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Summer book report

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Ah, the lazy days of summer, the perfect time to curl up in the sun on your favorite lounge chair and get lost in the pages of a good book. I’ll admit there weren’t nearly enough of those moments this past summer, but I managed to devour a handful of delicious reads. Here are a few of my faves:

Pax by Sarah Pennypacker
Youngest and I began this audio book on a nearly hour long trip to one of his soccer games. We were immediately hooked. Normally I’d continue listening alone, but he felt strongly that I wait for him to be in the car so that we could listen together. It killed me, but I love my boy and love that we had something to share. After we finished, he asked to borrow the CDs so that he could play them in his bedroom before he went to sleep. Hopefully there weren’t subliminal messages contained within because I’m relatively certain he listened to the book another four or five times. Pax tells the story of a boy and his abandoned fox, and it is beautiful and heartbreaking. I strongly recommend it for children (those able handle the painful themes of war, death, and loss) and adults alike.

The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry by Gabrielle Zevin
Another excellent audio book, this one listened to during my work commute. It is a must for bibliophiles and those who enjoy rich character development. Somewhat of a spoiler alert (although the reason I stumbled upon this book in the first place) — there is an adoption story line that I felt the author handled well. I’m always on the lookout for books that take on foster care and adoption from a somewhat unique perspective, books that aren’t simply about a child searching for his/her birth parents but one that embraces the uniqueness of a family created not out of blood.

I’ve renewed my commitment to reading more with my boys at bedtime. Sometimes when life gets crazy we let that slip, but it is such a wonderful time to bond and explore literature together, especially with my twelve-year-old, who has entered the “Don’t mind me I’m just going to lock myself in my bedroom and watch YouTube videos all night” phase. We finished Postcards from Venice by the fabulous Dee Romito. It is a follow-up (but can be read alone) to her debut, The BFF Bucket List and equally sweet. Then we read one of my childhood favorites, and a must read for all those in the throes of adolescence, Are You There God? It’s Me, Margaret. We laughed until our sides hurt at the part, “You must, you must…” (especially after I told him that yes, my sister taught me that chant when I was his age and I may have believed it could work. It didn’t. Also, if you have no idea what I’m talking about, well, then I guess you need to go read the book.)

Youngest and I read the third book in Todd McClimans’ American Epochs series, A Time to Heal. I recommend the series for elementary-middle schoolers who enjoy history and adventure. Then we read Project Mulberry by Linda Sue Park and are now about halfway through White Fang by Jack London. He saw the preview for a movie version on Netflix and we decided to read the book first (because you should ALWAYS read the book first). I’ve never read it before and perhaps should have given pause when I found it in the YA section of the library instead of juvenile. It is a wonderfully crafted book, but the language is a bit high for him and the content rather intense. We stop after particularly rough scenes to discuss them, and I’ve been using it as a way to teach difficult vocabulary in context as well as reading comprehension. Oh, the teacher in me.

A few other recommendations from my summer reading pile:

The Girl Before by Rena Olsen. Had a very Lifetime TV movie feel and was the perfect escape book for a day at the lake. (Warning: it does deal with a disturbing concept that may be difficult for some readers)

Every Little Bad Idea by Caitie McKay. Debut verse novel by my friend and editor. A wonderful book aimed at struggling readers that would appeal to teens experiencing first love (or those of us who remember our first love!)

If I Was Your Girl by Meredith Russo. Very well done book about a trans-girl trying to find her place.

I am still over two years behind on my TBR list, a list that is constantly growing because there are so many wonderful books out there! Fall is the only time of year when we have a reprieve from soccer, but scouts is in full swing, and hubby and I are both very active on the committee. Translation: time I could be reading and/or writing is spent organizing spreadsheets, planning activities, and sending emails. Alas, I love being involved in my sons’ lives and know that it will all end one day when they leave the nest.

(Of course I totally plan on being like the mom in I’ll Love You Forever and sneaking into their houses to read to them.)

Cub scout camping fun and a book cover hint

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kayaks-e1534354128166.jpg

vans at sea

Look at us! We’re in boats and not tipping over or rowing into the swimming area! If you have no idea what I’m talking about, stop, go read Row, row, row your boat…, and then come back here to finish reading this post.

I’ll wait.

This past weekend was our third trip to cub scout summer camp and the first time boat-incident free. Yay us! The boys had a blast (oldest tagged along as Den Chief), the weather turned out much better than the Wednesday afternoon predictions that had me packing all the rain gear, and I walked over 32 miles in four days. It felt great to be in nature, to hang out with friends, and to watch my boys do the things they love.

