Yellow Wallpaper

This past week was not very good. I was tired and didn't sleep well most nights--I should have been writing a draft of my paper that is due next Sunday, but I haven't done it yet. There were several nights where I felt exhausted and decided to try going to bed early instead of writing, and instead I didn't fall asleep right away so I was still tired and I have no draft of my paper. I also spent most of the week stressing about our final exam that took place this morning. Spoiler alert: I took the exam and think I did a pretty reasonable job even though it's hard to write seven decent short essays in 75 minutes. We're all adjusting after the death of our sweet kitty last Saturday. Surprisingly the kids have been mostly fine with the new state of things. My other kitty spent the first few days wandering the house and meowing, which was more heartbreaking than actually saying goodbye to the other cat. She peed on the couch on Monday but has otherwise not changed her ...

While I was making dinner on Thursday night I heard the unmistakable sounds of kitty barf happening in the hallway. I got there too late to move the cat, but realized that she was barfing up a large quantity of white foam and water. As soon as I saw that, my heart sank--that's exactly what has happened the last two times she ate something and got sick . I cleaned up the mess and finished dinner; later I checked the basement (her preferred barfing spot) and found more evidence of a sick cat. Friday morning she was curled up on the downstairs couch, and when I got home last night she was still in the same spot. This morning she made her way upstairs and lay down next to the water dish, looking sadly at it but not drinking. Thankfully the vet's office has Saturday hours, so I decided not to wait until Monday and gave them a call to make an appointment.  Before taking the cat in to the vet, I had already decided that if she had a foreign object in her stomach I wasn't going t...

The Good Girl by Mary Kubica If anyone has been keeping track of my reading habits over the years, they will have noticed that I have a weakness for the "literary thriller of the month" (as I like to call it). I don't read a lot of mysteries otherwise, but every now and then I grab something like this book because it sounds fun. I figured out most of the plot twists in this book before they were revealed, but the ending still managed to have a few more that surprised me. Not the best thriller I've read, but certainly not the worst. The Faraway Nearby by Rebecca Solnit This is the first time I've read anything by Rebecca Solnit, and I fell in love with her beautiful writing and powerful insights. This book is hard to describe; it's a series of essays that are interconnected, and somewhat chronological. It's not quite a memoir and not quite a simple collection of standalone essays--the chapters describe a period of time in her life, with themes and i...

Will Wonders Never Cease by Douglas Thayer Thayer's short stories were among some of the first works of Mormon literature that I ever read, and I loved them. I've read almost all of his work during the last decade or so--some I've enjoyed and some I really haven't. I wasn't sure about this book before I read it; the subtitle and the obvious moralizing agenda put me off a bit. However, it turned out to be better than I thought it would be and I actually enjoyed reading it. Some of his books about teenage boys have not felt very realistic too me, but I felt like he got the voice of his protagonist right this time. That was important since this book has a somewhat thin plot and is mostly a character study. I think it would be interesting to hear the same story from the point of view of his mother since she plays such a large role in this book. I Was Here by Gayle Forman I really liked Forman's If I Stay when I read it a few years ago, particularly for the ...

The first week of February was a good one and I was optimistic about the rest of the month. I had thought I'd post a little more often on the blog, but I didn't after all. Now I want to catch up on February and can't seem to remember anything significant happening. I got really sick during the second week of February--I went to bed on Tuesday night feeling fine, but at some point during the early morning hours I started feeling hot and restless. Thankfully the kids were at Mr. Fob's, as they usually are on Tuesday nights, because by Wednesday morning I felt like I had been run over by a truck. It's been a while since I have been that sick. I managed to crawl out of bed long enough to send some emails to people letting them know I wasn't coming to work. I also took my temperature, confirming that I had a fever, and went back to bed. I knew that if I could get up and fix myself some food, and take some medicine, I'd feel better. I just couldn't do it. Fina...

Wedding Cake by Josi Kilpack This was a fun and suspenseful end to this mystery series; I have enjoyed reading Kilpack's books and think she is a strong writer. She did a great job wrapping everything up in this conclusion--I like the way that each of the books has had its own plot in addition to the ongoing conflicts that have lasted through the series. Sadie is a great character and I loved watching her grow through all the crazy things she went through in each book.  Three Story House by Courtney Miller Santo My reaction to this book was mixed. I think it had a lot of potential but didn't quite come together in the end. First of all, there is a lot of mystery surrounding the house and why it was built, but none of that ever gets resolved or explained in the book. I was expecting some kind of flashback or explanation at some point that would tie together all the hints and answer the questions, but nothing was really resolved. The end matter of the book included a shor...

This has been a busy, but fun, week for me and the kids. On Tuesday we celebrated P. Bibby's birthday--she is a whopping 5 years old now. A fully potty trained, sitting in a booster in the car, going to preschool, big kid. She has always had a fairly mellow, sweet personality and that is still holding true at five. She has her moments of frustration, especially with 2 older siblings who often like to remind her of their wisdom and power, but generally is a happy kid. P. Bibby loves to color and to read books, and she loves her preschool/daycare and all her little friends there. We celebrated with a party the Saturday before her birthday at an indoor play area that has a bunch of giant inflatable slides and bounce houses. Some of her friends from church and school came as well as her cousins. She had a great time with all her friends and I'm so glad I paid the money to let some other place do the entertainment and clean-up for the party. I actually didn't get to see her on h...

