the classics

The new year has not started off on the greatest of feet for me. Computer problems continue to plague me in one form or another. Everytime I feel a surge of creative energy and vow to make regular blog posts, something happens- like a glass of water gets spilled on my computer and creates a small hiccup in my resolve.

The boys and I have been keeping up on our "grateful book" however (our version of the Happiness Jar) and so I continue to try and view things in a positive light. We started sometime in December and Nabih has finally stopped prefacing every grateful item with "well, it would have been good" or " I almost enjoyed..." He has succeed in actually saying positive things without finding a way to detract from their goodness. And I can be grateful for that.

Rather than create New Year's Resolutions, we have added a section to our grateful book for monthly goals. Happy to report Nabih is also the one of us making the most progress towards his goals for the month. I am struggling with myself over my goals and Mohamed....well, he is in full blown middle schooler mode and we are all struggling with that.

Since I have been in Abidjan my coping method has been to read, and read, and read some more.  I can actually only access free books from Amazon on my kindle so the reading quality has varied greatly. I am a mystery lover and have recently been lost in the world of English detective novels. I've been picking up some fantastic slang - capital! being among my favorite- and marvelling at the formality of life back then. The Moonstone was a delightful read and I was a bit surprised at The Mystery of the Hidden Room despite the comment that "the eventual culprit isn't a huge surprise if you've been paying attention" (perhaps I just wasn't paying enough attention.)

I may have been distracted by the medical rememdies running rampant throughout these books. Opium and wine seem capable of curing most ailments and I absolutely love that suffering from "brain fever" is completely acceptable after making a hugely irresponsible mistake on the job (Percy Phelps, as mentioned in this defintion). Despite being somewhat humorous to me, I can see the intrinsic value of recognizing the effects of stress as having physical effects on the body. It seems reasonable and I wonder why we stopped accepting brain fever as a viable call-in sick excuse.

I haven't just  been stuck in the 19th century however. I've been keeping up on the modern day mystery as well. In these novels, there tends to be a lot of eating at diners and drinking coffee which has awakened some small yearnings for the little pleasures of America. Since I have recently discovered I may well become an unintended life long inhabitant of Ivory Coast, the little yearnings have taken on an even more significant meaning for me. I am once again missing those white porcelain monkey dishes filled with  1/2 and 1/2  creamers and the endless cup of coffee.

I have realized that since I am escaping more and more into the world of reading, I might want to feed my brain something more nutritional than potato chip books. Classics are easily available and so I spent an afternoon choosing among the titles and filling my e-reader with the most interesting sounding novels from the past.

Most recently I read Vonnegut's 2BR02B, a surprisingly short, amazingly profound story with a perfectly morbid ending, my favorite kind. Though I can't stay hidden in the books forever, I am trying to read as a writer with the thought that, should I ever get a working computer in my hands again, I will be well suited to put it to use expressing something profound....or cheaply thrilling in any case.