The Help – Kathryn Stockett

If you were to ask me what I liked about this book, my first response would be something like: The heroine has the best name ever. Skeeter Phelan? It’s just godawful. And hence insanely great.

She’s an ugly duckling with a rich family and big dreams, which endeared her to me even more. While those around her immediately settle into their roles in southern society life, dropping out to get married and organising fundraisers for poor African children while refusing to share their bathrooms with their African-American maids, Skeeter has the balls to buck the trend and look beyond the uniforms, seeing “the help” as what they are. Real people.

Getting friendly with the help, however, doesn’t endear her to her snotty bridge club friends. And what would they do if they knew she – gasp – wanted to write a book detailing the experiences of local maids at the hands of their white mistresses? Fraternising with blacks can only lead to serious doo-doo in the sixties. Cue tiptoeing around as Skeeter leads a double life, telling her mother she’s going to church every night when she’s actually holed up in the home of her best friend’s maid, frantically transcribing the life stories of various local housekeepers (and even hiding it from her rich boyfriend. After all, you can’t trust anyone; apparently being an equal-rights sympathiser is akin to being a communist).

Inevitably, a project like this leads to learning things about your friends and neighbours you didn’t want to know (and begs the question of why Skeeter is friends with them in the first place). And what happened to her childhood housekeeper, the servant Constantine who practically raised her?

Aibileen and Minny, the two maids who make up the other two narrators in The Help, also make for gripping reading. Aibileen is a far better mother to toddler Mae Mobley than her cold, disaffected biological one – and while white children inevitably grow up to turn against the help, she does her best to instil a sense of decency and love in the child. Meanwhile, sharp-tongued, brassy Minny (who is, disappointingly, married to an alcoholic abuser) forms a surprising bond with her new mistress, the endearing white-trash Celia Foote who’s out of her depth in upper-class Jackson, Mississippi.

Stockett is brave, perhaps, attempting to write in a black voice. I’d like to think she does so elegantly and respectfully. Around the edge of the main story, she sketches out the horrendous things humans inflict upon each other in the name of hate – a man beaten and blinded for using a public toilet not specifically marked for blacks. Within that inner circle, she details both the cruelty of cold households, and the genuine affection that goes on behind closed doors in others.

My sole gripe is with an ill mother storyline that seemed to go nowhere. Otherwise, Stockett’s unfussy style and strong characterisation through speech and straightforward narrative gets the thumbs up from me.

Default credit card interest rates hover around 20%. You might see balance transfer offers around 5%. Car and personal loans around 10%.

You bloggers in the States, though (and that’s most of you)? I hear tales of 0% loans. 0% balance transfer rates. Cards without annual fees. Plus of course, you have access to so many more kinds of cards, and it’s easy to compare credit cards online.

Interest rates don’t overly fuss me, because I’m not in debt. What would be nice, though, is if there were local cards without annual fees.

I currently have one plain old Visa, and it’s with the bank I’ve banked with all my life. Luckily, it’s a pretty awesome bank with accounts that suit my needs and the single best online banking system available, IMO. It’s ridiculously easy to make instant payments onto it (because I like to pay off purchases right after making them) and the six-monthly fee of $12 is one of the lowest out there.

Recently I was tempted by Air NZ offering no joining fee on its Airpoints programme. (You know travel is number one on my list.) I could sign up for a credit card linked to Airpoints, and earn points on everyday spending.

Thing is, the fee is more than double what I currently pay – $25 every six months. And based on our annual spending, we would be lucky to rack up enough points in a year for a single domestic flight.

Maybe it’s worth it for frequent flyers, who also earn points when they book flights, but for those who are trying to save for travel, it doesn’t sound like such a hot deal.

Tell me, how many credit cards do you have? Anyone out there an Airpoints member?

Image via Wikipedia

driver.

Combine his skill with my caution and you would come up with the perfect blend.

T has the confidence, the quick reaction time, the coordination, the spatial perception, the ability to park effortlessly.

