Rainy Wednesday

My very favorite weather: warm and rainy.

I must be a fool for even attempting another blog; how much rambling does one person have in her? Quite a bit, actually: as I sail through my kids' teen years ("sail." Ha. There's a misnomer) I'm finding a certain amount of tension relieved by the ability to vent, and as I'm not much of a chatterer, writing (okay: typing) fills that bill nicely. (That "sailing" reference brings to mind a quotation from a- of course! - book I read titled "One Small Boat." The author takes in foster children and wrote about a child in particular who was eventually placed with her natural father- who hadn't known about her- after being approved for adoption by the author and her husband. It was a very good book: different from other foster-children-adoption-etc. in many ways, AND had what turned out to be a happy resolution. Anywho: the "One Small Boat" refers to the author's [aargh! What was her name????] prayer: "Oh, God, be good to me: the sea is so wide and my boat is so small." These teen years have my husband and me riding a sort of poorly-assembled raft across the kind of waves that were used to illustrate Sebastian Junger's book (and subsequent bad movie) "The Perfect Storm." And our kids aren't even "bad" (knock wood): they're just teenagers!

What's For Dinner: reubens. Like a fool, I bought this enormous corned beef flat, forgetting that 2/3 of my kids aren't likely to eat a reuben. I myself didn't care for corned beef as a child: it may be one of those adult-taste food products, particularly when you throw in some sauerkraut and rye bread and so forth. I can't recall the last time I saw one of my kids refuse something to eat (too well-mannered, for one, and possessed of distinguished palates, for another. I've never made a separate "kid dinner" here) so they may surprise me. It's not as though you can break down a reuben into more palatable parts: the corned beef seems to be the main issue, so what's left? A sauerkraut sandwich? Hmmm. Grilled swiss on rye. Why am I even thinking about this??? All three of them are more than capable of fending for themselves. (Note to self: buy big dill pickles.)

What I'm Reading Now: dry spell. I have stuff on hold, but it's slow to arrive. In the interim, I've resorted to some old favorites: Tom Perotta's "The Wishbones," "....And Ladies of the Club" (Helen Hooven Santmeyer. I'm post-it noting the references to the Civil War in it for my husband, whom I KNOW would love this book if he could get past the slow first chapter or two. It begins just as Reconstruction is starting and takes place in Ohio. I can't tell you how many times I've blurted out a line from this excellent novel in response to something Nate's said about the war) and "Pearl" by Tabitha King. I started reading her books after having discovered "Midlife Confidential," which is a sort of compilation of essays written by the authors who make up the literary band "Rockbottom Remainders." Her husband- Stephen King- was in the band (wrote a very nice essay, too.) Ms. King writes pretty well herself, although "Pearl" is the only book of hers that I read again and again.