Ramblings

Weekend Ramblings, Feb 25th

2012-02-25T07:35:00.000-06:00

I liked rambling away about miscellaneous stuff last weekend, so I'm going to do it again this weekend. I'm not sure if I'll do this every week, but a ramble or two might appear periodically. :D

The big thing that happened since my last ramblings is that I've started to build my cruise wardrobe. As I'm losing weight much more slowly now (about 2-3 lbs per month), I figure buying some clothes a month before I go won't be a problem. So far, I've acquired a formal dress (though I still need something over my shoulders) and a really cute sundress that is so comfortable! I'm not normally a dress kind of girl, but I loved these:

I also got a swimsuit for the cruise (not going to put up a picture of that, haha!) and new running shoes, a pair of Asics:

Honestly, I didn't want new running shoes. I love my New Balance shoes so much. They are so comfortable. But I've had to face the hard reality that my ankle injury started within weeks of getting those shoes. I've tried everything else to help this injury over the last six months - including taking five weeks completely off exercise - but nothing has helped. The only thing I haven't changed is my shoes. I wear my New Balance shoes as my primary shoes. Any time I put shoes on, those are the ones I use. So even when I wasn't exercising, I was still wearing them. I hope that by getting these new shoes, which do certainly work different parts of my legs when I walk/run in them, I can get past this injury, which has spread into my knee in the last few weeks.

I got the new shoes at Kohl's, and while we were there, I took a fantastic picture of Laurence in this awesome hat. The picture was made even more fantastic when I realized it was so similar to a picture he took right around his 3rd birthday. Laurence will celebrate his 8th birthday in just a few weeks, so it was fun to compare the two pictures, five years apart.

Love!!!!

More exciting news about the kids: We found out this week that Morrigan will get his braces off next Tuesday. Yay! He's had them on since July. He'll need a retainer for a few years, and probably another round of ortho once he's grown up a bit, but we'll be happy to have a braces-free house, at least for a few months (Ambrose will probably start this summer). We asked Morrigan what he wants to eat first when he's post-braces, and he said, "Grape-Nuts! Definitely. And maybe caramel." :D The orthodontist did a great job on his mouth. Here's a comparison of the day he got his braces on versus this week:

Other than that, I decided to take a new facial shot for my one-year Spark anniversary today (yes, I know I said I was quitting, but decided at the last minute to instead delete 2/3rds of my friend list there, to remove the stress, and stick with it). I didn't really think my face had changed all that much in the last four months. I've only lost about 10 lbs altogether in that time. But when I compared with a similar picture I took at that time, I realized just how much of a difference that 10 lbs made in my face:

Woohoo!

That's about it this week!

The Chrestomanci Series, by Diana Wynne Jones

2012-02-24T07:32:00.003-06:00

I decided to review this series as a collect whole rather than write seven individual book reviews. Hopefully this will help keep people from getting annoyed with me as I obsess over my newfound love for Diana Wynne Jones, haha! I do want to say a few words about each book, though, before I talk about the series, so here are my minis:

Charmed Life - I had very mixed feelings about the first book in this series. It was very easy to read, and fast, and interesting, but I was really, really disturbed by the extent of Gwendolyn's indifference towards her brother Cat. Maybe this is because I'm from a family where we're all really close - siblings, cousins, extended fam, all of us - but I was really bothered by it! It ruined the book a little for me, but at the same time, it made me want to read on in the series. There just didn't seem to be enough psychological fallout from the climax, and I hoped that it would be addressed in further books. (Later: Sadly, it was not, and I was left dissatisfied with this book.)

The Lives of Christopher Chant - I enjoyed this one much more than the first book of the series. It's a prequel of sorts, and I loved getting to know Christopher (the famous Crestomanci) and several of the other characters. While I've yet to feel resolved about the issue I had in book #1, I do feel like this book explored the world these characters live in a bit more, and it seems as if corrupt family is fairly normal there, especially when there's magic involved. That makes me feel a little better. And in general, I think this book was better organized and structured than Charmed Life. I feel more invested in the world and characters now.

The Magicians of Caprona - This one started slow but picked up after about a third, and ended up being my favorite of the series so far. It's not centered on Chrestomanci, but instead on a city-state in Italy where two magical families are in a feud, sort of Romeo-and-Juliet-ish. There's of course a lot of statement about blind prejudice and working together, the sort of thing you might expect in a story based on family feud. It didn't feel trite, though. All of that was worked in fairly naturally. There were quite a few startling moments/images in the book, too, which made it very powerful in places. There was one spot at the end that felt a bit too deus ex machina for me, but otherwise, I really enjoyed the book.

Witch Week - I liked this one a lot! It takes place in a parallel world that was very interesting to explore. I thought it was a very well crafted book, leading up to a fantastic resolution. I love that Jones has no qualms about exploring the idea that not every person is destined to become heroic, and that many hold on to negative traits. A character you might love in the beginning might end up turning sour by the end of the book, just like a person you meet in real life might not turn out to be as nice/good as you first thought.

Conrad's Fate - This book was interesting as it was written and structured very differently than the others. I believe it's the first book by Diana Wynne Jones that I've read that's narrated in first person. It's another prequel, taking place after The Lives of Christopher Chant but before Charmed Life. I enjoyed the story, though it was slow to start, and especially loved how twisted and turned the ending got, though glad it still wrapping everything up. I'm not sure I could pick a favorite of the whole series, but if I had to, this one might be it. Though it has some fierce competition with The Magicians of Caprona and Witch Week.

The Pinhoe Egg - As this is the only other full book in the series with Cat in it, I had high hopes that The Pinhoe Egg would help make me feel better about Charmed Life. Sadly, it did not. There was still no psychological fallout from Gwen's actions, and Cat's sister is reduced to a mere blip in his life. In the end, that leaves me to simply find Charmed Life fairly distasteful and my least favorite of the series. The Pinhoe Egg as its own book, however, was really good. After so many books in this series focused on very negative families, it was interesting to see a more moderate working of that idea here - families that aren't necessarily wicked, but misguided. The book was much longer than the others, and like Conrad's Fate, very well put together. I can definitely see the progress in Diana Wynne Jones' writing over time.

Mixed Magics - This was a collection of four Chrestomanci-related stories. There were two that were just okay for me, and two I liked. Of the two that were okay, Warlock at the Wheel was fairly forgettable, and The Sage of Theare was a bit confusing. I did enjoy both Stealer of Souls, which was a story about Cat from Charmed Life and Tonino from The Magicians of Caprona, and Carol Oneir's Hundredth Dream. The last one appealed to me most, because it reminded me a lot of mass writers, the kind that churn out several books a year. That's all I'll say about this book, because I never was good at reviewing story collections, and instead I'll move on to talk about the series as a whole.

About the series - This was the first children's series that I've enjoyed in several years. In some ways, it's light and fast and easy to read, but in others, it has a certain depth to it that gave me, as an adult reader, a lot to think about. What I found myself focusing on primarily were the family issues (understandably, after my reaction to Charmed Life) and on the way Jones built this magical world. I really can't say much more about family that I haven't already said above, so I'm going to talk more about the part of world-building that interested me most.

Jones created a world where magic is very commonplace. Rather than having it hidden and mostly used for good, the way it is in books such as Harry Potter, it's out in the open, and used more often for selfish or manipulative reasons. There are far more evil or unscrupulous magic users in this series than responsible or good magic users. There is also a sort of political divide between them. A good deal of people think that magic users should be left to do whatever they wish with their magic, without government interference, while others believe that regulations and restrictions are necessary to make sure magic remains controlled. The series is interesting, because while the latter view prevails in each book, we also get to see the other side from their point of view. It makes the whole thing far more grey. We also get to see plenty of people who start out feeling like good guys, and who end up selfish, indifferent, or downright evil. There's a definite moral grey area in these books, and not everyone comes out clean. It certainly gave me a lot to think about, and I applaud the world-building here. It was original, and didn't glorify magic, even as it focused on magic the whole time.

Now that I've finished this series, I'm going to take a bit of a break from Diana Wynne Jones. I don't want to burn out. I've read 10 of her books already this year, 7 of them in February, and at least half I've read twice (or more...cough...6 times in the case of Howl...). I've read too much in general this month - 11 books so far - when I wanted to read about half of that. So I'm taking a bit of a reading break, though I still have one more review to get to in the near future, and a longer break from Jones.

Thank you to everyone who recommended the Chrestomanci books to me!!

Determination, or Tired of My Size 16s

2012-02-23T07:10:00.001-06:00

Going into 2011, I was very, very determined to lose a serious amount of weight. There were times when I was not motivated at all, but I stayed determined. I pushed and pushed and pushed. Until early October, when I slammed into a wall.

It was a wall I created myself. From January until early October, my thoughts were primarily consumed with health and fitness. But in late September, I read a book that got me thinking about writing again (The Night Circus), and in early October, I became obsessed with a manuscript. All of my thought processes shifted, and suddenly my focus was on writing, not health and fitness.

I am an all or nothing kind of girl. I always have been. I get these thought obsessions, and everything else goes away. That's not to say I neglect my family or anything like that. But all my spare thought goes into the current obsession. For nine months in 2011, that obsession was weight loss, but for the last five months, it has been all about my book. I do think that it's a mark of my real lifestyle changes that during these five months of all-encompassing obsession, I still exercised and ate well, and managed to lose around 13 lbs. It's a much slower rate of loss than the first three quarters of 2011, but it's still a loss.

However, I am coming out of the writing coma now. My insomnia has been much better since I got bronchitis (go figure), and I feel like I'm waking up in more than one way. I'm taking some time off writing, and I can feel my thoughts re-shifting back to health and fitness. I am tired of losing 2-3 lbs a month. I'm tired of seeing no real progress in pictures. I am tired of injuries and distracted exercise sessions. I am tired of eating while my mind is on something else. I am tired of being in the 180s. I am tired of losing quarter inches in my measurements every month. I am tired of wearing the same clothes I've been wearing for four months, because I haven't gotten small enough to need to replace them. I am tired of my size 16s.

I want to get to a healthy BMI this year. I have another 27 lbs to go until I get there, and it won't happen if I'm only losing 2 lbs per month. It's time to reorganize, renew, and rededicate. It's time to let my willpower and determination shift from writing discipline to weight loss discipline again. Time to put that all-consuming mentality into use again, back into losing weight. It's time.

Top Ten Tuesday: Books I Would Save

2012-02-21T07:10:00.000-06:00

Today for Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, I'm supposed to talk about the top ten books I would save if a natural disaster was about to strike my house. This is an interesting topic, because in this particular case, I would not go for my favorite books. I'm not usually attached to specific physical copies of books, and I am not a book hoarder. Most of my favorite books could be easily be replaced if they were destroyed. The top ten books I would save, instead, would be those that are rare, expensive, or difficult to obtain. Looking at my shelves, this is what I came up with, assuming I can't choose things like school yearbooks and my old journals.

1. my signed copy of Possession by AS Byatt - This is my favorite book ever, and the fact that Jason was able to get me an autographed copy a few years ago makes it even more special, and not easily replaceable.

2. [refuge] - This is a collection of stories, essays, poetry, and photos from the children of the Jenin refugee camp. It's in Arabic and English both, and my brother-in-law gave it to me when I was in Palestine in 2008. It's not for sale anywhere that I know about, and would be impossible to replace.

3. my signed ARC of Matched by Ally Condie - I am not usually attached to author signatures all that much, but Ally Condie was kind enough to sign this specifically for me, knowing that Matched was very similar in concept to my own book, MatchMakers Incorporated. Her signature said that she couldn't wait to read my book one day as well. Meeting her helped me to really helped me to process the whole situation (her book was announced right as I was submitting mine). This is definitely irreplaceable.

4. the ARC of Liar by Justine Larbalestier - This is the first ARC, the one with the white-washed cover on it. I don't keep this out of any particular love - white-washing disgusts me, and I'm so glad they changed the cover in the end - but because I'm sure it's rare, and potentially valuable one day.

5. This is Weird by Patti Wolcott - A children's picture book that I've had since childhood, and not easily findable now.

6. Goodnight NOLA by Cornell P. Landry - A hilarious parody of Goodnight Moon that I bought in New Orleans when my family visited Chris there in 2009. Difficult to find locally.

7. the audiobook of Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov - I love this audiobook, and it's expensive, so I'd save it.

8. the audiobook of The Host by Stephenie Meyer - Same story as #7.

9. Ghost Cat by Beverly Butler - A not-so-popular children's book from the 80s that I adored as a kid. A few years ago, Jason managed to find me a copy on ebay with the exact same cover as the one I had as a kid. It's difficult to find, so I would definitely save it!

10. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte, illustrated by Dame Darcy - This is probably the least important of my saved books, because it's very easily findable these days and not quite as expensive as the audiobooks I own. Still, I would save it. I love this book.

The one thing I had to leave off my list is my Harry Potter collection. I have way too many editions of these books to fit into a top ten list, and I thought it would be peevish to include all 55 books as a single entry...

Boston Cream Pie Cupcakes

2012-02-20T06:58:00.000-06:00

I know I'm a bit early for birthday planning (my birthday is on March 1st), but I've already decided exactly what I want in terms of cake:

Boston Cream Pie Cupcakes. Mmmmmm...

I haven't had Boston cream pie in years. It was one of the very first desserts Jason and I ever made together, either in late 1999 or early 2000. That was the only time we ever made it, for some bizarre reason. We both enjoyed it, but I guess it was a lot of work to make. We don't use shortcut recipes that involve pre-packaged pudding or boxed cake mix. That's no excuse, however - it's been waaaay too long since we had Boston cream pie!

This weekend, we were discussing Laurence's and my upcoming birthdays (both in March), and Jason asked what kind of cakes we wanted. I'm not a big cake fan personally, and most years I either make cookies or a cookie cake for my birthday. This year, however, I suddenly remembered Boston cream pie, out of the blue, and decided to have one for my birthday. Laurence didn't know what Boston cream pie was, so I did an image search for him, and saw a bunch of BOSTON CREAM PIE CUPCAKES. I'm not sure why this appeals to me so much more than the regular kind, but I fell in love immediately. I can't wait to make these!

Weekend Ramblings

2012-02-18T07:28:00.001-06:00

Okay so I have lots of stuff from this week, and rather than try to talk about it all separately, I'm just going to have a big love-fest post with lots of pictures and topics! I hope it doesn't scare any of y'all away. :D

First! Valentine's Day. I know some people are really cynical about Vday, but I enjoy it, probably because Jason thinks of the most fantastic gifts. This year, he crocheted me a little heart-holding hedgehog, and I got these delivered partway through the day:

Aren't they pretty? I love lilies. On top of that, he made some very interesting pink lemonade sugar cookies:

Why yes, they did taste exactly like pink lemonade. Which was weird, but good at the same time. And while you can't necessarily tell from the picture, the cookies themselves were pink, because he used Country Time Pink Lemonade powder/mix in place of the sugar in the sugar cookie recipe.

Then for dinner that night, we followed through with an old tradition:

Heart-shaped pizza. Technically, the tradition didn't start at Vday. Back when we lived in Madison, WI, in 2001, a pizza chain called Rocky Rococo was selling deep-dish heart-shaped pizzas for most of January/February. One night when it was snowing these fat, slow snowflakes, we decided to skip cooking dinner and ordered one of these instead. It amused us so much that we've ordered heart-shaped pizza several times over the years, whenever someone near us offers it. Sadly, I must admit this is the first time we got one from Papa John's, and they made it on thin-crust (stale cracker-like substance that comes out of plastic bags - can you tell I dislike thin crust?), and it was slightly burned, uncut, and not terribly good. Still, we had fun with it!

We saved our actual Vday celebration for last night, because there's really no point in trying to get a babysitter and a reservation somewhere on Vday itself. So yesterday, we dropped the kids off at Grandpa's house, and had a date night. We bowled a couple games, then went to dinner and then for gelato, mmm.

Besides Vday celebrations this week, we also spent Wednesday evening at Rackspace, where Jason works, for a ribbon-cutting celebration. We missed the ribbon-cutting itself, but were there for the party. There was lots of yummy food - little mini-quiches, chicken kebabs with peppers and pineapple, meatballs on toothpicks, bread pudding, mmm... And Jason took us on a tour. One of the coolest things about Rackspace is that it's housed in a converted old mall. The mall closed down years ago, and Rackspace bought it and has been fixing it up. They're a very odd kind of company that likes to keep their employees amused with everything from game rooms to snack stations to tetherball to a giant slide from the second to first floor.

That's the slide, and me about to go down it for the first time.

They also bought up the cars that used to belong to a skyride that went from the zoo over some Japanese tea gardens we have here in town. The ride shut down years ago, probably due to safety issues, and the cars now sit around the slide area at Rackspace to be used as mini conference areas.

How fun is that?

There was also a magic show going on at this Rackspace party, which was actually really good. I have no idea how the magician pulled off several of his tricks. Morrigan got up and volunteered for one, and he said even up close, he's not sure how the guy did what he did. Here's a picture of Morrigan up on stage with the magician:

So that was our Wednesday party. The boys also had a Math and Science Night on Thursday, where I heard there were several very interesting science experiments (and a finale that somehow involved eggs...), but I rested at home that night so I have no firsthand experience to report. I do know they all enjoyed it.

Is this post long enough yet?? Well, I might as well answer the questions Trisha from Eclectic/Eccentric tagged with me. I've put it off for a week because some of them are HARD. You are an evil woman, Trisha! :D

1. What is your favorite piece of art?
Not a specific piece, but I really love the works of William Adolph Bouguereau and Camille Claudel, both of which I've seen in the originals. Not all of them, of course, but some. I got to see Claudel's work at the Rodin museum in Paris, and Bouguereau had several pieces at one of the museums in Houston.

2. What literary character do you think would make an awesome world leader?
I have absolutely no idea.

3. What color do you think should be outlawed from clothing?
Pink, or perhaps anything in the "neon" spectrum.

4. Hats. Yes or no?
On me? Absolutely not. On women? Depends on the hat. On men? Yes please! Especially formal hats - fedoras, bowlers, pork pies, mmm...

5. What contemporary novel should be added to the high school curriculum?
The Hunger Games trilogy. Fun, but with a lot of statements about war, society, politics, oppression, and all sorts of things that could turn into great supplementary classroom discussion.

6. What book featuring real people do you think could work if the characters were switched to animals?
None of them. I don't like books where the characters are all animals, generally. I guess if I HAD to choose one, Harry Potter could probably work with animal characters. But GAH it makes me shudder...

7. Genetically designed humans. Hell yes or absolutely not?
No. I'm having Gattaca flashbacks now.

8. What book would you like to see get parodied a la Pride and Prejudice and Zombies?
Lolita! I think Lolita and Zombies sounds awesome.

9. What book would you absolutely hate to see get parodied?
I wasn't sure how to answer this one, and then I saw Jill's answer of Jane Eyre, and I'm going to heartily agree with her.

10. TV. Awesome source of entertainment or horrifying time suck?
Can be both. Since I no longer get TV, it's neither for me.

11. What literary character should immediately jump off the page and into your bed?
I'm sure I could think of many, but the first one that comes to mind is Howl from Howl's Moving Castle. Yes, I'm still obsessed. And it would definitely have to be my bed, because his is waaaay too dirty.

Now the meme says I'm supposed to make up my own questions and tag people, but I'm not, sorry. I'm no good at that. I'm just proud of myself for finally answering these! :D

So that's it. My rambles. I hope you all are having a great weekend! :)

Revising my Bucket List

2012-02-17T06:55:00.000-06:00

So back in late 2009, I made a list of 50 things I wanted to do before I die. In the 2+ years since that time, I've completed 13 of them, which isn't too shabby. But in that time, I've also changed as a person, and some of the goals on that list are no longer relevant or desirous for me. People change, and goals change. I took a look at this list this past weekend, and realized there were 6 in all that I wanted to remove.

Here's the trouble, though - I like having an even 50! I'm such a numbers nerd, and the idea of having 44 things in my bucket list is just unfathomable. If I'm going to remove 6 goals, I'm going to have to replace them with 6 more.

Since the weekend, I've managed to replace 5 of the 6 goals. Now, I need your help. What do you think should be my last goal for my bucket list? It doesn't have to be anything big or grand. I'm looking for all sorts of suggestions. :)

Cakes and Ale, by William Somerset Maugham

2012-02-16T06:59:00.000-06:00

I have read quite a few books by Maugham in the last decade or so, maybe 15-16 in all. He's one of my favorite authors. Having said that, I must admit that Cakes and Ale didn't live up to his normal standard. The book is very muddled. The back of the book description says that this is about a writer named Alroy Kear who is tasked with writing a biography of the late author Edward Driffield, with the complication that Driffield's second wife is determined to wipe away all trace of his first wife in the process. Instead, this book is about Willie Ashenden, a colleague of Kear's, who knew Edward Driffield and his first wife in his youth. Kear and the second Mrs. Driffield are hardly in the book at all, there's no real hint of wife #2 trying to eliminate wife #1, and most of the story is told in a series of flashbacks.

Normally Maugham is very straightforward and to the point, but not so in Cakes and Ale. There are long sections of the book that meander pointlessly, that have nothing to do with the central story, especially in the beginning, almost as if Maugham wasn't quite sure where he was going yet. There are sections in the middle when the story is interrupted in order for the narrator (ie Maugham) to question whether he's gone about writing this novel the right way. The book lacks Maugham's normal confidence and surety. The result was unsatisfactory, and downright boring in many places.

On the other hand, I will give Maugham credit where it is due. Even at his worst, he always gives me something to think about. Hidden in all the muddle here was an interesting discussion on appearance and judgement. All sorts of people were judged by their appearances and reputation, rather than on their behavior. Take, for instance, a man by the nickname of Lord George. In reality, he's a poor coal merchant, not a lord, but he wears suits and hats, and he treats everyone equally no matter what their station. People despise him because they think he ought to stick to his place in society, rather than acting "above his station." Despite the fact that he is kind, generous, and friendly, people shun him. One quote about him in particular stood out to me:

They could not forgive him because he had always been so noisy and boisterous, because he had chaffed them and stood them drinks and given them garden parties, because he had driven such a smart trap and worn his brown billycock hat at such a rakish angle.

Whereas the one person who really sees Lord George for who is he says the following:

He was always such a perfect gentleman.

The issue of appearance is also brought up via the book Kear is supposed to write about Driffield. Driffield had many faults, and Kear is keen to cover them all up. There is a difference, he says, between private life and public image, and it's important to keep the private faults hidden so that the public image can remain untainted and unflawed. He says to Ashenden:

Of course, all this is between ourselves; I'm merely telling it to show you that in writing his life I shall have to use a good deal of tact...I don't want to say anything that's untrue, but I do think there's a certain amount that's better left unsaid.

Maugham explores the question of appearances all throughout Cakes and Ale, and it was the one thing that really kept me interested all the way through. Otherwise, I'm afraid, the book just didn't impress me. It certainly won't be added to my favorites among Maugham's works.

Valentine

2012-02-14T06:55:00.001-06:00

The most beautiful and personal gift I ever received came to me on Valentine's Day five years ago. Each scroll inside the heart lists one reason why he loves me.

