FYI

Last night my 12-year-old son went to a school play with some neighbors. He came home and faithfully reported the following conversation to me. (Backstory: Teen was arguing with his mom on the drive home.)

Son: Why do you argue with your mom? I never argue. When my mom snaps 'No', we listen.

Teen: That's because your mom is scary.

There you go. Listen and remember.

REVISIONS OF BODY AND MIND

January started with two major revisions in my life: 1) the personal trainer and 2) the second draft of my new novel.

I've realized over the last couple weeks that the process is remarkably similar for both. Pain, inertia, pain, stubbornness, pain, mental blocks, pain, endurance.

And pain.

Revising a manuscript has given me insight into revising my body, and vice versa. Here's what I've learned.

1. Take the Long View
I'm a Biggest Loser fan. Wonderful show. But it is frustrating to watch them drop anywhere from 5-15 pounds a week while my scale stays stubbornly on the same number. Maybe if I was only checking in on my body once a week, I'd see the changes, but since I live in my body, I have to remind myself daily changes are subtle. Too subtle to see most of the time. Just like a page of revisions or rewriting at a time seems miniscule when compared to the 200+ pages still to go, but each page adds up. So does each squat or push-up or bicep curl.

2. Take Your Rewards Where You Can Find Them
Write a particularly good bit of dialogue? Discover a hidden motivation in a character? Solve a particularly thorny plot issue? Giggle and do the Snoopy dance to celebrate. Last 15 seconds longer on a side plank hold? Do 5 sets of tricep dips without crying? Run a complete mile without pause? Same thing. (Well, maybe not the Snoopy dance--unless you want your muscles to give way.)

3. Use Frustration as Fuel
When jealousy, despair, cravings, and/or sheer I'm-so-tired-of-doing-this set in, channel it. Don't let it derail the process. Dougnuts will not--repeat, WILL NOT--make you feel better. Neither will playing solitaire or reading email for three hours while you avoid opening your novel file. Of course you don't want to start exercising/writing. Who does? But I promise, from personal experience, once you've done it, you'll feel so much better.

4. The Only Failure is to Quit
Will I ever get below 30% body fat or lose these even-more-stubborn-than-me 15 pounds? Not if I quit now. Will I ever sign with an agent/sell my novel to the highest bidder/become even more famous than Stephenie Meyer? Not if I quit now. I control what I can--the exercising, eating right, writing, and submitting said writing. Will it pay off? I don't know. But I do know that if I quit, then it's over.

5. Love Revising for its Own Sake
Body or soul, mind or manuscript, you have to love the process. That doesn't mean you enjoy every single weight lifted or mile run or chapters scratched and started from nothing . . . but it does mean you have to enjoy the process as a whole. I exercise now because it makes me feel good--stronger, healthier, happier. Do I want to get skinnier? Yes. Will I keep exercising when/if I reach my weight goal? Yes. And writing--well, whole books are written about writers and their devotion to an exceedingly difficult and irritating art form. Do I want to be published? Yes. Would I quit writing if I get published? Absolutely not. So why would I quit before?

Onward and upward--I have twenty more minutes of cardio to do and Chapter 13 to revise.

Wish me well :)

BOOK GEEK

Anyone surprised?

On Facebook, some of my friends have taken this challenge: Out of the BBC Booklist's Top 100 Novels, how many of you read?

(Note on the list--I've seen several different lists. I actually marked two--the one from Facebook and the official BBC Big Read List from 2003. I decided to post the Facebook list since I'd read more of them--probably because the Facebook list seems to have more novels that an American audience would recognize.)

The estimate is that any given average person (is there such a thing) will have read 6 out these 100 novels. Are you as geeky as me? Check it out.

The ones I've read are bolded.

And if you're interested only in the bottom line, I've read 68 out of 100.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 A Town Like Alice, Nevil Shute
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchel
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

FEBRUARY BOOKS

DEATH WITHOUT COMPANY/Craig Johnson/A
Wyoming sheriff Walt Longmire has had some bad weeks recently. He's still recovering from the tragic end of his last case. And he needs a new deputy. And winter is coming. So he's annoyed when a former sheriff claims that a death in a nursing home is murder. Turns out the former sheriff was once married to the woman in question, a member of the Basque community, and said woman has quite a large estate to leave. Did someone kill her for her money? Or do the roots of this crime go further back? I adore Walt Longmire and this was a wonderful story. Now on to the third book in the series.

NOTHING BUT THE TRUTH/Avi/A
A little book, written for teens, about a 9th-grader who causes a national incident when he's punished for singing the national anthem in homeroom. The novel is told entirely through diary entries, letters, phone calls, and interviews of the various participants, giving the reader the chance to see the incident through multiple eyes. As the mother of two teenage boys, it was a great reminder that most of what's going on in a teenager's head is kept hidden and I shouldn't jump to conclusions quite so fast.

THE PRIVATE PATIENT/P.D. James/A
Sigh--I love Adam Dalgliesh. This novel had everything I love about James--the trademark opening section which introduces us to various intriguing characters and the tensions that will bring about murder in a private plastic surgery clinic; Dalgliesh and his team moving methodically and empathetically among the witnesses and suspects; twisty plot points and most of all, humanity. There's a small but emotionally important sub-plot about Adam's fiancee, Emma, and an attack on one of her friends and the novel ends with an event I've been waiting for none too patiently--the wedding of Adam and Emma. I hope the 89-year-old Baroness James lives a long time so we can have more Dalgliesh stories.

