Day 235

Angelina listening intently to me.

Tim took this photograph, which is one of his rejects actually, because it is not perfectly in focus, but I love it, love her expression, so concentrated, so forthrightly holding my gaze, an ability she has had since she was a tiny baby.

And my friend's daughter had a new little girl today, named Clara, who resembles her grandmother, I think.  So I am an honorary great-aunt! 

Today huge waves were predicted, part of the lovely storms and rain we are experiencing.  So I went to run on the beach first, then swim afterwards, but only managed the running, as the choppy waves were being blown backward and none of them completed their rush to the shore well enough to be good for boogie-boarding.  In fact three surfers arrived and were preparing to go in as I began my run, and as I finished, about 25 minutes later, they were getting out, complaining about aforementioned waves!

Dead Monarch on the sand

It is lovely to run on a beach, even with the wind and rain stinging your face every time you turn at the end of the shore to run in the opposite direction.  I forgot my pedometer, so just ran for about 25 minutes, there and back and there and back and halfway there again.  So easy with no hills, no mouseholes or overhung branches to avoid, just clean sea-sand, with the tide coming in so that each time I ran back along my footprints, they were gone or barely visible, erased by the surging water.  I am trying very hard to keep up a good pace the entire run, so that by the time I run the Fun Run next Thursday I am used to not slacking.

Tomorrow is my Beddian Birthday, named after a firefighter who inspired a mathematical theory about how many people will reach the same age as their birth-year the next even year, as apparently it can only happen in an even year, which stands to reason if you consider each time that you are doubling the number, the product of which will always be even.  You can look it up if you are interested in such things.  I was born in 1955 and I turn 55 tomorrow, in 2010, which makes it a kind of special birthday! 

Since I have spent the better part of the night and today getting to the end of The Girl who Played with Fire, about which I have terribly mixed feelings, a book which drew me in and onward until I turned each page frantically wanting to know what happened.

But also a poorly written book, with so much weird unnecessary detail like how much furniture the main character bought at IKEA, including how much it cost, or what Mikael Blomkvist put on the irrelevant sandwich he made himself when he woke up and couldn't sleep.  And such out-of-character things such as the breast implant operation Lisbeth Salander decides to have done, which seems to me solely there to provide gratuitous nudity in the movie, which is all very well, but doesn't make sense, considering her history.

I did like the minor mathematical theme and the importance of laptops, email, computer hacking, all this contemporary technology used to communicate, to find out things, throughout the book.  And the fact that the author brings to light so much abuse of women, and then manufactures this wonderfully strong and intelligent woman as his central protagonist, who beats up the baddies and gets even with them in very clever ways.  The first book's Swedish title is "Men who Hate Women", and it seems as if the world is filled with such men. 

I will, however, definitely read the last one in the trilogy, The Girl who Kicked the Hornet's Nest.  So I admit that I am hooked!

All the while I was reading the book I knew that a man was writing it, which is not something you think of when reading someone like Patrick White or Tim Winton (both Australian male authors, funnily enough) or Sarah Hall (British).  These authors write from the point-of-view of either sex with utter accuracy and believability. 

I don't feel like I have enough time for a drawing, so my portrait tonight  is a photographic creation, a composite image of a dragonfly and a dewy spiderweb from yesterday's morning meadow.