The No Good Horrible Complaint List

I need to get this out in my space so as to not totally go postal on the next person who crosses me.  It's one of those days.

- The United States is not China.  Excuse me while I laugh at you while you try to prove your political statement with comparing them. Also? Just because someone doesn't agree with a political party does not mean they are apathetic and know nothing.  I assure you random facebook commenter that there are even people YOUR OWN age that disagree with your political stance and my age has nothing to do with what I think/believe.

- If I try to be helpful and explain how you can get better customer service after you complain about crappy service and I have had experience with the company, do NOT just ignore me and go on your hormonal tirade.  I get it, you are pregnant and uncomfortable but listen to reason, I and the rest of the world beg of you.  It's an easy fix if you calm the eff down.

- Sticks need to be removed from all butts.  No one put you in charge.

- If I cannot fall asleep until 1:30 in the morning it is cruel that my 2 year old for the second night in a row wakes hourly from 3-7.  I like my hangover feeling earned.

- Allergies suck.

- I should not have frozen toes and fingers in the middle of June.

- I'd like to take a nanny on vacation so I can enjoy it too.

- Bloat can suck it.

- Weekend not week-end.

- And such.

- Complaining about something and then doing it to someone else.  Umm?  I just can't help you there.

- Lack of dental insurance.

Phew... I feel much better now.  What's annoying you right now? Basically, I need to stay off the Internet, hide in my room and just eat tons of carbs.  Instead, I am going to the park and buying a large ass cup of coffee on my way and eat a lunch of hummus and vegetables.  Here's to Hump Day! It is Hump Day, right? Ahhh...

July's Group Pick...

By the magical picking powers of random.org we shall be reading Where'd You Go, Bernadette? by Maria Semple.  On the very big plus side is that it's only 330 pages compared to our 800 in June's pick! ;)

Description: Bernadette Fox is notorious. To her Microsoft-guru husband, she's a fearlessly opinionated partner; to fellow private-school mothers in Seattle, she's a disgrace; to design mavens, she's a revolutionary architect, and to 15-year-old Bee, she is a best friend and, simply, Mom.

Then Bernadette disappears. It began when Bee aced her report card and claimed her promised reward: a family trip to Antarctica. But Bernadette's intensifying allergy to Seattle—and people in general—has made her so agoraphobic that a virtual assistant in India now runs her most basic errands. A trip to the end of the earth is problematic.

To find her mother, Bee compiles email messages, official documents, secret correspondence—creating a compulsively readable and touching novel about misplaced genius and a mother and daughter's role in an absurd world

Sounds interesting.  Have you read it? Are you joining us? Hope you will! I will post a discussion on Beach Music on June 28th! ;)

Currently: June

Stolen and adapted from Kyria. ;)

Current Book - Beach Music by Pat Conroy
 Current Walking Path - Anywhere near a local park.  I plot out a sidewalk path and then we go play!

 

Current Drink - Water

Current Excitement - Checking out various parks in our area

 Current Favorite Blog/Website -  facebook ha.

Current Garden Item - Our garden is a said state but we are getting some asparagus but nothing else for awhile.  Oh and we should be getting blueberries and raspberries this year!

Current Love - Summer vacaaaaaaaaaaation

Current Food - salami and cheese

Current Indulgence - Margarita flavored crystal light.. yummm 

Current Outfit - Comfy, comfy, comfy.  So yoga pants and a tshirt.

Current Song -  Boys 'Round Here by Blake Shelton

Current TV Show - I'm so excited that Rookie Blue is back!

Current Wish-List - pool weather and it is coming!!!

What's your favorite song and/or meal currently?
 

July Group Read Suggestions

That time of month again!

What we've read...

Beach Music
The Dinner
The End of Your Life Book Club
Still Alice 

The Song Remains the Same

Those Who Save Us
We Are All Welcome Here
Gone Girl
Prisoner of Tehran
The Wednesday Sisters
Looking for Alaska
Cutting for Stone
One Summer
The Year of Fog
Winter Garden
The Violets of March
Rebecca
State of Wonder
The Invisible Bridge
The Postmistress
The Scent of Rain and Lightning
Still Missing
The Sandalwood Tree
Major Pettigrew's Last Stand
Something Borrowed
The Blue Orchard
Sammy's Hill
In the Woods
Shanghai Girls
The Weight of Water
Water for Elephants
The Color Purple
The One That I Want
The Secret Garden
House Rules
American Wife
Firefly Lane
Middlesex
The Reader
The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo
The Awakening
Pride & Prejudice
I See You Everywhere
What do you want to read/discuss in July? I will take suggestions through Sunday when I will use random.org to pick!

