Things, Life, What-not.

The Boy is in 7th grade. He’s growing tall and strong, and he’s practically electric with his shining good health and energy. Sometimes when I look at him I can’t believe he’s mine, and then I realize that . . . he isn’t mine. He’s his own person, one I can just watch, admire, guide for as long as he’ll let me, and love, love, love.

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I am nearly finished with my sister’s hot water bottle cover, and after a brief episode of panic surrounding a stitch dropped in the middle of the cable (I tried to fix it and felt like I was making things worse, so I wisely put it down until I could take it to Natural Stitches and have one of the fine people there straighten me out), it looks like it’s going to be very cute. I’m finishing the portion that will cover the neck of the water bottle, so right now the thing looks like a sweater for a little dog with no legs, but I swear that’s a good thing. I’ll post a picture once it’s finished and actually covering a water bottle.

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I have had a summer of series-reading, and it’s coming to and end. I read all of the Sookie Stackhouse books, including the most reason one, which I broke down and bought in hardcover because I really couldn’t wait. I’m pleased that after eight books Charlaine Harris still has things for these characters to do, but I sense that things are going to be wrapping up soon. Maybe another book or two, and then Sookie can be retired. In the meantime, though, I can’t wait to find out what happens next—especially with a certain little boy she’s become acquainted with.

I’m picking up the last of Harris’s Lily Bard series from the library today, and I’m looking forward to gobbling it up quickly. There are some similarities between Lily and Sookie that make me wonder about things Harris herself might have gone through—or at least things that are foremost on her mind. She’s an interesting person and a fun writer, and I have her first Aurora Teegarden book requested. I am a glutton.

I’ve also just finished the nine-book Little House series. I’d only read the first two when I was a girl, because that’s all my dinky school library had, but I sort of knew what happened even though I wasn’t a big devotee of the show. I mean, I saw enough of the show that all the characters in the book look like their TV counterparts in my head despite the illustrations, and every time Carrie was mentioned I pictured a little girl falling down in high grass. I knew Mary went blind, and I knew Laura married Almanzo, and I knew life on the prairie wasn’t easy. That’s pretty much all there was to it, right?

But somehow, there was more to it. They worked so hard, and were so resourceful. They loved each other so much, but their emotions were so repressed. They dealt with so many uncertainties so bravely. I used to think I’d have made it as a contemporary of Laura and Mary (I would’ve given Mary a run for her money at being the priggish little well-behaved rule-follower), but I don’t know if I’d have had the strength and grace necessary to make it as a contemporary of Ma and Pa Ingalls, what with the unceasing work, the continual threat of mortal danger to your kids’ lives, and the utter lack of book or time to read them.

Anyway, I really enjoyed reading these. I have to admit, though, that I skipped over the lyrics to most of the songs they sang (and they sang a lot of songs—Pa and his damned fiddle). I also skipped the detailed descriptions of their outfits, as buttons and hoops and corsets and hoops and layers upon layers of underwear just bore me. But I loved reading about the housework and the farming. Awesome.

Thinking of Little House naturally (ahem) leads me to Sci-Fi, namely Joss Whedon’s Firefly. I’d tried the pilot of this much-beloved show twice, and just couldn't settle into it. It opens with a battle scene featuring characters that you can't care about because you don't know, and . . . it just didn't work. I decided to give it another go last night, and it finally worked. GOD, it's good! It's so riveting! It's an odd combination of Little House and Star Wars and Gunsmoke and . . . I don’t know—was there ever a TV show about pirates?

Odd as it may seem, Firefly is like Little House--although it's set far in the future (and in space), the universe is crawling with PIONEERS. Mal, the captain of the ship, has a distinct whiff of Pa Ingalls about him (although Mal's a lot more menacing). The far-flung planets have been somehow given atmospheres, so humans can live on them, but from what I've seen so far they look like the Old West. They have horses and wear cowboy clothes and worry about supplies. They're settlers. Homesteaders, even. Their currency seems to be food, specifically nutritionally dense blocks of some kind of protein supplement. I don't have the back story yet, but I think Earth may be uninhabitable. And I don't think anyone I met in the pilot was an alien . . . this might be a show set in space but populated entirely by humans. That's rare, isn't it?

Anyway, I am totally thrilled to have this new television obsession, and I'm oddly pleased that there are only 14 episodes plus the movie. It feels so much more manageable than seven years of Buffy, and I’ll definitely be able to get through it before it’s time to go back to Dollhouse.

Oh, Joss Whedon, how do I love thee?