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I wasn’t really looking for something to read when I walked through the book aisle at Target Thursday. But it’s difficult to pass them and not look, so there I was, drinking in each title as if I were parched and they precious liquid.
A woman made the space too small when she joined me in the aisle, dragging her cart in backwards, like she thought it would take up less room that way. Barely glancing at me, she asked ‘are you looking for something to read?’ and I replied ‘always’. Beating a path directly to the back wall, she picked up Alice Sebold’s ‘The Lovely Bones’ and held it out for me to take while stating emphatically ‘this is a good book’. How can you argue with that? It’s like she was sent to tell me to read this book. So I did.

As it turns out, The Lovely Bones is a very good book. I love a good storyteller and Sebold is certainly that. Both easy to read and understand… yet she weaves an intricate tale so visually stunning she even makes you feel sorry for a serial killer.
That’s her gift, the balance. The understanding she bestows is a gift and a curse, much like 14 year old Susie’s heaven. Everyone gets their own heaven when they die, you see… and when Susie is raped and killed in a cornfield she goes to her own heaven where she can watch the living if she wants. But even there things are never ‘perfect’. One miraculous afternoon she actually ‘falls back to earth’ but does not, cannot stay.

Now that I’ve finished I can see obscure references, allegories and touchstones everywhere. The snowglobe, the icicle, the suburbs.
Susie’s body is never found, though the reader knows the location. It doesn’t matter, because ‘lovely bones’ are not her remains. Lovely bones [I think] references the framework of man, on a smaller scale the framework of family.

I could write a book about the book, but then you’d not need to read the real thing.

My two crape myrtle babies died from shock, but guess what? New growth!

They’re going to make it after all…

My husband and I first met at his sister’s wedding in Chicago, September 1986. It was love at first sight. Or a sort of recognition. For those who don’t believe in love at first sight: we were clearly destined for each other and we both knew it in a gut wrenching, heart lifting sort of way that made us want to simultaneously reach for each other and run as fast as possible in the other direction.

Since I lived in Houston and he in Miami, he made the first trip, joining my best friend and I at the Texas Renaissance Festival. I made him miserable, he flew home.

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Oldest Daughter and her family are on vacation this week… somewhere. Somehow I never found out where they were going, though I think she said something about Orlando… maybe Disney or Universal?

They always take lovely vacations, for which I am jealous. Theme parks, cruises, the Poconos… Don’t get me wrong, hubby and I could do the same if we didn’t spend all our money on computer equipment. LOL!

So, to OD: I miss you and can’t wait to see you the first weekend of August. That’s less than a month away, so get your scrapbooking stuff together; I’m in the mood to crop!

You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.
You cannot help small men by tearing down big men.
You cannot help the poor by destroying the rich.
You cannot lift the wage earner by pulling down the wage payer.
You cannot keep out of trouble by spending more than your income.
You cannot further the brotherhood of man by inciting class hatreds.
You cannot establish security on borrowed money.
You cannot build character and courage by taking away a man’s initiative and independence.
You cannot help men permanently by doing for them what they could and should do for themselves.
~William J. H. Boetcker, 1916