Books I read: July

Back in the saddle with my reading this month! So many good books out right now. All my library requests came in at the same time and I almost couldn't keep up with them all!

45 Mystic City - Theo Lawrence This tried to be too much. I thought I liked it, but then it just it just too much going on. The end was excellent though – I wish the rest of the book had been as good.

46 Dragon's Keep - Janet Lee Carey I can’t read books that are too far fantasy. Unfortunately I didn’t realize that until I started this – dragons and King Arthur’s court? Nothankyou.

47 Head to Head - Linda Ladd I enjoyed it for awhile, got bored and finally flipped to the end to see whodunit. Then I didn’t understand what happened and skimmed the parts I skipped to “get it”. It was okay.

48 Girl of Fire and Thorns - Rae Carson Once I got past the “I’m so fat and ugly and no one could actually love me” part, I really really enjoyed this book.

49 Crown of Embers - Rae Carson Second book – still loving the series.

50 Attachments - Rainbow Rowell Oh my. This was my favorite book I think that I read all year. It was so simple and the writing/dialogue was just so true. I adored it.

51 Defending Jacob - William Landay My coworker suggested this book, as she read it and really liked it. It was good! The ending really made you think.

52 Still Alice - Lisa Genova I brought this book on the plane so I’d have a paper book for the times when you couldn’t have electronics on. I figured, I knew what it was about, I would be able to put it down and start again later. Instead I read the whole thing on the flight up. And I cried, again, on the plane. It was beautiful and simple and the lack of indulgence made it so much better.

53 The Host - Stephenie Meyer Goodness it takes a long time to get into this story. If you could cut out the first 100 pages or so and make a small prologue I think it would have been greatly improved. I very much liked it though, once I struggled into it.

54 American Wife - Curtis Sittenfeld I loved this. I know nothing about Laura Bush, so now I want to go find a good LB biography to see what the actual parallels are. It was a little slow in places but I didn’t find it boring.

55 Eleanor &Park - Rainbow Rowell I had a hard time with her family situation. I didn’t think I would, but it was too much like my childhood I … it was hard. But I loved the love story, not so fond of the ending.

56 The Age of Miracles - Karen Thompson Walker I think this tried to be too big. It jumped too much, it skipped too much, and covered too much time to be compelling. I didn’t connect with the characters at all.

57 Beautiful Darkness - Kami Garcia I put this on library hold while I was starting the first one, and I didn’t like the first one that much. I had to abandon this but I held out for 100 pages to see. But no.

How to: Shop with kids and keep your sanity

I couldn’t possibly claim to do everything right with kids. Is there anyone who could? The truth is, I often feel like I’m failing – I’m impatient, short-tempered, don’t listen enough, and the mommy mommy mommy drives me up the wall. I love my kids, but sometimes they make me want to crawl out of my own skin.

HOWEVER.

There is one thing I do that I’m pretty proud of. It’s a small thing – I love to shop with my kids. Errands? Bring ‘em on. The grocery store? The more the merrier (I once took my two children and a 16-month cousin to the grocery store for a full grocery run). So I thought I would share my secrets with you on how I not only do my errands and shop with kids, but prefer to do all of it with them. Give me my cocktail on the deck by myself. Target I’ll do with kids.

* Here’s my biggest secret: make it fun. Give yourself enough time, go with a game plan and a good attitude. When you’re stressed, the kids will just make it worse. Take Mary Poppins’ advice:

Here’s how you do that: for every one or two errands that you need for you, do something for the kids. Is there a pet store nearby? Stop in to see the animals. Need to get lunch during errands? Go to a place with a play area. Going to Target? Hit the toy aisles so they can play for a few minutes before you leave. You can even stop into a sporting goods store and let them look at the baseballs and bicycles – I swear, if you tell them you are “letting them” do something, they will assume they like it. If you don’t want to go to a different store altogether, when you’re at Bed Bath and Beyond – ask them what THEY want to look at, and spend a few minutes looking at pig-styled kitchen stuff and As Seen On TV slushy makers.

This is not to say “bribe” them. I usually don’t tell my kids that we’ll do something for them. This way if I don’t end up with time, I’m not disappointing them. It’s usually more of a “Hey! There’s a Petsmart! Let’s go look at the fish!” Feels spontaneous to them, but obviously it’s not.

There are also a few tricks to my tricks. I don’t do it all the time. Sometimes it’s related to time, but also I don’t want them to EXPECT it because then it’s just another chore for me. Every time we go to Target I do not let them play in the toy aisles (although at this point I tell them ahead of time that we don’t have time to look at the toys). Or sometimes, if I’m pressed for time but still want them to enjoy themselves, I say they can pick ONE aisle to look in. Also, we never buy. I do not buy toys unless I had entered a store for that purpose. This goes for everywhere – the Disney store, gift shops, Target, Toys R Us. I’m not scared of stopping by a toy store just to look because the boys know we aren’t buying (this is not to say they don’t ask, but they don’t seem to be so upset when I say no).

