Smelling the Roses

One of the things I love about Sundays is that you have time to putter around and be domestic...play hausfrau.

Since it's been raining, this morning was wonderful. Cool, misty and relaxing. I like to take time in the morning to treasure a cat, so I made a cup of tea (a beautiful display tea that a friend got for me in China). Alma chose to take advantage of the situation, and continued to hang out as I puttered around the front flower bed and my tiny vegetable garden. It's one of the more enjoyable aspects of working outside - I usually have somebody or another hanging out with me in that casual cat way.

One of the saddest parts of being grown-up is that my main interaction with roses has nothing to do with appreciating their beauty or smell. Instead, they've become another responsibility. Every weekend I must dead-head my pink shrub roses. Then I compost the blossoms. Which seems sacrilegious. But what else can I do with mounds of dead and drying blossoms I prune each week?

On another note, yesterday, I went to Borders because I wanted to pick up a couple gift books (I buy all of mine used). On the discount table in front, I saw "Heimskringla or The Lives of the Norse Kings." Now that's just one of those random things one is meant to buy, if you know what I mean.

The Old Norse were amusingly different, for example, "It once happened when Odin was gone far away and had been a long time from home that his people thought he would not come back. Then his brothers took it upon themselves to divide his goods in succcession to him, but they both took to wife his spouse Frigga. But a little later Odin came home and once more took his wife to himself." There was also Fjolnir, who drowned in a beer vat.

Odin himself was a bit of a trip: "It was said that he talked so glibly and shrewdly that all who heard him must needs take his tale to be wholly true." Which explains the part about him talking to the dead, foreseeing the future and changing into animals and wandering around. Though they don't go into it in the book, I think he also may be the first person to sell the Brooklyn Bridge. He was also able to convince his followers that he was a god. So, now we know where the plot for "The Man Who Would Be King" came from. Though Odin died in his bed since he was a better shuckster than Daniel Dravot, and didn't drink as much beer as Fjolnir.

After Odin, came Niord, who was a political prisoner at the time(or rather a hostage, which was actually more of an ambassador). Anyway, there is no mention of Odin's sons - odd, no? Niord had a son and a daughter: Frey and Freya, who each successively became a ruler/god. After Freya's rule, "...they called all their noble women by her name, even as they are now called fruer; so every woman is called Freya (Frue) who rules over her own property, but she is called house-freya (husfrue), who has a household. I wonder what Freya did with her dead rose blossoms?

Lists of Books (updated)

5 most depressing books:
1) Ethan Fromme - Edith Wharton
2) Sex and the City - Candace Bushnell
3) The Rise and Fall of Courtesans - Balzac
4) Hunchback of Notre Dame - Victor Hugo
5)

5 recommendations:
1) The Joy Luck Club
2) Darwin's Radio (new recommendation)
3) Wildly Sophisticated
4) Now, Discover Your Strengths
5) Cyteen

10 favorite authors:
1) C.J. Cherryh
2) J.R.R. Tolkien
3) Tolstoy
4) Thackeray
5) Greg Bear
6) Amy Tan
7) Louisa May Alcott
9) James Tiptree
10) James Herriot

5 books I most want to read:
1) Mrs. Edgeworth's Tales
2) The New Testament
3) Adam Smith
4) Peter Pan
5) The Secret Garden

10 childhood favorites (junior high or earlier):
1) Pigman by Zindel
2) Arm of the Starfish by L'Engle
3) I am Not a Short Adult
4) Lord of the Rings Trilogy
5) Mustang, Wild Spirit of the West
6) Narnia Series
7) Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH
8) Little Women, Little Men and Jo's Boys
9) Macbeth
10) Angus and the Cat

6 great quotes:

1) Sex and the City - Candace Bushnell
"Who was that man you were kissing in the cab?" Skipper asked.
"Just another man I either don't want or can't have," Samantha said. "Like you."
"But you can have me," Skipper said. "I'm available."
"Exactly," Sam said.

2) The Prince and Pauper - Mark Twain
A sounding blow upon the prince's shoulder from Canty's broad palm sent him staggering into goodwife Canty's arms, who clasped him to her breast and sheltered him from a pelting rain of cuffs and slaps by interposing her own person. The frightened girls retreated to their corner; but the grandmother stepped eagerly forward to assist her son. The prince sprang away from Mrs. Canty, exclaiming:
"Thou shalt not suffer for me, madam. Let these swine do their will upon me alone."
This speech infuriated the swine to such a degree that they set about their work without waste of time.

3) The Bonesetter's Daughter - Amy Tan
I imagined two people without words, unable to speak to each other. I imagined the need: The color of the sky that meant "storm." The smell of fire that meant "Flee." The sound of a tiger about to pounce. Who would worry about such things?
And then I realized what the first word must have been: ma, the sound of a baby smacking its lips in search of her mother's breast. For a long time that was the only word the baby needed. Ma, ma, ma. Then the mother decided that was her name and she began to speak, too. She taught the baby to be careful: sky, fire, tiger.

4) The Joy Luck Club - Amy Tan
There were also fine points of chess etiquette. Keep captured men in neat rows, as well-tended prisoners. Never announce "Check" with vanity, lest someone with an unseen sword slit your throat. Never hurl pieces into the sandbox after you have lost a game, because then you must find them again, by yourself, after apologizing to all around you.

5) Chanur's Home-Coming - C.J. Cherryh
For the first time panic hit her, real fear. This was the hero-stuff, being number one charging up the stairs into that mess. It was where her rashness and the possession of that illegal AP had put her. "Hyyaaaah! she yelled in raw terror, and rushed the stairs, because running screaming the other way was too humiliating.

6) Vitals - Greg Bear
I was hoping for Eden. Prince Hal Cousins, scientist, supreme egotist, prime believer in the material world, frightened of the dark and no friend of God, was about to pay a visit to the most primitive ecologies, searching for the fountain of youth. I was on a pilgrimage back to where the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil had taught us how to die. I planned to reclaim that fruit and run some tests.