendency in yourself today." I snorted. Well, it's true I'll tend to go with whatever anybody else says rather than stand up for what I want, and that IS something that's been on my mind since yesterday evening, when the hubs and I had an argument about what colors to go with for the new siding and trim. He wants grayscale for easier repairing. I want the exact opposite-- even our current blue-with-white-trim is too bland for me. I want COLOR. Sensible color. I'm definitely leaning toward this particular shade of green, which looks lovely with some browns and a touch of red. Last night I spent a great deal of time dreaming I was studying green houses, and how to compromise with roof color. I also dreamed I was trying to unlock these pictures I couldn't access of the Time I Swear I Really Did Meet Julie Andrews and She Said She Liked My Gardening (note: I have never actually met Julie Andrews), and this lady kept wanting to give me acupuncture in the shape of India. But anyway, my point is I'm sticking to my guns on this, and we ARE going to have SOME color in our new house covering.

And, okay, I do tend to ignore problems, either hoping they'll go away or waiting until I ABSOLUTELY HAVE TO DEAL with them, which could be dangerous especially in medical situations (but you know what happens every time I go to the doctor, after trying to rassle up babysitting or some other rearrangement of schedule? "Oh, you just have a pretty bad virus. Get some rest and drink plenty of fluids." AAAGGHHH!)

But refusing to acknowledge the bad or thinking loved ones can do NO WRONG? I kindly disagree. I am all too aware of The Dark Side. I'm probably MORE aware of the Dark Side than the average person.** That's why disasters and tragedies and horrors seem to SHOCK other people more than they shock me. Not saying bad things don't make me sad, or angry, or slightly sick. It's just that they're so common. If I was expected to cry in outrage EVERY time I encountered a tragedy, I would never stop. So I choose to focus on the beauty or the humor or both.

A common refrain of those who take a pessimistic view is, "We're just being realistic about it!" Dude, let me tell you about being unrealistic. Do you know what goes on inside the head of a person with chronic depression? It's utter negativity. And it's utter BS. Choosing to focus on the positive allows me to actually TAKE ACTION in the world. Focusing on the negative makes me give it all up to hopelessness. Now, I can see where acknowledging as opposed to ignoring problems comes into this. Ignoring problems is not taking action, either. But there's a difference between "HERE'S A PROBLEM. LOOK AT THIS PROBLEM. GASP IN SHOCK AT THIS PROBLEM. OH NO, WE HAVE A PROBLEM!" and "Well, THAT'S something we need to fix. How are we going to do that? I'm sure we'll find a way."

As for idealizing people... I AM very good at seeing the good in other people. I AM inclined to Not-Hate people everyone else can't stand-- and often I DON'T see what their problem is until it's pointed out to me. But usually, I do. I just don't care unless it's actively causing a problem. Like there's a book vendor who has a history of coming to our library. I do not want to work with him. I wish they'd stop letting him come in. He's a horribly pushy salesman. Last time he showed up, unable to find anyone who actually orders books to talk to, he just asked some of the others to look and see what they might be INTERESTED in, and then went and ordered them all for us anyway. I don't like him. But only as a book vendor. I'm sure his family is very proud of what a good salesman he is, how he supports them and all. Just because I don't want to work with him doesn't negate his worth as a human being. It doesn't give me the right to insult his fashion choices or make assumptions about his politics. It doesn't mean I'm going to start a campaign to have all my followers find his Twitter handle and bully him online-- "well HE'S a bully, serves him right!" No, not really. I just don't want to deal with him trying to sell me books.

In one of my childhood books-I-wrote, there's a line at the end where I said (I'm the narrator of that book) something like, "The others have been treating so-and-so better after I told them that she makes a very good book character." Maybe the whole empathy-from-reading-fiction thing is what's kept me realistically-optimistic about people, instead of idealizing them or hating on them. I've always liked looking at people as potential book characters. Imperfect characters are way more interesting than perfect ones. I like quirks. I like wondering about the pain and/or hopes beneath the surface of people. I like comparing the different ways people react to the same situation.

And so I tend to give people the benefit of the doubt.

