Terms of Endearment

cats, etc., family, funny things, humor, language, , ,

“What’s for dinner, Ler?”

“I don’t know, Doodle. See what’s in the freezer.”

Conversations like those are what keep our marriage strong.

Back when my husband and I were dating, we had a reputation for inspiring a need for insulin in everyone around us. To say we were sickening would be an understatement. We addressed each other with a plethora of cutesie names and endearments. I don’t remember if we ever actually said “kissy-lamb,” but you get the idea. “Sugar,” “Sweetheart,” “Darling,” and other standards were definitely within our repertoire.

Since we’ve been married, not so much. I suppose it’s because no one can keep up that level of goo and drivel for too long. Oh, we still call each other by affectionate names, but they’re more likely to be odd ones.

First, I must admit that, aside from that dating phase, I never had a lot of experience with terms of endearment. My father’s favorite thing to call my mother was “Old Squaw,” which would now be objectionable for any number of reasons. My mother never objected to it, though, so I don’t see why anyone else should get a vote.

Dan and I started out along the same lines. One of his favorite names for me was “Old Boot.” (No, I have no idea of how that started. I suppose it sort of made some kind of sense at the time. And I didn’t mind, so again with the no one else getting a vote. But I digress.)

Over time, our endearments got even stranger. We took to calling each other “Doodle,” “Cake,” “Bug,” and “Ler” (no, I have no idea what that means either). Dan calls me “Rabbit,” “Bunny,” and sometimes “Rabbi.” (“Where’s the Torah, Rabbi?” he’ll say. We also have a scrap of dialogue that goes like this: “Friend.” “Thing.” “Friendly Thing.” And yes, I sometimes do say, “Thank you, Thing.” But I digress. Again.)

We mostly skip old standards like “Honey,” except in compounds: “Honey-Lover,” or “My Own Sweet Honey-Lover,” which is still pretty icky, now that I think about it.

Recently, we tried out “Bae” and “Boo.” (I’m Bae. He’s Boo.) But I’m not sure it will ever really catch on with us. It must be out of date anyway, now that we’re saying it. Along those lines, one endearment I don’t like is “Baby.” It raises my hackles. I’m not a baby. Of course, it’s different when combined with something else – “Baby-Bunny,” “Baby-Cake,” “Baby-Bug.” Don’t ask me why. I couldn’t tell you.

The truth is, I’m really bad at terms of endearment, other than the occasional “Honey” and the silly ones. I prefer to call Dan “Dan.” (And for some reason, he can call me “Jannie,” but I can’t call him “Danny.” I think he’s afraid I’ll burst into a chorus of “Oh, Danny Boy,” although I sing like a bird. An off-key bird. I do, however, occasionally call him “Fuzzer-Bear.” But I digress yet again.)

Of course, we do know people that stick with the sticky, as it were. One couple of our acquaintance call each other “Wifey” and “Hubby,” though they’ve been married for quite a number of years.

Just don’t get me started on the terms of endearment we have for our cats. Toto-boo-boo-baby (Toby) is a bit icky even for me, though I have been heard to say it. Toby doesn’t mind, and I don’t see why anyone else gets a vote.

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Life (Not Death) by TBR

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By now, everyone’s seen that cartoon where a grieving widow and a coroner are looking at the squashed husband, saying, “It was his TBR pile.” There are even those who say that will be my fate – to be smashed into a literary pancake by all the books I mean to read someday.

That could certainly be true if all my books were dead-tree editions. But slowly (more quickly since the tornado) I’ve been replacing my books with ebooks. (To those who say ebooks aren’t real books, I say phooey! They each have their good and bad points. Ebooks don’t have that delicious new-book smell, but ebooks allow for dwindling eyesight without having to resort to the 50 or so books in the LARGE PRINT section of the library. They both do, however, convey the same information or story. But I digress.)

I usually read two books at a time, one with each eye. (Not really. I wish.) I switch back and forth between a book of fiction and one of nonfiction. If I read two of the same sort, they can get muddled in my easily-muddlable brain.