The toys live at Target. When you’re done playing, you put them back on the shelf and say “goodbye, toys!” Give a little wave.

When we go to the grocery store, we get a free cookie from the bakery. This also is not a bribe for being good, however I will specifically say no cookie if they haven’t been good. Henry got in trouble at daycare? No cookie at Publix when we stop for milk. Cookie is the first stop if we only have a few things to get, and the last stop if I need a full cart of groceries.

There are other, smaller tricks, that I use through the store. Spencer is learning to read, so I try to always make a list of stops or a grocery list so he can keep track of it for me. He likes to mark off things that we do. Henry counts how many items we got, or how many things we need to get. We see how many red things are in the cart, or if we can find the sign with popsicles on it in the store.

I think I stress “no bribes” so much because my mom bribed my siblings for every inch of good behavior she got, and she spent a lot of much on throwaway toys and never really got good behavior out of them (I was older so I saw this, however I have no idea how I was growing up).

(an addition: I do not like clothes shopping with kids, but I'm pretty terrible about clothes shopping anyhow. This is how I make it work: I get the largest dressing room and let them go crazy in it while I'm trying things on. I don't worry about noise, I encourage singing while standing on the bench and jumping up and down in front of the mirror. In exchange I ask that they stay with me while I yank anything off the racks that might possibly work on me as quickly as possible. This works most of the time)

I can’t imagine that this works for every child/children. And sometimes it doesn’t work for me – I won’t lie. But I think the best thing you can do for yourself is to give yourself as much time as possible, and look at every errand like a game. You’ll be a lot happier, and then so will your kids while you drag them all over creation looking for that specific cream moisturizer and the book you heard about on Twitter, and to pay the electric bill.

BBTW: The saga of T

My entire family is down for a collective quiet time, and since it WON'T POSSIBLY LAST, I'm taking a quick second to tell you my funniest, worst dating story.

I was with my ex for nearly three years, and we broke up in July of 2002. C and I starting dating in December 2002, and we've been together ever since. I only had a small window of time to have bad dates before falling in love with the man who would be my forever. Thankfully, it appears I used it to my fullest.

This was still in the time where "meeting online" consisted of meeting in chat rooms instead of deliberate online dating. I met T in some chat room - don't even ask me where - but we went to the same college and I agreed to meet him.

The first thing I noticed about T was that he seemed a bit young. After discussion I supposed he was about a year younger than me which wasn't terrible, and he was really sweet. I met him at his house, which turned out to be his parent's house. He drove a Miata which I teased him about (that will always be a chick car to me) and we hung out at his house.

So he had originally told me his name was Taylor, but after hanging out at his PARENT'S house for awhile I saw all these kid's drawings that said "Travis". Who is that? Your brother? Nope. T had decided when he got to college to change his name. I couldn't possibly call him Taylor after that, so "T" he became.

We decided to head over to my house where I lived with some roommates to watch movies and hang out. I drove home in my car and T followed (in his Miata). We watched chick flicks on my bed while it rained through the night. When he decided to "put the moves" on me, he LICKED MY CHEEK. Not a little lick, either. A long lick all the way from chin to temple. Like a cat.

There was nothing I could do at that point to salvage this date. I may (did) laugh in his face. I walked him to his car where it turned out he had left the top down (on his MIATA) through the torrential rains and left his leather jacket on the back seat. Poor kid.

So that's my story. And while it barely eked out on the "worst dating stories", that is only because it was the longest date. Someday, remind me and I'll tell you about the Third Reich buff who liked me because I liked a German radio station and went dutch at Steak and Shake, and the time I broke up with a boy accidentally because he was seriously ill (in my defense, if someone doesn't call how are you supposed to know he's sick?)

Till then.


- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

We were on a break

So hello, July!

So July, I’ve been thinking. My older son is in pre-k. My younger son is enjoying the heck out of being the only one in our household at daycare. They are both driving me up the ever loving wall when they are home. It’s been raining for a solid week, we haven’t been getting out of the house, I’ve been attached to my ipad and my phone and I think this is making me more irritable about crazy children.

So this is my solution. For the month of July, I’m taking a bit of a break. I’m not breaking up completely (as is the running thing these days), but I think I need to take a step back and try TRY TRY to enjoy my family. Try to spend time with my children and work hard on not letting them annoy me. Try spending more quality time with my husband. SO. (There are a lot of So in this blog). I’m going to allow myself to be on the ipad/phone for half hour every night. The kids watch a show before bed, and that will be my time to update myself on the rest of my little world. This doesn’t include texts – text away! And it doesn’t include what I do with myself during the day (besides work, because, um, I have to work).

