“My high of the day, or one of them, is that I got to see the space shuttle.”

“You saw the space shuttle today? Did I miss the permission slip for the field trip to Cape Canaveral?”

“No. On our way home from school today, Mr. D (bus driver) pointed it out in the sky.”

“You saw the Endeavor flying across the Michigan sky?!”

“Yeah! It was really cool!”

“LM, tell me, how did you know it was the shuttle you were looking at?”

“Well, cause it was too bright to be a star, and it was moving far too quickly to be a plane.”

“So it just had to be the shuttle? You don’t think that maybe it might be difficult to see the shuttle from the ground?”

“Mom. It was landing. We didn’t see it out in space, we saw it as it was landing.”

“It was landing in Michigan?! LM, I think the shuttle usually lands in Texas, it doesn’t come down over land.”

“I know, Mom. “

“So you think the Endeavor came across Michigan on it’s way to Texas to land.”

“Yeah.”

A few clicks on the computer later –

“Hey, LM? The NASA website shows pictures of the Endeavor today!”

“Oh yeah? Of the landing?”

“No, of their fourth space walk mission. Seems they must have made a really quick landing today if they had time for a space walk before their detour over the great lakes.”

“oh.”

Two disappointments in one day. The poor, poor kid.

“Are you serious?!” was LM’s reaction when I handed him his test scores. He looked up at me with a shocked but excited look on his face. I was a little puzzled by his reaction – his previous scores on the Pennsylvania Standardized tests were actually higher than these.

“I scored in the 600’s?!?” he shouted excitedly.

“Yes,” I replied, still uncertain what all the excitement is about. I mean, the scores are good, advanced in most cases, but they aren’t off the charts or anything.

“So I qualify?!”

Ah, the lightbulb moment.

Gingerly I broke the news. “No, LM. These aren’t your SAT scores, we don’t have those yet. These are your MEAP (Michigan Standardized Test) scores.”

“oh.”

The poor kid.

George does really well when I sub in his classroom. He calls me Miss Jane like all the kids do. He doesn’t act out or act like he knows me outside of class. And if it weren’t for the fact that I drive him home everyday, the kids might not even realize we were related – well, this is the class that didn’t realize they had triplets in the room until it was pointed out to them.

Days when I am in George’s room are particularly fun sub days for me. His teacher is very organized and a fantastic teacher so her plans are always well organized and thorough. Her class if full of fantastic kids. Sure, there are a couple that I have to keep my eye on, but they are a truly delightful group of personalities.

Today we had a math assignment that involved counting, sorting and graphing jelly beans. The teacher felt particularly bad about leaving me such a task (handfuls of jelly beans and 20 first graders, she must have heard about Valentine’s Day) but I assured her it wouldn’t be a problem. And it wasn’t. The kids followed directions well and stayed on task. They were really quite good about it all.

But there was a point later in the day when I was allowing the kids to eat their jelly beans as we progressed through a particularly tedious book assembly project, when I just had to stop and laugh out loud.

It was George’s voice that reached my ears. He said, “Miss Jane? I think these green jelly beans taste just like Pizza Hut!”

I’m not sure even Jelly Bellies have that flavor, George.

(For the sake of argument, when it was time for everyone to eat another jelly bean, most kids chose out of curiosity to try a green one. We took a vote; half the class thought it tasted like lime. Half agreed with George and thought it tasted remarkably like Pizza Hut.)

LM was commenting on the directed audience for a particularly annoying commercial.

“Who do they think is watching this show?”

I replied, “Moms and losers,” laughing to make sure he got the joke.

LM replied, “I was thinking more like, losers and their moms.”

Wherever you are, I’m pretty sure you heard the smack when he hit himself in the head for that one.

My sister is going to Mexico. She and Bear are joining my dad and second mom for vacation in Mexico next week.

My dad has apparently reminded my sister on a couple of occasions that she will need to bring her own reading materials. I’m not sure if there’s an anti-sharing policy in place south of the border or if there’s just a high demand between my dad and second mom for the books they bring, or perhaps there is some sort of regulation that you can only bring in TWO books no matter how long you intend to stay, but my dad seems to think it’s of rather critical importance that my sister not forget to bring her own books.

