Yellow Wallpaper

The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in the Amazon by David Grann This had the potential to be a good book but it really wasn't. It took me a long time to get through it because I kept getting bored. That's not a good sign. The main problem was just a lack of focus and too much repetition of the same ideas and facts. The story was interesting, but not as interesting as the author seemed to think it was. Right of Thirst by Frank Huyler I had a hard time getting into this book at first, but after a while the story picked up pace and I really enjoyed it. It's an interesting meditation on international aid and on growing older, among other things. The writing is really beautiful and the plot has several twists that I was not expecting. Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet by Jamie Ford I really don't like the title of this book, but it was still a good read and a has a very interesting plot. It alternates between the story of a twelve-year-old boy and his firs...

I really should be; I don't know if it's the cold, the dark, or the lingering effects of the flu (S-Boogie was sick for all of last week), but we've had some rough mornings here this week. And yet I'm still diddling around on the internet. My mom just bought a plane ticket for when the baby gets here. It seems like things are happening fast, and yet there's so much to still happen before that time. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Years. Hopefully buying a house. Hopefully finding money to pay for diapers and for delivery. Part of me wants things to go fast, and part of me just wants to enjoy the next few months when I can sleep at night and we only have to deal with two children. Speaking of two children, Little Dude and I have been having a hard time lately. I think it's partly just being a three-and-a-half year old, partly having recently moved, having his sister go to school all day, and potty training. He's been acting out a lot more than he used...

Today STM wrote a post about a playlist that would reflect her life, and I like the idea so much that I'm copying it here. It's also been a while since I wrote a really interesting post so hopefully this will fill that gaping hole in my blog. I listened to a lot of music while I was growing up and I feel bad that during the last few years I really don't listen to it much anymore. Most of the people in my family are 'music people' and I think I'm not. Maybe I'm just not relzxed enough anymore because the chaos of life with kids is usually just too much for me to handle without adding some background music to the mix. So there aren't really too many songs from the last five years or so, but here's the rest of my playlist: Much of the music we listened to when I was a kid was country music. Old, classic country music. Johnny Cash, Hank Williams, Patsy Cline, Merle Haggard, George Jones, etc. When I was very young we didn't have a television, but we...

Today I finally broke down and bought a big bag of Halloween candy at Target. I'm probably going to have buy another one next week because I don't expect this one to last until next Saturday. Tonight I just realized that the advantage of having a baby in February means that I have free reign during the holidays to eat whatever I want. Awesome.

Several people have asked about our list of countries, so I thought I'd go ahead and post it. I found a list of all the 'sovereign' countries in the world, pasted it into a Word document, and then started paring things down (there were nearly 200 to start with). This list reflects stuff that interests our family and I left a few countries on there for personal reasons that you may or may not want to keep or replace with others. Like there are a lot of Scandinavian ones because we have ancestors from there. Also, since the list was based on 'sovereign' nations, it left off Taiwan and just put Great Britain instead of separating out England, Scotland and Wales. I'm still not sure how we're going to handle that one when we get to it. Anyways, here's my list and you can customize it as you see fit. As far as research goes, I've been able to find a lot at my local library. I'm blessed to live in a city with a library that has a large collection of chi...

So I know I posted a few weeks ago about feeling irritable and guilty and overwhelmed. The other day I realized that another reason for the feeling was the fact that I have gotten into the habit of avoiding doing pretty much everything besides the basics of cooking, laundry, and general kid maintenance. You would think that avoiding difficult things would make you feel better, but instead I had been feeling steadily worse. So the other day I finally started cleaning up and organizing many of the giant piles of stuff sitting around my house. And on Saturday Mr. Fob and I deep cleaned the house as well. Guess what? I feel a lot better. Tonight instead of watching TV I went and ran a few errands that are more pleasant without kids, including a trip to the library to pick up some books. It feels much better to have some productivity in my life. I also decided to start a project that I've been thinking about for a while. We are going to spend the next year or so learning about different...

Apparently the way to invoke bad karma is to write a blog post about how terrible your last week was and to hope that the new one will be better. My cold has not gone away, and last night as I was descending our basement stairs I managed to miss one and fell down the last three or four. My back has been aching all day and I felt miserable; thankfully tonight things seem to be clearing up a bit and hopefully tomorrow I'll feel better. If I'm trying to look on the bright side I can say that I've been taking a lot of hot baths and lying around on my couch for the last week or so. In other news, something I've been hesitant to announce on my blog looks like it might actually come true so I'm going to say it: we're buying a house. Right now in the middle of the process this doesn't feel like 'good news', but I have faith that it will work out and we will be somewhere else in a month. Somewhere without scary stairs to the basement or leaking pipes or incom...

