A Long Boring Explanation of My Reading Patterns

This is one of those posts that really, unless you're interested in the hows and whys of my reading 'cycles' you can certainly skip and I won't be insulted.  Thanks for stopping by all the same.

Before college I was obsessed with reading.  I remember reading Somerset Maugham for a grade school book report.  And Postern Of Fate.  I probably was the bane of my English teacher's existence.  My first romance was Jane Eyre, which I read with a box of tissues on my bed, sobbing.  I made my way alphabetically through the stacks in the school libraries, heck I STARTED the library club, a good way to avoid kickball during recess.

And therefore it made perfect sense to me to take English literature classes in college, and I ended up majoring in English.  Which was good, don't get me wrong.  I'll never be able to forget the Donne, Herbert, Marvell, Lovelace...I can't get rid of my Chaucer or my Arden Complete Shakespeare...I still have the New English Translation of the Bible I bought for $18 second hand - my first *real* Bible, complete with this strange thing called an Apocrypha...it's all fresh as the day it happened.

But I also got completely and totally burned out with reading.

After college I started working in a little indie bookstore in my hometown.  I believe I was there for about 4 years, and I did find some new authors, but for the most part I immersed myself in young adult and children's literature.  Sometimes I would try and get into something 'fluffy' (Diana Gabaldon, anyone?) but I just didn't have the stamina for it.  Books came out, great books, books I heard amazing things about, and I couldn't do it, I couldn't read them.

Eventually it got to the point where it wasn't so much that I didn't have the energy so much as I'd gotten lazy. Reading takes muscles, and I didn't have them - I was reading weak.

It was about 4 years after I started at that bookstore that I decided to go back to school, and that necessitated a move, and THAT meant a new job, this one also at a little indie bookstore.  This bookstore specialized in children's books, and I read tonnes of them.  And you know, there are some great authors out there who write fantastic books - but I knew that they weren't challenging me.

Enter the child-bearing years.  Four long years of vomiting, nursing and dragging recalcitrant offspring to the library in order to try and find/borrow a book for them, and then a few weeks later to return it late and pay the fees.

So here I am, now, smack dab in the difficult toddler years with two babies and a third on the way.  And if you think I have time for reading then you just come on over here and do my laundry for me.  But for the first time in a long while I was unhappy with every old five-times-re-read book on my shelves and I needed something else to read.  Which meant that yesterday I went to the library and did something I haven't done in almost a decade...I wandered up and down the adult fiction section looking for a 'good book'.  I found four, and I'm doing my best to read them, to get 'back into the game'.  I'm so far out of the game I'm in another park; I couldn't tell you who's won ANY prize in the past five years with the exception of Alice Munro.  Who's short stories I didn't like.

I'll let you know how it goes.

I can't eat. My child is not sleeping. World's boringest shopping.

I think that ultimately I'm an easy person to please; I don't need nor do I expect grand gestures of almost any type at all, in fact most things that would fall into a category where 'gesture' is an appropriate label would be pretty much guaranteed to make me such in my breath through my teeth in silent disapproval and discomfort.  Imagine how fun I am at parties.  No, really, go ahead.

But actually, once I started thinking about it I'm really not all that easy to please.  And I'm thinking here about a topic that is pretty much guaranteed to garner some sucking-in-of-breath all it's own (although not my breath, clearly).  I detest my laundry so much it's almost a physical CLOUD of unhappiness descending over me.  And probably the biggest part of that contempt revolves around how STAINED everything seems to be ALL THE TIME.  It's as though my family, as soon as they're out of my line of sight, roll in tomato sauce and scrambled eggs and baby poo and then deposit the clothes around the house for me to find.  No one is immune to this.  Although to be 100% fair I will admit that I am the biggest producer of what appears to be grease stains on the fronts of shirts.  I don't know why this is since as far as I know I don't have any sort of difficulty eating.  I do have quite long hair so perhaps my HAIR is dipping into my food and then touching my clothes?  Okay, that thought is making me queasy.

