Middlemarch, and Me, and Summer Reading

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books at bedsideThere are approximately thirty books in my bedside stack of in-progress and to-be-read books.

I don’t know the exact number.  Creating an actual reckoning of those volumes would probably fill me with so much guilt I would immediately leave the bedroom and turn on the television.

Right now, I am reading:

The Bronte’s Went to Woolworth’s (Rachel Ferguson)

Mrs. Tim of the Regiment (D. E. Stevenson)

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (Susanna Clarke)

The Hunger Games (Suzanne Collins)

But summer is approaching, and I have summer reading lists on the brain.  I still sometimes prepare these for myself.  They usually include some of the thirty-odd volumes which seem to have a permanent residence in the stack of to-be-read books; and other books, newer books, which have caught the changing pleasure of my infantile attention span for the moment.

I know my planned summer reading will include Marilynne Robinson’s Home; I’ve been saving it to read when I was in the right frame of mind, as well as – and I am somewhat bracing myself already – George Eliot’s Middlemarch.  When George Eliot last appeared on my blog, it was related to an article I had read about George Eliot that made comparisons to Jane Austen and even – to a degree – wrote about these two authors as though they wrote the same type of novel.

Because I don’t know whether I entirely agree with the conclusions I reached in that post, at book group last weekend I had a very brief conversation with someone who is far more well read and thoughtful about these matters – and who certainly has what I would judge to be a far less emotional attachment to Jane Austen – than me.  From that conversation, I have determined – the academic within requires it of me – to let George Eliot have her fair say.

So, maybe one of you will add Middlemarch to your summer reading list, and we can discuss our findings.  It’s currently winging its way to me; in the interim, lest it come up yet again, my dearest sister, I am (it was at the top of the list!) determined to finish The Bronte’s Went to Woolworth’s, though I confess I have yet to find myself on an even keel in that novel.

What are you going to read this summer?

The Two-for-One Deal and the Single Girl

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I’ve always felt that the bouquet toss at weddings was one of the biggest foes of the single girl: the bride’s little joke on her still-single friends. Please line up, and, if you’re not too humiliated to act eager, elbow your way to prime bouquet-catching real estate while I launch this probably-going-to-fall-apart-midair projectile blindly over my head backwards.

But last night, I discovered another, perhaps greater, foe of the single girl: the two-for-one deal.

Yesterday evening I had to go to Costco. Foolishly, I went while hungry. In a moment of weakness – no, let me stress, hungry weakness, which made the idea of stopping at a more appropriately-sized grocery store in addition to Costco out of the question – I passed through the bakery in search of some bread-like foodstuffs to eat with my dinner d’jour (tomato soup) and picked up a bag of bagels and a small thing of muffins. (Don’t judge; it’s just been one of those weeks.)

I like to go to Costco on weeknights because it’s usually much less busy than on a weekend. For whatever reason, though, everyone was apparently trying to check out at the same time last night. So my line choice was based entirely on minimizing line length and maximizing the distance between me and the large man who was yelling aggressively at his little boy.

It so happens that I’m in the cute checker’s line, the chatty one with the cool glasses. I’ve been in his line before. He was super chatty then, too, and since he’s cute, that’s kind of a problem for me. Because, irritatingly, I still blush like a twelve-year-old when a cute guy talks to me. Or when I’m embarrassed. Or when I’ve been startled by something silly. Cute Glasses Checker starts the check-out process, and inevitably the first things he scans are the muffins and the bagels.

“Hey Stace, what did you want to do for your second one for both of these?” he says.

I look at him blankly. Did he really just call me Stace? I put together that he’s read my name on my Costco card and automatically shortened it to the too-familiar-for-strangers-and-checkers-to-use Stace.

“You did know these were two for the price of one, right?”

I did. Blushing begins.

“Well, I was kind of hoping we could just skip the second one. I won’t go through that much food.” This is what I get for ignoring my healthy-eating-conscience and putting that many calories in my cart.

“Isn’t there anyone you can share them with?” he says. I blush deeper. “Mom? Dad? Friends? Boyfriend?” I’m shaking my head to all of these questions, although I am neither an orphan, nor friendless; but my parents don’t live in the same city, and I’m not good enough friends with anyone where I live to randomly show up at their door with Costco food, which is how his scenario was playing in my mind. And, obviously, no boyfriend. My face is starting to feel really hot at this point.

“You do know you’re paying for both of them, right?” he says. I nod; although, in hindsight – if the deal is two for the price of one, technically, one of them is free, right? So if I choose not to take advantage of the free food which I will not use and which I do not want to take, I’m not actually paying more for the single item than I would without the deal. Right? That very clever logical argument did not occur to me last night.

“They freeze really well!” he says.

“My freezer is really small.” And it is. I live in an apartment with a standard, minuscule freezer, which is already at a fullness that requires excavation and juggling prior to extraction.

“There’s really no one you can share them with? You know, you could just give them out to bums.”

And now I’m annoyed. Just let me leave with my guilt and my muffins already! “What a good idea!” I say. “I’ll remember that for next time.”

Except next time, I’m definitely avoiding his line.

A story from the weekend

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This weekend, we had a taste of good weather.  The sky was perfectly blue with barely a cloud in sight.  It was warm.  As I am once again sleeping in sweaters, and wrapped in a fleece blanket on the couch, writing this, that was a welcome change.

I was at my parents’, and their flowering pear tree is blooming.

It sits right outside my old bedroom window, and on Saturday I went out to take a closer look at the flowers, only to discover that the tree was positively swarming in bees.

I’m petrified of bees.  My sister got married outside last summer, and my parents practically invested in citronella candles and wasp traps for fear that I, the maid of honor, would embarrass everyone at the altar-slash-paper dove garland strung between two trees.  In the end, it was too cold and windy for bugs to really be a problem.  (Sorry, Mom and Dad!)

There were so many bees on the pear tree that you could hear them buzzing.  Did I mention that this tree is right outside my old bedroom window?  Let’s hope there aren’t any holes in that window screen.  For everyone’s sake.

Later in the afternoon I saw this lone, little cloud in the otherwise perfectly blue sky.  I went out to snag a photo, because I love little clouds drifting slowly and alone in the blue sky.

That little non-cloud object obscuring the beautiful blue?  A bee.