Great book for kids (and adults, too)

As part of the Accelerated Reader program at school, Laura's always bringing home new books. Most of them I've never heard of. Cinder Edna was one of those.
It really is a great book. Edna is a neighbor of Cinder Ella (Cinderella) who has her own wicked stepmother and stepsisters. But she has a much different approach to life.
I've never thought of Cinderella as being the whiney sort; the Disney movies make her look anything but, in fact. But Cinder Edna takes living positively to a whole new level.
I think that's a lesson we all need to learn.

I have no idea what this store sells,

but isn't the sign interesting? (Sorry for the blurriness, I took this photo while the car was moving.)
It's too bad I didn't have my camera with me today when my friend June and I drove past a protest in front of the embassy. (It had something to do with sugar cane workers and the prime minister of Trinidad and the EU, whose building is next door to the embassy.)

A not-so-good excitement

Kevin's dad called last night and asked, "Aren't you glad you're not in Belgrade?" It's not like we'd have been in the embassy when anything happened; it had been closed all week.
Belgrade is a place we'd consider going at some point, but maybe the whole Kosovo thing will be figured out by then.
Yeah, right.

How did mobsters work efficiently without cell phones?

I've wondered this several times over the past few days as I read The Godfather. I've seen parts of all three movies but none of them all the way through. And of course the movies don't cover everything in the book anyway. But the book's well-written even if the subject matter does closely parallel the Book of Mormon chapters that deal with secret combinations.



Another book I read recently was The Lisbon Crossing. It's set during World War II, after the fall of France but before D-Day, and I found it highly enjoyable. But if you like your war stories clean and your British royals nontreasonous, it's probably not for you.

So much for "retirement"

On March 3, I'll start work as a community liaison office coordinator at the embassy. I'll be working 20 hours a week, and it should be an adventure.

Beelzetoad

Reuters has a story about Beelzebufo ampinga, a huge amphibian whose remains have been discovered in Madagascar. Scientists think it grew to about 16 inches long and weighed as much as 10 pounds. There's even speculation that it may have eaten newly hatched dinosaurs.
I guess I should be grateful the only amphibians I have to deal with are the inch-long ones that hang out on my laundry area patio. Even though they seem to travel as a group, they're a lot less menacing than a single, 10-pound one would be.

My brilliance strikes again

For years, I thought it would be cool to have copper-bottomed pots. In addition to being pretty, they distribute heat more evenly than plenty of others. So I finally bought a set early last year.
Obviously I wasn't thinking about the fact I likely was going to be moving to a developing country where there aren't many copper-bottomed pots and therefore not a market for the correct products for cleaning copper. Or that those same products would be frowned upon in the diplomatic pouch because of their rather harsh chemical compositions.
So here I am in a developing country with less-than-beautiful copper-bottomed pots. At least my kitchen ceiling is too high to make it practical for me to invest in a pot rack to show them off.

Happy birthday, wherever you are

Today is my grandmother's birthday, although she died a couple of years ago. She was a most unusual grandmother in the sense that she didn't necessarily like children yet would do whatever she could for us. I spent many an hour with her, especially when I got old enough to drive, because although she had a driver's license, she stopped driving when I was fairly young. (It was for the best, I assure you.) So I'd drive her to the doctor and to visit her brother's nursing home and to the Bojangle's drive through.
When I was in South Carolina in August, I was able to get some of her things. One thing I somehow ended up with is a hymn book from the old Rock Hill Ward. Inside that hymnbook she collected things, including programs for various baptisms, funerals and sacrament meetings. But I also came across this poem, which was in a Dear Abby column that ran July 3, 1993. It's sad, but I'd like to think she saved it to share with a friend whose husband had died.

One or the other must leave,
One or the other must stay,
One or ther other must grieve,
That is forever the way.
That is the vow that was sworn,
Faithful 'til death do us part.
Braving what had to be borne,
Hiding the ache in the heart.
One, however adored,
First must be summoned away.
That is the will of the Lord,
One or the other must stay.

I like my hymnbooks clean, untattered and with intact pages. The one I got from her is somewhat yellowed. But I think about it whenever we go to church here because most of the ones in our chapel look a lot more like hers than my ideal. Well-loved, I guess.

I think this study is a load of ... stinky stuff

Apparently some researchers at my alma mater have done a study that shows first-born children get about 3,000 more hours of quality time with their parents between the ages of 4 and 13 than the next sibling gets when they reach those years.
I have a really hard time believing that. I know my family is unusually large (and therefore perhaps atypical) but if anything, I felt like I had less time with my parents as I got older. By the time I turned 4, I had a sister and a brother. And by the time I turned 14, I had four sisters and three brothers. And then there were the three later sisters ...
Maybe I should get one of my siblings to calculate the time each of us got. I'm sure one of them kept track.

"It's the best day of my life"

Or so Laura declared today after swimming across the pool under water for the first time. Perhaps her life hasn't been as exciting as I would like to think.

Oh, yeah, it's still winter some places

My brother Daniel, who lives in northern Utah, just sent me some photos, including this one of my nephews. At least they've recovered from scarlet fever enough to build igloos -- although I assume Daniel did the actual building. And he never had scarlet fever, just his kids.

Laura denies all responsibility

The international school didn't have classes yesterday because of water and power outages. Kevin has suggested that perhaps Laura and her friends did something to keep from having to go to school. I've pointed out that, unlike her friends, Laura was irritated they didn't have school.
But maybe it's just an act ...