***

Samuel has just recently stopped napping regularly and it makes me pretty darn sad and depressed that my guaranteed afternoon quiet time is disappearing.  I want him to sleep for two hours in the middle of the afternoon forever.  And the truth is that I CAN still get a good nap out of him but only if I exhaust him in the morning and these days I'm just not up for that.  Plus when he naps he wakes up in a terrible mood that sometimes lasts for an hour or more and drags everyone down with him.  And he's also up way past when I personally think 3.5 year olds should be awake - think 9 pm or later.  Since I would also like to go to bed at 9 pm and have child free time before I do so - this is not okay.  Not. Okay.  All of that is to say that I think naps are going to have to be cut for Samuel and a firmer hand used around the bedtime arrangements.  I've added it to my 'things to do before the baby arrives' list.

***

Also on that list is buying car seats.  Again.  Good Lord, have mercy on me a sinner.  Car seats are pretty much right up there with snow tires and white cotton underpants and pasta on my list of Most Boringest Things To Buy Ever.  "Oh, now THIS car seat goes to THIS weight limit and reclines at THIS angle and comes in Blue Sunrise Burst pattern, but then THIS car seat reclines at the better angle but only comes in Orange Surprise pattern.  Wait, Orange Surprise is out of stock you say?  Well, drat, okay then THIS...."  AGGGGHHHH.  If I had my way I would walk into a store, choose three identical seats that were upholstered in whatever hid vomit the best, and put them in my car and drive away.  The only factors I am interested in are price and utility.  However, the world being fallen as it is, I'm not so lucky.  We have a Pontiac Grand Am and soon to be three children to stuff into the back seat of it, so I need 'special' (read: expensive) seats.  Seats that are significantly more narrow that a standard car seat.  With not-narrow price tags.  Ugh.

***

I'm pregnant. I'm terrible at keeping my temper. Nothing is dead under my porch.

So, in case you follow me entirely via this particular medium and not, say, on Facebook or...well, however else people communicate these days, I shall share our Big Exciting News.  I'm pregnant.  Samuel is 3 years, 7 months, Clara is 18 months and as far as one can know these sorts of things, I'm early in my first trimester. Feel free to comment along the lines of "Oh my, won't you have your hands full!" "Wow!  You're certainly having them close together!" Etc. etc. I will warn you, however, in the interests of giving you a head start, that this time around I am Very Moody.  I'm also Quite Opinionated, and I articulate myself well in print.  Just a friendly reminder.

***

In other news, we had a visiting youth group here from a church about 5 hours away.  Among the other things they accomplished was putting up new lattice under my back porch.  The back porch hadn't been entirely cleaned out underneath though, and so there's a big black garbage bag I see sticking juuust out from the lattice and it's annoying me.  I can ignore the dropped clothespins and what have you but that bag is beyond my abilities.  What's worse is that it seems to have something in it.  So I can't PULL it out of the latticework.  And besides, my imagination tells me, what if it's a HEAD or something?  Or a DEAD ANIMAL.  Good heavens.  And then we'd have the police here and...I do realize how awful it is that I clearly would have preferred that the teenage children visiting from another church discover the imaginary horrors underneath my porch.

***

Do you find that your children often receive gifts that they are very excited about and you are not?  It seems to happen to us a lot, and I'd be interested to know how others handle it.  Handle it in a reasonable and not antagonistic way, that is.  I'm not interested in comments that go along the lines of "I tell everyone exactly what I want them to give my children and refuse all other things" because that sort of advice would neither work with our situation nor my personality.  From what I've been able to figure out my difficulties mainly arise from two points.

First, and probably more prevalent, is that I have ideas about what children need and I don't tend to deviate from those ideas easily.  I'm attempting to think of a non-condemning type example of this.  Okay, can we agree on clothing as a possible no-one-will-think-I'm-talking-about-them example?  I think Clara has too many pairs of pants when I can't fit them into her designated pants drawer.  I realize this is arbitrary and I don't care, that's not the purpose of this example.  The point is that I have made a guideline because I believe that a guideline is necessary and right in this particular situation.  The convenient but at the same time unfortunate result of this sort of thinking is that I have just what I need, but that I do not want/need more of any particular thing.