ENDER IN EXILE/Orson Scott Card/B
A direct sequel to ENDER'S GAME, which means it fills in some of the time gap between that book and SPEAKER FOR THE DEAD. Ender may have won the war, but that doesn't mean he can go home. Instead, the 14-year-old is appointed governor of the first human colony in space. He elects to stay awake during the voyage (2 years in relative time, more than 40 years in earth time) and much of the action takes place on the colony ship. I wanted to like this more than I did--Ender actually began to bug me a little bit in his perfection and I thought Card shortchanged the ending of a critical POV character (a teenage girl whose mother wants her to marry Ender). But it was still an Ender story, which means I was happy to read it.

TUTANKHAMEN/Christine El Mahdy/B-
The story of Egypt's most famous king, placing him in the historical context of his lifetime. El Mahdy spend the first two-thirds of the book recounting the discovery of his tomb and then giving us the accepted version of Tutankhamen and the pharaoh who preceded him, the controversial Akhenaten. The last third gives her account of Akhenaten, the mysterious Smenkhare who ruled briefly after him, and the teenage Tutankhamen who died too young and might never have been known if not for the magic of his treasure-filled tomb. It was a little confusing to follow in style, but it did have some interesting points and I especially loved the pictures of some of the pharaoh's artifacts.

THE PRICE OF BUTCHER'S MEAT/Reginald Hill/A
It was a good month for series I love. In this Dalziel/Pascoe novel, Dalziel is sent to an expensive convalescent home on the Yorkshire coast to recover from his injuries and coma suffered in the last book. But of course it won't be restful--the local lady of the manor is found dead at her own hog roast. Rich, rude, and several-times married, Daphne Brereton had enemies to spare. Dalziel tries to keep out of Pascoe's way when he comes to investigate, but you can't keep a good copper down and it's Dalziel who possesses some criticial information. Filled with Hill's witty writing and unforgettable characters--I'm smiling just remembering the book.

THE FAITH CLUB/Idilby, Oliver, & Warner/B+
A book club read. After the 9/11 attacks, New York Muslim Ranya Idilby wonders what she can teach her children about being Muslim in America. She decides to write a children's book with two other mothers--one Christian, one Jewish. I don't know if the children's book was ever written--but THE FAITH CLUB has been very succesful. The three women talk honestly about their fears, their personal faith, and their preconceptions of the others' religions. It wasn't a perfect book, but it was intriguing and the friendship the three women develop is beautiful.

MYSTIC RIVER/Dennis Lehane/C
Beautifully written, impeccably rendered characters, a plot that falls into place just when it should . . . so why isn't it an A book? This is one of those times where I have to fall back on "I am not the audience for this book." The story opens with three young boys playing in the street. One of them gets in a car and vanishes for four days. Twenty-five years later, the boys are brought back together when the daughter of one is murdered. This story was bleak and there weren't enough sympathetic characters to ease the bleakness. Still, I can see why Lehane has a wide audience; he's a wonderful writer.

My 40 days have come and gone . . . and I still haven't written about the fabulous surprise my husband came up with.

My life feels like one long list of things I haven't yet done. Which, I suppose, is kind of the point of living. If I ever reach the end of the list, what will I do next?

I have a wonderful post about branding floating around my head, but it will have to float for at least another day. I find it difficult to concentrate on being intelligent and witty while teaching my high school sophomore the basics of driving around an empty parking lot and attending junior high parent teacher conferences and helping my 4th-grader put handcuffs on her biography/puppet of Harry Houdini and reassuring a crying 2nd-grader that, no, his watch is not two minutes fast as a neighborhood child teased.

I love my life. But it does make intelligent and witty a state devoutly to be desired rather than my natural state of being.

But I do have one piece of advice before I dive back into my natural state of being. And the advice is for me.

"Laura--do not, under any circumstances, tell your trainer that your goal is to run in St. Stephen's Green in Dublin in May. And do not ever, no matter how happy you are, proclaim that a given weight is 'hard, but not hard enough'. If you do these things, you deserve every ounce of sweat and every quivering muscle that ensues."

I'm just saying.

This was going to be a post about my wonderful, darling, devious husband and the surprise he pulled off for the end of my 40 Days of 40.

It's still coming.

But tonight, I have to do a little complaining about a night on which my feminist sensibilities went right out the window. Or in this case, down the drain.

I've spent the last two hours covered in filthy pipe water, courtesy of my backed-up kitchen sink. I've changed two sets of clothing, disconnected and reconnected a bunch of pipes, scrapped gunk out with a knife, and made multiple trips to the bathroom to dump the bowl that will never again be used for any type of food product in my house.

Two hours, one set of dedicated friends, a wire hanger, two loads of laundry, a mix of vinegar and baking soda, and a plunger later . . . the sink is working.

And I may never eat again. So really, it's a win all the way around.

Especially for my husband, who missed all the fun by being somewhere else tonight.

Feminist or not, I agree with Buffy: "I was raised to believe that the men dig up the corpses and the women have the babies."

My friend, Patty (see her blog at Pat Esden in my sidebar) assigned this meme to one of her characters. As someone who knows a good idea when I see it, I shamelessly stole--er, make that borrowed--the concept.