Right now, my two books are Artemis, a science fiction novel by Andy Weir, the guy who wrote The Martian. Artemis is a city on the moon, and our MC (Main Character, for those of you not up on the jargon) is a shady delivery person who gets in far over her head. If it were a movie, it would be a caper film. The nonfiction book is The Suspect. (It has the impossibly long subtitle An Olympic Bombing, the FBI, the Media, and Richard Jewell, the Man Caught in the Middle, which at least tells you what the book is about without me having to. But I digress again.)

But what’s next? I have over 1,000 choices (another of the benefits of ebooks – they can all exist on my bed table without the threat of pancaking me). There are a few front-runners.

Fiction:

The Calculating Stars, by Mary Robinette Kowal. About women astronauts.

Calypso, by David Sedaris. (I mean, if it counts as fiction, which I can’t always tell.) I hope it’s as good as his early works.

While Justice Sleeps, by Stacey Abrams. Just to see if she can really write as well as legislate.

Battle of the Linguist Mages, by Scotto Moore. Because, duh.

Any of Dick Francis’s oeuvre, which I’ve been making my way through a little at a time.

Nonfiction:

The Better Angels of Our Nature: Why Violence Has Declined, by Steven Pinker, because I’d like to see him prove that.

Live Forever: The Songwriting Legacy of Billy Joe Shaver, by Courtney S. Lennon, because I love his music, if not his voice.

To the Stars: The Autobiography of George Takei, Star Trek’s Mr. Sulu, by George Takei. Oh, Myyy!

Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance, by Leonard Peltier. I’ve read about the case from a law enforcement perspective. Now I want the man’s own story.

Killing Rasputin: The Murder That Ended the Russian Empire, by Margarita Nelipa. Because I love Russian history.

Of course, that’s just a sampling. I have hundreds more to choose from. I tend to read the books that I’ve bought most recently, since they caught my eye for one reason or another. Almost none of the books on my Nook are popular, current bestsellers. With as many books as I buy, I try not to pay more than $3.99 per. Of course, that means I buy a few that are real clunkers. I read a chapter or two and then mosey along.

(To those who are curious, I generally read on a Nook or an iPad with Nook software. (I can also read on my phone or iPod, if I’m willing to read a paragraph or less at a time. Sometimes it becomes necessary.) Recently, I acquired a Kindle Fire (it was given to me) and I have at least a few books on it, including Rift, by Liza Cody, which I’ve never been able to find for Nook, for some reason. My problem will come when B&N (and my Nook) finally turn belly up and I have to find a way to convert the 1000+ books to Kindle. Or find someone who knows how to do it for me. But I digress again. At length.)

And for those who remember that I used to be a full-time literary maven, rest assured that I do have serious works on my Nook as well – the complete Shakespeare, James Joyce, Cervantes, Emily Dickinson, to name but a few. But I read them all, back in grad school (100 years ago), so they’re not high on my TBR list. They’re weighty tomes, to be sure – but not anything likely to topple on my head. Hold the maple syrup.

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Wrecks and Resurrection

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Gordon Lightfoot died this week, which made me and many others sad. I remember listening to “Sundown” when I was in high school, which got me hooked on him. (The song had just come out. My friend Kathy was listening to Stevie Wonder and Elton John, so we heard a lot of them, too. And my friend Peggy and I were both listening to John Denver as well. Yes, I’m ancient. But I digress.)

One of Lightfoot’s best-known songs was “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” It was one of the longest popular songs ever played on AM radio. The rhythmic swells of sound mimicked the waves on Lake Superior, and the level tone of his voice perfectly conveyed the sorrowful atmosphere of the story.

I gained even more respect for Lightfoot when, in 2010, he changed some of the lyrics to the song to reflect new evidence about the wreck and the men who went down with the ship. That was classy.

But there’s another shipwreck song by another Canadian singer-songwriter that has probably had even more influence on my life – “The Mary Ellen Carter,” by Stan Rogers, who died in 1983. It’s a folk song that packs a powerful punch.

