as promised, this is the start of my reading list for my thesis:

Bond, Marybeth and Pamela Michael, Eds. A Mother’s World: Journeys of the Heart. Travelers’ Tales, Inc.: San Fransisco, 1998. (collection of personal essays, motherhood and travel)

David, Steph.  High Infatuation. The Mountaineer Books: Seattle, WA, 2007. (climbing)

*Dillard, Annie. An American Childhood. Harper & Row: New York, 1987. (memoir)

*Erdrich, Louise. The Blue Jay’s Dance. Harper Collins Publishers: New York, 1995. (motherhood memoir)

Franklin, Sarah, Ed. How to Fit a Car Seat on a Camel. Seal Press: Berkley, CA, 2008. (collection of essays, motherhood and travel)

*Galvin, James. The Meadow. Henry Holt and Company: New York, 1992. (fiction, but mostly true, about a place in wyoming and its people)

Gore, Ariel. The Mother Trip. Seal Press: Emeryville, CA, 2000. (motherhood memoir/self-help)

*Kooser, Ted. Local Wonders. University of Nebraska Press: Lincoln, NE, 2002. (memoir)

Lamott, Anne. Operating Instructions. Randome House, Inc.: New York, 1993. (motherhood memoir)

*Marquart, Debra. The Horizontal World: Growing Up Wild in the Middle of Nowhere. Counterpoint: New York, 2006. (memoir)

*Miller, Donald. Through Painted Deserts. Thomas Nelson, Inc.: Nashville, 2005. (travel writing/Christian memoir)

*Ray, Janisse. The Wild Card Quilt: Taking a Chance on Home. Milkweed Editions: Minneapolis, 2003. (nature writing/memoir)

Rich, Adrienne. Of Woman Born. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc.: New York, 1976. (motherhood manifesto)

*Rosenthal, Amy Krouse. Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life. Crown Publishers: New York, 2005. (memoir of sorts, atypical)

*Sanders, Scott Russell. Hunting for Hope: A Father’s Journey. Beacon Press: Boston, 1998. (memoir/nature writing)

Steingraber, Sandra. Having Faith: An Ecologist’s Journey to Motherhood. Berkley Publishing Group: New York, 2001. (memoir/ecologist’s view on pregnancy, childbirth, infancy)

*Winner, Lauren. Girl Meets God. Random House, Inc.: New York, 2003. (conversion story/Christian memoir)

*my personal favorites–contains moments of incredibly beautiful writing.

KEEP SCROLLING! there are some other new additions below….

Posted on September 6th, 2008

“it’s so impressing for some people and their kids to go swimming every day. it’s impressing because i’ve never seen anyone and their kids swim all day.”

“it is so familiar that oren doesn’t share his lamb. i ask him every moment, and he always says no.”

and i quote.

Posted on September 6th, 2008

seb is trying to grasp the idea of size, in a universal sense. it’s kind of hard, so this is what he’s thinking at the moment.

the sun is bigger than any of the planets. (true.) it is bigger than skyscrapers (true.)–well, it’s wider, but not taller (well…). skyscrapers are narrow (yes.).

IKEA is bigger than the sun. IKEA is the widest thing ever.

(ummmm, uhhhhh. well…)

he’s got a ways to go.

Posted on September 6th, 2008

that was pwetty ‘mazin’!” says oren as the tape measure snaps back into its holder.

Posted on August 20th, 2008

it occurs to me that this section of anklebiter.net isn’t focused on the kids all the time (pointed out by one of my sisters who asked, do you still have kids?), and that i need to rename it something else, like ‘anklebiters’ mommy’ or something. i dunno.

