Between Me and You

Love, like life, is messy. This book gets it. Alison Winn Scotch's Between Me and You is a love story at once tender and funny and honest and most of all, heartfelt.

The structure of the book jumps back and forth in time and that device wasn't my favorite. I did enjoy the alternating his and her points of view.  It was well-written and satisfying.

ATTENTION REESE WITHERSPOON: PLEASE MAKE THIS INTO A MOVIE IMMEDIATELY.

B

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Free Advice Friday

The Resurrection of Joan Ashby

Read it, read it now!

According to Good Reads, I've read 46 books so far this year. And Cherise Wolas' The Resurrection of Joan Ashby is front runner for my favorite book of the year.  

A friend got an advance copy and lent it to me.  I finished up some other books and then sat down with this and a big cup of coffee.  Once I started it, I could hardly put it down.  It made me want to get up early to read! [I got some semi-solicited advice that if I wanted to get up early, to start the day doing something I like.]

I've convinced a few other people to read it despite finding it hard to concisely answer the question: What's this book about? Well, it's about a writer, marriage, motherhood, being your own person, fitting in, family, drama, and, of course, writing.  Sprinkled through the book are excerpts from the writer's stories that I also enjoyed.

My only complaint about this book was that it wasn't published when I was in graduate school, I would have loved to discuss this book in a literature class.

A

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Barbeque

If you are ever driving and see a sign like this:

pull over immediately!

We were driving through Purcellville, Virginia, on our way to an architectural salvage place for My Heart's Desire when we saw Monk's in an industrial park after the smell grabbed us.

Barbeque is My Heart's Desire's favorite food, after all, he's lived in the South for more than twenty-five years. He got pastrami, I had the Sunday special, burnt ends (brisket), and Babyface ate smoked chicken.  The smoked Gouda mac and cheese alone is worth the drive. 

Sorry, can't write more, have to plan next trip to Monk's!

5 Things I Love About Summer!

1.  Babyface's birthday! Of course I love Babyface's birthday. We told him he could have anything he wanted for dinner and he chose Mickey Mouse chocolate chip pancakes from the Silver Diner.  He was bouncing off the walls from the excitement of his birthday and the gallon of chocolate chips in his pancakes.  
2. Longer mornings for me! I'm an early riser and love having sunshine in the morning.  (In the winter I often feel like I'm getting up in the middle of the night since it's pitch black at 6AM, so much so that I use this alarm clock that wakes me gently with light.)  If I want any time to myself (and you know I do), the only way I get it is to wake up earlier than everyone else.  I usually exercise, read books, blog, or work on projects. 
3. Summer fruit! Oh, how I love fresh peaches, watermelon, cherries, grapes and everything sweet from the garden! My Heart's Desire was only half joking when he said he was going to buy a second fridge just for all the cut up watermelon.  Babyface likes watermelon as much as I do so it doesn't stay around too long. 
4. Vacations and day trips! Babyface and I went to Colorado for a family visit and had a great time at the end of June.  We also celebrated Babyface's birthday early, which was nice.   My family also has gone to some smaller towns in Virginia for barbeque (My Heart's Desire's favorite) and fun (in that order).  We've also got some more local activities to do on our summer fun board.  I also planned my first staycation in ages, will post about that at the end of the month.



Denver Botanical Gardens

5. Fall is coming! Fall is my favorite season and I'm looking forward to it!  And this fall Babyface is starting public school.  It's a whole new world. 

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Grateful Thursday

Grateful today for my new coffeemaker (replaced the old one that My Heart's Desire was afraid would burn our house down), a little time to myself in the mornings, all our appliances work, ceiling fans, lighter traffic before school starts, one of my favorite authors has a new book coming out this fall, the calm app, a staycation to look forward to later this month, being able to laugh at my mistakes, cold water, watermelon, Babyface's face while he sleeps, and feeling at home.

Eligible

I was waiting for a number of holds at the library (okay, libraries, I’m kind of a library card collector) and Eligible: A Novel by Curtis Sittenfeld was available. I had lower expectations since I liked and American Wife but not so much Sisterland or  Prep and was very pleasantly surprised.  This modern retelling of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice was smart, funny, clever, and enjoyable.

