Now that I am the proud new owner of a Kindle, I am busy loading it up with books.

Generally, I am drawn to the literature genres known as Trash and Crap.

I like a little romance, knowing that it will end with happily ever after. I love mysteries, but nothing too gory. I shy away from anything that’ll make me sad or books that feel too much like Quality Literature.

Also – and get ready, this could change everything about our relationship – I hate animal stories. Especially if they are labeled as “heartwarming.”

Heartwarming = Gag

I have been known to go to the bookstore, settle in the coffee shop with a stack of celebrity biographies – Martha Stewart, Tori Spelling, and even (heaven help me) Kendra Wilkinson - and greedily gobble up the highlights; I am definitely not an elitist, but I can’t bring myself to pay money for swill.

Yummy, illicit, swill.

So I don’t usually have a lot to add to book conversations, lest I reveal the true shallowness of my preferences. The delicious, nutrient-free, candy-coated shallowness.

I have, on occasion, inadvertantly read more Important Books. Books that are sometimes thick and called novels. Here is what the word novel means to me: there is no happily ever after, and there is no murderer handed to the reader on a silver platter. Instead the story seems to stop when the author reaches his word limit.

Okay, not really. But you have to admit, novels rarely have a neat tidy ending. I am usually left thinking, “wait – what? that’s it? what happens next?” and feeling vaguely dissatisfied.

Here are a few of the real books that have stuck with me over the years:

The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake by Aimee Bender. About a girl who discovers she can literally taste the emotions of the person who prepares her food. Interesting premise, and I didn’t mind the odd writing style (there are no quotation marks in the whole book); but the ending left me going “wait – that’s it? I still don’t understand the chair…” Nevertheless, I quite liked it. It was lovely and weird.

We Need to Talk About Kevin by Lionel Shriver. Disturbing and brilliantly written in the form of letters from Kevin’s mother, Eva, to her husband. Kevin is in prison for killing his classmates in a Columbine-esque spree. The letters recount the entire story of the family as Eva tries to understand what went wrong. The ending is a complete surprise and absolutely shocking - as well as unrelated to the school shooting I was steeling myself for from the beginning. Haunting. I read it years ago and sometimes think of it even now.

Loving Frank by Nancy Horan. The story of Frank Lloyd Wright and Mamah Cheney, the woman he left his family for (and she left hers for him). Firstly, I was completely unaware that that Frank Lloyd Wright was a cheating bastard, and could not believe Mamah abandoned her young children to be with him. It was the end of the story, though, that kept me up until 3 in the morning, sobbing. I was not expecting such a shocking and horrifying ending. The book was sad all along, but the ending! I was heartbroken for days.

Ok – now you. What should I add to my Kindle? Bear in mind my affection for trash, so no pushing the classics at me, okay?

(oh, and no vampires! good grief, will all the vampires please DIE already? gah.)

Okay, so here’s what happened.

In this neighborhood, there lives a tiny pack of six geese. All the locals seem to feed them and they wander around the neighborhood, fat and happy. They are cute, and we make honking noises when we see them. A couple of days ago, they were right down the street eating some corn a neighbor had set out, and me and the kids walked down to see them.

We stayed across the street from them; and when the kids wanted to get closer, I took the opportunity to tell them that animals will protect their food and their babies, and that the geese might LOOK all soft and cuddly, but they are wild animals who could hurt us if they wanted to.

It was all nature-lesson-y and stuff.

So we watched and talked and the geese were very cute and ate their corn.

And then the geese had enough.

They started walking across the street toward us, making little screechy chirping noises, hissing, and puffing up their feathers.

WELL.

I knew this was a bad sign, what with being an expert birder and everything, and started to hustle the kids back down the street. But our retreat was not hasty enough for the geese, and they kept advancing. Faster and faster on their little geese legs.

Of course, in my mind I was all, “walk backwards. make eye contact. NO! don’t make eye contact! wait, that’s dogs. Run down a hill! They can’t run down a hill! or is that bears? they are getting closer!” etc. etc. etc. After about three seconds of being stalked by a flock of geese, I calmly invited the kids to run back to the house, and I told the geese “OKAY! We’re leaving!”

I did not run, but kept backing away as fast as I could, keeping myself between the geese and my kids. For all I knew, running would provoke them, and I steeled myself to take a bird DOWN.

Eventually they were satisfied they’d chased us off and went back to the corner for a victory lap around the corn.