Will Grayson, Will Grayson

I've heard great things about John Green for the last few years and it took me until last summer to read one of his books.  He is awesome.  I've had Will Grayson, Will Grayson for quite some time and haven't gotten around to reading it, but this weekend I wanted a quick read before I start my next one and decided the time was right.

“When things break, it's not the actual breaking that prevents them from getting back together again. It's because a little piece gets lost - the two remaining ends couldn't fit together even if they wanted to. The whole shape has changed.”  

It started off a little shaky and I was worried that it just wasn't as magical as the other books and then will grayson was introduced.  See, in the first chapter you meet Will Grayson but in the second you meet will grayson.  Confused? Yeah, so were they when they met. :P

“I feel like my life is so scattered right now. Like it's all the small pieces of paper and someone's turned on the fan. But, talking to you makes me feel like the fan's been turned off for a little bit. Like things could actually make sense. You completely unscatter me, and I appreciate that so much.”  

The good and bad thing about discussing books with other people is that they open your mind to other viewpoints.  If, by chance I hadn't talked to my book club about how teenagers do NOT talk like this nor act like this and all of John Green's characters talk / act the same I would have been able to fully enjoy the whole thing, but those thoughts creep in.  However, I shoved them to the side and was like, "WHY WEREN'T THEY MY FRIENDS IN HIGH SCHOOL??????"

“maybe tonight you're scared of falling, and maybe there's somebody here or somewhere else you're thinking about, worrying over, fretting over, trying to figure out if you want to fall, or how and when you're gonna land, and i gotta tell you, friends, to stop thinking about the landing, because it's all about falling.”  

So, while yes, the same type of characters show up in John Green novels, and no, they aren't your typical teenager.  I do love them.  It's a weakness.  And I related to Will Grayson and will grayson, which is funny since they were alike yet very different. There were parts of each W(w)ill that I saw parts of my teenage self.  And that is how you connect.  That is why people will read the same characters with magnificent vocabularies. 

“You like someone who can't like you back because unrequited love can be survived in a way that once-requited love cannot. ”  

And I cannot do it justice with my horrific attempt at an explanation but I will say I'd highly recommend it if you liked Looking for Alaska or The Fault in Our Stars. 

“Also, I feel that crying is almost--like, aside from deaths of relatives or whatever-- totally avoidable if you follow two very simple rules: 1.Don't care too much. 2. Shut up. Everything unfortunate that has ever happened to me has stemmed from failure to follow one of the rules.”  

Goodreads Description: One cold night, in a most unlikely corner of Chicago, two teens—both named Will Grayson—are about to cross paths. As their worlds collide and intertwine, the Will Graysons find their lives going in new and unexpected directions, building toward romantic turns-of-heart and the epic production of history’s most fabulous high school musical.

Hilarious, poignant, and deeply insightful, John Green and David Levithan’s collaborative novel is brimming with a double helping of the heart and humor that have won both of them legions of faithful fans.

Have you read Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan?

The Book of Ruth

So, two people whose reading tastes I sometimes agree with and sometimes really don't agree with, both gushed about this book.  Like a good friend, I borrowed it from one of them and then sat on it for a few months.  Then I realized it was June and I should get on that.

Yeah, it was a bust for me.  I've enjoyed books where I can't stand the characters (The Dinner, Gone Girl) but I did not like the characters and the plot did not save it.

Goodreads Description: Winner of the 1989 PEN/Hemingway Foundation Award  for best first novel, this exquisite book  confronts real-life issues of alienation and violence  from which the author creates a stunning testament  to the human capacity for mercy, compassion and  love.

Basically, they suck you into reading the book by not really telling you anything about it. ;P

The writing isn't bad, but the book is just a sad tale of a poor girl whose life sucks and it keeps on sucking and there is no way out of the suck.  So it's a lot of sucking and when there is a lot of sucking you have to have SOMETHING that doesn't suck and well the book just didn't. 

A LOT of people really liked this book, so please don't just listen to me, but it was just a book and nothing I was super impressed with.  I did finish it because, I can't leave things unfinished usually, but it was just eh.

