Monthly Archives: October 2017

Friday Book Whimsy: A Gentleman in Moscow

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Since its publication in 2016, and into 2017, A Gentleman in Moscow, by Amor Towles, kept coming up as a book I MUST read. The best book of 2016, they said. One reviewer said A Gentleman in Moscow was her best book EVER.

After a long wait at the library, I finally got the book, and dove in. It’s not that I was disappointed; I just was a bit underwhelmed. Don’t hate me All of You Book Reviewers Who Loved This Novel. Just recognize that I’m not nearly as sophisticated as you.

Towles wrote a book called Rules of Civility published back in 2011. I read that book and liked it, but recall that it took me a very long time to get into the story. So when I found myself having trouble getting into this novel, I didn’t get discouraged. It helped that Towles’ writing is truly beautiful and elegant. It fit the story perfectly.

A Gentleman in Moscow tells the story of Count Alexander Rostov, a Russian aristocrat from a long line of Russian aristocrats. The story begins in 1922, when Count Rostov is tried by a Bolshevik court for being an aristocrat. Communism, you see. He is placed under house arrest at the Metropol Hotel, a real-life historic hotel in Moscow. He must live out the rest of his days within the confines of this elegant hotel. He has pretty much the run of the hotel. He can eat in the dining room; he can get his hair cut at the fancy barber; he can drink cognac at the bar. He just can’t leave the hotel.

The years pass, and the count has a series of relationships that are funny and poignant and interesting. Of particular note is a close friendship he develops with a young girl who lives with her parents in the same hotel. She provides him with not only friendship, but with a quirky outlook that is welcome given the fact that he can’t even go outdoors.

The book is really a series of vignettes. The writing, as I stated above, is eloquent, and fits nicely with the beautiful art deco hotel and the roaring twenties. The book follows the count throughout the next few decades into the 1950s and the Cold War.

Really, nothing much happens. Perhaps I was just at a time in my life when I needed a bit more action. I really did like the author’s writing, and Count Rostov was a likeable character, but I simply found myself skimming a lot of the chapters. I also found myself wondering if the leaders of the Communist party, particularly that close to the overthrow and murder of Tsar Nicholas II and his family, would really have allowed an aristocrat like Count Rostov to live such an unfettered life. It just didn’t seem realistic to me.

I’m definitely in the minority, at least when it comes to the reviews I’ve read. The book has been highly regarded.

Recommended for those interested in beautiful writing and less interested in a fast-paced story.

Here is a link to the book.

Thursday Thoughts

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The Race is On
Last night the Arizona Diamondbacks played the Colorado Rockies in a Wild Card game, winner moving to the regular playoffs. Not being particularly a baseball fan, I didn’t watch the game. I’m sure my brother did and Bill watched some of the game. I was hoping for a Rockies victory, though I like the Diamondbacks as well. The Diamondbacks won the game. Each year as we enter the October baseball season and get closer and closer to the World Series, I always think of my dad and how much he loved the Colorado Rockies. In 2007, the Rockies won the pennant and then went on to lose to the Boston Red Sox in the World Series. But Dad and Shirley were able to go to one of the World Series home games at Coors Field. It took some strategy and finesse to get them from Fort Collins to the game, but eventually Jen and I managed to walk them to the gate and wave goodbye, as Shirley pushed him into the ballpark in his wheelchair. The Rockies lost that game, but both Dad and Shirley had such a good time. I’m glad he was able to see a World Series game, and I hope that he watched the game last night from heaven (though he might have had other plans).

It’s Beginning to Sound a Lot Like Christmas
Bec texted me yesterday morning to tell me that she turned on her radio yesterday morning to hear her favorite country music station playing Christmas music. She is a lover of Christmas music, but nevertheless, she was stunned to hear holiday tunes on October 4. Thinking it might have been just an accident, she kept listening. Nope, the station is apparently beginning its run of holiday music early. I’m not sure how I feel about that. I sort of wish we could at least get through Halloween before listening to I Want a Hippopotamus for Christmas.

What I Want for Christmas is the Remodel to Be Finished
Seriously, if you would have told me in the middle of May when the remodel began that I would still be listening to pounding on October 5, I would have cried. But Bill is almost finished. He embarked last week on the very last room in which he will install hardwood floors. The process for all of the rooms has been that he pulled up the carpet, pull up the press board, layed down new plywood, and finally nailed in the hardwood. He has done the family room, the stairway, and the hallway upstairs. As you read this, he is probably nailing the hardwood down into the living room. And yes, even if you read this blog at 6 in the morning. Once the flooring is down, we will have a professional flooring company finish up the sanding and staining. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that the job will be complete before company arrives for Thanksgiving! The best news (and I hope I’m not jinxing anything by telling you this) is that he has done the entire job without serious injury……

Movie Comfort
I managed to talk Bill into taking a break on Tuesday, and we went to the movies. We saw American Made with Tom Cruise. We both really liked it, and thought Cruise did a great job. My takeaway was more about our experience, however. I’m telling you man, I love those reclining seats. Just imaging if those poor people that watched Gone With the Wind when it first came out could have had reclining seats for all three-and-a-half hours of watching enjoyment.

