This book also has a bunch of other awesome stories. The Very Mischief by Lesley Frost. Susan’s Bears by Mildred Lawrence and the Pear Tree by E. Elizabeth Longwell. ther is a list on this page.

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Once upon a time there was a little girl named Donnica who lived with her mother and a little black mouse. Mousie was very bad because no one had taught him to be good.

He cut big holes in the bedspread with Donnica’s little scissors.
He threw all of Donnica’s clean socks into the bathtub when it had water in it.
He made little mud tracks all over the rug when he came in.
Donnica’s mother said, “Mousie, don’t you know that nobody loves a bad mouse? That’s why we don’t want you to stay here with us anymore.” And she took her broom and swept him out of the house. “Now, don’t you come back until you learn to be a good ouse,” she called after him. Then she closed the door and locked it.
But bad Mousie waited until dark. Then he crawled under the gate and crept through a crack in the wall. And next morning, there he was again!
Donnica was glad to see him, but Mousie was still bad.
He pulled the top off the powder can and spilled powder all over the rug.
He tangled Donnica’s hair and scattered her ribbons on the floor.
He tipped over things not he breakfast table and spilled cocoa, and orange juice, and lots and lots of milk.
This made Donnica’s mother very angry. “Bad Mousie,” she said, “I’m going to put you in a box and close it tight and throw it in my washtub full fo water.” And she did.

But the box was only glued together, and the water softened the glue and the box fell apart. So, Mousie swam up to the top and scrambled out. Then he shook the water out of his ears and he climbed the cellar stairs and squeezed under the door. And there he was again! And Donnica was glad to see him.
The next day Mousie was as bad as ever.
He pulled all the books out of the shelves and tore out some of the pages.
He unrolled yards and yards of paper in the bathroom.
He spilled green ink all over the inside of a desk drawer.
Now Donnica’s mother was very, very angry. She said, “Mousie, you are so very bad that I shall feed you to the night owl!” o she took him and tied him with three white strings to the fence in the back yard. Then she put a yellow ribbon around his neck, so that the owl could see him better in the dark and fly down and gobble him up.
But before the stars came out, the mouse wriggled and tugged and finally got his feet loose. Then he untangled his tail, and nibbled through the strings around his tummy. So he was free again, and he ran and hid all night. The owl couldn’t find him.
Next morning he came back to the house and climbed in at an open window. And there he was again! And Donnica was glad to see him.
But Mousie was still bad!
The next time Donnica’s mother was away at the store, he took purple crayon and scribbled all over the yellow wallpaper.
Then he dumped all the buttons out of the button box.
He found a bottle of shoe polish, and he painted the floor white.
When Donnica’s mother came home and found the awful mess he had made, she grabbed him by his little string tail. Then she pressed her lips together hard, and she thought and thought of a way to get rid of him. At last she decided to let the wind blow him away.

So she got her oldest umbrella and fastened Mousie to the handle with an old belt. Then she carried him up to the roof and opened the umbrella, so that the wind could blow him off, right into the sky. The little mouse kicked and squeaked, but it did him no good, for soon the umbrella was sailing up, up over the tree tops. And Mousie was fastened to it.
After a while the umbrella drifted gently down onto a little ink cloud. Mousie managed to get himself unbuckled, and he let the big umbrella blow away. Then he lay down on the soft, warm cloud to rest. He was really very lonely and wished that he could go home to Donnica and her mother and live there with them. “Maybe I could leaner to be good,” he thought.
All of a sudden it began to get cold and th cloud began to drip. Drip, drip; drop, drop; dripple, droplet; the cloud was changing into rain. Mousie was getting wetter and wetter. Soon there was no cloud to lie on, and down he tumbled with the raindrops. Down, down, until he splashed into a muddy puddle.
Mousie was cold and wet and very unhappy. He had to swim and wade to get out of the big puddle. Then he ran as fast as he could to Donnica’s house. But before he crept under the door, guess what he did! He wiped his muddy little feet on the doormat.
And when Donnica looked around, there he was again! “Donnica,” said the mouse, “could you teach me to be a good mouse? I want to stay here with you where it is warm and cozy and I can be your friend.”
“I’ll try to teach you,” said Donnica.
“And I’ll try to be good, ” said the mouse.
So Donnica taught him how to begin to be good.
She showed him what not to touch.
She told him to cutpaper dolls, instead of bedspreads, with her little scissors.

