Update

I was doing so well at my goal of posting more often and then this month things fell apart! Part of it was the heat; it was too hot to think for almost 3 weeks this month. Happily, it cooled off completely for a couple days and now it's nice, normal summer temps. Part of it was lack of planning. I usually plan my weeks carefully and include "blog" two days each week (only 1 when I'm very busy with work, but summer is not that time); I realized that I was planning less because of the heat and I had forgotten to add "blog" to my days for the past two weeks. I'm back on track now and catching up with things.

To catch up on a bit of news.....

In June, my friend and I went on our "we're turning 50 this year" road trip. We drove south through the mountains, spend a couple days in Salmon Arm exploring the area, and then headed back home through the Banff area. 

The highlights of the trip: 8 used bookstores, 6 museums, and a kangaroo farm. One of the museums was the Frank Slide Interpretive Centre; I've wanted to go there since I first read a novel that takes place during the time of the Frank disaster. We also went to the Revelstoke Railway museum and learned a lot about trains and the building of the railroad through the Rockies. Oh, and on the way home we stopped at the Spiral Tunnels just a the right time to watch a very long train going through one of the tunnels. There were also some smaller museums, and we made one lady happy by coming into her museum and reading everything (it seems most people come in, look around, and leave without learning all the things). The kangaroo farm was so much fun: we fed and petted capybaras and wallabies, met a very large turkey who seemed to be very full of his own self-importance, admired some beautiful peacocks, and generally enjoyed ourselves.

The best news of summer though: I have a new baby granddaughter! She was born a couple weeks ago and is absolutely adorable. She all chubby and squishy and has a lovely amount of hair and I love her very much. Her big sister adores her and always wants to hold her. 

And now it's time to buckle down and get ready for fall!

Mandy: A book review

While visiting one of the many used bookstores my friend and I went to while on vacation, I stumbled upon Mandy by Julie Andrews Edwards. I knew that the book existed, thanks to reading Julie Andrews' autobiographies, but I had forgotten about it until I saw it in the store. She had originally written the story for her daughter Jennifer as a forfeit in a game (it was going to be a short story, but it grew). In fact, Julie Andrews has written several stories, many with Emma Walton Hamilton, her daughter from her first marriage. Mandy is the first of her books that I've read.

Mandy is 10 and lives in an orphanage (a nice one, not one of the miserable ones that show up in many stories). She is exploring one day and finds a small cottage that seems abandoned. Mandy starts to clean up the cottage and the garden, clearing weeds and planting flowers. She keep the cottage a secret and enjoys having a place of her own.

In time, there are troubles with her constant disappearances, a mysterious stranger leaving her messages, and a very bad illness that leads to everything being discovered. And....I will not spoil the ending, but of course Mandy gets her happily-ever-after!

Mandy is an interesting and well-written story. The main character is sympathetic and, despite her faults, is a rather likeable girl. The other characters generally exist to keep the story going and lack a lot of depth, but it's meant to be a story about Mandy. It's a fairly straight-forward story with no major plot twists (although younger readers may not see the ending coming as quickly as I did; as an adult, I have a lot more book experience); even with it being somewhat predictable for me, I quite enjoyed the story. It's the type of book that I would have read over and over as a child and probably invented my own day dreams about.

Mandy intended for the 8-12 year old range, and I think they will enjoy it. 

Unfocused

 There are a pile of things to do this summer, some of which I should be working on today, but I am feeling very unfocused. 

Why?

1. I went to the library this morning, and it's very hot today, so I came home already tired.

2. Hot outside = warm inside, even with the fans going. 

3. I had a cold for most of the past week and I'm in the last bits of it (the mild cough and bit of stuffiness that seem to go on forever after a cold).

4. They're working either on my balcony or on one close, so the noise is disruptive. Mostly I'm able to tune things out when they're working on other parts of the building, but not banging right outside my window or the sound of sawing (especially sawing metal).

So, I'm very unfocused. I suspect that this will go on for a while until it cools down again. I'll try to get things done, but it may be slow!

Almost a book review by a student

One of my tutoring students has been reading Romeo and Juliet. She is not overly impressed by it; in fact, rather than view it as either a romance or a tragedy, she has declared it a comedy. She finds the entire story over-the-top absurd! I love talking with her about it because I view it as a cautionary tale: don't rush into a relationship and always listen to your parents. Between the two of us, we've really torn the entire story apart and it's been so much fun!

A couple quotes from her essay:

Romeo and Juliet is one of the most famous dramas in history, and yet it is quite silly.

It goes on and on. In the end they are both dead. There is quite a lot of drama in this drama.

Suffice to say, she is not a huge fan of Romeo and Juliet! It's quite nice to teach young ladies who don't think the whole thing is just sooooo romantic!

Watching by Proxy

There is a Very Important hockey game on tonight. I don't have the means to watch the game, but I long ago discovered the art of "watching by proxy". I just leave the window open and listen for loud cheers or cries of anger and I know exactly who is winning.

Summer

It is summer, sort of. Officially it doesn't start until later this week, and the weather hasn't exactly shouted "It's Summer!" quite yet. There have been some warmer days, but it's mostly been cooler and wet, although that's supposed to change later this week as well.

For me, though, it's summer. All the school year stuff is done: Sunday School, work, women's ministry, history class, whatever. In summer, I have a bit of tutoring and prep for fall. Otherwise, it's free time.

The challenge of summer is using the time wisely, both to get ready for fall, take care of stuff that I'm too busy during the school year (especially towards the end) to get done, and find time for rest. I have a list of things to do, and each thing seems to be getting bigger as I look into it more clearly! 

June is a bit funny because it's downtime, but there's still a lot going on, and I have a week of proper vacation coming up (in which I actually leave the city for somewhere else), so there's also prep for leaving to take care of.

Then there are two months of proper summer with things to do and books to read. I'm working on getting organized now and getting into the routine of summer, but it's hard when I know that soon it will be disrupted by the lack of routine of vacation time. Still, things are slowly getting started and ideas are percolating in my head.

I like summer. I like the time to rest and the time to study and the time to prepare for fall. And by fall, I'm ready for things to start up again.

Once Upon a Wardrobe

I recently found Once Upon a Wardrobe by Patti Callahan on a suggested list of books about the 1950s. I had read her book Becoming Mrs. Lewis some years back and enjoyed it well enough, so I thought I'd give this one a try.

It is a wonderful book. The story starts with George, an 8-year old boy with a bad heart and the knowledge that he is going to die, probably soon. He has recently read a new book, The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, and absolutely loved it, and he wants to know more: where did Narnia come from? George has an older sister, Megs, who is attending one of the colleges at Oxford, and he asks her to find Mr. Lewis (who teaches at Oxford) and ask him where Narnia came from. 

Megs is a mathematician and loves numbers and figuring things out. She does not understand George's love of fantasy and his insistence that Narnia is real somehow. Because she loves him, Megs agrees to at least try talking with Mr. Lewis. And we discover that Once Upon a Wardrobe is really Megs's story, as she visits Mr. Lewis, learns about the role fantasy can play in the world -- neither more nor less important than her beloved math equations, and begins to see a bigger world than the one she knew.

The visits don't go exactly as Megs expected; Mr. Lewis answers her questions by giving her stories about his childhood, growing years, schooling, war years (both World Wars), and faith. Megs goes home and tells the stories to George, and so we get stories within the story. 

The book was fun to read, even the tough parts. The main story is well-written and interesting, and the stories-within-the-story are delightful and, so far as I know, quite accurate to Mr. Lewis's life. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who loves Narnia.