Meet Kieran Holt--17-year-old Londoner who has come to Whitby, Yorkshire after the death of her sister and gets more than she bargained for when she comes across an old house that she may or may not remember.

1. What are your nicknames? My mother, Vivian, calls me Kiki. I hate Kiki.

2. What do you do before bedtime? Study. It’s soothing.

3. What one place have you visited that you can't forget and want to go back to? Apparently Sorrows Court—though I’ve never been to the Yorkshire coast before. Explain, then, how I remember this house. And its long-dead owners.

4. What are some of your favorite scents? Books. New books, old books, libraries, bookstores. Oh--and fresh shortbread.

5. If you had a million dollars that you could only spend on yourself, what would you do with it? Buy a bookstore, hire someone to run it, and spend my days alone in a private library upstairs. Or possibly move to Africa and work in a public-health clinic. I’m 17—I don’t quite know yet.

6. What is your theme song? "The Wanderer" by Odd Project.

7. Do you trust easily? No.

8. Do you generally think before you act, or act before you think? According to my sister, I think and think and never act.

9. Is there anything that has made you unhappy these days? Besides my sister being dead?

10. Do you have a good body-image? I have a body. It works. For now.

11. What have you been seriously addicted to lately? Avoiding everything that might bring up painful memories of Alix.

12. How many colors are you wearing now? Olive green cargo pants, white t-shirt, pink hoodie.

13. What’s the last song that got stuck in your head? “Everything’s Magic” by Angels and Airwaves. I could swear my iPod knew what I was feeling the first time I looked at Sorrows Court--it sure picked an appropriate song.

14. What’s your favorite item of clothing? Alix’s flannel shirt that she always wore around the flat to keep warm.

15. What was the last book you read? Non-fiction? Just finished A-levels, so too many to list. Fiction? I’m a closet fantasy fan—Twilight by Stephenie Meyer.

16. What would you do with an extra five hundred dollars right now ... the only catch being that you have to spend it within a week? I have a trust fund and a generous trustee—an extra five hundred dollars would go into the fund and gather interest like the rest.

17. What items could you not go without during the day? iPod. Music is my most reliable distraction at the moment.

18. What should you be doing right now? Going to sleep. But I think I’ll go explore the Great Hall of Sorrows Court by night. There is definitely something odd in this house. It might just be me—or it might not.

YEAR 10

Who would have guessed that 70's hair could be so much better than 80's hair?

I'm not sure I can remember thirty years ago. Once I start thinking about being 10, I inevitably think about my one and only daughter who turned 10 a few months ago. (Of course, her birthday party is next week--it's just been that kind of year.)

So I thought . . . what are the differences between me at 10 and my daughter at 10?

1. I had a cat. My daughter does not. I do not wish to discuss the subject further. (Except to say: "Mom, now I totally get why you didn't want the cat. And apparently I'm meaner than you are.")

2. I have one brother. She has three.

3. I was a quiet, shy child. My daughter keeps getting moved at school and church for chattiness.

4. I had a radio. All feel free to laugh together, especially my daughter with her purple iPod shuffle.

5. I had a banana-seat bike. It's nice those seem to have the gone the way of dinosaurs.

6. I had color TV. With four channels. And if I was really bad, I had to watch the black-and-white set in my parents' room.

7. My big summer vacation was driving to Mexico in a motorhome with my cousins. My daughter is flying to Mexico for the second time this summer for a beach vacation.

Still, it's not all differences. We do share some things in common, besides our eye color. The biggest of these is reading. Nothing makes me happier (even while I'm telling her sternly to go to bed) than to find her reading in bed after 10:00 at night. Or shutting herself in her room when she "just has to finish this book now!" Or buying her books for Christmas and hearing a genuine squeal of delight.

Some pleasures remain the same.

MOTIVATION

I've now done three workouts with my personal trainer.

Three workouts in which she nearly made me cry (once with the body fat calipers, twice from reaching the physical edge.)

I'm proud to say I have learned something important from The Biggest Loser--Don't Ever Say I Can't. (Not out loud, at least--screaming it at the top of my inner lungs is another matter.)

What keeps me going the last five reps of a weight that's making my whole body tremble? Force of will? Stubbornness? Dreams of size-6 jeans? My jiggly stomach?

Alas, no. My motivation is much simpler.

Also fictional.

Captain Malcolm Reynolds.

I've got my Firefly DVD set sitting out on the trunk in my workout space. And when the screaming inside threatens to erupt out of my mouth, I just focus on Mal. And I hear what he said to Simon once: "You ain't weak. Don't know how smart you are . . . but you ain't weak and that's not nothing."

That's not nothing. Words to motivate--for me, at least.

JANUARY BOOKS

ARTHUR AND GEORGE/Julian Barnes/C
Arthur Conan Doyle and George Edalji. Non-fiction, I guess. Mystery about nasty letter-writing and vandalism that eventually lands Edalji in prison. Conan Doyle took up his case after his release from prison and helped clear him. Sort of. Honestly, that's all I remember. That's not a good sign.