But he’s prone to taking too many risks, accelerating and braking too hard – which is just uneconomic in $2-plus-a-litre times – and belongs to the “try to get ahead at any cost” mentality. By that, I mean when stopped at a light, he always edges as humanly close to the car in front as possible without touching (and laughs at me for leaving “enough room to fly a plane” in between cars). On long trips through the single lane country roads, he overtakes cars only to then get stuck behind yet more cars further along the track. It’s a loser’s game, I tell you.

Granted, since he was in a string of accidents a few years ago he’s less reckless on the roads. But fundamentally, we’re opposites behind the wheel.

It’s the same with our personalities and approaches in real life, really.

We even each other out.

Combine his physical attributes (strength, perfect vision, coordination), quick learning, inability to sit still, some kind of charisma with my work ethic, stubbornness, patience, planning, attention to detail and we’d be a pretty formidable superhuman.

Does your driving reflect how you navigate the real world?

And while slow, bad tech makes my life (both work and personal) hard, good tech makes it exponentially easier.

Some of my go-tos are:

Evernote

Syncs “notes” across all your devices. Radtastic. I use it for running lists and blog scribblings, mainly.

Dropbox

File storage in the cloud, accessible from anywhere. A godsend. Also much preferred over YouSendIt for sending/sharing items.

Buffer

Enables you to tweet links right from the webpage, and “buffer” links to go out at scheduled times throughout the day. Also integrates with link-shortening analytics services like bit.ly. Has totally changed my social media flow at work.

Flipboard

A seriously awesome way to keep up with the stories of the day.

Summify

Compiles the big stories shared by your peeps on Twitter and sends a digest to you. Need I say more? (ETA: Since I first drafted this post, Twitter has acquired Summify, the bastards, and its lifespan looks very limited. Alternatives I’ve found are news.me and Percolator).

Hootsuite

I despair if you’ve not heard of this. Hootsuite is much like a web-based version of Tweetdeck  – a simple way to manage multiple social media accounts (including integration with Facebook, LinkedIn, etc), track links, lists and schedule tweets. I use Hootsuite exclusively for my own various profiles, and other various apps for work purposes, to avoid mixups.

Goodreads

I have a terrible memory for books I’ve read, movies I’ve watched, etc. Goodreads deals to the first problem, letting me list and rate what I’ve read, keep a “bookcase” of titles to read in the future, and suggest others. Plus there’s social networking fun to be had!

What apps can you not live without?

Coconut chocolate blondies

I ran with this recipe from Brown Eyed Baker.

1 cup all-purpose flour
1/8 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup unsalted butter, melted and cooled to room temperature
1 cup light brown sugar
1 large egg
1½ teaspoons vanilla extract
1 cup sweetened flaked coconut
1 cup chocolate chips or chunks

Topping:
1 cup semisweet or bittersweet chocolate chips
1 teaspoon butter

• Combine the flour and salt; set aside.
• Stir together the melted butter and brown sugar until smooth; beat in egg and vanilla extract until well blended.
• Slowly beat in the flour mixture until blended, then stir in the coconut and chocolate chips.
• Scrape the batter into greased pan and smooth even with a rubber spatula.
• Bake for 25-30 minutes, or until set in the center but still soft. Do not overbake. Let the bars cool slightly before drizzling with chocolate, then cool completely before cutting.
• For the topping, combine the chocolate and butter in a small bowl and microwave in 30-second intervals until melted and smooth. Using a spoon, drizzle over the bars.

I only used about half the flour; it would have been too dry otherwise. I’m guessing that in this case the 1/2 cup of butter refers to the melted volume, not the original amount… I definitely like to err on the side of moister when it comes to baking. I also skipped the chocolate topping altogether.

Anyway, I definitely recommend making this! For not much work, these are incredibly tasty. As you can see, though, my chocolate chips (despite being tiny, delicate drops) all sunk to the bottom, even though I mixed them through evenly.

Yo-yos

Buttery, delicious biscuits with fluffy lemon icing? What’s not to like?