B+

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Family Fun Board

It’s summer. And every season my family makes a family fun board. My Heart’s Desire, Babyface, and I all come up with ideas and write them down. It’s a list of fun stuff for us to do every season.  We stay busy with regular weekend activities, like swimming lessons, chores and birthday parties, so it’s great to have a list of fun stuff to do.

Summer Fun  

This summer we came up with: plant something, make ice cream, picnic, hike, blow bubbles, spot a rainbow, museum visit, camping, farmer's market, bike ride, leaf blower, draw with chalk, and water slide.

It also changes the question from, “What do you want to do?” to “Which one of these things do you want to do?” When we accomplish one, Babyface puts a sticker or stamp on it.

And it had an unexpected bonus. We keep it up in the kitchen and guests sometimes chime in with ideas, suggestions, or offer to join us.  One of my friends from book club offered to join Babyface and I on a field trip to the Museum of American History.  He wasn't interested in First Lady dresses and she skipped the how to DJ tutorial, but we all liked the America on the Move exhibit.

Winter Fun

Our winter fun board included make treat and deliver to neighbors, visit museum, sledding, picture with Santa, make snowman, snowball fight, drink warm cocoa (Babyface loathes hot cocoa), make gingerbread house, decorate Christmas tree, ice skating with Uncle Dinky, write letter to Santa, have a Christmas movie night, make handprint ornament, and ring in the New Year. 

A Paris All Your Own: Bestselling Women Writers on the City of Light

How to read A Paris All Your Own: Bestselling Women Writers on the City of Light, edited by Eleanor Brown  

1) Get passport

2) Read this book 📖☕️

3) Ponder which you would love more, the bread or chocolate

4) Realize the answer is both and this is why pain au chocolat exists

5) Fantasize about whisking self away to Paris

6) Repeat step #3

7) Wonder if it would ever occur to hubs to whisk you away to Paris [or anywhere]

8) Try to recall dusty high-school French 

9) Look on Yelp where to find #4

10) Start mulling next adventure 

11) Allons-y!

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All the Ugly and Wonderful Things

Bryn Greenwood’s beautifully written novel with a controversial theme (the less you know about the book before you start, the better) sparked one of my book club's most interesting discussions.

My awesome book club organizer (shout out to Amy!) arranged to Skype with the author and we had a long talk about right and wrong, gray areas, and figuring out the answer for yourself. Though I read a lot of books, this one has stayed with me.

A-

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How to Murder Your Life

Reading Cat Marnell's How to Murder Your Life, it took me a long time to realize that this was not a recovery memoir. I thought it would be the Millennial version of other memoirs in the genre, like Augusten Burrough's Dry or Caroline Knapp's Drinking: A Love Story (both are excellent books).  Instead, her book reads just like she's telling you a long, pointless story in the most casual way possible.

ohmygod, you guys, she was, like, totally messed up. her wealthy parents did not understand her, like at all. so she got into drugs. like, the bad bad ones. and did, like, too much drugs and hung out with really toxic people and got pregnant a few times and had a glamorous NYC job and her alleged best friend was like a malignant narcissist (she read that book after, tbh) and wore expensive size 25 jeans (bulimia is "a rich-bitch disease") and made a career of being a junkie writer... but instead of recovery (rehab is totally unreasonable!), she, just, like went to thailand? and woke up really early and, like, wrote and got reeeeeaaaally tan. now, off the like bad bad drugs, she just takes adderall and ambien and only doctor shops sometimes tee hee.

Why do anything horrible like abstinence (shudder) or recovery or become a decent-ish human being, when she can take a harm reduction approach and stay shallow and self-centered? Plus, she's like really really ambitious and that will be stronger than her addiction, amirite?

D.

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5 Things I Learned: Procrastination

Yesterday I took a class called Procrastination, Perfectionism & Me. It was great. I got a lot out of it, including a reminder that doing something (no matter how small) is always better than doing nothing (1).

Or like Gretchen Rubin would say (2)...

The best time to start anything is today (3).  Not next week, not after this project or that class or that trip, now.  Because there is no magical time to start anything that is perfect. Just start today and you've got something to build on, no matter how small (4).  The imperfect present beats the future perfect every time (5).

I kept thinking about this blog and how it's been so long since I've posted and if I was going to post I should make some improvements... except that I didn't and then even more time went by.  Sometimes the longer I don't do something, the harder it is to do it.  So tah-dah!, here is a post that breaks that streak.