Daily Details: the bedside table

I like details best of all. Here's today's detail. This is my bedside table. Tomorrow it will look different.

Currently playing

Currently playing on my MP3 player:


Michelle Branch - Hotel Paper
Michelle Branch - Spirit Room
Barenaked Ladies - Stunt
Barenaked Ladies - Barenaked Ladies Are Me
Michael Jackon - Number Ones

I have music playing most of the day. Mostly in the kitchen. And I dance to make Elliot smile when no one else is around to see.

What are you listening to?

Interview With the Vampire by Anne Rice

This is the story of Louis, as told in his own words, of his journey through mortal and immortal life. Louis recounts how he became a vampire at the hands of the radiant and sinister Lestat and how he became indoctrinated, unwillingly, into the vampire way of life. His story ebbs and flows through the streets of New Orleans, defining crucial moments such as his discovery of the exquisite lost young child Claudia, wanting not to hurt but to comfort her with the last breaths of humanity he has inside.

This book surprised me. I thought it would be trashier. I've seen the film, but didn't take much from it. Or at least I thought I didn't until I started reading this and ended up with Brad Pitt's voice in my head narrating. I enjoyed the book, but I found Louis's incessant philosophising a little tedious in some parts. Rice explores some interesting themes, and I loved the rich detail of New Orleans but it felt a little flat sometimes. Maybe I've read this book too late and after too much saturation in books and movies about vampires and morality.

Read an interview here with Anne Rice including study questions, if you so wish.

(On other vampire book news, who else is counting down the days until Breaking Dawn is released?!)

This completes the required 10 books to be read for the 1% well-read challenge, but I'm having too much fun to stop now...

Linky love

I'm a bit short on the blogging ideas at the moment, but thankfully you lot out there are not. Here are some of my favourite recent posts:

A Book List Bonanza from Book Chase

What You Can Do to End Genocide in Darfur by Maw Books Blog

The Compulsive Reader is counting down the wait for Breaking Dawn by giving us a month of 'Books that Suck' including this one which I would quite like to read. Check out the others as well though...

Trashionista was the first to inform me of Tim Burton's latest movie offering

A World of Kate discusses book-to-film adaptations and how they can go terribly wrong

The Inside Cover writes a very interesting review including some fun optical illusions

And finally, over at Semicolon, her Sunday Salon lists some great links to fun bookshelves

Oldest's first haircut!

I did it. I finally succumbed to the pressure (internal mostly) and took Oldest for his first hair cut. Oldest was so serious and melancholy during the actual haircut. Wouldn't give any of the hairdressers a smile, whereas Littlest managed to charm them all. When we left, Oldest was all giggles and happiness.

I sent an MMS to N to show him Oldest's new look and he calls me later in the day to say 'you sent me the before photo, but I never got the after' Folks, I'd sent him the after!Oldest 's hair still looks 'moppish' because it's so curly, but honestly, it's quite a few inches shorter. You can tell by these photos. Right? Or is it just me? Do I think I should have had it cut shorter? It was his first haircut in almost THREE years, if I wasn't sentimental about it then it would have happened a lot sooner than this...

To me

It's my birthday today. I am 26. Happy birthday to me.

Lifelong list of goals: food edition

Based mostly around our latest Vegetarian experiment, I thought one of my new lifelong goals should be to grow my own vegetables. It seems like a really 'now' thing to do but it's something I'd been thinking about for awhile.

We have a patch of earth in the corner of our garden where the previous owner had a greenhouse. It is now currently used for nothing and though there isn't THAT much space, I'd love to plant vegetables there. Vegetables that we'd eat quite often. I was thinking possibly carrots, onions, peas, potatoes and sweetcorn. I have no idea how easy or hard that would be, but I'd like to find out sometime. The BBC has a website for such a thing.

This is something that I'd like the boys to be involved in as well (so might be more useful to the family in a few years time). My dad and I planted vegetables once. I don't remember everything we planted, but we had decent looking strawberries and a couple of heads of cauliflower. It was a fun thing to do and I had a great sense of accomplishment afterwards (even though we stopped once green bugs attacked the rest of our vegetable patch). I like the idea of a project that we all do together, giving them good memories.

The next item on my list, is to eat at a really nice restaurant. Just once. I'm talking fancy-nice, one with Michelin stars and everything a la Gordon Ramsay. I'm not much of a foodie and I think I might leave the table still hungry, but I think I'd like that experience anyway. And then I can go back to my mac and cheese fully satisfied.

He's a cheeky one.

Oldest is still sleeping in a cotbed. A bed that he has never climbed out of himself and therefore needs me to lift him in and out of. He'll be getting a big boy bed soon, but for now he calls me when he wakes up in the morning or after a nap. Here's how that went yesterday:

Oldest: MOMMY!
Me: Be right there child.
Oldest: MOMMY!
Me: (sigh)
Oldest: MRS C!
Oldest: MOMMY C-(the rest of our surname)! (really dragging out the syllables)
Me: Oldest, I'll be there in a minute.
(I was feeding Littlest at the time and he only had a little bit left)
This is followed by a few seconds of silence before Oldest pulls out the big guns.
Oldest: 'WEETHEART!