Secondly, we live in what I think is an adequate sized house for our family, but which, if we were to poll people, would turn out to be on the small size across the general population.  The main issue with the house is the almost complete lack of storage, and the last thing I want is More Things.  Even More Things that are pretty and useful.

***

I haven't experienced my usual pregnancy cravings, but I have found myself thoroughly revolted by almost all foods at one point or another so far.  This has progressed way beyond what I remember from any of my previous pregnancies.  This evening, while attempting to choke down a gorgeous meal cooked to perfection by my husband, which I could barely touch let alone look at, I offered to make nothing but Thai food for the next several weeks/months because it seems very non-repellent to me.  I would be willing to extend to Vietnamese food as well, but not, as requested by David, to Indian.

***

A show was advertised on tv this evening that recalls the emotional lives of parrots and is called Parrot Confidential.  It's situations like this that leave me struggling not to mock.

What I Wore Sunday - Back in the Action!

It's been a long time (Months!  MONTHS!) since I wrote a What I Wore Sunday post and linked up with the FLAP ladies.

Since my last WIWS post I've moved to a new town, in a new province, in a new climate with my husband in a brand new job in a new field of work.  So, it's been a little hectic!  I knew I wanted to link up again, though, and today seemed like as good a day as any, although my outfit was/is pretty mediocre all around.

So here I am in the leather skirt I wore to church.  Ahem.  You've all seen this top before, nothing new there. Tights are from Walmart, shoes are dark grey kitten heels from somewhere lost in the mists of time, and the cardi is the last maternity item I own; kept solely because I don't have another one to replace it with.  The skirt is part of a massive (for me, at least) shopping trip that included the purchase of, I believe FOUR items of clothing.  It's from Reitmans.  There you have it!

31 Days of House To Home

Let me tell you about our day.

It's Sunday.  I woke up at around 6:30 when the sky hadn't even started to lighten and David was bringing me a happy baby to nurse in what seemed to be the middle of the night.  Afterwards, working on the borrowed time of having children placed back in their beds when dawn is right around the corner, I had a quick shower and got through about a paragraph of Bible study before everyone was up.  We had oatmeal for breakfast and let Daddy sleep in for a little while longer.

The craziness of the morning 'everyone needs to wear clothing' rush wasn't too bad today.  And then Clara went back to bed fully dressed and Samuel watched cartoons and David went off to prepare in the church.  I puttered around putting supper in the crockpot and checking Facebook.

Church started at 10:30, and we were all there early to greet people and finish last minute tasks.  After the service we visited and had sandwiches and then we all trickled back to the house eventually.  Clara went to sleep, Samuel went to play quietly in his room, David closed his eyes in our bedroom and I passed out on the sofa.  We slept for almost two hours as a family.  When we woke up it was to the smell of a hot crock pot supper.  We sat down and ate together, and then I called various family members to wish them a happy Thanksgiving weekend.  Samuel and I headed out for a long hike in the late afternoon.  We gathered plants and apples for a pie and seeds for our garden and came home tired and cold.

The children had a hot bubble bath and then took their fuzzy pajama clad little selves to bed with hot water bottles and many quilts.  David and I sat up for a while longer eating banana bread and watching tv before we headed to bed to read and sleep.

I'm telling you about such a simple, boring sort of day because it's indicative of Sabbath; a rest in the midst of life.  It's not an ordinary day, filled with grocery shopping and elaborate cooking and cleaning tasks.  I didn't do laundry, I didn't (other than a pot of oatmeal in the morning and putting food in the slow cooker) do any cooking.  I didn't clean a thing.  No, that's not true, I washed a few pots and wiped the table and counters.  But you get the idea.  It was a rest from the week.  The whole family slept, we ate simple food, we went for a walk and talked to each other.  We went to bed earlier and read.

We're hoping to start the Sabbath as a tradition more and more in our house - rest from the every day.  It's an excellent tradition to have.

31 Days of House To Home

It's Day 11 already!  And Day 11 is a great day to get up on my soapbox and preach a little about something I get Very Frustrated about on a regular basis.  It's soap.  I get really, really frustrated about soap.  Here's the deal, friends:

This is soap.  This is what soap does.  In case you don't want to go click on those links I'll give you a brief outline.  Soap, when used for cleaning something, be it a body or a plate or a floor or your socks, works by suspending bacteria, germs, oils, dirt particles etc. and allowing them to be washed away.  Antibacterial soaps kill bacteria (which actually isn't always a good thing) and non-antibacterial soaps simply liberate the bacteria from the surface of the item so that you can rinse it off.

