Man vs Max

Our dog Max is a rescue. What he was rescued from, we don’t exactly know, but we do know that he came to Canada from Lebanon, we assume in a large dog crate. This explains many things. First, Max is an anxious dog. Second, he does not love crates. According to our dog trainer, his anxiety presents as aggression – so, she assures us, he’s not really an #$@hole; he just acts out because he’s nervous and doesn’t know what’s expected of him. As a teacher who often works with students who need a little extra attention, I feel like this is something I should have picked up, but the dogs I grew up with were decidedly not anxious, so I had no idea.

One thing that helps nervous dogs, apparently, is having a space in the house that is their safe space. Before we knew what he was doing, Max had chosen under our kitchen table as his space, which is not ideal because, well, that’s where our feet go. He’s generally ok with feet being there, but “generally” is not really enough when it comes to where your feet go while you eat. So… we are trying to help Max find another safe place in the house.

Max’s absolute favourite place to sleep is on our couch – with a stuffie

We started with a large hard-sided crate, which we put in the TV room by the sofa where we often hang out. Max was not impressed. He absolutely, 100% refused to go in the crate. Heck, he would hardly go near it. He growled at it and, when we put his favourite toys inside, whimpered a little, but he did not go get them. He spent weeks steadfastly refusing to go near the crate, giving it a wide berth while giving us the side-eye. Finally, we realized that he had probably flown from Lebanon in a crate, so we retired it to the basement (a place too scary for him to even contemplate; he will barely look down the stairs).

Months later, we put a dog bed in the kitchen near his table-lair. We have been trying to teach him the “place” command, and he will kind of do it, especially if treats are involved, but it’s out in the open, and he’s made it clear that he might go there to humour us, but this is not where he intends to sleep. So two weeks ago, we got *another* crate – this one with metal sides that he can see through. (Thank goodness for friends and family who are supporting us and our anxious dog by providing us with various types of crates and beds in our quest for calm.)

We set up crate number two in a different corner of the TV room, and this time he didn’t growl or whimper. Then we got smart: we put Max’s food dish in the far corner of the new crate. To eat, he would have to go in. He’s half Lab, so he loves food, but he’s still Max, so he was tentative: he tested things out with one paw… then two… then he s-t-r-e-t-c-h-e-d in to eat his food. Such a brave boy!

We added a towel to make the bottom of the crate more comfortable, and two days later, Max managed to put three paws in the crate. Then, yesterday, he discovered a better solution. When Andre put a treat in the far corner, Max pawed at the towel and pulled the whole thing towards the door. Once he’d pulled the bowl close enough, he grabbed the treat and triumphantly trotted back to his safe space under the table to eat in peace.

Anxious, but not dumb, this dog. Sigh. In the question of Man vs Max, I think Max is winning.

Update: tonight he put all four paws in the crate!

What happened on Tuesday

What happened was a thunderstorm with a massive burst of lightning and a thunderclap so loud that I jumped out of bed even before I understood that the dog was barking.

What happened was that the dog went crazy, running and barking and shaking, after the thunderclap that shook our house and shook me out of bed, so now I was wide awake and went downstairs to the kitchen, where I talked to my visiting in-laws about the much-needed rain that was pouring pouring pouring down.

What happened was that the rain started coming down so hard after that giant clap of thunder that it took us a second to register the blaring of the fire alarm. “FIRE! FIRE! FIRE!” a vaguely female electronic voice stated with an oddly calm urgency. She managed to time her words in between the deafening blares of the alarm. Lights flashed from every unit, the already nervous dog went wild, and even my father-in-law, who’s lost a lot of his hearing, had to cover his ears, while my mother-in-law jumped up, and I ran to the back door to let the dog out, then both of my children came loping downstairs, blearily asking what was going on as if our house was not suddenly and obviously full of noise and strobe lights and chaos. “It’s the fire alarm!” I yelled, and my voice was not calm or electronic and my words were not timed to fall between the blaring blaring blaring of the alarm, so I had to repeat myself several times even though what I was saying was painfully obvious.

What happened was that I ran down to the basement to try to turn off the insistent incessant alarm, and the frantic dog escaped from the backyard and tore down the driveway, seeking refuge anywhere that was not our shrieking, strobing house, so my son ran out the front door and intercepted him, then somehow the terrified dog and my somewhat-less-terrified mother-in-law ended up in the backseat of her car, trembling and meanwhile I dragged a chair into the basement and stood on it, ineptly pushing and jabbing at one unit, trying to stop the noise.