Some of you may know that starting next month, girls will be allowed to join cub scouts  and in February will be able to join boy scouts (which, going forward will be known as BSA) and start on the path toward Eagle. At camp’s closing ceremony, the director mentioned how there will be girls at camp next year, and no matter how we feel about it, we need to accept the changes and support them in their journey.

I was active in girl scouts from first grade through high school. I quit because A) it became uncool to be in scouts and our troop shrank to practically zero members and B) there was no ultimate goal to achieve. (I learned later that you could become a “Lifetime Member” but that did not hold the same weight as earning Eagle.)

As the buzz became a reality in current scouting, I did a bit of research. There are 169 National scout organizations around the world, and only 11 are exclusively for boys. We were number 12 up until this year. When you look at the boys only countries, many of them restrict the behavior of women as well. Why do we need to keep scouts gender segregated? Boys and girls alike can enjoy all elements of scouting. I loved being a girl scout. Would I have joined the BSA if I could have and worked my way to Eagle? Probably. Am I excited about the changes? Yes. Do I think our country should have one scouting organization open to everyone, including transgender youth? YES!

Scouting sometimes gets a bad rep — for being exclusionary, for pushing a particular agenda, for other terrible things I don’t want to discuss on my blog. (Believe me, as someone actively involved in the organization, we do a lot to make sure stuff like that doesn’t happen on our watch.) But at its core it instills solid values, nurtures a child’s strengths and interests, and provides a place to make lifelong friendships. Often for both kids and parents, as is the case in our family.

When I set out to write my YA verse novel (WHICH WILL BE IN THE WORLD IN LESS THAN SIX MONTHS!!), I wanted my main character to be active in scouts. I gave him a moral dilemma and had him use the points of the scout law to figure out how to navigate through it. I’ll be revealing the book’s cover soon, and I’m excited that scouts plays a huge role in the design.

I don’t have a funny/embarrassing story for you this year. But I have a lot of wonderful memories that will never fade and mosquito bites which thankfully will. My boys found the sunglassed lifeguard from last year and invited him to sit at our table for every meal. We played. We laughed. We sang ridiculous songs at the tops of our lungs. We studied toads in mud puddles and celebrated accomplishments. We barely slept. I captured moments like this:

boys

brothers and best friends

It was awesome.

Passing on the torch… or not…

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I love to cook. Our household has its share of dietary challenges, which means a fair amount of time and effort is required for meal planning and prep. I’ve been a vegetarian for 26 years and recently eliminated dairy. Oldest prefers an “everything plain” diet and actively describes certain foods (grapes for example) as his “arch nemesis”. Youngest is anti-fake meat (he makes gagging sounds if tofu is presented on his plate), and he is weirdly specific about the things he likes.

Example: All sandwiches must contain pickles, lettuce, and ketchup. And caramelized onions if they are on hand. Not regular onions. Caramelized. Because one year we had a big batch of onions from the farm share and I decided to spend the 45 minutes of cooking time required to caramelize them. They were crazy delicious. Now if someone puts onions on a sandwich he will ask, “Are they caramelized?” like he’s some sort of snobby food critic.

It’s okay to occasionally lie to your children.

Thankfully hubs is happy to eat whatever he doesn’t have to cook, and will prepare meat for himself and the kiddos once in a while so that I don’t have to. In my perfect world, all four of us would be on a veg-based diet, but that is simply not reality. So we compromise. Or try to anyway.

Declaration: I will prepare the same rotation of kid-friendly meals if they agree to try something new once a week without saying, “EW. What’s that?” upon arrival at the dinner table.

It works.

Most nights.

Lately, things have gotten a bit complicated in the van household. Oldest is working toward his cooking merit badge for boy scouts. As part of the pre-requisites, he is required to plan, shop for, and cook ten meals. Three days worth of breakfast, lunch, and dinner, plus one dessert. As of Wednesday afternoon, he still has four meals left. He leaves for camp on Sunday.

I have been nagging reminding him for weeks.

Maybe I come on too strong in the kitchen. I like things a certain way and have been known to default into, “here, let me do that” instead of being patient with the boys. I can’t say I blame them for wanting to stay away. But cooking allows for a certain amount of creativity, and like writing, when I’m in the zone, I’m in the zone.

Do not disturb. Mommy’s washing kale leaves.

Seriously though, when he decided to work on the cooking badge, I was excited to pass along some of my tricks and ideas. Instead, the pile of cookbooks I offered sat lonely in a pile, and he hid in his room for hours, “researching cooking methods” instead of asking me for help. “Let’s go shopping!” I offered. Shrug. “Want to try making X?” Shrug. “Don’t go waiting until the last minute to get this done!” Skulk off to room for more “research”.

