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One of the beauties of blog touring is being pointed to new blogs. Go over there and make merry, says Kathy of Random House, and off I go and explore Kari’s blog here, read all about her, and soon she’s set off enough sparks for me to feel less like an interloper and more like someone jumping up and down in Kari’s peripheral vision, saying “Me too, me too!”

So, here are three things I want to chime in with.

First thing. Like Kari, I’m not a big jewellery gal. But I resolved a few years ago that I would buy myself a ring, which I would wear all the time on my right-hand ring finger to remind myself to look after myself and to treat myself well. So I’ve been mildly on the lookout for the right ring for a while now.

Well, reader, I found it: Here it is. It’s not the splashiest ring in the world, but it says the right things to me; also, with the leaves, it’s even more appropriate for the author of a forest-y book like Tender Morsels to wear, no?

I have it now, and I wear it every day, and it does its job wonderfully well. Only problem? My arms are not long enough. If I want to actually see the leaves, I have to put my reading-glasses on. So sometimes the general emanations from this ring, although gleaming and cheering, are distinctly fuzzy.

Second thing. I think stuffing things with paper airplanes is a grand and noble endeavour. I like the way people will do this kind of thing for our own amusement, will go to the bother of turning an in-joke into a tiny monument to the power of joking itself. I can’t imagine anyone who knew this story looking at that lantern-with-airplanes and not wanting to laugh.

Third thing. Rootling around on Kari’s blog, I found this:“But waiting for birth, waiting for death—these are lightning times when the normal distractions of life have lost their power to take us away from—“ well, being a long-lapsed Catholic I probably wouldn’t quite phrase it Kari’s way and say “from God’s call to center in Christ”, but I’d certainly say “from elemental things”.

I remember when all our friends were having babies, how when you heard the news that someone was in labour, the whole world seemed to turn soft, different, poised, holding its breath, ready to change shape to accommodate the new baby. I remember when our boys were born, how the room seemed suddenly crammed full of their themness. The air seemed to change as they arrived, and it was more than just relief that they were here and whole, and that the labouring was almost over. It was the sort of experience when suddenly those Bible stories make sense, the ones about the Spirit of God arriving and, for example, hovering over everyone’s heads as tongues of fire.

Last week in Wellington, New Zealand, I visited the house where the writer Katherine Mansfield was born. I stood in the Birth Room, with the sound from the video documentary in the room next door booming through the wall. I didn’t get the hairs rising on the back of my neck or anything, but I had the equipment now (as I didn’t have when I first read Katherine Mansfield) to imagine baby Katherine’s arrival in this room, that weird mix of domestic mess and sacredness that hangs about a birth. This was the space that her new self (not even named Katherine yet) rushed out and first filled.

Nothing’s just wood, is it? Nothing’s just ceiling-boards and wallpaper. Nothing’s just a bit of metal or some paper planes stuffed into a lamp. Not when there’s a human mind around, ready to read meaning into it, ready to imagine the people around its creation, and wonder about them.

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Many thanks to Margo for starting her tour here. Here are the rest of her tour dates and blogs:

Tuesday, March 23rd: Steph Su Reads
Wednesday, March 24th: Bildungsroman
Thursday, March 25th: Cynsations
Friday, March 26th: The Story Siren
Saturday, March 27th: Shaken & Stirred

I have three copies of Tender Morsels available. To enter to win, please tell me in the comments what your favorite fairy tale retelling is OR what story you would like to see retold. (I love retellings of classic tales, so I am always looking for more suggestions. One of my favorites is Beauty by Robin McKinley.) You can also tweet about the contest or post a link on your blog for extra entries – indicate those in the comments and I will get you entered more than once. Tender Morsels is a gorgeous book, and I would love to get it in the hands of more people who are interested!

Carrie graciously agreed to answer some of my burning questions about The Forest of Hands and Teeth, with some hints about things in The Dead-Tossed Waves. Here are her answers below. (Please note how politely she avoids commenting on Edward and Bella. Any animosity towards them is mine and mine alone.)

