Life: It Goes On - April 6

Happy Sunday! I'm going to type this quickly because I have a lot of eating to get to today - late breakfast with my dad, late lunch with Miss C and then I need to get a welcome home dinner ready for the Big Guy, who's been out of town for four days. 

Not gonna lie, I've kind of enjoyed having the house to myself for the past four days - I've watched what I've wanted on t.v., eaten what I wanted when I wanted, done nothing or gone like a whirling dervish without concern that I was bothering anyone. But the poor cat has been so confused; she has hardly left my side the entire time and hasn't been eating so she'll for sure be happy to have him home! 

Last Week I: 

Listened To: I tried listening to F. Scott Fitzgerald's Tender Is The Night but it just wasn't working for me (I think in print I'll enjoy it) so I switched to Lucy Foley's The Paris Apartment and I'm a little more than half way through that. 

Watched: As much basketball as I could, including the national high school girls championship game. Mini-him's company installed the scoreboards in the gym where the high school championships were being held and he was there to rep the company and be on hand if there were any issues. So proud of him for being the go-to guy who can solve both the physical but also the programming problems AND be a person that a company wants interacting with customers. 

Read: Finished Nina George's The Little Village of Booklovers, which is April's book club selection. 

Made: Really, really very little - tuna salad, grilled cheese, some pasta. When I'm eating alone, I tend to eat like a 15-year-old. 

Enjoyed: I binged the entire series of Shonda Rhimes' The Residence and thoroughly enjoyed it. It was just the thing to watch when I was in the house by myself and didn't want anything too intense. 

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This Week I’m:  

Planning: This week is going to be all about finishing up taxes. I hate doing them and have to do them for us, my dad, and Miss H, so I tend to put them off. 

Thinking About: As part of 40 Bags, this week I've been working on organizing photos and memorabilia. It certainly has me remembering so many wonderful things that have happened in our lives. 

 Photo by @ItsCassified    

Feeling: Hopeful after being one of 5.2 million people across the country who protested in an effort to save democracy. Omaha had a really great turnout; this picture represents about half of what was on the hill in the park and doesn't include all of the people lining the street the park is on or the walkway over that street. 

Looking forward to: Getting these taxes behind me so that I can focus on getting back to a final push on 40 Bags. Time to get to the basement, where there will certainly still be a lot to get rid of. 

Question of the week: What have you been watching on t.v. or streaming services that might be great for me to watch the next time BG is out of town? We have a lot of things we watch together, but there are things that I just know I'll enjoy more than he will and I prefer to watch those by myself. 

How To Walk Away by Katherine Center

How To Walk Away by Katherine Center

Read by Therese Plummer

11 hours, 28 minutes

Published May 2018 by St. Martin's Press

Publisher's Summary: 

Margaret Jacobsen is just about to step into the bright future she's worked for so hard and so long: a new dream job, a fiancé she adores, and the promise of a picture-perfect life just around the corner. Then, suddenly, on what should have been one of the happiest days of her life, everything she worked for is taken away in a brief, tumultuous moment. 

In the hospital and forced to face the possibility that nothing will ever be the same again, Maggie must confront the unthinkable. First there is her fiancé, Chip, who wallows in self-pity while simultaneously expecting to be forgiven. Then, there's her sister Kit, who shows up after pulling a three-year vanishing act. Finally, there's Ian, her physical therapist, the one the nurses said was too tough for her. Ian, who won't let her give in to her pity, and who sees her like no one has seen her before. Sometimes the last thing you want is the one thing you need. Sometimes we all need someone to catch us when we fall. And sometimes love can find us in the least likely place we would ever expect.

My Thoughts: 

Margaret has always been afraid to fly, terrified, in fact. Her boyfriend, Chip, is a pilot-in-training, who convinces her, despite every fiber in her being screaming out against it, to go on a flight with him. Midflight he proposes and Margaret feels like her entire life is falling into place - she's about to start the perfect job, Chip is about ready to start a great job, and they're about to be married. But Chip is not skilled enough to deal with the winds that confront them as they try to land and the plane is sent cartwheeling down the runway. Chip walks away unscathed. Margaret is not so lucky. She will spend weeks in the hospital after skin grafts for burns and trying to regain the use of her legs. 

This is one of those books that is both predictable and unexpected. I knew that any relationship that good, any future that bright, was going to implode. Just as I knew that a relationship will develop between Margaret and Ian and that Margaret and Kit will mend their broken relationship. Readers will want those things to happen; we want Chip (and his not very nice mother) to fade out, we want Margaret to fall in love with someone who deserves her, and we want she and Kit to become close allies. 

But this isn't just a book filled with the lightness of a heroine finding love, with some humor thrown in. There is plenty of heaviness here as well. From the plane crash and  Margaret's burns and paralysis, to the reason that Kit left home and didn't make contact again for three years, Center gives readers some depth. And while there is a predictable happy ending (I'm not spoiling it - you know it's going to happen), there is an expected piece of the ending that made it all seem more believable. 

Was Chip (and Ian's boss, for that matter) a bit too much of a caricature? Yes. Did Ian and Margaret's relationship seem to develop pretty rapidly, considering how much she disliked him at first? Also, yes. Did Margaret seem to mentally heal faster than I would expect it to happen in real life? Yes, again. But all of those things seemed perfectly acceptable to me since I was all about Margaret healing and finding happiness. This is the fifth book by Center that I've read, and I've enjoyed all of them - she's become a go-to author when I'm looking for just a certain kind of book, particularly a book that will end on a high note, something I really need these days. 