^{*What happened was that one week earlier, Max had encountered a skunk and even though we had washed him and washed him, his wet fur now smelled distinctly of skunk, even as my mother-in-law sat with him in the back seat of her decidedly not skunky car, calming him.}

What happened was that I could not make the alarms stop screaming, maybe because they’ve only gone off twice in five years and both times Andre was the one who stopped them, but now he wasn’t home, so I called him at work and when he didn’t pick up, I kept calling and calling while I pushed and held and twisted and pulled and tried everything I could think of to stop the sirens. When that didn’t work, I got off the chair and threw all the fuses, desperate to make the noise stop, but then I was in the dark with the strobing lights and the blaring noise.

What happened was that Andre called back, alarmed and annoyed, and he told me to unplug each unit until I found the one that was the center of the storm of sound, and then, if they still wouldn’t stop sounding to just “throw them in the freezer” and I thought that sounded odd, but we’d once put a bat in the freezer (it’s a long story) and the noise was so loud that I didn’t think too much about it: I stood on the kitchen chair and unplugged one alarm then another while the kids did the same upstairs until suddenly, mercifully, the noise stopped, but when one of the units let out an errant “beep,” I threw them all in the chest freezer in the basement.

What happened was I had planned to meet up with colleagues for lunch, so once I had four alarms in the freezer and the dog coaxed out of the car and everything more or less back to normal, I left. As I drove to the restaurant, I wondered about those frozen fire detectors, but they were there now and quiet, so I continued. And all was well. I came home, took them out of the freezer, and took my younger child to the dentist to talk about braces. It took awhile.

What happened was that as the fire detectors defrosted, they decided they were not done: they started to scream. My mother-in-law put the (still slightly skunky) dog in the backyard, and he tried to escape again. My father-in-law decided enough was enough so he put the alarms back in the chest freezer, and when I came home I decided that I was done with alarms for the day, so even though I’m off for the summer and even though Andre was working, I ignored the clearly unsolved problem.

What happened was that Andre came home and said, incredulously, “You put them in the FREEZER?” and swore that he had said to put them in the cooler which is the ice chest and which does not actually freeze things – especially not fire detectors – and while I can admit that he might have said that, I also reminded him that we have put weirder things in the freezer, so he shook his head and went upstairs to change his clothes then went downstairs to take four frozen fire detectors out of the freezer.

What happened was that freezing the alarms (twice) had caused condensation to build up and the batteries to get low, but this time I knew better so, barefooted and disheveled, I took the dog outside before the chaos (re)commenced.

What happened was the dog treed a raccoon and one of our cats got into a fight with a neighborhood cat, and as I tried to calm things down, two little boys, brown as berries and attracted by chaos, wandered by and stopped for a chat. One told me that he was four and he could lift this rock and he could spell his own name. He was astonished to learn that I was a teacher and wondered why I was sitting on my front steps with a dog. I said, “because it’s summer” and he didn’t ask about the thin sound of fire alarms seeping up from the basement and only wandered away with his cousin when Andre came up and asked if I knew where the compressed air was. I did not.

What happened was that Andre, looking somewhat wild, begged me to go ask our neighbours if they had compressed air while he went downstairs to blow dry the fire detectors and even though this request was patently insane because who has compressed air, I got up from the porch and went door to door, barefoot and trailing a dog, asking. The two oldest neighbours laughed out loud and delightedly asked how our fire alarm was holding up. I didn’t tell them that four units were frozen and dying and currently being blown dry in an attempt to bring them back to life but in a silent sort of way because that was even more insane than asking 75-year-olds for compressed air on a Tuesday night. I tried four houses; no one had compressed air.

What happened was I came home empty-handed and finished blow-drying the four dead-ish detectors, leaving one after another on the basement floor, dazed, with their poor half-dead eyes winking weakly on and off until Andre fetched them and put them back in their places – except for one that we dubbed the “problem child” and put back into the cooler (not the freezer) until further notice.

As far as I know, one week later, it is still there.

Immigrant

Last week, my child had to interview an immigrant for a grade 9 Geography assignment. Everyone in his class had to do the same. Pause for a moment and take that in: we live in a place where a teacher can safely assume that every child in a class of 25ish can, with relative ease, find a person in their life who has immigrated to the country. Oh, and we live in a place where that is a good thing.