KARI: I think part of the isolation that was present in The Forest of Hands and Teeth is that no one, even the reader, finds out how all of the Unconsecrated came to be that way. Why did you choose to keep that hidden? Did the intense isolation make it difficult in places for you to maintain the story, since you only had a few characters to work with?

CARRIE RYAN: Great question! There are several reasons that I chose to keep the cause of the Return (the zombie apocalypse) hidden. First, with a first person point of view, the reader didn’t get to know unless the character gets to know and there was just never a chance for her to know. Mostly this is because in Mary’s world the existence of the zombies is just a fact of life, much like the fact that the Civil War ended without the Confederacy breaking away from the Union is a fact of life that we just accept and don’t really think about. The existence of zombies isn’t new to Mary or her mother, or her mother’s mother or her mother’s mother’s mother, etc.

Second, I realized the cause isn’t important to the story. Whether it was caused by radiation, government experiment gone wrong, mutating virus, etc doesn’t change in any way what happens in the book. Finally… I’m not sure most people would have even known what caused it. I imagine the world would have dissolved into chaos so quickly that the truth was never fully known or understood.

KARI: At the end of The Forest of Hands and Teeth, Mary realizes she still has worlds to explore and decides that she cares more about finding answers rather than choosing a boy. I enjoyed that because of the contrast to the Edward-and-Bella soulmate nonsense. Did you make that choice simply because you knew that’s who Mary was and that’s what she would do or because you wanted to offer a contrast to the messages/pressure that teenagers have to pair up?

CARRIE RYAN: I still remember the moment when I realized that Mary had to go after her dream on her own and what that would really mean in terms of the plot. I was sitting in the car and I wanted to grab my fiancé and cry about what I knew in my heart had to happen in the story.

I didn’t come to that decision to make a contrast with any other books, mostly it was just who Mary is as a character. I definitely knew that part of her story is what she has to give up in order to achieve her goals and I think that often teens (and adults) have to make similar decisions, especially when deciding where to go to college, where to live after high school, what priorities to make in their lives, etc.

KARI: Religion is often an easy target in literature and movies, and it’s true that religious beliefs don’t keep people from making bad decisions. Why did you choose a religious order like the Sisterhood to keep the secrets from people rather than simply some kind of government organization?

CARRIE RYAN: From the moment I started writing the book the Sisterhood (the government running the village) was always a dominant force. Often in history (and today) there’s little distinction between some religions and some governments and because of how the village was founded (which I discuss a bit in The Dead-Tossed Waves) I knew that religion would dominate their world. I didn’t think of religion as an easy target as much as I found several historical models to base the village off of — situations where, out of love or duty or desire for power and control, people withheld information and dictated beliefs for what they considered to be a higher power. One reason I found using an organized religion useful in the book is the idea of blind faith — Mary is asked to take on faith that the village is all that’s left in the world and she’s uncomfortable and wants to test the boundaries of what she’s been told.

If you are interested, you can follow Carrie Ryan’s tour as she blogs at the following places:

3/16 Cynsations
3/17 The Book Smugglers
3/18 MTVNews.com “Hollywood Crush”
3/19 The Page Flipper
3/21 Reader Girlz
3/22 Mundie Moms
3/23 Cheryl Rainfield
3/24 Just Blinded Books
3/25 The Story Siren
3/26 Bildungsroman
3/27 Beautiful Creatures

Carrie is also answering questions from March 22-April 2 at Random Buzzers, and you can become a fan of The Dead-Tossed Waves on Facebook. I’m hoping to read The Dead-Tossed Waves this weekend, so expect my review next week! I am not kidding when I say that my students have loved The Forest of Hands and Teeth, so I am going to brave the zombie apocalypse for them again.

