Idear

O.k. I had to comment so you guys would know something's going on here. So what about this.

I think we need cousin-ness going on here on a regular basis, because we are all living different places and don't you think we should be at least as connected as some random blog that we follow?

So, what if, oldest to youngest, we assign each girl cousin a week of the year and then it starts over at the beginning. (For example, Leigh: Oct 16-22, Kelsey: Oct 23-29, Jourdy: Oct 30-Nov 5, Katie: Nov 6-12, etc... adding cousin-in-laws if they so wish.) If it is your week, you are supposed to post at least ONE thing but you may post as many as you want, even one or more posts a day. It could be a random quote, a pretty picture, and embarrassing true story, a recipe you love, a knock-knock joke (every single day of that week if you wish it!), a book or movie recommendation, clothes you love, an online deal steal. Anything. But it is for the cousins so you can be a little weird about it and not worry about the cares of the world. Get it? That way, this blog will always be rockin and we'll be excited to read here and then always be friends forever and ever. And ever.

Do you agree? I am going to post an example next, but mostly because I think it is the most perfect passage ever to promote a book. Leigh, I know you will be right with me on this one. But the posts don't have to be nearly so long.

So. Comment to agree and I will assign weeks. If no one comments, I'm lame and off the deep-end about things. Also, someone needs to give this blog a facelift. Volunteers? Plus, invite Ashley because she wants to be part of us, and anyother cousins-in-law (Kenna, Jennifer...) and make sure the Leland girls are here too. Talk to me. xo~Kels

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And now, a long and necessary passage from South Riding, written by Winifred Holtby, published in 1936, one year after the author died at the age of 37, which I have read 5 chapters of, so hopefully the rest is good, thus, me putting a section out for you all to judge for yourself. (I give myself permission to do this because the kitchen is clean and I folded laundry today. Also, my new favorite phrase: superfluously pretty. Moreover, I take the liberty of highlighting excellent words or phrases, which inspire me to use in a casual sentence this week for dramatic effect on the absolute usual, and challenge you to do the same. Ahem, ahem.)

The governors of Kiplington Girls' High School had already interviewed Miss Torrence, Miss Slaker, Miss Hammond and Miss Dry, from out of five short-listed applicants for the post of head mistress; and they liked none of them.

 It was true that the appointment was not much to offer. The school owed its independent existence to masculine pride rather than to educational necessity. Thirsty years earlier the County Council decided that a daily train journey to Kingsport, suitable enough to Grammar School boys, was unsafe for girls. Girls were delicate. Life imperilled them. So four grim tall apartment houses were bought cheap on Kiplington North Cliff, facing the Pidsea Buttock road; walls were knocked down; dining-rooms became classrooms; a separate building housed the thirteen boarders, and there for a quarter of a century the High School mouldered gently into unregretted inefficiency under the lethargic rule of the retiring Miss Holmes. Miss Holmes had done well enough. Miss Holmes was amiable. It was a pity that age and health persuaded her to go now and share a semi-detached villa in Bournemouth with her widowed sister. Another Miss Holmes was what the chairman hoped for.

 The Reverend Milward Peckover, however, was financially compelled to send his own daughters to the High School. Three nice, good, clever girls they were; and he cherished ambitions for their future. They might even do what he had never done--win scholarships to Oxford and the Sorbonne, like Chloe Beddows, the one star pupil whom the High School had quite failed to discourage. He had good reason for desiring a more effective successor to Miss Holmes, and until he saw her, he had canvassed his fellow governors avidly in favour of the highly-qualified but personally unprepossessing Miss Dry. But, having seen her, he was out of love with her, and his second choice had been given to the still uninterviewed Miss Sarah Burton, whose testimonials both public and private were almost suspiciously favourable. He sat back restlessly listening to Mr. Tadman's idiotic remarks about a little more accommodation for the Buttocks.

There were Pidsea Buttock and Ledsea Buttock, and Mr. Peckover recognised the ancient and honourable nomenclature of the villages. He particularly detested the puerile vulgarity of persons who would make jokes about them, suspecting Mr. Tadmand of a wish to shock the clergy when, being a Nonconformist, he rolled the words round his tongue and proclaimed with a sort of sensuous relish, "the Buttocks this," "the Buttocks that," "with regard, Mr. Chairman, to that bit of unpleasantness about the Buttocks." And the worst of it was that, whenever Mr. Tadman started, some nervous affection contracted the muscles of Reverend Peckover's nose and throat; his eyes pricked; before he could collect his defenses, he began to giggle.

He turned to the chairman, driven to action.

"Mr. Chairman, I see we have another candidate, Sarah Burton. A good plain name. Let's hope," (snigger, snigger, snigger; but the explosion was now respectably justified)--"let us hope a good plain woman."

Dr. Dale, the Congregational Minister, pulled forward the typed papers containing Miss Burton's particulars.

"Yes, she is an Oxford woman," he said, preparing to be impressive. He was a Cambridge man and a Doctor of Divinity--two qualifications which made him a thorn in the side of Reverend Peckover, who was a Manchester B.A. and Lichfield.

"Only a postgraduate course. B.Litt, after graduating at Leeds," corrected Reverend Peckover. "Then she had--an--Empire experience--South Africa. Well, well. That should broaden the mind a little. Broaden the mind."

The chairman, a vague though ferocious little man, grunted that, whatever she was, Miss Burton must be seen.

The clerk summoned her.

Miss Sarah Burton, M.A., B.Litt., entered the unwelcoming ugly room.

She was much too small. Though her close-fitting hat was blamelessly discreet, her hair was red--not mildly ginger but vivid, springing, wiry, glowing, almost crimson, red. Astonishing hair. Nothing could have been more sober and business-like than her dark brown clothes; but from her sensible walking shoes rose ankles which were superfluously pretty. Head mistress, ran the unformed thought in the mind of more than one governor, should not possess ankles as slender as a gazelle's and flexible arched insteps.

On the other hand, her face was not pretty at all, the nose too large, the mouth too wide; the small, quick, intelligent eyes were light and green.

"But the skin looks healthy," thought Alderman Mrs. Beddows. "Good skin. Good teeth. And she wasn't born yesterday."

Miss Burton had been born, according to her official papers, thirty-nine years ago.

 "Er--er--Miss Burton." The chairman frowned and stuttered, wrinkling his face. "Won't you sit down?"

She sat, as she moved and spoke with deliberation. she placed her formidable leather bag on the table before her. Then she looked round at the governors and she smiled.

Her smile was not in the least like those of the other candidates, nervous, ingratiating, chilling, or complacent. It was a smile friendly yet challenging. Well, gentlemen, here I am. What next?

 ...

(!)
Talk to me.