I will still try to keep up with blogging during the day as possible (I do take work breaks occasionally), and anyone who still wants to reach me is welcome to by emails/DMs/texts/etc. I’ll be around! Just much much less between the hours of 4:30p-7:30p and 8pm until bed. 

Books I read: June

Somewhere toward the middle/end of June I lost my reading mojo, and I’d like for it to come back because I have five books on my side table waiting to be read. But here’s what I read before I ran out of juice.

38 Beautiful Creatures - Kami Garcia I loved the concept of this, but I thought the execution of it was crap. And that was disappointing because I really loved the concept. I don’t think I can muddle through any future ones though – is/will the movie be better? Or is it a tv series that’s coming? I don’t even know.

39 Snow Child - Eowyn Ivey  This was beautiful.

40 Decrypted - Lindsay Buroker  Ahh, my crack.

41 The Leopard - Jo Nesbo  Dear God. I listened to this by audiobook. Please please don’t do that to yourself. The torture descriptions … just no. I had to take my headphones off someties. (but read it! It was good! Just very gory.)

42 In Her Shoes - Jennifer Weiner  I bought this at a thrift shop in NOLA during Blathering and just finally got around to reading it. It was meh – I think the movie had more personality but I think I’d have liked it more if I hadn’t seen the movie.

43 Forged in Blood - Lindsay Buroker  Again. Love.

44 Through the Ever Night - Veronica Rossi I usually have a lot of trouble starting a sequel because I can’t remember all the intricacies of the story line, sometimes it’s not until halfway through that I start to enjoy. Not this – I loved it from the beginning and if possible I think it was better than the first book.

I just walked in, and boy are my legs tired.

So.

It tends to be that the weekends that I have nothing planned are my busiest. And I love busy weekends but seriously, I’m a little sore from this weekend.

Friday night I got to go out with a friend, and we picked a shmancy sushi place where I had the best soup I’ve had it a very long time. It was a chowder, technically, but not heavy and potato-y like most chowders. Had a kick and crab and corn and shitake mushrooms … it was delightful. They also did some sort of lemon zest on the edamame which was fantastic – I wanted to suck on every pod (That’ll make for interesting google searches). The sushi, also, was delicious – not traditional, mostly trendy (one had lemon on top!), but very fresh and tasty.

Saturday was Disney day. Spencer was finally tall enough to ride Space Mountain last weekend (thanks in part to new shoes) and was itching to ride Everest. This is our favorite Disney coaster so we were happy to take him. So? He was too scared to ride it again. S is a bit tentative (code word for scaredy pants) for indoor … things. So the Yeti inside freaked him the F out even though he KNEW it wasn’t real. Alas, we moved on. Drew Brees was also at Animal Kingdom and C snapped a couple pictures hopefully without bothering the guy. I bet he enjoyed Everest. We spent a few hours at Animal Kingdom and then headed over to Epcot where we stayed until the laser light show which we never do. Pretty neat!

One thing I want to mention because I was SO impressed: At the end of the day when we were waiting for the light show we decided to get drinks and some candy for the kids. I got a glass of wine in Germany and then went over to the shop for gummy bears for Spencer. When I was paying for the gummies, Spencer knocked over my entire glass of wine. It was totally his fault, and we made a mess (thankfully not on any merchandise or on us) but while I was paying for those gummies they second person working wrote me a note to take back to the wine shop to get a new glass of wine. It was so above and beyond – I was going to go back for another glass but I had fully planned on paying for it; my kid, our fault. For them to give me a new one – color me impressed. Sincerely.

Also, I walked more than 25,000 steps on Saturday. Holy crap.

Oh! And I thought of another very positive experience for Saturday! Spencer and C stood in line (60 minutes) for Soarin’, and Henry and I went wandering. On the Mexico ride I thought everything smelled like a fart. Turns out, it was Henry. C had taken the backpack with him so I was without any diapers or wipes or anything. I was very close to buying the $1.50 “diaper changing pack” from the tampon dispencer but I didn’t know if it would be the right size or what it would have in it. Very nice mothers in the bathroom came to my aid with an extra diaper and one very absorbent wipe so I could go about my not-smelling-like-a-fart life. Thank you, Epcot moms.

Sunday I didn’t get out of my nightgown until 2pm, and at that time it was just to take a shower and put on different pjs. I did, however, clean and run six loads of laundry and fold it all. I dealt with rainy day tantrums and hysterical “you left me in quiet time to long”s and SCRUBBED MY BATHROOM GROUT.

A word about grout. A couple. I have never cleaned grout. I honestly was under the impression that you tiled and grouted, and then your grout eventually changed color and that was that. But all the twitter is talking about cleaning grout and the best things to use (SoftScrub and a grout brush, apparently) so I tried it. The whole time I was on my painful hands and knees scrubbing that damn grout I was thinking “this isn’t worth it, this isn’t worth it”. Turns out, it’s worth it.

Damn you, twitter. Next up: my kitchen. Maybe I’ll do it on my birthday.