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Sunday Family Dinner
One of the things we have tried to establish in our house since Pop Tart joined us is the family dinner. Even before she came, we tried to have a once a week whole house dinner with roomie J. But especially once Pop Tart came, we started eating dinner at the table, all of us together, every night. It is a habit that has stuck. I am not saying that we are perfect at this. Some nights one of us is sick and gets brought dinner in our bedroom. Occasionally we are doing something where we eat dinner on TV trays in the living room. But for the most part,…
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Book Review: Uprooted by Naomi Novik
Uprooted is the story of a young woman taken by the local wizard to live in his tower for the next ten years. I feel like say more is to rob the reader of the joy of discovering the story on their own. Naomi Novik has written a lovely kind of fairy tale, and old fashion fantasy, filled with knights on horseback, wizards in their high towers, and lovely maidens be stolen away. It is a fairy tale, but one in which there is nuance, where evil is evil, yes, but something more, too. Where enemies come from multiple directions, and not all from evil, but perhaps with competing priorities.…
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Finding a New Love
The problem with having a mid-life crisis is that recognizing you are having one does not make it go away. And sadly, these things are not like a two week flu. They apparently stick around for a while. Being okay with being 40 does not make this random need for “new” in my life go away. I am not the only person in my friend group experiencing a mid-life crisis right now. One my oldest friends (we have known each other since high school) has basically completely blown up his life. He apparently decided it was time to completely start over, and *poof* moved without really telling anyone. As much…
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Book Review: Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee
To Kill a Mockingbird was one of those rare books I managed to fall in love with despite my freshman English teacher (who was just certain our entire class was lying about not being bothered by Scout and Jem calling their father by his first name). I still own a copy and have re-read it a few times in the last 25 years. So when Go Set a Watchman came out, I knew I would read it. Go Set a Watchman is not so much a “coming of age” novel as it is a “becoming an adult” novel, because those really are two separate things. Scout has grown up. She…
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Doing What Works for Me
Back in my college days, I was really bad at keeping track of how much money I had left in my checking account. I would often assume that whatever the ATM said my account balance was, it was, even if I had written a check or two recently. It was not that I did not know how checks worked, it was just that I assumed everyone cashed them really promptly. Because I did not actually track how much money was in my account, I bounced a rent check or two. In fact, at one place, I had to start paying rent in cash because I bounced too many checks. And…
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Book Review: The Golem and the Jinni by Helene Wecker
The real reason to read The Golem and the Jinni is for the writing, and by that I mean, for Helene Wecker’s use of language, and the way she combines ordinary words into something fantastical. I do not mean to take away from the story, which is good, or the characters, who are likable and (mostly) fully realized. But this is not a story which will blow your mind. These are not characters you will be aching for “more” about. What stands out in this book is the writing itself, and it is beautiful. The story is pretty basic. There is a Golem. She is brought to life on the…
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Book Review: YA Series – Hunger Games Trilogy by Suzanne Collins and Divergent Trilogy by Veronica Roth
Sometimes I feel like I should write a separate review for each of these two series, but the truth is, I read them intertwined with one another, and my thoughts on each are deeply connected to my thoughts on the other. The other thing to mention, I think, is that in both cases, I saw the movie for the first book before I read any of the books. And to get it out of the way, I think The Hunger Games is the best book out of the six, but that overall, Divergent is the better series. In both cases we have a young woman as our protagonist. She is…
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Forty
Today I turn 40. I have truly reached middle aged. I no longer even qualify as thirty-something. Instead, I am the big 4-0. I do not mind. I have no problem with being the age I am. I love my life, and am very happy with where I am. At the same time, I honestly do not know how I got here. A lot of the time I feel like I should just be turning 30. And yet, I look back at the last 10 years, since I did turn 30, and am amazed at all the changes. I have some amazing friends who I did not even know back…
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Book Review: Mr. and Mrs. Disreali: A Strange Romance by Daisy Hay
It is the end of the year, and that means all sorts of “year’s best” lists are coming out. I like to troll the lists of books for any that seem interesting, that I may have missed. It was on one of those lists that I came across Mr. and Mrs. Disreali: A Strange Romance by Daisy Hay. This is a non-fiction book. It is kind of a biography, kind of not. I very much suspect that the majority of it was Hay’s dissertation, or something similar. This book traces the lives and relationship of Mr. and Mrs. Disreali. Do you know who they are? I did not, not before…
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Winter of Discontent
One of my rules is to never claim something has happened “for a reason”. As a foster parent, and as an adoptive parent, I cannot imagine anything so cruel as to tell the children in my care that there was a “reason” they had to go through what they have gone through. Sometimes people do bad or careless things. Sometimes the sickness wins. There does not have to be a reason. It just is. But what we can do is look for the good, or at least the hope, that can come out of these events. Because good things can come from bad. This last week, a man I knew…
