No, I didn’t get to admire views any more impressive than those of a warehouse grocery store. The adjective I employ describes my feelings when writing the check for a month’s worth of groceries for a family of 11. Living in the boondocks means that whenever I leave for one errand, I always tackle as many other errands as I can on the same trip. In addition to Costco, Benjamin and I bought some items for an upcoming birthday, we went to an outlet grocery store to check out the deals, we bought strings for two guitars we’ve had in storage, we had a quick visit with an old friend, we bought some bread and tea at Trader Joe’s and we went to a hospice thrift store.

At the thrift store we found some great deals and some books…some to keep, some to sell. Would you like to know what I bought there? Well, it really doesn’t matter; I’m going to tell you anyway, because I am too tired to formulate anything more than a simple list. I’ve been doing a lot of that lately, it seems. Is that cheating, Miss Kyriosity?

What Carmon found at the thrift store:

An unused bread machine for $15
A foot stool with an upholstered top with a tapestry picture and a hinged lid
A Cardew teapot with teddy bears on it
New tennis shoes for one of my little guys
A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens, Illustrated Junior Library
Fearlessly Feminine by Jani Ortlund
Poems by Alfred Noyes (author of “The Highwayman”)
The Travels of Jamie McPheeters by Robert Lewis Taylor (one of my favorite books)
A children’s biography of Jedediah Smith
Outwitting Squirrels by Bill Adler, Jr.
The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency by Alexander McCall Smith
Strong Poison by Dorothy Sayers (like new paperback)
Two Ellis Peters Brother Cadfael mysteries
The Nine Tailors by Dorothy Sayers (like new hardback)
Tales of the Greek Heroes by Roger Lancelyn Green
Books and Libraries by Jack Knowlton (children’s picture book about the history of those subjects)
Cassette tapes by Michael Card, Twila Paris, Jim Weiss and Pam Mark (have you ever heard of her?)
A Dover paper doll book with a teddy bear family and their costumes (papa bear is wearing a Scottish
kilt on the cover!)
Benjamin bought the complete, illustrated Sherlock Holmes in paperback

Please give me a few more days to get my book business back online! I’m going to take down my for sale page until I can get it straightened out, then I’ll start offering more good things for sale.

As I said a few months ago, I have been trying to make menus for each month and plan my shopping trips more carefully. I’m getting ready for another big grocery-hunting expedition, so I’ve been making my menus with the help of my oldest daughter. I hope to give her total responsibility for this within the next few months.

It’s not very exciting, but here’s the plan for the next month. We are keeping things simple so that we can try to get back on track with school and buttoning things up around here in preparation for winter. I have just included the main dish for each meal, but there will be side dishes for most meals, too.

I’ve also been busy making reading lists for most of my children for the entire year. I’m trying to primarily use books from my home library, which has meant moving lots of heavy boxes of books to locate titles I know I have but can’t remember where I put them. Many of my books are in cardboard prisons crying out for freedom, but their new home is not yet ready, so they will have to languish a bit longer. When our library’s completed, there will a celebration to rival Bastille Day. Let me know if you would like to be added to the list to be given bits of the cardboard box prisons to keep as souvenirs of the auspicious occasion.

Toni was rhapsodizing over a hymn she sang in church today. I commented that I love that hymn, too; I love music, but my thorn in the flesh is that I can’t sing well and I don’t play any instruments. I said that I look to Grandma Moses for inspiration. If she could learn to paint when she was a senior citizen, there may be hope for me yet.

Do any of you play instruments? My girls are taking piano lessons, and I am amazed when I hear them making real music come from our spinet. We have developed a love for bluegrass music, and we’re thinking about branching out with the violin, and more specifically, the fiddle. Does anyone know if you need to buy a special instrument for playing fiddle music? My friend Jamie thought that fiddles may be designed with a lower fingerboard and other modifications, to produce a sound a bit different from a classical violin. Any recommendations about brands?

I’m anxiously awaiting Mr. Saenz’s study guides for music, but right now I’m going to read the interesting article he linked about a musical family. I think it will inspire me to go ahead and sing, at least with my family. My children don’t seem to mind, and they are the only audience I really care about impressing anyway.

My tastes are neither lowbrow, nor highbrow. They are middlebrow. Though I lean more toward the highbrow in certain areas, my eyes glaze over when I hear opera or read too deeply into literary or political theory, and I breathe a sigh of relief when I dip into the refreshing waters of the light literature on my nightstand. Yet there are times I check out the magazine rack at the checkout line or scan the bestselling thrillers in the bookstore, then I roll my eyes at the lurid headlines and tawdry teasers and pass them by.

Lest I gain a reputation for being wishywashy by planting myself firmly in the middle, let me explain. I’m referring to general cultural tastes, not political leanings, when I refer to the middle. On the political spectrum, most would probably classify me as right off the right end of the map, though I prefer a scale with tyranny at one end and freedom at the other, and I would most definitely not be in the middle of that one. As a middlebrow, however, I have the best of both worlds. I can occasionally indulge myself in a well-written but popular mystery novel, and I can also read classic books which are written by dead white males and which a modern professor of English literature wouldn’t be caught dead recommending. I can listen to bluegrass music which everyone else is listening to because it was made popular by a hit movie, and I can crank up Ralph Vaughan Williams really loud when his music is playing on the classical music station. And art…

This is where the point of this post is made manifest. Yes, there is a point, or at least a pointed question, which I’ll get to in a minute. I enjoy looking at illustrations in children’s books and Norman Rockwell paintings. I also love art galleries that exhibit representational art as opposed to modern art, which I consider “highbrow.” However, there is one artist who is well-loved by many, whose work I really don’t care for at all: the ubiquitous Thomas Kinkade.

Today my friend Brenda mentioned that her family just inherited two wild boar piglets. Our young mutual friend sometimes works at Thomas Kinkade’s ranch, and he brought the piglets home from there, to give Brenda’s family, as a joke (they have a long and illustrious history with pigs). In my strange-of-late (or early, depending on your point of view) state of mind, this tidbit of porcine information made my wheels turn, and I mused over Mr. Kinkade’s illustrious career and body of work. Here’s the pointed question:

Do you consider Thomas Kinkade’s art lowbrow, middlebrow or highbrow?

Now, in your all your commenting, get wisdom. In other words, be kind in your remarks, remembering that others may have another opinion, and this is not a debate over a crucial point of doctrine. From what I’ve heard, Mr. Kinkade is a very nice family man and a Christian. He got his start in my county and our young friend occasionally works at his ranch. Use your middlebrow manners, please.

I promise to be a good girl next week, when my equilibrium is back to normal. No more controversy then…not much anyway.

Between struggling with my “hormotions” today (which one of you coined that great word?) and my busyness with school and family, I wasn’t sure what I was going to blog about this evening, if anything. I haphazardly puttered about the internet, looking at links in my sidebar for inspiration. I decided to visit the Brothers Judd to see if any literary greats I admire were celebrating a birthday. Nothing exciting there. Then I thought I’d read a couple of their book reviews. This one tickled my funny bone. Maybe I put too much effort into my book reviews.

Now I’m curious about what grades they gave the other 99 books on the Modern Library’s Top 100 Novels of the 20th Century list.