We have reached that time of year again . . . that time of year when the festival looms so large that I completely fail to accomplish the simplest of tasks.   This year, what with those thugs rolling me in the alley and making me la presidente, it’s worse than usual.  This year, I’m so blotto I can barely muster an opinion.  And I’m made of opinions.   I fear for my soul, I tell you.

Normally, I can write well and clearly about my opinions.   Well, clearly things aren’t normal at the moment.  Huge festival, right there, with my name attached to it in big, scary letters.  Big truck repair bill.  Back injury (all better now, thank goodness) messing with my long weekend.   Confirmed proof that Yarrow, my beloved but evil kitten, eats wool.  Mother-in-law coming for a visit during and after big scary festival.  The weather is suddenly very hot.  Not enough vodka in this house, I say, and certainly something must be done about the fact that I have no bitter lemon into which to pour vodka.  Blasted minions.   Let’s put that at the top of the list:

1. Must replace all minions with much better, more motivated minions.    Requires finding any operating minions.
2. Must cleanse kitten’s evil soul.  Mr. Kittenpants is truly causing trouble, what with the wool eating.  We think he knows just enough about Aes and has hearing just good enough that, well, he has started saying "Muharhar" in his sleep.  Aes, what have you been teaching Yarrow with your mind-bullets?  Didn’t the hat buy some modicum of wool safety?
3. Must buy bitter lemon, and lots of it.  The cleaning will be more fun that way.
4. Must weed garden really a lot, so as to dispel neighborhood view that we’ve gone over to the dark, meth-producing side. 
5. Must make the only decent closet in the house into an actual closet, with a rod and everything.
6. Must resist urge to fill new lovely functioning closet with my own clothes until after wonderful Mother-in-Law visits, so as to be a good host.
7. Watch Deadwood DVDs, for procrastination’s sake.  (This is that easy thing I add to a list, so I feel like I’m getting something done).
8. Must knit more confounded wool socks, despite ridiculous heat wave.

In the meantime, here are some near-opinions:

Knitting Rules: The Yarn Harlot’s Bag of Knitting Tricks by Stephanie Pearl McPhee.  Love it.  Love word after giggling word of it.  And, because I read it on the metro, I love it even more because women who guffaw when no one is speaking to them while also wielding pointy metal sticks and reading generally get the whole set to ourselves.  Wheeeee–no one is sitting on my leg!  Double whopping warrior points, my friends.

The Tall Woman by Wilma Dykeman.   This is one of the classics of Appalachian lit.  And it’s out of print.  So I feel cruel telling you how good it is.  I waited several years for a copy to come to me.  It was worth the wait.  The novel follows our heroine, whose name I have honestly forgotten (forgive me, I have a huge heavy festival on my skull), from before the civil war, through marriage and motherhood, and on for a good while there.  Great language in the book, and the women in it are always knitting or spinning or sewing, so it gets extra points from me.  I’ll read it again when my brain is working at full speed.

Elizabethtown.   Cameron Crowe loves to kick my ass.  Seriously.  Loves it.  Why Cameron?  Why?  This film is about a young man named Drew, played by Orlando Bloom (not a fan of him, normally) whose life falls apart, and then his Dad dies, and then he gets sent to fix everything, and he’s surrounded by his father’s family whom he really doesn’t know.  It made me cry a lot, in a good way.  And it’s a love story, in which Drew falls in love with, er, Claire, played by Kirsten Dunst (who I’m not a fan of either), a gabby flight attendant.  Good music.  Deliciously manipulative subject matter for those of us with estranged families.   Solid performances from actors I’m not wild about, including Alec Baldwin who I normally really really dislike, but who is brilliant here.  And Paul Schneider, who I’ve never seen before–great job, kiddo.  Give him work, people.  Serious southern hippie charisma, there.  Matthew McConaughey has has his turn, already. 

American Massacre, by Sally Denton.  This is a pop-history book about a really terrible event in American history, which most of us never learned about in high school.  In 1857, a wagon train was ambushed in Southern Utah as it was heading towards California.  Most of the people in the caravan were murdered, a few of the children were kidnapped, all of the valuables were stolen or destroyed.  According to many historians and the author, the attack was ordered by none other than Brigham Young, leader of the Mormons.  Denton has gotten a fair amount of flack for some holes in her research and a pretty clear bias.  Nonetheless, I think this book is a great jumping-off point for those who want to learn about the settlement of Utah.  To my mind, the most interesting aspect of the issue is the relationship between the Paiutes, Mormon settlers, and the US government.  No matter what else you think about the event, it’s pretty clear that the Paiutes have gotten the short end of the stick for as long as Europeans have been settling that section of North America. 

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