Toddled Dredge

All day PoppySeed has been playing with this tent. I decided to make a video of it, but things do not go as expected when there are two older sisters who want to hog the camera.

For deaf readers – there is no transcription on this, because the only audible words are from my two oldest girls, whining and complaining about me removing them from the camera. It’s actually just as funny without a soundtrack.

Just watch little PoppySeed in the background.

PoppySeed and the Tent from veronica mitchell on Vimeo.

discernible

I have not checked out a library book in months.

Not for me, anyway.

Partly that is because I got a $60 fine for movies I forgot to return after – wait for it – the baby was born. I asked the librarian if they could extend any grace to me given the circumstances, and was told that IF I submitted written documentation from the hospital, they would deduct from the fine from the days I was actually in the hospital. Not particularly helpful. But I had earned the fine, so I dutifully paid it and left. Haven’t felt as eager to check out a stack since.

But the biggest reason I haven’t been checking out books is the enormous stack of unread books I have accumulated from used book sales (including the library’s discard sale – oh, library, I just can’t quit you). Why would I borrow more?

So here today I present to you an Unread Books Challenge. Give me the list or take a picture of all the books you have stacked on your bedside table, hidden under the bed or standing in your shelf – the books you have not read, but keep meaning to. The books that begin to weigh on your mind. The books that make you cover your ears in conversation and say, “No! Don’t give me another book to read! I can’t finish the ones I have!”

Leave a link in the comments and you have a post for the day. Then we can all shower each other with comments about which books are not worth the bother, which books saved my life, which books kept me reading till dawn.

Here is my list. Thoughts, dear readers?