And what's wrong with that? Is it really better to say "This person is a jerk because they have this terrible fault," than "This person is wonderful in these ways! Oh yes, they're not perfect, but I wasn't talking about that right now"? I mean, sure, if someone has done something reprehensible, they ought to be punished for it if at all possible, and it's wrong to let them get away with it (for example, on one end, Justin Beiber's DUI issues, or Woody Allen's sex abuse thing on the other). And I admit when someone gets a lot of praise whom you know has been, to put it mildly, Imperfect, there's that urge to say "...but!" It's my John Lennon problem. It bugs me when people talk about him like he WAS the Beatles, like he was the genius behind it all, because he wasn't. He was only a so-so musician, particularly compared to Paul. And that whole Icon of Peace thing... excuse me, John? Who mistreated his wives and girlfriends? Rude, crass John? GEORGE would make a much better Icon of Peace-- or Ringo. From a personal day-to-day standpoint, Ringo embodies living a life of Peace better than any of them. DARN IT, PEOPLE, STOP IDOLIZING JOHN. And yet... John. Funny, clever John, who would have made my life by writing either "Across the Universe" or "Julia" alone, and he wrote BOTH of them. I can't not love John, warts and all.

I just don't see the point on dwelling on problems that can't be undone. There comes a point where you realize what a crapball the world can be, what idiots humans are, what atrocities and injustices happen at every moment, and you give up on it-- or you notice the good things that keep on happening, even among all the bad. You notice the wildflowers that have overgrown the tracks at Auschwitz, the strangers sharing supplies with each other in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, the smile on the person you pass on the street, just acknowledging you, just saying, "Hi, I see you're there, and you're a person who could use a smile today."

Focusing on the good is not the same as refusing to acknowledge the bad. It's just not letting the bad win.

----
*one of my grandfathers was killed by a falling tree, this is serious business!
**seriously, "The Imperial March" is playing on my computer right now. I'm not even kidding.

In celebration of the long-awaited U.S. return of THE JOHN WATSON SHOW I mean Sherlock, you knew I meant Sherlock-- I need to confess something to you. I, kind of... HATE?...Sherlock Fandom...?

*phew* okay, got that out there. You see, whenever you want to get something like that off your chest, you're inevitably aware that every one of your reasons is hypocritical or selfish or hypocritical or irrational or also maybe hypocritical. And yet SOMEHOW you need to get it out. To WORK it out. To work THROUGH the irrationality to figure out what your problem REALLY is.

Maybe my problem is my uneasy relationship with the entire idea of fandom. I grew up before the Internet. I grew up keeping my various obsessions, with Les Miz or Ducktales or Madeleine L'Engle or Gadget on Rescue Rangers or my crush on Fred Savage (who ME? Get a CRUSH? On a TV STAR? NO WAY) or whatever, a kind of shameful secret. I didn't KNOW anyone who loved these things the way I did (or even at all). Therefore IT WAS WEIRD OF ME. It was weird of me to FEEL so much about imaginary things (or real people I didn't know: because frankly I thought it was weird of the OTHER girls to be hanging up pages from Tiger Beat and sighing over any of the New Kids on the Block or the other Teen Supposed-Heartthrobs in there-- Fred Savage WAS in there, too, but that was part of why my own feelings freaked me out). I'd see a reference to one of my Favorite Things out in the world and I'd BLUSH. I was a closeted obsessive, hiding my intense feelings just because they DIDN'T MAKE SENSE to me.

So I see these kids online and realize they ARE just like me, but they've found an outlet that I never had. So maybe I'm... jealous?

I AM jealous of SOME Sherlock fans-- or some People In General-- of ANY age, I can say. Maybe the adults even more so. Because it's such a THING to love the show SO much that you CAN'T WAIT FOR IT TO AIR IN YOUR OWN COUNTRY and so you find a way to hack the BBC to watch it, or download it illegally ("while preordering the DVD, I PROMISE!" and I don't doubt it but...). I just can't imagine that watching it immediately is THAT IMPORTANT. It's coming. In fact, for U.S. fans, it's been less than THREE WEEKS this time. WAY better than last time's four months. Meanwhile, I've got so many other things on my plate that I just can't justify going though all that effort for a TV show that IS COMING EVENTUALLY. So while all the impatient fans of the world make me want to shout, "Oh come on, why can't you just WAIT?!? Don't you have ANYTHING ELSE to occupy your time?!?" what I'm really saying is "Gee, I wish I didn't have kids to work around all the time when it comes to free time. I miss those days of viewing-marathons and opening-night movie-goings and otherwise-seeking-out-things-I-like-as-soon-as-possible-on-whatever-schedule-I-like." Sour grapes. But then what most gets me is the assumption, after that (or even beforehand-- "Oh come on, PBS," go the comments, "You KNOW we're all going to see it before you show it"), that ALL TRUE FANS would have done everything in their power to see it immediately. Even the PRODUCERS made that assumption at the New York "premiere" of Season 2! And I feel insulted. Who are YOU to decide who a true fan is?

