December 22 - 25th ...

I'm back!! I was in the clutches of a nasty influenza this past week which did little to improve my holiday mood.
But it's Christmas morning. Everybody's napping (except for me). And I'm feeling like I've accomplished something amazing. I survived December.
I survived December. (Okay. Technically I have one more week, but really, I'm just starting my "January" activities now because I can't go on!)
Okay. Yes a touch melodramatic. But just for kicks, I've decided to do a little calendar of events from the past month -- all done with a 21 month old child. Amelia is amazing!!
She survived this:

November 26: Thanksgiving with family and friends
November 27: Thanksgiving at the bi-national Center where I work
November 28: Turkey sandwich party
November 30 - December 3: Lag time ... Christmas shopping ... gearing up for...
December 3: Block party -- art and lanterns and Christmas music
December 5: Christmas carols and the Pereira symphonic orchestra
December 6: Friend arrives from Spain -- decorating the farm for Festival of Lights Party
December 7: Touring around the city with friend
December 8: (Another three friends arrive from Spain) Festival of Lights Party
December 9: Going out with friends from Spain
December 10: Cesar's 40th birthday party with live music and lots of friends
December 11: Hanukkah dinner
December 12: Another birthday party for Cesar
December 14: Friends arrive from Argentina
December 15: Touring with friends from Argentina
December 16: Big day with friends from Argentina, Spain, Mexico ... picnic and fun at the farm
December 17: What? No plans? Well ... I actually skipped out on a Novena (the nine days before Christmas people get together at each others' homes and sing carols and say the "novena" prayers here in Colombia)
December 18: I honestly don't remember. It's all blurring together now.
December 19: Big wedding that started at 1:00 pm and lasted until 3:00 am ... Amelia fell in love with the mariachi band. I finally got her to sleep at 9:00 pm and we danced and danced.
December 20: Back home.
December 20 - 23: the flu -- missing out on numerous Christmas activities
December 24: Christmas Eve at the family's until midnight!
December 25: Christmas Day -- lunch with family and dinner with friends

I'm tired.
I LOVED seeing friends we haven't seen for years! Friends from Spain, Mexico and Argentina. And I loved dancing and celebrating.
But no more.
Next year I think we'll go into hermit mode and keep things SIMPLE. It's all about survival!!

And, as promised, my last book recommendation for December. And it's a "parenting book." Granted all parenting books, after Amelia's birth, were burned in a massive bonfire. (Especially the ones that talked about simple 'routines'.) BLAST routines! All books except for this one.
Anyway, this book is one I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE recommended by my husband's student exchange mom who's a dietician/nutritionist. There's nothing that brings you back to the basics as much as parenting. What's important in life? Sleeping, eating, going to the bathroom, and laughter. But you can't have the last if the first three aren't in order. And this book is an amazing way to approaching eating and eating habits with kids. How to Get Your Kid to Eat ... But not Too Much has kept me sane and kept things in perspective at the dinner table.






Happy Holidays! I wish everyone peace and wonder in 2010. (Wonder is my favorite thing because so many forget about the magic of the world in which we live!)

December 19 - 21st and feeling surly ...

• Feeling overwhelmed. (Okay. Grinchy!)
  
• Have that itchy-need-to-write-but-the-screen-just-blinks-at-me feeling.
• Have a bit of a pit in my gut because of the blinking white screen/ blank-slate brain right now.
• Feeling like I've gotten wrapped up in everything and have lost a bit of the Christmas magic.
• Have a cough, fever, and am afraid that I'm getting a Christmas bug. (Yes, I'm whining here!)
  

So today's recommendations bring me back to what I love about Christmas because I watched them last night trying to capture a moment of peace in what has become a month of madness. Here are my recommendations for best videos on the planet. (They always make me cry.) Hell, a chunk of good, Manchego cheese makes me cry these days. Sheesh. Getting all sentimental and stuff. Anyway, get in the holiday spirit with The Grinch and Charlie Brown Christmas. And for good measure, maybe you can find a 24 hour marathon of A Christmas Story, too.

December 18 and The Book Thief

"It's just a small story really, about, among other things:

• A girl
• Some words
• An accordionist
• Some fanatical Germans
• A Jewish fist fighter
• And quite a lot of thievery "
  

I really don't think you can get better than this (though you can bet I'll spend the rest of my life trying.) Narrated by death, The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak, is the story of Liesl Meminger living in foster care outside of Munich, Germany. Her best friend is Rudy -- the boy who dreams of being Jesse Owens -- and she becomes the world for a Jewish refugee, Max, describing the outside to him since he hides, huddled in a cold basement.

Exquisite. Exquisite. Exquisite. Exquisite. Amazing imagery and the best narrator of a novel I've ever read.

Like I said, I really don't think you can get better than this!

Colombia From the Hip + December 10 - 15 Book Recommendations

Well, I was caught up in the mad Colombian party vortex last week and was conspicuously absent from my keyboard.
Yikes!!
But for good reason. Really. It was worth every sleepless minute. :-)
On December 7th and 8th, Colombia celebrates the "Alumbrado" -- the Day of the Virgin. And we have a huge party at Cesar's farm the 8th with a group that sings Colombian Christmas carols, the weirdest bunuelo contest (bunuelos are Colombian cheese donuts), and lots of lights!! All the kids light lanterns and stick candles in the grass to burn. (Note: We're NOT in Nevada here where the whole state would go up in a ball of flames.)

Friends came in from Spain and Argentina! (Yay!) And after the big Alumbrado, Cesar celebrated his 40th. (Yikes!) So we had to have another party to commemorate four decades and danced under the stars until our feet hurt.

