Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

Last night I put my mind to it and finished Besties: Set Sail, another graphic novel from the world of Click. (Because seriously, I’ve got to start moving through some graphic novels, right?) And I was delightfully surprised, because I liked it so much better than I liked the last Besties novel. This one returns to Chanda and Beth, who are on a cruise together with Chanda’s family, and it focuses on the inevitability of changing sister relationships. Chanda’s older sister is getting married, and the cruise is a way for their family to get to know her fiance’s family better; when Beth finds out that Chanda’s sister hasn’t been on any vacations with their family since she graduated from high school, however, the fact that her own sister is leaving for college shortly hits her like a ton of emotional bricks. Despite all of the wonderful things about the cruise, she can’t stop missing Lisa, and Chanda’s high-energy efforts to swamp her with fun don’t seem to be helping. Will the rest of their vacation be ruined?

I still remember what a hard time I had when my own sister went off to college, leaving me the only child left at home, so I empathized with Beth in a big way. And as a married adult, I got a kick out of Chanda’s sister’s frustrations about the level of togetherness the families insist upon. No teen drama, just real issues that families who love each other have to deal with–it was fantastic! And I’m hoping my 17-year-old girlie will enjoy it as well. (She didn’t particularly care for the last Besties novel, either.)

On the home front, I did my Battle of the Books volunteering this morning and then put some significant time into the area next to my bed. Not much actually got thrown away, true, but it looks a whole lot neater–and it might even stay that way for a minute or two! Tomorrow I’m making the official birthday cake and hitting Costco, because I lead an exciting life. Have a good night, y’all…

Not ready, that is, for my second daughter to turn seventeen today. Time is time, though, right? Happy Birthday to her!

I hope you all had a lovely weekend, friends; ours was relatively peaceful, which I appreciated. We had my girlie’s birthday dinner yesterday–a day early, yes, but Sunday’s by far the easiest day to make gnocchi–and we got Subway for dinner on Saturday. The backyard was worked on (not finished, but definitely improved), I did laundry and some random odds and ends, and the three younger kiddos geared up for their first full week of school. Good times…

Possibly my most exciting accomplishment of the weekend, however, was finishing Deborah Wiles’ Anthem, the third documentary novel in her Sixties trilogy. I started it forever ago–in March 2024, to be exact–and then put it down for (clearly) rather a lengthy amount of time before finally picking it up again over the summer. I thoroughly enjoyed the first two books in the trilogy, which covered (respectively) the Cuban Missile crisis and Freedom Summer, but I had a harder time getting through this one. In part, I think, it was because the chapter names were actually songs from the ’60s, most of which I hadn’t heard before, and the necessity (because of my personality, I admit) of listening to at least part of each one slowed my reading pace considerably. Unfortunately, the pace of the book was already measured, because it’s a novel about a road trip across the country; I’ve been a passenger on more than one such road trip, and they take time.

This particular road trip is undertaken by Molly, 14, and her cousin Norman, who’s old enough to drive; they’re headed from South Carolina to California to find Molly’s brother, who’s just been drafted. Along the way they meet a wide variety of musicians (Norman’s a marching band drummer with aspirations to a band of his own) and key figures and types of 60s culture and counterculture. Will they find Barry? If they do, will he return with them or attempt to dodge the draft? By the end of Anthem, the answers will tug at your heartstrings, and Molly and Norman’s lives will be forever altered by their experiences. I learned things about the 60s I most definitely didn’t know; I also listened to an incredible variety of music from the period. If you’re interested in the part music has played in the evolution of our national culture, don’t miss this book; if you’re not, it’s still worth your time, but read it when you have more time to devote to moving through it at a decent pace. In the meantime, I’m off to do laundry and wrap birthday presents–have a good Monday, y’all!