Although okay, maybe I'm NOT a True Fan. I love the show, but I'm an obsessive fan of, not the show, but one of the costars. And I'm a little weirdly protective of My Martin. And it bugs me how many people insist on seeing him only as John Watson. It bugs me how many people can't MENTION him in an unrelated setting (Hobbit discussions, mostly) without also throwing in something about Benedict-- not even just the Bilbo-and-Smaug thing, I mean discussions that aren't about Ben at ALL, and they're like "Ah, Martin's great, so is Ben," and I'm like WHO'S TALKING ABOUT BEN?! Though I thought the Bilbo-and-Smaug questions were getting old, too. (His answer at the DoS Premiere, starting at 45:08 here, about "Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney in the 'Ebony and Ivory' video," just filled me with joy, though. MUSIC GEEKS FOREVER. Which speaking of which? THIS is the greatest thing Martin has done this year, dangit. DOES NO ONE ELSE APPRECIATE MARTIN'S UTTER MUSIC-GEEKINESS BUT ME? Is it just that I so rarely encounter anyone who IS a bigger music geek than me? See what I mean? This is extremely important and it has NOTHING TO DO WITH SHERLOCK!) But this is, of course, my most hypocritical argument of all. I get frustrated because some people are all, "That's a guy in my favorite show!" while meanwhile I'm all, "That's a show my favorite guy's in!"

Maybe this all comes down to that FineLineBetweenLoveAndHate. PASSION is irrational. Maybe if I hadn't gotten so used to holding my passions in, I'd feel less conflicted about them existing in the first place-- for me or for other people. Maybe this is all part of me still needing to make peace with my hypersensitivity, as I discussed last week. I feel things LOUDLY. I not only cry easily, I fall in love easily. I'm Emotionally Pansexual (which is kind of an oxymoron. I'm ...panPHILIAL?). And part of me is still trying frantically to CONTAIN these emotions somehow, and ends up trying to contain the emotions of the rest of the world, too.

I often wonder what I would have thought of the Beatles if I'd been around in the '60s. Would I have stubbornly brushed them off as stupid pop stars all those stupid screaming girls were being stupid about? Or would I have fallen in love anyway, and tried to downplay it BECAUSE I didn't want to think of myself as one of those Stupid Screaming Girls Being Stupid? Or would I have been screaming? -- nah, THAT I can't see. I actually hope it's the middle option. Because that's what I'm doing right now, isn't it? Trying desperately to claim my fannishness and yet make clear that I'm not one of "THOSE" fans? And in that case, maybe I'd be hypocritical and irrational and stuck-up... but at least I'd still have the Beatles to love.

Well, time is tight, and I have so much to write about, but I don't want to let today (my favorite day of the year! Yes, Christmas Eve is actually more my favorite than Christmas Day, that's just the way it works) pass without wishing you, my Internet friends, my friends and family I WON'T be seeing this week, and my lovely random strangers who happen to be reading this, a very Merry Christmas. I'm going to get back to that by the end of this post, by way of a lot of other stuff that's been on my mind the past few days, so... be patient? Or get your internal scanners ready?

About this past weekend

So, eleven years ago tonight I got the only piece of jewelry I ever (let alone always) wear, from my then-boyfriend, who was actually stunned when I accepted it. Ten years ago this coming Friday we got married. It seems like a good opportunity to do MORE than JUST dinner-and-a-movie, although we did do the dinner-and-a-movie (though in two parts) too, but this actual anniversary weekend is a little busy, so this PAST weekend my parents took the kids and booked us a night at a fancy little bed-and-breakfast in Ligonier. We DID have Friday evening and Saturday morning at home, where we finished up Christmas Stuff; but then off we headed, to a fancy and probably-most-expensive-we-ever-actually-paid-for-and-WE-DID-IT-ON-PURPOSE dinner at my cousin's restaurant. That's where we took my new Facebook profile picture:
...which stunned at least 29 people with its beauty. "HOW are those two complete dorks looking so CUTE?!" everyone on Facebook thought. I don't know. Expensive food. That must be it.