Then we were invited to a Hanukkah celebration, which was a treat!! And then, of course, another party to celebrate Cesar's four decades just to make sure our bones ached. Nope. Not twenty anymore.

And I think Amelia has officially gone on strike. She's done with all this activity. (Though she's quite the good dancer now!! :-) )

So I'm back. Limping just a tad. (I think I pulled a hamstring or something.) And now we're getting geared up for a big wedding this week, Christmas next week, then New Years with twenty + family from all over the country. Then January. AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH.

So here are my latest book recommendations. Yep. I've been slack. On the computer side of things. I think it's understandable, though. Really. Don't you??

I *heart* Skippyjon Jones. This Siamese cat, wannabe Mexican Chihuaha superhero is the best children's book series I've read in a long time. Skippyjon, much to his mother's chagrin, sleeps in bird nests, writes on walls, and gets into loads of trouble. And the best part? He's the leader of the Chimichangos, a group of vigilante Chihuahuas, that save the world from horrible things like bobbleheads, pinatas and more (most found in Skippyjon's closet). Holy Jalapeno Hilarious!!


Jeanette Winterson's novels blew me away when I was in college. And the other day when I was at the Dollar Store I found one I haven't read yet. That brought me back to my days of quoting Oranges Aren't the Only Fruit, The Passion, Written on the Body -- novels that deal with love, sexuality, past and present, magic and more. Oranges is a semi-autobiographical novel about Jess, a "typical" teen dealing with the things all teens deal with. Add to the pot an evangelical mother that spews bible quotes and expects Jess to do the same and the fact she's fallen in love with another woman. It's a GREAT great novel about identity and reconciling religion, faith, love, parenting, and who we really are.


The other day I was recommending this novel. Actually, I pretty much recommend this novel to every single person I meet. Feed, by MT Anderson changed the way I viewed YA novels before I began writing YA. After I read Feed, I thought, "This is serious. I had better give every word I write in every book 150% effort, or not write."
This. Is. Amazing. In the future world where people are given "feed" implants in their brains -- hard-wired to advertisement-information that constantly 'feeds' into their brains, Titus and his friends meet Violet -- a strange girl who does things nobody else does. Like talk. Everybody in FEED just chats. Brilliant. Thought-provoking. A novel in which even the Sky, Clouds, and Stars are "trademarked", this is a phenomenal criticism of our rampant consumerism, technology, and the inhumanness of it all. Read. This. Novel.

Okay. Hope to not be absent so so long next time. Because that means I've been sleeping and working -- both of which I am behind on!! Ugh.

December 8 and December 9th with Poetry ...

Well, I have one book for two days, but it's a book for two voices!! Does that count?


Flickering fireflies, honey bees who want to unionize, a moth's love affair with the porch light and more, Joyful Noise: Poems for Two Voices by Paul Fleischman (illustrated by Eric Beddows) is a phenomenal collection of bug poetry. Vivid images, palpable textures, Fleischman's poems are funny, witty, and full of wonder.
It's the perfect book to read with kids (poems for TWO voices), and it's a great gift for those who simply love words.

On the Seventh Day ...

Okay ...
Too biblical, and a somewhat irreverent reference; however, my pick for day seven is Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre.

Set in small town, trailer-park central, Texas, USA, this is a story about how Vernon Gregory Little's life has been turned upside-down after his friend, Jesus Navarro, commits a Columbine-style massacre at his school.
This no-name town becomes the center of a media frenzy and a hungry-for-fame hack reporter, Eulalio Ledesma (yes, they all have weird names in the book!), manipulates events to look like Vernon was the perpetrator of the school killing.
Vernon heads to Mexico, Against All Odds-style to escape trial and possible death row with Taylor Figueros. As you can imagine, he doesn't escape and is represented by a Johnny Cochran-style big-shot lawyer
This is a slicing satire about American media, reality TV, fifteen-minute-famers, death row, and tragedy becoming a media orgy. And it's one of the funniest novels I've ever read in the midst of it all. I laughed out loud from beginning to end, and I sure wish this would be required reading when it comes to media ethics.
Writing a novel is hard work.
Writing comedy, real comedy, is an art.
Plus, Vernon is the best anti-hero I've ever read. And he's always nice to his mom (who's worth about as much as her latest perm).

READ. THIS. BOOK!!

On the Seventh Day ...

Okay ...
Too biblical, and a somewhat irreverent reference; however, my pick for day seven is Vernon God Little by DBC Pierre.

Set in small town, trailer-park central, Texas, USA, this is a story about how Vernon Gregory Little's life has been turned upside-down after his friend, Jesus Navarro, commits a Columbine-style massacre at his school.
This no-name town becomes the center of a media frenzy and a hungry-for-fame hack reporter, Eulalio Ledesma (yes, they all have weird names in the book!), manipulates events to look like Vernon was the perpetrator of the school killing.
Vernon heads to Mexico, Against All Odds-style to escape trial and possible death row with Taylor Figueros. As you can imagine, he doesn't escape and is represented by a Johnny Cochran-style big-shot lawyer
This is a slicing satire about American media, reality TV, fifteen-minute-famers, death row, and tragedy becoming a media orgy. And it's one of the funniest novels I've ever read in the midst of it all. I laughed out loud from beginning to end, and I sure wish this would be required reading when it comes to media ethics.
Writing a novel is hard work.
Writing comedy, real comedy, is an art.
Plus, Vernon is the best anti-hero I've ever read. And he's always nice to his mom (who's worth about as much as her latest perm).

READ. THIS. BOOK!!