New Hôm Nay

This weekend was fabulous. The women's group at our church took a little time out for pampering at a Park City condo. Nothing was scheduled. We just hung out together and relaxed. Luxurious for moms of small kids, which we all were. I think the idea of time away is most appealing when you are used to working hard at home. I did not miss cooking or cleaning up after every meal. Thanks to the good husbands for taking care of things so we could feel human again. :-)

Books I'm reading these days (I like to read several at once) -

The New Testament and the People of God - NT Wright - a scholar's history of the first century environment, Jewish and other, surrounding Jesus and the early Christian movement.

If Jesus Were Mayor by Bob Moffitt - about the role of the local church in the community. We may tackle this one next in women's group. I like his emphasis on living your faith through action.


Bagels, Dim Sum, and Grits - about living as a multicultural family. This was part of my inspiration to buy the Thai cookbook. My first attempt at Pad Thai was delicious, even though I used too many noodles. :-)

Dave Ramsey's money management audiobook - I've only listened to the first 2 chapter or so, and so far haven't learned anything new, but he's entertaining (though occasionally annoying) to listen to.

This book, a novel by Joanna Catherine Scott, tells the story of "what really happened" to the parents of 3 Korean siblings who were adopted to the U.S. when the oldest was 6 or 7. I liked it a lot. I thought the author did a great job of making you feel like you were in Korea. A couple things stuck out to me as odd or not very realistic, but otherwise it was an enjoyable, if heartbreaking at times, read. It's one I won't soon forget. And yes, it did make me cry. :-)

I also started reading one called Then She Found Me by Elinor Lipman. I saw that Helen Hunt is making a movie out of it and it was adoption-related so I thought I might like it. It's about a woman who is "found" (almost more like "stalked") by her biological mom 30+ years after she placed her for adoption. So far, I'm only 3 or 4 chapters in, but it's only so-so. The characters are pretty one-dimensional so far, and not particularly likable, at least not yet. There are a lot of references to the bio. mom as the "real" mom, which bugs me just a wee bit, as you might guess it would. :-) Not that she isn't "real," but you know what I mean. I wonder if the author has any personal connection to adoption or just thinks it's an interesting topic and makes a good story.

I have greatly enjoyed several books by Amy Tan, but this one really didn't do much for me.
I listened to it on audio, and it was read by the author, and she is a very good reader as well as writer. But...I'm not sure why...I just didn't get into this one.

It was told from the viewpoint of a dead person whose "ghost" (I guess) accompanies the tour group she had planned to lead through China and Burma before her untimely demise. The group goes missing and the reader gets to see what actually happens during their disappearance into the jungles of Burma. I had a hard time caring about any of the characters and there seemed to be a lot of gratuitous sexual stuff that IMHO didn't add any value to the story. The bigger issue was that in the end, it didn't seem there was any real movement or change or transformation that came out of the whole experience for any of the characters. Actually, the ending was kind of depressing, not in a "tragic" way that makes you think, but more in a mundane way that probably mimics the way life really is. I can get that from reading the newspaper. I want more profound take-aways from fiction. Maybe that is too much to ask, but I've gotten it from Amy Tan in the past.

I LOVED A Hundred Secret Senses and the Bone-Setter's Daughter, and the Joy Luck Club was pretty good, but this one was a disappointment.

Wow, I haven't blogged in a month now, since Halloween.

Thanksgiving was great fun this year. We were all reasonably healthy (the kids had runny noses). Cameo and I split up the cooking for Thanksgiving dinner again and it was a true feast. Thank goodness the turkey turned out well - I always feel I don't know what I'm doing when I try to make big meat dishes. I have a new favorite dessert - Bryan's mom's recipe for "Captain Scott H's Key Lime Pie." Yum. The stores here don't carry key lime kool aid, so I used lemon lime and it was OK, but if I ever do find key lime kool aid I'll buy a lot. :-) Cameo's pumpkin gooey cake was very delicious too. We had our friend Jill and Buzz's friend Alison and family and we all played Catch Phrase after dinner. A good game you can play anywhere with any number of people. The kids were playing semi-independently, though at one point I wondered where Sam had gone so I checked. I found Ava pressing down on him in a corner with one of the chair pillows in the toy room. He wasn't complaining, just trying to sit up despite having a pillow and Ava on top of him, and Ava explained something about how she was trying to play with something (translation: trying to keep Sam out of her toys).

It was interesting preparing and eating such a decadent feast while in the midst of reading about the famine in The Good Earth. Several thoughts I've had while reading it...