When Popularity Attacks

2012-02-13T06:40:00.001-06:00

There are some people out there who thrive on popularity and social successes, but I am not one of them. I am not a loner by any stretch of the imagination, but I much prefer to have a small knot of good friends than a huge mass of acquaintance-like friends. Those of you who have been with me on this blogging journey for a long time will recognize this about me. I mean, the biggest reason I eventually left The Zen Leaf behind was that my blog was catapulted into something way too big for me to handle. I was comfortable with a moderate-sized blog, but not at all with something gigantic. I am very, very happy with my little corner of the web now. It's so much smaller, but I know the people here. I love you guys!

Unfortunately, in my recent past, the same thing has happened to me on Sparkpeople. I've been using Sparkpeople to help me on my weight loss journey for almost a year now. I liked Spark. No, I didn't really follow its food plans, and I rarely counted calories, and I didn't use its recommendations on a lot of things, but Spark had one really great thing: it kept me going on my weight loss journey when normally I get bored and lazy after 4-5 months. I was comfortable there. Until the last few months, when people started to notice me. I had finally lost enough weight that people started to see me as an inspiration, and with that came a whole myriad of new friends. I suddenly became very, very popular, far more than I am comfortable with!

In the last month, I've avoided using the site because it's too overwhelming. I've been unable to connect with my core group of friends because my friend list was flooded by new people. I'm too nice and feel too guilty to just delete anyone out of my friend list, and there's no way to filter people out so I only view certain friends the way you can on Facebook. At the same time, I feel so much pressure on Spark to be "inspirational" now that it makes me want to give up my weight loss journey completely, just to make that pressure go away. NOT GOOD.

So I've done the only thing I can do: Today, I announced that I'm shutting down my Spark account. I hope that I can still connect with my friends there, through facebook or blogging or twitter or email, but one way or another, popularity attacked, and I find myself retreating as I usually do. Sigh.

Now I'm not giving up my weight loss journey or anything. I quit Spark in order to keep going on it. But right now, I feel this immense guilt for retreating, as if I'm letting everyone down. I just can't be what I feel like everyone wants me to be, though. I can't be the rock star Sparker with a whole collection of fans. I'm interested in friends, in getting to know people, in encouraging them and having them encourage me. I still have a long way to go, 30-40 lbs, and I'm approaching the hardest part of my journey now, the part I've never gotten past before, so I am going to need a lot of support. I can't get support on Spark if I'm avoiding the site because it's too overwhelming for me! In other words, I'm trying to do what's best for me here, even if I feel soooo much guilt in doing it.

I wish I had a better solution.

ETA: After talking with several friends and my husband this week, I decided instead to suck it up and delete those people on Spark that I'm not close to. There's no reason to get rid of the whole batch of cookies because a couple of them burned. So I'm minimizing my presence there, but will still be around.

Mindless Eating, by Brian Wansink (audio)

2012-02-11T07:12:00.005-06:00

I have been fascinated by mindful eating and food psychology for a long time. Back when I first began my weight loss journey at Thanksgiving of 2009, I started with only two ideas in mind: eat only when I was hungry, and exercise more. Eventually that bloomed into a few more guidelines, but the general principles of my weight loss journey remained constant: eat healthier-but-reasonable food only when my body needed fuel, and spend some time up off my butt every day. I never saw any reason to eliminate foods from my diet completely, or to cut my calories so much that I was perpetually hungry, and that has enabled me to keep going for over two years.

Mindless Eating is based on those same general principles. It doesn't talk about how to diet, but instead tries to make people aware of how our environment affects how much we eat. People are fooled into eating larger portions by all sorts of things: short glasses, big bowls, big boxes, label wording, etc. We may think we aren't fooled, but time and time again, studies have shown that even people who know and study this material for a living can be fooled into eating more by specific cues.

Brian Wansink walks us through study after study of all the ways people can be fooled, and then offers tips to help us redesign our personal food environment so that we can eliminate those cues. His book is not designed to help people lose 100 lbs in a year, but instead to help reverse the obesity trend. Most people do not gain weight in giant bursts, but in a slow trend over many years by overeating in what Wansink calls the mindless margin. A person can eat a couple hundred calories more or less than what their body requires to maintain its weight without noticing it by hunger or feeling too full. If you're overeating those couple hundred calories every day, you may add 10-20 lbs in a year. If you undereat those couple hundred calories, you may lose the same, without ever feeling like you've been on a diet. This is what Wansink stresses.

One of the most interesting things in the book to me was a fact that he puts out near the beginning of Mindless Eating. Since I listened to this on audio and don't have a print copy in front of me, I can't give the exact quote, but to paraphrase: If you lose more than about half a pound per week, your metabolism will go into some form of conservation mode. This blew me away. I've always known my body was sensitive to starvation mode. If I try to lose more than about a pound a week, I start holding steady instead, or gaining, despite eating less or exercising more. I figured about a pound per week was okay to hold off starvation mode, but apparently, even losing at that rate can mess with your metabolism, at least according to studies. Of course, most people who need to lose a lot of weight aren't going to be interested in losing roughly 26 lbs per year. At the same time, painlessly losing half a pound a week by making a few tweaks to your eating habits is better than making major overhauls to your diet that you'll give up on after a month, which is how many people approach weight loss.

There is a lot of really good information in this book, both about food psychology in general and in practical tips for helping people reverse the trend of slow, mindless weight gain. There is not a lot of information about mindful eating, which is one of the things I'd hoped for when I began it. Instead, it focuses on turning mindless eating to our advantage, and helping us to lose weight without ever realizing we're losing it.

Performance: This audiobook is narrated Marc Cashman, who does a great job with the reading. I do wish I'd read the print version of this, however, because there seems to be a lot of tables, charts, and visual representations in the book that were read out to me. I would have preferred to see them, and I'm thinking about getting my hands on a print copy just for those parts.

Weekend Cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads. Check it out for more food-related posts.

Absence

2012-02-09T08:53:00.002-06:00

Sorry I've been away from the blog so much lately. Between bronchitis, feeling unmoored after finishing my last manuscript, and some MAJOR behavioral issues Morrigan's having at school, my mind has not been in a good blogging place.

I have read a couple books lately. Been reading faster than I want to, actually. I've read the first two books of the Chrestomanci series, though I've decided to review that series as a whole rather than individually, to save you all from my current Diana Wynne Jones obsession. I also finished The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler, which was a lot of fun to read even though the writing and characterization were awful awful awful. It's my first less-than-3-stars book of the year, and won't warrant a review at all. And lastly, I finished the audio of Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink, a fantastic book. I do hope to get around to reviewing that one in the near future. Perhaps this weekend.

Mostly I'm just trucking along here. Trying to exercise a little though my lungs are still protesting, dealing with lots of stress, trying not to stress-eat, finally sleeping again (I really hope this round of insomnia is broken now!), etc. I'll be back to my blog at some point, though I'm not sure exactly when.

Unmoored

2012-02-06T07:35:00.004-06:00

There's a feeling that comes at the end of a long project, when suddenly, you've nothing left to do. Without another project to immediately take up the time the old one took, you suddenly have empty hours on your hands. How did I used to fill these hours, before I began to write again in October? What did I do with myself?

(Photo Credit)

I feel a little lost. I've been unmoored for the last month or so, and my temporary solution has simply been to throw myself back into my novel-in-progress, doing edits or even just reading the manuscript over and over, spending more time with these characters. I need to quit doing that, though, first because I need some distance from it before I can see it clearly, and second because I'm driving myself down into a depression. It's time to escape these particular bonds, not continue to tether myself to them when they've grown worn and thin.

I need something else to throw myself into. I need a new mooring post.

Je L'Aimais, by Anna Gavalda

2012-02-03T15:27:00.001-06:00

English title: Someone I Loved

Chloe's husband has just abandoned her and their two daughters for another woman. Lost and reeling, Chloe ends up staying at a remote farmhouse with her father-in-law. He tells her a story from his own life, which brings into question duty, love, relationships, and happiness.

I read this book in its original French (thank you Caroline for the suggestion!), and I want to talk a little bit about that experience before moving on to my thoughts on the book as a whole. It was one of my goals this year to read at least two books in the original French, one modern, and one classic. It's been about eight months since I finished reading the Harry Potter series in French, and I didn't want to let my semi-passing competence in the language drop. I also picked up the English version of the book to refer back to, in case I had difficulty with the French.

I'm pleased to say that I understood about 90% of the book in the original. Periodically there would be vocabulary that I didn't recognize, or phrases/idioms, or some of the grammar structure would trip me up, but for the most part, I could read through the book fluidly. I read each chapter/section in English after the French to verify that I was catching everything, and I was! The book was remarkably easy to read, and easier as I got back into the rhythm of the language. I started by translating to English in my head, but ended by just reading the French - it was easier to understand that way. I am very happy about this! I know there's little chance I'll ever be completely fluent, what with living no where near anyone else who speaks French, but I'm glad I have a few ways to keep on going with this.

As for the book, it was beautiful. This turned out to be a really good choice. I tried to get my hands on every book you guys suggested for me on my plea for help post, and this was literally the only one available from the library. So it's a really good thing that it turned out to be so great. The synopsis I gave above can't really do it justice. This is a story within a story, the story of an affair, but most important, it explores the complex question of what makes an action "right" or "wrong."

The story is one you hear all the time - a man, caught between a wife and a lover. A situation that may seem very clear-cut, but isn't. A person can rationalize and moralize all they want, but when you break down those arguments, you find that nothing is so black and white. Is there ever a time when leaving is justified? Can it be better for the wife if her husband cuts ties? Would she prefer to stay with a man who does not love her, or suffer the pain of his leaving? Can great pain and breakage lead to happier lives for all parties, in the long run? Does happiness trump duty, and if not, what comes of duty to oneself? There is no clear-cut answer given in this book. It's just an exploration, showing that there are multiple answers, and that no one way is right. There were a few passages of the book that I just loved so much, and I wish I could quote them in French because they're better in the original, but I know most of my readers don't read French so here they are in English:

...I would rather see you suffer a lot today rather than suffer a little bit for the rest of your life. I see people suffering a little, only a little, not much at all, just enough to ruin their lives completely... People who are still together because they're crushed under the weight of that miserable little thing - their ordinary little life. All those compromises, all of those contradictions... Regrets, remorse, cracks and compromises that don't heal over, that never heal. Never!

And then this one:

Happiness had been mine, and I had let it slip away in order to not complicate my life.

This book hit me on such a personal level, not because of my own marriage, but because of marriages of people I've been close to over the years, including my own parents' marriage (which ended when I was a teenager). I won't divulge the details of any of those, of course, and so therefore can't really pinpoint in this review exactly why the book touched me so much, but I hope it will be enough to say that I have seen situations like this enough times to understand that there is always more than one side to every story, and that even the person who looks most like the bad guy isn't necessarily bad. In an ideal world, there wouldn't be situations like this. We wouldn't fall in love with someone other. We wouldn't fall out of love, or marry for duty, or live in silent pain. But ours is not an ideal world, and I love that this book sits right in the messy center of it.

Sick

2012-01-31T07:16:00.003-06:00

I'm going to take a few minutes to just whine. Two days ago, I felt fine. A little muscle-sore from raking my yard on Saturday, but otherwise in perfect health. Yesterday, I woke up with an unexpected cough. It felt like someone was pressing down on the spot where your lungs meet your esophagus, and I couldn't cough it away. By noon, it felt like I was having an allergic reaction to something. I thought maybe I'd eaten something out of the ordinary, or I'd stirred up something while raking Saturday. I took some benedryl, hoping that would help.

Well, it didn't help the coughing, but it made me sleepy and I ended up laying in bed for 2.5 hours yesterday afternoon. I barely slept, because I was freezing cold even with three blankets on, only I was too brain-fuzzed to realize that probably meant I had a fever. When I finally got up, I confirmed that I did indeed had a fever, which eventually crawled to over 101 degrees by 8pm. I'm allergic to acetaminophen, so I can only take ibuprofen for fevers, and really nothing for cough because the majority of cough-and-cold meds have acetaminophen in them. Sigh.

I did manage to sleep for about nine hours last night, only waking up twice to take more ibuprofen. I hope to be able to get in to a doctor today. I'm not sure what this is, but it feels a whole lot like when I had bronchitis last year in March. I'm coughing continuously, have a fever that has not dropped below 99.5 in almost 24 hours, and my heart is racing at over 120 bpm even while I'm laying down. I just hope this doesn't turn out to be a flu! Thankfully there are no stomach symptoms yet. I'm not sure I could handle stomach trouble on top of everything else.

So depending on how long this takes to go away, I might not be around too much for the next week. I've already hit "mark all as read" in my google reader, wiping out all the posts from the last week that I hadn't caught up on. Sorry about that. One of these days I'll get around to responding to comments etc again. In the meantime, I'm off to lay down and watch a movie or something again.

ETA: Doctor confirms I have bronchitis. Well, at least it's not flu, I guess...

Weekend Cooking: Mujadeera

2012-01-28T14:06:00.007-06:00

Back at Thanksgiving, I put up a Weekend Cooking post that mentioned offhandedly a Middle Eastern rice dish that my brother-in-law, Rami, brought to Thanksgiving dinner. I didn't know exactly what it was at the time, or how to make it, but have since gotten that information!

The dish is called Mujadeera (or variant spelling thereof), and is made with onions, rice, and lentils. Rami gave us a recipe of sorts, but it's one of those meals that is made mostly by intuition rather than instruction. In fact, the "recipe" we got was simply the notes my sister made while watching him make the meal. No measurements, nothing specific - more of a method than a recipe. Still, I'll share, because it's really, really delicious! The measurements I used here are from when Jason made it for us (pictured above).

Ingredients:
2.5 cups of lentils
2 cups of rice (basmati is best)
3-4 onions
2-4 tbsp olive oil

Method:
Boil lentils in a quart of water until they are tender but not falling apart. If there's any water left after they reach this stage, drain it off. While they are boiling, coarsely chop onions and caramelize them in the oil until they are transparent and tender. Add rice and 4 cups of water to the onions. Boil until the rice is cooked but not sticky (drain off any excess water here, too). Pour the rice and onion mixture into the cooked lentils. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Serve with a dollop or three of plain yogurt.

This has seriously become one of my favorite meals ever!!

Update: After I posted this, Rami contacted me to let me know that Jason didn't quite transcribe the recipe directly. So here are the updated instructions. Both recipes taste very similar, but Rami's is far less sticky and obviously much more authentic! Here's what he had to say:

Ingredients:
Brown lentils
Rice
Vermicelli
Onion
Salt
Water
Olive Oil

Method:
Soak the lentils for 2-3 hours, then boil them until cooked and drain excess water into a bowl (keep the water). Lightly fry the vermicelli in oil, and then add the dry rice and the cooked lentils. Stir them for a minute, and then add the water that you used to cook the lentils. Bring them to boil for few minutes, and then take the pot off the stove and cover it totally with a towel until the rice absorbs the water. Then caramelize the chopped onion and add it to the lentil/rice/vermicelli mix. Salt to taste.

Thanks Rami!! :)

Weekend Cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads. Check it out for more food-related posts.

House of Many Ways, by Diana Wynne Jones (audio)

2012-01-26T08:09:00.000-06:00

I know, I know - I've become obsessed with Diana Wynne Jones and the Howl series these last few weeks. But this is the last of the three, so it's the last time you'll have to hear me talk about Howl, though I can't guarantee it'll be the last time I talk about Diana Wynne Jones this year. She's fast becoming one of my new favorite authors, and I have several more books by her on hold for me at the library!

House of Many Ways is the third book in the Howl series, and like Castle in the Air, it is more a companion novel than a direct sequel. Once again, this book takes place a couple years after the last book, and we get to see where several of our favorite characters have gotten to in the last little while. There is more of Sophie, Howl, and Calcifer in this book, which made me happy. The setting is High Norland, a small country in the same world as Ingary. The royal wizard of High Norland has become ill, so his great-great niece, Charmain, comes to look after his very strange house while he is away being treated. Charmain is a big bookworm and doesn't know anything about magic or taking care of houses, which makes her life in this house quite interesting.

I think I liked this book almost as much as the first book, and definitely better than the second. I adored Charmain and several of the other new characters, and I laughed all through the sections with the old characters. There seemed to be less mystery to this book than the others, so I didn't spend as much time playing guessing games with the plot, though there was, of course, some good reveals at the end. I do think some of the end was wrapped up a bit too quickly. I would have liked to explore a few more things, like how/why the rocking horses were "protection," and how Charmain's magic worked, and maybe a resolution for Charmain and Peter's friendship. In general, I just wanted more more more at the end. It makes me sad that there are no more books about all these characters.

These are such fun books. I'm really looking forward to reading others by Diana Wynne Jones now, and I'm bummed that only one other of hers (Enchanted Glass) is available in audio from my library, as I've really enjoyed listening to these three. But by now, I'm willing to read the print versions too, so I have a large selection to dig into!

Performance: Jenny Sterlin, as usual, did a fantastic job with the narration of this book, especially with Howl's rather odd vocal choices. These have definitely made my top audiobooks list, and she had become one of my favorite narrators!

Taking a break from this weight loss stuff.

2012-01-25T07:53:00.004-06:00

The last four months have been very frustrating for me. In early October, while planning for my NaNoWriMo project, I got insomnia. It's not the kind of insomnia where you can't fall asleep at night, but the kind where you wake up in the middle of the night and can't get back to sleep. Sleep is very important to me. When my sleep gets disordered, I break down completely. My body stops functioning properly, I lose my short term memory, and I get depressed, tired, scatterbrained, and disorganized. Physically, my heart rate slows, as well as my metabolism, and my rate of weight loss cuts in half. Since early October, I've only lost 2-3 lbs a month, when I used to average 5-6 lbs.

(early Oct versus mid Jan - I've hardly gone anywhere!)

This is incredibly frustrating. I've done every experiment I can think of to jumpstart my weight loss again, and nothing works. If all the exercise and food experiments do nothing for me, and this slowed level of loss started at the same time as the insomnia, it stands to reason that nothing is going to work until I get the sleep under control. I've suffered from this kind of insomnia all my life, but it normally goes away after a few weeks. This is the only time ever that it's lasted this long.

No, I have not gone to a doctor. I haven't found a decent doctor in San Antonio in the six years I've lived here (the ones I've found have ranged from fraudulent to dangerous), and Jason's insurance is terrible anyway. I've tried every other trick in the book for insomnia, and I think I'm just going to have to wait this out. Eventually, it will go away, or I'll find a doctor.

In the meantime, though, I'm tired of trying to lose weight against my body's will. I'm declaring myself officially on weight loss break through Easter. That will take me right through Valentine's day, my birthday, four other family birthdays, and my honeymoon. That's just over 10 weeks altogether. In that time, I will still eat healthy food and avoid eating junk or eating out a lot, but I won't count calories or anything like that. I will keep up with my exercise, maintaining my fitness level and building muscle. I will try not to obsess about the scale. I can't say that I won't obsess a little, but I will try not to. I need a break from the mental aspects of this journey more than anything else.

Hopefully, a 2.5-month break from this journey will help my body reset. I want to get my sleep back under control, and start mentally fresh in April when I resume. Wish me luck!

Top Ten Tuesday: Books to Revisit

2012-01-24T06:25:00.000-06:00

Today for Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by The Broke and the Bookish, we get to create our own list! I'm going to talk about the top ten books that I like to revisit.

It's no secret that I love rereading books. Just this month, I read Howl's Moving Castle four times, and the sequel, Castle in the Air, twice. I have no problem reading the same book multiple times in a row, or reading a book every year or every couple years (*coughHarryPottercough*). There are, of course, some books I would never bother to reread, but for the ones I really enjoy, I adore the rereading process.

My list today celebrates my favorite books to reread. To qualify, I must have been rereading them at least for several years now (thus, for instance, while Howl will probably qualify in a few years, I left it off of today's list). Here goes:

1. The Harry Potter series by JK Rowling - I'll just get this one out of the way immediately. Since I first started reading these in 2005, right after Half Blood Prince came out, I've read them around 30 times each. I've read them in French, compared hardback/paperback versions, and collected the first book in tons of different languages. Yes, I am Harry Potter obsessed, and proud of it. :D I reread these at least once every year.

2. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller - I first read this one for a satire-in-literature course in college. I'm not sure I really understood most of the book then, but I did like many parts, and since then, I've reread it 4-5 times. Every time, I like it just a bit better. Jason and I quote it to each other all the time. :D

3. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway - My cousin Jen told me just how BORING this book was back in high school, so I avoided it for years. Then in 2001, I decided to read it as part of my weekly read project, and ended up adoring the book. Not boring at all! I can't remember how many times I've reread it, though I don't think I have since I started blogging. I should rectify that. I've wanted to revisit it for several years now and haven't solely because of all the new-to-me books available. So neglectful!

4. Possession by AS Byatt - This is my absolute very favorite book ever, one that struck me on such an emotional level on first read that I'm not sure how it will ever be surpassed. I've only reread it twice since then, because it's the sort of book that is better revisited only every 3-4 years rather than yearly. It will be time again in another year or so. Every time I read this, I love it more.

5. Insomnia by Stephen King - I'm not a big fan of King in general, but I love this book. I think I first read it in late high school or early college, and something about it just stuck with me. It's another one I've come back to every couple years, though like with The Old Man and the Sea, I've neglected it since I began blogging! Another thing to rectify.

6. The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder - This was my favorite book as a child, and I used to read it multiple times a year. As I got older, I set it aside and it disappeared, but I rediscovered it a few years ago and it was great to revisit!

7. The Painted Veil by William Somerset Maugham - There are actually several Maugham books that I've reread several times in the last decade, but of them, I think The Painted Veil is the one I've read most and which most stands up to reread. I can definitely see myself reading it several more times!

8. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith - Every year in December, I get the urge to reread this book. I'm not sure why I associate it with Christmas. Perhaps the first time I read it, it was at that time of year? Either way, it's the perfect December read for me, comforting and gentle.

9. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson - First discovered in late 2006, reread about five times since then, plus the graphic novel version. The atmospheric writing of this book makes it perfect for reread for me, especially if I'm struggling with my own writing.

10. The Hunger Games trilogy by Suzanne Collins - In the first year that I was introduced to The Hunger Games, I read it four times. I didn't particularly like Catching Fire, so I didn't multi-read it, but when Mockingjay came out, I ended up reading the trilogy three times in a row. I've also just acquired all the audiobooks to revisit before the movie comes out. This is definitely the newest-rereads books on this list, and barely qualify as I only discovered them about three years ago, but I know they are ones I will continue to reread in the future.

Honorable mention goes to Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux. I'm not sure I even like that book, and yet I've read it three times in the last five years, and plan to reread it again this fall in the original French. Something about it just makes me want to reread it over and over, despite being disappointed every time. I have such a weird love-hate relationship with that book.

So that's my top ten! What are some of your favorite books to reread?

Cinder, by Marissa Meyer

2012-01-23T07:13:00.001-06:00

Cinder is a retelling of Cinderella, set in future-world China on a background of cyborgs and plague and intergalactic politics.

I'll be short with this review. I wasn't sure I would like this book. It seemed everyone was reading it, and I wanted to see what all the fuss was about. Since Cinder was YA, a fairy tale retelling, and the first book of a series, though, it had quite a few personal marks against it before I began. I sort of expected to pick it up from the library, read a few pages, and turn it back in unread. But I didn't. I was hooked right from the first chapter.

