So, this Christmas I went home and spent a few weeks with my awesome family. During that time, I went along to help my sister-in-law set up her brand new kindergarten classroom. My 11 year-old sister Bailey and I were put in charge of organizing the books. Bailey was in charge of fiction. She organized sections of story books, and chapter books, and books about Disney characters, etc. Being a Master’s-toting librarian, I was in charge of the non-fiction and what we called the “issues books,” which is what we deemed books about things like bullying, moving, whether the tooth-fairy is real, why we all have to take a bath, and the like. Bailey did a great job. She really enjoys organizing, reading, children, and helping, so this job was right up her alley. She was good at telling the difference between fiction and non-fiction animal books, not always an easy task at the kindergarten level. Then at one point she came across this Sesame Street book. The book simply gives out hints about the characteristics of a specific muppet, then asks the reader “Who am I?” But Bailey picked up the book, looked at the title, mused “Who Am I?” and then commented, “Definitely an issues book,” and handed the book to me. It was one of my most awesome moments as a big sister. She is growing up too fast, and sometimes, I think, not fast enough, because I want to know all about her now.
Who are you?
The question has been a prevalent one this season since John and I also got married during the long break. It was wonderful and beautiful and happy and all the things a joining of two people into an official sort of family is supposed to be. But there has been some major pressure to change my me-ness, or at least what I am called.
It appears that the only way to motivate myself to write in this bedeviled thing is to make rather large, silly lists. Since I haven’t been in a terribly silly mood this spring, it has indefinitely fallen by the wayside, but THINGS have happened, many THINGS. As a result, you, gentle reader, are entitled to one (1) fanciful picture of an octopod, and a list.
Except for when, of course, I do believe. Or did, anyway. It’s been a long time since I hid my head beneath the sheets, terrified to peek out and behold the grim horror that surely awaited me. I could probably have been awarded a medal for my performances in the little girls’ long jump from the light switch to my bed to avoid the gory monster underneath or the 50 yard dash up the basement stairs.
I say Ma’am and Sir to my elders. I grew up in a town of fewer than 10,000 where everyone knows me and who my parents are. I smile at people I don’t know on the streets. I’m pretty sure that most of the people I meet in my current Deep South haunt think I’m respectful, kind, non-threatening. They’re pretty sure I’m “one of us.” But they might be a lot more suspicious if they knew the truth. I’m a progressive, feminist vegan (and possibly other labels people might find even more threatening if I was willing to lay it all out there for you, but I’m not). I’m participating in a blog carnival today drawing attention to young feminists. Apparently, some young(ish?) women like myself are none too willing to tag themselves feminists. 
When one fails to post on a modest little blog like mine, the need to make the next post that one would post be a uber-fantastical post blossoms and grows and consumes until it is nigh impossible to post any post at all. After considering for weeks now what knowledge I could possibly share that would be of interest to anyone other than myself (and perhaps my grandmother who would celebrate any small accomplishment of mine, but hates pretty much every topic in which I am personally interested), I have decided to disappoint anyone who comes here to read this at this moment rather than allowing my own (or any one else’s) expectations to unnaturally balloon any further. I turn 27 next week, and I haven’t the energy to think that I might have something amazing to say that no one else has said on the internet ever before any more. Perhaps, in my soon-to-be advanced age, I will have the proper life experience to know that if one fails to write on a blog for such an infernally long time, the necessity to do so transforms into a giant, yellow-eyed, furry, 14-headed manticore of suckage. So let me delay no further with my pitiful effort,
But I’d rather talk about books. My big favorites since my last post in August have been The Abhorsen Trilogy by Garth Nix (
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