- Women in this country are very, very lucky to live here and now.
- I thought I worked hard and for little reward in residency - reading about how the people worked themselves to the bone on the land (and still risked starvation) really puts things in perspective!
- Things happen "when the rich are too rich, and the poor are too poor." Reminds me of the line in Les Miserables, "Something's gotta happen now and something's gotta give."
- The protagonist of The Good Earth is a man, but I think Pearl Buck secretly makes the real hero of the story a woman. A plain, silent, selfless, sad woman who no one wanted.
- I cried when I read about Olan's death and Wang Lung's response. I'm pretty sure I liked this book well enough when I first read it in high school (20+ years ago now!?) but I think I appreciate it much more now. How many other books were half wasted on me in high school and college?

Anyway - not much more can be said about a long weekend of feasting and friends and time with my beloved family. I am deeply thankful.

Whew. This month has been busier than I wanted. I usually work 3 days a week but for the past 3 weeks I worked full time (2 weeks of ward attending on the VA neurology service, and one week of work meetings and recertifying ACLS (Advanced Cardiovascular Life Support)). I'm hoping for things to settle down now, and looking forward to enjoying the fall weather. This morning I was surprised by the first new SNOW on the tops of the mountains near our house - a rude awakening! The leaves are barely starting to turn color - I hope the valley floor doesn't see snow for another month yet. I don't think Sam has a winter coat that fits!

Speaking of Sam, he has had a runny nose and 2 white sores on his tongue for the past 2 days. I wonder what this is, and I hope I don't get it. Since he has sneezed directly into my face a few times, I'm sure I'm exposed. Oh goody.

Despite my schedule I've managed to stick my nose into a few good books lately. I've read one chapter of The Ragamuffin Gospel by Brennan Manning, and I can see a kindred spirit in him already. I felt like I could close my eyes and point to the page, and almost anywhere in the chapter I'd land on a good quote. I remember laughing out loud at one description of someone whose "cheese is falling off his cracker." Wish I had a sample for the blog, but I don't have the book with me. I'll work on that.

I also started reading Velvet Elvis: Repainting the Christian Faith by Rob Bell. I think anytime someone starts talking about "repainting" or "re-visioning" or "re-thinking" some aspect of Christianity, it makes some people really nervous and threatened. There is a Wikipedia page about Bell in which some of his critics call him various names, like "relativist" and "liberal" and the like, but I find it interesting they are calling him these names rather than pointing out flaws in his thinking or inconsistencies in his positions. If they want liberal, they should read something by John Shelby Spong - perhaps "Rescuing the Bible from Fundamentalism", a book whose title I really love (haven't actually read the book though). Bell is pretty moderate, if you ask me. It seems he is just out there saying what a lot of us(maybe most) have been thinking, and is trying to swing the pendulum from way over on the "orthodoxy (right doctrine)" side, to a balance between orthodoxy and orthopraxis (right living). I think it's a healthy change. I bet I'd enjoy going to Mars Hill, the church where he is a pastor. But alas, I haven't found a Rob Bell or a Mars Hill in Utah yet.

Other books to consider, when there is time - Reading the Bible Again for the First Time, by Marcus Borg - anyone out there familiar with this author?

and

The Kalahari Typing School for Men - by Alexander McCall Smith - I cannot say enough how much I have enjoyed this whole series!

Last night I dreamed there were large holes in our roof during a colossal rainstorm, so that little waterfalls were cascading from various places in our ceiling. This also caused all the wallpaper to come off the walls in the kitchen (in the dream we had wallpaper in the kitchen). As if that weren't enough, I saw a big snake in the living room and before I knew it, Sam was trying to play with it, so I quickly stepped on its head and killed it. Soon other snakes were popping up and Bryan and I were busy trying to catch them and protect the kids from them. Bryan got bitten by one but he assured me it wasn't poisonous. Weird dream huh? At the end of the dream there was also a mouse in the room, and we surmised that all the water was attracting rodents and therefore, snakes. It was nice to wake up to an intact and snakeless house, after that.

I have a theory about the origin of this dream...Recently I've been listening to a fun novel in the car, "The Number 1 Ladies' Detective Agency" by Alexander McCall Smith. It takes place in Botswana and snakes do figure in the story a couple of times. In one episode, the protagonist sees a snake disappear from the road while she is driving and is astute enough to realize that the snake has gotten into her engine block. Bryan and I actually witnessed this once, in Arches National Park. We saw a large hawk swoop down and grab a snake, but then it dropped the snake on the road. The car in front of us had stopped to watch, and then they lost track of where the snake went. Sure enough, it was coiled around the various engine parts under the hood, and we spent some time trying to get it out. Eventually we succeeded, but the poor snake crawled away rather crookedly. That was a bad day for him.