A HISTORY OF THE KINGS OF BRITAIN/Geoffrey of Monmouth/A
Written by a Welshman in the 12th century, this history isn't so much fact as storytelling. But what wonderful storytelling! It purports to tell the history of the ancient Britons who were ruled over by the Romans, invaded by the Saxons and Angles, and finally driven to Wales and Cornwall. Geoffrey of Monmouth was the first major writer to give King Arthur a written form and many of the romances that picked up his story got it from Geoffrey's history. In many ways more informative about Geoffrey's time than those of the kings he's writing about.

CALLING MR. LONELY HEARTS/Laura Benedict/A-
Benedict's second novel (after the haunting ISABELLA MOON), it defies easy labels. Mystery? Suspense? Horror? Paranormal? It's got bits of all of them, woven into a story about three teenage girls who drive a young priest out of their school and, years later, have to deal with the consequences. When Varick comes to town, disaster follows for all three women: Del, struggling to fit into her perfect life; Alice, whose marriage is coming apart at the seams; and Roxanne, the artist who started it all. And when deals are made with the devil, not even the innocent are safe. Not an easy read, but beautifully written and haunting in its own right.

WICKED LOVELY/Melissa Marr/A-
Aislinn is a high schooler who has always followed her grandmother's cardinal rule: Never Let the Fairies Know You Can See Them. But when a particular fairy goes out of his way to be noticed, Aislinn finds herself caught in a power struggle that's spilling out of the fairy world into hers. The Summer King needs a Queen in order to defeat his Winter Queen mother's reign, and he thinks Aislinn is the one. An urban fairy tale for today's teens, with a pace that never lets up and a plot that has some interesting twists. I'll definitely read the next one.

HEIR TO SEVENWATERS/Juliet Marillier/A+
Ahhhhhh . . . this is how historical fantasy should be done. And where better to go than back to Sevenwaters, where Marillier's fame began. Clodagh is the sensible 3rd sister of 6 who keeps the household running while her mother is perilously pregnant. When baby Finbar is born, the long-awaited son and heir, rejoicing quickly turns to tragedy. Finbar is snatched from his cradle, replaced by a changeling child. But only Clodagh can see the changeling for what it is. Distrusted and frightened, Clodagh sets out on a quest to the Otherworld to find her brother. She's aided (naturally) by Cathal, who has his own secrets and a disturbing knowledge about the Fair Folk. Marillier is a master who doesn't disappoint--and she throws out enough hints to give me hope of more Sevenwaters books to come.

DRAGONFLY IN AMBER/Diana Gabaldon/A-
The sequel to OUTLANDER, equally lush and romantic. The bulk of the story takes place in France and Scotland in 1743-44, with Claire and Jamie trying to stop Bonnie Prince Charlie's invasion to restore his father's throne. With Claire's knowledge of the disaster awaiting the Highlanders at Culloden, they work behind the scenes to undermine the prince's fundraising while trying to avoid being labeled traitors. But history, it seems, cannot be outwitted--on the eve of the fateful battle, Jamie sends pregnant Claire back through the standing stones to her first husband, Frank. The book is framed with Claire, twenty years after her return, bringing her daughter back to Scotland to tell her about her birth father, who died at the Battle of Culloden in 1744. Or did he? I thought this one was a little overwritten and could have used some serious editing, but overall I enjoyed the romance and adventure and I have the third book waiting.

AFTERMATH & FRIEND OF THE DEVIL/Peter Robinson/B
Detective Chief Inspector Alan Banks is called in when a domestic violence call leads to the discovery of a vicious serial killer. The fittingly-titled AFTERMATH is complex story about what happens after that discovery and the mysteries that still have to be untangled, not least the question of motive. FRIEND OF THE DEVIL involves several characters from AFTERMATH, but I thought the first book was the more compelling. Robinson writes good characters, but I can't quite get into him the same way I've fallen in love with Reginald Hill, who also writes police procedurals set in Yorkshire.

THE SEDUCTION OF WATER/Carol Goodman/A
A re-read for book club. When Iris Greenfeder gives her writing students an assignment about fairy tales, she sets in motion an uncovering of long-held secrets--not least of which is why her mother died in a hotel fire when Iris was ten. Selkies and stolen necklaces, reformed criminals and hotel millionaires, a hot summer and a search for a mother's missing manuscript . . . Goodman writes smart, romantic, and richly atmospheric thrillers that are great for book club questions like: What's the difference between a smart thriller and a dumb one?

YEAR 20

I'm a few days late with this. I think it's because I could only take so much humiliation in one week. After the body fat percentage, I had to fill in the cracks of my esteem before I dared post this photo.

Of course, it was 1989. I was not (please, tell me I was not) the only 20-year-old walking around with bangs to heaven. The truly sad thing is that I spent more time doing my hair in the years of this style then I ever have before or since. So much effort--so little reward.

Aside from the tragedy that was my hair, 20 was a good enough year for me. I was a junior at BYU, loving Shakespeare and the Romantic poets and Victorian novels. I finally had my own car (and a driver's license--that's another story). I had a job at a doctor's office and friends and even some dates from time to time.

It was also a turning point year for me. It was the year I pondered what I wanted in my life and the year I decided to take a break from school. One week after my 21st birthday, I started a new adventure as a missionary in Haiti.

There is no better decision I could have made. Haiti changed me, physically and emotionally. I would not be who I am today without those 18 months spent with Haitians, speaking their language, loving their children, being part of their lives.

I'm starting to see a pattern here--20 was the year I prepared for Haiti; 30 was the year I found myself in a new state and new home; what will 40 be?