A few years ago, Mike and I had a weekend in Asheville. We had planned on going to the Biltmore, but ended up just hanging out in the downtown area, shopping and visiting some art galleries. Now, when it comes to art, Mike and I will be the first to admit that we are not the most knowledgeable individuals. I wouldn’t say we’re Philistines, though. Except maybe when it comes to modern art. When we went to the MOMA last fall, there was an unfortunate giggling incident when it came to some artwork that featured a dead rabbit. (That’s not our photo. And I can’t find what that art is called. But you see the dead rabbit there, right? Big Bunny was most seriously displeased.) Sometimes modern art is just a little bit too much for us.

When we were in Asheville, one of the pieces of art that we found particularly memorable was a birdcage filled with paper airplanes. Now, I know it’s terrible to say, “I could make that myself,” but, y’all. I could totally fill a birdcage with paper airplanes. It might not have meaning or purpose, but I could do it. Ever since then, every time we have seen a birdcage for sale or at someone’s house, Mike has leaned over and said, “That would look better if it had some paper airplanes in it.” Let’s just say we had an unfortunate giggling incident that day as well. (This is why we cannot go to nice places or have nice things. We are terrible disrespectful people who don’t understand art.)

We have some new shelves in our kitchen, and I have been trying to find things to fill them. I went to Marshall’s and bought a little lantern that I thought would look nice. Mike also liked it, but he pointed out that it would be better (and more like art) if I took the glass out and filled it with paper airplanes.

So on Saturday, I did.

If you are interested in my lantern/airplane art, I would be happy to discuss pricing with you. Please keep in mind, though, that something this meaningful would be worth every penny.

I thought Veronica’s inability to stand up to the “mean girls” she works with was incredibly realistic. Veronica was both sure of herself and afraid to get too close to anyone. She was skeptical of the girls’ motives and wanted to believe the best of them. She couldn’t stop herself from wanting to be included. I have been in that situation myself, and acted (much to my shame) just as Veronica did. When you are a teenager (and beyond), it can be hard to stand up for what is right when there are friendships on the line, when you could be part of what is going on.

This is a book that felt true to me. Veronica makes mistakes, and so do the people around her. I enjoyed the people who worked with her at the store and the ways that she began to learn what it means to carve out your own life and interests. I’m going to pass this on to the librarian at the high school that is next to the middle school where I work – I think it would be a great choice for high school collections.

Random House provided me with a copy of this book to review.

Mike has told me for many years that he would like to get me another ring for our upcoming tenth anniversary. I have had mixed feelings about it – I do enjoy shiny things that sparkle, but I probably enjoy them less than the average girl. We replaced my engagement ring a couple of years ago when the one he bought originally gave up the ghost. Besides, what I really wanted was my mom’s ring.

I learned a lot about being married by watching my parents. I watched them love, honor, and cherish each other. I grew up knowing my dad would do anything, anything, anything in his power to make my mom happy. I watched my mom trust my dad to make the right decisions for our family, and I watched them make those decisions together. I knew they disagreed sometimes, but they presented to us a united front. They were not perfect together, but I did not have trouble understanding what Ephesians 5 could look like. I saw it. Every day.

The very last thing that my dad told me and Mike was to take care of each other. That was certainly what my parents did, through richer and poorer, sickness and health. They took care of each other for 32 years before he lost his battle with pancreatic cancer. Mike and I have only experienced a small portion of that, but we have learned some things about sacrifice and commitment and the profound mystery of two becoming one.

For Valentine’s Day, my mom gave me the ring. I am proud and thankful to be able to wear it as a reminder of where I have come from and the commitment that Mike and I continue to make to each other every day.

When it snowed last week (I am desperate for it to stop snowing), Mike took this picture of one of the first signs of spring covered in ice. To him, it was just a picture. I saw an image that represents so many of my own struggles: I begin to trust and allow my heart to grow, and then something happens and I am frozen again, afraid to move.

When that happens to me, I cry a lot. When it happened to Susan Isaacs, she took God to couples counseling.

“Susan,” Martha declared, “our relationship with God is nothing short of a marriage.”

