Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

Okay, well, it’s obvious that I’m just not as on top of this blog as I used to be–I’m sure my legions of devoted followers are very upset–but I did have a good bit going on in the last week or so. I missed the 1st because I’d posted on the 31st and wasn’t as committed to making the 1st happen, but I was planning on posting on the 2nd, until fruit happened.

You see, we went to Las Vegas last weekend for the BYU-Arizona game–meeting family and staying together in a vacation house sort of place–and on Thursday (the 2nd) I was in the kitchen prepping various foods we were planning on bringing with us. I’d already cut up a cantaloupe and a jicama and grated enough zucchini for two big loaves of zucchini bread (which were in the oven) when I decided to bring the peaches from the dining room to the kitchen to sort out which ones would have to be used before we left. We’d gotten them from our neighbors (who have a tree) in a paper grocery bag, which was still at least half full, and when I picked it up, out fell the bottom and out fell the peaches.

SPLAT.

I love ripe, juicy peaches. They are HEAVENLY. They also, however, leave literal puddles of juice when they fall several feet onto the floor–and the ones that aren’t quite ripe enough to splat ROLL instead. I spent the next hour (possibly hour and a half?) salvaging everything I could in the peach department and cleaning up the floor (plus at least one dining room chair). By then I was behind in my day, and that plus the flurry of “we’re going on a road trip” meant no post before we left for Vegas. Certainly I wasn’t going to post while we were in Vegas, and since then I’ve been unpacking and doing laundry and catching up on some of the missed sleep that comes from staying in a big house with lots of family. (Also planning meals that involve eating the leftovers we brought home with us; we were the only ones with a cooler.) Today, however, I am starting anew. Go me!

At some point in all of the craziness I managed to finish AJ Pearce’s Yours Cheerfully, her sequel to the delightful Dear Mrs. Bird, and I loved it. Loved it! Pearce has a gift for creating a perfect blend of poignancy, humor, and history, and her characters are completely lovable–except for the ones that are deliciously NOT. (There’s a dichotomy there that’s not completely realistic, but it’s thoroughly satisfying, so I find myself not caring.) Emmy, Bunty, Mr. Collins, and their supporting characters are back, and when the government asks media outlets to help recruit women workers, they can’t help seeing the difficulties faced by women in the workforce (especially the factories). What’s to be done about it? Charles is also back–a desk job for the moment–but Pearl Harbor throws him (and Emmy) for a loop, and they must decide what to do about THAT as well. If you want historical fiction with all the feels, AJ Pearce is an author not to be missed–and she’s recommendable to anyone!

I really thought I’d return to consistent posts once the kids were back in school, no problem. And yet…

Well, anyway. To be fair, my niece and her hubby and son came down on Saturday morning and then the littles had a birthday party on Saturday afternoon, while we had dinner in Clearfield yesterday and celebrated August and September birthdays (my second girlie is one of the August ones). Today, however, I am committed to reviewing Quack (by Anna Humphrey) BEFORE I return library books, and so here I am! (My teeth aren’t brushed yet, granted, but it’s only 9:02, and my hubby’s currently showering in our bathroom anyway.)

I read Quack aloud with my now-12-year-old, and I have to say, we both thoroughly enjoyed it. I’m familiar with selective (and elective) mutism as concepts–have been for years–and our family is familiar with anxiety as a whole, so my girlie didn’t have any problems understanding Shady. I loved his older sister and best friend as narrators, and Pearl was in a class by herself–frequently unlikable and yet ultimately understandable (at least to some degree!). What makes Quack such a fabulous read, however, is the overriding concept. Who doesn’t want to read about an emotional support duck named Svenrietta?

You know, I’m just going to leave it there…because the answer should absolutely be NO ONE.

I’ve officially entered it, folks. On Monday two of my kiddos had appointments and one of them involved a shopping trip afterwards for her required planner for school. (She and her sister were also out of conditioner, which they told me after I’d already made trips to both Costco and Walmart that week.) On Tuesday my 7th grader tried out for her school play and yesterday they had callbacks, and I’ve been to two DIs already looking for cheap scriptures for my oldest to leave in her seminary cubby so she doesn’t have to haul her nice ones back and forth. Good times! In the meantime, I meant to write a review on Monday but was waiting until I finished my book, only my sister called when I had three pages left and I got distracted. Yesterday night I was intending to review the same (fully finished!) book after our church youth activity and just plain forgot, which is why it’s the 26th and I’m here reviewing Nia Gould’s A History of Art in 21 Cats. It’s less than 100 pages and light on text, but I spent a ton of time googling the artists mentioned, so it took way more time than I’d anticipated.

