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.

BBTW: What started it all

I was nosing around my blog to find my oldest entry to see why I started this thing. Because I have no idea. It turns out that the day after my birthday in 2004, I decided I was going to write more. Ha! At the time I was finishing up my BA in Creative Writing, and while I didn’t fancy myself a WRITER, I did feel like I had important things to say. I was snarky. I was funny. People wanted to know what I had to say.

Crickets.

I did technically start earlier, because Diaryland tells me I had 62 entries between December 15, 2002 and April 30, 2003 and they couldn’t ALL have been memes. No one wants to read that nonsense though. Why is it still out there? (because I don’t know my password and the email attached to it is defunct)

I think that I started reading blogs around the same time. It was a community, oddly a completely different community than now. In a fit of nostalgia I have tried looking up some of those old friends – do you realize how hard it is to find people that you only knew handles from ten years ago? I hope they are all well.

My blog, my blogging, has obviously taken on a different direction. I realized that I’m not a writer. I don’t even want to be a writer, ever. I have ideas, sure, but what I really love to do is read, is edit, is to offer ideas on other people’s writing. I love my job now which is not in the writing fields I thought I would be in, I have a husband and children and a life that is a lifetime away from where I was ten years ago. My friends who were my nearest and dearest at the time – yeah … not so much.

But I’ve met some amazing people because of blogging. Even before there was The Blathering and organized ways of meeting people from the Internets, I wanted a pair of shoes that they didn’t have at my local DSW. So a girl in Delaware found them at HER store and sent them to me. And thus began a beautiful friendship (even though my dog ate those damn shoes). More recently I have found twitter and The Blathering, and as cliché as it has started feeling, “I have found my people”. So I will continue to blog (although obviously not as prolifically as SIXTY TWO TIMES IN FOUR MONTHS).

I started blogging because I had something to say. Even though my somethings have changed, I’m amazed to find that sometimes I still have something to say.

(PS – I went back through my DL site because it turns out my first post there was four days after my first date with my husband. Yep, never deleting that thing.)

Prompt from http://rambleramble.com/2013/06/16/bring-back-the-words-prompts-link-up-week-1">Bring Back The Words – Week one

Let's do this thing

I made the conscious decision not to participate in Biggest Blogging Loser this round for two reasons. I planned on starting my exercise/meal overhaul earlier by several weeks, and the last two rounds I hadn’t been able to keep myself motivated and frankly I gained instead of lost both times. The very first time I participated I lost 20 lbs, and that was on my way to a 42lb weight loss year. I’ve gained somewhere between 15-20lbs back over the past two years since then, and it needs to go. I’m too old for this up-and-down.

But due to other (lazy) reasons, I hadn’t actually got off my duff more than a couple times for exercise and I’ve been eating terribly when I was supposed to be being So! Much! Better!

So Monday, while all the other participants were gearing up to lose that weight and get that money, I decided. …. Well, I decided just to lose that weight. I’m making my changes alongside my for-profit friends. I took before photos. I started cataloging my food and drink intake and doing the 30 Day Shred. I gave myself a goal (20 lbs) and a date (August 19). I will do this. I possibly look a little silly posting with the BBL participants and getting so super involved but it’s the only way I can psych myself  up for workouts and no less sweets and alcohol.

Two days into 30 Day Shred, I can tell you that’s no joke. It hurts to get in and out of my chair at work. Please, someone tell me it gets better. And am I supposed to do 30 straight days, or I read somewhere on the Internet that I’m supposed to have a rest day for every 6 days of workout?

A little of this, a little of that

Summer!!!

While I make no excuses about being absent around here, one of my issues is that it feels like so much happens when I’m away and although YOU don’t care, this is my space and it turns out I care. I haven’t figured out what I want this space to be, as I’m not blogging as much as I want to/should/could. But here are a few things going around at Casa Bapryll:

My best friend came to visit this past weekend. We ate great food, had some much needed girl time, shopped, ate, shopped, ate, and hung with children. And then she left and I fed the kids candy to numb the pain.

I decided that it was finally more important to have some semblance of a guest room over my 700 books (not an exaggeration) so I have gotten rid of almost all of them, moved all the kid books I was saving for the boys into their own room (Spencer points out his “new” HP collection twice a week) and now I have somewhat of a comfortable guest area/office.

When we’re not at Disney, we have been spending a lot of time in the back yard. My mom got the boys Socker Boppers (remember the commercial?) and they wrestle in the splash pool. Henry goes “ding ding!”

After coming home from vacation I remained attached to the French 75, so I’ve started making my own. Except that I don’t have a cocktail mixer (I swear I did, but it’s nowhere to be found) so mixing cocktails can be a bit messy. I make it happen though.

And I’m teaching the boys to be self-sufficient. You lost a ball under the couch and can’t get it with your arm? What do you do?

Books I read: May

I usually don't write my thoughts down when I finish a book, but looking back at this month I really should have. I had to look back at the synopsis on a couple to remind myself of the story. That's a bad thing, isn't it? No reflection on the books, either. I'm losing my mind, or my memory, or both. (edit: also I originally named this Books I read: June. Ooops!)

29 Delirium - Lauren Oliver Oh, this was good. I liked it and I'm hooked on the end. It felt young to me but I still liked it a lot.

30 Indigo Spell - Richelle Mead Mead's characters are like old friends at this point. I care so deeply for all of them. I will be sad when I don't get to read them anymore.

31 Lament: The Faerie Queen's Deception - Maggie Stiefvater They plot holes and the way that everyone just has no problems with magic and faeries just SHOWING UP one day ... didn't like. It was just very okay. I also read a couple pages of the next one and gave up. I just don't care about these characters.

32 Son - Lois Lowry This was a beautiful ending to the Giver series. Loved every page.

33 Clockwork Angel - Cassandra Clare Not nearly as good as her other series, but I'll read them. I'm intrigued.

34 The Raven Boys - Maggie Stiefvater THIS is what the Faery series should have been. LOVED.

35 Days of Blood and Starlight - Laini Taylor I had a difficult time getting into this second book even though I re-read a synopsis but by the end I couldn't wait for now the third book to come out.

36 The Fault in our Stars - John Green I didn't expect to love this as much as everyone else did. I did.

37 Nemesis - Jo Nesbo I'm listening to this on audiobook as I have a bit of work driving lately. I did NOT realize that the main character's name was pronounced Huula. This is why audiobooks are a good idea. Also, I love it - but what's not to love? I have about 6 hours left but I'll knock those out on Thursday, plus some (sadly).

A vacation in pictures (of food, mostly)

hanging out at a trolley stop.

First French 75

First meal - Oysters at Royal House

The view outside our room.

Oyster pasta

washboard band on the sidewalk

lunch at Cafe Amelie

impromptu lunch at Rum House - serious, go there now.

Bike tour - Confederacy of Cruisers. Do it.

hanging out at the room listening to jazz from across the street.

have a bite! at Ruby Slipper

Lost $30 in 20 minutes. Hurray for Harrah's!

dinner at Commander's Palace - very dark, very delicious

trolley photo for the kids

breakfast at Stanley. Delicious (although not particularly breakfast-y tasting)

trolley stop, resting our footsies

Jazz downstairs - the original tuxedo band

chocolates and gelato!

breakfast at The Gumbo Coffeepot Shop

Does a goat with doors warrant an explanation?

came home with mardi gras masks for the boys - missed them!