Memorial Day

The first commemorations to honor those who have served and died in war were held following the U.S. Civil War. By the 20th century, the memorials had extended to honor all Americans who have died in any war. In the early 20th century, these commemorations had become a way to remember not only those who had served but family members as well.

On this weekend when we celebrate graduations, the opening of swimming pools, the kick off of summer and the annual Indianapolis 500, let us not forget those who have gone before us, particularly those who have served our country and made the ultimate sacrifice.

Bleak House Readalong - We're Done!

We're done, we're done, we're done! I think my final opinion of Bleak House is going to evolve over time. Right now, I'm honestly a little disappointed. I can't help but think that Dickens thought he was throwing in some great twists at the end but the big things that happened weren't all that surprising. Dickens always leave me with the feeling "and they all lived happily ever after ... except the people that didn't ... live that is."

What I Liked This Week:
Well, being done for one thing. Seriously - I can't believe I've been reading this book for more than two months. You can't help but be happy that Esther found love but you always knew that she would find happiness no matter where she ended up. I was happy that George reconciled with his brother and finally found his place in life.

Not that our little group didn't already hold John Jarndyce in high esteem already but these last chapters have really cemented my impression that he was one of the kindest, most thoughtful characters in literature. Is it terrible to say that I liked that Dickens killed off some of his characters? Well, I did - so much more realistic that way. And once you've read a Dickens' book, you know going in that some of the major players will die so it makes it interesting to guess which ones he'll kill off.

What I Didn't Like This Week:
I know, I know - I just got done saying that I like the fact that Dickens kills off some of his major characters. But Lady Dedlock before Esther and she have any chance to have one last moment together? That's just mean, Charles!

And why did the only characters that died have to be ones that we like? Why couldn't Harold Skimpole (the leech and liar) have been run over by a truck? Okay, I know there weren't trucks yet but you get the picture. Or Mr. Vholes? There's a guy that deserved to be dragged down the street behind a team of runaway horses. Nothing even remotely bad happened to either one of these louses.

It's been tough going, pushing my way through this one even when I really didn't have time to read. But I'm glad to be able to say that I've read Bleak House and I'm thankful to Wallace (The Unputdownables) for being so strict with us so I felt like I had to keep up for fear of being dropped from the group. Now I just need to find a group that wants to tackle Little Dorrit!

Pin It And Do It - Pink Champagne Cupcakes

Number five on the Pin It And Do It challenge for me was Pink Champagne Cupcakes. Miss H is having a hot pink and zebra print graduation (never mind that her school colors are forest green and black) so we've been looking for ways to bring pink into the menu and Miss H loves cupcakes. Pink Champagne Cupcakes seemed to be perfect and look how pretty they looked in the pin.

Of course, ours aren't going to look this pretty. We didn't have adorable little cupcakes papers and I wasn't going to bother to add those pretty little pink edible pearls. But we were looking primarily for a yummy cupcake that happened to be pink. The recipe makes 24 regular-sized cupcakes; we were making mini-cupcakes and got 48 out of the batch. For batter lickers like us, that champagne makes for an unusual aftertaste but the finished product loses the alcohol bite while retaining the champagne flavor. The frosting was a hit with my taste testers so we are a go with this recipe for graduation. Now to crank out another four dozen of these little beauties and move on to the next cake recipe. Miss H is thinking Key Lime cupcakes even if they aren't pink.

Calling Invisible Women by Jeanne Ray

Calling Invisible Women by Jeanne Ray
Published May 2012 by Crown Publishers
Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher

When you've been married a while, when you've been a mother a while, when you've been in the same place in your life for a long time, sometimes you begin to feel that you've become invisible to those around you.