I'm not a fan of January--I'm sure you can look back through this blog and find plenty of posts describing all the reasons why this is not one of my favorite months. It's long, cold, and doesn't have any birthdays or anything to make things exciting. The first part of the month is always swallowed by recovery from Christmas break, and I always set too many high expectations for the new year. This January was a mixed bag. The weather was ugly--the entire western part of the country has been stuck under a high pressure ridge that's pushing all the cold and snowy weather to the east. It's been a moderately cold, hazy, polluted month around here. I've barely seen any rain or snow, and it's gotten warm enough for trees to think they need to pop out some buds. I like winter weather and feel sad that we haven't had any this year.  I've settled into work and made plans through the rest of the year. At the end of last November I interviewed for a posi...

(Previous years: 2013 , 2012 , 2011 , 2010 , 2009 , 2008 , 2007 )  I read at total of 74 books this year; this is 14 less than I read in in 2013. I actually feel good about the number going down a bit--I work full-time and I'm in school so I don't have as much free time any more. I still should be doing other things besides reading, but finding balance in my life is still a work in progress. I did read the Whitney finalists for all the adult fiction categories this year, which accounts for 20 of the fiction books (there were 25 finalists, but I had already read some of the books in 2013). I read 61 fiction books and 13 nonfiction books, which seems to be about average for most years for me. I like nonfiction, but that usually means reading books that are dense and need more than a few hours to read. 60 of the books I read were written by women and 14 were written by men; this ratio has gone up and down for me over the years, but generally has been dominated by women. I don...

Marmee and Louisa by Eve LaPlante This was our book club for November, and I thought some parts of it were better than others. I'm not a huge fan of Little Women and I don't know a lot about Louisa May Alcott. I thought the book was most interesting when it discussed Alcott's mother, Abigail, and her life as a woman in early America. The parts about Louisa's life didn't feel as focused to me and if often seemed that the author was making assumptions about what the readers already knew about Alcott. Also, Bronson Alcott mostly seems like a horrible, selfish person in this book, so it might be good to read a biography of him some time to get a little more balance. Painting Kisses by Melanie Jacobson I've loved everything I've read so far by Jacobson, but this was not as good as some of her other books. One of the things I like about her writing is that she writes about contemporary LDS single adults in a way that is very insightful and realistic. This...

Today didn't feel very much like New Year's Eve to me. I had to go to work--this year they changed the paid holidays to the 1st and 2nd to give everyone a four-day weekend. There weren't very many people at work and not a lot to do and I ended up leaving early in order to go to the grocery store and check out some movies at the public library before it closed. We got back from our vacation on Monday night and my brain is still adjusting after being gone for a week, especially since the weather here turned bitterly cold and snowy while we were away.  According to many articles I've seen around the internet, 2014 was kind of a crappy year. Outrage on the internet, Ebola, crazy weather, unrest and protests all over the world, airplane disasters, and so on. I get it--I don't feel like 2014 was my best year either. It feels like the year flew by before I had a chance to even catch my breath and get my feet under me. I spent a lot of time doing homework and not much els...

Angle of Repose by Wallace Stegner It's been a few years since I last read this book and I was craving something more serious after my last fluffy book binge. The more I read Stegner, the more I love his writing. It was also interesting to re-read this book after being divorced--it's a book about marriage and relationships, and I felt like I noticed different things this time around. Big Little Lies by Liane Moriarty Another excellent book about marriages, although written in a very different style from Stegner. I felt like this book combined the best aspects of the two books by Moriarty that I've read previously. It had the hilarious social satire of What Alice Forgot along with the gripping mystery of The Husband's Secret (but without the awkward ending). Sure, the ending of this book was just a bit too tidy, but overall I thought it was really well-done. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova I've had this book on my list for years and never got around...

The Martian by Andy Weir I don't normally read a lot of science fiction, but this book was recommended to me by several people I trust and I thought the premise was intriguing. It was quite a lot of fun to read and rather suspenseful; nice to read something a little out of my usual comfort zone and enjoy it. Vanished Smile: The Mysterious Theft of the Mona Lisa by R.A. Scotti This was our book club pick for the month and I honestly didn't think it was all that exciting. The writing style was a bit dry and it was hard to get into the first few chapters. I think I also didn't enjoy it that much because I've never had strong feelings about the Mona Lisa, and the book didn't do much to convince me that I should. The Language of Flowers by Vanessa Diffenbaugh This was a book that I'd read many good things about, but didn't really care for much at all. I'm usually more willing to suspend disbelief for a plot when the characters are sympathetic, bu...

I took the day off work today--I've had a few sick days saved up for a while and thought it would be good to use one. I had planned on taking the afternoon off, since I had a phone appointment with the counseling center at noon and the kids had their back-to-school thing this afternoon (it used to be back-to-school night, but now for some reason it's in the afternoon). Then when I got up this morning, I just didn't feel like going in to work for only a few hours. So I got dressed and went to the temple instead; it was nice to be there and I felt good afterwards. Then I came home and had my phone appointment with the counseling center on campus--they will call in a few weeks and set up an appointment with me. I get to be some grad student's project for the semester, but at least it is cheap and easy to get to since it is on campus. I think things will be OK--I'm also going to work on getting more sleep and taking better care of myself too. This afternoon I had a fe...