so, this thursday marked the end of my course work for my mfa in creative writing. can i just say, WOO HOO! and last night marked the actual start of my thesis writing (although i have been working towards it for several semesters now). while working on my proposal this morning at a bookstore, feeling all academic and stuff, waiting for the car to get a tune-up, i got really excited about what i’m working on. really excited. so maybe this writing thing is what i’m supposed to be doing…

for the first time in my life, that i can remember, i am reading not one book, but six. all at once. (up until now, i have usually forced myself to read a book in its entirety, whether i like it or not, before picking up another.) i’m worried that i’ll get them mixed up. but i have a list of at least 30 books for my thesis of which i have only read about 10 or so, and homeschooling is going to start happening this year in theory if not in practice. i feel like i’m using more than the usual 10 percent of my brain right now, and i have to say, it feels good. well, it feels good when it’s in the middle of the day and not 3:30 am and i can’t sleep because my mind is so full and i feel like i can’t keep it together.

here’s the short list of current reading: For the Children’s Sake, Macauly; The Well-Trained Mind, Bauer and Wise (this may not count, ’cause really all i’m reading are chapters 3 and 4 as they pertain to my kids); Through Painted Deserts, Miller; Of Woman Born, Rich; High Infatuation, Davis; Walking on Water, L’Engle… an ecclectic little list.

anyway, i think i have a pretty interesting booklist for my thesis, and once i get it all typed up and looking pretty, i’ll post it. i have enjoyed the ones i have read. mostly. so it’ll be like a list of recommendations for anyone who cares.

Posted on August 16th, 2008

smells a little bit like body odor. it’s not me! well, it is my hands, but i just finished cutting up rhubarb for this shortbread dessert i’m making for a picnic today. the rhubarb is from the backyard, a place that tends to produce bitter veggies, so i hope it doesn’t taste like body odor too.

a lifetime ago when i was 12 or 13, my little sister and i traveled with my grandparents for a month or so. we ended up in michigan, and i remember “helping” my grandmother make strawberry-rhubarb preserves. i mainly remember snarfing a good bit of it on saltine (or was it keebler club?) crackers. i don’t remember, however, the rhubarb smelling like body odor.

Posted on August 8th, 2008

The tomato plant has completely smothered the green pepper plant and is starting to oppress the limelight hedrangea. The sumac weed (tree) we cut down has sent hundreds of shiny new shoots sprouting throughout the entire backyard. The aphids ate the birch tree. The bind weed is trying to strangle the black-eyed susans. The pineapple mint has forced its way into our neighbor’s yard where the chihuahua likes to stand and endlessly yap at us. The hemlock trees have reached the electrical and phone lines. The forsythia is fighting for light between the lilac bush, which has suddenly decided to flourish since I pruned it last fall, and the humongous spreading clump of maiden grass.

I have to leave the backyard and go to the front.

A young morning dove has made our and our neighbor’s front porch its hang out. It’s cute. It lets us come stare at it while it blinks and makes herky-jerky bird movements, then it scuttles away and poops. And then it scuttles to a new place and poops again. it’s cute, but its poop, which is like mini piles of cement, is all over our front porch now.

It makes me want to go back inside where I step in a pile of cat puke.

@#$&* nature!

Posted on August 6th, 2008

go here and click on the slideshow for a funny story about a t rex we lost while climbing a couple weekends ago. a special thanks goes out to our friends john and danielle.

and tyranny did make it safely home.

Posted on July 6th, 2008

mommy, they aren’t ALIVE. they’re EXTINCT. they’re just BONES.

this was seb’s response to my question whether the t. rexes were fighting over another dead, partially ingested dinosaur. the boys and daddy (theirs, not mine) visited the carnegie museum of natural history while i was away at class all afternoon. the t. rex exhibit was out visiting other museums and has finally returned. as seb described to me, the dinosaur skeletons are arranged with the t. rexes standing over a partial (broken up) other skeleton as if they are eating it. i don’t think my question was unfounded under the circumstances, but what do i know?

now that i write this down, it was waaaaay funnier in the moment. guess you had to be there.

Posted on July 3rd, 2008

once upon a time, there was a little Dante (a robot NASA has developed to explore volcanoes to start and other planets possibly in the future). he went into a volcano, and it exploded. he fell apart! *giggle giggle*

and then he added a penname: shannon toughlite. (don’t ask, ’cause i can’t tell ya.)

Posted on June 13th, 2008