More fun with Yahoo headlines

McCain, Castro spar over Vietnam torture claim

The visual this creates almost makes me laugh out loud. I know in reality the sparring is verbal, but the idea of John McCain -- who can't lift his arms high enough to comb his own hair -- fighting a bedridden old guy like Fidel Castro is just too much. Who would win? Even before that, who would resort to biting first? Oh, the questions.

How I spent my Saturday

We went to the beach Saturday morning. It's close, mileage-wise, but the roads are less than desirable. And, compared with the good places in the U.S., the beaches on Trinidad just aren't that impressive.
But we finally went, and there weren't many people there. I suppose they still were sleeping off Carnival.
We played in the water, and I found a small lobster who was missing a claw. (The photo I took of it was out of focus, though.) Laura had fun playing in the sand.
It rained a little while we were there, and there were a bunch of stormclouds. When the lifeguards came on duty, they didn't seem to think it was safe to swim. But we were ready to leave by then.
But doesn't this cloud look like a dog chasing another dog?

Is it just me or do I talk too much?

One of the wonderful things about our church is that the work is done by (somewhat) normal, everyday people. There aren't paid clergymen (or women).
So I've come to enjoy teaching Relief Society. That's our church's women's organization.
Then today, I was asked to start teaching the teenagers' Sunday school class. I've done that before in Houston and Denver.
That means I'll be teaching Sunday school every week. And then the second Tuesday of each month I'll also teach Relief Society.
In addition to that, I'll also be speaking in sacrament meeting in a couple of weeks.
I guess I should have asked whether I could switch that talk to March 9, which would have meant more than two hours of people having to listen to me during the three hours of church.
I guess I should start exercising my voice now.

No herons were injured in the taking of these photos

But one sure tried.
I went out this morning to check on my little sprouts growing behind the swimming pool. Brief update: The sunflowers aren't doing well.
On the pool deck, a little blue heron was hanging out. I followed it around for a few minutes, taking pictures. It didn't seem bothered by me; it walked around the pool and even flew from one side to the other once.
I assumed it would fly away soon. But no, it decided to walk through the fence. (It's a chain-link-style fence that separates our yard from the riverbank.) And its skinny little body fit through fine. Its wings weren't so lucky. So I launched Operation Saving Heron.
My friend June came over, and we tried to bend the fence with pliers. But the hole still wasn't big enough for the bird to figure out how to free itself. So June distracted it (with the pliers) while I untangled its wings. It dropped down to the brushy riverbank a few feet below, hung out for a while and then left.
Later research showed this probably is an adolescent bird as it doesn't have the longer feathers on the back of its head. Hopefully as it grows older it also will learn to identify fences.

How is it ...

that I feel like I'm constantly doing laundry but the right clothes are never clean?
At 6:15 this morning I was on my hands and knees on the floor of my room, rumaging through a pile of dirty clothes looking for a pair of Laura's P.E. shorts. Because somehow, despite a five-day weekend, I didn't do the load of laundry containing either pair of said shorts.

Hey, here's an idea!

Let's turn off the traffic lights on the major thoroughfares through Port of Spain for Carnival, when the roads will be closed to cars, and then not turn them back on Wednesday when people with real jobs have to go back to work.
Oh, wait. That already happened.
Of course, very few drivers pay attention to traffic lights here anyway. And I'm guessing the people with power over the traffic lights don't actually drive anywhere but employ other people to do it for them.
At least there were people sweeping all the trash around town into mounds as we drove to the embassy and home this morning.
But still, I'll sum it all up in one word: Ugh.

What's so Super about it?

It's kind of odd to realize we're thousands of miles from the United States but are watching Super Tuesday returns on television. Of course, we don't have real CNN, just the international version and Headline News.
We also get BBC World, which is all news all the time. And recently most of that news has been about the U.S. presidential election.
It's almost like I still work at a newspaper.

A different kind of Carnival

Carnival was yesterday and today. Mostly that's meant we've avoided going anywhere, which hasn't been hard because the embassy's been closed. (It's on the savannah, which is the middle of all the action.) We've watched some of the parades on television, though.
The international school had its own Carnival jump-up Friday. They tend to take the international aspect of it all a bit far, and the first-graders were assigned the theme Seasons of Canada. (I saw on the list that another grade had something to do with hurricanes.) But at least Laura got to paint a T-shirt and get some glitter on her cheeks.

A series of fortunate events

1. The Giants won the Super Bowl! Do I care? No. But even living outside the U.S., I was getting tired of hearing about the Patriots' perfect season.
2. The Super Bowl being on Fox means our cable company finally has added Fox to its lineup. It was the one gaping omission.
3. I finally cut my hair. Yes, myself. Whether it will look decent once it's been washed and blow dried, I don't know. But it's definitely no worse than plenty of haircuts I've paid for. And the best thing about this one is that it was free. And I'm cheap.

Just because. That's why.

Exchange with Laura this morning during a discussion about what she was going to have for breakfast:

Her: I was thinking. Some people eat mashed potatoes for breakfast.
Me: But not you!
Her: Why not?
Me: One, we don't have any mashed potatoes. Two, you wouldn't be eating them for breakfast if we did.
Her: But you never let me do that!

I must admit, I don't recall ever having had a conversation about mashed potatoes for breakfast. But if such a conversation has ever taken place, she's right, I probably didn't let her do it then, either.