Dark Thunder and Foul Murder

Dark clouds loom over the Sound, the sea gulls are circling very low. The rain will soon be here - in torrents, I think. But! It's Friday! It's a long weekend! What shall I do? Tommorow is K's birthday, so perhaps I should get my act together and wrap his presents. Unfortunately, brother-in-law R can't make it or else we could all have gone for a lo-ong drive to Mystic, take the kids to the Aquarium, etc. M. is out for a walk, so I took the opportunity to finish reading Agatha Christie's Body in the Library. I've read it many times. Read it, put the book away for a few years, then when I return to it, I find that I have often forgotten whodunnit, so the thrill is new the next time. I find this happens often to me with Christie murder mysteries. I don't find this happening with any other writer. Do I really forget or is it a forced forgetting so that I will enjoy the book again the second, third, fourth, fifth time? Also, I enjoy reading about stuffy British society from the forties and fifties and thanking my good fortune that I escaped being born into that dismal milieu. So, I bring to my enjoyment of Christies books a horrified fascination with the overbearing vicar's wife and the Conservative Colonel Bantry and the faceless parlormaids and cooks. Good heavens! Could such a world actually exist and flourish? I suppose it did. I am so glad that it passed by me, or before me.

Sunshine

Sun's out today. Yay! Games are on, construction moves forward and the day looks good. We went to eat at La Colline Verte, an upscale French restaurant in Fairfield yesterday. It was disconcerting to walk into a French country dining room overlooking the parking lot of a strip mall. But the food was great and they closed the blinds so I could maintain the illusion of la douce France. Oh, how I miss my Paris, [stuff about Paris deleted - too gushing] but it is time to plan another visit to the land of the friendly croissants.

Rain, rain go away

So things are still pretty damp around these parts, although the sun finally came out weakly just before the day ended. Games and playdates were cancelled. We did a brief visit to the construction site. Things are happening but things are still very raw. I hope we can get in before the lease here runs out. Sigh!

Literally blank

So, of the best American fiction published in the last 25 years, I am sorry to say that I have read - drumroll....none! So much for writing about books. Oh well, more rain threatens, I'll just go finish off Rattled, the new novel about New Jersey suburbs, rattlesnakes and competitive stay-at-home moms.

Why do I write?

Yes, why do I write this blog? After all, my posts are just about - my non-working life here in Southwestern Connecticut. And unlike work where my mind is fully engaged (I wish my salary reflected that but alas, I only work part-time), my home life is just plain vanilla bourgeois. There, I said it! That used to be such a term of contempt back in my twenties before the burdens of mortgage and credit cards and car payments descended on my shoulders. And now there are other - very cute - monkeys on my back. My kids. But I hesitate to write about very personal things. What the hell business is it of anybody else's how much I love my kids or my husband or my parents or my brother or my niece or my....they know how loved they are and don't need a blog to tell them that, anyway. And I don't want to write about my neighbors, friends and other acquaintances either. They are decent people who do deserve better than to end up as unwitting supporting actors in somebody else's play.

So what shall I write about? Well, there is the house of course. What an education it has been to go through this remodeling process. I can now talk with aplomb about tiles and hardwood floors and siding and dormers. But is that really my passion? No, I loved putting my stamp on this house that hopefully will be our retirement too (in any case, I cannot see myself going through this process again). But I cannot talk endlessly about Toto versus Kohler versus Jado. So instead, I will write about the two things that I do have a passion for: books and food. I'll write about restaurants, recipes, novels and non-fiction and sometimes all of them together. With some music and movies thrown in. That will spare my family and friends and acquaintances from having to read unmentionable things about themselves in public and will also give me an opportunity to explore my extended neighborhood a bit.

I hope everyone in this area is outside, enjoying the beautiful spring day. As I drove past the beach, the late afternoon sun was bouncing off the water and the seagulls circled and swooped, active and eager. There were young children with ice cream stains on their clothes and their mothers/nannies smiled indulgently. Our elderly neighbor dozed in his chair outside. My own little one looked around, a little stunned at the soft brightness of everything. Spring is here, yay!

Fairfield County Sport

I haven't posted in ages. Part of the reason is a busy summer and part of the reason is an even busier fall. We are currently fully absorbed in the Fairfield County sport: remodeling. In the summer we traveled like everyone else here and that was hectic enough. But remodeling redefines busy. After two years of drawing up plans, changing them, postponing them, we finally decided to bite the bullet this fall. So, I spent a month or so looking for suitable rentals for us. K. only wanted veto power over shortlisted houses so I did the hunting and the gathering this time. First shock: the few offerings. Second shock: a familiar one, sticker-. Third shock: moving out with infant and kindergartener. Oh-My-God! Anyway, we are in a cottage by the beach now, trying to adjust to a new neighborhood. But the construction goes full speed ahead at the old place. Today. they took away the old heating oil tank. It was underground and really old. But thank God, it didn't leak so we should be fine, inspection wise. Will post updates.

Snow yet again

The third winter storm in about ten days! Lots of snow but most of it came down during the night and the roads cleared pretty quickly in the morning. Our snow plow guy cleaned up our drive quite nicely and the city cleared the street soon after and then everything looked pretty normal but for the sombre grey skies, hanging low with cloud. During the day, I made some quick trips around the world via the internet, while baby napped and pre-schooler went on a play date at the neighbors. So, for today I've decided that I'm glad I'm not Lebanese living in Lebanon. Or a young schoolgirl trying to get on with life - or whatever they call life - in northern Iraq (thanks for all the Middle East blog links, Zeyad). Or a South Asian worker in any of the Gulf states. For that matter, I'm also glad I'm not a relative of Denis Rader and especially thankful that I didn't live next door to him in the 1970s and '80s. OK, back to the diapers- and-wipes job.

What do you do for company when you are not an extrovert? Why, retreat into the world of books of course. Here are people who will talk to you when you need company, will go away when you're tired of them and will engage you in intellectual discourse when your brain needs exercizing. For some reason, I am fascinated with the period 1900-1960 and most of my English reading consists of forgotten bestsellers, British and American, from those years. Does anyone still read Nigel Eldridge's The Colonel's Son? It's about the author's childhood in interwar India (1919-39). Or Julian Maclaren-Ross's books? Books like these evoke an era of bad plumbing and uncertain electric supply, when modern amenities were still not taken for granted. I think I relate to them so much because this was what small-town India was like in the 1970s and 1980s (perhaps even today?). Also, books like Eldridge's (although not Maclaren-Ross) were often available in dusty libraries in the small towns where I grew up, as were books by Daphne du Maurier and Laura Lee Hope, all probably left behind by the departing British. In the days before the Internet, these were my only window into the western world. Little did I know till I studied history that these tales, so outdated, such markers of a world of racial inequalities, were stories of a world being transformed. Still, their nostalgic appeal remains for me even though I recognize all the limitations of the authors' latent and blatant prejudices. I choose to read them as narratives of a time before central airconditioning and central heating. Every time I hear our sixty year old boiler make groaning noises in the wintry nights of southwestern Connecticut, I remember...cold nights in unheated houses in Punjab and John Masters.

Snow is coming, snow is coming, right now a distant gray-whiteness on the horizon. But we are not alone. Right now, Washington DC is hunkering down and other areas will follow suit. Far away, in California, six days of rain has made people's lives miserable. Further away, in India, the air force and army is having to drop supplies for snowed-in people in Kashmir. 40 feet of snow in some places! First, the tsunami and now the rain and the snow. Stay warm and dry, everyone.