I no longer take this for granted.

My child chose to interview me because I am an immigrant. Some days I am highly aware of myself as an immigrant; others, it seems like a word that pertains to other people. As an American immigrant to Canada, right now I feel horribly connected to my birth country: people who, like me, have immigrated, only to the US instead of to Canada, are being targeted and deported – sent to rot in foreign jails from which they may never return – for no reason other than being immigrants. Yes, yes, I realize that there are trumped-up reasons for their deportation, but even the Cato Institute (not exactly a bastion of liberal thinking) has determined that many of the men recently deported to an El Salvadorean prison had no criminal record and had never violated immigration law. The immoral actions of the current US government must surely give many immigrants pause.

So, when my child started asking me questions, I was a little tense. He was conducting the interview in Frenglish because I refused to answer exclusively in English for a class that he’s taking in French. Soon, he learned that I had lived in five places (and two countries!) before I was ten; that I have taught in four countries; that people in the US don’t take their shoes off when they enter a home. (“Wait? Really? That’s weird. Why don’t I know about that?” he asked. I said that his American relatives probably just laugh at him behind his back. Hee hee hee.)

He learned about the visa process and what it was like to move to a country where I could not yet hold a job and didn’t really have any friends.

“What did you do?” he asked.
“Learned to knit,” I replied, which is sort of true.
“I never really thought of you not knitting,” he said.
Oh, my sweet child. One is not born knowing how to knit.

After the interview, he drafted his “article”. It was still in Frenglish, though the French was coming along. Tonight, he’s polishing it, so we’ve spent quite a long time making sure the French grammar is right and double-checking accents. “I trust you more than Google Translate and BonPatron,” he tells me.

I point out that I am American. He is literally writing about me being American. I am not a native French speaker and still have a bit of a Southern accent when I speak. He says my French is still “really good,” and I decide to accept the compliment.

He decides he wants pictures to accompany his article. He’s particular – he wants me at specific ages and doing certain things.
“Do you have any in the snow?” he asks.
“Not if I can avoid it,” I tell him, but I live in Ottawa now, so of course I do. I send him what I can.

After a few minutes he says, “Do you have any of you looking normal?” which makes me laugh – I love making silly faces for the camera. Still, for him, and to make immigrants look good, I find some “normal” pictures.

For you, however, I will share some of the funny ones.

There: faces of an immigrant. Remember this the next time another person gets deported. They might be a lot like me.

I Can Do Hard Things #SOLC25 31/31

Not for the first time this month, I nearly forgot to write. Tonight seems egregious, since it’s the last post of the March Challenge, but there it is. I’m the mom who would forget to leave the house with a spare diaper, even with the second baby – even when the second baby was over a year old. Apparently I have trouble forming new habits.

Of course, part of the reason I almost forgot to write is that I’ve been thinking about this post for a while. Wrapping up a month’s worth of daily writing and publishing is definitely part of the challenge, and this year is no different. I’ve been trying to put into words what I’ve learned this time around, or at least what I experienced. In my head, I’m close to knowing; in writing, I’m a little farther away from conclusions.

This March, I’ve sort of shoehorned writing in around other things. Some years I feel like it’s been more central to the month; this year it’s been more part of the fabric of my days. Predictably, some days have been tough, but mostly I had something to say when I sat down to write. As usual, I feel that I haven’t commented on nearly enough blogs, and I’m missing reading some of my “regulars.” I’ve come to recognize that this is ok.

Mostly, this March has been a reminder that I can do hard things – and I’m allowed to do them in a way that works for me. Write in the evening instead of in the morning? I can do that. Some days comment on only three or four other blogs? I can do that, too. Write a two-sentence post? Sure. Or use almost all pictures? Ok. Heck, accidentally post about extremely similar dinner conversations in the space of three days? Go for it. This month I have forgiven myself over and over for things that, as it turns out, others don’t even notice. Who knew that writing every day would help me continue to shed the shoulds that have governed my life for so long.

Tonight, I went to a class at my gym that I have never tried before. It “includes a little more intensity and choreography than our usual.” Since I can barely keep up with the “usual,” I wasn’t sure that I was making a good choice, but I did it anyway. I had to stop a few times, and for one entire “choreo” track, I gave up and just did my own basic steps. No one cared and I got a great workout. Once I got home, I had to wait a while to stop sweating – which is part of why I nearly forgot to write. The whole thing was more than my usual, but I can still feel the buzz of energy from having finished.