Here I am, folks–posting on the right day and getting an early start! (To be honest, it still completely weirds me out to have all of my school aged kids gone by 7 AM, but hey.) Remember how I said I’d finished two books on Saturday? The second one (technically the first that I finished, but whatever) was Rebecca Stead and Wendy Mass’s The Lost Library, which I read aloud with my 11-year-old.

Interestingly enough, I actually tried listening to it first, but something about the multiple POVs–especially with the first one being the cat–made it harder for me to follow. It turned out to be a great read aloud, however, and both of us thoroughly enjoyed it. Lost Library is the story of a boy, and a cat, and a town, and some ghosts; it’s also the story of how the library in that town once burned down and then, eventually, crept back in. The book itself begins, more or less, with the advent of a little free library on the town green. As that library grows, the boy’s curiosity about the first library–the one that was lost before he was born–grows with it. Why did it burn? Why wasn’t it rebuilt? The more he discovers, moreover, the more serious he is about doing something about what he learns. Because–of course–we all need libraries.

I suppose that’s a rather more vague summary than most, but it’s what’s working for me. I had to get my senior to school by 6 AM (only she wanted to be earlier, so we were there by 5:45), which means I’m now sleepy enough to go back to bed for a bit; we seem to have survived the first (partial) week of school, however, so go us.

I hope your first days and weeks go well!

What can I say? Yes, all the kids got off to school okay yesterday, but what with an unexpected visitor, Wednesday being my volunteer day with the elementary school, and Costco–I didn’t post. (To be fair, part of the problem was that every time I had down time I was dozing off.) I finished two books on Saturday, however, and so I’m going to try my hardest to review them today and tomorrow. Here goes!

For those of you who don’t know, Dude Perfect was started by a group of five former roommates/friends from Texas A&M; they have a hugely popular YouTube channel involving trick shots, obscure world records, stereotype videos, and much, much more. They’re fun to watch–our whole family generally watches new videos together–and they’re fabulously clean, which means that my 11-year-old has literally grown up with them as one of her screen time options. One of their more current branching-out-in-a-new-direction adventures is a middle grade novel (apparently the start of a series), and it’s that novel I’m reviewing today.

Operation Trick Shot is the first ‘Dude Perfect + Panda’ book, and I’m undecided whether it’s going to have broad appeal beyond DP’s fan base. On the one hand, it’s a classic plot–good people banding together to save a community gym from closing due to debt–with a classic rich-and-unscrupulous-businessman sort of villain. On the other hand, DP is somehow already famous in middle school–making trick shot videos that include stunts like flying through the air in a harness–while still trying to figure out their nicknames and going through (in Tyler’s case) an epic missing-all-shots sort of slump. It’s farfetched in kind of a strange sort of way, you know? Of course, the audio is fun because each guy reads his own lines, and the book is illustrated, so its intended audience might not care about the oddness. If I run across a kid unfamiliar with DP who reads it, I’ll let you know!

In the meantime–thanks partly, I think, to meeting friends at back-to-school night–my youngest is feeling more positive about junior high than she was. I think my son’s okay with high school as well, but we’ll see how his B day goes today. And my senior is already stressed about homework…

That’s more or less what I was doing yesterday, folks–getting ready yesterday for today’s tomorrow, which is the first day of school. And so we picked up my son’s chromebook yesterday, and went to Walmart and Sam’s Club, and my youngest had a friend over (anything to help her stay positive, since she’s dreading junior high!). I didn’t exactly manage a book review, however, and so I’m throwing out this recipe for Best Pumpkin Apple Baked Oatmeal, which was really quite tasty. My pumpkin spice loving child weirdly didn’t love it, but my son gave it a thumbs middle, which is high praise indeed from him. (He generally won’t touch cooked fruit, so I’d assumed he’d hate the apple part.) We had it with dollops of vanilla yogurt on top–regular or Greek depended on the person–and it made for a simple dinner. Tonight my oldest made us stir fry before we headed off to back-to-school night at the junior high; it helped lower my youngest’s panic level, so that was good. If you’ve got a minute, I’ll take prayers/good vibes for my two nervous-to-be-starting-a-new-school-tomorrow kiddos. And if it’s your or your kiddo’s first day, I’ll do the same for you!

