Yarn, Paper, Wood

I am knitting thumbs tonight.  I will be very glad when all this is behind me.

I just finished ANOTHER book - The World's Strongest Librarian. Quirky but a good read, and I learned a lot about Tourette's Syndrome.  You'll notice that my memoir habit still exists.  The 2 other books I've just read are Ann Patchett's compilation of non-fiction memoir-type essays This Is the Story of a Happy Marriage (excellent) and David Harris-Gershon's What Do You Buy the Children of the Terrorist Who Tried to Kill Your Wife? (which wins the prize for longest title ever).  This last was pretty good, if only for its excellent description of the history behind the state of constant crisis in the Middle East.

Oh, AND The Late Starters Orchestra, by Ari L. Goldman. That one was okay, although the author went on too long about his son's cello lessons.  Also, it could have been titled "If You Have Lots of Money, You Can Do Many Neat Things as You Get Older" or (even better) "With Lots of Money, Middle Age Does Not Have To Suck."  Still, it got me thinking - for an evening, anyway - about asking to audit my kids' summer band camp and learn a new instrument.  So, yeah, sort of inspiring.

You will be noting the effect of my not having my IPad handy, right? I'm almost caught up on my New Yorkers, also.  I did retrieve said IPad this afternoon and spent a blissful 25 minutes on it, catching up on Words With Friends and checking out Twitter.  But not this evening.  This evening, I'm all thumbs.

Get it?  ALL THUMBS.  Oh, man, I'm something else.

I'll try it, but I won't promise I'll like it

So! A variety of novels written by Ann Patchett are winging their way toward me right now, courtesy of PaperbackSwap, as I try once again to revive the interest in literary fiction that abandoned me completely the day my eldest child was born (oh, 23 years ago).  I don't know why that happened, but it did.

In other news, Larry came home early today and took the girls to go buy a Christmas tree.  As mentioned in these pixels before, our family tree tradition consists of selecting one of many pre-cut and reasonably priced trees from the outside lot of our nearby Home Depot. Festive it isn't, but it's definitely efficient.  The three of them came back with a very nice-looking tree that now reminds me of ALL THE THINGS I still need to do over the next 9 days.

Including knitting thumbs - I've got to get back at it now, folks, time's a-wastin'...