March is like that: it’s more than my usual, but the buzz – from the writing, from the community, from the challenge – lingers long afterwards, and it’s totally worth it.

See you on Tuesdays! (Um, yes, that’s tomorrow.)

Dinner Party Conversation #SOLC25 29/31

We may have been talking a little too much about politics in our house over the last few weeks. Just now, when I told Mr. 14 that I was writing about tonight’s dinner table discussion with friends – the US, Trump, tariffs, deportations, Signal – he rolled his eyes. “Everyone knows what you’re going to say.”

“What should I say instead?” I asked.

“Tell them that someone thought tariffs were a great idea,” he suggested. “Tell them that we had a big fight and we threw the person who thought tariffs are good into the backyard with the dogs.

“At least that will be different,” he added. “I mean, what Canadian thinks tariffs are good?”

So, um, yeah: that’s my 14-year-old’s take on Trump’s tariffs.

Back up two hours to the dinner discussion my son found so predictable. There, the 16-year-old daughter of a friend tried to fathom the Signal war planning fiasco. “Wait – what?” She squinted her eyes a little and looked at her mother and me like we were trying to pull a fast one. “They talked about bombing people in a group chat?” She paused and let that sink in. “Like, seriously? Grown men? Real bombs? In a *group chat*?” When we mentioned that they had accidentally invited a journalist and that some of them were outside the US, she was incredulous. “Do they even know how group chats work?”

Around the table, people talked about not buying fruit that came from the US, avoiding products they used to rely on, cancelling streaming services. The teen whose parent is cancelling streaming services was unimpressed, but consoled herself that “at least TikTok is Chinese.”

With that, we are treated to a TikTok video of NDP leader Jagmeet Singh demonstrating how he ties his turban while he talks about his Conservative opponent. (For the non-Canadians, the NDP is the furthest left of the three major Canadian political parties; we are having an election on April 28.) She calls this “hair porn” and we all watch, fascinated.

Not long after this, we piled into the living room to watch our movie. As we settled in, three families, four children, two dogs, I kept thinking of one of JD Vance’s lines from the leaked Signal chat, one which has been on repeat in my head, though not in the way he meant it. “I think we are making a mistake,” he wrote.

For once, I think the VP got it right. Maybe we should throw him in the backyard with the dogs.

The Blank Page #SOLC25 28/31

Tonight, I offer a true free write – from my brain to the page, and then to your brain. I warn you now: it got odd.

It’s not that I don’t have anything to write, it’s that I have everything to write.

It’s not that I have everything to write, it’s that I don’t have the time to write what I want in the way that I want to.

It’s not that I don’t have the time to write what I want in the way that I want to, it’s that I am doing too many things.

It’s not that I am doing too many things, it’s that there are so many things I want to do.

It’s not that there are so many things I want to do, it’s that I keep doing things that aren’t that important to me.

It’s not that I keep doing things that aren’t important to me, it’s that so many things must be done.

It’s not that so many things must be done, it’s that I’m not managing my time well.

It’s not that I’m not managing my time well, it’s that there’s not enough time to do everything.

It’s not that there’s not there’s not enough time to do everything, it’s the idea that there is everything to do.

Usually, when my brain reaches this point, I take a bath.

When I take a bath, I sometimes look at the state of my toenails. They could almost always use some love. Sometimes when I look at the state of my toenails, I wonder what they would look like if I had married the man who was interested in my feet when I was in my twenties. We didn’t date or anything – I didn’t even know him well; he was my roommate’s colleague, an attractive South African man who sometimes came by. Several times, he mentioned how much he liked my painted toenails. It turns out, he also mentioned them to my roommate once or twice when I was not there. Apparently he liked my feet. This felt… unusual.

Sometimes, I imagine that I married the handsome South African who I did not know well and who found my feet attractive. I imagine that my feet now would be amazing. I would get regular pedicures and I would not have done things that made my feet spread and whatnot over the years. If we had had children, I would not have walked around barefoot in the heat during my pregnancies. I would spend a lot of money on shoes, and they would all fit me perfectly, so my feet wouldn’t have the weird lumps and bumps that feet sometimes acquire. I probably would not do yoga or run. These things are hard on one’s feet.

