The stigma of food service.

Two years ago, I wrote about my brother and his decision to move to the New England town where he completed his undergraduate program.  I still miss him like hell, but I am so very proud of everything he has accomplished.  After a rough first few months, he secured a full time job at a dining hall and was able to cover rent.  He finally was able to claim state residency and was recently accepted into a competitive masters program for education that will begin next fall.  I can honestly say that he is one of the hardest workers I know.

When he first made attempt to live on his own, he had a lot of pressure from home (A.K.A. Mom and Dad) that if he didn't get an office job, his efforts weren't worth it.  I told him that any full time job in his position that paid the bills was admirable.  His degree was as follows; Major in History.  Minor in Comparative Literature.  Two certificates.  One in Asian literature and one in Asian/American Studies.  Some impressive paper, but nothing so solid that an obvious job would be waiting for him.  Really, he always wanted to teach high school history.  Now he is going to get to train in that field.  He had to serve food to get to that point.

"The Face" Reenactment by Tina Fey

In a few weeks we will be visiting and helping he and his girlfriend move into their new apartment.  His girlfriend has a similar problem as my brother when it comes to her degree.  Lots of fancy titles, no clear path.  Luckily for her, she speaks three languages and might have a shot at a part time translating job.  Someone at work asked me the other day what her plans were after graduation.  Mentioned the possible translating gig and said that she would probably supplement it with a barista job. 

Then I got a face.  

A teeth clenched judgy judgy face.  I excused myself and fumed elsewhere.  Though our community is filled with well to do people who most likely built their success upon the sweat of their grandparents who emigrated and worked in whatever field they could to earn a buck, the idea of a child graduating college and working in service is a big taboo.  While we would all love to get a high paying job right off the bat, life just doesn't work that way.  Especially in this type of economy.  You are lucky if you can pay your bills.  You are lucky to stave off student loans.  

So I don't get why there is such an "ick" factor to a manual labor job.  Some people work manual labor and nothing else.  And you know what?  It is an honest job.  If you can pay your bills and you don't want to kill yourself by the end of the day you are doing better than most people.  

I get that in an affluent community we want to see our children succeed.  We want to see them well educated and we want to see that education pay off.  What I don't get is this stigma of actual physical work.  I don't get why it is such a "no no" to have to work in food service if you can't find a job in your field.  I was a barista during and for a bit after my undergraduate program and got the same sad looks of failure.  What is wrong with some sweat?

My father's big catchphrase during my brother's initial employment was, "He didn't go to college for four years to wash dishes."  No, but a lot of people who go to college do end up washing dishes to pay the bills.  And that should be okay.  Some people don't go to college and pay their bills washing dishes.  And that is okay too.  Some people get a degree and never enter their field of study.  Some people graduate and have no next step.  I was like that.  It was scary.  My brother had a plan set out for his education.  Washing dishes helped him achieve the next step.  I think that is reason for applause.

If we in a well educated neighborhood only measure our children's success by the titles on their diplomas maybe we need to assess how much they have learned about life in the real world?  Because living in a dorm and never cleaning other people's dirty dishes is not the real world.  Maybe the latter is as important a lesson as any you can learn in a lecture hall?  Maybe we should accept that accepting any work while looking for ideal work is nothing to judge.

Today's flavor: Abandoned Hotels

Many years ago, my grandparents decided to get re-married at some nearly dead hotel in the Catskill mountains of upstate NY.

Apparently, there was a time when this was one of the most majestic resorts on the east coast, but now it is abandoned and in ruins.  The hotel closed in 1998 and we had been there two years earlier.  At the time it was clear that the place was horribly dated.  While there were other guests, they were few and the halls were dead.  It reminded me of "The Shining".  I stumbled upon a book that took place in this area and decided to do a digging for information about hotels from this time period.

There is something so beautiful about these about these places.  They are like tombs for a tackier time period.  

Holly Hobbies

Hanging above our fridge.

I think I need to revisit a few hobbies or just find some new ones.

Aside from reading and rollerblading, I have been pretty void of activity.  I don't consider T.V. a hobby.  I have a few shows I follow, but I don't consider that productive.  Yes, hobbies must be productive in some way.

A year ago, I was cross stitching 8 -bit versions of game and cartoon characters for gifts and leisure.  I suppose if being a fan of a T.V. series "inspires" some sort of art, then it is productive in a way.  Years ago, I would pick up my brother every Sunday and we would go to Border's cafe with some sketch books to draw.  Eventually my brother moved away and Border's closed.  I don't really have much desire to draw anymore.  My brother draws on a regular basis.  But I have not been feeling terribly inspired to do much.