Hopefully this week will be a little better; today is starting to feel that way, especially since right now I'm home alone because Mr. Fob took Little Dude with him to run an errand and my fabulous sister-in-law took S-Boogie to go have fun with her cousins. I should probably be lying down on the couch right now but decided to take a chance and blog instead. Last week was fun, but crazy. Mr. Fob has six siblings, three of whom live in Hawaii. Last week two of his sisters and their families came to visit, plus his dad, so we all went up to a cabin by Bear Lake for a few days. It was fun and a little crazy at the same time. Since we were already most of the way up there, we took a quick day trip up to Wyoming and rode horses at my aunt's house. It was fun, even though the horses were acting kind of crazy since we had some from my uncle and some from my aunt and they weren't too happy about getting together (and no, I didn't get on a horse this time--not a good idea in my ...

The Ghost Map by Steven Johnson I didn't put the subtitle of this book on here because it's really long, but the book is about a cholera epidemic in London during the mid-nineteenth century and the men who figured out how the disease was spreading through the water system. It was a very readable, interesting book about a lot of related topics: epidemics, sociology, history, the development of cities, ecology, and sanitation. I felt that in some places his arguments were not convincing and I didn't agree with his decision in the final chapters to try and tie so many things together, but I generally enjoyed the book. Abide With Me by Elizabeth Strout I really enjoyed reading Olive Kitteridge and so I thought I'd try some of Strout's earlier work. This book also had lovely writing, but I felt that story fell a little flat and I didn't like very many of the characters. 1959: The Year Everything Changed by Fred Kaplan This is another book that had potential to be ...

This morning was, unfortunately, like too many other mornings on school days. The kids dawdled through breakfast and getting dressed while I spent my time repeatedly saying things like "go get dressed", "stop talking and eat breakfast", "we don't have time for that", and so on. By the time we were out the door walking (running) to school I was pretty upset. I realized today that part of the reason why I was upset was because I was just as mad at myself as I was at the kids. Because it's all my fault that they don't get up on time, my fault that they can take thirty minutes to eat a bowl of cereal, my fault that S-Boogie still can't focus enough to get herself dressed without my help. I realized while walking home today that I've fallen into the trap of feeling too much guilt and responsibility. Lately I feel like everything I do is wrong, that everything is totally my fault, and that I'm an utter failure. The problem with this minds...

Right now in the refrigerator we have: string cheese, shredded cheese, cream cheese, feta cheese, sour cream, plain yogurt, Gogurt tubes for lunches, Activia yogurt, milk, and ice cream (in the freezer). Maybe we should try other food groups?

I've been looking forward to tonight's Relief Society broadcast all week, partly for the spiritual uplift and partly for the opportunity to have a nice meal and get out of the house for a little while by myself. Our stake was planning a dinner at 5:00 and then we would watch the broadcast together. I was a little late getting out the door, but still surprised by how full the stake center cultural hall was when I got there. I noticed a sign announcing the event and noting that dinner started at 4:30, so I felt embarrassed and slunk around the back to grab a plate at the buffet. There was a nice spread of pasta and salad, so I filled up my plate and took my seat at a table with an empty spot. There I nodded at the other women seated near me and tried to concentrate on my food while surreptitiously looking around to see if I recognized anyone. I found it odd that I didn't see anyone I recognized at all; I've only been in my ward for a few months but I have started to make ...

Right now I think fall is my favorite season. Of course if you ask me next year I'll probably tell you that spring is my new favorite, but I really like the fall. Where I spent most of my growing up years we didn't see a lot of change in the seasons and it wasn't until we moved to Maryland before my senior year of high school that I understood what kinds of colors the leaves could turn. I love the the colorful trees, the yummy fall foods, and that clear, cold sharpness that shows up in the air one day to signal that fall is here. After spending so many years in school fall also feels like a new beginning to me. I keep remembering my first fall in Utah, settling into my new apartment, learning to live on my own, buying books, making new friends, going to bed with aching legs from walking all over campus. Before coming to BYU I had not spent much time in Utah, especially not in Provo. Each fall that I live here I seem to remember the first time I saw all these places that ar...

A few weeks ago I read an interesting article about parents who forget and leave their children in the car. It was a horrible article to read, but fascinating at the same time. Several things stood out to me from it. First of all, a demographic survey reveals no common link between any of the parents that do this. They are all over the map, and even include parents that have gone through great time and expense to adopt children. It's certainly not a case of neglect or an absence of love. The article pointed out that these parents are often vilified in the media or by law enforcement (in many cases they are arrested and charged with neglect or even manslaughter). The writer theorized that the reason for our visceral reaction to this phenomena is the fact that in our subconscious we are afraid that we could be that normal parent who just forgets, and to escape that fear we must demonize them and turn them into the 'Other', some kind of non-human monster. Another, related poin...