Ciao.

Are You Sitting Here?

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I’m in a fight with Target. Believe me, that doesn’t happen too often. And my fight has nothing to do with their bathrooms.

It has to do with their toddler car seats.

You may be wondering why a 63 year old woman is interested in car seats. Well, again, maybe you aren’t wondering since the name of my blog is Nana’s Whimsies. And being a nana involves more than making slime. It often involves giving rides to one or more of the grandkids.

Cole is 3, and he’s our youngest. He’s surprisingly tall for his age, but still requires a car seat, and will until he’s 4, at which time (I think) he can move into a booster seat. So for the past few months – all summer long, really – I have been squeezing him into my existing toddler car seat. That seat has been involved in the lives of eight previous grandkids. C’mon, just one more to go, I thought each time I struggled to get him into the seat.

I finally threw in the towel a few weeks ago when I took Kaiya, Mylee, and Cole to see a movie. Getting the carseat completely buckled over the squirming boy was nigh on impossible. Given that the theater was only a quarter mile from our house, I finally made do with only having one of the buckles fastened.  But I vowed that it was the end of the line. Time for a new car seat.

So I began researching car seats. Heavens, one can spend a small fortune on a car seat. Given that he’s the youngest, coupled with the fact that we will leave in a short time for our winter in AZ and when we get home he will be 4, I didn’t want to spend a fortune, no matter how small. But I wanted something that got good reviews and safety ratings with which I was comfortable.

I finally narrowed it down to a specific car seat that was sold at Target and didn’t require me to sell my plasma to afford it. Target.com told me that the store that is literally a half mile from our house had two in stock.

First thing yesterday morning, I drove to Target and made my way back to the baby supplies. I quickly found the model I had selected, but couldn’t find one in the box. I found every single OTHER car seat in its box, but not the carseat I sought.

With a minimum of fuss, I was able to get a Target staff person, who helped me look but was also unsuccessful. She checked the back room, also to no avail. However, she kindly assured me that another Target that was further away had two in stock.

So I made the trip to the second Target, and I won’t bore you with details. Suffice it to say that they also had one on display but none available to buy. But the staff person also couldn’t have been nicer, and promised me that a particular OTHER Target had a couple of the carseats in stock.

Now, as the saying goes, I might have been born during the day, but I wasn’t born yesterday. So this time, I called. Or perhaps I should say I TRIED to call. Because despite several attempts, I got cut off just at the point that I was going to get a live person who could tell me whether or not they had the car seat in stock.

I was pretty frustrated, and about to give up except that I kept envisioning poor Cole nearly busting out of the car seat and me wrestling the seat like Hulk Hogan fighting Andre the Giant. With renewed vigor, I drove to the Target in question and found the car seat in question.

And then, lo, and behold, decided on another one instead. One which they may well have had at the original Target. No matter, because I’m giving Target a reprieve. After all, my alternative is Walmart, and you all know how much fun that trip is.

Sorry for all the car seat drama, Nana.

Love in the Twilight

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You’re born, and then the first 25 years or so of your life seem to take forever. Particularly in elementary school and high school, you can’t wait to get old so that you can do All Those Things. You can’t wait to have a car. You can’t wait to get a great job and earn lots of money. You can’t wait to get married to the perfect person and have those perfect kids.

But from about 25 years old and beyond, life seems to move quickly. You’re busy with raising your family. You’re trying to balance your family life and your professional life. You’re running to and fro to soccer games and school plays and making sure homework gets done while trying to get a few bites of healthy food into your kids’ mouths. And before you know it, your kids are grown and don’t live with you any longer and work no longer seems as interesting as it once did. And then you retire, and though you might not have as much to do, it seems like the weeks just fly by. Tick tock, tick tock.

Wow, the above two paragraphs sound very maudlin, don’t they? I don’t mean that to be the case, because I’m happily retired and love my life very much. But it really does seem like time moves quickly.

I’m not just being a flibbertygibbit; I’m just about to get to my point: the other day, Netflix sent me an email in which they told me about a newly-posted movie that they think I might like. They do this quite often, and most of the time I wonder why in heaven’s name they would think that I might like a movie featuring Bruce Willis as an alien space commander in the year 2080.

But the movie they suggested this time was Our Souls at Night, a brand new Netflix original film. Hmmm, I thought to myself. Why does that name sound familiar? And as I read the synopsis, it occurred to me. Our Souls at Night was the last book written by the late author Kent Haruf, published posthumously in 2015 and reviewed by this writer in July 2015.

Kent Haruf is one of my very favorite writers, and his novel Plainsong is one of my two favorite novels of all time (the other being My Antonia, by Willa Cather).

The movie stars Robert Redford and Jane Fonda, who play Louis Waters and Addie Moore. The two septuagenarians live in the fictitious town of Holt, Colorado (allegedly modeled after real-life Yuma, on Colorado’s eastern plains). Louis and Addie are widowed, and lonely. They have both experienced tragedy, and now are just living day-to-day. Time is rushing by, just as I mentioned above. One day Addie gets up the nerve to ask Louis if he would spend the night with her, just talking and platonically sleeping together. He agrees, and a beautiful story emerges. The movie hit home for me so much that I wondered if the movie-maker was peering into my windows.