“Well, in that case,” I replied, “God and I need to go to couples counseling. Because we’re not getting along.”

The Sacred Romance wasn’t the first book foisted on me. Someone else told me to read Conversations With God, that new age piffle where God is like the Big Lebowski, telling you to “just follow your truth, dude.”

Who on earth had conversations with God like that? If I wrote my conversations with God into a book, they’d be very angry conversations. They’d go more like:

SUSAN: What the —-, God? Are you trying to kill me?
GOD: Shut the —- up or I will!

And that would be the end of the book.

(I think I have had that conversation with God myself.)

To our great good fortune, that was NOT the end of the book. Susan Isaacs did, in fact, talk through her relationship with God with a couples counselor, a former pastor who both let her be honest and challenged how she represented God in their sessions. (Her version of God was sarcastic and a little bit mean.) As she worked through her issues, I recognized myself in her questions and experiences. This is a passage that comes close to the end of the book that sums up a lot of her journey.

When I think of the people whose character I admire, they’ve all walked through deserts or hells far worse than mine. And when they got to the other side–the ones who did get to the other side–they always said God got them through it. They have a peace and a friendship with God that I want. But the problem is, the man who’s stuck in the desert because God put him there looks exactly like the man who’s stuck in the desert because he’s lost. And I don’t know which one I am. I don’t know if I’m here to find friendship with God or if I’ve been left to die.

My ex used to get angry when I said that. He would say, “God isn’t personal. God isn’t good or bad. God is like science. God just is.” But even with science . . . Look at the stars. You see such beauty and order, and you sense the Thought that went into their making. But if that thoughtfulness is not extended to me, then all that order and beauty is merely cold and sterile space that mocks me because I’ve been excluded from it.

If God wants to burn up everything useless in my life, amen to that. But I want to know whether or not this sorrow has an end. Do these longings in my heart for love and purpose mean anything? I say yes. Is my need for God just misplaced longing that has no place to be satisfied? I say no. The body thirsts because it needs water and water exists. The soul longs for purpose because it needs it, and because it exists. And I wouldn’t long for God if he didn’t exist. I am taking this personally because I am personal. And I don’t think that an impersonal God could create humans to be personal. So I’m taking this personally from a personal God.

A sixteenth-century monk wrote a treatise called Dark Night of the Soul. When we first know God, he lavishes us with blessings and signs of his love, the way you do with your children when they’re small. But God wants us to grow up. So he removes his blessings. The sense of his presence. And even signs of love. Because he wants us to trust when we can’t see, to believe we’re loved even if we can’t feel it, to walk by faith and not by sight. And maybe he wants me to love him for himself, not for what I can get out of him.

Well, if that’s where I am, that’s okay. I can be here. I’m in my own Dark Night of the Soul. And I’m just waiting for my sun to come up.

I have said before that one of my main definitions of myself is that God is busy taking care of other people and that he’ll get around to me if he’s got time. It is very easy to see things through that paradigm. Any challenge, any adversity is just God looking away, taking a nap, worrying about people who have much bigger problems. It is much harder to believe that a personal God wants me to be a better person and to take up the challenge and accept that becoming a better person is part of why we are here and what we should be about.

The best thing about this book is that, while Susan talked about her struggles in a way that I could relate to, the book was also wickedly funny. Here was a conversation with God that I particularly enjoyed. (Rudy is the counselor.)

RUDY: Last question. Let’s talk about creativity. No one in Susan’s family “got” her. Doesn’t sound like the church did either. Why is that, God? Do you not like art?

SUSAN: Only if it ends in an altar call.

GOD: Come on. I love art. The Sistine Chapel, the Bach B Minor Mass. A Man for All Seasons. Love that stuff.

SUSAN: You didn’t like my kind of art. Show me one joke in the Bible.

GOD: The hill of foreskins.

God snickered and Jesus joined him. Well, that’s how I saw it.

(That’s how I see it, too.)