1. Duchess of Malfi and Other Plays John Webster

2. Rymes of Robyn Hood John Taylor and R. B. Dobson

3. Robin Hood Henry Gilbert

4. Kenilworth Walter Scott

5. Old Mortality Walter Scott

6. A Journal of the Plague Year Daniel Defoe

7. Bleak House Charles Dickens

8. The Woman in White Wilkie Collins

9. Dr Heidegger’s Experiment and Other Stories Nathaniel Hawthorne

10. Daisy Miller Henry James

11. The Portrait of a Lady Henry James

12. Moby-Dick Herman Melville

13. Villette Charlotte Bronte

14. The Red Badge of Courage Stephen Crane

15. Rilla of Ingleside LM Montgomery

16. Emily of New Moon LM Montgomery

17. World of Wonders Robertson Davies

18. Kipps HG Wells

19. The Sleeper Awakes HG Wells

20. Thirty Strange Stories HG Wells

21. Sailing Alone Around the World Joshua Slocum

22. First Footsteps in East Africa Richard F Burton

23. Journal of a Tour of the Hebrides James Boswell

24. Journey to the Polar Sea John Franklin

25. The Last Voyage of Captain Cook John Ledyard

26. Kabloona Gontran de Poncins

27. Freddy and Mr. Camphor Walter R. Brooks

28. Paddington Helps Out Michael Bond

29. The Neddiad Daniel Pinkwater

30. The Tale of Desperaux Kate DiCamillo

31. The Phoenix and the Carpet E. Nesbit

32. Tales of Myrtle the Turtle Keith Robertson

33. The Old Country Mordecai Gersten

34. The Juniper Tree and Other Tales from Grimm illustrated by Maurice Sendak

35. Tales Before Tolkien ed. Douglas A Anderson

36. Scaramouche Rafael Sabatini

37. The Land That Time Forgot Edgar Rice Burroughs

38. Kipps HG Wells

39. The Sleeper Awakes HG Wells

40. Thirty Strange Stories HG Wells

41. The Art of Detection Laurie R King

42. Find Me Carol O’Connell

43. Crime School Carol O’Connell

44. Death’s Darkest Face Julian Symons

45. Death in Disguise Caroline Graham

46. Rilla of Ingleside LM Montgomery

47. Emily of New Moon LM Montgomery

48. Maigret and the Bum Georges Simenon

49. The Breaker Minette Walters

50. Police Procedurals ed. Martin H Greenberg and Bill Ponzini

51. Into the Mummy’s Tomb ed. by John Richard Stevens

52. Murder Most Divine ed. Ralph M. McInerny and Martin Harry Greenberg

53. The Warden of English Jenny McMorris

54. Monster of God David Quammen

55. The Mismeasure of Man Stephan Jay Gould

56. The Mummy Congress Heather Pringle

57. Animal Architecture James L. Gould and Carol Grant Gould

Last night Az the Husband and I sat and watched an episode of Cities of the Underworld. Don Wildman followed a guide through the secret underground bunkers of Moscow. Stalin built miles of tunnels hundreds of feet below the ground, and one of the access points was an ordinary apartment building.

Wildman led the way through the dingy entrance of the apartment building, and suddenly it hit me. I could smell it – the scent of that door and hallway filled my mind. It is a wet smell, concrete and paint and rain and must.

Eighteen years ago I went to Russia on a college trip. There were a dozen of us, including my sister, and we attended a few classes at a university in a large city. We made new friendships, learned a little Russian, and saw places I am unlikely to ever see again. One of my friends was so enthralled by that first glimpse of Russian culture that she has spent the last seventeen years living and working there or in Russian ex-pat communities elsewhere.

Watching Don Wildman enter that apartment building, the scent of the place came back to me, and with it the memories of being eighteen, when friends and new experiences were the priority of each day.

When I was a child, the neighbor boy and I once played a game. He collected random objects from our houses and put them in a paper bag. We each closed our eyes, picked up an object, and sniffed it. We guessed, based on the scent, which of our two houses it had come from. Our guesses were surprisingly accurate.

Scent holds memory. Helen Keller could not see or hear, but she said, “Smell is a potent wizard that transports us across thousands of miles and all the years we have lived.” And power of the scent has no relation to whether it actually smells good.

The spring that Az asked me to marry him, we both lived in a dormitory whose landscaping was covered with pungent oak mulch. It stank. But for years afterward, the stink of oak mulch was, to me, the scent of falling in love, transporting me across the seasons to those early days.

What scents carry you back in time?

The scentful photos in this post are taken from Flickr’s Creative Commons with the following attributions: the rose by marialuisa, Coffee Love by alex-s, Cohiba by keithjohnson.

And for a less pleasant scent reminder, check out my latest 5MFP post: Things I Have Learned the Hard Way.

We are weaning the baby.

I know it is normal to feel wistful and emotional about weaning. I keep waiting for the rush of longing and regret that one expects. But it isn’t there. Maybe it will come eventually.

My milk supply has been decreasing for months. Baby LemonDrop’s hunger was showing in her behavior – the sparkle was gone from her eyes, her face was less expressive, and she would not gabble. This has been the case with each of my babies as my milk failed to satisfy. They eat, but there is not enough. They get cranky. I worry.

Az the Husband and I talked it over. I hesitated, wavered, and then began giving her regular bottles.

The change was immediate. She is happy again, round-bellied and laughing. She gabbles and chortles and giggles and shrieks. She finishes a meal and is content. The joy of seeing her satisfied is so complete that I don’t have any room for regret.

Today, for the first time, I packed a bottle in the diaper bag for church, instead of planning to nurse her after the service. Az popped that bottle in her mouth, she leaned her head back into his chest, and she drank herself to sleep. She drained the last of the bottle with her eyes closed, and her tiny chest rhythmically rising and falling. When Az finally removed the bottle from her mouth, she groused a bit until he held her to his shoulder, where she settled in for more sleep.

My contented baby, gorged into a stupor. So well-fed, even her mama feels satisfied.

I don’t have a new post at the moment, but Robin at Pensieve (one of my favorite blog names, BTW) has quite a discussion going on at her place about children’s presence at adult activities. I dissented from the main consensus on children in a worship service, and my comment (oof) is basically a post in itself. Her post doesn’t show all the comments at once, so if you want to read the whole discussion (and it’s a humdinger) click the “Show more comments” link at the bottom of each set of comments.