Exotic yet ordinary

J: Want to help make mom a birthday lunch?

M: Let's make her a C-A-K-E!

J: We could make that, or a c-h-e-e-s-e c-a-k-e.

Me: Guys, I can s-p-e-l-l.

The final hours of my 35th year, and what am I doing? Reading. Sitting and reading. And, honestly what else would you expect me to be doing? Drinking coffee? Because, damn skippy, that happened, too.

Several years ago, I started keeping a list of the books I read. I'm really not sure what the list reveals, other than all the time I've spent bumming around with fictitious characters when I probably should have been bumming around with my very real family. This was my most recent year in books.

January

• Wild Sheep Chase by Haruki Murakami
• Peaches for Father Francis by Joanne Harris
• The Dark Monk by Oliver Potzsch
• Everyone's Reading Bastard by Nick Hornby
• An Arrangement of Light by Nicole Krauss
• The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
• The Mysterious Benedict Society by Trenton Lee Stewart

February

• Speaking from Among the Bones by Alan Bradley
• The 100-Year-Old Man Who Climbed Out the Window and Disappeared by Jonas Jonasson

March

• In the Night Garden by Catherynne Valente
• Before I Go To Sleep by S.J. Watson
• The Beggar King by Oliver Potzsch
• Cutting for Stone by Abraham Verghese

April

• Odd and the Frost Giants by Neil Gaiman
• The Silence of Bonaventure Arrow by Rita Leganski
• The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes
• The Uninvited Guests by Sadie Jones
• Charlotte Markham and the House of Darkling by Michael Boccacino
• The Fate of Mercy Alban by Wendy Webb

May

• Peter Nimble and his Fantastic Eyes by Jonathan Auxier
• A Natural History of Dragons by Marie Brennan
• Big Fish by Daniel Wallace
• Grendel by John Gardner

June

• The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker
• The Kings and Queens of Roam by Daniel Wallace
• The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place by Maryrose Wood
• The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman

July

• You Suck by Christopher Moore
• The Matchmaker of Perigord by Julia Stuart
• Luka and the Fire of Life by Salman Rushdie

August

• Palimpsest by Catherynne Valente
• The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti
• The Alchemist by Paulo Coelho
• The Paris Wife by Paula McLain
• Mort by Terry Pratchett

September

• The Pigeon Pie Mystery by Julia Stuart
• The Poisoned Pilgrim by Oliver Potzsch
• Letters From Skye by Jessica Brockmole

October

• The Tower, the Zoo, and the Tortoise by Julia Stuart
• Arthur & George by Julian Barnes
• The Girl Who Soard over Fairyland and Cut the Moon In Two by Catherynne Valente

November

• A Tale for the Time Being by Ruth Ozeki
• The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz
• Longbourn by Jo Baker
• The Curiosity by Stephen P Kiernan

December

• Burial Rights by Hannah Kent
• How to Talk to Girls at Parties by Neil Gaiman
• The Land of Stories: Wishing Spell by Chris Colfer
• Tuesdays at the Castle by Jessica Day George
• The History of Love by Nicole Krauss
• Momo by Michael Ende

Maya (grinning ear to ear as Paul launched into the first song of the night): Pinch me, Mom! PINCH ME!

We saw Paul McCartney (PAUL McCARTNEY!) at the BOK Center in Tulsa Thursday night. Our seats were nearly nosebleed and steeper than a cow's face, but it was fun. So much fun! So many GREAT songs! Blackbird! Rita! Mr. Kite! Hey Jude sing-a-long! Explosions! Helter Skelter! Double encore! Maya wanted to rush the stage and give him a big ol' kiss for playing Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da. He absolutely rawked. our. faces. off. I can see now how a person could keep going back to see him over and over (and over), because at the end of the night, I was ready to go again.

Oh, and I did pinch her.

Today is the birthday of writer, illustrator Maya McBride, born in Bartlesville, Oklahoma (2004). She composed her first story, 'The Owl in the Night Time', at age three. This was followed a few years later by the beloved Jorn and Rona series, stories about a boy and his adventures with his imaginary kangaroo friend. More recently, she has added poetry to her writings. She is best known for saying, "Ooh! Jellybean macaroni with cheese on the cob! My favorite!" Also on this day, some other stuff happened.

Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.®

So, Maya is curled up beside me on the couch, sipping apple juice from a regular, non-sippy cup cup (yay!) while watching the Grinch as he grinches the Cat in the Hat. A few minutes into the show, I notice that Maya has gone from sipping the apple juice to swishing it, but I choose to ignore this, mainly because she spent part of her afternoon scrubbing the living room floor for fun. No really. Of all the options I gave her (chalk? play games at pbskids.org? draw? video? nap? clean the floor? ) she gets excited about cleaning the floor. Consequently, this makes me ridiculously excited for the future and makes me think all that time she wasted watching Cinderella is starting to pay off. I mean, who cleans for fun? Apparently, my kid. Anyway, she's sitting and swishing and I'm ignoring until I feel a splat of apple juice on my arm, which has been around her all this time, and Maya gets very still. I'm no longer ignoring, obviously, but I still don't say anything and in the silence I can tell she's debating what to do. Finally, she speaks. "Mom, I spit apple juice on your arm." "Yeah." "Don't worry. I'll lick it off." And she leans over and licks my arm and takes another sip. Told you she likes to clean.