I used this Kidspot recipe:

125g butter, softened
¼ cup icing sugar, sifted
1 teaspoon vanilla essence
1 cup plain flour
¼ cup cornflour

Filling

30g butter, softened
¾ cup icing sugar, sifted
1-2 teaspoons lemon juice

• Use an electric mixer or beaters to cream butter, icing sugar and vanilla essence.
• Sift together the flour and cornflour, add to butter mixture and mix on low speed until just combined and a soft dough forms.
• Place a piece of plastic film on a work bench, tip dough onto plastic film, wrap up and roll into a sausage about 2cm diameter (no messy bench or hands!).
• Refrigerate for at least 30 minutes.
• Preheat oven to 160°C.
• Line two baking trays with non-stick baking paper.
• Remove dough from fridge and slice into about 30 rounds.
• Lightly flour hands and roll each round into a small ball.
• Place each ball onto the tray about 5cm apart.
• Dip a fork in flour and press each ball to 1 cm thick.
• Bake for 10-15 minutes or until just starting to colour.
• Cool on baking tray.
• To prepare filling, beat the butter, icing sugar and enough lemon juice to make a thick paste. Sandwich cookies together with icing.

In this case, I definitely advise erring on the dryer side. My first batch melted too much and flattened out. I left the remainder of the dough in the fridge overnight, added more flour the next day and the second lot turned out much better, if not exactly photo-pristine.

And finally, my coup de grace!

Minimalist lemon ice cream

My favourite food blog, Stonesoup, walked me through this:

1/3 cup lemon juice
250g icing  sugar
300mL (1 1/4cups) whipping cream

• Combine lemon juice and icing sugar in a small bowl.
• Whisk cream until soft peaks just start to form and the cream has thickened slightly.
• Whisk the lemon mixture in with the cream and mix until the texture is back to the soft peaks.
• Freeze for at least 6 hours.

You really cannot go wrong, I tell you.

I ran out of icing sugar, so used mostly caster sugar, and it was fine. Super easy!

You know the kind I mean.

Newly freed, they dive into the next one, seemingly heartless to heartbreak.

I once read that it takes half as long to get over a relationship as it lasted. So if you were together for two years, it would take roughly a year to truly heal. Etc.

I don’t know if I believe that. Lately, I’ve seen a good number of people exit a long-term relationship (numbering years of dating, not months) and march straight into the arms of a new squeeze. Rebounds, I thought at first. Yet they seem well on track to another long-term love. And who am I to talk? T and I got together only a month or two after the demise of my first relationship. I can’t say I expected it to last at the time, but lo and behold, we are betrothed.

That said, at that stage I certainly wasn’t over my ex-boyfriend by any means. I still thought about him plenty, particularly as he started going out with another girl I vaguely knew and liked, and always stayed tuned for any gossip involving his name. And I can’t pinpoint the exact moment I honestly could say that I had stopped wondering “what if” and fully threw my heart into T. Maybe it was six months in. My memory blurs.

What do you reckon? A solid rule of thumb or useless women’s mag trope?

Really, the only thing missing from there now is book blogs – but as much as I love reading, I don’t read blogs about books. Ah, well.

WORK

Ten ways to tell freelancing isn’t for you, at Freelance Folder.

To make a living writing, be more than a writer, says Alexis Grant.

Better writers don’t always earn more, writes Carol Tice.

Oh yes. The pros and cons of being a web worker, by Deb at Kommein.

LIFE

Shit first time homeowners say, by Little Miss Moneybags and Blonde and Balanced.

This is rad. At APW, Maddie’s guide to getting married young. (Love the line about staying out with the boys all night playing Rock Band. Can I get a hell yeah?)

Things that are hugely overrated in life, according to Marian.

The literary alter ego of Obsessions of a Workaholic is, apparently, a grad student.

FOOD

Ginger kisses! Courtesy of a wandering food lover.

Via the $120 Food Challenge, Thai garlic chicken on rice noodles. Plus lime and garlic mayo.

Cate shares her recipe for squash and red lentil soup.

Image via Wikipedia

Pets.

Not an animal person, never have been. My ex’s mother once said “a home doesn’t feel like a home without pets”. I grew up in a human-only household, so anything else would feel strange.

T really wants a dog (or dogs, plural), so we can fight that out when we start thinking about buying a house. (And that will apparently be just the first of 2000 arguments over it.)

