Long time, no see! I’m back with a round-up of all the books I read last year, with a thought or two about each. Happy reading about reading!
FICTION…
Category: Self-Care
Goodbye, 2023!
I feel like I’ve been so busy this year. Kids are growing and time is flying. Hardly any time or brain bandwidth for blogging. But here is a glimpse into what I’ve been up to all year.
We’ll start with baking….
Books of 2022
Nearly six months after finishing the last book on this list, I finally found enough time and motivation to finish up all the blurbs about why I chose to read each book and a final thought or two about each.
There are some really good ones in here. I hope my commentary helps you pick out your next read! …
How to Feed a Gecko When You Really Hate Crickets
Context #1: Why I Hate Crickets
In the Summer of 2012, there was a drought in Oklahoma. It was so dry that a certain parasite could not survive. Said parasite usually eats many, many cricket eggs in the early summer, but this year, all the crickets hatched in late summer. When I arrived on campus to begin my senior year of college, and on into the fall semester, basically until it got cold enough to freeze, I learned firsthand what a “plague” of insects is like. There were so many of them on the sidewalks that one could not physically avoid crunching them while walking or biking across campus. They swarmed around street lights at night. They somehow came into apartments through air vents. And the smell of their rotting corpses wafted across campus from the mass graves that happened to be created each time exterminators came through with pesticides.
One evening….
…but ya gotta have friends!
In which I talk once again about investing in one’s community, such that one can reap the benefits of said community, because it’s kind of a soapbox of mine, and I’ve not been on it lately, so here we go:
It was Rest Time on a Sunday. Justin and one kid were out running errands. One kid was watching TV. Two kids were napping. I made myself a cup of coffee and sat down on the couch with my book. A friend texted me, regarding how several families met at the park after church that day:
“We should do this more often!”
Yes, please!….
Young Baby Plus Sick Toddler
…equals I have been getting absolutely nothing done. For all of February and half of March, I’ve been achieving bare minimums, but barely. We dipped into some freezer meals (which is why I bothered to freeze the freezer meals, so, Thank you, Past Me, for doing that, at least). I like to meal plan and make my grocery lists in [usually two separate] uninterrupted chunks of focus. When I am interrupted, it takes me significantly longer to do these tasks, because I’ll forget where I was and have to redo a few steps. When I don’t have any time when I might not be interrupted, I just….
Books of 2021
I know this subject is so last year, but I’m just so excited about it anyway, and the end of last year was full of, you know, having a baby, so, a few weeks late, here we go!
Back in 2020 I read a whole seven books, the last two of them during December, because I was so mortified by my only having finished five so far when December arrived. I had set a goal for myself at the beginning of the year to read 12 books. One per month, on average. Should be totally doable, right?
Well….
Goodbye, 2021!
Oh, 2021. So different from 2020. And still so different from everything before 2020.
See what I’ve been up to all year, in baking, books, and life events….
This Nap Brought to You By…
I’m terrible at sleeping. This is a new development in my life since becoming a mom. In college, I would consistently fall asleep within 10 minutes of closing my eyes at bedtime, and I could go right back to sleep after getting up to pee in the middle of the night (it was only once a night back then). It confounded my roommates that I could fall asleep for a quick power nap just about anywhere that I had been studying, if a sleepy spell came over me. Even then, I suppose, I wasn’t good at going to *take* a nap….
It is a truth universally acknowledged…
….that the public library is wonderful.
Now, please tell me you’ve read Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. If you haven’t, I enjoin you to open a new tab in your internet browser right now, go to your library’s website, log in, and request a copy. If you don’t have a library card/account already, sign up for one. My library system is doing virtual-only accounts, from which one can check out digital media (ebooks and audiobooks), as well as request hard copies of books for curbside pickup at the brick and mortar library.
[I promise there is more interesting content in this post than just me raving about libraries. Click that button to see for yourself!]