Not as often as I’d like right now, it’s true, but it does happen. To wit? Yesterday I finished listening to Freya Sampson’s The Busybody Book Club, which was quite gripping towards the end. I don’t know whether to call it character driven fiction or a cozy mystery–I suppose it’s a mashup of the two–but it follows Nova Davies, who runs a (very) small book club at a community center in Cornwall. When a large sum of money is stolen on the same night that a book club member rushes out partway through with no explanation, Nova’s work habits come under scrutiny, and she allows herself to be drawn into her book club’s amateur sleuthing in hopes of getting the money back. The sleuthing, however, puts a strain on her relationship with her fiance, and when murder enters the picture, things get even dicier. How it all comes out is a captivating ride, and the name/plot dropping of an impressive number of mystery and romance titles makes it all the more entertaining. Book lovers and fans of found family plots should enjoy this one.

In the meantime, my son’s schedule was successfully changed yesterday, tonight is freshman orientation, and I’ve already taken a nap today. (In my defense, my almost-17-year-old had to be picked up at 10:45 last night and taken to dance at 5:45 this morning.) I’ve got wash in the dryer, my youngest has a friend over, and I did some very good work in my kitchen this morning. I’m pretty sure my audiobook is calling me…

I did mean to post yesterday–truly, I did. But the morning started with the AC/Furnace people coming before 9–NOT to measure, as I thought, but to install. Which entailed my almost-17-year-old finding a ride to seminary council, since I didn’t want to leave the littles home with the installers first thing, plus dishes and then a warm house by the time they were done and the AC was on again. My oldest was blessedly on her way home and close to the high school when her sister was ready to be picked up, but between doggedly cleaning the living room (my youngest was sure she was going to die), taking a child shopping, and finding time to eat meals, well–it was a day. And I never do well when my expectations of the day undergo sudden and significant revisions first thing in the morning.

On the other hand, here I am now, right? And on Tuesday–starting while the littles and a friend apiece were at Classic–I read the start of a delightful new graphic novel series by Deborah Underwood and Jorge Lacera. The Fairy Tale Fixers: Cinderella owes some of Cinderella’s character to ‘The Princess and the Frog’, but it’s got mice, an evil stepmother and stepsisters, and a handsome prince. One of the mice, in fact, gets the plot rolling–she’s so tired of all the yelling at Cinderella that she employs the Fairy Tale Fixer to get Cinderella out of the house so she (the mouse) can (hopefully) get some sleep. Unfortunately, the handsome prince is an incredible bore, so the initial fix needs some serious fixing. The plot is highly entertaining, the illustrations are fun, and at 120 or pages, it’s got crossover appeal between early readers and solid ones. Check it out when you’ve got a chance!

The good news is that I am making progress. The (temporarily) bad news is that I have bags upon bags of clothes waiting to go to different people and places, so not half of the things designated to leave my house have actually left yet. One step at a time, I guess…

Anyway. It was a full weekend, what with a work event Friday night, fetching the middles back from Provo early Saturday morning (together with all of their laundry), teaching adult Sunday school, Sunday dinner in Clearfield with my and my August birthday girlie’s birthday dessert, and a devotional to drop the middles off at afterwards. Today I’m allowing myself a slower pace while still accomplishing things, which is why I made myself this Old Fashioned Kidney Bean Salad to have for lunch (I wanted higher protein and fewer carbs today). I halved it, since I wasn’t sure anyone else was going to be excited about it, and when I read the blogger’s note that it would have a deviled-eggy sort of vibe, I decided to add a teaspoon each of horseradish and mustard, both of which are in my deviled egg recipe. That worked for me, but I ended up wishing I’d salted it more liberally (I wish ‘salt and pepper to taste’ always came with a ballpark amount to start with). I’m not so sure about the texture of the beans (oh, I used red instead of kidney, since kidney beans are unkind to my digestive system), but they do add a significant portion of the nutritional value, so there’s that. It wasn’t instantly amazing, but it’s good enough to tinker with. Let me know what you think!