Have you read The Book of Ruth?

Day in the Life: First Day of Summer Break

I haven't done one of these in a loooooong time and thought I'd share how our first day of summer break went!

8:15 – I wake up freezing.  I check fb and email on my phone then roll out of bed to start some coffee.

8:25 Coffee is ready and the very loud garbage truck drives by. 

 8:36 I hear Isla and go get her.  Make her breakfast and then eat with her.  Peach Greek yogurt, strawberries and toast w/ water for her and wheat bread with peanut butter and my coffee for me

 

8:45 I tackle the dishes and kitchen clean up.

 

9:00 Isla is done eating so we move to the living room for her morning Elmo time aka mommy’s drink coffee in peace and catch up on the Internet time.

 

9:04 I have to read, “Elmo’s ABCs. Book”

 

9:08 Back to her own chair with Elmo book while watching Elmo.  She may have a problem.

 

9:30 – Isla wants to go outside but we need to do laundry and get dressed first.  So we go downstairs, throw a load in, color an Elmo coloring page, then head upstairs to get dressed.  After she’s dressed I send her out to finish the Elmo episode so I can get dressed.

 

10:00 About to head out the door for Target when my friend calls and wants us to meet up at the park.  So I throw snacks in the diaper bag, dinner in the crock pot and we go play outside with her Little Tykes grill for a bit while I try to get her trike in the car --- FAIL.

 

10: 25 We leave and got gas and met up at the park where a TON of kids are riding trikes and having a blast in the water area.

 

11:45 Isla is HANGRYYYYYY.  We eat almost all the snacks I brought and manage to convince her to head home for lunch.

 

12:10 She eats leftover pasta, broccoli, corn and an orange for lunch..  I also ate leftovers.

Only photo of the day.  Tried at the park but she kept running away and/or showing me her belly and she hates her photo taken anyway so I sneak them in!

 

12:31 I read Elmo’s ABC book, again.  Then, Itsy Bitsy Spider (Elmo version), and a book about colors.  Then we put together Miss Potato Head whom I swear looks like a potato head drag queen.  Then she looks sleepy so at 12:50 I put her down for a nap.

 

1:00 I grab a diet coke and sit down to catch up on my shows.  First up, Rookie Blue.  Then I couldn’t figure out our DVR so I put an episode of Blue Bloods on in the background and read some of my book, The Book of Ruth until she woke up at 4:30!!!!

 

4:30 Snuggles and goldfish snacks. 

 

4:50 I set her up with a laminated letter ‘I’ sheet and play dough while I took the chicken out of the crock pot, shredded it and prepared enchiladas and made guacamole.

 

5:40 Dinner is served.  And my husband walked in the door 5 minutes later.

 

6:15 We all head outside for a walk that ended up being only two houses down because we took her trike and passed the cows and we then had to go back on the farm and look at the cows and donkey.  Came back and planted some pansies I got as a gift and played with the toy grill again.

 

7:00 Bath time!

 

7:25 We put on Gilmore Girls and play with blocks and daddy now reads Elmo’s ABC book.

 

8:00 I jump in the shower and 2 minutes into my shower Isla is put down to bed by her daddy.

 

8:15 We start watching The Voice results show.

 

9:00 I catch up on two episodes of Armywives.

 

10:35 Read more of my book.

 

11:00 To bed I said!

 

A very busy, yet fun and somewhat relaxing first day of break.  Today? Has been a bit more whiney but I'm trying to push off outside time because we have an outdoor lunch date and I don't want her too tired for the fun!

 

What shows do you catch up with on DVR? Do you have a million like I seem to have? ha..

Call The Nurse: Tales of a Country Nurse on a Scottish Isle

I received this book from Skyhorse Publishing all thoughts and opinions are my own. ;)

Description: Tired of the pace and noise of life near London and longing for a better place to raise their young children, Mary J. MacLeod and her husband encountered their dream while vacationing on a remote island in the Scottish Hebrides. Enthralled by its windswept beauty, they soon were the proud owners of a near-derelict croft house--a farmer's stone cottage--on "a small acre" of land. Mary assumed duties as the island's district nurse. Call the Nurse is her account of the enchanted years she and her family spent there, coming to know its folk as both patients and friends.