“The Mary Ellen Carter” is another story-song as well. It’s about a group of men determined to raise a sunken ship from her “sorry grave.” They know that the ship is still worth money if they can raise her, but really, it’s a labor of love. And the chorus says, “Rise again!”

It’s the final verses that really pack a punch, though. It talks about rising from all kinds of wrecks – “No matter what you’ve lost, be it a home, a love, a friend/Like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again! Though your heart it be broken or life about to end/Like the Mary Ellen Carter, rise again!”

I’ve known the song to be deeply meaningful to any number of people – a woman going through an unexpected divorce, a cancer survivor, and more. When our house was destroyed by a tornado, it buoyed up my husband and me. (Sorry. Couldn’t help myself.) Whenever we’re having difficulties, we play the song. Sometimes we just play it when we need encouragement. And we always sing along at top volume. Sometimes we even put it on repeat and listen to it over and over.

The thing about the song is that, though the lyrics talk about all the rigors the sailors go through in trying to raise the ship, the song never says whether they actually accomplish it. In that way, it’s even more a song about hope than one about success. Hope, working together for a common goal, and persevering when everyone thinks you’re a fool for doing so.

I hope you listen to it. I hope it inspires you as much as it does me. Stan Rogers has lots of other songs, some of them humorous (“White Collar Holler”) and others heart-wrenching (“First Christmas Away From Home”) and still others slice-of-life ballads (“Lies,” which makes me and other of my friends cry every time we hear it), plus any number of folk songs.

Both “Edmund Fitzgerald” and “Mary Ellen Carter” are great. Both songwriters are phenomenal. One had a place on radio and the other at folk festivals. But I think they’re both worth a listen. Let me know if you agree.

Chill Out, Kitty!

cats, etc., funny things, pets, , , , ,

My husband’s big orange-striped cat, Matches, was so chill that Dan once put the creature into an empty birdcage and hung it from the ceiling. Amazingly, the cat voiced no objections. He just looked around calmly from his unique new vantage point.

Not many cats are that agreeable about being put in a cage – especially when it signals a trip to the vet. Even the cardboard boxes that pass as pet carriers are useless. Just try to put a cat in one and you have a (Your State’s Name Here) Chainsaw Massacre. And cardboard carriers aren’t designed to stand up to a massacre.

We had a black-and-white cat named Shaker, who started with one fang hooked into an air hole in the cardboard carrier and demolished the entire thing until it was a pile of Shredded Wheat. We had to drive the rest of the way to the vet with one revved-up, pissed-off cat. For later visits, we just let her sit on my lap while we drove and while sitting in the waiting room. While we waited, Shaker hopped off my lap and made a break for it. She waddled (she was chubby, okay?) as fast as her little white feet would carry her toward the door. She just hadn’t counted on it being glass. She bonked her head against it and while she was stunned, I scooped her up.

Another cat, Julia, was okay with going to the vet. It was what they did to her there that she objected to. The vet tried to demonstrate to us the proper way to give a cat a pill or liquid medicine. Julia went into her act. She demonstrated her own little invention – projectile drooling. Soon the exam room was dappled with gooey patches of sticky saliva. And so were we, when we tried it at home.

A friend of mine recently posted on Facebook that her cat, known as Mrs. Bompstample (I may have spelled that wrong), had been voted the second-worst cat at their vet’s office. And that was despite Mrs. B. being sedated before she came. I don’t even want to contemplate what the worst cat was like. There was a note on its cage that said, “Do not open!” which probably made it difficult to treat the cat. (Personally, I think most vets coat their hands with a Valium salve that is absorbed through the animals’ fur, which is why vets don’t shake hands with pet owners. Although maybe they should in some cases. But I digress.)

We’ve never had a cat that needed Valium to go to the vet, though we have had cats be naughty. One jumped off the examining table and holed up between it and the wall. We had to get down on our hands and knees to coax her out (something we couldn’t do now). Well, and Drooly Julie can’t strictly be said to have been on her best behavior. Django once scratched my face and various other cats have bitten me. Once it was so bad that I had to ask the vet to treat me too.

