eating words

After all that running around I'm rather sore today. Ouchy! More busy scheduling ahead, but hopefully it doesn't involve physical running today. (Can you tell sport isn't my thing? Although I don't mind running if it's just me.)

What I'd really like to do after the whole music event is done today is sink into a book. In English. With delicious prose.

I don't like books with no plot, and sometimes you find books where nothing happens, but the language is lovely. I still want an interesting plot, but I want to eat the words, too, and while I can read in German, I'm not advanced enough to enjoy most of the subtleties of a good "voice." If I read a book in translation that I've already read in English, I can recognize it (Catherine Murdock, Melissa Marr, and Eva Ibbotson all come through pretty well, for example). But mostly, reading in German is all meat and potatoes fare. I want Thai green curry and cardamom carrots and sundried tomato pasta salad to read. Sigh. I browsed Amazon last night, trying to see just how many books I could buy before my bank account would need a transfusion. I'm sooo looking forward to Harry Potter (which I get first--MINE! MINE!--even if I have to hide out in an undisclosed location--do you think the bookstore would let me hide out in the room they've had to store their high-security copies in??). But that's not until the 21st!

Okay, let's see if I can write some before heading off for more shopping and the children's fest.

Pseudo-website

I've been playing around with Blogger because it is more website-looking, and in lieu of a real web site, I've set up the following: Der Buchwald.

I think I'll put up a couple of article-like posts so that it doesn't look weird with my page elements right up front there. Anyone else do a web page like this who wants to offer suggestions/ideas that made it look professional?

Dances

Okay, I realize this is like my third post today, but I have the need to empty my brain today or something. I'm trying to write a chapter that I just CAN NOT get into. Logically, schedulewise, I should at least mention homecoming. It would be odd not to, given my football-playing MC. and I could even make it sort of humorous. But argh, I just can't get into it. Even if I can think of ways to make it count in the plot. Maybe I'll just skip it for now.

On the subject of formal events, though--when I ran over to pick up my kids from their birthday party yesterday I passed a high school where teens, parents, and even grandparents were all congregating in some pretty formal attire. Flame-colored dresses fluttering in the wind, black coats and slicked-back hair...and then from a separate event in the field next to it, the song Fields of Gold was echoing across the...er, fields. Something about dress-up clothes, and people gathering, and music surrounding you and taking over your head makes you want to follow the people inside and be there, you know? Our church congregation is doing their annual formal dance next Friday. For all those reasons I think it would be fun to go. Unfortunately, Germans dance actual dances, even to popular music. We haven't the slightest idea how to do them, even when people tell us things like, "It's easy! A variation on the double-step-fox-tango! You can learn it in five minutes!" Plus, it's for ages 12 and up, so nearly everyone I know who I'd feel comfortable leaving my kids with will be there. Ah, well. Maybe we'll do a family dance that night.

Which is my third point. Am I the only one who does family dances? They are informal (as in, put on music and dance funny with the kids). The two-year-old thinks Erasure is about as good as it gets for jumping on the bed in circles. The five-year-old (who starred in downtown's Katzentatzentanz as the dancing cat--she was fantastic and is ready for a life on stage, let me tell you!) prefers Eurovision Song Contest songs ("Gungy songs," she calls them). But Sandra Boynton's Dog Train album will do, too.

Okay, I really need to do something useful. Homecoming is cancelled this year, that's all.