my pink toes

You hear that? Those awful noises? The crash crash bang thud bounce crash thud bounce bounce bounce crash? Yeah. That's the sound of the juggling balls and spinning plates that I have dropped.

I may have gotten an "A" in all the classes I've taken this year, but I'm pretty close to being on probation for my dismal grade in Life Management. We have missed birthday parties, eaten poorly, and rummaged for clothes in laundry baskets. I have mis-remembered more appointment times than I care to count.

Sure, I've had a lot going on with two close family members having serious health problems, having chronic health problems myself, and still having a 3 year-old. Did I mention I also took 15 credits this year? Just these things combined have more than swamped me. I've been bailing my boat for a long time, yet I sail clumsily along - arriving late, awkward, and looking like a wreck.

I ponder the "fairness" of it all - I often feel that I'm not enough because I can't be Wonder Woman (wouldn't you love to look that great in Granny Undies?). I continue to struggle and process and pray. I need to realize that I did not "win" the genetic lottery and get the unfettered body that only needs 6 hours of sleep and can go like the Energizer Bunny the rest of the time. I actually "won" the entire other end of the spectrum: A body that needs lots of sleep, that is prone to overwhelming fatigue, that can collapse me into bed with bone-crushing pain without much warning. Mostly I'm OK with it now. Sometimes I think I can maybe even see that God is teaching me through it. But mostly I'm just OK. I'm still learning how to balance everything I NEED to do, WANT to do, and CAN'T do. Sometimes, all the balls and plates drop.

This is one of those times.

The latest crash bounce thud crash bang happened this morning. I had planned my next two days of baking and celebrating out in a way that would be (almost) do-able for the real me - and then I discovered Book Group is tonight. TONIGHT! AND: we are discussing THE BOOK I BROUGHT. I had lost the book for a while and just found it last night. I've sure enjoyed the 30 pages I've read so far...but I hear it has a big "twist" ending I need to be able to opine intelligently about.

My strategy? Get my Book Group drunk. OK, so not drunk drunk, but "pleasantly tipsy and therefore generous feeling". I'm hoping that way that they won't notice how little I have to say (about the book anyway). Think it will work?

Filed Under "Books, Fibromyalgia" on June 13, 2008 | Permalink | Comments (3) | TrackBacks (0)

So I spent the day doing my Chinese homework. The homework that I just stared at as very very little sunk in. Sigh. Later, I got to hang out with Shona and Jen and the rest of my bookclub as we discussed The Thirteenth Tale. Well, to say we discussed the book is perhaps a bit generous. We actually discussed a great variety of things, some of which were actually inspired by the book.

I came home and realized I had just a few minutes to record my Chinese dialogue and email it to my professor. I had to keep stopping, rewinding and re-recording because my cat was sitting on the back of my chair coughing up a lung. My Chinese pronunciation is so bad, I can only imagine what my professor would think of it when augmented by scary hacking noises.

So instead of writing something interesting, or delving into some of the stories I want to tell, I'll give you another cocktail recipe. A "thanks" if you will, for suffering through this NaBloPoMo and reading all the junk mixed in with the moderately-good stuff. (A friend at bookgroup said "You actually EDIT some of your blog posts? You spend time drafting them?!" Um, apparently not enough time...)

Ooh - and that reminds me: Monica of my bookgroup is doing the REAL NaNoWriMo! Go Monica, go! She is right on target and sounds like she's having a great time with a topic that she's been researching (!) and planning (!) for. You probably wish I'd spend a bit of time researching and planning. Sorry - not tonight.

In celebration of the season, here is my friend Heidi's Cranberry Margarita recipe. It is just not Thanksgiving with her family without it. And by the way, I'm having Thanksgiving at my house and am looking for a good autumny cocktail I can serve in a fix-and-forget-pitcher fashion. Any ideas?

Filed Under "Books, Cocktails" on November 16, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

I just finished The Eyre Affair and Lost in a Good Book, the first two books in the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde. They are fun little books, full of wit and literary humor. They are great books to read quickly, just for plot - and fit well with my preferred escapist reading of detective fiction. I did find that a little goes a long way and that small doses are best.