The writing is good, far better than I expected it to be. I loved the world-building, and the careful way the original fairy tale unfolded in this format. I liked that it was set in future-world China, which is not something I've ever read before, and I do hope more of that is explored in future installments. I loved the cyborgs and learning about the prejudices that evolved in this world.

There were things I didn't like as well. I thought the book would have been ten times better if 1) it was a standalone novel with a straight-forward ending, and 2) the whole lunar people part of the plot had been left out completely. I found the lunar people plot to be both superfluous and extraordinarily predictable. There's a small detail mentioned in the first 50 pages of the book that is obvious instantly, but turns out to be the "big reveal" at the end of Cinder, which was a let-down because it wasn't really a reveal at all. All the lunar stuff bogged down the ending and made it both rushed and confusing, not to mention the grates-on-my-nerves-by-now lack of any closure. If that subplot had been left out and Cinder had been a standalone focusing on plague and cyborg prejudice, I personally think it would have been a more solid book.

But that's just my opinion, and I know others will disagree. And regardless of my irritation at all of that, I do plan to read the next book in the series when it comes out. I really liked the story and the characters and the world that Cinder was set in. I do wonder how the rest of the books will pan out since nearly all of the Cinderella tale is told in this one...

Need your help!

2012-01-22T07:55:00.001-06:00

One of my 2012 goals is to read two books in their original French this year, one of them modern, one of them classic. I already know what I'm going to read for my classic. I plan to read Phantom of the Opera because apparently nearly all of the English translations are incomplete! That will be next fall, in the RIP time period. What I need your help with is finding a modern book originally written in French. I'm having a really difficult time with this!

I looked through my Goodreads list of translations, and nearly all of my French translations are classics! There are only two modern books on there - The Elegance of the Hedgehog and Persepolis. The former, I think would be too difficult to read. It was difficult enough in English! The latter, I tried to order through the library's ILL system, and no library in the country was willing to lend it to me. Ugh!

I looked through my library's catalog of all books currently-in-french, originally-in-french, and there is a very, very limited selection, none of which I've ever even heard of. I checked out L'Amant (The Lover) by Marguerite Duras and tried to read it. I got about 40 pages in and thought that I simply couldn't be understanding it properly (it made no sense), so I checked out the English version and discovered that I had understood it. That's simply the way the book is written, with no real plot or steady point of view or anything, jumping around and very dreamy/symbolic. It's pretentiously-poetic, the sort of book I absolutely can't stand, so if I dislike it in English, why should I bother reading it in French?? I returned both copies as DNFs. But now, I don't know what to do. I could choose another random pick from the library's tiny selection, but I'd rather have more direction.

Does anyone know of any good modern books written in French? I'd love to have a large list, hopefully ones that would have ready translations available, ones that I can possibly ILL because my library simply doesn't have a large selection. I would love to be able to read something I've already read once before (like Persepolis), but sadly, the buying options on that are prohibitively expensive.

And if you don't have any suggestions, have you heard of any of the following four books? They are my only other library options:

- Céleste by Martine LeCoz
- Le Rocher de Tanios (The Rock of Tanios) by Amin Maalouf
- La Maison de Jade (The Jade House) by Madeleine Chapsal
- Laura sur la Route (Laura on the Road) by Philippe Dumas**

Thank you for any help you can provide!

**I've ordered this one because it's shorter and juvenile fiction - hopefully that will make it easier! There is no English translation at my library for me to refer back to!

Got my first beta-review back!

2012-01-20T17:39:00.000-06:00

Okay, my night was just made. I mentioned a week ago that I'd finished the fourth draft of my novel. Earlier this week, I reread through the book, making spot-edits and minor consistency corrections. Then, I sent it out to my four trusted editors and beta-readers: my husband Jason, my cousin Jen, my published-author-friend Marcia, and my super amazing best-ever editor Oisin. I didn't expect to hear back from anyone so soon, but I just got a call from Jen.

She told me she was just about to go out of town but HAD to call me first. She said she spent most of the day finishing my book, reading the last 100 pages (which would be about 200-250 in paperback form). She said that she hadn't been able to do much editing, because she was so swept up that she forgot she was supposed to edit. She said it was like reading a book she'd bought at a store. She said it was better than any previous book of mine that she read, and that she just knows that this is the one, that it's really marketable and someone is going to pick it up. She sounded as excited as if it had been her own book.

Okay, so you may think that yeah she's my cousin and flattery is part of the package, but NO. You'd be wrong. I choose my beta-readers and editors very wisely. I choose them specifically because they will tell me anything that is wrong, will help me to make the book better. Jen did tell me a few things she'd like to see, and gave me some ideas about ways to improve even more. She will be sending me the manuscript back with specifics tomorrow. But the fact that she was raving over the phone just makes me so happy!!!

I'm really, really excited about this manuscript. I really feel like I have a chance with it, and it felt fantastic to have her repeat that back to me, especially to hear her say that she thought this one was much better than a previous manuscript that she really enjoyed a few years ago (and the only other manuscript I've completed that I feel is publishable). I'm so looking forward to when the next three beta-reviews and edits come in, and to then diving in to make corrections and improvements!!

*doing a happy dance, grinning all the while*

Castle in the Air, by Diana Wynne Jones (audio)

2012-01-19T07:23:00.000-06:00

In Zanzib, a city in a land south of Ingary, a carpet merchant named Abdullah dreams of meeting and falling in love with a princess. He buys a magic carpet from a stranger one day, and that night, finds himself improbably in the night garden of just such a princess, Flower-in-the-Night. As soon as he's realized that this is actually happening, rather than a dream, a djinn kidnaps Flower-in-the-Night, and Abdullah sets off to rescue her.

Castle in the Air is a companion novel to Howl's Moving Castle, and is loosely based on stories from Arabian Nights. I was told by many other bloggers, before I started this book, that 1) it was not as good as the first book, and 2) not to expect much of Howl or Sophie in it. I still wanted to listen to it, though, so I went into it without high expectations. The result was that I ended up enjoying the book much more than I might have otherwise. While it was not as good as Howl and I doubt I will obsessively read through it multiple times, it was still a very fun book.

Like with the last book, this one was fast and easy to listen to, and it caught my interest right away. I liked the characters and the way the story twisted and turned. Also like the first book, I found some things in the story very predictable, while also finding some completely surprising. I admit, I enjoyed the book much better in the second half, especially once I started meeting up with characters I'd known from the last book. It was great to see them from Abdullah's point of view and to learn more about where they ended up several years after the last book ended. But I didn't like the book solely for Sophie and Howl. I really liked the way Abdullah's character evolved throughout the novel, and the way his and Flower-in-the-Night's story went. I particularly love that she was an intelligent, thoughtful kind of girl that was strong in a crisis and could think her way out of trouble, rather than relying on someone else.

Really, my only big problem with the book was the way it drew on cultural stereotypes. I understand that it was just the retelling and fairy tale natures of the story, and that it was super exaggerated on purpose, but it still made me cringe to see the way the culture of Zanzib was portrayed. I'm very sensitive to that sort of thing. The book wasn't entirely defined by these stereotypes, which was good, but they still made me uncomfortable. Other than that, though, I really enjoyed it. I'm looking forward to the next book!

Performance: Once again, Jenny Sterlin narrated this book, and she did an excellent job with all the characters, including ones that existed in many disguises.

Top Ten Tuesday: Books for Non-Classics Readers (plus audiobooks!)

2012-01-17T07:12:00.007-06:00

I love today's topic from Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. Today, we're supposed to list the top ten books we'd recommend to someone who doesn't read in whichever area we love and are familiar with. For me, that's classics. I'm a huge classics lover and have been for over a decade now. Before discovering how much I loved them in 2001, I always thought classics were boring, probably because the ones they gave us to read in school were generally boring. Therefore, I love making lists of fun, enjoyable, readable classics to hopefully get others away from the school-book mentality! Here goes:

1. The Awakening by Kate Chopin - This book is very easy to read and has a modern feel to the prose. I particularly recommend it for anyone who has ever struggled with being a parent of a young child, and to people who feel trapped by their situation in life.

2. The Painted Veil by William Somerset Maugham - Maugham is one of those classic authors who was never respected in his time because his books were "too easy" to read. They were fun, they had plot, and they also had emotional depth. All of Maugham is easy to read, but this is the one I recommend most.

3. The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath - This one is for anyone who has ever suffered from depression and likes to know that other people out there understand. :D I wish I'd found this one as a teenager!

4. Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon - Fun, fast, twisting mystery, easy to read and will have you smiling all the way through!

5. Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy - While Hardy can be slow and plodding, this novel isn't. It's fast-paced, with interesting characters, and a story that is never dull through the very end. And if you need more convincing, Alan Rickman reads the audio version!! He not only reads it, but he SINGS in places. :D

6. The Importance of Being Earnest by Oscar Wilde - This play is hilarious and only takes an hour or two to read. It's comedy at its best!

7. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn by Betty Smith - Coming of age YA story that is brilliantly put together, with modern-enough prose that it feels more like current historical YA than a classic.

8. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier - Spooky gothic mystery, with crazy characters and lots of twists!

9. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck - This is my one iffy book on the list. It's a little harder to read than the rest of these, but well worth it, particularly if you are interested in the Great Depression, have ancestors or family from the OK/TX area, or are interested in immigration and social reform.

10. Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson - Another easy-to-read, short fun horror/mystery novel! This is another one I wish I'd found as a teenager!

**After seeing April's post for today, I've decided to add my top 5 audiobook recommendations for people who don't like or have never listened to audiobooks! I know that's technically cheating, but I don't care! These 5 are wonderful!

1. Return of the Native by Thomas Hardy - As I said above, ALAN FRICKIN' RICKMAN reads this audiobook!! It really doesn't get any better than that. This is the audiobook that got me listening to audiobooks!

2. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov - This one is read by Jeremy Irons, who doesn't just read it. He peforms it. It's a brilliant narration and I know of at least one person who didn't really like this book before listening to the audio version!

3. The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan - Scott Brick reads this book and makes it fun nonfiction. I'm not a huge nonfiction person, but the audio version kept me interested and learning.

4. Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones - I know, I know, I've been praising this one like crazy lately! But it's just so good, and Jenny Sterlin does a fantastic job with the audio version. Like I said with Jeremy Irons above, she performs this book, rather than just reading it.

5. Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett - This audiobook is read by Martin Jarvis, who is one of my favorite audio narrators. Once again, he performs the book. It's such a great book to begin with, and the audio version makes it even better!

The Double Birthday Hike

2012-01-16T07:38:00.000-06:00

Yesterday was Jason's birthday, and today is my sister Becky's birthday. Now Jason does not like birthday parties and events centered on him, and Becky wanted to do something active rather than a have food-based party for her birthday, so we all decided several weeks ago to go to Enchanted Rock to celebrate their birthdays. Enchanted Rock is a large, pink granite dome that you can hike, and it's located about two hours northwest of San Antonio.

This is a view of the hill from the bottom. You can't even see most of it or how high up it goes or how steep it gets...

There were nine of us who went on this trip - Jason, me, and the three boys; my dad, stepmom, and half-sister Julia; and Becky. We got there early and immediately started up the trail to reach the top of the hill. Here are some pictures from along the way.

The boys and Julia posing on top of a rock about halfway up.

Jason asked me to "pose like Wuthering Heights." I was supposed to be "brooding" but I don't think it came out too well. It was super windy on top of that rock! That little plaque by my feet is the highest point of Enchanted Rock.

View from the top. It's hard to really get a picture of the height of this rock. I tried to get ones of how steep some sections are, too, but didn't manage.

Our family at the top of the rock. It was really, really windy!! And cold! And as usual, Laurence and Ambrose are both making silly faces.

It took about half an hour to reach the summit, but we didn't stay up there for long. It was one of those strange days where sometimes it was sunny and warm, while other times it was cloudy and really cold, and the wind up there didn't help. One of the pictures I didn't include has Becky and me standing next to a tree growing out of the top of the granite (don't ask me how that's possible), and she's wearing sunglasses and has her hood up over a hat. She says she looks like the unabomber, which she does. :D

Jason got a couple of really good pictures on the way down:

Morrigan and me taking a rest halfway down. I think going down might be more difficult than going up, since it's so steep!

Becky and me "worshipping" the sun when it came out from behind the clouds and warmed us up a little. This is probably my favorite picture from the entire day.

I'm not sure why Jason was taking a picture here. It was near the bottom of the hill, and in this particular picture, I had just slipped on some rock and thrown my hands up to try to regain balance...

After the trip up and down the rock, we all got our lunches out and picnicked. While we ate, a woodpecker joined us.

We didn't want to just end the day after lunch, though. There are another couple hiking trails around the various granite rocks and domes at Enchanted Rock, and we decided to take the four-mile cross-country hike around the largest. Again, here are some good pictures from along the way:

I'm not sure what kind of cactus this is, but it looked so neat!

Moss Lake - around the back of the rock.

Jason took one of me in front of the lake. It's funny how little I mind pictures these days...

Becky posing as a monster above the three boys while we took a short rest.

The birthday boy with Ambrose and Laurence. I got a lot more pictures of him from throughout the day, but he hates pictures, so I'm minimizing the ones I put up. :D

In total, we ended up hiking for about 3.5 hours yesterday, and I burned nearly 2000 calories in the process. Whoa. We're all a little sore today, but it was definitely worth it!

After all our hiking, we drove back to San Antonio and met up at a Thai restaurant, Sawasdee, for a double birthday dinner. This was only my second time having Thai food, and I decided to get a new-to-me ethnic meal to continue with my goal for this year. Huzzah! I got chicken pad woonsen, which included glass noodles and chicken with garlic, tomatoes, onion, baby corn, carrots, cabbage, celery, and egg (though I really didn't find any egg in it when I got it).

Not the greatest picture of it... It tasted good, though a little strange. I'm not quite used to Thai food, I don't think, but I'm willing to continue to try it.

It was a good day for all of us, good food and good fitness and a great way to celebrate two birthdays!

The novel is done!!

2012-01-13T10:30:00.005-06:00

After nearly four months of constant obsession about my current WIP, I am done. I just put the last words down on the fourth draft of this novel, which has been in my head for about 4.5 years now. I think this deserves a LOLcat.

Yeah, that's about how I feel. Since early October, I've written ~173,000 words of text on two different drafts of this book, plus another 20-30k of notes. I've cut up a bajillion index cards to create multiple scene indexes for my first non-linear novel. I've killed a character that I love dearly. Twice, since I had to kill this character in both drafts. I've spent months dreaming about these characters, suffered through the worst insomnia I've ever been through because of them, and become madly obsessed with words words words.

The end result: a 96,000-word non-linear, adult, contemporary, realistic-fantasy novel which I love so much!! I'm temporarily calling The Magician, but it desperately needs a new name.

So if anyone needs me, I'll be off reading Howl's Moving Castle for the fourth (or fifth, or more) time. It's time for me to escape into someone else's world for awhile.

Howl's Moving Castle, by Diana Wynne Jones (audio)

2012-01-10T06:36:00.000-06:00

Sophie Hatter is the eldest of three girls in a land where fairy tale is the norm. She doesn't expect much from herself, since nothing ever happens for the oldest daughter in fairy tales, and is resigned to a life of dull loneliness. That all changes when an unexpected visitor enters the hat shop where Sophie works.

This book is the perfect example of why timing and media really matter in books. My friend Karen from Books and Chocolate has been trying to get me to read Howl's Moving Castle for two years now. Considering I don't really like fairy tales or fantasy all that much, I was reluctant to try it, but Karen spoke so highly of it that I decided to give it a chance. I picked it up from the library, read a couple pages, and turned it back in. Over two years, I did this four times. I kept thinking maybe I was just in the wrong mood, but every time I tried, I never made it longer than a few pages. Eventually, I gave up.

But something kept drawing me back to this book, and in late December, I picked up the audio version from the library. I figured I might as well try it again. I tend to be far more tolerant of books out of my comfort zone in audio for some reason. When I finally got around to starting it this past Saturday, I was hooked instantly. I spent three days neglecting everything else I wanted to do in order to listen to it. Now that I'm done, I've ordered the sequels and the movie version. I think I might be just a wee bit obsessed.

Howl's Moving Castle was a fantastic book, the first book I've given five stars to since reading The Night Circus in late September. It was creative and interesting and well-crafted. It was like a fairy tale, without trying to copy the feel of old fairy tales. There was so much quirk! I adored the characters. Sophie, Howl, Michael, Calcifer, all of them. Even if I didn't like them when I first met them, they grew on me, until even their flaws were adorable. I found myself grinning and laughing out loud so many times, and already I want to reread the book. And of course, it had the perfect ending.

If I had any complaint at all to make - and I don't - it would be that so much of this book was extraordinarily predictable. However, I don't feel like that was a negative point at all in this case. While that normally bothers me a lot, it fit the fairy tale quality of this story, like the reader was meant to see in advance what the characters couldn't. I liked that. I kept waiting to see how it would all come together, even as I knew a lot of what would inevitably come up. It helped that there were also some real surprises, things I never would have guessed in advance. The predictability, therefore, felt intentional. So - no complaints!

I'm glad I gave this a fifth or sixth or whatever-it-was chance. I'm glad Karen kept pushing it on me. And I'm really glad to read something so great so early in the year! This is the sort of book that makes me excited about reading and reviewing again (even if my review is pretty pathetic). I highly recommend it, even if it's outside your comfort zone. It really was such a fantastic book.

Okay, and I admit it. I fell in love with Howl, just a little bit. :D

Performance: The audio version was read by Jenny Sterlin, and it was fantastic. As usual, I listened to this on double-speed (I rarely, if ever, listen to books on normal speed now), and didn't have any trouble following along that way. Sterlin did a great job with the narration and all the character voices. She drew me into this world in a way all my attempts to read the print version didn't. I'm very happy that she also narrates the two sequels!

Weekend Cooking: New Ethnic Meal #1

2012-01-08T07:25:00.000-06:00

One of my 2012 goals is to try six new-to-me ethnic meals. They can be home-cooked or ordered at a restaurant. The goal is simply to try at least six meals that are completely out of my comfort zone. Last night, I had my first one of the year - karni yarik!

Jason and I took the boys to a restaurant in town called the Mediterranean Turkish Grill. We first went there back in late December for our anniversary and really loved it, so we decided to take the whole family out. Now, I'm familiar with a lot of Turkish foods, especially as it can be very similar to Middle Eastern food (which I've had a lot of), but both times I've been to this restaurant, I've tried something completely new to me.

Last night, the five of us began with an appetizer of dolma - grape leaves stuffed with rice, pine nuts, and currants, served cold with lemon juice squeezed on top. This was only my second time ever having dolma (though both were at this restaurant) and it is soooo good. I've been avoiding foods wrapped in grape leaves since the first time they were offered to me in a fifth grade unit on Ancient Greece. How sad is that?? I've been missing out all this time! I tried to get a good picture of the dolma, but it was dark in the restaurant and I only had my iPhone camera with me.

After the dolma, we got our meals. There were four different meals at the table, including my karni yarik pictured above (yay that picture came out!). I'm already familiar with most of what's on that plate: rice, pickled cabbage, onions smothered in sumac, roasted veggies. But the main dish? Eggplant stuffed with beef, peppers, and tomatoes. Completely new to me, and definitely out of my comfort zone.

I've been terrified of eggplant since a recipe of ours went horribly wrong in 2001. Jason and I tried to make an eggplant stew. It was only the second time we'd ever cooked eggplant. The problem was that the eggplant we used had been sitting in the fridge for about three weeks. We learned a very important lesson that day: eggplant is only good for a couple days after you buy it, even if it looks exactly the same three weeks later. Just the smell of that stew was enough to make everyone sick. Since then, I haven't touched eggplant.

So yeah. Last night's meal was a bit scary. But the verdict?? DELICIOUS. So good. I loved it. The boys all tried it, too, and two of them said they liked it. I'm pretty sure the youngest said he didn't solely because he knew there was eggplant in it and that scared him. He's never had eggplant before in his life. I'm also pleased to report that all three boys said they liked their pickled cabbage.

So YAY for a successful Part 1 to my new-ethnic-meal goal!

Weekend Cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads. Check it out for more food-related posts.

The Dream, by Émile Zola

2012-01-05T07:43:00.001-06:00

In a small town outside of Paris, a nine-year-old orphan named Angelique sits outside a cathedral the night after Christmas. It's snowing, and she has nothing on but rags. She stares up at the images carved into the cathedral's wall, images of virgins and saints. She expects to die there that night, but is rescued in the morning by the two poor embroiderers who live near the cathedral. They take her in, shelter her, and keep her cloistered from the world, until all she knows is fairy tales and Catholic legends.

I adore Zola. He is one of my very favorite authors, and this is the sixth work by him that I've read. Every single book has been masterfully crafted - exquisite writing (even in translation), amazing characterization, fantastic exploration into the particular culture of each novel, and engaging storytelling. The Dream is no different. In fact, from the beginning, it had potential to rival my very favorite Zola, Germinal, because it starts (or seems to start) with a theme that is very dear to me: the contrast between reality and fantasy, and the moment when one replaces the other. This is, at least, what I expected from it.

As a kid, I was one of those people who wanted my life to be like in a fairy tale, book, or movie. I remember once, at ten years old, wanting to throw myself onto my bed and cry when I was very upset, and how disappointed I was that I couldn't, because it would look ridiculous having to crawl up to the top bunk bed to get there first. I remember wanting to have an imaginary friend but being too self-aware to have one. I remember wishing on stars, and dreaming about first kisses, and all sorts of things. I think in a way, it's symbolic of youth that we dream detached from reality. One day, we grow up. We reach the point of disillusionment - the negative side to a coming of age story - and this fascinates me. This is what The Dream seemed to be about from the beginning, and why I instantly loved it. I wanted to see exactly how Zola approached that moment of disillusionment.

This was not a tale of disillusionment, however. I was wrong. In The Dream, Zola weaves Catholic symbology and mythology together with the art of embroidery to spin his own fairy tale or saint story. It isn't only Angelique's story, though she is definitely the heart of the book. It is also the story of her adoptive parents, Hubert and Hubertine, who have spent their entire adulthood suffering under the weight of guilt, having married against Hubertine's mother's wishes. It is also the story of Saint Agnes, a virgin saint who ascended to Heaven to marry Jesus. Lastly, it is the story of the Monseigneur, with his troubled past and the passion for his dead wife renewed after he brings his adult son home. These stories all interlace to create something as far-fetched, fantastical, and mythical as the saints' Legends that Angelique reads and loves so much.

I have noticed in previous books I've read by Zola that there is always a touch of sentiment to contrast with the ever-present realism. In Germinal, there is one touching scene at the climax amidst a nightmare background. In Thérèse Raquin, there is a moment of connection before utter destruction. These moments pop up, brief and touching and sentimental, almost incongruent with the rest of the story, more visible because of the horror with which they are contrasted. In The Dream, there isn't one moment of sentimentality. The entire book is sentiment, and I'm not sure there was any irony to it.