She taught him how to wipe up the milk he spilled.
She helped him pick up books and put buttons away in there boxes.
Then she kissed him to help him get good faster.
When Donnica’s mother came home from the store, she certainly was surprised, for there was Mousie helping Donnica set the table for lunch.
“Mommie, I’m teaching him to be a good mouse,” said Donnica, “and Mousie is trying very, very hard. Please let him stay.”
So Donnica’s mother was proud of them both, and she told Mousie that she, too, would help him learn to be good. Then she hugged Donnica and the mouse, and they all join hands and danced round and round.
Next day Mousie brought in the morning newspaper and the mail.
He wiped all the forks and spoons, and put away the pans after breakfast.
And he spread the wet tea-towels out on the grass too bleach in the sun.
So Mousie became a good mouse, and they all lived cozily together again.

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Vm becomes obsessed with lacto-fermentation:

First he made whey and cream cheese with some strauss organic yogurt and then used the whey to make beet kvass. I think beet kvass is an acquired taste. I like it now! Poor Jack asked to taste it and spit it out and screamed I HATE IT and started crying. Poor baby!

Vim was left alone for a week the Nourishing Traditions by Sally Fallon. It’sa good book, I bought it on a friends recommendation and because I wanted to read more about bone broth. I had never even heard of bone broth until I was pregnant with Jack and my (old) acupuncturist recommend it and basically all the food from Three Stone Hearth. She described it as a ‘nutrient dense’ diet an that was the first time I had ever heard that term as well. They recommend (and cook for you) lots of soups in bone broth, organ meat, raw whole milk, sprouted grains, soaked legumes and fermented foods. If you are in the East Bay highly recommend Three Stone Hearth for some good tasty healthy hippy food.

All this is is not to be confused with the ‘cleanse’ diet I did more recently with my NEW acupuncturist. The point of that diet was to lose some weight and to ‘give your digestive system a rest’ by eliminating all the things that are hard on the system to digest like legumes and grains.

All this always reminds me of this scene in Sleeper:

Dr. Melik: This morning for breakfast he requested something called “wheat germ, organic honey and tiger’s milk.”
Dr. Aragon: [chuckling] Oh, yes. Those are the charmed substances that some years ago were thought to contain life-preserving properties.
Dr. Melik: You mean there was no deep fat? No steak or cream pies or… hot fudge?
Dr. Aragon: Those were thought to be unhealthy… precisely the opposite of what we now know to be true.
Dr. Melik: Incredible.

Speaking of which, yesterday I started reading Good Calories, Bad Calories and I also watched the first hour of Capitalism: A Love Story and I had to turn it off due to the incredible stress of thinking about … everything. So far Good Calories, Bad Calories is pretty good and seems like ti will go into more detail about the politics of the things mentioned in Nourishing Tradtions. I’m interspersing it with reading some Georgette Heyer books I purchased on sale for the kindle. So romance novels and food politics is an odd combo…

We planted a million and one cherry tomato plants and now I am wondering what the heck to do with them. Can them? freeze them? grind them up in a food mill and then can that? Any suggestions?

Some day I will do the Eat Local Challenge as described by Stitch and Boots. For some reason I am not quite ready to commit and say out loud that I am going to do it. I bet I eat like 75% locally already. I think meat is the one thing I tend to buy organic but not necessarily locally. oh, also butter. I buy pastured butter but I don’t think it is local. If I shop at Berkeley Bowl they label where all the produce comes from and I try to stick to california but that doesn’t count as within 100 miles!

I decided to unsubscribe from my CSA. It’s so easy for me to go to a farmers market and actually choose the produce I want rather than be stuck with a ton of turnips I have no idea what to do with. And I forgot to pick up the last box and the host family didn’t get back to me until like a week later and I was kind of put out.

We have a jar of ladybugs we are going to release into the garden tonight! Yesterday I noticed black aphids on our corn plant. This shall not stand! Vim thinks the ladybugs will break my heart and fly away but I refuse to believe it.

Oh man, now i remember why i switched away from this template. It’s aliquot layout and I think I struggled (and failed) for entirely too long with the css to try to get the images to center. hmmm.

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Besides the ukelele I have a few more plans for the new year. One is to start entering all books read into library thing. I wasted too much time rereading crappy old comfort books in 2009. So far this year I have read the Magic’s Child trilogy, The Thirty-Nine Steps and The heart of the Mirage and one other book I can’t remember already and forgot to enter into library thing.

I also am going to attempt to be slightly (<- note the vote of confidence here...) less of a flake. i.e. check my voice mail, respond to emails and phone calls in a timely fashion. (<-already a giant FAIL)

I'm off later this week to visit my parents with Jack. I'm not too worried about the plane trip. I'll have my laptop and Peep and the Big Wide World to entertain jack plus a new Richard Scary book. I have a crappy mystery novel and some Philipa Gregory shlock. I'm obessesing about packing as usual.

