More Tuesday Tidbits

Hey. Roxanne, Heather Annastasia, and Chipper Beaudrot--email me your mailing addresses, would ya? (jennifer at practicallyperfectbook dot com). I have some prizes for you.

Everyone else, your prizes for the New Dr. Phil Homespun Phrase Contest should be in the mail. They're books. I've read them all and liked them (what, like I'm going to unload the real clunkers on you?), but I read freaky fast, freaky fast enough enough that Brandon has accused me of taking Bill Cosby's speed-reading course, and I thought I'd share. If you don't like them, or have already perused, there are ... things you can do with them, but as someone who is hoping very much that future royalty checks will keep her in chai latte money, you're not going to hear about these things from me.

In any case--thanks for playing!
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Did you read this in Newsweek? The basic gist is that an editor reads a smattering of recent motherhood-themed books that fail to float her boat, and then decides that she's sick of reading about motherhood period. As my seventh-grade industrial arts teachers used to say, "That don't make no cent, son." I mean, axing an entire category of human experience? Yeesh. I wrote a letter to the editor. Because that's how we stick to the man around these parts.
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I don't know what category of happiness this would fall under--maybe Forgotten Knowledge Happiness? My friend Janet and her daughter recently came back from France after spending a year there. I took five years of French; I can tell my sister Erin to clear off her desk; she can tell me to empty the trashcan. (We shared the illicit French/English dictionary that translated "Fuck off," so we can also tell each other that. Or, more literally, "Go make the fuck to yourself.")

Anyway, Janet and her daughter sometimes still slip into French, and I knew what they were saying--and it had nothing to do with trashcans, desks, or making the fuck. The surprise of being able to understand--it kind of made my whole week.