Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life by Amy Krouse Rosenthal

Flaubert's Dictionary reminded me of this book I read last year. I picked up an advance reader's edition at the Northern California Independent Bookseller's Association trade show in October of 2004, but I didn't actually read it until my (then) fiancee and I took a trip to Las Vegas in July.

We go to Las Vegas every July because it's the low season there. The weather is so hot that not a lot of tourists want to venture out into the desert then, so hotel rates are lower and you can actually get a seat at the gaming tables on a Saturday night. I can't stand hot weather, but I also hate crowds and I love low prices. So we stay inside the air conditioned buildings as much as possible, except to sit by the pool.

This trip was a little different because we had places to go and people to meet. Namely, we were meeting our wedding coordinator and catering director at the Bellagio to go over details for our September wedding. One of our groomsmen and his wife met us from Los Angeles to partake in the menu tasting.

[This is all I'm going to say about the tasting: private kitchen in the Bellagio, seven different hors d'oeuvres, three different 4-course dinners, three wedding cakes, and wine. I have never eaten so much beautiful and delicious food in one sitting. They even made extra food for our friends. We were rock stars.]

Back at the MGM Grand, we decided to aid our digestion by lying out at the pool. We almost always stay at the MGM because they have, hands down, the best pool area. Not only are there mulitple large swimming pools and spas separated by tropical plants, rock formations and bridges, the MGM has the longest and most beautiful river pool. The river pool snakes around islands and in caves and is propelled with underwater jets so that you can bob all the way around on an inner tube, or not. (College kids line the sides of the river with buckets of beer in plastic bottles watching the view pass by, but ignore them. They are harmless.)

Normally, I have no patience with sunbathing. On this trip, however, I took a ride around the loop of the river pool every time the heat threatened to set my skin on fire, and while on shore, I had the Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life to amuse me. It's basically a study in narcissism, but what a fun one it is! Set up very similarly to Flaubert's Dictionary, all of Rosenthal's entries detail her life and her own neuroses. Some entries are hilarious, while others are so poignant that I feel like the book was written about me. Hey! She's crazy just like me! I was mad I hadn't thought of it first.

I love how some entries are about big things, and some of them are about very small things. That's how life is, and that's how anyone's own Encyclopedia would be laid out. Beginning with her own name ("AMY ROSENTHAL: My father-in-law informed me that my married name could produce these two anagrams: Hearty Salmon. Nasty Armhole. I cannot tell you how much I love that.") through "Deli Trays" to "Marshmallows" and "Meaning," ending with "You," most entries make you smile, either knowingly or eye-rollingly, but very few make the endeavor seem as self centered as it actually is. That is the charm of Rosenthal's writing. I found myself reading passages to my fiancee every few minutes, because Rosenthal was able to capture things I thought were really just me, and explain them perfectly.

For example. This passage is really just a description of me:

EGG-WHITE SCRAMBLER
I went out for brunch with my dad. I ordered the breakfast burrito. It turned out to be way too much: too many eggs, too much cheese. A few bites into it, a waitress waltzes over to the table next to ours with two orders of this happy light plate of scrambled egg whites and diced tomato and a touch of cheese. Their waitress had obviously let them in on this special order item. It was the dream version of my dish. The women were oohing as she placed it before them. Yeah, it's my favorite, the waitress cooed with them, only adding to my misery.
The ridiculous thing is, I couldn't get it out of my head for the rest of the afternoon. I'd be driving or washing my hands or looking up a word in the thesaurus, and my mind would keep going back to the egg-white scrambler. I imagined how it would taste, thought about when I'd go back to that restaurant, imagined how my day, my entire life, would have been so much better if only I'd had that egg-white scrambler.

-Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life, by Amy Krouse Rosenthal