Only my sister doesn’t read.

I don’t mean she can’t, or that she hasn’t, or even that in a pinch, she wouldn’t. She just doesn’t. For as much as I read, my sister is balancing out the universe by refusing to even look in the direction of a book. She thought Barnes and Nobles was a law firm on TV. (I jest.)

Anyhow, it has been no small bit of amusement to me that my dad keeps bringing this up to my sister -to the one that doesn’t read. She has apparently shared with him that she doesn’t seem to think she will have any use for a book, so not to worry. But still, he is concerned.

Today, when we were chuckling about it my sister said that she MIGHT pick up a book at the airport, but she certainly wasn’t going to go out and buy books ahead of time for the trip. I said I couldn’t even think of what sort of a book she would read or I’d offer her any of mine to take.

She said, “Oh, I know of a book I’d like to read, I’m just not sure I’ll be buying it to take to Mexico.”

I stared in disbelief. “You? You know of a book you’d LIKE to read?”

“Yes.”

And before I could even make a crack about a certain financial guru that she’s obsessed with and how it must be his autobiography or his latest decree on how to make a million with only a penny and a pack of gum (oh, I kid. It’s not like he’s a complete whack job.), she says, “Dave Ramsey recommended it, but it’s not about finances. It’s about fathers raising daughters.”

Now, pause with me to consider just how Type A my sister really is. She not only cannot possibly imagine the idea of reading while on the beach in Mexico, she cannot fathom planning ahead of time for some relaxing novels to have along, but even if she were pushed into reading a book, it would darn well NOT be for silly pleasure, nor would it, apparently, have anything to do with her. Instead, she would like to spend her rare book-reading time about how BEAR’s relationship should be with Bird. As recommended by the financial dude on the radio.

I said, when I could smother my laughter, “You just can’t read a book just to read a book, can you?”

“Heck no! I have no interest in reading about other people’s stories!”

Nope, we’re not sisters. No relation at all that I can tell.

Oh, to have written a book such as this! To have created such an incredible twisting, turning, captivating novel that when it was finished, readers flippe back to the first page and began the journey all over again.

“The Thirteenth Tale” has restored my faith in readers. I was beginning to think any novel with “National Bestseller” emblazoned on the cover was something to fear. Setterfield deserves every accolade, every morsel of praise for this provocative, spellbinding, enchanting tale.

I will tell you nothing more of it. I will only caution you: open and commence only when the rest of your life can be put on hold.

I actually finished this book (reluctantly) a couple of weeks ago, but was never motivated to write a review. Suffice it to say I did not enjoy this book and did not find myself drawn in to the characters or the plot at all. I tried. I really did try, but there was nothing about the people or their circumstances that made me want to find out more. The book is primarily about three friends in their 30’s in New York City. What I found it to be, however, was a depressing tale of people who seemed to lack ambition, standards and compassion. Perhaps my disinterest in the book stemmed from my lack of connections to the characters and their self-inflicted plight.

In any case, many of the critics strongly disagree with me, so take my review for what you will but my recommendation is that you leave this book where it belongs: on the shelf, unread.

“LM, what happened to the two potatoes I bought yesterday? I don’t see them in the fridge.”

“They should be in the crisper drawaer, Mom.”

“I know, but they aren’t there, and I don’t see them in the fridge anywhere.”

“Maybe they are still in the car?”

“Why would they still be in the car, we only had one bag at the store? They should have been brought in.”

“I know, but maybe they fell out. I’ll go check.”

“Nope, they aren’t in the car.”

“Well, LM, I’ve looked in the fridge three times, where else could they be?”

“I don’t know, Mom.”

“I remember buying them. I can remember putting them on the scanner and typing in the produce code. I think it was 4072.”

“It was 4072. I remember you doing that.”

“Well, if I bought them, where could they be?”

“I don’t know, Mom.”