Basically - soap cleans stuff.  This isn't rocket science.  Some soap is rough, some soap is gentle, some soap has a nice smell, etc. but it all boils down to a substance that cleans.

This begs the question, and please pardon me if it seems overly simplistic, but if soap cleans things - why do we have to use, say, toxic scouring powder on our bathrooms?  Or fume-laden chemicals that actually require you to wear gloves when you use them, on our kitchens?  In a room where you prepare food that you're going to eat?

If you're planning on performing surgery on your table, fine and dandy, use a chemical or something to clean it.  Or, I don't know, I can't really think of a situation where it would be applicable to use something else...maybe if everyone had an antibiotic resistant virus and you needed to disinfect the house?  Good, excellent, go buy something revolting and spray it everywhere.  But to wipe down the bathroom every week?

Keep your soap.

31 Days of House To Home

Celebrate the seasons!

I realized tonight as I was sitting in our neighbour's backyard in the dark, alternately watching the children run wild with sparklers and glow sticks and at the hypnotic glow and crackle of the bonfire in front of me, that celebrating and rejoicing in the change of seasons can come around in just such simple ways.  A few I thought of were:

Stepping outside to breathe the Spring air.
Taking pictures of shoots coming out of the ground.
A first rhubarb recipe of the season.
Buying tulips in season and pressing the petals.
Cleaning the chimneys and windows and whatever else gets especially dirty over the winter.
Circling the 'first days' on the calendar.  First day of farmer's market!
The start of new things.  Why have resolutions in January?  Have them start on the first day of Spring!
Wearing light colours, buying white shoes, doing something light with your hair.
Spending an entire hour thinking about sunscreen and making it a fun outing to buy what you've selected.
A visit to the tree nursery.
The local chip stop is open!  Eat them with tiny red forks while standing outside.
Carefully packing away sweaters.
The trimming of hedges, the sharpening of push mower blades.
The starting days of sports team
Going to a farm, going anywhere, really
The last day of school!
Making an event of the day the local pool opens.
A tinkle of the ice cream cart
Hot days spent in the shade.
Teaching the children to make paper fans
Sitting in the evening outside in the yard with your feet in the kiddie pool
Sprinklers
Sidewalk chalk
Summer dresses made from old flowered sheets
Big floppy hats
The beach in all it's glory
having neighbours over for a barbecue
Fireworks
Camping in the back yard
Bathing the dog outside with the hose
Cleaning the eaves troughs
Fireflies
Listening to the lightening storms
Back to school sales
Exclamations over how much everyone has grown
Visits to family
Buying lots of cards for birthdays to come
Family photos
The first day of school
New shoes
All new supplies.
The first day of a new planner or journal
Crafts with leaves
Carving pumpkins
The delicious anticipation of 'what to be for Hallowe'en'!
Bonfires
Being out after dark
Shorter days.
The night you turn on the furnace
Cold weather foods, crock pots and slow meals
Buying candles and lanterns for blackouts
Counting the stars, watching for meteors
The fall storms
Planning Christmas cards
Present buying trips
Making wrapping paper
The big mailing out!
Guests
Velvet tree skirts, hot chocolate and decorations
Buying a poinsettia
Reading stories
The fireplace
Stockings
Christmas morning
Packing gifts for the less fortunate
The long trip of the wise kings to see the Christ Child
Epiphany cake
Winter birthdays
I Love Yous and candy and special Valentine's dates
Games around the kitchen table
Snowmen!
Feeding the birds
Toboggan rides
Grey and cloudy skies
Seed catalogues
The careful planning of gardens
Watching the produce slowly change in the grocery store
Using up the last of the fall harvest
Lenten reflection
Holy week
Easter morning
New clothes
Chocolate, egg hunts
The first day of Spring
Lengthening days
Setting the clocks forward
Spring babies
Green shoots
Life