Oh the other thing I decided to do was enter all the food I am eating into The Daily Plate just so that I could see what the hell I am eating. One day, weirdly, like all my calories were from milk and kalamata olives. I was being pretty careful about my food intake until one day when I was hungry and said fuck it and ate a slice of pizza. I then proceeded to eat 2 candy bars and a bottle of wine and then stopped entering shit into the Daily Plate. Hmmm. Something is wrong here!

I need to get back to entering food. It's very interesting but kind of a pain in the arse.

That effing pacifier is going the way of the dodo on our vacation. I’m inspired by the twinkles experience. My favorite 70′s child rearing book recommends that you not bother taking away a kids comfort items as clearly they get over it themselves eventually. but I hate seeing him with it in unless he is sleeping.

I think I will go clean my craft studio. Imma gonna take some pictures so that I can horrify you all later.

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Even with having done a few things wrong the bread came out well. I forgot to test the oven temperature and to put the steam tray in while the oven was pre-heating and also to time how long the bread was in the oven. I just went by color of the crust. It could have stayed in probably 5 minutes longer because if I were to complain about the bread at all it might be to say the crumb was a tad on the moist side.

Speaking of Louisa May Alcott, I have often been obsessed with her and when in school wrote many papers, etc. about her. But I’ve never read any of her really hard to find books UNTIL NOW. When I can get them for free on the internet and on my amazon kindle. KACHOW, baby.

I’m about to read Pauline’s Passion and Punishment available now on Project Gutenberg.

Behold the first paragraph,

“To and fro, like a wild creature in its cage, paced that handsome woman, with bent head, locked hands, and restless steps. Some mental storm, swift and sudden as a tempest of the tropics, had swept over her and left its marks behind. As if in anger at the beauty now proved powerless, all ornaments had been flung away, yet still it shone undimmed, and filled her with a passionate regret. A jewel glittered at her feet, leaving the lace rent to shreds on the indignant bosom that had worn it; the wreaths of hair that had crowned her with a woman’s most womanly adornment fell disordered upon shoulders that gleamed the fairer for the scarlet of the pomegranate flowers clinging to the bright meshes that had imprisoned them an hour ago; and over the face, once so affluent in youthful bloom, a stern pallor had fallen like a blight, for pride was slowly conquering passion, and despair had murdered hope.”

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I made a blurb book and it turned out AWESOME. I love it! It’s like an actual book! It’s small and square, hardcover, with a dust jacket and is about 100 pages of all full color photographs (some text), is great quality and cost about 30$. Well worth it, IMHO, for a book you will be ordering as a keepsake for yourself and family.

I’m feeling pretty grumpy right now. I’m PMSing hardcore. Once a month I become SO AGGRAVATED with EVERYTHING. Things that only mildly annoy me at other times become huge issues that make me stabby.

For instance, you know how everyone thinks their baby is totally awesome and cute and smart? I’m sure it is, but even if I love your baby and think it is perfect it is still a giant lumpy BLOB. So when you think MY BABY is a giant lumpy blob then welcome to the club, fuckwit. ALL BABIES are giant blobs unless you spend a lot of time with them. Talk about how great your baby is all you want but don’t then point out some other lady’s baby and whisper about how it seems like kind of a blob because I guarantee you that everyone thinks that about your baby as well.

Also, I swear I have been the recipient of no less than 3 fucking stupid junior high school moments in the past few weeks. OMFG! Grow up! I’m a little slow on the uptake sometimes like 10 minutes or a day later I’m all, “wtf just happened?! Did they really insinuate that? WHY?” In my hightened PMSy state I keep going back over the moments to try to figure them out instead of just forgetting about it.

I just read an article in Vim’s MIT magazine about a drug that they can give people that dims emotional memories. So they ask the person to recall them memory in detail and then give them this drug and the memory loses it’s emotional charge. They don’t forget it but it just no longer triggers an emotional response. To this I say, “DISTURBING!” Well, fuck, if soldiers get PSD we’ll just give them this drug and it won’t matter anymore! Go ahead rape somebody! the state will just give them this drug so that they won’t care enough to prosecute. OMG. But then also, If you’re incapacitated by emotional memories maybe it would be an okay thing… but still, EW!

Fish tacos, chocolate and bouncing on the trampoline with kids made me feel slightly better. As did some retail therapy. I got a cute black dress on sale, some underwear, some shampoo and some crap at IKEA.

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