I suspect that by now, if I had married him, I would resent the attention that my feet required. I would get pedicures, but I wouldn’t think of them as a wonderful indulgence; instead, I would consider them wasteful and time-consuming. I would look at women on their way to yoga and long for the inner peace I imagined they experienced. I would think wistfully of buying cheap shoes at PayLess and I would resent the way my friends casually compared me to Imelda Marcos. Maybe I would be considering divorce – or already divorced! – because I was so frustrated at having to take care of my feet.

I get out of the tub, happy with the revelation that I have better things to do than take care of my feet – things like write a slice of life about the weird ways my brain works. Then my spouse, who is not South African and probably prefers my writing to my feet, comes and settles in next to me. “I think my brain is better than my feet,” I whisper, and, while he looks perplexed, to my delight, he agrees.

Dinner conversation, outlined #SOLC25 27/31

We went out for burgers with our kids tonight to celebrate a birthday. The Works isn’t fast, but their burgers are delicious. While we waited for our food, we talked; when the burgers came, we kept talking. Once we were home, I was stunned to look back on our meandering conversation and to realize how interesting I find my teenage children. When did they get this curious about the world?

I can’t possibly write it all up, so I’m taking (more) inspiration from Sherri and trying an alternative format. Here’s an outline of we discussed:

Andre’s run today
1. his longest since pre-children
2. how far the rest of us have run
  1. I have run the farthest (yes, I’m bragging)
What the Bank of Canada does
1. The state of the internet when Andre worked for the Bank
2. It was rudimentary
Why the drama teacher was late to class
1. This is unclear
2. Maybe she was creating a seating plan?
3. She still does not know the names of everyone in the class
  1. It is six weeks into the semester
4. She now has pictures of the students with their names
  1. It’s not obvious that this is helping
When the next set of article summaries is due
1. Monday
2. This will require good time management
Camus
1. He is an existentialist
2. This was not required reading
Jesse Thistle
1. He spent a lot of time in his memoir recounting his experiences with addiction
2. He met his wife after he got clean
  1. Because falling in love with an addict would be hard
  2. She was from the same town he was
  3. They now have children
Being cancelled
1. Is it being cancelled if, like Joseph Boyden, you misrepresent yourself?
  1. Did Joseph Boyden actively misrepresent himself or did he not understand the gravity of what he was doing?
Race – biological or cultural?
1. The idea of race as a cultural construct is very difficult to fathom
  1. It’s hard to see culture when you’re in it
2. Andre and I provided (frankly) thoughtful examples
  1. The children were unconvinced
  2. But they listened
Why Google’s AI summaries are untrustworthy
1. Which teachers have discussed this in school – mostly English and Social Science teachers
2. hilarious examples from our children
Tariffs
1. Why targeting the auto industry might be effective or ineffective
2. Why countries are or are not banding together to oppose the US
Illegal actions by the current US President
1. Including interfering in private industry, like specific law firms
2. Also telling a university that its students cannot wear masks during protests
  1. Which seems a bit much
Group chats
1. Signal vs WhatsApp
2. Why would you add a journalist to a government group chat?
3. Why would the US bomb Yemen?
  1. Who are the Houthis?
The efficacy of protests
1. Some of these seem deeply ineffective to the children
  1. One protest was declared “annoying”
2. The children are not convinced that protesting Israel/ Gaza is effective – on either side
  1. Institutions outside the affected area have financial interests in what is going on
    - Including weapons
Civil disobedience
1. Examples from Gandhi & India
2. The US Civil Rights Movement
  1. Rosa Parks was effective
  2. Perhaps we need to watch some movies about this because it sounds really interesting to the kids

Dinner ended.
WHEW!

Scam Artist #SOLC25 26/31

As I pulled into the driveway, Andre was coming out of the house with the dog. They paused to greet me (aka Max dragged Andre to the car door), and Andre said, “I thought I’d go ahead and take him for his walk since you were running a little late.”

I gave Andre a funny look. “Mr. 16 didn’t walk him? He said he would.”

Andre, in turn, gave Max a funny look. “Max? Did you already have a walk?”

Max looked off into the distance, the picture of doggy innocence. If dogs could whistle, he would have whistled an innocent little tune. “Who me?”

And Andre decided that since Max was already on the leash, he might was well take him for a second walk.

