I’m just like Patricia Marx as I, too, am struggling to get through AK! Although my mental wanderings have less to do with Zumba and making waffles and more to do with annotating John Waters’ Role Models and contemplating why all Mormons are good looking.
Me, Reading
‘O my sweet!’ he said inwardly to Frou-Frou.”
Wait a second. Frou-Frou? Frou-Frou is his brother or his horse? Or is Frou-Frou Dolly’s sister? But then who’s Kitty? Uh-oh . . . do I need a manicure? Where’s the place that does the new color? Guppy Green? Is it faster to take this to the shuttle or take the crosstown to the 1 and transfer to the 2?
“ ‘Yes, I understand it all now,’ said Darya Alexandrovna. ‘You can’t understand it; for you men, who are free and make your own choice, it’s always clear whom you love.’ ”
Did Larry really finish the Pecan Sandies? Now what will I eat?
“Sergei Ivanovich Koznyshev wanted a . . .”
Jane’s a nice name. I could make waffles.
“The Karenins, husband and wife, continued living in the same house, met every day, but were complete strangers to one another.”
I bet Larry hates the name Jane. Susan’s a nice name, too, but why does every single Susan end up divorced?
“And the prince with surprising ease fell in with the Russian spirit; he smashed trays full of crockery, sat with a gypsy girl on his knee, and seemed to be asking: What more? Or does the whole Russian spirit consist in just this?”
Can you get knee damage from crossing your legs?
“When he got home, Vronsky found there a note from Anna. She wrote, ‘I am ill and unhappy. I cannot come out, but I cannot go on longer without seeing you.’ ”
If I start uncrossing now, is it too late? I should skip the squats in Zumba class. Do wedding registries ever include knee replacements?
“The doctors said that it was puerperal fever, and that ninety-nine chances in a hundred it would end in death.”
The man next to me, was that a cough?
“At midnight the patient lay without consciousness, and almost without pulse.”
Won’t he be offended if I move? What if he has TB? Isn’t TB making a comeback in the United States, especially among the prison population? Couldn’t he have a gun?
“The end was expected every minute.”
Better to get TB than be shot.
“ ‘A sledge, sir?’ asked the porter. ‘Yes, a sledge.’ ”
No! How can this be?! I’ve read only fifty-two per cent of this damn book? Wasn’t I at fifty-one per cent like seven months ago? The Kindle must be broken.
“ ‘There’s nothing, nothing I wish . . . except for it to be all over.’ ”
The lady across the aisle, is she looking at me? She thinks I’m a slow reader, doesn’t she? Do I care? Should I skip ahead so she sees that I’m pushing buttons and making progress? Really, what can happen in a few hundred pages? I can always download the SparkNotes.
“The baby girl—his child—was so sweet, and had so won Anna’s heart, since she was all that was left her, that Anna rarely thought of her son.”
Anna had a baby?! Who’s the father? Anna didn’t do it with Vronsky, did she? Should I go back to the beginning again? Am I losing my marbles? Everyone says they have Alzheimer’s, but I really do. Who do I know who would know the name of a good neurologist in the city?
“As Vronsky had from a child a taste for painting, and as, not knowing what to spend his money on, he had begun collecting engravings . . .”
Why didn’t Larry give me a gift? Can I really be with a man who doesn’t give me a gift on Arbor Day?
“ ‘Une partie de lawn-tennis,’ Veslovsky proposed, with his handsome smile. ‘We’ll be partners again, Anna Arkadyevna.’ ”
I should friend that guy on Facebook, what’s his name, who took me to the junior prom. Didn’t he have a Russian aunt? He was cute. Would he like green nail polish, though? Hold on. Do we have milk? How can I make waffles without milk?
“And exactly at the moment when the space between the wheels came opposite her, she dropped the red bag, and drawing her head back into her shoulders, fell on her hands under the car, and lightly, as though she would rise again at once, dropped on to her knees. And at the same instant she was terror-stricken at what she was doing. ‘Where am I? What am I doing? What for?’ She tried to get up, to drop backwards; but something huge and merciless struck her on the head and rolled her on her back.”
Hey, this sounds familiar. Did I already read this? Should I break up with Larry before or after Zumba class?
“ ‘My life now, my whole life, regardless of all that may happen to me, every minute of it, is not only not meaningless, as it was before, but has the unquestionable meaning of the good which it is in my power to put into it!’ ”
If the place next to Zumba class doesn’t have Pecan Sandies, I bet they’d have Nutter Butters. Would I look better in bangs?
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