Can't wait to find out.

PAINFULLY HONEST

I'm not entirely happy with the way I look.

Yes, I've lost 15 pounds since last spring. But I've got another 10 or 15 to go, and I have far-off hopes that include size-6 skirts and running a 5k.

Enter my 40 days of 40 and my darlingest husband who paid attention to all my griping and got me the best present that I would never have thought to ask for . . .

A personal trainer.

Who comes to my house.

It doesn't get any better. Which is what I'm reminding myself as I sit here, vaguely aware of muscles that I'm pretty sure will hurt tomorrow morning. "This is a good thing, this is a good thing, this is a good thing . . ."

Good news: in our very first session at 7:00 a.m. this morning, she had me doing things I didn't think I could. Like when I'd finished 3 sets of something-or-other lifts and thought I was done, only to be handed a heavier weight and told, "This is your heavy set." And that one was followed by a return to the lighter weights. 5 sets? No wonder I never made progress on my own.

Bad news: the session started with the ritual taking of my measurements and the calipers for body fat. (Followed by the ritual throwing of myself off a cliff into a pile of doughnuts.)

In the interest of using public humiliation as a motivator for change, I will now tell you that my body fat percentage is 32%. Looking at different charts, that puts me anywhere from poor to barely acceptable to obese.

Obese?! Really?! I wear a size 8! (Of course, I also recently preached to you all about how sizes and weight numbers don't matter.)

But body fat percentage is another story. That's a number I intend to change in the next four months of twice-a-week training sessions and changed-up cardio workouts. I want to drop that number, drop my weight, increase my strength, and increase my endurance.

I'll let you know how it's going. If only because I don't want 32% body fat to be the last number you remember about me.

2008 IN BOOKS

Where has January gone? Into fog and inversions and sleet.

Where is Maui when you need it?

Sigh.

I did finally tally up my last year in books on this icy day.

Total Books Read: 114 (almost 20 fewer than last year--I thought so much time in hospitals would have increased my total)

Non-fiction: 30

Young Adult: 13

Fantasy: 14

Historical: 25

Mystery: 52

Although my overall number was down from last year, my percentages stayed pretty much the same. (In other words, you just can't take the genre-lover out of the woman.)

The very best books? Here's my spur-of-the-moment list . . .

Best non-fiction that was not a re-read: DEATH BE NOT PROUD/John Gunther (a 17-year-old's final year of life with a brain tumor, written by his father in 1948)

Best YA: a tie between two wildly different novels--THE BOOK THIEF/Marcus Zusak (young girl in WWII Germany and her friends and family) and SPECIAL TOPICS IN CALAMITY PHYSICS/Marisa Peshl (intricately plotted, exuberantly written, what-is-going-to-happen-next story of a private school girl and underground political movements)

Best Fantasy: THE GOLDEN COMPASS/Phillip Pullman (daemons, witches, armored bears, and the most compelling child character in ages)

Best Historical: OUTLANDER/Diana Gabaldon (a post-WWII woman goes back in time to 18th-century Scotland and falls in love with a Highlander, richly romantic and lushly epic in both story and style)

Best Mystery: has to be subdivided into:

Best Continuation of a Series: a tie--CARELESS IN RED/Elizabeth George (for pulling off the nearly impossible task of following Inspector Lynley after the traumatic death of his wife and unborn child and offering an intricate mystery to boot) and THE LAUGHTER OF DEAD KINGS/Elizabeth Peters (because I love John Tregarth and Peters obviously had nothing but great fun writing this book--I smiled all the way through)

Best First in a Series: VARIOUS HAUNTS OF MEN/Susan Hill (wonderful characters and a twisty plot that ended in a stunning about-face--unfortunately the next two in the series would fit in the category Biggest Disappointments)

Best Stand-Alone: TOUCHSTONE/Laurie R. King (anarchists, British upper-classes, an FBI agent searching for a bomber, and a traumatized soldier with an unusual skill are woven into a wonderful story that I loved every word of)

Best New Series To Me: the Armand Gamache novels by Louise Penney, starting with STILL LIFE (a Quebec officer investigates murder with humanity and grace, compelling characters and plots, wonderful sense of place)

Honorable Mentions:

DREAMS FROM MY FATHER/Barack Obama (biography of our new president's early life)
FIELD OF DARKNESS/Cornelia Read (first in a mystery series set in the 1980s with a journalist who uncovers murderous secrets in her family's past)
A THOUSAND SPLENDID SUNS/Khaled Hosseini (the unlikely friendship of two very different Afghani women, even better than the author's THE KITE RUNNER)
THE NIGHT VILLA and THE SONNET LOVER/Carol Goodman (I love her atmospheric romantic thrillers and these both had exotic locations and sympathetic heroines)

Do you know what I'll remember most about this last year in books? Where and when I was reading them. TOUCH NOT THE CAT by Mary Stewart, for instance, is the book I took with me to the ER on January 1st and finished reading by my son's bedside later that week after he'd been diagnosed with cancer. Re-reading Bill Bryson's NOTES FROM A SMALL ISLAND during his daily radiation treatments, just to have something familiar and funny to take my mind away for a little bit. Weeping my way through Joan Didion's THE YEAR OF MAGICAL THINKING for book club--I'd recommended it after reading it the previous year but reading it again while my son went through chemo was an entirely different experience.

