...but nevertheless, here they are.
- Raccoons are good outdoors but not as good when they have chewed a hole in your roof and live in your attic
- Due to birthday reflectivenss, the presence of old friends, and listening to pineapple-juice-and-Malibu-fuelled converations at the Esquire, it has occurred to me that the kindest, most fun, most loving, most joyful - and not to mention most compatible - "involvement" I have ever had with a boy was in my junior year of high school. That isn't right, is it? We're supposed to get better at these things as we get older, but my favorite relationship was almost half a lifetime ago. Does it have to do with knowing yourself? Or knowing other people? Or just plain ol' getting along with someone so, so well?
- I am lucky, oh-so lucky, regarding my friends. All of them. Fabulous. Thoughtful. Kind. Generous. Understanding. Challenging. Fun. Giggly.
- Being honest and professional and kind and absurdity-busting all at the same time is a skill I do not have. Yet.
- Helen Fielding's new novel, Olivia Joules and the Overactive Imagination, is so not what I expected reading the cover. Latley I have had a hard time finishing any books, very unlike me, and and I had thought this book would break the pattern, but no go. I am not inspired to keep reading. To be fair, I'm not so annoyed I want to put it down forever, either, and I haven't finished the book yet, so there is obviously a lot I don't know. So far the problem is that it has a clumsy mixing of the actual plot of the story and (what seem to me to be) pointless references to recent world tragedies. Based on her other novels, I assume Fielding feels deeply about certain global trends and political issues, such as hunger relief in Africa, which I totally respect. The Bridget books include these positions too but much more gracefully. I'm not going to be encouraged into social justice action by big, clunky jokey points about terrorists hiding out as Miami fashionistas. The cover said the protagonist was Bridget for the new millennium. I have been soooo burned by book jackets saying the work was "the next Bridget," that the characters "were sure to be the new best friends of Bridget," or even "the midwestern Bridget Jones." But I don't think it was unreasonable to expect a Bridget-related comment to be true when the book is by the same author! More thoughts to follow, once I've actually finished it.