Life after 60 is entirely different than life as a young adult. The issues you face aren’t getting kids to soccer practice. Instead, many people fight loneliness and chronic pain and kids who are so focused on their life that they quit being curious about yours. Some might struggle with memory issues. Maybe macular degeneration or cataracts are giving you fits.

The movie does a wonderful job of presenting the realities of relationships in your twilight years, so very different from those in your more youthful life. It hits on friendship instead of sex, and the important role of grandparents in the lives of their grandkids. It reminds us of what life was like before we all were staring at our electronic devices. It winks at small-town gossipers.

And wow, what a job by these two amazing actors. Redford is 81 years old and Fonda will turn 80 on her next birthday, but they haven’t lost any of their acting chops……

The movie doesn’t glamorize growing old by making Fonda look va va va voom. She looks like a senior citizen, albeit quite an attractive one. Redford’s portrayal of Louis reminded me of my father.

All I can say is thank you Netflix, both for making this movie and for suggesting it to me. Now stop with the Bruce Willis stuff.

Well, I Don’t Like Your Tattoos

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Following is another Crabby-Get-Off-My-Lawn rant. Proceed at your own risk.

At my recent 45th high school class reunion, one of my fellow classmates told me this story: She was at a clothing store and overheard the conversation of a young couple. My friend was on one side of a rack of clothing and the two people were on the other side, out of her sight. The female of the couple had apparently pulled out a pair of capri pants and her male counterpart sarcastically said, “Oh, those will be great if capris ever come back in style.”

My friend’s reaction was to resist the urge to run over to the other side and grab the man by the throat, shake him like a wet rag, and say, “Oh, listen to me, and listen good. Capris ARE IN STYLE. If I ever hear words like that come out of your mouth again, you will be a dead man. I will hunt you down.”

Well, that might not have been the exact words she would have chosen, but it was her sentiment. And what’s more, I understand completely.  Because here’s the thing: I no longer wear shorts. The world in general should be thankful for that. My knees are wrinkled; my thighs are flabby; I’m nearly 64 years old and my days of wearing shorts have gone the way of the Edsel automobile. Having said that, now that Bill and I spend winters in Arizona, I spend the majority of my time in warm-to-hot weather. I get very hot in long pants. While capris aren’t a perfect answer, they do as good a job as anything of covering my legs but allowing a bit of relief from the heat. They are now – and will forever more be – a part of my wardrobe.

So Get Over It Ms. Millennial.

Facebook users: You know those lists that show up on your Facebook feed? Things like Fifteen Words that Are Always Used Incorrectly, or The 20 Makeup Tips that will Make You Look Like Milania Trump. I’m a sucker for those lists. It takes all of my self-control to stop from looking at each and every one of them.  So of course when I saw these words – 23 Baby Boomer Fashions That Need to Go Away — I couldn’t click on the link fast enough.

What I read made me so annoyed that I found myself yelling at an imaginary Millennial throughout the entire list. I won’t tell you all of her concerns, but here are some of the fashion trends that some 30-something spoiled trust-funder who only eats kale and quinoa and buys all of her clothes from Anthropologie thinks need to go away.

Pants with stretch waistbands: I eat things besides quinoa and kale. Like hamburgers and root beer floats. And since I haven’t tucked in a shirt in 10 years, what difference does it make if my waistband is elastic? Enjoy your spinach and acai berry shake and leave my waistbands alone.

Visors: Ms. Millennial’s command – “Wear a hat!” I don’t want to wear a hat. I look stupid in hats…..

But sometimes I want to keep the sun out of my eyes. I’ll wear a visor whether you like it or not. And stop telling me what to do. You’re not the boss of me.

Fanny packs: “Fanny packs are cute if you do it right. Baby boomers never do it right.” Seriously? There is a right and a wrong way to wear a fanny pack? Doesn’t it just clip around your waist and hang there?

Capris: According to Ms. Millennial, capris are the pants that cut your leg off in the worst place possible. I dare her to say that if she saw where shorts cut off my legs……

I’m entirely at peace where these pants cut off my legs.

Chico’s: Yep, she’s begging baby boomers to eliminate an entire chain store. She asks, “How many flowing cardigan vests do you need?” As many as I want.

Flannel nightgowns: She condemns flannel nightgowns because they make the wearer look like are from Little House on the Prairie. At least Laura Ingalls was warm at night, and so am I.

Merrill shoes for men: Their alleged ugliness offends our favorite fashion guru. I wish I could be around to see whether she is wearing fashionable shoes when she’s 75.

Rain ponchos: Dorky, says Ms. Millennial. Apparently getting soaking wet is better?

She goes on and on with her suggestions as to what fashions should be banned. I remember very clearly when I was younger and wondered for myself at what point I would start thinking it was fine to wear elastic-waisted pants.

It’s now, my friends. It’s now.

This post linked to Grand Social.