A Good Excuse and Some Trivia

I thought this was as good a time as any to try and make a case for my fundamental resistance to going outside. There are those who will argue its value--and I would tend to agree, on a theoretical basis, that there IS value. For people who aren't me. But whatever value there MIGHT be in spending time outside is almost certainly dashed against the rocks of sound reason when THIS is what awaits.


For those unfamiliar with the trees of this region, what you see here is the puked forth cotton from a cottonwood tree. ONE tree. We actually have a few very substantial trees around our house that make damn sure that all of our yard looks pretty much like this. Now, this isn't the total accumulation of cotton by any means. Two days before I took this picture, it rained, which knocked most of what was on the ground before that into the grass. And then it rained the night after I took this, and the yard is starting to fill up again. It looks like it's snowing around our house--miserable, itchy, inhalible snow. It gets EVERYWHERE, and it sticks on just about anything.

And it's not just the cotton. A few weeks before the cotton starts to fall, the tree drops tiny yellow seed pods of some sort that stick to everything and, without further dampening, will permanently stain whatever they are attached to--including our bathtub if some happen to fall off our feet while we're showering. These little bastard seeds will continue to show up throughout our house for another month as our feet find one buried in the carpet or under a shoe and later deposit them somewhere to do irreparable damage to the carpet or a piece of white clothing.

All of this from just one tree. I'm actually convinced that it's not a normal tree. I can very nearly prove that, in fact, the tap root from this tree (assuming it has one, of course, which I do) stretches down far below the earth's crust and straight into the circles of hell. I don't think it has made it to the final circle, YET, but I'd say it's probably made its way down to the 5th Circle right now, drawing its strength from the waters of the River Styx (as opposed to how it would be if it were drawing its strength from the band Styx, which would be magical).

I've been actively trying to kill this tree with malicious thoughts for nine years now, but the fact that it's still alive seems to be pretty clear evidence that I'm not dealing with a normal tree. Such are my mind powers. One day, though, we'll buy a chainsaw, which trumps mind powers in the Hierarchy of Killing Yard Things, and then it will see who's boss.

The bit of truly useless trivia that I wanted to share was something I discovered in my bathroom book last night.

But first I'll explain the last part of that statement a bit.

At any given time, I'm working on at least three books. Traditionally, they have fallen into their own category: Bathroom, Bedroom, and Work.

The first book is almost always non-fiction (the only exception being a fiction book that I don't have much interest in reading, so I put it in the bathroom where I'll HAVE to read it or read nothing at all--so far, there has only been one of these "The Poisonwood Bible," which a friend told me I MUST read. It was, at best, boring as hell most of the way through, so after a month of failing to read it somewhere else, I moved it to the bathroom, and, after about a year, finished the damn thing. Then I promptly donated it to the library, which, if you've seen my collection of books, you'd know is a punishment reserved for a very special kind of book). I don't read a great deal of non-fiction, and what I do tends to be of the humorous bent, so I've found it makes for a delightful trip to the potty.

The second book (Bedroom) is my primary read. I like to read for at least a half hour before bed every night--sometimes more if I am enjoying the book a little too much. These books have the fastest turn-around time. I'll usually finish one in a few weeks. Currently, I have "Children Standing Playing before a Statue of Hercules" by David Sedaris up there. I am largely disappointed by the book. Having simply added it to my wishlist on Amazon without first seeing what it was about, I had no idea it was a collection of short stories COLLECTED by Sedaris and not a book of his own work. Being someone not particualrly interested in reading something "because such and such loved it," I'm finding the collection rather tiresome and boring. That and I'm not a huge fan of the short story these days. I like the idea of a short story, and I appreciate them as an art form, but I just don't care to read them all that much. I prefer to make a commitment to my reading. I like characters to linger and my stories to develop slowly over the course of chapters. I don't like getting thrown into the middle of something all willy-nilly. By the time I figure out the characters, it's time to do away with them forever, which seems like such a waste. Plus, most short stories these days seem to focus on regular, standard-issue people, which also seems like a waste. If I'm only getting to see a slice of someone's life, that life better be goddamn interesting, that's all I'm saying.

The third book (Work) is an unfortunate bastard that languishes in my book bag most of the time. Before I accepted the role of full time parent, I could make it through a Work book with decent speed. Any time I was somewhere that didn't require me to pay much attention to what was going on around me, I'd pull out the book and read for awhile. Now, since I only work two or three Saturdays a month at Ten Thousand Villages, I don't have much time for reading (especially since I also have all of my writing stuff in the bag and I veiw my time at Villages as prime writing time). As such, I've had the same book, "Three Men in a Boat" by Jerome K. Jerome--which is actually a quite amusing 19th century travelogue following a poorly executed trip down the Thames--in my book bag for the last year and a half.

Anyway, the snipet of interesting information came from my bathroom book--currently "Made in America" by Bill Bryson. Normally, I love Bryson. His mixture of facts and fun is exactly the recipe that my brain needs to stay interested in factual non-fiction. Plus, this book is about words, which is another favorite topic of mine. Specifically, he traces the origins of hundreds of words and phrases that have been coined here in the US over the past few centuries. The combination of Bryson and word nerdishness SHOULD have meant a slam dunk of interesting reading. However, it has not proven thus. His other word book, "The Mother Tongue," was fantastic. This one is, sadly, almost impossibly boring. I'm not sure what the difference is, but there is one, and I've been slogging hopelessly through this book for about nine months now. It's made my bathroom time rather rushed and less than enjoyable, frankly, and I'll be glad when the book is finished.

Despite its basic disinteresting nature, there have been a few little nuggets of useless information that I've uncovered in there, and one of them struck my fancy last night.

Apparently, the Puritans were pretty forgiving when it came to premarital sex. They had a strangely complicated system for it, but, by the 1770s, nearly half of all marriages involved an already pregnant woman. This struck me as completely odd since every instinct in me wants to refer to prudish behavior as "Puritan" and blame it away on our ridiculously fun-sucking forefathers. But that's just not the case (that's not to say they still didn't suck a lot of fun--the outlawed just about everything else that was fun, so I guess they had to have SOMETHING to do with all their time). Our culture's sexual squeamishness mostly began with the Victorians. Stupid Victorians. We are not amused by their Puritanical ways!

Anyway, that's it. Lots of build up for a relatively pointless fact. You're welcome!