Then we RELAXED in our fancy little B&B, run by a woman who ordered us to Be Romantic or Else. She seemed to think we ought to be listening to quiet instrumental music over breakfast instead of watching Marvel Universe movies on FX. But this is what she served us for breakfast: baked pears in rum sauce with pecans; a sort-of-stuffed-French-toast-thing-made-with-cinnamon-and-stuffed-with-mascarpone-and-apricot-jam-I-think-I-got-that-right; very good seasoned homefried potatoes; sausage and maple syrup. There were also snacks in the room, and we had hot chocolate in the morning too. So we were very well-fed this weekend.

Then we ran off to see Desolation of Smaug, because it wouldn't be a proper anniversary without me dragging my Real Husband to watch my Imaginary Husband on the big screen. So here's where I do a quick movie review!:

A Quick Response to The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug:

Desolation of Smaug is very much the middle movie of a trilogy: it drops you right into the middle of the action and ends so suddenly that, in our theater, the silence was broken by the guy beside us exclaiming, "You have GOT to be KIDDING me!"

Beyond that, I cannot possibly give you an objective, mainstream review. I will admit it: I'm an utter Pete-Jackson's-Middle-Earth fangirl. I fail as a book purist-- I honestly didn't care WHAT happened-- even Jason, who has only read the book once, questioned aloud at one point "The ring didn't AFFECT him this much in the book, did it?" (and I refrained from responding "ShutupmyOtherHusbandisACTING!")-- although towards the very end I did wonder how long the action at Erebor would drag out-- but otherwise I let it go (also I figure if people would just refer to the movies by their subtitles only-- ie Desolation of Smaug-- the need to feel at all book-pure decreases significantly). I fail as a critic of fine cinema-- I don't even KNOW this time around what the faults and strengths of this movie as a visual storytelling device are. I was just THERE, immersed, and smiling constantly. Dear lord it's possible I'm even more of a Middle-Earth fanatic than I am a Martin Freeman fanatic! ANYTHING else he's in I get totally antsy when he's off-screen, no matter how good the overall production is (DARN YOU LAST-JOHN-WATSONLESS-THIRD-OF-SCANDAL-IN-BELGRAVIA!)-- THIS time, even though there was a disproportionate LACK of titular Hobbit in this Hobbit movie, I BARELY noticed: I was like "MIDDLE-EARTH!-happy-happy-happy-smiling-happy-ohlookmyfavoriteactorBONUS!-happy-happy-happy...." A LEETLE bored by wizards and necromancers, but that was my only "but why can't we get back to the OTHER scene?!" moment. So yeah, I loved it, but I can't speak for anyone else. My geekitude, which even I wasn't entirely sure about before, has become fully exposed.

About Kindness

Now to get serious for a moment. Last week YA author Ned Vizzini killed himself. Considering that I've never actually READ any of his books, and considering how little I tend to react to most other deaths and atrocities in the world, it's surprising exactly how much this shook me up. Or not. I've already written about how sensitive I am to suicide. There's something about being destroyed from the inside out, it's scarier than external enemies. Demons are absolutely the most frightening of monsters, because they attack from the inside, too. Dementors are by far the scariest monsters in Harry Potter, because they're basically a metaphor for this whole thing-- MENTAL ILLNESS, eating you up from the inside.

Anyway, somebody wrote a perfect comment on the obituary at The A.V. Club-- so perfect I printed it out! It summed up my own feelings, though perhaps more crassly than I would. So if you don't feel like clicking through, I just want to highlight his* last paragraph for you: "So let this be my New Year's resolution, my goal. For every artist like Ned Vizzini who loses their battle in the end, I vow to work twice as hard at making my craft better, out of respect for what they've managed to do despite their challenges and to in some small way keep them alive, by working on their behalf to create something new that otherwise might not be."

