25-50-75: Day 18

25
Dinner: turkey meatballs, whole wheat pasta, homemade pasta sauce: olive oil, Roma tomatoes, green onions and garlic simmered and mashed until sauce-y.  Topped with shaved parmesan.  Yes.

4th day in a row at the pool.  Much quieter today, plenty of time to read.  Got more sun and the hair is FINALLY starting to lighten up after the home dye-job disaster of early 2012.

Lots of water: Pamplemouse.  And my favorite iced tea: Celestial Seasonings Cool Brew-Peach.

50
Hated the ending to Blue Angel.  Seriously.  The guy gets busted for his affair and as he leaves the mock trial on campus realizes he's been set up from the very beginning.  Just then the campus bells, which he has always found annoying until now, begin to chime and he feels liberated from his buttoned-down back East existence.  BOO.

Read two more today: Ellen Foster by Kaye Gibbons and Mister Posterior & the Genius Child by Emily Jenkins.

Ellen Foster was better when I read it the first time, but it was called Bastard Out of Carolina then and it was written by Dorothy Allison.  Gibbons has a decent voice, but I could never told how old the narrator was supposed to be in the telling and it distracted me from the story.  Also, it was unclear if her father was black or if he just associated with blacks.  This seems small, but the way her grandmother treats Ellen because of the grandmother's disdain for Ellen's father makes the distinction important.  Quick read, but not great.

Mister Posterior etc. was good, but it too has a better corollary.  The Summer of Naked Swim Parties by Jessica Anya Blau does a much better job of capturing early 70s sexual rebellion-post sexual revolution.  I didn't hate Jenkins' book, but I did find the eight going on nine year old narrator's comfort with the naked ass flashing that occurs over a period of months outside her bedroom window to be disingenuous.  I have a hard time any kid, when confronted with a "wiggly, hairy" male ass would be so mellow about it that they'd refer to it as "just a bottom".  Maybe I'm uptight, but I didn't buy it.