Essentially, Gould gives brief descriptions of 21 art styles/periods/movements (generally mentioning at least two major examples of each, although I felt like some descriptions missed some notable artists) with a cat depicting significant aspects of each style. She then explains the specific representative parts of the cat, often including a quote or two from artists mentioned, and there you have it–an actual (if not full, you understand) history of art in what are, in fact, 21 artistically rendered cats. If you’re looking for an easy jumping off point for the visual arts, this flock of felines has your back!

It took most of the summer to finish reading Sofia Valdez and the Vanishing Vote to my youngest; after all, when summer vacation began, suddenly there weren’t any more lunches where it was just the two of us and I was desperately trying to get her to SIT DOWN AND EAT. (We read plenty together over the summer, mind you, but mostly picture books, while she’s been reading chapter books to herself.) Sofia’s talents are a bit more of a stretch for the ‘Questioneers’ series, but this tale of a class pet election and the logistics of the process thereof was both interesting and entertaining. Not being STEM-y myself, I enjoyed this one more than some of the others, and it’s possible that my kiddo did as well. Either way, though, the whole series is worth your time!

That said, I’m off to do more of my usual Saturday chores. Have a lovely day!

My friend Andrea picked Jennifer A. Nielsen’s The Scourge for book club a few months ago, and this week the stars finally aligned for me to listen to the audiobook. (I wasn’t as enthusiastic about the plot at first, it being less my thing, but Andrea’s a pretty good judge of what I’m likely to enjoy anyway if I push through.) I admit, I was impatient to get past the one plot point that was making me crazy–purely in an “I’m an adult and I can see what’s coming and these are only kids but I just want them to FIGURE IT OUT already” kind of way–but once the book got there, it was an enjoyably adventurous ride from then on out. If you combine the idea of a leper colony with a country of unfair class systems and a suspicious government, adding to it a “only we know the truth and now we have to bring people together and save everyone and banter while we do it” sort of arc, you get a pretty solid idea of Scourge. Even not being my thing, it kept me reading (especially after the first third or so); I think its audience ought to love it. In the meantime, I’m going to return the audiobook and move on to the next book on my list!

This is, in fact, my second day of being left to my own devices for the whole school day, and I’ve already been to the junior high (to deliver a forgotten Chromebook and lunchtime water bottle), the dollar store, my aunt’s house, the pharmacy, the post office drive-through, and the library. After lunch I get to exercise and put an angel food cake in the oven, but in the meantime, I finished reading the graphic novel that my birthday girl is getting today over an early first-course-of-lunch, which means that I really ought to review it before I wrap it. (Despite the 3 or more books already waiting to be reviewed.)

Allergic is the sort of graphic novel I’m delighted to find; my 12-today-year-old can read and reread it all she wants without me worrying that she’s spending too much time with the characters. (She DOES obsessively read graphic novels, so this is a concern. There are plenty of books out there that I’m fine with her reading but which don’t make great daily companions, you know?) Maggie is a thoroughly sympathetic main character, and while I wish there had been more consequences for her one major deception, it’s hard to be too hard on a girl who finds out, after picking out a puppy, that she’s allergic to animals with fur or feathers. (The poor thing wanted to be a vet.) As she learns to deal with her allergies, Maggie also learns how to deal with life shifts and friend struggles, and isn’t that the primary job (in many ways) of Allergic‘s intended audience?

I’ll let you know, but I’m hoping my girlie will love this one!

Here I am again, folks. I’ve survived orientations and walkthroughs and parties and yard cleanup and laundry, and now tomorrow–TOMORROW!–is the first day of school. And not just any first day of school, but the first day of the school year in which my youngest starts FIRST GRADE.

As in, I’ll be home alone all day. (All school day, that is.)

You should see the list of things I’m hoping to do tomorrow.

That, however, is tomorrow. Tonight I’m finally reviewing Patricia MacLachlan’s Dream Within a Dream, which I finished days ago. It’s no secret that I love MacLachlan’s books, of course, and Dream was a lovely little read; Louisa and her brother are staying with their grandparents for the summer while their parents do their usual summertime traveling-for-their-careers. That’s nothing new, as far as it goes, but this summer their grandfather’s eyesight is failing–AND Louisa meets George. Dream is a story of family and friends and love in its many forms, old and new; the island setting particularly appealed to me, and while its almost-fairytale quality was unexpected, you have only to look at the title to realize that nothing about the book is unintentional.

I’ll be interested to know exactly what my turning-12-on-Tuesday-year-old thinks of it.

In the meantime, I’ll be tucking in my junior high and high school students now. Tomorrow morning is going to feel appallingly early!

So.

