This is me on my third birthday, enjoying some new crayons and a colouring book:

Me and my new crayons.

I’m 36 now, but I haven’t changed in some respects: I still find a great deal of fun in (supposedly) childish things: splashing through puddles, getting filthy, eating junk food for breakfast, reading fairy tales, etc. I also still like the few stuffed animals that I’ve managed to keep with me through well over 20 moves (and the few I’ve bought myself as an adult, too, but who could say no to plush toast?).

And while some of the things I loved as a kid are maybe not quite as fun  - especially the stomachaches from eating potato chips for breakfast – the one thing I still like just as much now as I did when I was little, are colouring books. The smell of Crayola crayons is a time machine for me; all I have to do is open the box, and I can see my younger self sprawled on on the floor, crayons spread out on the carpet, while I dedicated myself to the seriously fun business of colouring pictures.

I own a couple of colouring books now that are clearly aimed at children: simple pictures, lots of big spaces, and everything in ” jumbo” format (and they are Christmas-themed books, as they always seem the most fun to colour). And, because my fine motor skills have improved greatly since my third birthday, I’ve moved on from the jumbo crayons in the picture above, to a set of extremely nice Faber-Castell pencils, and beautiful stained glass colouring books.

These gorgeous books are printed by Dover Publications. The pictures are printed on translucent paper, with bold outlines, and can be coloured on both sides (or just one) and they look fantastic hanging in a window when you’re finished colouring them.

Recently, I indulged myself and bought one of the Christmas stained glass colouring books, and sat down with a glass of wine, and coloured this:

St. Nicholas with toys.

I feel safe in saying that the picture of St. Nicholas is a vast improvement upon anything I coloured as a three year old.

I love that there are companies like Dover Publications who make colouring books for adults; it means never having to give up being a kid – not entirely.

Not that I was going to anyway.

The book opens with the New York Times obituary of Oscar Feldman, an influential artist of the 1940′s and 50′s, who – unlike his abstract art contemporaries – focused solely on painting female nudes. The obituary praises his work (“ballsy almost to the point of testicular obnoxiousness”) and talks a little of his personality and family. He is survived by his wife, Abigail, their son Ethan, and his sister Maxine (also a painter).

What the obituary fails to mention is that Oscar led two lives and had two households; the other was with his long-time mistress, Claire St. Cloud (called Teddy by her friends) and their twin daughters, Ruby and Samantha.

The relationships between the women in the book are complicated: Maxine despises Teddy (and Oscar too, really) and refuses to acknowledge the children Teddy had with Oscar. Teddy doesn’t like Maxine much either, but can’t quite understand the depth of Maxine’s venom. Teddy is best-friends with Lila – and though they haven’t been lovers for years, is sometimes possessive of Lila’s attention the way a lover would be (which eventually complicates things a little). Lila is still dependent on Teddy’s opinions to a certain degree and is a little uncertain of herself. Abigail seems to be the calmest of them – there is no real outrage that Oscar cheated on her and had children with another woman; she seems calm to the point of indifference which many people mistake for a lack of understanding on her part about the sort of man Oscar was – but she knows perfectly well.

These complications have an element of soap opera drama about them that would obscure the story if told by a lesser writer, but in Kate Christensen’s hands, these complications enhance the story, because more than Oscar’s roving eye and carnal appetites, each woman knows the secret behind two of Oscar’s most lauded paintings, Mercy and Helena – a secret they’ve all kept, even from each other, and must now keep from the two writers digging up information on Oscar for the biography they are each writing.

One of the best parts of this book is how Christensen handles the issue of truth. Truth ends up being something in the eye of the beholder, there is no absolute truth. Each woman in The Great Man has her own picture of Oscar, in some ways those pictures are similar (as are the women themselves) and in other ways they divulge so greatly that it creates resentment and indifference. It makes you wonder how well you can ever really know another person – even if you share their bed and daily life. How much of that life shared is the truth of who a person is?

The weakest part of the book for me was the ending. The complications, the old animosities and relationships, and even the secret about Mercy and Helena are wrapped up too neatly and quickly and are a little jarring. I didn’t quite buy it given how complex the characters and feelings are – or maybe it was just that there didn’t seem to be the same sort of thought put into reaching the endings they came to.In fact, I think only Maxine’s ending seemed possible – and even that was rather abrupt. Another 50 pages might have eased into it better and made it more believable.

Still, it’s going to be difficult to read one of Christensen’s other books – Jeremy Thrane, waiting on my TBR pile – without pining a little for Teddy’s clever wit and Maxine’s incredible bluntness. My life hasn’t been filled with lusty artists and love affairs, but I can’t help but hope that I will be even half as interesting and lively as these women are in their 70′s.

The Great Man is a great read – the writing is excellent, the characters are refreshing and interesting (and have no fear of four letter words, sex, or sensuality) and it was a world I was sorry to leave so quickly.

Spastic Things I Did This Weekend:

1. Burned my finger on the side of the slow cooker.

The Universe was warning me, but I very foolishly ignored it – a few hours later, I did the following:

2. Spilled the contents of a fresh and full glass of iced tea directly into the vent of my new PC.

This is what happens when you play World of Warcraft on your weeks old PC and get too excited. I gestured wildly at another player, who cannot see or hear the real me, because he had the effrontery to ride his gargantuan dinosaur into Undercity and cut off my view such that I fell off a staircase. This gesture connected solidly with a full glass of iced tea and sent it pouring directly into the air vent of my new PC.

I pushed my chair back, swore impressively, and threw myself at the PC (smartly tipping it to the side to avoid more iced tea getting in) while madly unplugging it.

Joe and I blotted the video card dry, dried the inside of the casing and the fans and decided to let it take some air for awhile.

3. Covered my feet in shattered glass.

After we’d mopped up most of the iced tea we remembered that the table I use as a desk has a leaf that would extend directly over the PC; thus protecting it from future acts of stupidity. In order to extend the leaf we needed an inch more of space to move it forward and then up and back into place.

The bookcase next to the table was blocking us a bit, so I decided to wiggle it forward by degrees. Unfortunately, I had forgotten to check for objects that might fall on my head.

A small glass candle holder that we kept our Bic lighters in (the cool ones with long stem thingies so you don’t set your hands on fire lighting tea lights) fell from the shelf mid-wiggle, bounced off my shoulder, and smashed rather spectacularly all over the tile floor.

At this point, I am standing directly in a puddle of shattered glass and iced tea that we missed in the initial cleanup; plus completely soaked pants, shirt and sweater (from the iced tea mishap).

I decided pretty quickly that whole situation was actually pretty funny and laughed my fool head off while Joe rolled his eyes and got the broom.

I have never, ever, spilled anything on any computer ever. What better way to remedy that than to spill an entire glass of iced tea into my first ever new PC.

Lucky for me, the PC dried OK and everything still works fine.

I found the last of the glass slivers this evening several feet away from the crash site and got to it before I stepped on it. I also had a very good day at work.

I might be the Universe’s bitch, but sometimes, she throws some good luck my way.