“I remember putting them in the bag, on top, and we only had the one bag, and all the grocery bags are back in the car, so it can’t still be in a bag somewhere. I just don’t know where they could possibly be.”

“Mom. I just don’t know.”

“I know, LM, but sometimes when you say ‘I don’t know,’ it turns out later you did know. I wouldn’t surprise me in the least to find two potatoes in your bathroom or someplace weird.”

“I know, Mom, but I really don’t know where the potatoes could be. I know we ate two baked potatoes last night, but…”

“Oh, we did eat two baked potatoes last night, didn’t we?”

“Mom?”

“Yes, LM?”

“I think your brain is officially fried.”

“I think so, too, LM.”

LM’s school had a Science and Literacy Night this evening. Living in such close approximation to my sister, she felt an obligation to attend (or perhaps Bear just wanted to see what kind of a grade he LM, got on his marble cannon). Or maybe my sister just doesn’t get out enough. Ahem. In either case, we went.

We were greeted at the door by students shoving handing us reuseable grocery bags. I thought for a moment that perhaps I had misjudged the event and it might be slightly more organized and interesting than I had imagined. Right.

We followed LM to his science room so he could drop of Bear’s LM’s marble cannon. The room had about 20 tri-fold first-grader sixth grader presentations on display, representing ten minutes’ a month’s worth of a science project for each student full of useful information grammatical horrors. On the projection screen were students mumbling giving book reports. (What the one had to do with the other, I never will know.)

LM’s PowerPoint presentation was on display nowhere. We had to make room for his cannon display despite having told his teacher he would be bringing it for the evening.

We went back to the front of the building to actually attempt to go through the right procession of events for the evening, only to find there was no procession of events. They had skipped the Welcome part, dinner was being served for the next hour and there were various activities throughout the rather large building. Bear surveyed leftover school lunch dinner and suggested perhaps we think twice about eating there. The kids LM thought reheated monkey brains school spaghetti sounded delish. After a hike back to LM’s locker to get the dinner tickets we didn’t know were in the reuseable bags that we had shoved in his locker for the night, we jumped in line for our gruel dinner and sat down to eat without anyone ever asking us for the mandatory useless meal tickets.

While we ate, a small group of girls did some sort of stomping screaming thing rhythmic cheer thing on the stage (can someone tell me the correlation between that and Science or Literature?) We also heard the drums playing (not with the girls’ performance) off in the hallway somewhere, but never did see them.

After dinner, we wandered around – not, in fact, to actually try the “interactive events for the whole family” namely Book Bingo and the Cake Walk, but to find LM’s Science Teacher so we could ask some very pertinent questions about the Science Olympia this weekend that we’ve received NO details on to date. (Note it should be made clear that the Science Fair marble cannon and the Science Olympia trebuchet/catapult are not only not related, they are equally a pain in my butt.)

The highs of the evening would include showing LM that wintergreen Lifesavers really do spark in your mouth, and of course, the indulgent obligatory trip to DQ after a school event. The lows, while too numerous to name them all, included: A)LM’s teacher telling us that the Science Olympia he’s been preparing for since December is really only competitive at the ninth grade level, and while the sixth graders will take their projects, (LM’s catapult) they are really nowhere good enough to actually compete in the event. B) Walking nearly ten miles back and forth between supposed “interactive activities” is always a fun way to spend a family evening together, lost in a middle school building. And certainly, 3) Talking again, with LM’s math teacher and reminding him again, as I did the first time I met him, during the third week of school, that LM is ready to commit hara-kiri STILL bored in math and some truly challenging curriculum would be greatly appreciated.

I think, after this evening of learning, entertainment, chaos, ineptitude, my sister might listen to me choose to stay home the next time.

*Stacy, you’re right! Strike-throughs are a sign of astute intellectual humor fun!

When you feel badly for forgetting your coat when you visited out of state, and you have to tuck your tail between your legs and kindly, sweetly ask your friend if she might just cram it into the smallest box possible and ship it the cheapest way possible, she’ll do it, but she’ll stuff the pockets full of rocks just to remind you why she’s such a dear friend to begin with.