I wonder what I'll be reading two weeks from now while he has first follow-up MRI since treatment ended.

Maybe I won't be reading--maybe I'll be writing. Now there's a thought! Here's to 2009--The Year of Selling My First Book :)

In honor of my 10th day of being 40, I thought I'd go back ten years and give a peek of my life at 30.

(Full disclosure: the photo is taken shortly before my 31st birthday. I do not like any photos from earlier in the year. Deal with it.)

Worst thing about turning 30? I was living with my parents. That's just embarrassing. Granted, it was temporary, but by my birthday, it had been going on for weeks longer than we'd hoped. We had moved from Seattle the previous August and were building a new house; everyone who's built a house will understand how the weeks dragged by. To the point that, around about my 30th birthday in January, my mother was asking, "Now when is your house supposed to be finished?"

Not soon enough.

While living with my parents, our one and only daughter was born. After my shortest labor (four hours) and with no epidural (not the gameplan), my husband and I graduated from one-on-one parenting to zone defense (basic philosophy--there's more of them than of us, try not to let anyone die). I had thoughtfully pulled out everything I would need for a newborn before the move and made sure it didn't get packed away in the storage unit. Which was all well and good until we put the swing together and realized we had all the pieces except the motor.

We finally moved (into the home we're still living in) just after Valentine's Day 1999. We had no neighbors, something that would not change for an entire year. We had no yard, something that would not change until nearly the end of summer. We had no TV, something I had ambitious hopes of never changing (Hope: "Maybe we'll discover how wonderful it is with no television!" Reality: "Do you know how many times I've watched that Sesame Street videotape in the last 7 months? Get me a satellite dish now!")

Life was good :)

And here's my basic mantra about growing older: I can totally love getting older as long as my children do the same. I'll take 40 any day of the week over having 3 children age 5 and under.

Check back in 10 days for a look back at 20. (It will be worth it for the 80s hairstyle alone.)

FORTY DAYS OF FORTY

Good news--my birthday did not include a single doctor's visit.

Bad news--I'm still forty.

Good news--It's better than the alternative.

So what did I do on my birthday? I got up at 2:45 a.m.; drove an hour to Haiku, Maui; rode another hour up Haleakala; watched the sun rise over the crater; rode a bike 29 miles back to Haiku.

It seemed like a good idea right up until the part where I had to get up at 2:45 a.m.

Seriously? It was a lot of fun. Which might have something to do with the bike ride being almost completely downhill. Oh, and for anyone who might be considering this in the future? They're not kidding when they say it's cold on top of Haleakala. And I don't mean cold for Maui--I mean cold, period.

Now I'm in the midst of my Forty Days of Forty.

This concept was introduced to me by my friend, Laura (great name) whose husband took it upon himself to make sure each day for forty days before her birthday was something special. (As he told me, don't get too excited. Yes, one day he gave her a horse. But another day, he gave her a pancake. The classic "It's the thought that counts.")

I, selfish creature that I am, did not want to start my forty days before my birthday, as that would have necessitated sharing it with the month of Christmas and New Year's Eve. So I'm doing the forty days after.

I am currently on day 7. So far, so good. No more Maui, but I have my friends. It's a fair trade.

Yesterday's treat fell somewhere between a horse and a pancake. While talking to Katie on the phone in the morning, we decided to go to lunch. Why not? It's my forty days, after all.

And if I can spread that concept around, the world will be a little better place.

At least for forty days.

(Ask me how I feel about my age on Day Forty-One.)

RANDOM

1. What happens when Dad gives 15-year-old a cell phone for Christmas without asking Mom? Said 15-year-old takes video of Mom attempting Dancing With the Stars on Wii. And shows it to his friends. At which point Mom threatens to disable either son, dad, or phone.

2. The Law of Inverse Time and Writing: a fabulous, not-to-be-missed opportunity to share one's writing will arise at the end of a month in which absolutely no writing has been done except the family Christmas letter.

3. Taking down Christmas decorations is almost as satisfying as putting them up.

4. Diet success during the holidays means gaining no more than two pounds. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.

5. Sub-zero temperatures and two feet of snow in the front yard are absolutely blissful to contemplate when one knows that 24 hours from now, one will be contemplating it while on a beach in Maui.

6. As long as my 40th birthday this week doesn't include outpatient chemotherapy or a two-hour long meeting with my son's radiation oncologist, I will be delighted to bid 39 farewell.

DECEMBER BOOKS

DEATH BE NOT PROUD/John Gunther/A
Written in 1948, a non-fiction account of the author's only son, Johnny, and his diagnosis with and death from a brain tumor. What I found most intriguing was immersing myself in a cancer parent's world sixty years ago and how different it was. Johnny was one of the first treated with a precursor of chemotherapy, developed from the chemical weapon mustard gas. Parents weren't allowed to spend the night in the hospital--this 17-year-old boy would call his dad last thing every night to say goodnight. Pathology reports took weeks without computers and faxes to send information. Doctors would not give any information to Johnny's mother, only his father. Darn good thing none of our doctors tried that! A small but beautiful book about a boy and his graceful last year of life. Recommended.