Some of this is due to being preoccupied with some work related drama and the rest is because, well, I really don't know why.   I am used to having an active mind and while it is usually filled with thoughts and ambitions I want to keep my hands active as well.  Maybe I should study something just for the hell of it.  But what?  Should I visit abandoned places and research their history?  Is that productive to anyone but me?

Any suggestions?

Do the noises in my head bother you? Observations on Hollywood's "baby culture".

OMG!  Fuck off.

DISCLAIMER:  This post was originally written back when I was having my initial doubts about motherhood and babies. I couldn't help but notice the bullshit on the tabloid stands every week when we finished our food shopping.  Last night, when we were at the check out counter, I noticed that this "periodical" has now gone from this to nasty pictures of who is too fat or too thin during their pregnancy.  It honestly all makes me sick.  We talk about misogyny at the Oscars, or misogyny in politics but we rarely ever seem to chastise these conflicting standards and unfair expectations of motherhood that hit our news stands every day!

Anyway, on to the original post.

I promise that this will be my last post for a while about my prospective parenthood freak out, but I couldn't help myself due to this bullshit.


While I adore print, these lowbrow tabloids hang out by the check out aisle at, what I assume to be everyone's supermarket, save for Trader Joes or Wholefoods type places.  How I miss having TJ's so close by.

Basically, what we have to the right feels like an example of a romanticization of unrealistic parenthood.  It mocks us regular folks feeling guilty about their having cold feet.  Why are the contents of these people's wombs "news"?

 Seriously.  Every single junk magazine is obsessed with pregnant celebrities.  I mean, I can't even call these three on the cover celebrities, because they don't DO anything worthy of celebration.  They are each famous for being "famous" or for being photographed and/or marrying someone on a reality show or being on a reality show, or for being the child of someone famous.

Yet, every single tabloid wants to tell us about their BABIES!  Seriously, I think I have passed by about ten false headlines that claimed that Jennifer Aniston was preggers.  So, either this was never the case, poor Jen has miscarried, but as far as I can tell, she hasn't had a child yet.  Maybe she's just gotten a belly and doesn't want kids.  Why should we care?  Should she actually be trying to conceive (fucking) and failing, is it right to have each failure documented on the cover?  Conversely, if she was getting bigger in the thighs, we would be treated to a close up of her cellulite.  Still, not cool.


Let's talk about this, "bump" alert.  Kate Middleton, a seemingly lovely young woman who actually met and married a prince has her "bump" plastered all over the damn place.  She, (unlike these media whores on the front) seems to genuinely want her privacy, as she should, but the media is baby crazy and her bump is proof that Britain shall prevail, so it is everyone's business.

But, you know, the thing is that there seems to be this "culture" of babies as accessories.  You get the ring and you get the bump.  And in a way it makes me sick and sad.

Let's face it, we regular folks don't have $1 million to drop on a baby (whatever that means).  But we are given these images to idolize.  And while I do not know nor care who "Kendra" is, she is being paraded as the face of parenting.

How infuriating when a baby "bump" is considered kin to designer bag.  And while most of us are aware that these people don't represent real life, there is that tick in the back of our heads that tells us that there is something wrong with us if parenthood is something we are apprehensive about.

But honestly, I see this and aside from the initial need to barf, I suppose it just makes my jitters feel superficial.

Because if these people who don't do shit can be parents, then what the hell is wrong with us hard workers?

Not quite Gaiman. A review of "Dreams and Shadows"

3 stars

So, I picked up "Dreams and Shadows" by C. Robert Cargill, after the book's marketing campaign finally wormed its way into my brain.  Whenever I looked up a book I enjoyed or wanted to read, there was an ad for "Dreams and Shadows".

As a children's librarian, the majority of what I read is, well, children's novels.  This is not to say they are juvenile, most are quite sophisticated.  Sometimes even more sophisticated than adult novels.  And that is because children, tweens, teens, young adults, whatever you may call them are not stupid.  I think it was Dr. Seuss who said ,"Children can smell a moral a mile a way."  If that is not a direct quote, it is close.  So while people get all high and mighty with me when I read children's books and say that it would drive them mad, because they are juvenile, I argue back that most of the time a good children's author will write a better story than an adult author.  Because, while a child may not be totally jaded, they are not stupid.