In anecdotes that are by turns funny, sad, moving, and tragic, she recalls them all, the crofters and their laird, the boatmen and tradesmen, young lovers and forbidding churchmen. Against the old-fashioned island culture and the grandeur of mountain and sea unfold indelible stories: a young woman carried through snow for airlift to the hospital; a rescue by boat; the marriage of a gentle giant and the island beauty; a ghostly encounter; the shocking discovery of a woman in chains; the flames of a heather fire at night; an unexploded bomb from World War II; and the joyful, tipsy celebration of a ceilidh. Gaelic fortitude meets a nurse's compassion in these wonderful true stories from rural Scotland.

When I got the email describing the book I thought," hmm, that sounds like an adventure I'd like to read about," and I was not disappointed.  Mary sweetly describes her early years on the island of Papavray (name changed).  It's fascinating to hear about the very primitive conditions and camaraderie that the islanders have with one another.  Her writing made me want to sit down and have a 'cuppie' with her and talk about more of her adventures.

It's a definite cozy memoir that is told like you are sitting down with your grandma and she is telling you about her life.  It describes island life more so than in depth nursing adventures but Mary seemed to do a lot of non-typical nursing duties in her time on the island.  She briefly mentions fixing up their dump of a house (which had no bathroom when they got it!), but I'd have loved to hear more about how it ended up being in the end. 

A very sweet read and I'd love to hear more of her stories!

Have you read any memoirs recently?

The Dinner Discussion

Hey everyone.  It’s Lisa from Lisa’s Yarns!  I’m taking a turn at coming up with some questions for our latest book club read, “The Dinner” by Herman Koch.  This book had actually been recommended to me by a co-worker so I had already bought it on my nook before it was selected for our book club.  I read it in the span of days, which says a lot these days since I am pretty busy between work and studying.

 

Without further adieu, here are some discussion questions!

 

1. How did you experience the book? Were you engaged immediately, or did it take you a while to "get into it"? How did you feel reading it—amused, sad, disturbed, confused, bored?

 

2. Do the main characters change by the end of the book? Do they grow, or come to learn something about themselves and how the world works?

 

3. Let’s talk about the book’s structure.  The author jumped around from present day to past time and back again quite a bit and the flashbacks at times seemed superfluous.  Did you like the structure of the books?  Or did it confuse or distract you?

 

4. The characters in the book, for the most part, are not very likeable.  Do you need to like the characters in order to like the book?  Or can you like a book despite not liking the characters?

 

5. Were you surprised by how far the parents were willing to go to protect their children?

 

6. What were your overall thoughts on the book?  Is it something you would recommend to others?

 

Here are my responses!

 

1. I was engaged early on and had a hard time putting this down as I wanted to find out what happened next.  It was disturbing to read at times.
2. The characters don’t change, but our opinion about them does as we learn more and more about them (they became less and less likeable for me).
3. I liked the structure of the book.  Sometimes I wondered where the author was going with these stories, but I think by moving back and forth in time, and sometimes sharing what seemed like insignificant or weird details, the author was showing us what the mind of the main narrator was like.
4. Typically, my answer to this is no.  But I enjoyed this book and “Gone Girl,” both of which had characters that I did not like at all.  It used to ruin the book for me if I didn’t like the characters, though!
5. I don’t have children so I don’t know how I would feel…  but I can’t imagine that I would overlook a horrible crime, or try to justify it as they did in this book.
6. Overall, I really liked the book and it was an engaging read.  But it was rather dark and disturbing, so I would be hesitant to recommend it broadly as I think it takes a certain reader to enjoy it.

Thanks Lisa!! I really enjoyed this book too and when I started reading I read it quite quickly as well.  I would read another book by this author. ;)

June Group Read is...

Beach Music by Pat Conroy!

I used random.org to pick.

Description: PAT CONROY, America’s preeminent storyteller, delivers a sweeping novel of lyric intensity and searing truth–the story of Jack McCall, an American expatriate in Rome, scarred by tragedy and betrayal. His desperate desire to find peace after his wife’s suicide draws him into a painful, intimate search for the one haunting secret in his family’s past that can heal his anguished heart.

Spanning three generations and two continents, from the contemporary ruins of the American South to the ancient ruins of Rome, from the unutterable horrors of the Holocaust to the lingering trauma of Vietnam, Beach Music sings with life’s pain and glory. It is another masterpiece in PAT CONROY’S legendary list of beloved novels

Per my last post, I will post one full discussion on June 28th! Hope you join us this summer!