Matches, of course, was so chill at the vet that he should have worn shades. He loved riding in the car and never had to be put in a box. Maybe that was why he was so cool.

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‘Splaining to Do

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“Lucy! You got some ‘splaining to do!”

It was one of Ricky Ricardo’s most memorable lines. But nowadays, Lucy doesn’t get to do the ‘splaining. That’s because the latest trend is mansplaining. (It isn’t really a new trend. It’s been around since Og tried to teach Raquel how to build a fire. But I digress.)

Mansplaining is really simple. It assumes that women are really simple, and that a man knows better than they do – about everything, but especially about highly intellectual subjects like politics, technology, history, economics, sports, and fire-starting. He talks down to her – sometimes literally, as it’s not uncommon for him to mansplain while standing over her. The thing is, the woman already knows the topic well and didn’t ask for any ‘splanation.

“Actually” is the signal that introduces an episode of mansplaining. “Actually, Christopher Columbus never landed in America.” “Actually, Big Ben is not the clock.” “Actually, you have to rub the two sticks together.” The mansplainer is at the same time authoritative and condescending. He may really think he’s helping, but the effect is demeaning.

The classic tale of mansplaining is that, at some kind of conference, a man lectured a woman about the subject, saying that she had got whatever-it-was all wrong. “You need to read McCarthy, et al.,” he pontificated. She pointed to her nametag. “I am McCarthy, et al.,” she replied.

Nor is mansplaining the only gaucherie that men have been accused of. Manspreading is another. Notice how men often sit with their legs wide apart. It takes up more space than necessary, which leaves less room for someone else (i.e., women). (Men say that they have to sit that way because it’s the only way they can be comfortable, but I think it’s really because they want to take the opportunity to display their package. But I digress again.)

Now, though, it seems there’s a whole lot of ‘splaining going on. The latest trend I’ve heard of is “richsplaining” – when well-off people try to tell less-well-off people how to save money. “Cut out Starbucks.” “Buy cheap sneakers.” (As if there are any!) “Eat only beans and rice.” “Go to fire sales.”

I haven’t heard of it being official yet, but I’d like to introduce the word “sanesplaining” – when people with no emotional problems lecture those who have them about the best route to proper mental health. “Take vitamins.” “Try yoga.” “Choose happiness.” “Don’t be so depressed.” “Own the fire.”

Related to that is medsplaining. Avid Googlers who “do their own research” have all the answers and are all too eager to share them with friends, relatives, and even strangers – sometimes even their doctors. “Apple cider vinegar is all you need.” “Slug slime is a magic age-eraser.” (I’ve actually seen that product.) “Blueberries/kale/kohlrabi/quinoa/chia seeds are superfoods.” “Firewalking will cure what ails you.”

Then there’s momsplaining. Everyone seems to know better how to raise children than actual mothers do. “Teach them manners.” “Teach them phonics.” “Don’t let them read comics.” (That’s “graphic novels,” boomer.) “Don’t let them set the cat on fire.”

(Come to think of it, I’m a boomer and I know what graphic novels are. Have I just invented selfsplaining? But I digress yet again.)

When Ricky asked Lucy for a ‘splanation, he wanted her to account for her own behavior. Let’s get back to that instead of spouting off “wisdom” to people who don’t want or need it. And unless you’re stranded in the Arctic with someone, don’t offer advice on fires.

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The Sport of Cooking

cooking, etc., food, funny things, humor, television, , , , ,

Food has become a sport. Personally, I blame Guy Fieri.

There are plenty of cooking competitions these days – and eating competitions, too, which make me feel queasy just watching them, so I don’t.

But recently, sporting events for chefs seem to have taken over the streaming channels. And they come with all the unwelcome accouterments of regular sports competitions.

There are some, such as Chopped, that avoid the worst of sports talk, other than the inspirational “I want to teach my children that they can go for their dreams” and “If you try your best, you haven’t really lost” and “Either you win or you learn something,” which, now that I think of it, are more common in parents watching or coaching kids’ sports than in adult sports.