The Dream surprised me. I expected a crashing, a destruction, a slow soul-crushing fall. I did not expect Zola to retain the whimsical, dream-like prose all throughout the book, until it is almost as surreal as Angelique's fantasies. It is so different from Zola's other books. While I understand the direction he took this book - symbolically, thematically, it makes sense - I admit I was unprepared for it. Despite my surprise and mild confusion, though, I did love the book. It was beautiful. Strange, surreal, but beautiful. It didn't quite conquer Germinal as a favorite, but it is definitely loved. It was a great book to start off 2012.

I am overweight!!

2012-01-04T07:33:00.006-06:00

The moment has finally come. I have lost 70 lbs since I started my weight loss journey in November 2009, and I've finally crossed the line from "obese" to "overweight." It's my first milestone of 2012.

I am no rock star of weight loss. I am not the person who can lose 100+ lbs in a year. I am the person who loses very slowly, a pound a week at best and often less than that. But I am consistent. I work very hard, and I do not give up. I only make changes I can live with forever, and I stick with them. I am persistent and determined and willing to walk this road for however long it takes to get back to a healthy weight. Slow, small, consistent steps. That is what got me to where I am today, 70 lbs lighter.

Things are a million times better for me at 185 lbs than they were at 255 lbs. I can do all sorts of things now that I couldn't do then, from simple things like shaving my legs properly to unbelievable things like racing my 11-year-old track star and keeping pace with him. I can only imagine what might come after losing the next 30 lbs, which will put me at a healthy BMI.

I am now past the 2/3rds mark of my weight loss journey. At the 1/3rd and halfway points, I took pictures with book stacks equaling my lost weight. Today, I carry on the tradition. Here I am with 70 lbs worth of books: 40 books altogether, mostly hardcover, many chunksters, and those towers of books are barely standing. I have no idea how I'll make this work when I hit 100 lbs lost, haha!

And just for fun, I also took a picture with a pair of pants I was wearing about 15 months ago. They're a size 24W, while the ones I'm wearing now, size 16s, are starting to get loose. Pretty soon, I'll be in 14s, a size I've literally never worn as I jumped straight from 12s to 18s after my third pregnancy.

I almost don't believe I'm here, honestly, but I am. I am here. I am overweight. I have left obesity behind forever.

Thank you to everyone who has been with me on this journey and cheered me on every step of the way. Thank you for reading my blogs and leaving comments and just being there for me in good times and bad. You all have been such an important part of my success. Thank you.

Weight Loss, 2011 and 2012

2012-01-02T07:20:00.001-06:00

I began 2011 with a goal to lose 50 lbs, which would take me from 240 lbs to 190 lbs. I've made goals to lose weight before in the past, but 2011 was the first time I really succeeded at it. In the past year, I have:

lost 54 lbs, bringing me to 186 lbs and a total loss of 69 lbs since I started losing weight in November 2009
decreased my BMI from 38.7 (morbidly obese) to 30.0 (only a tenth of a point away from "overweight")
gone from a size 24W to 16 in pants
gone from a size 2X to large/medium (depending on brand) in shirts
gone from a size 8.5 to 7.5 in shoes
lost 51+ inches from my neck, arms, bust, waist, hips, thighs, and calves (measurements first taken in April, so I don't know what I lost in the months before then)
brought my resting heart rate under 60 bpm
become far more physically fit than I have been in years
learned to eat healthy foods and a far more balanced, nutritious diet
stopped getting sick, even minor sniffles or cold-symptoms, due to better diet and physical fitness - better yet, my kids have also stopped getting colds AND car sickness because of the better diet
stopped getting heartburn altogether, because I no longer eat highly processed foods
stopped getting headaches, because I drink tons of water and eat healthier food

I don't have a picture of me from the beginning of 2011. In fact, my last picture from 2010 is from October, and my first picture in 2011 is from March, after I'd lost 15 lbs. So I'll just have to use the October 2010 picture for comparison. Here is (about) where I started and ended 2011:

Now I still have a long way to go in 2012. I want to lose another 31-46 lbs altogether, and I'd like to lose at least 31-36 this year. I think that's doable if I stay on track. I'm looking forward to reaching a healthy BMI (155 lbs), and also looking forward to a bunch of weight-loss-related things:

visible collarbones!
being able to wrap a regular sized towel all the way around me
getting over my fear of swings (long story)
trying a bunch of new-to-me foods, freggies, and cuisines
continuing to purge processed foods from my diet
starting to run again
maybe (I hope!) being able to do some pullups again
weighing less than Jason!

My weight loss plan in 2012 isn't much different from what I was doing in 2011. I will continue to focus on moderation, balance, health, and good habits. I will drink 100 oz of water every day, and try to sleep 8-9 hours a night (still fighting this insomnia, but it's getting a little better). I will continue adding more freggies to my diet, and keep eliminating processed foods as much as possible. I will avoid eating out as much as I can, especially fast food, which I haven't had at all in six months. I'll balance intuitive eating and calorie tracking together to stay on target to lose weight at a healthy, maintainable rate.

The biggest change for me this year will be in exercise. Rather than doing 5-6 hours of exercise a week, I plan to do closer to 2-3 hours a week, and take a couple weeks off every few months. I've pushed myself too hard this year, and need to balance a little better in this area. At the same time, though, I find that many of the things I do these days for "exercise," like biking, I also do for fun, so it's possible I'll end up doing much more exercise than planned. It's only the exercise-for-exercise's-sake that I want to decrease to 2-3 hours/week.

Of course, Sparkpeople will be a huge component in my weight loss journey in 2012. I'm really happy that I found Spark last February. I know I wouldn't have done nearly as well this year without it. In the 15 months that I was trying to lose weight before Spark, I lost 27 lbs. In my first 10 months on Spark, I lost 42 lbs. Spark keeps me on track, helps me to figure out when I'm doing things wrong, and keeps me motivated. Yes, the site can be confusing and overwhelming at first, but it is definitely worth sticking with. I highly recommend it! :)

So that's it - my plans and goals for my weight loss journey in 2012. And this year, unlike 2011, I took Day 1 pictures (front, side, back) so that I can really see how well I do in 2012. They're awful quality pictures because of the lighting when I took them, but I have them! I can't wait to add comparison pictures to these at the end of the year!

2012 Goals

2012-01-01T06:25:00.010-06:00

I did really well on my 2011 Goals. Usually, there will be one or two of my goals that I'll excel in, while leaving all the others behind. Last year, though, I managed to balance my time better and work on all my goals evenly. I hope this year will go similarly. Here is what I intend to do in 2012.

Health
- Lose at least 31 lbs. This will get me to a healthy BMI and my initial goal weight of 100 lbs lost. If I can lost another 10-15 lbs (taking me to where I want to end up eventually), that would be even better!

1st quarter:
2nd quarter:
3rd quarter:
4th quarter:
Total for 2012:

- Do 100+ hours of exercise, split up into quarters based on weather and the kids' school schedule

35+ hrs 1st quarter:
25+ hrs 2nd quarter:
15+ hrs 3rd quarter:
25+ hrs 4th quarter:

- Participate in 2+ official 5Ks

Writing
- Write 500+ words every school day until I finish my current WIP - Complete!

- Take time off writing to edit other manuscripts after finishing current WIP

- Participate in NaNoWriMo in the fall

Reading
- Continue reducing the number of books I read, preferably under 100 in 2012

- Read two books in their original French (one classic, one modern)

Je L'Aimais by Anna Gavalda (2/3/12)

- This isn't exactly a "reading" goal, but related - I want to be much better about blog comments in 2012. I was pretty much absent the entirety of 2011, and I want to spend more time actually commenting on the blogs that I read in 2012.

Personal
- Complete 3+ Bucket List goals

- Try 6+ new-to-me restaurants in San Antonio

Sawasdee (Thai)
Ruby Tuesday (American)

- Try 6+ new-to-me ethnic meals (at home OR at a restaurant)

Karni Yarik
Pad Woonsen
Pelmeni and Georgian kidney bean salad

- Do not cut my hair!!! I would really like to grow it all the way to my waist again. It hasn't been that long since 1999 and Jason has never seen it that long before.

***
So how about you? What are your goals in 2012?

2012 Books

2012-01-01T01:31:00.028-06:00

Books read in 2012, with links to reviews and/or reactions, if applicable:

January - 5
Favorite: Howl's Moving Castle

1. The Dream by Émile Zola
2. Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones (audio)
3. Castle in the Air by Diana Wynne Jones (audio)
4. Cinder by Marissa Meyer
5. House of Many Ways by Diana Wynne Jones (audio)

February -
Favorite:

6. Je L'Aimais by Anna Gavalda
7. Charmed Life by Diana Wynne Jones
8. The Lives of Christopher Chant by Diana Wynne Jones
9. Mindless Eating by Brian Wansink (audio)
10. The Future of Us by Jay Asher and Carolyn Mackler
11. Cakes and Ale by William Somerset Maugham
12. The Magicians of Caprona by Diana Wynne Jones
13. Witch Week by Diana Wynne Jones
14. Conrad's Fate by Diana Wynne Jones
15. The Pinhoe Egg by Diana Wynne Jones
16. Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
17. Mixed Magics by Diana Wynne Jones

2011 in Review

2011-12-29T09:15:00.000-06:00

It's been a really good year. If you knew me at the end of 2010, you know just how horrible last year was for me. My end-of-year wrap-up was a mix of severe depression, desperate hope for 2011, and a fierce determination to do whatever I could to make my life and the world around me better. This year, therefore, became a year of extreme change for me. From the way I think about books to the physical changes I've undergone to deleting my old blog and starting over, very little has stayed the same for me in 2011.

Some of these changes have been sad. I really regret, for instance, losing a lot of the blogging friends I had when I left The Zen Leaf. But other than a few small sadnesses and regrets, 2011 has been an overwhelmingly positive year. I am very happy with where my life is at and where I am going. I'm healthier and far more balanced, and I'm looking forward to continuing to press in the right direction in 2012.

So many good things happened this year that I couldn't possibly name them all. Instead, I want to highlight the best 11 things of 2011! Here they are, in no particular order:

Losing 54 lbs. I'm now one pound from officially being "overweight" instead of "obese," and hoping to lose that last pound by January 1st, so I can completely leave obesity behind in 2011. I've lost 3-4 sizes from my pants and shirts, and even two sizes from my shoes! The difference this has made on my body and my self-confidence has been incredible. My life has expanded a thousandfold through losing weight. I'm still in the middle of my journey, but I came a really long way this year.
Getting fit, which I consider a different thing from losing weight. I have exercised for over 260 hours this year, participated in several 5Ks (one with my son!), and improved all areas of my physical health. I can do regular pushups and run a mile. My resting heart rate is under 60 bpm. I feel healthy and athletic again! It's been years.
My diet has vastly improved. As I stated in a recent Weekend Cooking post, I went from the girl who rarely ate a fruit or vegetable to the girl who eats 3-5 servings a day. As someone who hated produce before 2011, this is a huge deal for me. I also eliminated a good majority of processed foods from my diet, and have tried a ton of new things.
Vacation to Baltimore. It was amazing. I had so much fun in Baltimore, DC, and Virginia. Got to visit a blogging friend, had a fish pedicure, and saw so many things I'd never seen before.
Vacation to Wisconsin with my family. Amazing trip. I hadn't been back to Wisconsin since we moved to Texas in late 2005. This summer, I saw my in-laws, met my new brother-in-law, learned to kayak, rode a bike for the first time in over a decade, ate tons of delicious food, wore a cheesehead, fed a baby cow, visited a bunch of old restaurants and stores I miss, and so much more.
Financial security. Jason started working at his current employer in October last year, and the job has improved all through the year. Since we live on a single income, this has been a really great thing.
I rocked my 2011 goals! Normally I do well in a single area, but this year, I had far more balance and completed every single one! Not only completed, but bettered each one! (Well, except the writing one, which I gave up early in the year when I decided to take a sabbatical. I consider that quitting rather than failing. Besides, in the last two months of the year, I wrote over 150,000 words - the original goal equalled ~130,000 - so I sort of made up for quitting and bettered this goal, too.)
I learned how to do so many new cool things, like writing in calligraphy, making stained glass, tatting, and painting with henna.
My sister, Becky, and her husband, Rami, finally immigrated to the US. They had been trying to get a visa for Rami for over three years, but it's difficult when you're a Palestinian refugee. We are very happy that they are both here with us now!
My cousin, Jen, moved across town and now lives five minutes away from me! My cousins are my best friends, so it's been great to have her close by. We get together every week to write, and babysit for each other, and she can come to my book club again now. It's fantastic!
I'm writing again!! After everything that happened with Matched in late 2009, and everything that happened with the New York Times article in fall 2010, I had just about decided I didn't want to write or publish anymore. It's been my dream to be a published author since I was a little kid, and I've worked really hard on my writing through the years. It hurt to give it up, but my heart wasn't in it anymore after a lot of heavy blows. I decided to take a year away from writing and see where I ended up, and this fall, my love came back. I'm currently working on the fourth draft of a novel that I am more excited about than any I've worked on since 2008. I can't wait to finish, edit, send to beta-readers, and start the submission process!

So those are my top 11 wonderful things of 2011! It has definitely been a good year.

I want to thank all of you who have stuck by me this year as I transitioned to this new home. I really appreciate your patience with me, and your friendship. I hope to get better at commenting on blogs again in the new year. I'm looking forward to re-connecting. :)

Here's to 2012. *Glasses clink.* Happy New Year, everyone!

2011 in Books

2011-12-27T07:55:00.002-06:00

It's been a pretty good year for books for me. It didn't start that way. While I had some good books from time to time, 2011 started a lot like the way my entire year went in 2010 - mostly duds, with a gem that popped up every once in awhile. All my 1-star books came from the first 4 months. I'm pretty sure that's because for the first 4 months of the year, I was still averaging 17 books a month. That's just too much for me. Since I got rid of my virtual and physical TBR, dropped all reading-related challenges, and stopped reading so fast, I've enjoyed my reading year much more!

Now it is time to wrap up my 2011 book journey! I'll start with Jamie's End-of-Year Book Survey, which I love. Then I'll talk a bit about my favorite books of the year, and put up some quick stats for the number-lovers (like me) out there!

1. Best Book You Read In 2011?
There are six, and I won't name them here because I want to talk about them in more detail below. :D

2. Most Disappointing Book/Book You Wish You Loved More Than You Did?
Habibi by Craig Thompson. I loved Blankets and had looked forward to this one for a long time, but while the art was beautiful, the cultural portrayal made me very uncomfortable, and I felt like Thompson got off on the juvenile humor way too much. I was incredibly disappointed.

3. Most surprising (in a good way!) book of 2011?
The Host by Stephenie Meyer. I had read the first two Twilight books and hated the second one so much that I never finished the series. I expected The Host to be equally lame, but it ended up being much deeper than I would have ever guessed and left me thinking for a long, long time.

4. Book you recommended to people most in 2011?
The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, which is just an incredible look at where our food comes from. I would recommend it to everyone!

5. Best series you discovered in 2011?
Not sure if this counts, because I didn't really "discover" it as "read it as soon as the first book came out," but I will have to go with the London Shades series by Maureen Johnson. I adored The Name of the Star.

6. Favorite new authors you discovered in 2011?
Michael Pollan, Erin Morgenstern, Justin Evans, and Selma Lagerlöf

7. Best book that was out of your comfort zone or was a new genre for you?
The White Devil by Justin Evans. I never, ever read horror novels and there are some scenes in there that really creeped me out, but it was fantastic! I really admired the author's guts in ending the book the way he did.

8. Most thrilling, unputdownable book in 2011?
Well, despite the fact that I had a LOT of problems with this book, I'd have to say my most unputdownable book was The Unbecoming of Mara Dyer. So unputdownable that I read it a second time, despite only giving it a 3-star rating and taking many, many issues with the writing, characters, and plot.

9. Book you most anticipated in 2011?
Habibi again. Sadly.

10. Favorite cover of a book you read in 2011?

11. Most memorable character in 2011?
Does the circus in The Night Circus count? Because that one was by far the most memorable, and I would argue that the circus is the most important character in that book...

12. Most beautifully written book read in 2011?
The Inferno by Dante (especially as translated by Robert Pinsky) and The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern.

13. Book that had the greatest impact on you in 2011?
Two in this category. First, The Omnivore's Dilemma, which changed the way I thought about food and has helped me so much on my nutritional journey. Second, The Night Circus, which really got me excited about writing again after taking almost an entire year off and thinking I might give up completely.

14. Book you can't believe you waited UNTIL 2011 to finally read?
I've meant to read The Nun by Diderot for 12 years now, and finally did. It wasn't amazing, though, so it didn't really matter that I waited. None of the really amazing books I read this year were ones I'd put off for a long time.

15. Favorite Passage/Quote From A Book You Read In 2011?
I'm really bad at remembering passages, but this one that I quoted in one of my reviews was gorgeous. It's from The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist:

And when Elsa was finally unable to control the sobs she had suppressed until now, when her cries became louder and more piercing and persistent, first one of the diners got up, then another, and a few more, and the hostess hurried over to the buffet table and put down the dish so that her hands were free. The next moment a crowd of people surrounded Elsa in a semicircle, some sitting on chairs they had dragged along with them, others standing. Those who could reach were touching her. With steady hands they held her shoulders, or stroked her arms, her back or the nape of her neck. As if they were holding her together.

16. Book That You Read In 2011 That Would Be Most Likely To Reread In 2012?
The Night Circus. In fact, I'm already on the hold list at the library for the audio version. Can't wait to revisit!

17. Book That Had A Scene In It That Had You Reeling And Dying To Talk To Somebody About It? (a WTF moment, an epic revelation, a steamy kiss, etc. etc.) Be careful of spoilers!
The climax of Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy, with Little Father Time. Oh my gosh. That's one of the most powerful, disturbing, memorable, and shocking scenes I've ever read.

Best Books of 2011

And now that I finished up the survey, I want to talk about my best books of 2011. In the past few years, it's been really difficult for me to narrow down my top books, but for some reason, this year it was really, really easy. There are six that stand out far above the rest. Here they are, in the order that I read them.

The Host by Stephenie Meyer

This was the very first book I read in 2011. Technically, I listened to it, and finished 3/4ths of it in December 2010. It hardly counts as a 2011 book. As I said in the survey above, I really didn't expect much from this book. I have not liked Meyer's writing in the past, or her characterization and stories, and when I began to listen to this one, I went into it with a very cynical mind. Quickly, though, I found myself carving out extra time to spend with the audiobook, dreaming about what might happen next, and thinking about the ethical dilemmas of the book. I fell in love with many of the characters, and after I was done, the book stayed in my mind far longer than I ever expected. For anyone who was turned off of Meyer by Twilight, I really recommend giving her another chance, because this book is worth it.

Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte

(Warning: review link has spoilers.) This was actually my second read of Jane Eyre, the first being in early 2008, right before I started blogging. When I read Jane Eyre the first time, I'd somehow avoided all spoilers about the book, and went into it blind. I expected to dislike the book (this is a frequent theme among my favorite books, I find), but ended up loving it so much that it became a thematic element in one of the books I was writing. Revisiting it three years later was amazing, especially as a second read, knowing the spoilers already, and with a Dame Darcy illustrated version. Jane Eyre remains one of my favorite books of all time, and I admit to being completely and utterly in love with Mr. Rochester.

The Inferno by Dante

Like Jane Eyre, this was a reread. I first read The Inferno in college, and we spent weeks discussing it. I don't think I would have gotten nearly as much out of it without those college classes, and I'm incredibly grateful for them. I wish we'd done Purgatorio and Paradiso as well! I've never read them and I feel lost when I try. Revisiting The Inferno after 13 years was an incredible experience. I loved the Robert Pinsky translation. I read it three cantos per day, breaking up the experience, and savouring all the footnotes. That makes me a total geek, I know, but I just adored this book so much, even more the second time around. I know some people are really afraid of this book, but it really is so beautiful and wonderful! You shouldn't be afraid. Especially if you get the Robert Pinsky translation, because it's incredibly easy to read.

The Unit by Ninni Holmqvist

A lot of the dystopia I've read over the last few years has been frustrating to me. However, when I read The Unit, I knew - THIS is what dystopia should be!! There is so much depth, and so much conflict. So many dystopias are completely straightforward - good versus evil - but nothing was that clear-cut in this book. It is beautifully written and incredibly thought-provoking. I adored the ending, though I know some people despise it. I adored it because it felt far more realistic than if it had ended any other way. It also reminded me in some ways of my own dystopian novel, and gave me hope that there might be a market for mine some day.

The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

I said above that the Omnivore's Dilemma had a huge impact on my life. I can't describe just how big that impact was. You know how some people, when they read about the abuses of animals that take place in the food industry, go vegetarian or vegan? I had a very similar reaction to this book, except against processed food. I've never been one to eat tons and tons of processed food, but I've never been actively anti-processed food either. After reading this book, I gave up fast food completely, and started eating far cleaner than I ever had before. I increased my produce intake and got more interested in cooking. I started going with my husband and kids to the grocery store, and trying new foods. I looked into CSAs and farmer's markets, and even have the desire to garden. Me!! This is a literal 180 shift for me, and that impact hasn't worn off with time. Michael Pollan's writing is easy to read, informative, unbiased, and non-judgemental. It looks at facts and history. It is journalism in its best form, and I would recommend this book to anyone.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern

I read this one at the end of September, and since then, no book has been able to live up to its standard. This book is incredible in writing, tone, world-building, characterization, everything. I was completely blown away by it, and since I finished it, I've wanted to revisit. I haven't yet, but I will soon. Now this book was always going to be one of my favorites with how incredible it was, but it became even more so because it revitalized my own writing. I decided early in the year to take a sabbatical from writing, and to possibly quit altogether, after writing my entire life. Late in the summer, I had a few twinges of potential writing inspiration, but nothing that really got me writing again. The Night Circus did. It got me excited about words and projects. It made me see writing differently. Because of it, I decided to do NaNoWriMo again this year, and I've been writing nonstop ever since. I have a WIP that I'm more excited about than any I've written since 2008, and I'm so grateful that The Night Circus got me motivated and inspired again.

Honorable Mention: Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon - This one wasn't quite good enough to end up in my top books, but it certainly stands apart from the rest of the books I read this year, so I had to give it a quick mention. If you're looking for good RIP-quality sensationalist nineteenth-century fiction, this one is fantastic!

And lastly, book stats:
(Feel free to skip these if you're not a numbers person!)

Total books: 128
New reads: 112
Rereads: 16

As usual, my new reads vastly outweighed my rereads, and I'm okay with that. I'm very happy with how few books I read compared to 2009 and 2010 (184 and 218 respectively), and I'm hoping to decrease that number even more in 2012. Under 100 would be great!! I think under 100 is a good pace for me to really enjoy the books I read.

Novels/Novellas: 96
Nonfiction: 16
Collections/Anthologies: 7
Plays: 6
Poetry: 3

Again, no surprises there... I'm glad my play count is up from previous years!

Text/E-text: 98
Graphic/Photo/Art: 7
Audio: 23

My audio didn't increase as much this year as I expected.

Classics: 49
Contemporary: 79

I'm so glad the classics are still up! I like this balance - about 40/60.