That’s on page 58, and by that point, Mike was already tired of me reading stuff from the book to him. But he had to admit that that one was pretty much awesome. And written just for this family, yes?

I loved this book. It balances a lot of my favorite things very well: faith, questions, humor, personal stories. Even more than that, it showed how Susan pushed for real answers and had to change her thoughts and actions because of them. Susan’s tenacity and desire to work through a relationship with God resonated with me, as did her frustrations with how a relationship with God is so different than our ideals. And I laughed. A lot. I’d recommend it for fans of Don Miller (she toured with him), Anne Lamott (of course), and Sara Miles. Also recommended for friends and family who would like to understand me a little bit better.

Laundry room! (I love my new washer and dryer and want to have their babies.)

Our closet and my half of the closet (it is really hard to show closet size in a picture).

This is what our bedroom looks like now. Not that I ever showed you what it looked like before. Because it wasn’t as bright. But now it makes me really happy.

And we’ve got the kitchen all figured out now, too. If you look here, you’ll see where the fridge used to be. This is what everything looks like now.

And remember the door to nowhere behind our TV? Check it out now.

Mostly we’re just sitting around and listening to the quiet these days. It’s the greatest sound I hadn’t heard in a while.

It worked essentially like you’d expect – we had to race to destinations and get our “passport” stamped. At a few locations, we did have to answer trivia questions, but there were no tasks. Alisa and I did not come anywhere close to winning, but that is okay. Because before the race started, we saw the Fox 8 guys standing around, and we asked them if they were going to follow a team. They said yes, and we convinced them to follow us! So we got the real Amazing Race experience (except that we felt bad about talking so much about The Amazing Race because it’s on another network. Also I kept talking about Michael Scott. Still the wrong network, nitwit. Finally we remembered to talk about Glee). We even tried to hit all the Amazing Race cliches: we called each other “baby” and discussed whether it was God’s will for us to win. (I guess he was busy with other things.)

(The video works for me but sometimes I have to refresh the page first. So try that OR you can just click here to watch it.)

Here we are afterwards with our cameramen. Special thanks to them for editing out the part where we climbed the back hill to the Blandwood Mansion in the dark when the clue was, you know, at the front. As we were doing that, I thought, “Here’s where we get the dumb girl edit.” But, no. They were lovely. And we definitely owe them beer for making them run so much.

Sometimes nice, fun things just happen. I am usually the person who would watch the cameraman choose someone else, so I am thankful to have a friend like Alisa, who gives me the courage to try new things and be bold. I am so happy that we spoke up! We could not have had more fun than we did, and we would do it again, even without cameramen. Many thanks to Triad Stage for hosting such a great event. Mike and I went and saw the play a few weeks ago, and it’s very funny. I would recommend that you go see it, but I believe they said last night that they are all sold out except for the weekend matinees today and tomorrow. (I am not sure what they said – I was too busy getting my microphone put on. hee hee hee.)