What Guy Fieri has done, though, is to infuse cooking competitions with the worst aspects of sports. I suppose it could have been done by the powers that be at The Food Network, but the examples all seem to have his personal stamp on them.

The most sports-like is Tournament of Champions, which has just completed its fourth season and is already gearing up for a fifth.

Just from the title, you can tell it’s based on sports. Then there’s the format. The competition is based on brackets like a basketball tournament, with seed rankings like a tennis tournament (or Robot Wars, which does not feature cooking robots but does have the format of a cage match. But I digress.) (Beat Bobby Flay also somewhat resembles a cage match, but that’s not emphasized. I keep digressing.)

As a host, Guy Fieri projects a pro wrestling vibe. He bellows the names of the contestants as they enter from opposite sides of the arena, and he has nicknames for everyone – The Jetster for Jet Tila, Bee-Dub for Brooke Williamson, and Superchef for Darnell Ferguson (about whom more in a moment). There are even commentators, who also have nicknames – Justin Warner (Wolfman (or Wild Card)) and Simon Majumdar (Scoop). Guy’s son Hunter interviews the contestants after the match is over. It’s clear that Hunter is the heir apparent to Guy’s Food Network empire.

It’s also clear that Guy is grooming Darnell “Superchef” Ferguson for Fieri-style success. Ferguson was a frequent contestant (and frequent winner) on Guy’s Grocery Games and now has his own show, Superchef Grudge Match. It’s structured as a boxing match, only without the nicknames for competitors. It’s kind of a junior Tournament of Champions. The contestants compete for prize money and bragging rights, but the winner also gets the loser’s favorite chef’s knife. (There is lots of trash talk and sometimes even side bets involving social media accolades, monogrammed aprons, and, in one memorable case, a tattoo of the winner’s name. But I digress yet again.)

For myself, I don’t do competitive cooking – or eating. (Once, when I was a kid, I had dinner at a friend’s house. Hers was a large family, and when the food was served, everyone competed to get their food, serving spoons and forks flying. I was stunned. In our house, dining was much calmer. But with so many people trying to get a fair share, it was normal for them. But I digress even more.) Sometimes, it’s all I can do to put together something edible. Trying to do it with a time constraint and an audience is simply beyond me.

I’ve got to admit, though, that I love watching someone else doing it. It’s appalling and fascinating at the same time. With actual sports, other than the Olympics, I just don’t get the fascination. Maybe if they had to prepare a dinner to celebrate their wins or console themselves for their losses, with medals for the best dishes…now that, I’d watch!

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Songs Around the Campfire

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I loved being a Girl Scout. I especially loved camping and sitting around the campfire singing. What I didn’t love were some of the songs they made us sing. (I also didn’t love wearing my uniform to school because our meeting was right afterward. I got called a “little green cookie pusher.” But I digress.)

There were good campfire songs, of course. Among our favorites were “Free to Be You and Me,” which was popular at the time, and “Let There Be Peace on Earth.” There were rounds such as “Make New Friends But Keep the Old,” “One Bottle of Pop,” and, of course, “Row, Row, Row Your Boat,” which I never quite got the hang of. There were songs that couldn’t be sung today (“The Poor Old Slave Has Gone to Rest”). And there were songs that were just plain fun or funny – “Ragtime Cowboy Joe” (the Chipmunks’ version) and, as we got older, “Seven Old Ladies Stuck in the Lavatory.” There were also folkish staples like “Take Me Home, Country Roads,” “If I Had a Hammer,” “Puff the Magic Dragon,” “Where Have All the Flowers Gone?” “500 Miles” (not the Proclaimers version), “Today While the Blossoms Still Cling to the Vine,” and “The Ash Grove,” as well as classics like “Taps” and “This Land Is Your Land.”

There were also just plain idiotic ones like “On Top of Spaghetti,” “B-I-N-G-O,” and “Be Kind to Your Web-Footed Friends,” plus recursive song/chants like “There’s a Hole in the Bottom of the Sea,” and “There Was an Old Lady Who Swallowed a Fly,” and memory test/games like “One Hen, Two Ducks” (which I actually sort of liked and can still remember most of).