That is EXACTLY the way I felt when Diana Wynne Jones died, though she wasn't a suicide, just a sucky lifestyle choice (HAVE I EVER MENTIONED HOW MUCH I HATE CIGARETTES, TOO?!). But this time, maybe because I hadn't read his books, it wasn't the carrying-on-the-ART vow I wanted to make. I vowed, with all my heart, to work THAT MUCH HARDER to counter negativity in the world. To counter negativity-- and this is the important part-- not with MORE negativity, but with KINDNESS. To devote my life to spreading Kindness (as opposed to my usual, ineffective Niceness). To embrace everyone, with all their faults, and hold them up, out of the darkness.

So Now for my Christmas Wish

Which brings me back to my Christmas Wish for you, and for the world. Every year I post this song. Many of you have it memorized. Many of you have listened to it once before. Many of you weren't following me last Christmas, or you just never bothered to listen. But this time I'm serious. I want each and every one of you to spare three and a half minutes to let this Christmas Wish seep into your consciousness:

Wishing you the most genuine of Peace and Love from me to you. Merry Christmas

*(the commenter struck me as male, but I could be wrong. He's a he in my head. If she's not, and she/you are offended, you can set me straight.)

I knew there was something significant about today's date, and now I remember: it's the 95th anniversary of the birth of the woman who wrote my favorite book and the 12th anniversary of the death of the man who wrote my favorite song. That's a lot of significance for one day. (Just listened to the latter sing the words "All the world is birthday cake" which could be for the former. IT ALL TIES TOGETHER).

Nowhere I have to be for a few hours at least, nothing I have to do except get the kids in the shower once they're done with breakfast (they got into my cousin's cologne yesterday. This will require a serious soaking), and I have a horrible cold, so don't really WANT to do much. Don't really want to SIT here, even, except mentally I'm in a place where I just feel like talking to you today. It's been two months. (Have you missed me? If you missed me, tell me so, it will make me feel useful. Then again if nobody missed me then I'll be more depressed than if I hadn't bothered to ask, so maybe not. But now I won't know whether you didn't miss me or DID miss me and are just trying not to enable my neediness).

Yesterday was Thanksgiving, so of course it's proper to start out by being thankful for Madeleine L'Engle and George Harrison. And for once I feel like telling about personal events, as if this was a journal again more than a blog. My aunt had hosted Thanksgiving, and, well, pretty much everything, for many years because she had a house for it, but this spring she moved to a place more suitable for Just Her and a Cat or Two. But her son manages/lives above a restaurant/bar/thing, so he offered the run of the place for all of us for Thanksgiving this year, instead (I'm sure he didn't intend to offer the run of his cologne in this package, but what's a holiday with small children without the makings of a holiday with small children?). It was a maze of rooms, so quite easy to lose yourself/ small children in (they had themselves a surprisingly difficult game of hide and seek. Don't think they'd ever played in a place with so many good hiding spots before). But everywhere you went, you ran into someone else, so you never were COMPLETELY lost. And they certainly had the facilities for feast-preparation, although in our family no one is ever in charge of ALL the cooking. I brought bar cookies that I overboiled the ingredients for, making them ROCK HARD (I actually broke one of my best knives trying to cut them!), but luckily there were enough other desserts. We had pumpkin pie, pumpkin cake, a REALLY DELICIOUS pumpkin trifle made by a woman we just found out is the fiancee of one of my cousins so YES MA'AM WELCOME TO OUR FAMILY YOU MAY ALWAYS BRING DESSERT, pumpkin cookies, pumpkin dip, and pumpkin ice cream. Also a few other things that weren't pumpkin.

I simultaneously love holidays and get infinitely frustrated by the way other people react to holidays, too. Every so often this week there's been someone on the "Thanksgiving is offensive because that whole Pilgrims-and-Indians-happy-feast-myth is so PROBLEMATIC" train. Which is not a fault of Thanksgiving at all. It's the fault of people who insist on having preschoolers make feathered headdresses for a Thanksgiving craft. CANADIANS have Thanksgiving-- in October-- and it has NOTHING TO DO with Puritans at Plymouth. It's what it IS-- a harvest feast to give thanks for being able to eat and all. And I'm pretty sure that's how most people celebrate Thanksgiving, anyway.