We had our 'big' twenty-week ultrasound today, and to be honest it was sort of anti-climatic. I guess that's part of having three kids; with each one the newness wears off a little. The baby also wasn't moving around very much and insisted on being face-down the entire time so we also didn't get a very good look at much that was cute. We did get to measure all the important things and everything looks great. First of all, we are definitely having another girl. Mr. Fob and I both pretty excited about this; I'd been mentally preparing myself for another boy just so I wouldn't get my hopes up, and was therefore excited to realize that I'm getting what I want after all. Everything looks nice and healthy, and the placenta is at least towards the top and back of my uterus, which is a better place for it than other spots could be. Hopefully the next twenty weeks will just go smoothly and we will have a more calm and peaceful delivery this time around.

To be honest, the biggest reason why I haven't shopped at WalMart for a few years is because it is not close to my house. I'm lazy and would rather drive to a closer store that only takes two minutes rather than ten. Today my mother-in-law asked me to pick something up for her at WalMart, and since I needed some groceries anyway I was happy to oblige. When I hit the produce section I started to question my laziness, because many of the produce prices were lower than my usual store and the produce was just as fresh. But then I tried to find some spinach in the frozen foods section and they were completely out. I had a similar experience trying to find hair detangler for S-Boogie and they only had one set of the curtains my mother-in-law wanted me to buy. Then when I got to the cash register I had to wait several minutes while the cashier chatted with another one who was apparently replacing her. No one looked at me or said anything to me like "sorry, we're changing shif...

David O. McKay and the Rise of Modern Mormonism by Gregory Prince and W. Robert Wright I liked this book quite a lot more than I thought I would; it is long and has extensive footnotes, but the writing is very readable and most of the chapters were very interesting. The book is organized by themes rather than chronologically, so it was occasionally confusing, but other than that it seemed well-written and carefully researched. I learned a lot more about President McKay and the history of the Church during the mid-twentieth century than I had known before, and many issues and ideas that come up now make a lot more sense to me after reading some of the historical precedents for them. I also realized that I am much more interested in recent Church history than in early history; I must be a modernist after all. Gone for Good by Harlan Coben This was another quick, fun read that definitely sucked me in until I finished it. I didn't like it as much as the last Coben book I read ( Tell...

Like I mentioned a while ago, I won a gift certificate for the Homestead Resort , which is up in Midway. Mr. Fob and I went and used it on Friday night and it was fabulous. The only thing I would have done differently is plan the trip to have more time to spend up there. Next time I would like to do more activities, like some bike riding, hiking, or more swimming ( this would be cool). Friday afternoon we dropped the kids off in Salt Lake and headed up to Midway. First we stopped off at the outlets in Park City for a little shopping. I splurged and bought myself two new pairs of maternity jeans; Motherhood is one of the few places I've found petite maternity pants and I'm glad I don't have to spent the winter tripping over my pants. Hopefully I'll keep finding nice shirts on my regular thrift store trips. Now I can't wait for the weather to cool off so I can wear my new pants. After the outlets we drove into Heber and grabbed dinner at Granny's drive-in; then...

I haven't said much about my pregnancy on this blog, especially compared to the last time. That's mostly because there hasn't been a lot to complain about. I spent the first trimester feeling yucky; I didn't have a lot of the more traditional nausea, just severe indigestion and heartburn. It felt like food was just sitting there instead of doing anything after I ate it. I have had phases of nausea as well, especially the kind where everything smells terrible and makes me gag. But I am mostly feeling better right now and hope things start looking up from now on. Thankfully I haven't had too many of my other digestive issues; I think that's because we've transitioned to a mostly vegetarian diet and I am proactive about eating a lot of fiber. I will also confess that I've hardly ever taken my vitamins because the extra iron makes me feel terrible, but I know I'm going to need it even more from this point on so I'm trying to figure out how to work wi...

Mr. Fob called and made reservations for us to use our gift certificate this weekend and I can't wait. The kids are pretty excited because they get to spend time with their cousin and their auntie (and new uncle and cousins probably too). Now I'm just trying to decide what else we will do besides enjoy our suite at the hotel and our scheduled massage session at the spa. Anyone have good ideas for a Friday night in Salt Lake, Park City, or Heber ? Part of me wants to just go through the drive- thru at Chik - fil -A and find a place to have a picnic, but I wonder if we should be more romantic than that. Also, we have two tickets to the outdoor movie at the SCERA shell this Saturday night. They are showing Iron Man. If anyone wants them, let me know. I also have one coupon for buy one/get one free for tickets to the Bedtime Stories night at the Storytelling Festival (Friday Sep. 4) . The tickets for that are normally eight dollars per person (it's best for slightly older kid...