Being the Parent #SOLC25 25/31

I parked in the tiny parking lot and sat in my car for a few minutes, hoping that the rain would let up. While I waited, I texted a friend to let her know I had arrived; we made plans to meet in a bit. That taken care of, I darted out of the car and towards the well-lit building. A young man – one of Mr. 16’s friends – said hello to me as I made my way up the stairs. There, a couple I’ve known for years were standing near an open door, so I paused to chat for a few minutes – kids, work, life. Luckily, no one was in no rush.

Eventually, a door down the hallway opened, and an old colleague gestured to me. I made my excuses to my friends and headed over to him. We embraced briefly and then caught up. He shared photos of his son – already two and a half! – and we laughed a bit about my youngest, now 14, and some of his antics in English class. Time flew; soon it was time to go.

This is how parent-teacher interviews go for me now that both of my children are in high school.

The next interview was across the courtyard, and I ran into several people I knew as I made my way to the classroom. There, a semi-familiar young teacher greeted me and reminded me that we had worked together a few years ago. “I’ve gained weight,” he said ruefully, “Imagine me, thinner.” Again, we used some of our ten minutes to catch up and some to talk about Mr. 14. When time was up, the next parent was a friend, so we all talked for a minute before I left them to their discussion.

Being the parent in these meetings is odd. I’ve taught in this school district for seventeen years now, and I’ve worked in four different high schools. Since I take pleasure in both collaboration and mentoring, and since new teachers often move around a bit before they get a contract, I’ve gotten to know a lot of teachers at a lot of schools. More than that, a few of my former students are now teachers (!!). These days, much to my children’s dismay, parent-teacher conferences are a semisocial event for me.

The third teacher on my appointment sheet was not able to make interviews – too bad, really, because she was the only person I didn’t already know. After I figured out that she was absent, I made my way back to the front hall of the school to wait for Mr. 16. He was serving as a guide for the evening, and it was still cold and rainy, so I had offered him a ride home. This meant I was free to stand in the lobby and chat with an old friend/colleague and talk about books, the upcoming PD Day, and changes in the school board. Soon, one of Mr. 16’s teachers joined us, and we began an animated discussion of AI and how it’s affecting learning. By the time Mr. 16 was released from his duties, we were gesturing with enough enthusiasm to be completely mortifying.

Eventually, parent-teacher conferences wound down. Before we left, I found the friend/ neighbour/ colleague who I had texted when I arrived, and we all walked out to the car together – of course we were also giving her a ride home. After we dropped off my friend, my child said, “It’s kind of cool that you know so many of my teachers.”

I’m glad he’s ok with it because apparently this is what it means for me to be a parent who teaches.

4-4-4 #SOLC25 23/31

This evening, after several false starts (possibly because I’m still a little tired from whatever illness got me down yesterday), I decided to do a 4-4-4: write about four things within four feet of you for four minutes. I set the timer & wrote, then went to have dinner with the family. Now I’ve spent another minute editing/ tidying. (And probably another minute writing this.) It’s a pretty good way to get writing when I’m feeling stuck. Special thanks to Elisabeth Ellington who used this form earlier this month and to whomever mentioned Saffy’s Angel (maybe as a book her mother liked? Can’t remember.)

***

On the other side of the bookshelf, Mr. 14 is on the computer. What is he doing? I don’t know. I do know that earlier today he let me add him to my Google Classroom to check out a quiz I made. Then he commented on my quiz (“interesting, but hard”). He’s awfully fun to have nearby; one of the many reasons I appreciate having his computer in our main living area.

My feet are up on the arm of the love seat in front of me. Just beyond them, our black lab mix, Max, is snoring lightly. He prefers being near me whenever possible; even better if he can be near me and in a soft space. If I stir, he’ll wake up, but for now, he sleeps peacefully.

Beside me on the couch are two blue yoga balls in a small mesh bag. They are calling me, reminding me that some mobility work will be good for my body, even if I’m not quite done being sick, even if I would rather just sit and read my new book, James by Percival Everett. It’s open and just next to the yoga balls. So far, it is amazing. I finished The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store just in time for book club on Friday night; that one was a slow read for me. Then, yesterday, I read Saffy’s Angel – a middle grade novel recommended by Elisabeth Ellington – because I spent most of the day in bed. It was a great half-sick lie-in-bed read. Last night I started James, and I’m tearing through it – making much faster progress than I did on The Heaven and Earth Grocery Store.

Time’s up.