I'm Liz, and I'm a librarian (duh)

Sunday, March 7, 2010

Back to Reality


All too soon my much-anticipated vacation has come and gone. The Olympics barely began and I was already looking back fondly on my (too short) time in Vancouver. I could go on and on about my trip, but in the interest of not boring the daylights out of what few people I suspect might be reading this, I will distill the trip down to a few highlights:

Spotting Bertster and Dee in the airport at 4:30 am--proof of Buono/Mulligan magnetism
Sharing a plane with multiple Olympic hopefuls--mostly snowboarders, including Lindsey Jacobellis, and some women's hockey players
Riding the elevator with a Mountie in my hotel
Inukshuks everywhere, including one made of storage containers near the airport--awesome!

One thing that did not happen, and about which I will forever be disappointed, is that I did NOT go to see Anvil perform on my last night in town. I really should have just made that happen, the serendipity was almost too much. Who knows when they will come to CT?????

On the gluten-free front, lots of good news about Ella--in the month between when she was diagnosed and when we went for our consultation with the RD, she has gained 3 pounds!! This may not seem like much, until you consider that she didn't even gain 2 pounds in the last two years. She is definitely less anemic--she is pink! She is already growing out of clothes that were baggy on her before her diagnosis. This more than makes up for the tears and anxiety about the grocery shopping--it is totally worth it. Of course, now that she's feeling better she is starving--she eats like a teenage boy, now that her body is adjusting. My one worry is that she was measured for her dance recital costume back in November, before all this weight gain and growth--there is a very good possibility that it won't fit her by June. All in all, good news as we head into spring!

Between being on vacation and then getting ridiculously sick about a week later, I have had a little time on my hands to read a little. First, I read Tales of the Madman Underground by John Barnes while I was away--one of this year's Printz honor books, it calls itself "An Historical Romance: 1973," and it owes a large debt to The Catcher in the Rye, despite being about 4 times as long. Still, it tells a complicated story with many threads about a group of high school seniors with totally messed up home lives who have been in group therapy together since about 3rd grade, and ends hopefully, if not outright happily.

While I was home sick last week I read a book I found in our gift/giveaway pile from a couple of years ago: My Most Excellent Year by Steve Kluger, which I absolutely loved. It had romance, baseball, and very sweet relationships between boys, boys and girls, and families in general. I knew it was too good to be true as I was reading it, but I didn't care--it stopped just short of being saccharine (although Mary Poppins figures prominently). Charming.

2 comments:

Catherine A. Mulligan said...

The Buono/Mulligan magnetism is inescapable!

Sara said...

I'm a new-found reader of your blog, Liz!!

Hooray for weight gain! (We get pretty excited about it at our house, too...) :)

I am a little more than halfway through "The Help". Do I remember reading here that you had finished it? I like it very much, but am a little distracted during the chapters told in Aibileen's or Minny's voice. I'm such a "Good Grammar Girl", that I find myself focusing too much on the dialect. It makes it harder for me to enjoy the story. I think this just makes me a nerd. :)

Glad you had a good vacation!

~Sara