The Thursday Next series is an odd mix of science fiction, literature meta-jokes, and detective novels, with a definite British flavor. I am reminded of Douglas Adams and Red Dwarf (but thankfully not Sherlock Holmes – I often feel like Conan Doyle is talking down to his readers…but that’s another review). I kept feeling that if I were British, I would probably find them laugh-out-loud funny (do the Brits laugh out loud? Or is it frowned upon?) but since I’m American, I just find them smile-to-myself humorous.

I’ll admit that by the time I was done with Lost in a Good Book, I was ready to put the series down for a while. Instead of buying the rest of the books, I’ll reserve them at the library and read them as they come available. What made them less compelling as they went on? I think perhaps they are a little too clever after a while. By the time I got through the first half of the second book, I ws thinking, “Oh, speaking to characters by ‘footnoterphone?’ Hunhh!" Instead of entertainingly clever, it seemed a little roll-my-eyes-clever.

Continue reading "The Eyre Affair and Lost in a Good Book" »

Filed Under "Books" on March 23, 2007 | Permalink | Comments (1)

I am very late in my book updates. I read at least one book a month for book group, and quite a few this year have been wonderful. I also added a "Currently Reading" notification on the sidebar.

Here are a few recommended books with brief notes. I’ll work on expanding them in subsequent entries soon.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close by Jonathan Safran Foer
This book may be my favorite book of all time. I’ll have to give it a year to see how well it sticks for me. I’m always much too attached to a book right after reading it to give a proper life-list rating. But this book is wonderful. It’s heartbreaking, but in a beautiful way.

Cloud Atlas: A Novel by David Mitchell

It sounds so cliché to call something a “literary masterpiece”, but I’m going to anyway. This book has an experimental structure - it’s as if you opened six books, stacked them on top of each other and read up one side and down the other – and for me the experiment pays off handsomely. The stories have a few interwoven elements, but they are elusive. The genres and themes Mitchell covers in this book are expansive, but not too far-reaching. I felt the book held together nicely.

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

This is a wonderful book. It’s quite long, and doesn’t really get going until about page 75, but it’s well worth it. The best test I know to help you decide whether you’d like it is this: do you like Dickens? If yes, you’ll love this book. If you hate Dickens, you’ll probably hate this book. The author meanders along and the footnotes (which often go on for pages at a time) read like their own set of interwoven stories. If you can sit back and enjoy the ride, I think you’ll enjoy all the little places the writer takes you.

*Whew, the HTML learning curve is still a bit high! If anyone knows the right code to use to have my text wrap around the book images, instead of putting it on separate lines, I'd love to know!*

Filed Under "Books" on November 13, 2006 | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

This month, we're reading The Plot Against America by Philip Roth. Once I discovered it wasn't actually a left-wing political diatribe, I was eager to read it. (Not that I don't enjoy my left-wing diatribes, i just was hoping for some good fiction.) It seemed promising enough - New York Times Booklist, etc.

I had heard two of my friends murmuring this weekend about the slowness of the book, but I hadn't started it yet. Now that I have, I must concur. I'm not enjoying it. I feel like I know where the book is going (Nazism! In America! Oh, how awful!) and I'm not really very excited about following the writer to his destination. I consider myself a moral and socially aware person, but this book seems tedious to me.

Please tell me it gets better!?

Coincidentally, I had borrowed the book The Known World from the same friends as I had seen its high recommendations and was interested in it. I had no idea what the plot was before I flipped it over this weekend to read the back and thought - great, another morally pedantic book. This one is about Slavery! It's horrible! Feel compassion for those who went through it! Feel shame at your anscestors' complicity! I agree slavery was horrible and that its effects are still being felt in many ways that we as a society must continually address. I just don't want to read any more fiction about it.

Sigh. How about some modern fiction? Well, maybe not modern fiction if you mean the kind of 'modern fiction' wehre there is no point to the story whatsover (ala Stone Diares). But how about something like Three Junes, Peace Like a River, or the Egqyptologist?

Complicating matters is the fact that it's my turn to bring books for October. If next month's book sucks, it will be entirely my fault!

Any suggestions?

UPDATE: I acutally abandoned reading this book. I know many people think Roth is one of the best authors of our time, but I just couldn't connect. Yeah, and I hated Moby Dick in college, too, so maybe my idea of what makes a "great American novel" is a bit off. Anyway, my book club universally disliked it. So, yay for me!

*I stole this title from a book review on Amazon.com*

Filed Under "Books, Everything Else" on October 11, 2005 | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)