What I didn’t like so much were the ones they made us do motions to. The old staples “Little Bunny Foo Foo” and “Kum Ba Yah” were among these. They were okay, I guess, if a bit predictable. Then there was “Gray Squirrel,” much less okay. The lyrics go “Gray Squirrel, gray squirrel/Swish your bushy tail/Wrinkle up your little nose/Put a nut between your toes/Gray squirrel, gray squirrel/Swish your bushy tail.” Not what I would call Grammy-quality lyrics, but hey, we were Girl Scouts. The motions that went with it were squinching up our noses, pantomiming putting a nut by our feet, and – you guessed it – waggling our asses. This wouldn’t have been quite so bad if we were five, but it continued into our tween years, when it was just embarrassing.

Even more embarrassing were the motions that went with “Running Bear,” that corny song of doomed Native American love (another one that’s almost certainly offensive these days). We mimed the lyrics as we sang – diving in the water, happy hunting ground, and so on. “Running Bear” (the male protagonist), unfortunately, was mimed as a homonym. We made a motion of running and then one of throwing open our shirts to expose our (or, in the context of the song, his) chest. It was stupid in the extreme, not to mention creepy. The thing is, I still can’t listen to the song without thinking of the motions. (Not that I listen to it often anymore. Or much. Or at all. But I digress again.)

Did they make Boy Scouts do this dopey kind of thing, acting out songs in pantomime? I don’t know. It could have been just us girls. I didn’t experience mixed-group camping until I was in college, when they took freshmen out, hoping to lose some of us in the woods and reduce overcrowding in the dorms. I managed to survive. And there was no singing. Or pantomime.

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Bye-Bye Nose! Bye-Bye Ear!

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I’m lucky that I still have an ear and a nose, without which my face would look unfinished. Or Cubist. It’s not because I had necrotizing fasciitis. (I’m ghostwriting a book right now about necrotizing fasciitis, leprosy, and other dreaded diseases, which is actually right up my alley as a devoted fan of Monsters Inside Me and Mystery Diagnosis. But I digress.)

My potential disfigurement was at the hands (well, not hands, exactly) of two wild animals. How I met them and how I escaped assault on my body parts is the real story here.

My nose almost left me during a journey in a drive-through zoo. (I didn’t know if they still existed until I asked Mr. Google. They do. Whether it’s a good idea, I’ll leave you to decide.)

One day, my husband and I visited the establishment in either Pennsylvania or New Jersey (exactly where it was is lost in the mists of time). The people who ran the place posted warnings about not trying to drive through any animals that blocked your path. They also warned you not to attempt the journey if you had a vinyl roof on your car. The car in front of us did have one and ignored the sign. They were quite alarmed when a troop of monkeys descended on their car. (Yes, a group of monkeys is called a troop. Mr. Google again.) We had an unobstructed view as they learned their lesson. The monkeys ripped holes in the vinyl top. Shredded it, really, which I don’t know if the occupants realized. The troop also pissed down the windshield, which they definitely did notice. From our vantage point, we could even see the look of disgust on the passenger’s face.

Our difficulty came a little later in the self-tour when we encountered a herd (yes, herd) of ostriches. A small herd, but still. They came very near the car, so we had a close-up view. As you can see from the photo, an ostrich close-up is pretty damn ugly. They don’t improve when the only thing separating you from one of them is a pane of glass.

That pane of glass – our car window – was the only thing that saved my face. I got to see one of the ostriches up close and personal. It strolled up to the car and peered curiously inside. I pressed my nose against the glass to see the ostrich better. It wanted to get closer to me, too. It took its hard, horny beak and tried to attack my nose. Peck! Peck! Peck! I could hear it striking the car window, which fortunately withstood the onslaught. Dan didn’t drive on, out of its reach. He was laughing too hard.

My other wild animal encounter came many years before that, when I was particularly young and stupid. It was at a local mall, where an area was set up that had baby animals. They were offering to take photos of customers with a baby animal. Being a cat lover, I chose the baby lion. The photo you see here is the result.

