Birdwalk

Mickey celebrates Easter in his own way



"Mickey? MICKEY!!! What did you do to the Easter Bunny?!?!"

By popular request

All righty, Morgan -- here you go...

You’re stuck inside Fahrenheit 451: Which book do you want to be?

Gosh, I don’t really understand this question. Do you mean which book do I love enough to want to risk it all to save from the flames? This doesn’t really make sense since the books in F451 didn’t really have any say in what happened to them, in other words, they couldn’t save themselves…but anyway. My answer is Les Miserables by Victor Hugo.

I first became interested in this book when I was way, way too young to understand it. I must have been about seven or eight and they made a TV movie out of the story and I was absolutely transfixed. I just fell in love with the story, and my father at the time had these big muttonchop sideburns and I kept calling him Jean Valjean, which, looking back on it must have been startlingly precocious for an eight year old. I decided that when I was old enough I would sit down and read the whole book. Years later – oh, I don’t know maybe I was like, twelve? – we went to the Hamptons for a weekend and it rained a lot and we went into a bookstore and I bought this book with the idea that I’d curl up in an armchair and read it. It was way over my head, of course, and I think I made it about ten pages in until I gave up. But I carried that book around until I was 24 and finally sat down one day to read it. It still wasn’t easy, mind you – Mr. Hugo could have used a good editor, if you ask me – but the story itself far exceeded my expectations. It’s a story about love, loss, sacrifice, meanness, karma, coincidence, right and wrong, and all that wrapped in a history lesson. I still love that story. I love all the intertwined-ness about it, how people keep meeting, moving apart, then meeting again under different circumstances. And best of all when I saw the Broadway play I had all this backstory – I felt bad for the poor fools who didn’t know all of the details behind it.

Have you ever had a crush on a fictional character?

Well, besides Jean Valjean…see above…I had a big time crush on Rob from High Fidelity (by Nick Hornby.) I thought that we would be perfect together.

The last book you bought was: Um. Yeah. Well. It isn’t exactly War and Peace but I will admit that the last book I bought was The Last Juror by John Grisham. I was in Newark Airport on my way to the Bahamas and I needed something to read on the beach. So there.

The last book you read was:

The Two Income Trap by Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi. This was a gift from my father who apparently wanted to cast me into a intractable state of despair. The book is basically about how two-income families with children are doomed financially no matter what they do.

What are you currently reading? White Teeth by Zadie Smith. A gift from my friend Laura who always has excellent taste in books.

Five books you would take to a desert island:

The Shell Seekers by Rosamunde Pilcher
Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
The Joy Luck Club by Amy Tan
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Except for the last one, these are all books that I have read several times and loved. I did not see the point in bringing books I haven’t read to a desert island because I would not want to bring a book and end up not liking it.

As for the last one, this keeps coming up as people’s favorite book of all time and I would like to see what all the fuss is about.

Who will I pass this on to? Sadly, nobody. I don’t know anyone else with a blog.

Home again, home again, jiggity jig

Well, finally, the long-awaited replacement honeymoon has been taken and thoroughly enjoyed. A good time was had by all, much sunblock was utilized and a great deal of food was consumed. Holey moley was a great deal of food consumed. Anyway, now that the vacation is but a memory, I have a few observations to make.

1. Every vacation has a migraine in it. It never fails: on day one of any given vacation I will get a migraine. And sure enough, soon after arriving and unpacking, just as I was sliding into a bubbling hot tub with a cold pina colada in my hand, the telltale aura that precedes every migraine appeared. Then, as I was stumbling to our room to cram a pill down my throat in time to thwart the crushing pain and nausea sure to follow the aura -- I stepped on a bee. That frickin hurt. My husband came to my rescue and got the stinger out, then went up to the room to retrieve my pills. He's the best husband EVER (more on that later.)

2. People won't talk to strangers, but they will wear just about anything on a t-shirt. I finally gave up trying to chat up other guests because my efforts (which were meant to be friendly and charming, I swear) were not successful. I do not understand this, because to me that was always the fun part about vacations, meeting new people and the like, telling them outrageous lies just because you can, that sort of thing. So, if you assume from their reticence to chat that people are shy and like to keep to themselves, why the trend toward t-shirts that highlight the absolute worst part of your personality? For example, I saw one woman walk proudly into breakfast wearing a white t-shirt with red letters that spelled out "I'm talking and I can't shut up!" and another guy wearing a t-shirt that said "Drink Till You Stink." Ok, so you won't have a chat with me about the freaking weather but you'll wear that lovely sentiment on your t-shirt?

3. My job is really not hard. We met this guy and his wife from Wisconsin. They are dairy farmers. This man gets up every day at 3am and doesn't stop until 6 or 7 pm. Sometimes, his wife says, they have to pack up lunch and dinner and bring it out to him otherwise he'll forget to eat. He has 60 or 70 cows and he's the one primarily responsible for milking them, birthing their calves, administering rudimentary veterinary care, all that. This week away is their one and only vacation for the entire year. I decided then and there that I am the luckiest person in the world to do what I do for a living and if I even think about complaining I am going to remember this man with his calloused hands and his cows and remember how lucky I am.

4. For some people, drinking counts as an activity. I do not understand it, but I have finally come to accept that for some folks, consuming a lot of alcohol and acting like an idiot is, in itself, an activity.

5. I can eat a lot. This was an all-inclusive resort and you can have pretty much as much food as you want, and I took advantage of it. I ROUTINELY got two and three desserts. Breakfast was a three-stage affair: first, protein (eggs, bacon) then starch (cereal, wheat toast with peanut butter, croissant) then fruit/yogurt (pineapple, mango, strawberry yogurt.) I am astounded by my ability to stuff my face, which leads me to my next observation...

6. I am fat.

7. I like Jet Skis. I really, really like jet skis. If I could, I would like that to be my primary mode of transportation.

8. I have the best husband, EVER. This is further confirmed because he brought me back peanut M&Ms and water at the airport without even being asked to, his valiant, tireless (yet unsuccessful) efforts to get us upgraded to first class, and his total and utter lack of concern about the vast quantities of food I was consuming.

So, all in all, we had a good time, and Mickey did fine at the kennel.

My favorite appliance

My brother and his (lovely, smart, etc) girlfriend gave me a rice cooker for Christmas. This is, mind you, a super-duper fuzzy logic rice cooker from Japan, not some rinky-dink on-off thing that burns the bottom of the rice and boils over. This machine makes incredibly good rice -- brown rice, of course -- but it also cooks a whole mess of other stuff really well, including lentils, polenta, rice pudding and the very healthy, very stick to your ribs steel cut oatmeal that usually requires 30 minutes of constant stirring at the stove. This machine makes the most unbelievable oatmeal ever with pretty much no effort. Plus, it plays twinkle twinkle little star when you turn it on and another song when it's done cooking your oatmeal. I love this machine. Therefore, I give you a humble little haiku about my favorite appliance.

Ode to My Rice Cooker

Ivory, ovoid
You percolate happily
And make great oatmeal

Thank you. Thank you very much.

(And if you want to see someone who's really working the haiku format, check out Morgan's blog.)