dual personalities

I stayed close to home all weekend, catching up on a lot of things. I brought a suitcase up from the basement so I could start thinking about what to bring on a trip the OM and I are taking next week to Colorado. It is a work-related conference for him so I will have a lot of time to relax and read.

Right now I am reading Lamb in His Bosom by Caroline Miller, a mostly forgotten novel which won the Pulitzer Prize in 1934. It was a best-seller, second only to Anthony Adverse that year. I stumbled across it when reading a book of Conrad Richter’s writing journals (found in my bookcase overhaul) where he admires this book and thinks her depiction of simple country folk better and more real than his own. As you know, I am a great admirer of Conrad Richter, so I had to check it out.

The novel tells the story of Cean and Lonzo, a young couple “who begin their married lives two decades before the Civil War in a land where nature is hostile, the seasons dictate the law, and the days are punctuated by the hard work of the land.” The NY Times, reviewing it at the time, said, “It has a wonderful freshness about it; not simply the freshness of a new writer, but the freshness of a new world…. A wonderfully large and vital picture,”  and they were correct. The characters are pioneers in rural Georgia, farming for a living. They own no slaves. This novel is about as far from Gone With the Wind as you can get and I much prefer it. There is no melodrama here, but real fully-developed characters written with depth and insight. Clearly the author had one big book inside her and she wrote  it.

While I was cleaning up the house, I noticed an amusing thing.

Something is taking over my house! I ask you, what would June Cleaver do in this situation? Well, I am trying to go with the flow.

Sunday night the wee babes came over per usual with their parents. The wee laddie is on the mend from his eye surgery…

…and enjoyed his peanut butter and graham crackers–no tacos for him.

Little Lottiebelle is a babbling dynamo…

Well, we all went to bed early Sunday night in preparation for a very busy work week. We also got a call from my brother’s two adult children asking if they can stop in Thursday night on their way from California to Michigan. Sure thing. The bed ‘n breakfast is open for business. Just don’t trip over the vintage Little Tykes toys or slip on a Playskool figurine!