For Clover Hobart, one day it becomes much more than just a feeling. Clover actually discovers that she has physically become invisible. As shocked as she is to discover that she can't see herself, she is even more shocked to discover that her son and husband don't notice. Almost no one, in fact, notices that there's no body there as long as a pair of pants, some shoes and a hat are making their way around. Sure being invisible comes in handy when it's time to stop her son from getting a tattoo. Otherwise, it's a sad and lonely life. Then one day, Clover answers an ad in the local paper that reads, "Calling Invisible Women." Clover discovers an entire group of women her age who are in the same predicament and these women have the answer Clover's been looking for - the reason she became invisible. Knowing who to blame gives Clover a strength she didn't know she had and a cause for which to fight.

Jeanne Ray is Ann Patchett's mother. That, in and of itself, was a selling point for me. Patchett's Bel Canto is one of my all-time favorite books and I was eager to see if Patchett had inherited her talent. Ray certainly has her own style; Calling Invisible Women is satirical, funny, and touching. Much like her daughter, Ray writes a smart book with strong female characters.

The other selling point for me was the idea of a middle-aged wife and mother not only feeling invisible but truly becoming invisible. Have you ever thought that the things you're doing around the house, for example, won't even be noticed? That your family will only notice the things that don't get done? I certainly have so I knew I could relate to Clover on that level. I liked the way Ray played with the idea that not only are these women so overlooked that they feel invisible but when they truly are invisible no one even notices. I had wondered how the idea was going to play out - would there be an actual cause or would the cause be more mystical. While I found the cause interesting and it was nice to see Clover become more visible even when she wasn't visible, I'm still not sure whether or not I liked how the plot played out. While the ending was certainly upbeat, I was glad that Ray hadn't given the book a Disney ending.

Ray is the author of several other books, including Julie and Romeo which many of you may recall. I will definitely be picking up another of them soon.

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett

State of Wonder by Ann Patchett
Published in paperback May 2012 by HarperCollins Publishers
Source: my copy courtesy of the publisher and TLC Book Tours

When co-worker and friend Anders Eckman dies in the Amazon jungle of Brazil, Marina Singh is sent by the company to finish the mission he was sent on - a mission she is reluctant to taken on. The sense of an obligation to Anders widow convinces Marina to journey to the equator in search of her former mentor who has disappeared while researching and developing a new drug for Marina's company.

As with Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, Patchett has dropped her lead character into an unforgiving setting for which she is utterly unprepared. If you had given me that comparison before I read the book, I might well have run screaming even though Patchett is one of my favorite authors. Thirty years after I studied Heart of Darkness in college, I still can't forget how much I disliked that book. Fortunately, Annick Swenson is no Kurtz, although she is equally idolized by the natives she lives among. Swenson is certainly a force to be reckoned with, a doctor who wishes that she had never revealed that fact to the tribe, a woman who brooks no nonsense and who deeply resents the company who pays for everything she does and has.

Throughout her journey, Marina learns that poisonous snakes, insect bites and unknown infections are not the only dangers she faces. Along the way, she must come to terms with events in her past that she has been pushing into the dark recesses of her mind and discover the things that are really important in her life.

"The news of Anders Eckman's death came by way of Aerogram, a piece of bright blue airmail paper that served as both the stationery and, when folded over and sealed along the edges, the envelope. Who even knew they still made such things? This single sheet had traveled from Brazil to Minnesota to mark the passing of a man, a breath of tissue so insubstantial that only the stamp seemed to anchor it to this world."

Patchett has a marvelous way of making the smallest details come alive. From a Minnesota winter to the stifling heat and humidity of the jungle, she makes her settings come alive. Seriously, the deeper into Brazil Marina went, the more I wanted to jump into a swimming pool! Patchett's writing blends both a lyricism and starkness and her characters are wonderfully realized. Are they characters readers will relate to or like? Maybe not, but I knew these characters by the end of the book and Patchett kept me interested in the book because I wanted to know what would happen to these people. As much as the book is character driven, the story is, at heart, a look at ethics - just what are we willing to do in the name of scientific discovery and business? Patchett never fails to deliver a book with amazing depth.

Thanks to TLC Book Tours for including me on this tour. For other reviews, check out the full tour.