The attendant hefted the lion into my lap. As you can tell, even though it was a youngster, it was still quite heavy. I could barely hold it upright. I smiled like the idiot I was, and they snapped the picture.

Right after the picture was taken, the lion looked over at me, stuck out its huge, rough tongue, and slurped my ear. In less than a second, the attendant swooped in, snatched the lion out of my lap, and put it back in its pen. My theory (and theirs too) was that the lion was taking an exploratory taste test to see if my ear was worth snacking on.

(No, I don’t remember whether the attendant was the infamous Joe Exotic, but I kind of doubt it. I think I would have remembered his remarkable appearance. I do know that they don’t allow this kind of thing anymore, which I didn’t need Mr. Google to ascertain. (I did find out that it was legal until last year when Biden signed a ban.) But I digress again.)

Because of those incidents, I’ve learned my lesson. I have kept my interactions with animals limited to domesticated cats, semi-domesticated dogs, and the occasional garter snake that my husband sometimes catches. The cats, despite being domesticated, have damaged my skin with tooth and claw, though the wounds seldom get infected.

I haven’t lost any actual body parts yet. And I avoid ostriches and lions, not that they roam the countryside in Ohio. But I keep an eagle (sorry not sorry) eye out!

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Reading With Abandon

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I’m an unrepentant bibliophile. I started reading at the age of four and never stopped. I prided myself on the number of books I read, even after I grew too old for the library’s summer reading program. However, increasingly, there are books that I just can’t read. (And not because my eyesight is bad. My e-reader makes up for that with its bump-up-the-type-size feature.)

No, the books I can’t – or won’t – read anymore are ones that manage to annoy me. I start reading them and can’t go on anymore. I don’t actually throw them across the room, but I am tempted to. (Except that, as noted, I read on a Nook or an iPad and don’t want to throw those across the room.)

So, what kinds of books annoy me enough to be figuratively tossed across the room?

I buy a lot of bargain e-books. I get multiple emails daily offering books that are not in their first flush of youth or frequently are self-published. Sometimes I even buy them, if the title is interesting or I recognize the author. I do try to check them out a bit before I hit “submit order,” but occasionally a clunker gets by me.

There was one, for instance, that was supposed to be about how stupid decisions affected history. It sounded interesting and only cost two bucks. However, when I started reading, I discovered that every example the author gave involved a stupid decision regarding a military campaign. I was disappointed. I was hoping for stupid decisions in politics, science, medicine, and other fields as well as war. I’m not a big fan of military history – with a few notable exceptions – and I lost interest so rapidly that I abandoned the book after a few chapters, when it became clear there would be nothing else.

I also abandon books with wretched writing. I recently bought a book by a well-known writer that was a sequel to a book I remember from a couple of dozen years ago. I made it about halfway through. I like foreshadowing and setting up a later revelation if it’s done skillfully, but this novel used the “had I but known” gambit that gives away the “surprise” twist. It also used the narrator to give backstories for every character and describe their inner motivations instead of letting the reader discover them through the characters’ words and actions. And these nuggets broke up what should have been a dramatic and suspenseful story.

Another book got on my wrong side because of its descriptions. It was a mystery with a literary setting, which I ordinarily like. But the author engaged in serious fat-shaming, describing an overweight character in not just unflattering but demeaning terms. It was gratuitous, too – had nothing to do with the plot or the character’s character (as it were). It was clearly meant to make the reader dislike the character for her appearance only.

Speaking of mysteries, I have been annoyed by ones that are too easy to figure out. One, for example, gave away the killer in the introduction. I noticed that the author avoided using personal pronouns (which makes the writing very stilted and artificial), and I knew that the brutal killer must be a woman because why else would they leave out “he” or “she”? Then when a female character gave another person a false alibi – thus alibi-ing herself as well – I knew whodunnit and spent the rest of the book trying to interest myself in another character. I actually finished that one, just to see myself proved right.