Adult: 91
YA: 23
Children's: 14

And my YA and children's book counts keep getting lower and lower. I rarely enjoy these now, unfortunately, especially children's books. The Harry Potter series is the only reason that children's number is as high as it is.

By men: 53
By women: 73
By both: 2

For the last couple years, I've read nearly twice as many women authors as men, so I'm glad this is at least closer to 50/50.

Chunksters (450+ pages): 21
In translation: 25
Translated from: English (7), French (5), Russian (4), Swedish (3), German (2), Finnish (1), Spanish (1), Italian (1), Norwegian (1)

Note: The seven books translated from English were the Harry Potter books that I read in French.

Longest Book: The Complete Stories of William Somerset Maugham - 1,636 pgs
Shortest Book: The Lost Thing by Shaun Tan - 32 pgs
Longest Audio: The Host by Stephenie Meyer - 23 hrs
Shortest Audio: The Pearl by John Steinbeck - 2.5 hrs

Most read author(s): JK Rowling, as usual, with 8 books (7 in French, 1 in English). There were no other high authors this year, the next one down being Nabokov with 3 books. I read many authors twice.

Best book-related discoveries: I've been answering this question since 2008, and this year, it's difficult to answer. I didn't make any great discoveries in authors or genres or media like in the last few years. After thinking really hard, I think my best discovery is that it's okay to go weeks without reading a book if I don't feel like it. It's okay to wait and savour a book's effect on me, rereading it or just thinking it over, for a long time, before diving into the next book. It's also okay not to be slave to a book list or TBR pile, to read only what I want, and to abandon books if they aren't speaking to me. I guess my best discovery, then, is that I can read how I want, when I want, what I want, and that's okay. I like that.

So what about you? How was 2011 for you in terms of books and reading?

Christmas in Retrospect

2011-12-26T07:10:00.004-06:00

Christmas was nice. I love this time of year. I love gifts and family and good food and all the traveling around. I know, I'm nuts, but I just love these things! This year, Christmas was particularly wonderful because it was the first time the whole family has been together. My brother-in-law from Palestine got to experience his first Christmas. My future brother-in-law also came down with my other sister, so there were all the spouses and future spouses and kids and everything. The five of us siblings were together for Christmas for the first time since 2006.

Rather than babble on longer, I think I will tell the rest of this post in pictures from our two days of festivities. :) I wish I had gotten more than this! I was a bad photographer this year.

On Christmas Eve, the boys each got to open one gift.

Here is the tree with all the presents after Santa visited. Yes, the boys loved their bikes. I can't wait for the teaching process.

Ambrose decided all the gift ribbons made good bandannas. They didn't all fit, though.

My favorite gift of Christmas: Stiffs Inc stacking dolls. Other great gifts involved a "literary book" tshirt (seen in pictures below), a Mischief Managed hoodie, olive oil soap from Jordan, a 5-Year Q&A journal, an elephant ring, and lots of gift certificates to help Jason and I save for our honeymoon/cruise this spring. :)

Sadly, I forgot to bring my good camera to my mom's house, so the only picture I got of all the siblings with spouses/partners and kids is blurry and dark.

I did, however, get a great picture later on of the 4.5 siblings at my dad's house. The adult-version siblings, from left to right, are Aaren, Becky, William, and me. Our half-sister, Julia, is in front of us.

And then after our photo session, which went on way too long as we tried to get pictures that didn't involve blinking or not-smiling, Jason snapped this one as we all walked away. :D It's probably my favorite picture of all.

I wish I got a picture of all the food - vegetarian tamales and steak and guacamole and asparagus and biscuits and green beans and strawberries and cheese and chocolate chip cookies, just to name a few items. :D I did eat a bit too much, but I didn't overdo it, and I don't mind. It was Christmas. :) I can get back to a normal schedule today.

I hope everyone had a very wonderful holiday!

BEST CHRISTMAS GIFT EVER!!!!!

2011-12-24T19:31:00.007-06:00

Sorry for the double-post on Christmas Eve, but this is just too frickin' amazing for me not to post about!!

My husband is AMAZING. We always open one present on Christmas Eve, and he picked this one out for me to open:

Hand-painted Stiffs Inc stacking dolls, complete with "My Papa's Leg" - ahhhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I know, very few of my readers will get the significance of this, so I'll take a quick moment to explain. Stiffs Inc is my favorite band, and has been my favorite band for about 15 years now. They don't exist anymore, but still have a very strong cult following, and that includes me. Over the years, I've met (most of) the band a couple times, gotten my albums and singles signed, made a Stiffs Inc gingerbread house, and been interviewed for a documentary. A couple years ago, Jason made me clay Stiffs Inc dolls, and now, he's made me stacking dolls! They are, from biggest to smallest, Whitey F. Sterling (singer/songwriter), Paul Boering (guitar), RX Mauser (bass), Bryn Mars (drums), and "My Papa's Leg" (It's a "gladglum"). That last one has to do with the cover art on their first album (see below).

Anyway, point is, I have my own Stiffs Inc stacking dolls!!! I haven't even opened my other presents this year, and I can say without a doubt that this will be the single best present I will get. Hands down. Now excuse me while I go squeee a bit. :D

Weekend Cooking: Sugar Cookies

2011-12-24T06:46:00.000-06:00

Every year for Christmas, we make and decorate sugar cookies. This is a family tradition that goes back at least to my childhood. My family has a very specific recipe we use to make soft cookies rather than the hard crispy kind. When I went to college, my brother typed up a copy for me, interjecting his own comments, such as "Make the no-purpose flour sit in the corner while you laugh at it" after the ingredient line for all-purpose flour. I still have the original printout he sent me in 1997.

I also managed to find all the same cookie cutters my mom used except one (still looking). They are olive green, so 70s, in the shapes of a star, angel, Santa, camel, and Christmas tree. The only one I'm missing is the bell. I have a different bell cutter, but it's much bigger than the 70s cookie cutters. We also have more modern cookie cutters, and I use them periodically (used one candle and one sleigh this time), but I prefer to use the same ones I grew up with. It just feels better that way!

I waited to make these cookies this year until the 23rd so that I wouldn't binge on them while everyone was at school and work. I love them way too much. We made a half-batch (yes, that's a half-batch!) in the morning, and let them cool in the afternoon while we took the boys to see Hugo (fantastic movie!). Then, in the evening, we decorated!

We always decorate the same way. We make four batches of powdered sugar frosting and color each of them with the four colors that come in a normal pack of food coloring - red, yellow, green, and blue. Then one by one, each person tells me what color frosting and what shape of cookie they want, and I frost them, and they decorate them with sprinkles, chocolate chips, mini M&Ms, Red Hots, nuts, or whatever we happen to have around that year.

You can always tell which ones the kids decorated by the overabundance of stuff on them. :D

These are sooooo good, and despite the fact that this isn't exactly the kind of food I should be eating right now, I feel much better for making them. It doesn't feel like Christmas without my sugar cookies! The good news is, I'm completely satisfied after one, and haven't had the urge to binge on them at all. Yay! So I'm even happier that I went ahead and made them. :)

Merry Christmas and happy holidays everyone!

Weekend Cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads. Check it out for more food-related posts.

On my twelfth anniversary...

2011-12-22T06:22:00.000-06:00

...my true love gave to me...

...um...

...well, if I were cleverer, like my husband or Jill, I could actually write out a good parody song to celebrate my anniversary here. But I'm not. I completely suck at that sort of thing. So instead, I'm just going to put up a happy smiley picture of Jason and me from about a week ago, and say I love you so much sweetie!! Happy anniversary, and I look forward to another 12+ years! :)

Also, look at what Jason made me for our anniversary!

It's a beautiful, sturdy bag that I can hold my books in, or my laptop and writing supplies, or whatever else I need. I got to pick out the fabric, and he made it for me over the last week. He is so much craftier than I ever will be!

And Jason doesn't know it yet, but this year I'm giving him a copy of Queen Mab by Percy Bysshe Shelley, and I'm going to promise to read it with him. Jason loves poetry so much, and I know it had to be a downer to marry someone with absolutely no poetic sense. I'm sure I won't understand half of Queen Mab (if that), but I will try. :)

Today, we're going to spend a couple hours to ourselves while the kids are off at Grandpa's house. It'll be nice to have the time together. :)

Things I Love About Winter

2011-12-20T06:20:00.000-06:00

I'm a HUGE fan of winter. Some people might say that that's because I live in South Texas and therefore don't experience real winter, but they'd be wrong. I lived in Wisconsin for five years and adored winter there. The only thing that I disliked was how dry it got, all the static shock. The snow, the cold, the clouds - I loved all that. I didn't even mind shoveling snow. Really.

Texas winters make me sad. We were astonished in February this year to get a dusting of snow (sidewalks and street only), the first snowfall San Antonio has had since 1985. My kids spent all morning playing in it, making 3-inch high snowmen, before it melted away by noon. A few days before the snowfall, it had been in the 80s outside. Dandelions had just puffed up into blowflowers when the snow hit. I got a great picture of an iced-over blowflower:

I doubt we'll be lucky enough to get snow again this year - remember, that was the first time in over 25 years - but there is still so much to love about winter, and I wanted to take a post to talk about all the things I love about this time of year.

Christmas traditions - in my family, there are so many! There are a couple movies we watch every year, no matter how cheesy they are (Rudolph, and Pee-Wee's Christmas Special). We make sugar cookies every year and decorate them with the kids. We have at least five advent calendars in the house each year. We each buy a new ornament for the tree every year. We make popcorn strings and paper chains (though it's been awhile since we did this). We put a chocolate Santa under the kids' pillows on Christmas eve. We all open a single present on Christmas Eve, and the next morning, we take turns one at a time in circles to open gifts. There are at least four Christmas celebrations with different parts of my family. And more.
Snow - Yeah, I mentioned it above, but really, I love snow!
Warm baths - They're just so cozy during the winter, and I find myself taking one nearly every day just to relax and warm up in the evening. They also help with the creative process - I always come up with new writing/scene ideas in the bath!
Hot tubs - I think one reason I love warm baths in winter so much is because of hot tubs, actually. Back when we lived in Wisconsin, Jason's parents had a hot tub on their back porch. The only time we ever used it was in the winter. If you live in a place where it gets super cold and snowy, you HAVE to try a hot tub in that weather! It sucks at first when you run from the house to the hot tub in a swimsuit, but it's worth it when you get in the water! You're so warm in the hot tub, contrasted with the cold skin outside the hot tub, and if you get too warm (a frequent problem for me with hot tubs) you can just sit on the side for a moment to cool off. I miss doing this so much.
New goals - I'm one of those geeks who actually enjoys making yearly goals and working hard to complete them.
New Year's bonfire - My mom's side of the family gets together every New Year's Eve and lights a bonfire at my grandmother's ranch. We eat Frito pie and tamales and hang out with the family. Many of my cousins come, and for some of them, it's the only time I see them all year. They light off fireworks too, but I dislike this part of the tradition and my immediate family usually leaves before they start that part.
Family in general - I love, love, love my extended family. This is the part of the year where I get to see my siblings, cousins, aunts, uncles, grandparents, great-aunts, etc more than any other time of year.
Wardrobe - From cardigans to long coats to fingerless gloves - you just can't beat winter wardrobe!
Clementines - Mmmmmmm.
Gingerbread tea - Another mmmmm. I'm so happy I finally found some this year!
Christmas - Yes, I count this as a separate thing from Christmas traditions. I love Christmas, one of my favorite holidays of the year. I'm not Christian and I don't celebrate it for its Christian meaning. I celebrate it as a time to be with family. I love all the songs and presents and fun things around it. I'm never sad at Christmas, and I don't get stressed out by all the Christmas stuff, and I'm not a Scrooge about the season. I turn into a little kid at this time of year, the only time I ever feel like that all year.
My anniversary - It's coming up in a few days. Jason and I chose this part of the year to get married in because we both love winter.

I'm sure there's more than that, but that's what I've got off the top of my head.

What do YOU love about winter?

Get Moving Fitness Challenge

2011-12-19T09:14:00.041-06:00

Since fall of 2009, I've been participating in the 100 Mile Fitness Challenge, both officially (when available) and unofficially (when not). In 2012, the 100 Mile Fitness Challenge has changed to be more flexible, and has been renamed the Get Moving Fitness Challenge. Goals are individually set, and sign-ups are going on now!

This upcoming quarter, my goal is to do 35 hours of exercise from January 1st to March 31st. In 2011, I've averaged over 60 hours of exercise per quarter, but I'm purposely decreasing that due to some overtraining issues I've had in late 2011, including some injuries. It's time for me to take a more moderate approach to exercise and do 2-3 hours a week rather than 5-6!

I will keep track of my progress below.

1st Quarter 2012 - 33 of 35 hrs

1/1 - 0.5 hrs
1/2 - 1 hr
1/3 - 0.75 hrs
1/4 - 0.75 hrs
1/5 - 0.75 hrs
1/6 - 0.75 hrs
1/7 - 0.25 hrs
1/8 - 0.5 hrs
1/9 - 0.75 hrs
1/10 - 0.25 hrs
1/11 - 0.5 hrs
1/13 - 2.5 hrs
1/15 - 3.5 hrs
1/18 - 1 hr
1/20 - 0.5 hrs
1/21 - 0.75 hrs
1/22 - 0.5 hrs
1/23 - 0.75 hrs
1/27 - 1 hr
1/28 - 1.25 hrs - January's total: 18.5 hrs

2/3 - 0.65 hrs
2/4 - 1 hr
2/8 - 1 hr
2/12 - 0.85 hrs
2/13 - 1 hr
2/14 - 1.5 hrs
2/15 - 1 hr
2/16 - 0.5 hrs
2/17 - 0.5 hrs
2/19 - 0.75 hrs
2/20 - 0.75 hrs
2/21 - 1 hr
2/22 - 1 hr
2/23 - 1.5 hrs
2/24 - 0.5 hrs
2/25 - 1 hr

Weekend Cooking: Life with Vegetables!

2011-12-17T07:03:00.000-06:00

Weekend Cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads.

I have come so far this year in terms of what I can eat. Before 2011 began, I lived my whole life in a tiny, insulated food world. Growing up, I rarely ate any vegetables or fruits, and when I did, they were always the same: a bit of iceberg lettuce (bleagh - still hate it to this day), cooked carrots or peas, bananas, and raisins. That's about all. When I went to college, I gave up fruits and veggies altogether. Yes, true story. I didn't like them, so I didn't eat them.

Over the course of my adult life (pre-2011), I certainly got better about produce than when I was in college. I discovered a few more freggies that I could eat - strawberries, clementines, baby spinach, asparagus, cooked tomatoes, pumpkin, rhubarb, onions, blueberries, and (sometimes) green pepper. Mostly I had to mince or hide the veggies, and my selection was very limited, but it was a start. There were times, though, when I literally went months without ever touching a fruit or veggie. It was unhealthy, and I'm sure my body suffered from it. I balanced myself out to a certain degree because I never ate a lot of junk food, but I know I would have been healthier if I'd been able to eat my produce.

At the beginning of 2011, I knew this had to change. I made a tiny goal: eat one fruit and one veggie every day, at least six days a week. While this may sound ludicrous to other people, it was HARD for me. Near impossible. Especially with such a limited selection. For the first six months of the year, I struggled with this. I just didn't like freggies. But I got used to eating them, once a day, and in June, I decided to try to add a second vegetable to my day at least five times a week. Not long after that, I read The Omnivore's Dilemma, which I swear changed my life. I saw food in an entirely new way. For the first time ever, I wanted to eat produce. Again, I know this sounds ludicrous to many people, but seriously, in the first 32 years of my life, I'd never, ever had that desire before.

We went on vacation to Wisconsin in July, and I spent two weeks trying out tons of produce, much of it directly from my mother-in-law's garden, some of it brand new to me and some of it stuff I hadn't tried since early childhood: green beans, cauliflower, kohlrabi, radishes, peaches, nectarines. I discovered I could eat veggies easier if I mixed a little hummus with them. I wasn't so scared of them that way. Hummus was the gateway that opened up the vegetable world for me. When we got home, I continued to try new stuff: guavas, summer squash (cooked and raw), broccoli, broccolini, Brussels sprouts, kiwis, many kinds of pears, grapes, celery, pineapple, mango, figs, cherries, sweet potatoes, cabbage. I haven't liked everything, but I'm no longer scared of any of it. It really is an entirely new world!!

Last night, I had dinner at a really fancy Mexican restaurant in town here called La Fonda. The last time I ate there was fall of 2006, and I hated it. Every meal on the menu was tainted with veggies. There wasn't a single meal on the entire menu that I thought I could eat. I ordered something, barely touched it, and waited until I got home to eat. Last night, I had a hard time choosing a meal, because there were so many good options. I ended up choosing Milanesa de Pollo: a flattened, battered, sauteed chicken breast smothered in avocado sauce, with fresh avocado slices on top, served with white rice and a mix of chayotes, tomatoes, and onions in thick cream. I wish I had a picture. I'd never even heard of chayotes before yesterday, but I wasn't scared of them at all. I didn't have to convince myself to eat them. And they were delicious. Everything on my plate was delicious. The bites of rice pudding with mixed berries and brandy caramel sauce for dessert were delicious, too, as well as the bite of house salad (mixed greens, black beans, and toasted pumpkin seeds) my sister gave me.

Life is so much better this way. In one year, I've gone from the girl who could barely stand to touch freggies, to the girl who doesn't feel a meal is complete without them. From the girl who had to ask about every aspect of a menu to the girl who can see "served with white rice and vegetables" and know she'll be okay no matter what comes on her plate. I generally eat 3-5 servings of freggies daily now, and have eaten more freggies in 2011 than the entire rest of my life combined. I have worked hard to change my palate, and it is paying off in huge ways. I know I still have a long way to go, but I am loving life on this side of produce world! I never want to go back to where I used to be!

[Oh - and in case anyone's wondering, I am a hypocritical parent who forced my kids to eat everything I couldn't because I didn't want them to suffer as an adult like I did. I'm happy to say they are all freggie-lovers and no longer resent me for my hypocrisy. Instead, they encourage me every time I try something new.]

Custom-made Tarot Bag

2011-12-13T15:56:00.000-06:00

My husband is so crafty! I've had my tarot deck, a Medieval Scapini deck, for over a decade now, and the box is getting worn out. Jason made a tarot bag for his cards a few years back, and two days ago, I asked if he could make one for me.

We picked out the cloth together - a green canvas-like material on the outside, and a blue silk-like lining inside. Both materials were ones we used in designing our house in Wisconsin years ago, so the bag carries so many memories already. The drawstring is elastic and loops at the end, so I can use it as a handle to carry the bag around. Jason sewed a little pocket for me on the side to put my instruction booklet into, because I admit that while I can read some cards very well, there are others that I still have to look up when I read my tarot cards. It's perfect.

I love my little bag! Absolutely delighted. I had to share.

Thanks Jason!

It's interesting to be an agnostic parent.

2011-12-12T07:09:00.004-06:00

First, before I begin this post, let me define my agnosticism: I do not specifically believe in any god or gods, but I don't necessarily believe that there is nothing spiritual out there either. I believe that it's impossible to determine one way or another, and that in the end, it really doesn't matter. I have personal beliefs about what happens when we die, and I am happy, comfortable, and firm in my agnosticism. It's been a long road to get here, through both Christian and atheist paths, and I am glad to be here.

It's interesting, though, to be an agnostic parent, because there is no real belief (or unbelief) system to teach my children. I do not believe in pushing my beliefs on anyone, including my children. I want them to learn about many different types of religions, philosophies, and ways of life, from all around the world and all different cultures. I want them to learn, and to find their own path, whatever that might be. I teach them to be open-minded, and to respect people of all faiths. The one thing I really stress is that every person has the right to make their own decisions about their faith or lack of faith, and that no one should push their beliefs on anyone else.

My children are aged 11, 9, and 7, and each one is very different in the way they think about religion. It's amazing how diverse they are in this. Of course, I'm sure their thoughts may change over time, but for now, this is where they're at.

Morrigan, my oldest, has always leaned toward Christianity. I believe this is because he spent much of his younger years near Jason's parents, who are Mormon, and he adores his grandparents more than anyone in the world. Most of his interests (from soccer to airplanes to God) are still remnants of things they taught him or did with him when he was under the age of five. He's also very influenced by his peers, who are mainly Christian. But he's conflicted about his Christianity, because of the historical inaccuracies of the bible and the things that many Christian religions teach (like anti-homosexuality). He doesn't understand why a lot of things in the world would happen if there is a God, and so most recently has decided that he believes in God, but that God is indifferent to people and takes no part in their lives, and that human beings have no real purpose in God's eyes. He's the most conflicted of my children.

Ambrose, my middle child, has been a strong atheist for the last few years. He's the most steady of any of my children. He is always very definite in his opinions about all things. Years ago, we were talking about Christianity and atheism, and as soon as he heard that some people believe that there is no god, but believe in science instead, it was like a light went off in his head. He adores math and science, and since then, he has stated firmly that he does not believe in any god, but believes in science instead. When other kids at school try to change his mind or tell him he's going to hell for not believing, he calmly tells them that he doesn't believe in hell. I admire the guts it takes for an elementary school kid to stand up to all of his friends and classmates that way.

Laurence, my youngest, views religion as a game. He has no serious thoughts in his head about religion. To him, religion is purely a fascinating cultural and historical thing to study and play with. A year ago, he decided he wanted to be Jewish after learning about Judaism in cultural studies at school. This past summer, after reading some of the Percy Jackson books, he decided he believes in the Greek gods. He doesn't really believe in anything, yet. To him, there is no pressing reason to think about spirituality, divinity, or religion.

I don't know where they'll all go in the future. And honestly, as long as they aren't forcing their beliefs on other people and being obnoxious with them, I don't care where their spiritual journey ends. In some ways, I think that's the beauty of being an agnostic parent. For me, it's the personal journey and discovery that's more important than the end result.

Weekend Cooking: Two Birthdays and an Anniversary

2011-12-10T12:50:00.001-06:00

Weekend Cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads.

It's been a food-filled weekend. It started with Emily Dickinson's birthday, which my husband celebrates every year. He's a huge fan of her poetry. This year, he made a cake for her birthday, using one of the only recipes of hers in existence:

It's like aged fruitcake, soaked in brandy. Jason brought it to work yesterday and had a little party with his coworkers. I'm not a big fan of fruitcake, but I tried this anyway, and it was pretty good! The brandy made it delicious enough to cover up the candied fruit. It was very heavy, though, and after two bites, I was done.

Next up came my two book clubs. The first is my Classic Lit book club, which I formed five years ago. In the beginning, it was just a group of friends and family, and I never expected it to last for five years. I got permission from the library to host the club there, the second Saturday of every month, and opened it to the public. Very few of the original members still come, but we've acquired a bunch of new ones in the years since then. Our very first book was Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy, an absolutely fantastic novel, and our first meeting was one of the best ones we ever had. We celebrated our fifth-year anniversary by reading another of Hardy's works, The Mayor of Casterbridge, and I brought along some chocolate-pumpkin brownies to share with my fellow book people:

Okay so technically this was the second recipe we made. The first one was...an unmitigated disaster. I love pumpkin and love chocolate, but I wouldn't even touch them. The kids liked them, though. I guess they aren't old enough to have discriminating tastes, haha! Needless to say, I left the bad ones home for the kids to eat, and took the good ones with me to my book club!