ALL SOULS/Michael Patrick McDonald/B-
Another non-fiction, about the author's family and his years growing up in Boston's South Side. It was well-written (I would give it an A for style and prose and scene-setting) but depressing. Four of the author's brothers died, in prison or shot by police or drug overdoses or suicide, and one sister fell (or jumped) off a building while high and suffered permanent brain damage. Unless you're interested in a sociological account of political incompetence, gang violence, and the destroying nature of drugs, I wouldn't recommend it.

IN THE WOODS/Tana French/A+
Another new crime writer to love! Hooray! French's first novel is set in Ireland where a police detective investigates the murder of a young girl on an archaelogical site. But it's complicated (naturally) by the fact that Detective Rob Ryan was once Adam Ryan, a 12-year-old boy who went into the woods with his two best friends and came out alone, catatonic and with someone else's blood in his shoes. The new murder site contains a link to that old disappearance and Ryan sets the stage for trouble when he remains on the case by lying about his past. He's never been able to remember what happened that afternoon when he was 12, but working this murder begins to unlock his memories. It's not an easy or light book, but I was drawn right in and impressed by French's character work. I especially liked Cassie Maddox, Ryan's police partner, who is the main character in French's second novel (which I'm taking with me to Hawaii this week.)

AN INCOMPLETE REVENGE/Jacqueline Winspear/B+
Maisie Dobbs' latest case takes her to Kent and the hop-picking fields. It also reveals more about her past and the gypsy blood I didn't know she had. While clearing up a land deal involving vandalism and mysterious fires, Maisie realizes that the village is holding a secret from the war that continues to reverberate almost twenty years later. I liked this one much better than the other recent entries in the series; it was, of course, well-plotted and well-told.

UNABOMBER/Robert Graysmith/C
I was looking for an in-depth study of Ted Kacynzski and his life and psychology, but ended up with a minimum of human interest and a maximum of technical detail. I'm not really interested in the schematics of each bomb he made--not to mention I can't understand them. But there was just enough personal storyline to keep me going. I liked the accounts of his adolescence, his short teaching career, and especially his interactions with his family. But it wasn't the biography I was looking for.

NEW ENGLAND WHITE/Stephen Carter/A
Carter writes beautiful prose and twisty plots about upper-class African-Americans who keep coming up against the facts of their skin color in white society. But not really. What he really writes about is people--difficult, complex, ambitious, and interesting people who wind up in even more interesting situations. One snowy night, Lemaster and Julia Carlyle come upon a body in the snow. It turns out to be Julia's former lover, Kellen Zant, an economics professor at the university where Lemaster is president. Julia thinks it's only the emotional landmines she has to watch out for her, but sooon discovers that Zant left her clues to something dangerous he was working on before his death. Now the people who came after him are after her, sure that she will decipher what he's left behind, a secret that involves her husband and may change the course of the next presidential election. But all Julia wants it to be left alone--until she realizes her troubled daughter is at the heart of the secrets.

EXTRAS/Scott Westerfield/B+
The newest in the UGLIES series, EXTRAS benefits from a new point of view character. Aya Fuse lives in a city that functions on reputation, determined by how many people connect to your website (or the future equivalent of such). Trying to kick a story that will rocket her out of extra-hood and into the high life, Aya infiltrates a group of girls pulling amazing tricks. But the real story comes in a train tunnel and with the alien-looking creatures who lead them to what looks a lot like a missile silo. Set several years after Tally Youngblood and her friends changed the world, Aya is a refreshing voice and when Tally shows up, it's fun to see someone else's take on a character who told her own story for three books.

CHRISTMAS NUMBERS

8: books received by me from me

1: linen-silk coat received by me from me

12: inches of snow on Christmas Day

16: people fed at my house on Christmas Eve

4: chairs borrowed to seat people on Christmas Eve

7:30 a.m.: hour we allowed children out of their rooms on Christmas Day

2: children who had to be woken up at that hour (not the teenagers--it was the little ones who were sleepy)

4: presents my husband cheated and bought me after telling me to buy my own gifts

2: presents I cheated and bought my husband (3 if you count the DVDs that were for both of us)

16: Christmas Days as husband and wife

1: incredibly surprised and happy 15-year-old, the newest owner of a cell phone (not my idea)

2874: calories burned on December 24th--I usually work out between 45-60 minutes to burn between 2100-2200 calories a day--apparently, all I need to go each day is get up at 7:00 a.m. to shop and go to breakfast, then spend the rest of the day cooking, cleaning, and wrapping gifts--who knew?

12: days until my husband and I leave for Maui

Merry Christmas!

FICTIONAL CRUSHES

My friend, Amy, gave me a wonderful idea for a post--list my fictional crushes. (So my husband can blame her for what follows--I'm just doing what she suggested.)

Where do I begin . . .With Frank and Joe Hardy solving crimes? Gilbert Blyth holding fast to his love for Anne? Austen's Mr. Darcy or Bronte's Mr. Rochester or du Maurier's Maxim de Winter?

In ascending order, here are my Top Five Entirely Fictional Crushes, loved from words alone and the stories they live in.

5. This was the hardest spot to fill, but after long and careful thought I had to go with Faramir, Captain of Gondor (THE LORD OF THE RINGS/J.R.R. Tolkien)

In the film versions of Lord of the Rings, Aragorn is far and away my man, but before the films were the books and in the books, first read when I was 17, Faramir has my heart. What to make of a man who can resist the One Ring? Who fights for a father who torments him? Who falls in love with Eowyn . . . (I'll get to her in another post--Fictional Women I Wish I Could Be). So Faramir it is.

