housecleanus interruptus

michellemybell and I had a great time with the spring housecleaning. Unfortunately, she is sick, and I was distracted, so we didn't get as much done as we'd hoped. (I'm kind of amazed we did as much as we did.) She is going to come back this weekend or next week to do more, because she's awesome.

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I'm feeling a bit out of sorts. I'm in this place where I'm not sure whether to keep going or stop. It's harder if you don't have someone to help, or at least to be company while you're cleaning. We did so much, but things were so bad that the house still doesn't really look good, and that's kind of frustrating. I guess, if I can just relax enough to stop being crazy about it, it should be easy to wait a few days until the sweet M comes back. How to do that is the problem. Once I actually let myself notice how things look it's hard to let go of that.

I think it would help if I left the house for a while. Then, when I come back, I'll notice everything that we did, not everything we didn't do.

So I guess I'll go look at the dyeing books I ordered from the library. They all came in today for some reason. Tomorrow, if it's still driving me crazy, I'll clean some more. But if it isn't, maybe I could start experimenting with dyeing some yarn, which I've been wanting to do. I got excited when I found an unused box of food coloring and an unopened jar of vinegar while cleaning the kitchen - those were the two ingredients I kept forgetting to buy. It should be fun! With the gorgeous weather, I might even be able to do it outside.

[books] thematic arc: women in Iran

This is a review of two books I read concerning the same place, time, and issues, with completely different constructions. The books are Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi and Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azir Nafisi.

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One of the things that struck me numerous times while reading these books is that we in America have not lost nearly as many freedoms as we imagine ourselves to have lost. I'm not saying the Patriot Act is okay. But try to imagine for a moment living somewhere where being in public with someone of the opposite sex you're not married to, who isn't a family member, can get you arrested and flogged unless you have enough money for a bribe. Where women must be veiled in all public situations and wearing makeup is illegal. Where homosexuality is a crime punishable by death. Where female prisoners scheduled for execution are "married" to their jailors - legal rape to get around the Muslim injunction against killing virgins. Where those who speak out against the government - or even specialize in the wrong area of academic study - simply disappear. Where those who are not Muslim must legally be buried in mass unmarked graves. All in a country where Islam was a minority religion just a generation ago.

I'm not saying Islam is evil. I respect all the world's religions. But the seperation of church and state is one of the best things that ever happened to this country, and fundamentalism scares me a lot.

We're not there yet, but we could be in a few years. Think about it.

[books] finishing books, and books you feel good about claiming

My question for the day is: Do you always finish the books you read? Or do you sometimes abandon books mid-read?

A while back, I read Nancy Pearl's Book Lust. In general, I wasn't a big fan - her reading tastes and mine did not match up. But I took something fairly important from the book. She writes that with the volume of literature well beyond the limits even of someone who devotes their entire life to reading, we can't afford to spend our time reading books we don't like. She suggests that if, after fifty pages, you still don't like the book, you should put it down. She suggests that readers over the age of fifty should subtract even more pages based on how much older than fifty they are, as they may be running out of time.

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