What does this have to do with "Dreams and Shadows"?  I have been reading some adult literature lately for a number of reasons.  One, I am running a 20-30 something book club at work and two, I feel like I need to be familiar with some of the more modern stuff.  As I enjoy most of Neil Gaiman's writing, this one was suggested.  And in a way I see how.  Cargill weaves a dark fairy tale complete with some great research of fae and dark legends.  Not all that "glitters" is gold in the world of fairies and djinn.  Anyone who does a little probing of this type of lore realizes that cutesy victorian fairies are not very good representatives of the creatures of legend.

The main issue I had with this book was not the storytelling.  I found that I wanted to know what happened next.  There were points when I couldn't put it down.  It was mainly the characters.

I realize now, that I have gone through most of this review without talking about plot.  Here, there are several plots running.  The first is the doomed romance of Jared and Tiffany Thatcher, which begins as a story of a too perfect couple with all the luck.  Their text book courtship is interrupted when they are chosen as targets of baby snatching fae who replace their newborn son, Ewan, with Knocks, a hideous changeling.  This drives Tiffany to suicide and Jared to a watery death at the hands of other dark forces.  Knocks is the only survivor, and while he proves a good villain, he is probably the only well fleshed out character in the entire novel.

The second main plot is that of Colby Stevens, a little boy chosen by the cursed djinn Yashar to be "granted" a wish.  When Colby's wish leads him into the dark realm of Austin Texas' fae Limestone Kingdom (yes, Austin Texas) he meets Ewan, grown into a boy around Colby's own age.  While Ewan has grown into a precocious little boy seemingly beloved by the fae (especially Mallaigh or Molly, a young Sidhe) Knocks, Ewan's changeling counterpart seethes at Ewan's very existence.

Everything comes together when ghosts or demons from the past come together and Colby discovers that Ewan's fostering by the fae has been part of a sinister plan.  Colby, being a young boy who knows no better uses his bond with Yashar to give himself the power to save Ewan.  Of course this is also not for the best.

The story follows these characters, Colby, Ewan, Knocks into their adult hood and while it was a fun ride, once again, only Knocks' rage fully fleshes out his character.  I would have liked to get to know Colby and Ewan a bit better.  Neither or them seem to display the power of emotions I like to see in protagonists.  Once again, this is what children's novels do so very well.  A good author will know that a child must connect with several characters on many levels.  Therefore they will flesh them out.  I would have liked more "flesh" on these bones.  Yashar, the cursed djinn may have been the only other character that had enough substance to intrigue me.


Also, I know there have been several complaints about the female characters being very thin.  While I agree, I can forgive some of them due to their fae nature.  Still, I really like to see a well written female character that does not only exist as a love interest.  Tiffany Thatcher and Knock's adopted mother Leila were as close as we could get to a well written heroine, but neither of them seemed to stick around long enough to be more than plot devices.  However, neither of these plot devices were particularly bad, so I am not sure how much of a complaint that is.

Littered between each chapter are "real" accounts of fairy activity from excerpts of a fake text written by a mysterious Phd. of metaphysical studies.

This is definitely worth a read.  It is funny in places (especially when it comes to the dialogue between Yashar and the young Colby) and terrifying in others.  However, there are parts of this novel that left me feeling like I had an itch I could never scratch.  This was likely the holes in the characters.

Negligence and a quick review.

I've been neglecting my professional blog which is a sister to this site in lieu of whining on this blog.  That disappoints me because I initially wanted this site to be a professional one and it turned into something else, which is why I spun it off.

My apologies.  Aside from the personal turmoil that has been exhausting me, both from my internal struggles to feel fit for motherhood and the outside stress of dealing with damage control caused by my own mother's mental health issues, there have been other factors keeping me from reviewing children's/YA literature.

I took on extra Sundays of work in order to gain some needed overtime.  Now, I really love my job in a way that may seem unnatural to some, but the fact that I have such little down time off desk has taken a toll.  The only time I do have off is spent doing everything I don't have time to do during the week, part of which includes sleeping.  Other than that, my time is spend going to work, coming home, eating and going to sleep.  Now that Spring is on its way I am eager to have more daylight with which to explore outside.  Of course this has nothing to do with the fact that I just have not been bringing the reviews.

I have gotten lazy.  After all the time I spend at work, the last thing I want to do when I get home is something, "professional".  I am so behind on the usual amount of books that I usually read, I feel like I am letting my patrons down!  Still, I have actually read quite a few books worthy of review, but I just can't bring myself to actually write the damn reviews!  Hopefully, this will change in a few weeks when I will temporarily return to a normal schedule.