And I avoid altogether buying books that are the beginnings of series. Oh, I’ve enjoyed – even adored – series in the past, but anymore I want to read a stand-alone book. Maybe it’s because I can’t commit, but I no longer want to be sucked into thousands of pages of text or endless cliffhangers. If a book wants commitment from me, I want resolution. Fortunately, most series now announce themselves proudly as “Book 1 of the XYZ Series,” so I don’t fall into them by accident. At least I don’t have this problem when it comes to nonfiction.

Despite my newfound ability to discard books and refrain from ordering ones that violate my “rules,” I feel a sense of not just disappointment but a bit of self-criticism when I’m not able to stick with a book. I know this is ridiculous – I still have a TBR list that’s long enough to keep me engaged for the next hundred-plus years. Some of them may prove less than captivating, it’s true. But though I may have given up on certain books, I will never abandon my quest for better ones – or my love of reading.

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I Tried Not to Love Her

cats, etc., family, health, pets, , , ,

Dushenka came to us as a stray. She hung around the neighborhood for about a week, with my husband trying to coax her closer. Then she disappeared for a week. One day, though, she came trotting through our garden and up to our door. She had chosen us as her family.

It turned out that her former family lived just a couple of streets away from us, which we found out because the vet discovered that she had a microchip. (We also found out that her original name was Carmen, which isn’t a bad name for a cat, but we had already started calling her Dushenka because we couldn’t keep calling her Li’l Bit. “Dushenka” is Russian and means “little soul.” But I digress.)

I tried not to love her. I really did. We had recently lost our darling cat Julia, another little calico, and Dushenka reminded me so much of her. I just felt I wasn’t ready to give my heart to another one yet. But there Dushenka was with her little pinky nose, her smudgy chin, her crazy eyes, her super-long white whiskers, her floofy white belly, and her gorgeous, silky calico fur.

I began to suspect that I was falling in love when a neighbor (not Dushenka’s former owners – they never responded to us) lost their cat, also a calico, and came to inquire about the one we’d found. I found myself quizzing them closely about what their cat looked like. He said she was female. Check. I asked if she had a dark smudge under her chin. What were her eyes like? Then I brought Dushenka out for him to look at, and he said that she wasn’t his. I began to suspect she was ours (or we were hers) and that I was in love with her.

It turned out she is different enough from Julia that I was able to think of them as individuals. Dushenka has shorter fur than Julia did. Julia had a distinctive, bitchy meow. (She wasn’t actually bitchy. She just sounded that way.) Dushenka almost never meows, but she has a strong purr. And she snores. Daintily, but she snores.

She has acquired nicknames. (Baby Cat. Pretty Grrl. (Occasionally Naughty Grrl when she goes walkabout.) The Incredible Pettable Pet. Ms. Muss (rhymes with puss). Shenka-doo. (I may or may not have once called her Shenka-Doodle-Doo.) She even has her own song (“Shenka-Shenka-Doo, where are you? On your little kitty adventure!” ttto the Scooby-Doo theme song.) But I digress. Again. At length.)

I’m not sure exactly how old Dushenka is because she came to us fully grown, though still youthful. Now she seems more like a little old lady, or at least on her way past middle age. Lately, she’s been in poor health. She just can’t seem to pee. She eats and drinks just fine, but nothing comes out the other end. Several vet visits later, it seems – no big surprise here – to be a problem with her kidneys. I hesitate to say how much we’ve spent, what with the weekend emergency vet visit, the blood tests, and the x-rays.

We’re giving her subcutaneous (subQ) fluids, a process we learned how to do over the years with other cats. It involves immobilizing the cat – no easy matter – and sticking a needle under the skin between her shoulder blades. (That’s always my job. Dan can’t bear to do it). We have a bag of fluids and a drip set and let about 150 ml run in. The fluid occupies the space between skin and flesh and makes her look lumpy and weird until it gradually absorbs. Repeat the next day. The idea is to flush out her kidneys. The process exhausts us and Dushenka, too. Afterward, Dushenka has a little snack for her nerves and then we all go have a lie-down. These are the things we do for the little soul we love.

Every so often we look at Dushenka and say, “Who could not love this cat?” Other than the people who had her originally, I don’t know. I couldn’t not love her. I tried.

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