When I got back, the kids were hysterical, having flung themselves at their Daddy, sobbing that “the geese were ATTACKING US!”

I recounted the whole story to him, but when I got to the part where I had heroically put myself in danger to protect my children, he only looked skeptical and said, “THAT’S why you didn’t run?” and didn’t give me any credit at all for being a self-sacrificing SUPER HERO.

Which I so obviously AM, JIM

OBVIOUSLY.

I swear. Rude.

I was mystified.

I said, “what are you talking about? what is that? where did you hear that word?”

He’s all, “it’s a gate thing on a castle” and he showed me a picture of it in his Lego book. But I don’t see that WORD anywhere, and can’t figure out where it came from or if he’s using it right, or if it’s even a word at all. And he couldn’t remember where he heard it, either.

So I googled it.

portcullis – gate consisting of an iron or wooden grating that hangs in the entry to a castle or fortified town; can be lowered to prevent passage.

Uh-Huh. Okay.

I guess that’s it then. My services are no longer needed.

Bring on the bon-bons and Real Housewives!

• I love Pinterest so much that I had Sheila from Blog Designs by Sheila make me a new button. See? Up there on the left? By the Twitter button? Isn’t it cute? If anyone wants any matchy bloggy buttons, send Sheila an email. She always gets back to me in, like, 30 minutes with perfection. And if any of you are on Teh Pinterest, feel free to follow the navel-gazing pinboards of a compulsive pinner!

• We spent the weekend cleaning the house we’ve been in and packing up our stuff. We are heading to Washington state this week! Also, deep cleaning a house that I’ve only half-heartedly swiped at for the last 10 weeks has brought me to a new realization: we are pigs. Gag.

• Happy Monday, y’all!

If going OUTSIDE and BIRD WATCHING and actively engaging in a spirited discussion about the teensy marks on a SEAGULL’S BEAK is not a sign of true love, I don’t know what is.

I am awarding myself ten-thousand homeschool mom points for this bird business.

I should get a plaque or something.

**eventually narrowed it down to either Western gulls or Glaucous Winged gulls, but couldn’t make a final determination, especially once Birds of Oregon revealed that the two groups often winter and “hybridize together,” at which point I lost the will to live we were satisfied.

• We went to the beach on Monday afternoon (is it awful when I say that? I feel like I’m tossing off something really obnoxious, like “I went for a drive in my Bentley to buy a Birkin Bag and some new Manolos like I do every week” because the beach is JUST SO FREAKING AWESOME and I wonder if talking about getting to go there as often as I used to go to WalMart is mean and heartless to all you guys who can’t go too.)

Anyway.

We went to the beach on Monday and walked down a little further than usual and we SAW SEALS.

SEALS, PEOPLE!

FROLICKING.

THERE WERE SEALS FROLICKING IN THE OCEAN!

Not 20 feet from us!

I squealed like I was 7 years old, it was so exciting.

• I realized in the middle of the night that we need to work on Big’s math facts. He needs to get them down more solidly than regular book work is doing for us. I think flashcards, although boring, are the answer. However, there is no dollar store here, and I didn’t bring any (yes, there are PILES of flashcards at home in storage, fat lot of good they are doing me), and I didn’t want to spend four hundred dollars on ink printing them. Finally, it occured to me to check for an app, and what do you know? The kids LOVE them.

I think it’s the phone. It’s novel. Having them play on it makes me twitchy.

Me: are you okay, baby? it’s not too hard is it?

Kids: it’s FINE mom. jeez.

Me: I was talking to my phone.

Here are the apps I like best – Math Flashcards, Math Bingo, and Montessori Crosswords.

• Read aloud Hello, Mrs. Piggle Wiggle. Listened to chapter 1 of Ordinary Jack by Helen Cresswell on Audible.com.

• Little flew through All About Spelling Lesson 2; Big sulked through spelling and his uncooperative attitude keeps him on Lesson 1 of AAS Level 2.

• Big sulked his way through Math-U-See chapter 20, but did well on the test. He gets to sulk his way to chapter 21. Little finished Singapore Early Bird Kindergarten Math Book A (could that HAVE a longer title?) and began Book B.

“Go pee.”

“I DON’T NEED TO GO PEE!”

“Try anyway.”

“I DON’T NEED TO GO PEE!”

“Just try for a minute.”

“NOTHING COME OUT!!!”

“Just sit there for a minute and make sure”

“NOTHING!”

“FINE! GET IN BED THEN!”

Five minutes later ~

“Mom? I need to go pee.”