I quick mini review on something not book related that I have mentioned here in the past.  We recently acquired a Roku box which streams free, "channels" through the internet.  Having been an anime fan for years (yes, I will be a hipster and say I was a fan "before it was cool", if it even is cool to be a fan. I honestly don't know about that), I was pretty excited to have the Crunchyroll channel.  Basically, Crunchyroll legally streams current and past series, some of which have not been formally released in the US, some of which are airing in Japan right now!  There is a lot more anime on Japanese television than one may think.

While here, we have dozens of new regular television shows that air each season, only a handful of them are not total shit.  This is true of currently airing anime.  So, while having Crunchyroll has been fun, before I collapse I get to check out a lot of content I would have missed otherwise, there are no filters to what sucks and what is good.  And like it is here, most of it sucks!  And not only does it suck, badly, it costs more to produce than a normal American sitcom!  This is disappointing knowing how much goes into producing a cartoon.  And I love all animation.  It all has so much potential.  Be they cartoons that are comic or fifteen minute shots of color and manic script as well as the cinematic storytelling that takes place in several anime series.  So it is just sad to see nothing but crap.

So anyway, I found a hidden gem from last season which is worth writing about, which is given the common title of, Anohana, loosely translated to, The Flower that we saw that day.  It is a story about recovery from grief and trauma, but not in an over the top ridiculous sense, which is why it works so well.

Jinta, Memna and friends as children.

As teenagers, with one less friend.

Basically, the story begins when a depressed teenager named Jinta begins seeing the ghost of Menma, a girl from his past.  Oddly enough, Menma appears to have grown to the age she would have been had she not died.  The cause of her death is revealed little by little throughout the series, which is appropriately short.  Only 11 episodes.

Ten years prior to the beginning of the series, Jinta was the "head" of his group of grade school age friends.  They spent their summers playing in a "club house" and were all very close.  Menma was part of this group.  Then she died.  Her death caused the once close friends to react in different ways and eventually they all retreated into actions that lead them to stop talking, occasionally sharing uncomfortable glances when they passed on the street.

Jinta is convinced that Menma's ghost is the manifestation of his stress.  He has stopped attending high school and is on the verge of being kicked out.  All he does is lie in bed.  Menma is shocked and hurt to see what has become of her group.  She is also fully aware that she is dead.  She convinces Jinta that she must have a wish that she needs granted in order to allow her to pass on to the next life.  In order to do that, all of her friends must be together once again.

I'm not a fan of "soggy" stories, and though this one is pretty much a tear jerker it feels so very real that I couldn't help but care about everyone of the characters.  Each one is "stuck" in a cocoon of guilt or failure in a very believable sense.  One character takes his grief to a somewhat bizarre level, but it is a minor squabble considering the rest of the material.  It all resonated beautifully across the screen, the opposite of the false sentimental films based on the literature of Nicholas Sparks, which make me feel like vomiting.  Yes, big eyed animated characters made me tear up while Nicholas Sparks films with real people make me feel sick.  I don't care.

Hopefully I can pick up once again at my professional blog.

The "H" word

I'm not sure why, but I feel weird using the the word "husband".

It's not that I don't want people to know I'm married.  In fact I am more than happy to mention that I got married when I run into old acquaintances.  I am definitely happily married.  So it isn't the "M" word that I can't wrap my tongue around, it is the "H" word.  It feels funny.

I had a worse problem with the "F" word.  No, not that "F" word.  I mean fiance.  I never used it once throughout my entire engagement.  It just seemed so pretentious.  I would simply refer to Thoth as his name (which isn't Thoth, and he doesn't look like an Ibis) or as, "the guy I'm marrying".  Sometimes still, "boyfriend" and Sometimes as, "future husband".  It seemed funny then, but I figured it would get less weird when we were actually married.  It has gotten very slightly less weird.  But fiance was something I just couldn't say.  Ever.

I don't really understand it.  It's not so much that it seems, "too grown up".  Sometimes I feel like we are kids winging it, but we take care of our shit like adults.  We divide up chores, pay bills, do taxes.  All those great adult things.  We've gotten estimates for new windows, y'all!  We go "antiquing"!  We are pretty on the ball with discussing our future, especially since my recent freak out.  We work as a team, when needed.  We've been married for almost three years!  But the word "husband" still feels weird.

Explain that, Clarissa.