Moxie: Deep thoughts

Highly Recommended

Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi: The Two-Income Trap: Why Middle-Class Mothers and Fathers Are Going Broke
Reading this book explained a whole lot of things about why so many families I know are struggling financially, even though we don't spend extravagantly. Simultaneously enlightening and nauseating.
Elizabeth Warren: All Your Worth : The Ultimate Lifetime Money Plan
If other personal finance books have frustrated you because they assume you have money to invest and you don't even have enough money to buy a large coffee, this is the personal finance book for you. Reading this book showed me that it's not that I waste money on stupid things--it's that our basic expenses are too high to begin with. Reading this book is the end of financial guilt and the beginning of getting out of the hole.
Adele Faber: Siblings Without Rivalry: How to Help Your Children Live Together So You Can Live Too
Lots of great ideas to think about and put into practice about not assigning your kids roles and how to approach fights. Also goes over some of the stuff from the How to Talk So Kids Will Listen book about making kids feel understood. Because, really, that's all anyone wants--to be understood. And kids are people, too.
Anne Lamott: Operating Instructions: A Journal of My Son's First Year
Just perfect. A beautiful, funny, sad, accurate account of what the first days, weeks, and months with a baby are like. This is exactly what your journal would be, if you could write as well as she does.
Adrian Nicole LeBlanc: Random Family : Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx
LeBlanc's writing and pacing makes you want to keep reading despite the tragic story. Think you have an informed opinion about welfare reform and how to strengthen families in this country? Not until you've read this book.
John Taylor Gatto: Dumbing Us Down: The Hidden Curriculum of Compulsory Schooling
This is the red pill. Don't read it if you want to stay comfortable with the American school system. Gatto goes into why government-owned schools were created and the things they actually teach us.
Ellis Avery: The Smoke Week: September 11-21, 2001
If you have any curiosity about what it was like for New Yorkers during the World Trade Center attacks, this is the book to read. A brilliant, crystalline, spot-on memoir of the week or so after the attacks, this book is an ode to New Yorkers. Realistic, clean, and completely un-maudlin, it's just the story of what it was like for us. This is what should go into a time capsule to represent September 2001.

Deep thoughts

Right next door to my office is a designer store. I look at the clothes as I walk by, and sometimes think they're cute, but most of the time they just seem a little misguided to me. Today there was a new dress on one of the mannequins, and I am not kidding you when I say that it looks like someone got a big piece of black cloth, sewed two ends together, and put in two pieces of elastic (one at the top and one at the waist). It looked like Marge Simpson's dress, only ugly.

Then I stopped and really looked at it, and realized it was just like my Show Choir dress from high school, only without the straps and gold sparkles, and not of polyester. I won huge trophies for Show Choir. Why is there not a Show Choir for grown-ups? I would totally join. Irving Berlin medleys, jazz hands, cheesy arrangements of songs that were popular two years ago--it would be like being on the Lawrence Welk Show, but IRL.

May 21, 2008 | Permalink

Comments

Yay -- comments working again! Show choir for adults -- I'm so there (as an observer only -- definitely not a participant) -- I love the cheesy medleys, jazz hands, etc!

Posted by: Kathy B. | May 23, 2008 at 02:27 PM

I think there is one of these at the 92nd Street Y. My friend Lucy belonged to it a while ago.

Posted by: Num Num | May 24, 2008 at 08:35 PM

I've never commented before, but I had to tell you that there ARE show choirs for adults. Sweet Adelines. google if you don't believe me!

Posted by: Jeanne | June 20, 2008 at 01:04 PM

Sweet Adelines! I am one! Sequins, false eyelashes, and jazz hands... what fun. :-)

Posted by: susie | July 03, 2008 at 09:10 PM

It's so nice to have you do all of the research for us. It makes our decision making so much easier!! Thanks.

Posted by: MBT Shoes | July 21, 2011 at 04:58 AM

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