Pin It And Do It - Cake Batter Truffles

Miss H's graduation was the perfect incentive to shoot for the stars on the Pin It And Do It challenge. I started to wonder if I was actually going to be able to get through eight pins in one month as I began to realize that quite a lot of the great ideas I had pinned were completely infeasible given the size of the crowd we're expecting (I mean, am I really going to want to make 150 fruit skewers between the ceremony and the party?). So I may not make that lofty goal, but at least, after this weekend, I've gotten five done already!

Yesterday I made these little beauties - Cake Batter Truffles. There are actually two recipes that I've pinned but this one was so quick and easy, I'm not sure I'll try the other one. Five ingredients and only about fifteen minutes of work to make, they are easy although I will warn you that they are really sweet. The recipe said it would make 20 - 30 truffles but I only got 22 and they were quite small. The recipe calls for dipping chocolate which I bought for the first two batches. It's not cheap nor is it particularly delicious so I played around until I came up with my own version. I made some truffles dipped in milk chocolate and some dipped in white chocolate. Now I just have to hope that it's not 100 degrees on Saturday and I end up with a plate of desserts that are so melted no one can pick them up!

Sunday Salon - May 20

Books? What are books? Last week was almost entirely about getting the house ready for Miss H's graduation party and this week will be mostly the same. I did finally finish So Much For That for this week's meeting with the Omaha Bookworms and my Bleak House reading but I'm going to have to race through State of Wonder for a review this week. Thank heavens for my lunch time reading!

I didn't even manage to get my Friday post done for the Bleak House readalong so I'll do a quick recap here:

What I Liked:
Mr. Bucket - I'm not really sure what this officer's territory is, he seems to be able to go all over London and well out into the surrounding countryside to pursue his case. He was relentless in trying to locate the missing Lady Dedlock. I'm still a little iffy about the way he treated our poor little Jo since he sent him off on his own, in theory to protect himself, but gave him very little help in doing that. Still, he took no time at all to figure the weasely Mr. Skimpole out.

 What I Didn't Like:
I'm sorry to say, but I was more than a little annoyed with Lady Dedlock. Granted, she was willing to sacrifice her happiness with her daughter to protect her husband and she left, in theory, to protect him. But was she really being that thoughtful? The fact that she left was bound to stir up gossip (which it did and which Dickens wrote about masterfully) and it was bound to cause Esther great pain. Apparently she was not even aware of the pain it would cause her husband (shame on her for not realizing the depth of his feeling and causing him to have a stroke). It felt more like she couldn't bear the thought of falling from her own high perch.

We'll be finishing the book this week, only about fifty more pages to go and I must say that I really have enjoyed these last two hundred pages. All of that slogging through seemingly unrelated characters has come together marvelously.

Miss H's graduation has gotten me moving on some projects around the house that I've been meaning to get to but just haven't. When we moved into this house 16 years ago, we put in the usual shiny brass for most of the light fixtures and hardware. I have been wanting to get rid of all of it for a long time but where to start? It would cost hundreds to switch everything out and if you started one room, you'd have to do the whole room. Thanks to Pinterest, I discovered how easy it is to spray paint light fixtures and I had two in mind that were just the place to start.

The Big Guy wasn't too thrilled about having to play with electricity but it turns out that it's really not that difficult, you just have to pay attention to what the wiring looked like before you take the fixture down. Unfortunately, the cord to connect my camera to my computer has disappeared  so I don't have pictures of my finished projects. But I'm absolutely delighted with my "new" black metal kitchen light fixture and "new" nickel fixture in the powder room. Both blend so much better with their surroundings and really do look like new fixtures.  I had thought I would get new glass for both of the fixture but even those look so much nicer with the new finish.  I highly recommend this if you have fixtures you're tired of the finish on but you still like the shape. This summer is bound to mean the rest of the fixtures will get the same treatment. And all of those shiny brass door knobs? Turns out you can do the same thing with those! Rust-o-leum and Krylon are now my new best friends!