Bach.

I don’t have any stats to draw on, but holiday house ownership seems reeeeally high among Kiwis.

Now, I love me a holiday and I love staying in a proper house. In my adult life I have only been camping once, overnight. (I think about all the Coro Gold campers who only had a tent to return to after jumping around in mud for hours and shudder) . And there’s nothing better than a free stay at a friend’s parents’ bach.

But a bach is only used for a tiny fraction of the year (and you certainly can’t rent it out all the rest of the time). And do you really want to keep returning to the same spot? (Maybe. But maybe not). I wouldn’t say no to a free bach (Lotto Powerball anyone? Not that I play, so moot point)  but I wouldn’t mortgage one and I’m not sure I’d tie up cash in one either.

Boat.

As much as I hate sand, I really do like the beach. I find being around water really relaxing, and there’s nothing better than a spot of sunbathing with a good book, interspersed with ventures out into the waves to splash around. But actually being out on the water at any depth doesn’t really appeal. Aside from fishing for T, I can’t see how owning a boat would add anything to my quality of life. I would need to be well off to the point where I was seriously stumped as to what best to do with my money.

Looking over Waitakere to the Shore. Image via Wikipedia

We Aucklanders are an insular lot. You grow up in a certain area, and apart from a possible stint living close to or in the city, it’s likely you’ll end up going back to where you came from.

We’re snobs for suburbs. There’s something that comes with being a Westie, a Shore-ite, whatever – it might be cred, or it might be denigrating. Usually elements of both. And sometimes people take it far too seriously. T gets flak from people he knows for not being a proper west Aucklander since we moved to a more central location (first to Epsom of all places, about the swankiest old money area there is, and now Mt Albert, less swish but still very nice). Never mind the supercity, never mind the fact that Waitakere city is no more – the old lines are still as clear as ever for the hardcore.

At least now that we’re a fair bit closer to the west side (all his friends and family live within a very close radius; on his bike T can make it back from any of theirs in under 10 minutes) he’s stopped hassling me so much about moving further out and how much more house for our rent we could get.

Sure, we would get more floor space for the same amount (maybe cheaper). But we now live in a 1.5 bedroom house with garage (the 2nd “bedroom” is no more than a study with small closet – we’d probably struggle to rent it out for $50 a week), and definitely don’t need more room. I would need to get a car of my own. Youch. Not only do I not enjoy driving, I’m not very good at it.

To me, it makes sense to live centrally while we can afford to – we’ll have to move further out when we buy anyway, because prices in this suburb are way beyond our reach. Commuting sucks, so I’ll take my 20-minute walk and proximity to everything while I can get it. And if that makes us suburban traitors, so be it.

What do you like best about the area where you live and why’d you pick it?

The pause function didn’t work, which was annoying. I recoded two separate workouts, one pre-traffic light and one post.

What felt like a decent 30-35 minute run? Was 3km in 19 minutes. Sigh. (I kinda made up for it on my next one – 15km in two-ish hours.)

Knowing that I was measuring my progress definitely spurred me on. But my low data cap and my approach to exercise (keep running fun, basically) means I probably won’t be busting out this app all that often.

Linky time!

Freedom 35 explains the secret power of multiple incomes.

You Have More Than You Think lists 10 things we love to buy but hate to use.

Can I pick your brain? Here’s Urban Muse Writer on paying it forward vs being a sucker.

Decluttering tips from Leo himself at Zen Habits.

Here’s some seriously good advice on rocking the first day at a new job at Bullish.

Dollars and Deadlines breaks down her 2011 freelance income.

Stuff new homeowners never think about. Via Budgets Are Sexy.

Awesome advice from an MIT alum to a struggling student, at Study Hacks.

Geek in Heels on social capital and tapping into the expertise of friends.

Kyla Roma blogs about eating well as a lifestyle.

Cate shares a recipe for creamy stovetop mac and cheese.

Dinner: A Love Story offers four culinary strategies for nervous newbies.

Neurotic Workholic explains who and what she doesn’t want to be in five years.