Right after my Classic Lit book club (during which we had a fantastic discussion of The Mayor of Casterbridge - Thomas Hardy is great for book clubs!!), the library's Jane Austen book club met. I'm a peripheral member of this group, because I'm not a huge fan of Austen, but I enjoy the people, and every December we have a tea party in honor of Austen's birthday (which is on the 16th). We have tea and snacks, play whist and other games, and generally have a fun little party for our last book club meeting of the year.

This year, there was some really fantastic food: smoked salmon cream cheese sandwiches, curred egg salad with mango chutney (my favorite!), homemade scones, clotted cream and jams, cinnamon bars, gingerbread, and lots of cookies. We all talked and played Pride & Prejudice trivia and generally had a fantastic food-and-fun time. I ate way too much sugar, haha! I hope I can recover before Jason and I head out for his work's holiday party tonight...

Last day

2011-12-08T15:26:00.002-06:00

All semester, I've been picking Laurence up on Tuesdays and Thursdays while his brothers have choir practice. Today is the last day of practice for them for the rest of the school year, and the last day I picked him up. The last day we have an hour or so just for the two of us after school.

Laurence is my baby, the only child I've been home with pretty much since he was born. Back when he was three and four years old, and his brothers were in school, we spent all day together, just the two of us. He went to "school" with me, which basically involved lots of games, reading, playground trips, and movies. To this day, he doesn't like real school as much as Mom's school.

Since that time, we haven't had any regular just-us time. With three kids all born close together the way my boys were, it's hard to carve out alone time with any of them! So both of us have enjoyed these Tuesdays and Thursdays together. Starting next week, he'll be walking home from school with his brothers every day.

We took a picture together today after we walked home together. It's gorgeous out, in the mid-50s, perfect weather for the mile-long walk from the school. I held his coat for him, and he held my hand whenever we crossed a street.

Fourth Drafts

2011-12-05T07:30:00.000-06:00

Back when I wrote my first novel, over four months in summer 2006, the idea of rewriting an entire book appalled me. I had loved my book idea, and thought it was going really well in the beginning. Slowly, though, as I wrote, I began to realize just how awful the book was. By the time I got to the end of the third section (of four), I cut the book short by about 20,000 words because I realized my characters would have to be the stupidest people in the world to do what I originally planned for them to do. The book wrapped up around 60,000 words, and I was so disgusted with the final product that I couldn't even look at it again for awhile.

I had been writing short stories for years and had even published a few in literary journals. Of course, I knew that a competence in writing short stories did not equal an ability to write novels, and I expected my first novel to be rough. I did not, however, expect it to be such a piece of crap that editing alone would not fix it. I did not expect to have to rewrite it from scratch, leaving behind all the (very rare) bits of decent writing from the first draft. I even tried to edit it, using green-colored font to mark all the parts that needed fixing, but gave up when I realized there was more green on each page than black.

Disheartened, I decided to abandon the project altogether and work on a different book. It took two years before I was ready to revisit that first book, and by then, I'd realized rewriting was my only choice. At that point, I still hadn't rewritten anything so huge before, and I sat down to do so with a lot of trepidation. The most difficult part was realizing that I had to overhaul the original story completely. It was hard to be okay with changing characters and plot from my original thoughts. I'd always been one of those (very amateur) writers who got it into their heads that the first idea is the best idea, and revisions were like selling out. (Yes, I laugh at my old writer self now.)

I rewrote the book in 2008. Almost none of the characters were the same, and the major conflict of the book had changed completely. The prose was much better, but I was still dissatisfied. The book didn't feel right.

So in 2009, I rewrote it again. Again, I changed a lot of the plot, and some of the characters, though the third draft had far more in common with Draft #2 than either of them had with Draft #1. This one was pretty polished, though in my mind it still lacked the spark that existed in other novels I'd written. I sent it out to beta readers, and some of them loved it, and some were just meh about it. I fell into the meh category myself, and in the last two years, haven't even looked at the novel again. I know, at this point, that it might only need edits to get it into good shape, but part of me thinks I want to just rewrite it from scratch again. Maybe I can find that spark in a fourth draft.

Yeah. I just said that. I want to rewrite it from scratch. I want to write a fourth draft. In just over five years, I've gone from appalled by and dreading the need to rewrite whole novels, to loving the rewrite process. There has only been one novel that I've written that didn't need a full rewrite, and that novel was a slow (11 month), edit-as-I-go novel that I worked on painstakingly, and have done some pretty extensive rewrites-from-within work on. Every other novel, no matter what it's current condition, has been a series of multiple drafts (or in line to get rewritten).

The more I do this, the more I realize just how much I LOVE rewrites. Each rewrite gets a little easier, and each time the book gets a little better, until it's in a condition where I can love it and know that it is as great as I can make it. I am currently writing Draft #4 of a WIP that has been in my head since mid-2007. Draft #1 was for NaNo in 2009, Draft #2 was my cleaned up, slower rewrite version of the first draft, in spring of 2010. I still wasn't satisfied, and put it to bed for 18 months. Then I wrote Draft #3 for NaNo this year, after a complete overhaul of the plot and characters. Now, the novel is exactly where I want it, and I just need to improve the prose (my current fourth draft). I've spent several years working out my characters, my plot, and the things I want to say in this book. I'm finally satisfied with it. Once I finish this fourth draft, it'll be ready for beta-reading and edits, and after edits, for submissions. I am very happy with the progress of this book.

And I'm proud of myself. I really didn't want to rewrite a novel, ever, in the beginning. The idea of rewriting a 60-80k chunk of words felt like such a waste, a crime almost, to discard all those old words as junk, all those words I so painstakingly wrote in the first place. But now? I'm more than willing to abandon old words for the sake of the book. I've realized that third and fourth drafts are far more fun to write than first drafts, plus they make much better books! I'm about 24,000 words into my current fourth draft, and excited every day to write more of it.

Weekend Cooking: Yogurt

2011-12-03T16:51:00.001-06:00

Weekend Cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads.

Originally I had nothing really to write about for Weekend Cooking this week, but today I made a new yogurt discovery that I'm ridiculously excited about. I figure that's as good a topic as any, right?

I'm super picky about yogurt. I didn't really eat yogurt growing up, because it was always too sweet and too thin. The only kind I could stand was the Yoplait Custard Style flavors, and even they were a bit too sweet for me. When I went to France for six weeks in 1999, my host family ate yogurt with everything, little 2-oz glass containers of vanilla or plain yogurt (adding a spoonful of sugar to the latter). I ate yogurt for breakfast every morning, and yogurt after every lunch and dinner. When I got back to the states, I tried the yogurt here again, but still couldn't stand it. It didn't taste the same.

Of course, now that I'm more aware of what's in food, I understand why this is. Most of the yogurt here is low fat or fat free, filled with chemicals, loaded up with tons and tons of sugar to mask the nasty taste of fat free yogurt. I like full-fat yogurt, with as little additives as possible, and with lower sugar content. Creamy, mild, thick, and yummy. The only kind that even comes close to what I had in France is Dannon's La Creme, and even that is still too sweet.

More recently, I discovered Greek yogurt, which is much thicker and more likely to have full-fat varieties. I've been experimenting with different kinds for a couple years now, and really like the Greek Gods varieties. We keep containers of the plain kind around for use in cooking, adding to oatmeal, etc. Well this morning at the grocery store, I saw the Fage brand of Greek yogurt, which a friend of mine on Sparkpeople raves about. It only had a no-fat and low-fat variety, but I looked at the ingredient list on the low-fat kind and it only contained skim milk, cream, and yogurt cultures, so I decided to try it. I got one of the 5.3-oz containers that comes with a little packet of strawberry preserve goo to add to it.

Oh. My.

I just had it this afternoon, and I am in love. The texture is absolutely perfect, so thick, so creamy. The little container of strawberry goo was just the perfect size, adding enough sweet so that the yogurt was no longer sour, but not so much sweet that it was overpowering. There's a really high protein content in Greek yogurt, and this container of Fage had 12 grams of protein in it, making it super-filling, much more so than any other yogurt I've had in awhile, plus the whole thing was only 140 calories. It was perfect. I wish I'd taken a picture before I gobbled it up.

(not my actual yogurt)

I am converted. There are other Fage varieties I can get at my store, with different fruits and such to add to the yogurt. There are also larger tubs of the yogurt so that I can just add my own fruit to it. I'm in yogurt heaven.

Can't See Myself

2011-12-01T06:25:00.000-06:00

I have gone through a lot of physical changes this year. Fifty pounds is a lot of weight to lose in eleven months. I've gone from round to shaped, lost most of my double chin, and toned up, until I look relatively normal (though still overweight, of course). While my weight is technically still "obese" for a few more pounds, I have a lot of muscle on me, and I fit into clothes that didn't fit the last time I weighed in the 170s. I haven't hit the magical number yet (185 lbs), but I consider myself "overweight."

That's a lot for me to wrap my head around. I haven't been "overweight" since mid-2007. Until I few months ago, I hadn't seen a 1 at the front of my weight since mid-2008. I spent over three years in the 200s, and in many ways, my mind is still stuck there. When I think of myself, I don't think of the way I look now. I see myself like this:

I see myself at 240 lbs, which is where I began this year. At best, I see myself at 225 lbs, that last picture there. I reached 225 lbs on March 17th. My current 189 lbs is unfathomable. I simply can't see myself there. The number isn't real to me yet.

Example: On Sparkpeople, many people have a weight loss ticker in their profile when they respond to posts on their teams. I was reading a thread the other day, and the last person to reply had their ticker up. It read 188.0 lbs, and for about five minutes, I was consumed with jealousy and envy. I didn't know this person, didn't have any idea what weight she started at or how long she's been doing this. All I knew was that I wanted so badly to get to 188 lbs, which felt so far away. Unreachable. Unattainable. It took me a full five minutes, literally, to remember that my own ticker currently reads 189.0 lbs. I swear I thought 188 lbs was at least 20 lbs away, months from being possible.

I feel like I'm trying to fit into new skin. I spent years between 185 and 195 lbs, so this shouldn't be anything new or out of the ordinary for me, but I guess after spending several years well into the 200s, it is. I really can't wrap my mind around it. I wonder how long it takes for your mind to really adjust to a new body...

Two Year Anniversary of my Weight Loss Journey

2011-11-27T08:41:00.001-06:00

On September 2, 2009, the last of my tooth infections was cleaned out. Over the rest of September, all the symptoms I'd had for the previous eleven years started to fade, until they disappeared completely. Those symptoms included constant throat infections, allergy symptoms, bipolar symptoms, hypoglycemia, swollen stomach, pain in the glands of my upper arms, and an up-and-down weight roller coaster. For the first time in over a decade, I started to become healthy. Unfortunately, I was still very obese, and needed to lose the weight I'd gained over those eleven years of illness.

That came slowly. I had to overcome both physical and psychological barriers before I could start losing weight. It had been eleven years since I was in control of my body, since healthy food and exercise had any effect on my weight. I was terrified to make my situation worse by trying. It was October before I tried to exercise. I weighed 255 lbs and hadn't exercised in almost 15 months, so I quickly injured my feet, knees, and hips.

Discouraged, I gave up for a time. I kept thinking about how I might do things differently, and finally decided to buy a recumbent bike, which I thought wouldn't hurt my feet, knees, and hips as much as my dreadmill. The day after Thanksgiving in 2009, I went to Sports Authority. There, I stepped on an elliptical for the first time in my life, and fell in love. I ended up coming home with an elliptical instead of a bike, and began to work out regularly. That same day, I met with some friends, and learned about mindful/intuitive eating for the first time. Those two things together started my weight loss journey, which is now two years old.

It hasn't been a fast or easy journey. I've had long periods of time when I wasn't losing weight - months that were frustratingly slow no matter how hard I tried, and months when I was just lazy. I've had to work really hard to learn how to eat healthy foods, and that's only after I learned how to tell when I was hungry again. I overcame emotional eating, and frequently dealt with a tendency to over-exercise or overtrain. I've spent a lot of time studying my body and my habits.

But while the journey has been slow and difficult, it has also yielded steady, consistent results. In the last two years, I've lost 66 lbs. I've changed my life from sedentary to active. I've done things, physically, that I haven't been able to do since before I got sick. I've learned how to eat things I've never been able to eat before. I could list hundreds of accomplishments, but one in particular stands out as the most amazing and wonderful achievement of all:

Except for one little 5-lb blip when I was super depressed around this time last year, I haven't gained a pound in the last two years. Not a single pound. I've either maintained or lost, and that's a good feeling.

I'm not healthy yet, but I'm getting there. It's a work in progress, and I'm happy with what I've achieved so far:

255 lbs versus 189 lbs - 66 lbs gone forever!

Can't wait to see where I'll be on my three-year anniversary!!

PS - Just as a brief FYI, I'm taking a break from my weight loss journey for the rest of 2011. I've worked really hard this year and I'm both physically and mentally exhausted. I've stalled out and made very little progress over the last two months, despite working really hard. I need to step back for the next five weeks and recuperate. My physical and mental batteries need to recharge before I start on the next leg of my journey in 2012. I hope to be back to full power in January! Posts on weight loss will resume then, too. :)

Weekend Cooking: Thanksgiving

2011-11-25T07:01:00.002-06:00

Weekend Cooking is hosted by Beth Fish Reads.

As with most holidays, Thanksgiving is a huge family affair in my family. And by huge, I mean that there are always at least two Thanksgiving dinners to attend, because I celebrate both with my mom's side of the family and my dad's. Yesterday was no different, and we started off with a Thanksgiving lunch at my cousin's house with all of my mom's side of the family there. My plate: turkey, stuffing, broccoli casserole, potatoes, rolls, and pumpkin cream cheese roll-ups. Oh so good. I got to hang out with my cousins, some of whom I hadn't seen in about a year. The kids got to play with my cousins' kids. There was an accident with one kid falling into a fountain, but thankfully that wasn't one of mine, haha! After lunch, we got this lovely picture of my family:

It's our first family photo in awhile!

So that was lunch, and then for dinner, we went to my dad's house for Thanksgiving with his side of the family. Of course, we were still pretty stuffed from lunch, even though we tried to go light, but we still had some really delicious food. My plate: turkey, potatoes, stuffing, asparagus, sausage-cheese balls, a roll, this incredible Middle Eastern rice dish that my Palestinian brother-in-law brought, a brownie (below), and a small bit of upside-down pineapple cherry cake. The only leftover I brought home was the rice dish. It's made with rice, lentils, and onions, and you add a dollop of plain yogurt on top. There's more to it than that, I'm sure, and my brother-in-law is supposed to send me the recipe. Maybe I'll feature it on Weekend Cooking soon. It was soooo good, best thing I ate all day.

Of course, Jason and I also contributed a few things to these parties. There were two dishes we made. The first is a home made cranberry sauce, a recipe from Jason's mother. I'm not a huge cranberry sauce fan personally, but this is better than most, and everyone else in the family loves it. Here's the recipe:

Jason's Cranberry Sauce

Ingredients:
2 cups cranberries
1 medium orange (seeded)
1 medium apple (cored)
sugar (to taste - no, we do not use as much as is pictured below!)

As with some of the other recipes I've put up for Weekend Cooking in the past, this one is adaptable. The "instructions" are rather vague. Use a food grinder to grind up all the fruit into a single bowl. If you prefer a little bitterness in the sauce, leave the whole peel on the orange. If you prefer it to be sweeter, remove half the peel, but leave the other half on. Use whatever kind of apple you like or have around. If you use a sweeter apple, you won't need as much sugar, while a tart apple will need more.

Once you have all the fruit ground up together, add in sugar in small batches, until the sauce is the right sweetness for you. This will vary depending on your tastes and the sweetness of the orange and apple. While the picture above shows a lot of sugar, we only used about a third cup of it for our Thanksgiving batch. Usually we use between a third and two-thirds of a cup. After you get it to the right sweetness, cover and refrigerate for an hour. It's better if you eat it the same day you make it.

***
The second thing we brought for Thanksgiving is black bean brownies. I know that sounds really strange or gross, but I was fascinated by the idea and wanted to try it. Plus, my stepmom and several members of her family have Celiac Disease, so we always try to bring gluten-free stuff whenever we visit their house, and these qualify!

Black Bean Brownies

Ingredients:
4 medium eggs
1 tsp vanilla
2 tbsp olive oil
1 can (14 oz) black beans, rinsed and drained
1 tsp baking powder
4 tbsp cocoa
3/4 c sugar

Instructions are simple: Mix all the ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth. Pour the mixture (which will be a lot runnier than normal brownies) into a greased 8x8 pan. Cook at 350 degrees for 30 minutes. They will puff up a lot while cooking, but will shrink to normal brownie size as they cool.

Since this was the first time we'd ever made these brownies, we had no idea how they were going to come out. It turns out they have a slightly different texture from normal brownies. More spongy, very moist but not fudgy. They taste good, though, almost exactly like normal brownies, and you can't taste the beans. They are, of course, much better for you than regular brownies. We cut our pan into 16 servings, and each brownie is about 93 calories, with a lot of fiber! Of course, the problem with having only 16 brownies is that they disappear really fast at a Thanksgiving dinner...

So that was my day yesterday. It was great, and as clichéd as it sounds, I'm very thankful for my family. I hope all of you had a great Thanksgiving, too!!

Top Ten Tuesday: Thanksgiving Feast

2011-11-22T07:19:00.002-06:00

It's been quite awhile since I participated in Top Ten Tuesday, hosted by The Broke and the Bookish. I'm not sure I've done it at this blog before at all! But I couldn't resist today's topic:

Top Ten Authors I'd Love To Have At My Thanksgiving Feast

A little background story before I move to the actual authors. In our first home, Jason and I dedicated one bookshelf to our favorite authors. We quickly saw that all these authors jumbled together made a very interesting dinner party guest list, so the shelf became known as the dinner party shelf. Nearly all the authors were classic authors and therefore dead, and they all lived in different time periods and different cultures. You know how in some Barnes & Nobles, there are those murals that have a bunch of random authors sitting around at a café? That was our dinner party shelf. That's what this topic reminds me of.

I won't just reiterate our dinner party shelf, especially since it included people who were Jason's favorite authors and not mine (Emily Dickinson, Emily Bronte...), but instead, I've made my own awesome dinner party for this Thanksgiving topic! I hope including both live and dead authors is okay. Consider it an alternate dimension where they can all be alive at the same time, in the same place, rather than a zombie-type thing. :D

So, my authors:

1. Vladimir Nabokov - The man was fascinating, a complete genius, and an utter snob who would certainly get the party rolling with his cynical disdain for the other guests. I'm not sure he'd like any of them, but he certainly wouldn't be able to resist talking with them.

2. Virginia Woolf - Perhaps her success here would depend on her mood, but I think she would be highly entertaining no matter what. Her unpredictability would be an asset to this party.

3. Lord Byron - Can't you just see him making eyes at everyone? And when he's not doing that (or sneaking off with Oscar Wilde - see below), I'm sure he'll spend most of his time goading Nabokov, snickering to himself the whole time.

4. Scott Westerfeld - One of only two currently-alive authors. He's interesting and humorous, plus I think he'd appreciate all the history in the room, dead authors and all.

5. Edward Gorey - He can do sketches!!! No party is complete without a performance of some sort!

6. Elizabeth Barrett Browning - She will add to Woolf's drama and Nabokov's snobbery nicely, plus it'll be good to have someone prim and well-mannered at the table. I'm not sure she'd approve of any of the other guests.

7. Franz Kafka - Brooding and paranoid - what more can this party want??

8. Maureen Johnson - My other currently-alive author. I'll bet she can enliven any party. She and Byron would probably play off each other pretty well, too.

9. Oscar Wilde - You can't have a (mostly) dead author party without Oscar Wilde. It's like a law of nature that you just shouldn't violate. He'll come decked out in purple furs, and will sneak off with Lord Byron sometime during the party.

10. Emile Zola - He'll sit in the background, not really interacting with the other guests, but you can bet that he notices every detail and writes an awesome book about the party...

And here they are - my dinner party (click to enlarge):

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children, by Ransom Riggs

2011-11-17T07:02:00.000-06:00

It's been nearly a month now since I put up a review. I've practically forgotten how to do this...

So this book has been big news around the blogosphere for the last few months. I wanted to get it in time for RIP, but didn't. It just now finally got to me from the library, and I read it enthusiastically. Unfortunately, I was not really blown away by it the way many people seem to be. The story was fun enough, and creative, but I had quite a few issues with it.

If you haven't heard what this one's about, basically it's the story of a boy whose grandfather told him crazy stories about the weird kids he grew up with. Kids with special abilities, like being able to levitate or lift boulders with one hand. This boy, Jacob, doesn't believe the stories, until he gets caught up in them. Scattered throughout the book are photographs related to the story, usually relating to the weird kids.

Now the rumor that I've heard is that the entire plotline of this book was based on this series of photographs. Originally when I heard of the photo idea, I thought they were photos used as illustrations, created for the storyline, rather than the reverse. I thought that was quite clever, and really looked forward to the interplay of photography and text. However, if the rumor is true, then the book is the opposite, and the text is bent to match the photos, rather than the other way around. From the writing and storyline, this seems probable, and this is where my main issue with the book comes up.

I read a review of this book months ago that said the pictures felt like they got in the way of the story. At the time, I didn't really understand, but now I do. This book reads a lot like a round robin story, only instead of multiple writers all dragging the story in new directions, it's dragged around from place to place by random photos. It felt far more like a creative writing assignment than a novel. Periodically, stuff would happen that had no relevance to the story, just for the sake of the photo. You could always tell when a photo was coming, because the story would just veer off on some tangent. While I loved the photos and the idea of using photography for illustration, these photos in particular felt superfluous, or at times even detrimental to the story.

That was frustrating for me, because the story was definitely creative and original, and I liked where Riggs was going with it. But because it kept going back to these pictures, a lot of the writing and plot felt forced. The characterization was likewise forced - though not necessarily due to the photo issue - and despite the originality of the story, it was very predictable. It read far more like a middle grade novel in tone and foreshadowing than young adult, though the subject matter was too old for middle grade. I don't know. It was just okay for me, I guess. It wasn't quite what I was hoping it would be.

I must admit, though, I've also heard rumors about a potential Tim Burton movie version of this book, and that would be 100% awesome.

To warn people up front: this is the first book in a trilogy, in case that bothers you, and it does read as if it was cut off mid-story.

In Defense of NaNoWriMo

2011-11-15T05:39:00.000-06:00

Every year, when NaNoWriMo starts, I hear a lot of people complaining or bad-mouthing the process. Most of what they say boils down to one thing: You can't write a good novel in thirty days or less, so what's the point? Setting aside the fact that some geniuses out there have written great novels - classics, even - in a month, my rebuttal to this argument is that writing a GOOD novel is not the point of NaNoWriMo. It's the writing itself that's the point.