You want to say that with the emphasis on the first syllable, because I really have been working on projects. My middles are off at FSY–sort of a church camp but at a college–and so I’ve been working with my youngest to clean up the stuff that’s been taking up space in her brother’s room. (To be clear, she still has things in her brother’s room–the goal is just to clear out everything she doesn’t want and get the rest into drawers and/or bins.) There was a great trying on of shoes earlier in the week that saw a very full kitchen garbage bag’s worth of shoes leave our house for other homes; this morning saw a great trying on of shirts, and all of the too-small shorts have already left. Tomorrow will need to see more trying on of shirts–she only had so much in her–but by the time we’re done, I’m guessing whatever short-sleeved shirts that are still too big are going to fit into the same bin the too-big shorts are in. Hallelujah!

In the meantime, I’ve been reading less because of the projects, but I did read Planet Omar: Operation Kind aloud with that same youngest while we were in Idaho visiting family. (No link because it appears to be out of print, but you can find it used on Amazon for pretty cheap if you’re interested.) A novella written for ‘World Book Day’ in 2021, Operation Kind fits into the middle of the Planet Omar series and follows Omar, Daniel, and Charlie (together with a helpful adult or two) as they encounter a series of obstacles while trying to give Daniel’s sister, Suzie–who is in and out of the hospital–an amazingly fantastic surprise. There are some typos, but it’s a thoroughly enjoyable ride!

And now, my friends, it’s back to the projects–or rather, the daily things that struggle to get done while I’m working on the projects. All you can do is eke away at things, right?

We’re back! After a crazy week (plus), we’re currently all back from visiting family, and I’m up to my ears in laundry. While driving to Idaho and visiting my parents, however, I wanted audiobooks I was already familiar with, and as I was scrolling through the ‘available now’ list of titles, it suddenly occurred to me that it might be entertaining to revisit some of the Louis L’Amour novels that I read in junior high.* I ended up listening to both Utah Blaine and Kiowa Trail while I was in Idaho, so here are my thoughts!

First of all, L’Amour heroes definitely have a type. They’re broad of shoulder, lean of hip, rugged and honorable–you get the idea. Utah Blaine is a former soldier who saves a rancher from a lynching and undertakes to protect his land from a whole town of greedy men who want to get their hands on it. (Hence the lynching.) Conn from Kiowa Trail works for the woman he’s loved for years, and when her younger brother is shot in the back for daring to pay a call on a townsman’s daughter, he backs up her planned revenge on the town. In general, the bad guys get more or less what they deserve, the good guys get the girl, and there is a surprising lack of death by infection for the number of people getting shot. Utah Blaine has some fairly impressive insta-love, but like I said, westerns are formulaic. You know what you’re getting. There are definitely original elements within the formula, however, which is what makes L’Amour fun. Both books have flaws–Utah Blaine suffers from insufficient falling action and Kiowa Trail has a noticeable streak of racism unsurprising for the time and subject–but if you go in with your eyes open, both books still have entertainment value. Anybody else out there go through a western phase at some point in their life?

*Why was I reading westerns in Rhode Island when I was in junior high? Well, we had a downstairs cabinet holding shelves of them, which I found out recently from my sister used to be my dad’s ‘graduation’ books. (As in, he would buy one and read it during graduation at RIC, since college graduations when you’re only there as a professor and don’t know anyone actually graduating are deathly boring.) And when I was in junior high, I still had plenty of free time, so I read a whole lot of books that we owned simply because they were there. Plus, westerns are comfortingly predictable–the hero wins every time.