Did You Ever Have A Family by Bill Clegg

Did You Ever Have A Family by Bill Clegg

Read by Bill Clegg

6 hours, 54 minutes

Published September 2015 by Gallery/Scout Press

Publisher's Summary: 

On the eve of her daughter's wedding, June Reid's life is upended when a shocking disaster takes the lives of her daughter, her daughter's fiancé, her ex-husband, and her boyfriend, Luke-her entire family, all gone in a moment. June is the only survivor.

Alone and directionless, June drives across the country, away from her small Connecticut town. In her wake, a community emerges, weaving a beautiful and surprising web of connections through shared heartbreak.

From the couple running a motel on the Pacific Ocean where June eventually settles into a quiet half-life, to the wedding's caterer whose bill has been forgotten, to Luke's mother, the shattered outcast of the town-everyone touched by the tragedy is changed as truths about their near and far histories finally come to light.

My Thoughts: 

Well, first off I need to admit that I thought that Bill Clegg was Bill Bryson. I mean, I didn't think they were the same person; apparently I thought that there was only one author with the first name of "Bill" and I thought he was the guy who wrote At Home: A Short History of Private Life. Which I'm only admitting to so that you can understand that I had absolutely no idea what I was getting myself into with this one. Even after I read the first paragraph of the publisher's summary. Which accounts for, to some extent, why it took me so long to get into this book, to be able to follow along. 

In the early morning hours of the day of June's daughter's wedding, while June is out of her house, there is an explosion and fire at the house, killing everyone in it - June's daughter, Lolly; Lolly's fiancé, William; June's ex-husband, Adam; and June's boyfriend, Luke. Almost immediately, I was convinced I was listening to a mystery, because it wasn't clear to me why June wasn't in the house, why she was fleeing. It wasn't until a couple of hours of listening that it was truly clear to me that June had fled to try to flee her grief, to make some sense out of the senseless, as she travels across the country, using Lolly's journal's as a guide. 

We gradually get the full story of the people involved and what actually happened through a variety of points of view: Lydia Morey, Luke's mother; Dale, William's father; the couple who run the motel June eventually ends up at; the maid at that hotel; and Silas, a young man who worked for Luke. Each of them has their own story to tell, their own sadness and grief to process. So many books that bounce from point of view to point of view leave me confused or wishing to get back to one or another of the characters - I never felt this way about this book, becoming completely absorbed in each storyline. Readers come to know and care about each of characters and I loved how everything came together, very unexpectedly for me, in the end. 

Did You Every Have A Family made the longest for the National Book Award in 2015. I can understand why. Kirkus Reviews says this book is: "An attempt to map how the unbearable is borne, elegantly written and bravely imagined." It truly is an utterly unique way of exploring grief and the consolation we find in the smallest of things. 

Life: It Goes On - March 30

Happy Sunday! You know that saying, "March come in like a lion and goes out like a lamb?" Well, we've had the exact opposite this month. Today is grey and cold and there is snow forecast for our area in the next couple of days. Think I'll be drinking a lot of hot coffee today. Mind you, Friday it was 81 degrees and we had dinner and drinks in short sleeves on the patio of a local brew pub. 

Bit of a strange week ahead for me: the Big Guy is doing a lot of traveling this week so it will largely be the cat and me, plus I'm taking care of Mini-him's and Miss C's cats while they are out of town for the next five days. I'm going to be a real cat lady! 

Last Week I: 

Listened To: Kaliane Bradley's The Ministry of Time. Really interesting premise. 

Watched: As much college basketball (men's and women's) as I could. Also a couple of episodes of Shrinking, which is just so very good. 

Read: The Little Village of Book Lovers by Nina George and Twist by Collum McCann. 

Made: This morning I made cheesecake French toast (delicious but very rich for breakfast!), a recipe I found on Facebook from Applesauceandadhd (she of the aggressive tutorials). 

Enjoyed: Last night I really wanted some good mozzarella sticks for supper. Off we went; first place was packed so we left and went to a second place which is NOT a place I wanted to go (and I was kind of a whiny baby about it). But BG was sure they would have mozzarella sticks so we ordered them and a pizza. When I tell you they were terrible, I am not exaggerating. Even BG wouldn't eat them; we left them on the table. About now you're wondering why I enjoyed this, right? Here's why: when I fall into a mood like I was in at that point, I'm typically irretrievable. But last night I was able to enjoy everything else about the dinner and laugh about how horrible the mozzarella sticks were. I was glad I was able to come home in a good mood and enjoy the rest of my evening and I was proud of myself for not wallowing. 

I do still want good mozzarella sticks.

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This Week I’m:  

Planning: I'm still way behind on 40 Bags. Part of the reason is because I've been working hard on clearing out spaces in the past few months so a lot of places have already been gone through. But this week, I'm bound and determined to get to the basement, which always needs more decluttering. The woman who started this considers it part of the sacrifice of Lent; I don't agree. I'm not sacrificing anything; this is for me. But it times up well with Lent and I'm always in the mood to declutter this time of year, so I join up. 

Thinking About: What to watch while I have the t.v. to myself so much of this week. It's definitely time for another viewing of Hamilton. 

Feeling: Pretty blue about the state of our democracy. 

Looking forward to: Once Mini-him and Miss C return from their trip, Mini-him will take off on some work travel. Since Miss C and I will both be without our guys, we're planning on doing a lunch or dinner and some shopping, a first for us. I can't wait. 

Question of the week: If you got to choose what to watch, without having to consult a significant other, what would you choose?