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Operation exemplary destruction
2003-03-24 - 9:04 a.m. Bleh, I'm exhausted. We're painting the garage! It will be a room! It's going surprisingly well -- I made Kevin buy green paint -- a pale green. We actually didn't get the best color -- Maddy and I found the best color afterwards, when they were mixing up the one we'd picked. But hopefully it will be okay. Here are some facts. Kevin, apparently, does not like it when different rooms have different colors. I never knew that. I am so completely tired of our dust colored walls that I've been formulating plans to paint everything everything everything. I think I still will -- it's just interesting. We got off to kind of a slow start -- I think none of us really wanted to do this, when it came down to it. I spent most of Saturday reading Donna Tartt's Secret History (more about that later). But finally we went off to the paint store around 2, and purchased everything required for our painting needs. The kid who helped us was very helpful, and we got stuff to do the floor with later, too. Then we came home and slowly slowly slowly began to tape up the stuff we didn't want painted and sort of clean up. Sunday, we finally finished that and started painting. At first it was very very hard, but then it got easier. The worst was the ceiling, which is completely bizarre and covered with horrible corners and garage door openers, etc. In the end, it was kind of fun. Nora and Maddy helped and we listened to CDs and it was good. (They might be Giants is very good to paint to, but then so is Beck.) So -- now we've got the primer on! (Woe is me -- we have not even begun to paint.) I hope the color will be alright. You know how these things are -- a really lovely shade of green is just a few steps away from a pukey shade of green. Hmmm. Nora had a very busy weekend. She went to some all day meeting on Saturday. No one was very clear on what it was -- some kind of organization to promote diversity in independent school. She went mostly because her friends Erin and Emma were going. But I think it ended up being quite a bit of fun. There was some hiphop group there -- they all came home with signed postcards. There was dancing and drumming. They went with their Spanish teacher, too, who they all like. Then Saturday night the same group of kids went out to see a concert that their friend Hannah was singing in (we dropped them off and picked them up) and then Sunday, she painted, and then rode her bike down to the plaza to meet another friend. They got ice cream, tried on beauty products at the beauty store, and called other friends on the phone from the pet store to convince them to buy goldfish -- who would otherwise be eaten by the turtles. Quite a busy weekend. And then we watched the academy awards, which was also quite fun. I think it's good for everyone that we're finally letting her do stuff on her own -- like go to that concert (although it was with 3 other friends) and ride her bike to the mall (although she met a friend and her dad there.) She's quite a responsible and resourceful kid, and it's good for her to be able to do stuff by herself. Makes life easier for us, too. Cell phones are the key. Anyway -- Let me tell you now about Secret History. I'd like to organize my thoughts more coherently, but -- 1. I think she really gets what it's like to go to a college -- like Bennington, like lots of private eastern schools, and probably private western one,s too -- where there are people with lots and lots of money, especially when you don't have lots and lots of money. The character Richard is an observer, and that's one reason he is an observer -- you have to kind of watch, to see how to fit in. That seemed very accurate. 2. I liked the sense of the Greek students as a sort of secret club. I think that happens a lot, actually -- you grow very close to a small set of people. That seemed very familiar, too. Plus something about the intensity of it -- even before anything intense really happens. 3. It would be interesting to look at it as a counterpoint to Bel Canto. This first struck me just from the endings [don't read further if you don't want to know the endings] -- at the end of Bel Canto, Gen and the singer get married, and are happy. At the end of Secret History, Richard and Camilla don't get married, and aren't particularly happy. If you look further, they're both about a sort of idyll -- the Bel Cantans in their captured villa, and the students in their set apart world -- It would be interesting to look at the differences. One is voluntary -- one isn't. In one, the characters are somewhat older (although not all), and come with some experience of the world. Hmm. 4. In general, I hate books where bad things happen for no apparent reason. Thomas Hardy, for instance -- I really can't read him. But this was not like that -- bad things happen, but there's a point to them. It's not "fate." Okay -- it's possible that I'm all caught up, here. Now I'm back to Fragrant Harbor, which is good. I hate the type, though -- it's sans serif, which I completely hate and which reminds me of things not really published. Isn't it odd that that would bother me? But it does -- OKay -- bye.
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