May 18: Sunny May Saturday!

And it's already 6:30, though I have a funny feeling of time moving into its own natural flow, despite the hysteria, demands, and extra commitments of the end of the school year. Today felt roomy--the vocab word "commodious" would work here, in fact--replete with "enough": Lori is recovering well from her stroke last week (seems weird to write it, even. Harder to wrap one's brain around it. She could have died. But she didn't. And she still has her wacky sense of humor and warm heart. Wow. Thanks. Chalk one up to the "because" side of bad things that didn't happen.), and the sun was out though the air was still chilly. Andy and I went to the Bragg's yard sale, I did two bouts of correcting and four loads of laundry; I went for a good run, stretched well, and did some errands downtown; I've been working my way through American Gods by Neil Gaiman, which is a fascinating alternate reality novel, and I read a good chunk of that today; I made this for dinner and have been smitten by Joy the Baker's picture of this. . . .(strawberry rhubarb crumb topped pie, in case the link doesn't work) which made me question my whole existence and why some part of my life hadn't included making that today. But the tradeoff was that I picked up all through the house. Let me repeat that:

I picked up all around the house. Straightened. Tidied. Neatened. Organized.

So all in all, I think not baking but straightening was a good decision, though, believe me, soooooooooon, I am making that pie!

My last weekend of 49hood. Next weekend will include much celebration of my 50hood. So.

And I just finished American Gods! What a creative, interesting, absorbing, original story--it grabbed me and I gobbled down the 592 pages in a week or so, pausing mostly to try to figure out who Mr. Nancy or Whiskey Jack might be. Only two quibbles: first, again with the sex scenes. Sheesh. I begin to wonder if male writers just have to let the 15 year old boy in them out for a few pages, no matter what. Patrick Rothfuss in Name of the Wind and his long sex chapters in the second book in the series, Chabon with . . . well, all of his adult novels, and now Gaiman with American Gods: detailed sex scenes with luscious-bodied women. Ah well. And my second quibble is that while the ending did tie up the trickster theme of the story well, it didn't, in my opinion, live up to the epic sense of the whole  novel. I was a little disappointed, but maybe I'll come to see more in it as time goes on and I think about it. Still: a deeply interesting novel!