In retrospect, perhaps I should have had a more open-door policy in the kitchen when the boys were younger. They used to enjoy helping me, but my, “Not like that, like this” attitude is exhausting, I’m sure. I want to change, and am trying to. Last night youngest wanted to cut veggies and I let him, without hovering or criticizing. Of course when dinnertime came and I asked if he wanted to try what we made he responded with, “I just like to cut vegetables. Not eat them.”

This morning oldest made blueberry chocolate chip pancakes for his merit badge. And while his flipping skills need a bit of work and I was left to scrub the chocolate covered griddle, the food turned out tasty and it felt good to work side by side. Of course we’re still arguing about what’s left to be done and how he shouldn’t have procrastinated, but, well, at least he comes by that trait honestly.

I want my boys to have basic cooking skills, not just so they can earn the Eagle required merit badge, but so they can survive on their own and perhaps even learn to enjoy experimenting with food. To understand why I feel the way I do about cooking (FOOD=LOVE). And maybe someday impress their friend or partner with a giant plate of caramelized onions.

Happy Camper

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I love camping. Fresh air, campfires, afternoon naps in the sun. The blissful escape from routine.

Back in the days before kids, hubs and I camped all over the state. We weren’t very adept when we started out—on our first trip we forgot pillows and other essentials and had to drive to a nearby mega store. (Incidentally that was not the only time I forgot pillows on a camping trip and had to drive to a store to buy them; somehow pillows are not high on my list of necessities for sleep).

I remember trying to cook in the pouring rain, hunched over the propane stove, umbrella in one hand, utensil in the other, and then eating our meal in the car. After that we purchased a simple canopy, which took off down the hill in a strong gust of wind and retrieved right before it landed in a nearby creek.

But the misadventures were part of what made camping great, the stories I tell when people ask why I love it. During a visit to Letchworth State Park, we arrived to discover the campsite was full. The ranger directed us to a nearby campground which turned out to be one of our favorite places to stay.

Enter children.

When our oldest was two, we took him to the above mentioned favorite campground. He had a blast despite the rainy conditions. However, I fretted for most of the weekend and did not enjoy the mountain of muddy laundry on Sunday night.

Next we tried to camp on the beach. Readers, you should NEVER CAMP ON THE BEACH. A strong wind collapsed our tent in half on itself (there is no way to fully stake it in the sand), the lack of distinguishable sites meant our neighbors were all on top of us, and when we got home after leaving early because of previously stated reasons, SAND WAS EVERYWHERE.

EVERYWHERE.

At first I laughed. “Hey, everything’s sandy, like me!” Two years later I used one of our sleeping bags as a prop in a play and my student commented on the sand still stuck in the bag. I had stopped laughing.

That ended camping for a while. When our youngest joined scouts, we started going as a family to overnight cabin trips, and took the boys to summer scout camp. The camping bug returned, and I remembered why I loved it. This despite the constant rain during summer camp, a car that smelled like wet feet, and a kid so covered in mosquito bites I needed to dump him into a bathtub full of calamine lotion.

Through scouts we found a great group of friends with similar aged kids who also loved to camp. Moms who don’t mind getting dirty and being without makeup or running water. We took them to our favorite spot and had an amazing weekend. But camping with two kids is a lot of work. The prep, the execution, the cleanup. I do most of it on my own. Also, to be perfectly honest, I’m not a huge fan of sleeping on the ground.

So when an opportunity came along to buy a small cottage on the lake, we jumped on it. Hubs calls it glamping because it has all of the things we love about camping—nature, fire pits, no technology, without the things we hate—sleeping on the ground, washing dishes in a plastic tub, dealing with drunk neighbors. I love waking up early and watching the sunrise. Sitting around the campfire and playing board games with my family. Curling up with a good book and taking a nap in the middle of the afternoon. No TV, no video games, the responsibilities of life left at home, at least for the weekend.

Camp NaNoWriMo kicked off on Sunday. We were out at the cottage, and despite the sweltering heat I was able to get back into my WIP and make forward progress. Last week I took the first chapter to my critique group and they loved it. Told me I needed to keep writing. When camp started I set a modest goal and made a commitment to myself to sit down every day and write. So far so good. We’re back out at the lake and I am sure my muse has found me here. (She likes to go places with no wifi—who knew?) Our friends are coming up for the holiday and I hope they love it as much as we do.

camping

Ready to write on the first day of Camp NaNoWriMo

Sometimes I think the secret to life is as simple as this: find what makes you happy and do it. Adjust as necessary to accommodate children and bad  backs.