Yellow Wallpaper

I write a lot of things in my head and never manage to actually get them down somewhere more permanent. Sometimes I wonder if other people live like this, with a constant stream of narration in their own heads. I don't usually talk to myself directly and I feel weird doing that, but I like to comment on my day, analyze things, and describe them to other people. I've always liked to process things out loud, and since getting divorced this has been a lot harder since I don't have anyone around to do this with. Hence, trying to get back into blogging and journaling. I just need to sit down more often to write out the things I'm thinking.  We had a good Christmas this year. I hadn't been feeling much of the Christmas spirit since our schedule was compressed and the kids and I were at work and school through the 22nd. During the earlier part of the month I was also still recovering from my surgery, and so we didn't do very many festive things like we usually do. I

I spent half the month recuperating from surgery, which explains the massive number of books I read. A few of these books were one-day reads. I don't plan to repeat this number in December.  Missing, Presumed by Susie Steiner It took me a while to realize that the focus of this book was really the protagonist and not the central mystery. In fact, the mystery itself had a rather anticlimactic resolution that I mostly figured out. The pace of the book was slower than I expected, but in the end I liked it and if the author writes another book about the same characters, I would read it. Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life by William Finnegan I've never surfed, or had any desire to surf, despite growing up in southern California surrounded by surf culture. However, a number of positive reviews convinced me to give this book a try, and now I think it's one of the best I've read this year. It is a long, dense book, and there were times when I didn't quite understand