Yes, I know there are some people out there who write their very first novel during NaNoWriMo, and they're so excited about it, and think it's the best thing in the world, and they ship it off to agents in December, expecting a seven-figure deal and world fame. I'm sure this is incredibly annoying to agents and the publishing industry in general. But with or without NaNoWriMo, you're still going to have people shipping off their very first novels, unpolished, into agents, and it will always be annoying. NaNoWriMo doesn't encourage people to think their book-in-a-month is a work of genius. It tells them, outright, that they're going to write crap this month. The point of this month is not to write something beautiful, but simply to write. To finish. To get your ideas on paper so that you have a place to go from there. Many people are so paralyzed by the idea of writing a novel that they may never try, even though they really want to. NaNoWriMo gives them the encouragement to START a writing journey.

Some might ask: what's the point of writing a novel if it's just going to be crap anyway? My answer to this is twofold. First, if this is a person's early novel, it's going to be crap fast or slow, and either way you'll learn something of the noveling process. If doing it fast with NaNoWriMo helps people to at least get that first book done, to get over the paralysis of the journey's start, then it is doing a good thing. Second, if this is not a person's early novel, if they already know how to write well, NaNoWriMo can do all sorts of things - networking, encouragement, idea-building, etc. Most people who already write well don't think their NaNo novels are going to be works of genius, and they're generally not the people sending unpolished novels out to agents.

I would call myself an experienced writer, and for me, NaNoWriMo acts as a giant think-tank, as well as a social activity. I didn't start writing novels because of NaNoWriMo. I started writing very young in life, and wrote hundreds of short stories before I was finally good enough to get a few published. Other than one really awful attempt when I was twelve, I didn't delve into novel-writing until 2006. Even though I was pretty good at writing short stories at that point, the novels I wrote obviously sucked. That's what happens with first novels. They suck. And that's okay. In the intervening 5.5 years, I've written nine novels, including full rewrites of some of the early ones, and I still only have a tiny handful that I think are close to submission-ready. This is a long process, and I'm okay with that.

I didn't do NaNoWriMo until 2009, and I was dubious at best about the process before I began. I had always written novels slowly, over 6-12 months, and I didn't know that I could complete 50k in 30 days, much less make it readable afterwards. But what I discovered in 2009 was that NaNoWriMo wasn't much different from my pre-novel note-taking period. I'm an extensive note-taker when I write. Before I wrote my first novel, I literally wrote about 30,000 words of notes over the course of two weeks. Some of those notes were so detailed that I had scene dialog planned out. The notes were slapdash, haphazard, and obviously couldn't count as a novel themselves, but they did something very specific for me: they laid out the book, they helped me figure out what worked and what didn't, and they helped me develop my characters, plot, and themes before I got to work on the actual novel.

NaNoWriMo worked the same way, and since 2009, has turned into that note-taking period for me. When I'm ready to launch on a new book, I use NaNoWriMo as a way to develop my thoughts more fully than I can do in regular note-taking. They aren't as slapdash or haphazard as my old style, so that they do make up a book, but what comes out of my NaNoWriMo experience is less "novel" and more "glorified narrative outline." It is a jumping off point for me to plan and rewrite the book a second (or fourth, or tenth) time, slower and better.

The novel I worked on this year is actually a second rewrite of my 2009 NaNo novel, which might be considered cheating, but I figure is okay since I changed most of the characters, plot points, world building, and words. The two books only have a passing resemblance to each other. The slow rewrite/edit of the 2009 NaNo novel wasn't bad - I even had agents asking to see it - but I wasn't satisfied with it, and I needed to change it up. In writing it again this year, fast, just to get an idea of what it will look like whole, I discovered some major changes I needed to make in the structure and order of the book. I uncovered a plot hole that I didn't figure out beforehand. I learned things about my characters that I didn't know before I started. Will I do more of this when I rewrite it slowly? Yes. Definitely. But now I know so much more about the characters and plot going into the slow write, more than I could have ever known just by jumping in slowly.

I've had slow novels derail because I got 40,000 words into them and realized I'd structured the entire beginning wrong and would have to rewrite from scratch if any of the rest of the book will work. That's really discouraging. If I'd had a fast write ahead of time, I could have discovered that problem in advance. I would have saved time. That's just one example of a pitfall I can avoid by using NaNoWriMo as a launch point. I could name a whole myriad of others.

So I guess my point is really this: NaNoWriMo is not a bad thing. No, it doesn't usually lead to a perfectly polished, deep, multi-faceted masterpiece. It doesn't usually even lead to a decent novel that just needs some editing afterwards. But it's not meant to. There are some writers who don't need NaNoWriMo, or who have never found any use in the process, and that's okay. But there are some people, new writers or experienced ones, who can take the process and get something out of it, and in my opinion, that alone makes NaNoWriMo a good thing.

Done, or my NaNoWriMo experience

2011-11-13T11:10:00.001-06:00

As of Friday, I've officially finished up my NaNoWriMo novel. I hit 50,000 words on November 6th, and finished the book itself on November 9th, coming in around 75,000 words. On the 10th and 11th, I rewrote two scenes that were bugging me, and then I read through the entire book to correct line edits (for instance, a child character once pushed over a "drunk" instead of a "truck," heheh). Final total word count: 77,012. This weekend, I'm putting the book to bed for a couple days before I start work on the non-NaNo phase: reordering, correcting, streamlining, and beginning the rewrite process.

I love NaNoWriMo. I love what it does for me. I will talk about this a bit more later this week, when I put up my "In Defense of NaNoWriMo" post, but for me, the NaNoWriMo process is more about getting a not-quite-to-scale model of a novel. A pre-novel, if you will, or what I'm calling a "glorified narrative outline." In this first pass of a novel, I have the opportunity to play with ideas and figure out what will and won't work when I do the much slower rewrite process. Then I get to develop this pre-novel into something far more dense, thick, and luxurious. I can't wait! It's always great when I'm still excited about my NaNo novel after I'm done.

I love the story I'm working on. I won't say much about it, but I will say it has to do with magic, split souls, tarot cards, Ouija, and a contrast of two ideas about love. The story has been in my head, in pieces, since the summer of 2007. I first put it into novel form for NaNoWriMo 2009 (my first NaNo experience), then slowly rewrote it after NaNo to make a decent YA novel which had some agents looking at it. Still, I wasn't satisfied. It wasn't quite what I wanted, and after setting it aside to rest for a year, I have overhauled it completely, aged it, and turned it from what was just a fun book into something a bit more meaningful. I hope to finish writing it in 2012, to make it into something decent and editable, and I really think it has potential.

Of course, it's not without problems, or pain. I still have a couple things I'm working out, particularly in restructuring the beginning of the novel. This is the first time I've written a nonlinear book that weaves several plotlines from several time periods together, so it's a bit more difficult structurally. I've also had some heartache in writing it, because I had to kill one of my favorite characters, someone who didn't originally die in the first versions of the novel, and it just about broke my heart. I had to mourn for this character, literally mourn, and it's taken a lot out of me, but I know the book will be better for the character's death, and I'm a responsible enough writer to kill when necessary.

I am very much looking forward to the rewrite process. I've taken most of this year off writing, as I needed to work through the whole "do I still want to write/publish" question after last year's NY Times debacle. Changing up my blog and getting away from The Zen Leaf has helped settle my thoughts immensely, even if it means that I've lost a good majority of my followers and even some fellow bloggers who I once thought of as friends. I am happy here at Ramblings, and comfortable, and I feel so much more at home in blogging than I have in a really long time. I don't feel like I'm in a spotlight so much anymore, and that has helped take the pressure off my writing as well. Ever since I deleted The Zen Leaf completely, my desire to write has come back more and more, and I'm even excited about possibly searching for agents again one day. Not quite yet, but one day. A year ago, I thought about giving up writing completely, and now, I can't imagine doing so. That makes me really happy.

So onwards! I will get back to regular exercise in the next week (I've been taking it light during NaNo), and start to work on getting this NaNo pre-novel ready to become a real book. Wish me luck!

I have earned my cruise!!!

2011-11-08T07:50:00.000-06:00

At the end of 2010, I made a decision. I opted not to go with lapband surgery (which I was heavily leaning towards) and instead gave myself one more try to lose weight properly. I made a deal with myself: Lose 50 lbs in 2011, and I earn a cruise in 2012. Don't lose 50 lbs in 2011, and I can do the lapband surgery in 2012 instead.

I started the year at 240 lbs, so the goal was to hit 190 lbs. I didn't tell anyone about the deal until after I'd lost the first 12 lbs, because I was afraid that I was just setting myself up for disappointment. Losing such a large amount of weight in a year is difficult, especially for someone like me - I'm a very slow loser. I know there are people out there who can lose 100 lbs in a year, but I'm not one of them. I'm lucky to lose at a slow, 1-lb per week rate, so 50 lbs in a year is hard for me.

But yesterday, I stepped on the scale, and it read 190 lbs. After losing almost nothing for all of October, I just stared for awhile, almost unable to believe that this moment had finally arrived. I have lost 50 lbs in 2011. I will finally go on a cruise (Mexico, Honduras, Costa Rica, Panama, Colombia, and Grand Cayman) this upcoming spring, with my husband, as a very late (12+ years) honeymoon!

And I still have almost two full months of the year to go! I know I won't lose much more in that time, but I'm hoping to lose at least 5 more pounds, taking me to the "overweight" level rather than "obese," and also bringing me to roughly the same weight as my husband (another of my goals for this year). But even if I don't quite get there, I am happy knowing that I set out to achieve this goal, and as of yesterday, I have accomplished it. I worked hard, I had good times and bad times, and I kept going no matter what. Now here I am.

Thank yous:

to Chris, who talked me out of lapband surgery
to the Game On! Diet, which taught me how important it is to drink my water, get my sleep, and balance all the parts of health in order to lose weight
to all the friends I've made in person and online who have supported me through this journey
to Sparkpeople, which has kept me going and saved me multiple times from all sorts of weight loss pitfalls, as recently as this week
and last but definitely not least, to Jason, my loving husband, who has supported me every step of the way, from helping to make our meals healthier, to calculating calories in the food he cooks, to taking endless series of pictures until I'm satisfied with one, to not complaining when I have to buy new clothes every month or two, to agreeing to polka with me on camera, to finding all the best ways to compliment me and make me feel good about myself - he has been the best partner in this journey that anyone could ever ask for

A comparison:

my last picture in 2010 (240 lbs) versus me now (190 lbs)

Victory!!

2011-11-06T16:37:00.003-06:00

It's been a good day. I finally broke through my weight loss plateau, and I hit 50,000 words for NaNoWriMo. Hey, that rhymes!

Hmm, maybe it's time for me to take a break from writing...

NaNoWriMo 2011

2011-11-01T06:20:00.018-05:00

NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) starts today! I will be mostly absent from the blogging world this month - or at least until I finish writing my book, which might be shorter than a month - just to warn you all in advance. I don't have posts lined up, and I probably won't be reading or commenting on a whole lot of posts. I promise to be back to normal as soon as I've reemerged from my writer's coma.

For the past few years, I've posted NaNoWriMo reports daily or every other day. This year, I'm going to do a master post like for Readathon, and just keep updating this particular post with my daily updates. You're welcome to read them or ignore them. They're mostly for my own journalistic pleasure!

Let the games begin!

Novel: The Magician
Word Count: 77,012 of 50,000 words (hit 50k on Day 6)

November 1st: Today went well! I had hoped to hit 10,000 words today, getting a real jump on the story, and ended up surpassing that by over 1000 to come in for a total word count today of 11,043. The story is coming along nicely. The writing is fairly crap, but I'm okay with that. I just want to get the story out, then I can work on it in earnest in 2012. So far everything has gone as planned, and there's only been one scene that I struggled with. A lot of the characterization will need to be cleaned up in rewrite, but the story is on track. Putting it to bed for the evening, and hoping to get a fresh go at it tomorrow!

November 2nd: The goal today was 5,000 words, half of yesterday's goal. This is mostly because writing that long yesterday left me stiff and sore, and I wanted to spend more time moving around today. Everything went smoothly again, and I ended up writing 5,031 words. I could have gone longer - I'd originally planned to write two more scenes - but decided to put it away until tomorrow. The good news is that I got in a lot more exercise today, so I'm not nearly as sore! Final word count as of today: 16,074.

November 3rd: Another day of booking it, ending the day with a word count of 9,141, for a total of 25,215. This officially puts me at the halfway point for NaNo, though looking at my scene cards, I realize I'm just over a quarter of the way into the story. I'm a little worried about that, especially since a lot of what I'm writing in these scenes is very bare bones. I already know this wil have to be rewritten from scratch, but I'm a little worried about the word count is going to be in the final book...

November 4th: I got to write some really wonderful scenes today, scenes I've been wanting to write for a long time. It was far more pleasant writing them than others I've been working on! I only expected and planned to write about 7500 words today, but because of those scenes, I ended up writing 10,266 words. So I'm still officially on a roll (though the weekend will probably crash that roll, just a tidge - it's much harder to work on the weekends when everyone's home). I'm still a bit worried about the final word count for this novel, which is still leaning in the 80-100k range, eek. Final word count after Day 4: 35,481. I fully expect to hit 50K by day 6, and I hope to hit the end of the book by Day 12.

November 5th: Today was far more productive than I expected, since it was a weekend and the rest of the family was home. I got in 7,165 words! I'm right up to a scene that I'm really excited to write, but I know it'll be a couple thousand words so I'll save it until tomorrow. One really good thing from today: I finally wrote something decent in this novel. Decent writing! It was a short place, about 200 words, but it's so far the only thing in this entire book that I think is fully saveable for when I rewrite. I'm also getting a better handle on the timing and sequencing of this book, which is good. With all the words I wrote today, I'm at 42,646 words total, which means that if I want to hit 50K tomorrow, I need to write 7,354, or just slightly more than today. With that scene I'm excited about, I think that's possible, but we'll see!

November 6th: Wow. 11,029 words today, for a total of 53,675. 50,000th word: "it" How boring. But still. Yay!!

November 7th: I had planned to do less today, but after severe insomnia, I'm too tired to do anything active, so I ended up writing another 6,513 words, putting me up to 60,188 total. I'm sure they're utter crap, especially since I'm so tired, but I'm that much closer to finishing the book. I think I'll finish by the 12th as planned.

November 8th: Another 7,055 words today, bringing me to 67,243 total. There are only six scenes/chapters left to write in this book! One of them will be pretty long, but it's looking now as if the book will be closer to 75,000-80,000 words rather than somewhere between 80 and 90k. I forgot I had another 6 scenes planned out as an alternate ending where the one character that I love who has to die doesn't die. It was an alternate just for me, because I couldn't bear to kill this character, but now that I'm going along, I know that killing them is the right thing to do. I no longer feel the need to write the alternate ending, so I'm just going to end the book. That'll make it a bit shorter, because I was judging off my scene cards. I can't believe I'm so close to the end! Things are going so well. I'm really loving this story and I look forward to really fixing up the problems I've found in this go-around and writing it out slowly, painstakingly, in 2012. Hope to finish the book tomorrow, on Day 9!!

November 9th: 8,060 words today, to end the book at 75,303 words. Painstaking work today, killing a character I loved, and writing the fallout from that. For a very rough draft written very quickly, this book sure took a lot out of me. It's time to rest.

November 10th and 11th: I said I was going to rest, but I took these two days to rewrite two scenes that were bothering me, add in some stuff I forgot, and generally look over and edit the manuscript. Not huge edits, but simple ones, places where Word autocorrected my mispellings to the wrong word, things like that. (Once, a child knocked over a "drunk" instead of a "truck." Yeah.) I also reread to get a general handle on the structure, and a better idea of how to fix/rearrange once I start doing rewrites and edits. In the process, I wrote a lot more words, especially since rewriting two scenes (perhaps 3000 words altogether?), plus there were words I added beyond that. My total at the end of Day 11 is 76,698, though that doesn't really say how many words I've written during NaNoWriMo, since I deleted around 3K. Still, sum total here is 76,698.

[Note: any word count discrepancy after this post is from additions/subtractions made in further editing processes in November. The word count at the top of the post is the most accurate.]

RIP Wrap-Up

2011-10-31T06:57:00.000-05:00

Sadly, today is the last day of the RIP Challenge. I didn't get nearly as much read for this challenge as I usually do, but I've been reading a whole lot less in general this year, so that's okay. I had a blast and most of the books I did end up reading ranged from good to fantastic. Here is how RIP went for me:

Books Read

A Good and Happy Child by Justin Evans - Very fun book, I loved the ambiguous ending. Not quite as good as The White Devil, but still solid writing. I'll be keeping my eye on Justin Evans for future reads.
The Turn of the Screw by Henry James - Reread of a book I didn't remember from the first read in 2001. I can see why I didn't remember it. Snore.
In the Woods by Tana French (audio) - Really fun until the narrator turned into a complete jerk. Had an interesting conversation with Carl (who hosts RIP) in the comment section of my review, though!
A Red Herring Without Mustard by Alan Bradley - My favorite of the Flavia de Luce books so far, and thankfully much better than the second book (which I didn't like). I can't wait to read more!
The Woman in Black by Susan Hill - A fun ghost story, though not as creepy as I was thinking it would be.
The Lottery by Shirley Jackson (audio) - Very powerful short story/novella. One that has come back to me multiple times since I finished it.
The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern - By far my favorite book of RIP. This book blew me away in so many different ways and has become one of my favorite books not just of RIP but of 2011.
The Haunting of Hill House by Shirley Jackson - Reread with a new, more accurate perspective. I didn't like this one at all the first time, but loved it the second (though not as much as The Lottery or We Have Always Lived in the Castle).
The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson - Incredibly fun book that I read during Readathon, creepy and perfect for the season! My second favorite full book of RIP (or third favorite, if you count The Lottery as its own book).

So nine books read total for RIP, and of them, only one was a failure. I'd call that a huge success!

Books Tried and Failed

White Crow by Marcus Sedgwick - I've been trying to get my hands on this one for two years now, and I was finally able to, only to really dislike the writing style. Sad. I gave up on it a third of the way through.
Phantom of the Opera by Gaston Leroux - I discovered not too far into this one that the translation I borrowed from the library is one that cut out many parts of the story, and decided to read this next year for RIP in the original French instead.
Practical Magic by Alice Hoffman - I had planned to reread this one to see if I would still hate it like I did in 1999. I got maybe 20 pages into it, laughing at how bad the writing was the whole time, before deciding yes, it was just as bad as I remembered.
Uncle Silas by Joseph Sheridan le Fanu - I wanted to read this and love it. I loved the beginning. It reminded me of Lady Audley's Secret, which I loved. But then the new governess was introduced, and the book spiraled downwards so fast that I just couldn't keep reading. Jason told me that it stayed pretty much that bad for all the rest of the book, so I gave up.
A Dirty Job by Christopher Moore - Not my kind of humor, I guess?
A Tale Dark and Grimm by Adam Gidwitz - Not a fan of fairy tale tone or breaking the fourth wall, and this had both, so I gave up pretty quickly.

Honestly, the reason my RIP was probably so successful is that I didn't continue on with books that weren't working for me. I could have read 15 books total for the challenge if I'd pushed on with these, but I think 9 with an 89% success rate is better than 15 with a 53% rate, right? I do wish more of these had worked for me, though. I was really excited about several of them. :/

Books I Didn't Get To

My Cousin Rachel by Daphne du Maurier - Just didn't have time. This will stay on my list for next year.
Insomnia by Stephen King - Same as My Cousin Rachel.
Wild Seed by Octavia Butler - I discovered that the entire San Antonio library system doesn't have a single copy of this book!! I was floored. By the time I discovered this, though, it was too late to ILL it, so I'll have to get it for next year.
The Lantern by Deborah Lawrenson - I've had this on hold since August, and it still hasn't arrived. There are only 5 copies in the library system. I will probably read it whenever it comes instead of waiting for next year.
Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs - Also still on hold at the library for this one. It had a HUGE hold line (I started out in the 120s, I believe). Like The Lantern, I plan to read this whenever it comes in instead of waiting.

For Next Year

Well, I have at least four books already on the list for next year: My Cousin Rachel, Insomnia, Wild Seed, and Phantom of the Opera in French. I also didn't get to any Wilkie Collins this year, so I will probably try to read another of his books, too. I will try not to get distracted by book club books midway through the challenge like this year. Lastly, I will try not to start the challenge a month early like I did this year, but keep my RIPish books for RIP, and I'll try to make sure my holds don't run over into November and December the way a couple of them will this year.

As for today, Happy Halloween everyone! This is what we all look like this year:

(click to enlarge)

We are, from left to right, Brutus, Julius Caesar (he looks better when he's got his wreath on, but I didn't get that in the picture), Napoleon (kids at school thought he was Captain Crunch), and a revêur from The Night Circus.

Feast of the Heart 5K

2011-10-29T12:29:00.011-05:00

For Morrigan's birthday a few weeks ago, I gave him an entry into the Feast of the Heart 5K, which took place this morning. Morrigan has never run a 5K before but has been asking to do one for at least six months, and it's been about seven months since I've done an official 5K, so we were going to do this together. This particular 5K benefited the Jimenez Thanksgiving Dinner here, which feeds thousands of homeless people on Thanksgiving. It was a very small 5K, not too crowded, and there were a lot of fun things to do before we got started.

Morrigan got a picture with the Turkey mascot!

Laurence and I raced each other around the playground area while I was trying to warm up for the race - it was COLD! About 40 degrees when we got there, and all I had on was thin pants and a thin jacket over a thin long-sleeved tshirt. Sheesh. Still, I was really happy that I could play with the boys on the playground, that I'm in shape enough to play with them on the playground. In the picture, my arm is around Laurence, and Ambrose is poking his head into the picture in his awesome monkey hat. :D And btw, once I got to running, my outfit was perfect for the weather, so I'm not insane to have worn it!

The race wasn't timed, and like I said before, it wasn't too crowded, so we were near the front of the group in the runners section. It took us about 18 seconds to cross the line after the timer started, so we based Morrigan's race time on the clock time minus that. For me, I started my heart rate monitor the moment I went across the starting line, and stopped it the moment I finished, so I have my exact time.

First guys, I have to tell you about Morrigan. I said above that he's never run a whole 5K before. He does the 800 meter in track at school (fifth grade), and said this week he did a 1600 meter, so he was looking forward to a full 5K. Morrigan turned 11 on October 18th, and he's really short for his age. Since this wasn't a timed event, they presented prizes in four categories based on clock time: boys and girls 14 and under, and men and women 15 and up. So Morrigan was competing against kids several years older than him and quite a bit taller. I told him before we started that if he needed to walk, he should walk, and that he did not need to stay with me, because I knew I would be much slower than him.

Morrigan ran THE ENTIRE 5K. His first time ever. More than that, when he passed the first corner of the race, where my dad, stepmom, sister, and half-sister were watching, he was like the 8th or 9th person to pass. Adults included. At one point, the path we were running on bent back on itself and I saw Morrigan on the further side. That was around the 2.33-mile mark, and he had been going for around 18 minutes. !!! When I got to that same point, it was around 27 minutes, haha! He said the only time he stopped running was at one of the water stations for half a second to drink the water, because he wasn't sure how to do it while he ran. He was the first kid to finish - or so we thought - with the fantastic time of 26:42 (adjusted for the 18 seconds - the clock showed 27:00 flat). That's under an 8:40-min mile pace! My mom got a great picture of him raising his hands in the air as he passed the finish line, but I don't have a copy of that one yet. These are the ones Jason took:

My race wasn't nearly as good as his, but it was great for me! The last time I walked/ran a 5K was in mid-March, at the Shamrock Shuffle. It was my first time running a 5K and my time was completely awful, 53:54. I knew I would be faster today. I did a practice 5K on Tuesday and came in with a time of 43:55, so I was just hoping to get under 45 minutes during the official 5K. I walked and ran in intervals, 1-3 minutes of running followed by 1-2 minutes of walking, depending on how tired I was.