February 1 – Cleaned out all our old magazines. Filed the recipes and book reviews I wanted to save. Total dorky happiness about it, yes.
February 2 – Best workday lunch ever. I would explain it, but you kind of had to be there. I will give you a few pieces of information: guacamole, tomahawks, unsafe road conditions, and band manuals.
February 3 – Dealt with the fundraiser for Haiti and got all the money organized and cleared out of the library. Over $1000 raised! With a week to go!
February 4 – I got my teaching license in the mail. All that hard work, finally finally over.
February 5 – We moved the fridge to its new spot and started decorating. Also I ordered about 150 digital photos for our walls and for other reasons. And then we watched Footloose (Mike had never seen it before).
February 6 – Great organization and house cleaning sort of day.
February 7 – Mike had a good Male Bakeoff experience and I got to be excited for Scott when the Saints won. (I yelled a lot during the second half of the game.)
February 8 – The painters finished and it was the greatest day of my entire life.
February 9 – 3.1 miles in 30:29. My best time yet! Soon I hope to be under 30:00.
February 10 – I talked on the steps with a friend of mine for an hour instead of doing yoga.
February 11 – I came home to a lovely clean house. God bless cleaning services.
February 12 – Tea party for some six-year-olds and had new friends over for dinner. Also . . . Olympic opening ceremonies!
February 13 – Babysat for the neighbors. Four kids (and I) ate four bags of popcorn. Two of them stayed up and watched speed skating with us. Worst babysitters ever? Possibly so.
February 14 – Homemade pizza and The Amazing Race premiere.
February 15 – Good workout at the gym. Which is kind of lame but true.
February 16 – Saw a friend do his first public reading at a coffeeshop. Also my mom sent me a fantastic YouTube video.
February 17 – Ash Wednesday. Nice service at church.
February 18 – Watched the snowboarding half-pipe with Mike and made fun of the announcers saying the same thing for every. single. guy. (“This is his last chance at a gold medal run. He needs the run of his life.”)
February 19 – Took a sixth grader to Lucky 32 (her first time eating there) and Triad Stage to see Around the World in 80 Days. Now I never have to read the book.
February 20 – Fun game night with very creative friends. Also pots of chocolate.
February 21 – Lunch to celebrate one of our Sunday School student’s baptism and a good walk with my neighbor.
February 22 – Great day teaching sixth graders how to do Microsoft Publisher.
February 23 – Did 3.1 miles in exactly 30 minutes on the elliptical. New world record! For me, anyway!
February 24 – I was sick so we ordered Chinese food for dinner and it was wonderful.
February 25 – Had to miss a friend’s party, a meeting, and my book club, but got good sleep thanks to the new and improved Nyquil. No Sudafed in Nyquil = GENIUS.
February 26 – Mike went out of town so I fell asleep watching the Olympics.
February 27 – Two fun friends came over for soup and wine and more Olympics.
February 28 – Unexpected coffee with a friend. Plus a walk with my neighbor. Plus Mike came home.

I am not going to go on and on again about how much I love the Olympics, but even though I wasn’t as captivated by the figure skating this year (the new scoring system takes so much of the fun and grace out of it), I was particularly moved by Joannie Rochette, the Canadian skater who lost her mother just before the games. Obviously she has an amazing inner strength, but I also felt as if every person in that room (including me on my couch in my pajamas and scarf) was willing her to land those jumps. The Olympics are big, but there was something even bigger going on. There have been some great moments in these Olympics, but I imagine her skate is the one I will remember.

I was also impressed with Johnny Weir’s press conference after some Canadian TV announcers made some jokes that perhaps he should skate with the women instead and perhaps he should be tested to prove that he’s a man. Instead of asking for an apology, he chose to call attention to the fact that they said those things and to ask them to think before they speak for the sake of young people who just want to express who they are. I appreciate that perspective and his insistence that they think about the power of their words. I saw a young man crying this morning because he did not want to be made fun of for being smart, so this is an issue that is on my mind. I want my students to be able to express themselves through school and sports and art and music and words and even feathers (like Weir) or ballet (like Billy Elliot) if that’s what they want. Thanks to Weir for articulating that in such a thoughtful manner.

I have been working with a couple of classes on projects on the Holocaust, and one of the topics that has come up was the Armenian genocide. I never learned about it during school myself. In fact, I learned about it from, of all people, Charla and Mirna on The Amazing Race. So I have taken that opportunity to help my students see why we spend so much time focusing on the Holocaust, because it happened before and we did forget, very quickly. One student has been particularly engrossed with the Rwandan genocide, and I have pointed him in the direction of some of the resources I encountered when I was studying that topic for myself.

This was a long week, which is something I imagine I say every year at the end of February. With all the snow, I think everyone will agree with me if I go ahead and declare that, this year, February was the cruellest month. But doing good work with students, telling them that they should be proud of themselves, and pushing them to explore new things prove that even February and a nagging cold cannot completely keep me down.