Thursday’s Tale: Beaver Builds a Slide

by Carol2 Comments
David and I watched a bit of a tv show last night that I think must have been on sneaky animals. It included a bit about sea otters. This male sea otter waited for a momma sea otter to leave her baby in a safe spot and go fishing. He then kidnapped the baby and gave it back, unharmed, in exchange for the food the momma had. The show made me look for an animal tale for today. Beaver Builds a Slide is a Shoshone tale. The Shoshone are a Native American tribe from an area around Wyoming, Nevada, Utah and Idaho. I read the story at Storyteller.net. In the beginning, beavers had tails that looked very much like an otter’s tail, long and narrow and covered with hair. Once, in the middle of winter, an otter was swimming in the cold river. She climbed onto a snowy bank, threw herself down in a belly-flop on her stomach and slid down the...
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Readers’ Workouts – 1/19

by Carol5 Comments
I almost didn't post this week because my week was pretty lousy, but I decided that was silly and really kind of against the whole accountability theory. Here are my steps for the week. Not so great. I had a bunch of family stuff to do this week, with Amber's birthday Monday and her party Friday, driving kids around on Thursday, Solo and Ensemble Saturday, and the Steelers game Sunday. And I seem to have picked up a bit of a cold. Excuses, I know, but sometimes I'm allowed to have them, right? My current plan is to do a core workout on Monday, cardio on Tuesday (60 mins), upper body on Wednesday, cardio on Thursday (60 mins), total body workout on Friday and cardio on Saturday (60+ mins). This week was a bust. Tuesday - Helped shovel the driveway Wednesday - 20 mins arms/shoulders I need to go to the gym this evening while Amber's at the basketball game. I usually listen to a book while...
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Spotlight on The Last Dinner Party by Carly M. Duncan

by CarolNo Comments
Book Excerpt: She opened her eyes only once she heard the apartment’s front door close. She couldn’t even bring herself to turn over in the bed despite her discomfort, for she didn’t want a single mattress coil’s shift to alert him to the fact that she was awake. She waited a moment, lying in her bed, pausing in case he had forgotten anything, but the sound of footsteps faded into the distance. Meryl Brunetti had been awake for twenty minutes, but she wasn’t prepared to begin the day. Not until he was gone. She didn’t want to see him, she didn’t want to talk, and she certainly wasn’t prepared to deal with anything they’d discussed the night before. She needed more time, and she needed to figure out how she felt. Instead of waking up at seven o’clock to make him breakfast as usual, to start his day on a pleasant note, and see him out the door, she slept. Or, rather, she...
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All the Old Knives by Olen Steinhauer

by Carol1 Comment
I listened to the audio version of All the Old Knives, which I think may have been a mistake. The plot is interesting: former lovers, Celia a former spy, Henry still in the game, meet for dinner. Henry's goal is to put to rest once and for all a case from years ago that involved a plane hijacking, or at least that's what he tells us his goal is- he doesn't tell Celia that when she agrees to meet him. Of course, she has her own reasons for coming to the restaurant. The story takes place during this one meal, but we go back and forth in time to the hijacking. the book alternates between Henry and Celia's viewpoints, with a different narrator for each. Most of the time, switches in viewpoint and time period don't bother me, but I think the two narrators made this one tough. Celia's "voice" threw me out of the story every time. She just didn't sound like...
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Thursday’s Tale: The Obstinate Man

by Carol3 Comments
It's finally winter around here. My feet have been cold all day, even with a space heater blowing on them. Tuesday, Amber had the day off of school because of the snow. Not my favorite time of year, but it did make me want to find a cold tale for today. This one comes from Greenland and was retold by Knud Rasmussen in Eskimo Folk-Tales, 1921, edited and translated by W. Worster. There was once an Obstinate Man — no one in the world could be as obstinate as he. And no one dared come near him, so obstinate was he, and he would always have his own way in everything. One day his wife was in mourning because her child had died. Therefore she was obliged to remain idle at home as was the custom. And while she sat thus idle and in mourning, her husband, that Obstinate One, came in one day and told her to sew the skin of his kayak. Sher...
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