Then there's the "Thanksgiving is early Christmas" thing, which was even more tricky this year since Thanksgiving WAS also Hanukkah, and "Hanukkah is Jewish Christmas." Look, I love Christmas more than ANYBODY.* ANYBODY I KNOW, at any rate. But I'm not ready to get in the mood for the holiday season until NOW. People always laugh about how early Christmas stuff comes out in STORES, but this year I saw SO many Christmas lights out on PRIVATE HOMES TWO WEEKS AGO. Of course, maybe they celebrate Hanukkah and were only prepping for THIS week. I guess we don't really know. I just hope they KEEP those lights up until at LEAST January 7th. Come on.

But on the complete opposite hand, a couple weeks ago my coworker who "shares" social media duties with me (okay, anymore SHE does most of it, and I just pop on whenever I have an idea) posted a picture of the decorated tree we have up in the library with the message "Our holiday tree is up and decorated in Dr. Seuss characters thanks to our local girl scout troop." And on our Facebook page, someone commented, "Don't you mean Christmas tree?" Since our Facebook page is linked to my personal Facebook account, I got a notification as soon as this comment was posted, so I responded, "Well, it's a little early for Christmas-- Thanksgiving and Hanukkah aren't even for another two weeks! We have a lot of other holidays to celebrate before Christmas!" This turned out to be the Exact Right Answer, earning both an in-person thumbs-up from my coworker for handling the comment so well, and a Facebook thumbs-up from the commenter for an explanation she could live with: her response was "I was really just hoping you guys weren't going the way of (what seems to be) everyone else, by not acknowledging Christmas at all...glad to hear you're just trying to extend the joy. ;)" And I'm like, really? That's the whole POINT of using the term "holiday season," not to cut OUT Christmas, but to extend the joy to ALL the OTHER holidays and traditions of this darkest-time-of-year. Christmas is December 25! But Dewey Decimal Day is December 10, and that's an important holiday, too! Okay, maybe not important, but worth celebrating (the last thing I did at work before leaving on Wednesday-- we were closed yesterday and today-- was making a "December" sign for our monthly holiday books display. There's a LOT of holidays this time of year! And it so happens Dewey Decimal Day is one of them). Worrying that there's a War on Christmas because it's acknowledged not to be the only holiday in December is like worrying making gay marriage legal will destroy straight marriage. Wait, that's usually the same people doing the worrying.

Then there's people who get stressed out about holidays. I just want to say "WE DON'T CARE! Let us people who DON'T get stressed out about holidays handle everything! We'll ALL be happy!" I was angry with my husband yesterday because HE'S one of the grinchy types, and he said, "Are you okay? Is this just your usual holiday depression?" "MY holiday depression? I wouldn't be depressed a bit if YOU weren't so grumpy." Luckily he mellowed out by the time we reached my family's party and he had a couple superb German dark beers. But anyhoo, I really think that. Holidays would be so much more pleasant for everyone if the people who got stressed out over holidays would just sit back and let the holiday-lovers take care of stuff.

So, I hope tomorrow we can do the Thorough Once-a-Year (or close to that) Housecleaning that must take place before the Christmas decorations (and Advent, and New Years, and St. Nicholas' Day, and Dewey Decimal Day, and Jane Austen's Birthday... you know, the HOLIDAY decorations) can come out, but I do have this awful crappy cold and want to go to sleep. And now it is much later at night than when I started this, so going to sleep would be a pretty good idea.

I'll get back to you again SOMETIME before Christmas (I refer here to December 25): I've been meaning to tell you about the book I'm reading/working through. For one thing. Also, who wants to go see Catching Fire with me? Jason says he'll go to the theaters with me for Desolation of Smaug (even if that IS the one with my Imaginary Husband in it), but he doesn't care to see Catching Fire in the theaters... which is just a shame that he didn't care for the first movie, because I KNOW if he read all the books he'd REALLY appreciate the worldbuilding of Panem. But ah well. Girl date! Or boy date! I don't know of any boys who read this who actually live near me though, so never mind them. Whatever-gender-you-identify-with non-spousal date!

---
*That links to a post that links to almost every OTHER post I've ever written about Christmas, so it seems most convenient. Except for the post I wrote last year, since it hadn't happened yet.