At which I couldn't resist and went into him. He then called me 'cheeky monkey' and raised his arms to be lifted out.

YAY!

A huge thank you goes to Christie from Baby Tea Leaves for sending this lovely package of Bath and Bodyworks products! She's hosting the Summer of Me Weightloss Challenge (because of which I've lost 4.5 pounds)(had a rough couple of weeks there, but I'm back on the wagon!) and I won this wonderful prize. I felt so excited when the postman rang the bell holding a big package for me. And, AND I'll be getting another package in the mail soon containing this t-shirt from One More Mile. Lucky, lucky me.

I love the people I've met via blogging. Aren't we a lucky bunch?

Vegetarian experiment

We're always up for a challenge in the Fluttering Butterfly house, and here's our latest: to go vegetarian for a couple weeks in a row. Not strictly. We had lamb at my mother in law's house the other day and we threw some leftover bacon into some fried rice at the beginning of the week, but other than that, vegetarians. (the kind that eat dairy products as well as fish) It won't be forever, we both love meat too much to give it up entirely.

We both feel a little bad about the treatment of animals that provide us with meat, but that isn't our sole reason for this meat-free weeks. It's the rising cost of everything lately! Not buying meat is saving us money on our shopping bill, and really, every little bit counts, right?

So let's hear it. What do you think about going vegetarian? Eating meat? The treatment of animals? Any tips and advice for me? Recipes? What are your creative ways to beat the credit crunch?

The Book of Illusions by Paul Auster

Vermont professor David Zimmer is a broken man. The protagonist of Paul Auster's 10th novel, The Book of Illusions, hits a period in which life seemed to be working aggressively against him. After his wife and sons are killed in an airplane crash, Zimmer becomes an alcoholic recluse, fond of emptying his bottle of sleeping pills into his palm, contemplating his next move. But one night, while watching a television documentary, Zimmer's attention is caught by the silent-film comedian Hector Mann, who had disappeared without a trace in 1929 and who was considered long-dead. Soon, Zimmer begins work on a book about Mann's newly discovered films (copies of which had been sent, anonymously, to film archives around the world). The spirit of Hector Mann keeps David Zimmer alive for a year. When a letter arrives from someone claiming to be Hector Mann's wife, announcing that Mann had read Zimmer's book and would like to meet him, it is as if fate has tossed Zimmer from one hand to the other: from grief and loss to desire and confusion.

Although film images are technically "illusions," this deft and layered novel is not so much about conscious illusion or trickery as about the traces we leave behind us: words, images, memories. Children are one obvious trace, but in this book, they are not allowed to carry their parents forward. They die early: Hector Mann losing his 3-year-old son to a bee sting just as David Zimmer has lost his two sons in the crash. The second half of The Book of Illusions is given over to a love affair, and to Zimmer's attempt to save something of Hector Mann, and of the others he has loved. In the end, what really survives of us on earth--what flickering immortality we are permitted--is left to the reader to surmise.

I had to read this book slowly, to drag it out over a week. I didn't want this story to end. It invaded my thoughts so much so that it was the first thing I thought of when I woke up and the last thing I thought about when I went to sleep. Auster's writing style, his characters, the bizarre series of events and all the details. The details are what have made The Book of Illusions one of the best books I've read in a very long time. I've read three of Auster's books in as many weeks and each one gets better and better in my mind.

9/10 books completed for the 1% well-read challenge
99/1001 books read of the 1001 Books To Read Before You Die

My beautiful baby

Oh, Littlest, what an easy child you are to look after! I am really very lucky with Littlest. He sleeps through the night, he wakes up with a smile on his face, is endlessly entertained just by watching Oldest run around, hardly cries. What did I do to deserve such a beautiful and happy little boy? And how did 4 months pass so quickly?!

Mr Vertigo by Paul Auster

The story of Walt, an irrepressible orphan from the Mid-West. Under the tutelage of the mesmerising Master Yehudi, Walt is taken back to the mysterious house on the plains to prepare not only for the ability to fly, but also for the stardom that will accompany it.

I think I've found my new favourite author ladies and gentlemen. I loved Mr Vertigo and I can't exactly describe why. The beginning sucked me in so intensely that even though I didn't care much for what happened after the Big Turning Point, the characters and Auster's style of writing carried me through the rest of the book. 'I was 12 years old the first time I walked on water' What an incredible way to start the book, and it was quite a journey following Walt on his path, the choices he makes in life and the weird characters he meets along the way.

Things I've Been Dragging My Feet About Lately:

1. Getting dressed this morning
2. Blogging (obviously)
3. Calling my friend for the number of her mobile hairdresser
4. Making a doctor's appointment
5. Picking out a free t-shirt at OneMoreMile
6. Exercising
7. Studying for my British Citizenship test
8. Applying for Littlest's American citizenship
9. Potty training Oldest
10. Phoning my mother
11. Answering the questions 'what would you like for your birthday?' and 'what would you like to do on your birthday?'

I don't know what's wrong with me lately, but ever since our week of day trips, I can't seem to get focussed or organised lately. Everything seems to be a struggle.