4. Francis Crawford of Lymond, once Master of Culter, later Comte de Sevigny (THE LYMOND CHRONICLES/Dorothy Dunnett)

I think I'd love him for his titles alone--there aren't a lot of great titles in today's world. The first time I read the six books in the Lymond Chronicles, it took me to the end of the third book to fall for Francis Crawford. He's the epitome of a riddle wrapped in an enigma, something the author perpetuates by only very rarely using his point of view. He's a Renaissance man in the Tudor era, who can fight and love and deceive in multiple languages and across continents. He's charming, clever, athletic, cruel, loyal, dangerous, and vulnerable. And he recognizes a good woman when he meets one--even though Philippa is only ten years old the first time she crosses his path.

3. Peter Wimsey (The Wimsey Novels/Dorothy L. Sayers)

Younger son of a Duke, army captain in WWI who "had a bad war", collector of rare books and solver of mysteries in 1920s and 30s England. He babbles about anything and everything, sings like a professional, and has beautiful hands. He also has the good taste to fall head over heels for a mystery novelist the first time he sees her, as she's standing trial for her life. It's Harriet Vane who makes Peter human and crushable--I re-read the Peter/Harriet stories more often than the Peter stand-alones, just to imagine what it would be like to have a rich, titled man in love with me.

2. John Tregarth (The Vicky Bliss Novels/Elizabeth Peters)

I fell in love with John the first time he ran away from a gun in THE STREET OF THE FIVE MOONS. Art thief and avowed coward, John is bound to break into bad jokes at the most inopportune moments. He also has a bad habit of leaving Vicky to pay the bills and, although she never knows when he'll show up, she does know that he'll bring trouble with him. But she can't resist his insane sense of humor and his esoteric knowledge of English poetry--until he shows up with a pretty little wife and in the company of dangerous men in NIGHT TRAIN TO MEMPHIS. I defy anyone (okay, any woman) to read that book and not fall for John.

1. Ramses Emerson (The Amelia Peabody Novels/Elizabeth Peters--what can I say? Clearly Elizabeth Peters and I have the same ideas of what makes an irresistible man)

Although I generally love seeing books made into films, just to see the beautiful settings brought to life, I hope I never see Ramses Emerson caught in flesh. That way, I can continue to worship him through the pages of books alone. Ramses is the son of Egyptologist parents in the early 20th century and is himself a brilliant scholar and linguist. But it's his actions that make him crushable--from disguising himself as an Egyptian nationalist to working undercover as a spy during WWI to scaling the sheer wall of a cliff-side dwelling to get to the woman he loves . . . Sigh. And when that love, Nefret, marries another man in a fit of pique, the crush is absolute. Ramses Rules. End of story.

So what can you learn about my psyche from this list?

First, that I'm an Anglophile. Barring Faramir, each of this men is British (and I think a point can be made for Faramir--at least his author is British.) True, Francis Crawford is loyal Scots through and through, but British is British, whether he wants to admit that or not.

Second, that I'm a sucker for other times and other worlds. Except for John Tregarth, none of these books or men are contemporary. What can I say? I like swords and battles and chivalry.

Third, that each of these men has something in common besides the British accent: principles. As a character says of Peter Wimsey in GAUDY NIGHT: "That is a man able to subdue himself to his own ends. I feel sorry for anyone who comes up against his principles, whatever they may be."

The principles of an art thief may not seem to have anything in common with those of a Tudor soldier or an Egyptologist. But each of these men, in their own stories and their own circumstances and their own ways, comes up against a choice to break those principles. And they don't.

Peter Wimsey lays out the facts of an Oxford poison pen even when he believes it will destroy any chance he has with Harriet. John walks away from Vicky, allowing her and even pushing her to think the worst of him, in order to save her life. Francis Crawford sacrifices every single personal love to protect his country and his family's honor. Faramir sends Frodo away with the One Ring even though he knows his father will never forgive him for not taking it.

And Ramses? He will do anything to ensure Nefret's happiness, even when it appears to take her away from him. And he will endure any pain, mental or physical, to save others. And he will drive himself to the point of illness in order to do his duty to his family and country.

And the women they love? Eowyn, Philippa, Harriet, Vicky, and Nefret are independent and stubborn. They go their own way and they make their own choices, some of them stupid.

And the men wouldn't have it any other way.

In GAUDY NIGHT (it's the one I've most recently re-read), Harriet says that she almost wishes Peter would interfere instead of leaving her to make up her own mind about their relationship. And someone tells her: "He will never do that. That's his weakness. He'll never make up your mind for you. You'll have to make your own decisions. You needn't be afraid of losing your independence; he will always force it back on you."

Here's where I make up to my husband for this post: he doesn't have a sword, or a long list of hereditary titles, or a desert cliff to climb.

But he has principles. He has never broken them.

And he has always, since we were 17 years old, forced my independence back on me.

That's not a crush.

That's love.

WHOSE CHILD ARE YOU?

My daughter likes to read. A lot. Every night around here it's "Hey! Turn off your light and go to bed!"

But last night was a new one.

While I blow-dried her hair, she kept reading. Had to use both hands to keep the pages from being blown over, but she didn't falter.

Could she be any more my child?