I never meant to bail for three weeks, folks. It’s just that we’ve been trying to rearrange bedrooms at our house, plus get ready for school which starts in a week, plus spend time with visiting family, plus do swimming lessons, and this is what fell by the wayside. I’m not going to promise a back-to-normal yet, either–we’re still working on the bedrooms, we’re not done with new school orientations yet (what with the oldest starting high school and the second oldest starting junior high), we have friends we haven’t yet done anything with this summer, a birthday dinner to make and have, birthday ear piercing to schedule…so many things. (At least, yesterday, we crossed pick up glasses, get the littles haircuts, and high school orientation off of my mental list.) I’m just going to warn you that posts are likely to be spotty for a bit, because ALL THE THINGS. We’ve been going through stuff in the kids’ bedrooms and have donated or passed on several boxes of things–extra purses, toddler puzzles, etc.–but the project goes on. It’s not that I literally have no time to post (I’m more honest with myself that that), but the mental energy? Not so much.

Anyway.

That being said, I finished a book this week that’s been on my shelf for a disturbingly long time, and it pleases me inordinately that I get to review I Lived on Butterfly Hill tonight. (Of course, I meant to do it earlier, which would have resulted in a much more impressive review, but I’m trying!) My friend Andrea recommended Butterfly Hill to me because she knew it would press all my buttons–historical fiction? displaced girl finds refuge on the coast of Maine? strong family ties? Sign me up! I enjoyed it, too. Marjorie Agosin’s tale of a Chilean girl sent to live with her aunt in Maine after a military coup in her country is a thought-provoking look at exile. Celeste’s grandmother is an Austrian Jew who escaped to Chile during the war, and when Celeste’s parents go into hiding and Celeste herself leaves Chile for a time, we can’t help but feel the parallels. I did find occasional weaknesses in the writing that likely stem from being translated from Spanish to English–there are always bits in translated works that don’t make the transition as well as I want them to–but the truly odd thing for me was the contrast between the text and the illustrations. This is a serious, heartfelt story–sometimes a mystical one–and yet the illustrations were whimsical. It wasn’t that I didn’t enjoy them, but they didn’t fit the tone of the book itself. Those things aside, however, this is a book worth reading. (Except that now I just miss Maine.) Let me know what YOU think!

Seriously, though. My hubby’s work does Lagoon Day every year–Lagoon being Utah’s amusement park–and it’s an impressively good deal, especially since it comes with a lunch; unfortunately, instead of being in June, when it usually is, it was this past Saturday.

My birthday.

Have I mentioned that I don’t love Lagoon? I hate heat and sun more with each passing year, and my feet hate standing in line. The kiddos love it, though, and some of their favorite cousins have season passes, so to Lagoon we went, with a few friends in tow to add to the cousin mix. Luckily, my sister-in-law offered to stay with the older kids after my youngest was done, and so I escaped the heat a little early–bless her, bless her, bless her. I had my birthday cake the next day, and all was well.
Having been out in the heat for hours, however, my brain was too fried (melted? baked? broiled?) to post, and so here I am on the 19th instead. Sorry not sorry?

Anyway. This month one of the book clubs I’m in read Randy Pausch’s The Last Lecture, and I have to say, I really enjoyed it. I was expecting something more self help-y; instead, it’s more of a memoir with leanings toward being business-y. Pausch had interesting things to say and didn’t take three times the pages to say them in than was necessary, which I sincerely appreciated. I found it interesting as a parent, a wife, an erstwhile student, and a human being, and I’d recommend it to any or all of the same.

And apparently that’s all I have to say about that. Have a good night all!

I’ve written about Kate DiCamillo and her different kinds of books before–how she’s always a beautiful writer, but her books can trend either toward a fabulous story or an odd philosophical flight, at least in my opinion. After reading Raymie Nightingale and Louisiana’s Way Home, the two books preceding Beverly, Right Here, I was excited to read Beverly; I particularly loved Louisiana’s Way Home, and I was hoping for another story in the same vein. I was worried, then, when Beverly seemed to be trending towards the philosophical end of the spectrum. As the book progressed, however, the story stepped more fully into the spotlight, and I laughed out loud more than once during the last quarter of it. (I need to talk with someone else who’s just read it, so I can quote “Is that a whiffle bat?” and giggle.) There is pain here–DiCamillo doesn’t shy away from writing about pain–but it’s balanced nicely by a few truly lovable characters (and at least one that’s delightfully unlovable.) Beverly’s journey is a different one from Raymie’s and Lousiana’s–she’s coming from a different place, after all–but it’s possibly even more moving. If you’re ambivalent at first, stick with Beverly.

I promise you’ll love the ending.