books read

Diane Ackerman, Cultivating Delight (HarperCollins 2001).
I wanted this to be like Verlyn Klinkenborg - it's short snippets moving through the year in her garden - but I stopped reading a few scenes into summer and I'm not going to finish it. I'd read her Natural History of the Senses years ago, and similarly just couldn't care about it. Her writing style is quite lush, and I do prefer the spareness of someone like White or Klinkenborg. But more than that, it's that I don't get anything from her books - she describes things, but there isn't any thoughtful moment there, no point to the anecdote that resonates with me. It's just pillowy pages of prose, signifyin' nothin'. Note to self: don't bother trying again.

Loretta Chase, Miss Wonderful.
Susan W. has excellent taste in romance authors with a past in traditional regencies (naturally I define excellent as "I agree with her"). Thanks, Susan! This books wasn't perfect, of course, but it was worth reading, and I have very high standards of worth reading. She's a highly competent estate manager (dad's an absent-minded botanist) and heiress who broke off a former engagement because she was so devoted to the land. He's a ladies' man turned reluctant Waterloo hero who can't remember the battle, and due to a paternal injunction must make his way in business or marry an heiress. They fight each other over whether or not a canal is a good thing, and have lots of wildly anachronistic sex.

Dr. Seuss, The Lorax (1971).
I don't include all the children's books I read, but I read this for the first time since my childhood this week and was struck by its simple message about limited resources on the earth, and how we shouldn't destroy something beautiful (the Truffula Tree environment) just to make something nobody needs (Thneeds), as well as money. Compared to now, of course, 1971 looks positively restrained in its consumerism (okay, I wasn't born yet, so I don't exactly remember, but I am sure there were no Humvees and Viking stoves were not standard kitchen upgrades.) Sigh.

headaches, physical and metaphorical

The physical is brought on by 1) the fact that Casper was up at 12:30 and intermittently from 1:30-3:30 last night, then again at 5, 2) the exertion of my day which has involved lunch at home to discuss the nanny fall schedule and then a women's colloquium discussing the "momoir" genre and its fleeting moment, and how it relates to feminist concerns as a whole, and 3) the metaphorical headache.

Baby Milo is pulling out of the summer nanny share because after 7 weeks he and the nanny still haven't got any equilibrium and it's making both of them miserable, and Eli moved away last week, so now the schedule will be Hadas and Casper every morning, and Casper alone every afternoon. Options for dealing include: asking the nanny to accept $10 an hour for the afternoons, rather than her usual $15; tapping our prospective fall addition (who we hope will replace Eli) for a couple of afternoons a week; cutting back the nanny's hours and taking care of Casper ourselves a couple of afternoons a week; some combination of the above. Any way you slice it it's more expense and hassle for us.

In today's lunchtime meeting we got S. to agree to try putting the girls down for their naps early starting in August, so as to have them up before the pickup of Alexander at school at 2:30, which is the major stumbling block for making the schedule work. Casper cannot make it until 3 without a nap, which was S.'s proposed solution, and if she did, she wouldn't be up by 4:30, which is when I pick her up. So this is good, but I'm still wary and weary and wishing we could hire the nanny for ours alone. Ah, daycare.