An Announcement . . .

The last post I wrote was over a week or two ago, right?  To my shock and horror, I found that someone had left a comment on it recently, which means people are still actually reading this blog.  Augh.

Now, don’t get me wrong.  I LOVE that people are still reading this blog.  The problem is — if people read it, then the pressure to write the thing is all the greater.  And with three kids under the age of six in my house, that becomes a problem.  I have, maybe, twenty minutes a day in which to spend online.  Maybe.  Things aren’t helped by the fact that the seven-month-old has taken it into his little head to stop sleeping in the wee sma’s.  Blogging takes a backseat pretty quickly whenever there’s an opportunity to grab a nap.

So: the Big Announcement is that I’m only going to be posting on weekends anymore.  (Heh.  I made that decision a week ago, and didn’t have the chance to post about it then.)  Which, as I figure, is about as frequently as people look in on this blog, anyway.

Come back in a week, and I’ll have some Sparkly New Content for you all.

Cheers!

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Why I Haven’t Been Posting

Wanna know why?  It’s because of these, the Cookies of Doom:

I think that spritz cookies were invented by a particularly diabolical alien race to keep us busy and frustrated while they secretly take over the government.  Because I don’t think real, actual human beings can make these.  They defy the laws of physics.  And yet they are so cute that I always want to make them.  The little wreaths!  The sparkly flowers!  A pox on those aliens!

Granted, the culinary episode I just experienced involved a cookie press held together with Duct Tape, but this isn’t a solitary incident: every single stinkin’ time I’ve tried to make these kind of cookies, it JUST DOESN’T WORK.

How do you get the darn dough to stick to the pan?

Don’t say and ungreased sheet don’t say an ungreased sheet don’t say it . .  .

Because if you do use an ungreased cookie sheet, then you will need a jackhammer later on to get the darn things OFF the pan, leading to

1. Much noise and profanity in the kitchen, which is hardly befitting of a home with young, innocent children

2. Cookies that more closely resemble shrapnel and/or a pile of chicken feed than some delightful holiday sweet.

So, enough!  This is my last, very very last attempt to make spritz cookies.  CURSE YOU, foul calorie-laden packets of saccharine impunity!  I condemn thee to the Hall of Epicurian Horrors!

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Off Like a Herd of Turtles

 The world is a book and those who do not travel read only one page.

–St. Augustine

We are on our way to New York City, Boston, and New Haven, with possibly some unexpected detours to Philedelphia and Rhode Island. I originally had these brilliant plans of writing a whole bunch of reviews and such ahead of time so there would be current postings while I was gone, but . .  . oh, really.  HAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

Three children under the age of six, remember?

We’ll be back on Nov. 15, and perhaps I’ll be able to stumble to the computer some time after that and give y’all an update of the happenings.  Until then, hasta la vista, compadres.

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Fall Festival: Still Comin’ Up

Well, that was exhausting — a full day of lectures and writing workshops with some rather classy writers and an illustrator (an illustrator who, I found, does some mean kung fu). I’ll be writing up a full report of the event in a day or so, just as soon as I get some good shut-eye.

And watch me some Daily Show.

And maybe some Friday Night Lights.

And consume a sizeable bowl of piping hot popcorn.

G’night.

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It’s Good to Be Back

Whew. It’s been about six months since my last posting on Ye Olde Brookeshelf. That last bit of book chatter was created right about the time that somebody nominated me to be a “Thinking Blog.” (There’s been a rumor going around that I, um, think.) What happened, you say? Well, my pregnancy became very complicated (let’s say it involved the phrase “aortic dissection,” yeesh) and suddenly blogging just didn’t seem like a priority anymore. Plus, my posts had sprawled into these long mini-theses that took forever to write. It took me three hours to write the flippin’ endless post on Brian Selznick, alone.

So I took a break, and it felt great. That is, until just about everyone I knew started moaning and complaining about the death of the blog. It’s wasn’t pretty. Most of them were along the lines of “but I just finally figured out how RSS feed works! You can’t DO this to me!” etc.

But the delivery was beautiful, the baby (my third) is a happy two-month-old, and I can finally begin to eaaaase myself back into blogging. Ease. No more three hour post-a-thons. Brevity is the soul of wit. Or, better yet: brevity is . . . wit.

Oh, and in case you’re wondering:

Yeah, ain’t he a great one, though?

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