I took splits at the 1-mile and 2-mile marks, and had to guesstimate the last mile since there was no 3 mile marker in a 3.1 mile race. At the first mile, I was at 13:06. At the second mile, I was at 24:00, so my second mile was done in 10:54 (this REALLY surprised me - that's really fast for me), and I finished the race in 40:27!!!!! That puts the last 1.1 miles at 16:27, or about a 14:57-min mile pace. I felt like I was going only slightly slower that last mile, though, so I wonder if the 2-mile marker was just a bit out of place, especially since my time on it was much faster than I imagine I can do. Either way, though, I couldn't believe how fast I went - 40:27!!! That beats my time seven months ago by 13:27! It's a 13:03-min mile pace! Here's the picture Jason got of me crossing the finish line:

Don't I look exhausted? I was! I ran the last 3-minutes, up a slope, at a much faster pace than usual. Here's a picture of Morrigan and me after the race, once I'd recovered, haha:

We really thought Morrigan came in first in the boys 14-and-under category, but it turns out he came in second. There was a kid who had to have been 14 who came in about 30 seconds faster than Morrigan. The kid was already the size of an adult and Morrigan remembers being right behind him most of the race. Still, he was happy getting second place. He got a medal and $30 of iTunes gift cards.

After the award ceremony, the whole family went to brunch. There were the five of us, plus my mom and stepdad, plus my dad, stepmom, sister, and half-sister all out at breakfast. Morrigan and I pretty much inhaled breakfast (according to my HRM, with all my warmup and cooldown I burned over 900 calories this morning). It was great. Great way to celebrate afterwards all together.

So that was our morning. Morrigan says he can't wait to do another 5K, so maybe we'll do one in the spring. I hope to start training to run more - one day I want to be able to run a full 5K - and maybe one day I'll get my time under 40 minutes!

I'll end with a comparison photo of me after this 5K versus me after the Shamrock Shuffle in March (almost 40 lbs difference):

The Five Oldest Things

2011-10-27T07:49:00.002-05:00

This past weekend, Jason and I got to thinking about the stuff we own. We've lived together now for about twelve years, and very little is left from when we were first together. Most of what is left is ridiculously old and silly but has somehow managed to survive all this time. While we were talking about this, we picked out the five most iconic things that we have owned together the longest (not counting things we each brought to the marriage, like random bits of dishware, photo albums, books, etc). These things have come to represent our marriage in some silly, bizarre kind of way, and make us laugh when we think about them.

Gordo. Of all these things Gordo is probably the oldest. He is a bean-stuffed bat (possibly a beanie baby, though likely a rip-off) that my mom gave us for Halloween in 1999. We hung him in the kitchen of the apartment we shared with three other people. Ever since then, he has hung somewhere in every house or apartment we've lived in, usually in the kitchen. He's permanently dusty and his wings curl back, but Gordo will always be a fixture in our house.

The KitchenAid. Of all the "oldest stuff" we have, this is the only one of any actual value. We got it for our wedding reception in summer of 2000 (the reception took place six months after the wedding). My grandparents got us this and we use it all the time. It's one of those appliances that never dies, and we're both very happy to still have it. The KitchenAid, btw, is what started this whole conversation and post.

The clock. When Jason and I moved from Houston to Madison in late December 2000/early January 2001, we had very little furniture and home decor. When we found our apartment in Madison, we ended up buying lots of things (bookshelves, desk, etc...) at Target. Most of it was horrible pressboard crap that cost way too much and died way too quick, but this $10 clock, for whatever reason, has just kept going. Other than the kitchen table Jason's parents bought for us around that same time, the clock is the only piece of furniture or home decor that we still have from early 2001.

The tube of medicated Chapstick. Okay, so that's really a bathroom scale, bought halfway through my pregnancy with Morrigan in 2000, but we call it medicated Chapstick because when we bought it from Walgreens, we bought a tube of medicated Chapstick at the same time, and the clerk accidentally charged us for two tubes of Chapstick rather than one tube and a bathroom scale. We didn't realize until we'd already gotten home, and being poor, broke college kids expecting a baby, we didn't fix their mistake (yeah, I admit it). So this scale, instead of costing $10, cost less than $2. I've weighed myself on it nearly every day for the last decade. It's old and dirty (can you see my footprints?) and the pad lining is coming off. It badly needs replacing, but I don't plan to replace it until I've finished my weight loss journey. Or possibly until it's so old it no longer works. I'm rather fond of that tube of medicated Chapstick.

The Candle. "Amanda's Bathtime Candle." Can you see just how old, dirty, and worn that label is? That's because Jason made it for me sometime in the fall of 1999 (rivaling Gordo for position of oldest object here). Originally, the candle itself was pink. It had another label on the top that said "For Relaxation Only," but that one fell off in the last year. It also had a mild flowery smell when I burned it. Jason gave it to me to use for baths, and I used it all the time. Now, it no longer has any smell, has turned kind of greyish-pink in color, and is so far down the jar that I have a hard time lighting it! So I have a different candle to burn during my baths, and I keep this one on the bathroom counter because it's been there for twelve years, and I don't want to let go of it any time soon.

That's all. Those are the five things that improbably still live with Jason and me after all this time. Do you have anything like that? What strikes you as silly and ridiculous that you still have after over a decade?

The Name of the Star, by Maureen Johnson

2011-10-25T07:07:00.001-05:00

Rory is from backwoods Louisiana, and her parents decide to spend a sabbatical in England. She chooses to go to a co-ed boarding school in London. Right about that time, a series of murders that mimic the Jack the Ripper murders of 1888 begin in London. Everyone is afraid, but Rory is more so because no one can see the man committing the murders, except her.

I think I have found my new favorite Maureen Johnson book. Seriously, this book was fantastic. Johnson does everything right. She makes her characters believable and real without glamorizing them. She makes them feel like teenagers without belittling or stereotyping them. She rides through drama without becoming melodramatic or letting anything get too big. She has a dry humor that helps to keep the book grounded even as tension builds. Lastly, she has a perfect sense of timing and pacing. This is why, in a time when I've grown tired of 95% of all YA, I keep coming back to Maureen Johnson. She's just fantastic!

I didn't know anything about Jack the Ripper before reading this book. I had heard the name and knew he was a murderer, but the rest - from the time period when he was killing to the fact that he was never caught - was completely unknown to me. Now, I feel like going out and reading some true crime about the case, which is far more interesting than I expected it to be. I loved the way Johnson handled his story, weaving in bits of history all throughout the book so there was never any straight-out info-dump, and how she made her present-day murder suspect believable.

I was also impressed with her ability to make this a complete, closed off book while also opening it to the rest of the trilogy. I generally run the other direction when I hear the words "trilogy" these days. I've read too many where stories cut off in the very middle of something, leaving dreadful cliffhangers, or where a trilogy is really a single story stretched out to ridiculous proportions in the hopes of selling more books. The Name of the Star was a complete and whole story, beginning to end. In the last chapter, there is a new development (ie set up for the sequel) that is related to the rest of the book but does not in any way change the rest of the book. The book itself is still complete. There is just something new for us to wait for. The beginning of something new, not the middle. Not a cliffhanger. The start. A teaser. In my mind, this is the best way to handle a sequel or series: finish each book completely, while giving the reader a reason to come back that isn't such a huge reason that you'll annoy them.

That's all. I really liked this one. It was perfect for Readathon, and I'm looking forward to reading the rest of the trilogy.

Insomnia, Plateaus, and NaNoWriMo

2011-10-24T07:08:00.000-05:00

I mentioned on my Readathon post Saturday that I had been suffering from a bad bought of insomnia. This happens to me occasionally, every few months. I'll start waking up at 2 or 3 in the morning and will be unable to sleep again for hours. Nothing fixes the problem, not exercise or hot baths or yoga or different foods. I can't take sleepy meds because I'm very, very sensitive to them and will be groggy for a good 48 hours if I do. That leaves me with no options other than to just tough if out, which sucks.

I've been going through this latest patch for about three weeks now, with only a rare night or three in that time where I've actually slept all the way through the night. That's led to all sorts of ugly things, from a complete lack of energy to a strangle-worthy weight loss plateau that I know would go away if I could just sleep! I've been trying to pinpoint the reasons for this particular bought of insomnia, hoping to eliminate the triggers, and have hit on two things.

1. I've been eating a lot more chocolate over the last few weeks. By "a lot more" I don't mean huge amounts. Just that I've had a Dove Promise or two (or three) every day, whereas before I would eat one or two per week. (And before anyone suggests that my weight loss plateau might be due to increased chocolate, let me just say the increase in calories is 50-100 a day, so no, that's not related.) My body is super sensitive to caffeine, increasingly so as I get older, so that I can't even drink a mouthful of coffee product or tea without being awake for the next 48 hours. I'm starting to wonder if chocolate is affecting me the same way, though not as badly since it has smaller amounts of caffeine. Given that I'm semi-allergic to chocolate as well (gives me headaches if I have it too often), I probably ought to scale back again anyway.

2. NaNoWriMo. My brain has been FILLED TO THE BRIM with my upcoming novel. I finished all the planning for it about 1.5 weeks ago and am just itching to explode outwards with words come November 1st. It's been so long since I felt like this, and my brain has been consumed with this other world. One reason I like to plan so early is so that I'll have a couple weeks for all the pieces of the book to come together in my head. I ruminate on them so long and so often that I can build up layers of characterization and plot and depth. I can really figure out not just what I'm doing, but what I'm saying, with my book. This often leads to middle-of-the-night revelations. When I was younger, I was smart enough to leave a notebook and pen on the bedside table to deal with this sort of thing. Now, I seem to prefer spending two hours awake, wishing I could sleep again, while going over whatever bit of newness has just occurred to me until I have it practically memorized.

[Sidebit: The night before the Readathon, my insomnia was caused by a very powerful revelation about my upcoming NaNoWriMo novel that makes me very sad: one of my very favorite characters in this book needs to die. They weren't originally going to die (indeed, did not die in the first draft version of this particular novel), but I realized, at 2:30 in the morning, that this character's death would make the book far more interesting, painful, meaningful, and powerful. I don't want to kill this character. I ADORE this character! I might have to write an alternate ending where they don't die, just so I can feel better. But I am a responsible enough writer to kill this character when I know they ought to die. Even if I don't like it one bit!!]

One week until NaNoWriMo starts and I can extract this story from my brain and leave it on my hard drive. One week until I'm gleefully ignoring all my other obligations to spend hours writing 5-10k words a day. Those of you who have never done this, I cannot describe the exhilaration that's coming up. I. Can't. Wait. And hopefully, between extracting this novel and cutting back on the chocolate, I will get back to normal sleep patterns soon. I hope. I'd really like to feel like a person - rather than a zombie - during the day again, and to see my scale moving downwards!

(So please, writing gods? Give my brain a tinsy bit of a rest? Please?)

It's Readathon!!

2011-10-22T07:00:00.018-05:00

After seeing how neat and tidy Erin's Readathon updates are, I decided to reorganize this page! All my updates and mini-challenges can be found here in this single post.

Updates

7:00 am - Okay, it's time to start! Sadly I am not as peppy right now as I wanted to be after suffering from insomnia for 2 hours in the middle of the night. Gah. But I'm up, and planning to start with The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson, just like I said in my vlog yesterday.

9:00 am - Well...I'm not very far into this thing, honestly. In the last two hours, I've barely managed to read 80-odd pages of The Name of the Star. There have been a LOT of distractions in my house. The boys aren't leaving to go to my mom's until this afternoon, but soon they'll be leaving to go to a library book sale that I'm skipping in order to keep reading! :D I'm sure Jason will get me stuff if he sees something good. I'm LOVING The Name of the Star so far. I'm so glad I got this one for Readathon, even though it will probably take up half my day. I'm okay with that!

11:00 am - Spent most of the last two hours exercising, showering, and cheering, but I finally got to sit down for about 40 minutes and read during this last hour. That brings me up to around page 125 of The Name of the Star, still not even to the halfway point of this book, but that's okay, because it's tons of fun and I'm glad I'm reading it slowly! Even if I only get two books read today.

1:00 pm - Finally got in some real reading this time, at least until the kids got home from the book sale near noon, and got up to about page 250. This book is getting intense! I'm looking forward to finishing it, though I'm putting it aside for a bit because my mom should be here soon to get the boys. Then the real Readathon fun begins! I will leave you with a (very blurry) picture of me reading The Name of the Star:

3:00 pm - I finally finished a book! My mom finally picked up my kids about 1:45ish, so I was able to sit down and get some real reading in. Only eight hours into Readathon and I finally got a book read...yeah. :D At least it was a doozy. The Name of the Star was fantastic, probably tops my list of Maureen Johnson books. Now it's time to take another exercise break and get started on The Princess and the Goblin!

5:00 pm - It's been a productive two hours! I knew once the house was quiet, I'd get a lot more reading done. I finished my second book, The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald. Sadly, it wasn't nearly as good as The Name of the Star. Ah well. I'm also now halfway through Wonderstruck. After Wonderstruck, which I'm sure I'll finish by the next update, I'll probably stop reading and spend the rest of my Readathon time on cheering. I probably could get another book read, but my brain is already starting to feel a little fried and I don't want to overdo it!!

7:00 pm - I finished Wonderstruck, which was pretty good (though not as good as Hugo Cabret). And on that note, I think I'm done here. My brain has gone elsewhere, and I think I'm going to spend the rest of my evening hanging out with my husband and maybe taking a hot bath. Just have to do another 15 mins of yoga to complete my hour of exercise first! I might also finish some other mini-challenges during the evening. I'll keep a running stats up as well. If I do any more reading, I'll add a final update before I go to bed, but otherwise, I'm out! Happy reading y'all!

Running Stats

Books: 3 (The Name of the Star, The Princess and the Goblin, and Wonderstruck)
Exercise: 1 hr
Mini-Challenges: 5 (opening meme, character photos, book sentence, mid-event survey, end of event survey)

Mini-Challenges

Hour 1 Opening Meme:

1) Where are you reading from today? - My living room in San Antonio, TX!

2) Three random facts about me… - I make gingerbread houses, I love lists more than just about anything, and I've lost almost 65 lbs in the last two years (almost 50 in 2011).

3) How many books do you have in your TBR pile for the next 24 hours? - Five!

4) Do you have any goals for the read-a-thon (i.e. number of books, number of pages, number of hours, or number of comments on blogs)? - Yep, I want to not read so much that I forget the books or get burned out. Probably 3, maybe 4 books. I also want to do a fair bit of cheering for my Readathon friends, and get in an hour of exercise.

5) If you’re a veteran read-a-thoner, any advice for people doing this for the first time? - TURN OFF WORD VERIFICATION. Relax. Have fun. It's not a competition, so don't treat it like a race to read more than others. Don't get too hung up on prizes either - there are LOTS of opportunities. And if you're tired, go to sleep, take a nap, etc. It's okay not to be up the whole 24 hours!

Hour 2 Mini-Challenge: Character Photos, hosted by Alyce from At Home With Books

My photo is of Jack the Ripper, as I'm reading The Name of the Star. :D

Hour 8 Mini-Challenge: Book Sentences hosted by Kate of Midnight Book Girl

I really love this particular mini-challenge! My sentence is We Crossed (the) Bridge to Terabithia. I know technically I should have a "the" in there, and I could have chosen another book title that did, but I liked the bridge image too much not to use it. :D

Hour 13 Mid-Event Survey:

1. What are you reading right now? - Absolutely nothing! Just finished my third book.

2. How many books have you read so far? - Three!

3. What book are you most looking forward to for the second half of the Read-a-thon? - I was most looking forward to Wonderstruck, which I just finished. I'm done with the reading portion of my Readathon.

4. Did you have to make any special arrangements to free up your whole day? - Nope! My family is great about Readathon, though it always helps when the boys are away this weekend!

5. Have you had many interruptions? How did you deal with those? - YES. Very noisy household for the first 6-7 hours. Just didn't get as much reading done, that's all. Plus last night's insomnia wasn't helpful...

6. What surprises you most about the Read-a-thon, so far? - Nothing! (Is that standard answer when you've done this 6 or 7 times now?)

7. Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year? - I would like some of the mini-challenge prizes to be broader reaching. Most have just been uninteresting to me so I haven't bothered to participate. Then again, that's just me being picky, and I don't mind if I don't win anything. :)

8. What would you do differently, as a Reader or a Cheerleader, if you were to do this again next year? - I would see if I could get my kids out of the house earlier in the day!!

9. Are you getting tired yet? - Nope! :)

10. Do you have any tips for other Readers or Cheerleaders, something you think is working well for you that others may not have discovered? - Keep moving around! Exercise and general movement helps keep you from getting too tired.

End of Event Survey:

1. Which hour was most daunting for you? - None, really, since I didn't stay up.

2. Could you list a few high-interest books that you think could keep a Reader engaged for next year? - I highly recommend Brian Selznick's work!

3. Do you have any suggestions for how to improve the Read-a-thon next year? - Nah, I think it works well. :)

4. What do you think worked really well in this year’s Read-a-thon? - Not sure if anything really felt different than other years from a reader's point of view.

5. How many books did you read? - three!

6. What were the names of the books you read? - The Name of the Star, The Princess and the Goblin, and Wonderstruck.

7. Which book did you enjoy most? - The Name of the Star, definitely!

8. Which did you enjoy least? - The Princess and the Goblin

9. If you were a Cheerleader, do you have any advice for next year’s Cheerleaders? - n/a

10. How likely are you to participate in the Read-a-thon again? What role would you be likely to take next time? - Definitely likely, though as usual it would depend on my schedule. I'd probably be a reader and unofficial cheerleader again.

Readathon Pile & Vlog

2011-10-21T07:50:00.003-05:00

Okay, I promised to do a little vlog for my Readathon pile, so here goes:

For those who don't want to watch the video, I have five books in my potential Readathon pile:

Wonderstruck by Brian Selznick (I plan to save this until my eyes are getting tired)
The Princess and the Goblin by George MacDonald
The Name of the Star by Maureen Johnson
When She Woke by Hillary Jordan
The Fox Inheritance by Mary Pearson

I'm not expecting to get through all five of these. I'm sure I could, I've easily gotten through eight books in previous Readathons, but I've found that if I read more than four or five books during a single Readathon that I get really burned out and don't appreciate the books very well. I plan to definitely read Wonderstruck and the MacDonald title, and at least one of the YA books, most likely The Name of the Star. The others I might try or might leave for next week. I'll concentrate on cheering after that.

Speaking of cheering, that's the one big thing I want to ask everyone for Readathon: if you're on Blogger, PLEASE TURN OFF WORD VERIFICATION, just for the day! The cheerleaders are trying to get to hundreds of people to cheer them on, and word verification takes up a lot of their time. You'll get far more comments if you turn it off, and Blogger is pretty good about catching spam, so a day with it off won't hurt. I promise. Please?

That's all. I'm very excited about Readathon, and will see you all tomorrow!!

We, by Yevgeny Zamyatin

2011-10-20T07:15:00.000-05:00

General summary: Thousands of years in the future there exists a dystopian city-state called One State. There, the millions of people, called ciphers, exist in harmonious, cog-like obedience, because they know that true happiness is only achieved through lack of freedom. They sleep at specified times, have sex when they're scheduled to, walk in time with everyone else, chew their petroleum-based food fifty times per bite. A green wall surrounds and protects their society from the evil that is nature. The world they live in is clear, transparent, viewable by everyone else.

Cipher D-503 is a mathematician in One State. He is a good cipher, fulfilling his duty and appreciating his lack of freedom, until he meets I-330, and falls prey to a catastrophic sickness: love.

I first read We back in early July 2008. I've gone back and read my review from that time, and it's clear that I had no idea what to make of this book. It's supposedly one of the three best dystopias of all time, along with Brave New World and 1984, but I had a really hard time with the book. I knew that a good half of it, at minimum, went completely over my head.

In the intervening time, however, the book has had a chance to percolate in my brain. I don't remember that feeling of not understanding We. Reading my review from 2008 actually surprised me, because I could have sworn the book made some sense to me. I remember having some confusion about the timeline, but that's all. In the three years since then, the book has come to make perfect sense, and grown into one of my favorites. There are very few books that I can say I still think about on a regular basis years after reading them. We is one of those books. There are images from it that come back to me frequently. Striking, distinctive images, ones that must have affected me far more strongly than I understood at the time.

So this time, rereading We, I didn't feel like any of the book went over my head. It made sense. I could see all the pieces of it, how it all fit together, why it worked, why it's considered one of the best dystopias of all time.

What makes up happiness? We asks this question. One State asks this question. The Ancients, people like us, we ask this question too. How can we achieve complete happiness? What is the key to locking away sorrow? What sacrifices are necessary to give us exactly what we want? Is it better to risk extreme pain to experience extreme joy, or is it better to cut out all extremes and to live, instead, on a field of medium - medium pleasure, medium emotion, medium living?

Think about the innocence of a child. A child, sheltered from the pain of the world, is far happier than most adults. As they grow, they lose that innocence, they are filled with thoughts and experiences that cloud their happiness, and they lose that carefree joy of childhood. Once you learn something, you cannot unlearn it. You cannot regress back to innocence. But what if, instead, you can be cured of learning? Of experience? Of pain? If you could stay in that childlike innocent state, would it naturally follow that you would remain happy? Or is experience at some point necessary to place value on your feelings, like a touchstone? Is it truly possible to know happiness if you have never known sorrow?

They say that we as humans have a tendency to want what's worst for us. The wish to never feel pain or sorrow or grief implies the necessity of cutting off the opposites of those feelings as well. Would we be willing to give ourselves over to slavery in order to always be content? Can contentment be enough, if it also means never having to hurt again?

It's funny that I didn't recognize these themes the first time I read through We. It boggles my mind that I didn't see any of this, particularly because as a writer, I have written many, many stories and novels that touch on these same themes! It's one of the things I explore the most, one of the things that I have been thinking about since I was in my early teens. Somehow, I was just blinded to all this the first time I read We. Another proof that sometimes rereading can be a beautiful thing.

Happy Birthday Morrigan!

2011-10-18T16:53:00.005-05:00

Today, my oldest son turned eleven years old. Eleven years ago, my 21-year-old self was cowering in a Houston hospital while the crazy doctors and nurses did things I never expected them to do, making it a really horrible birth experience that (thankfully) I never had to repeat! But we got Morrigan out of the deal, so that's okay right? :D

We had his party Saturday. He wanted a lizard party, which later turned into a sci-fi lizard party, and a chocolate chip cookie cake.

He had friends and family over for a series of lizardy games, a bunch of awesome gifts, and of course cake and ice cream.

Gifts included some plush angry birds, nano hex bugs, walkie talkies, movie tickets, registration for an upcoming 5K, and money all folded into various origami shapes. There was more but I forgot to take a picture of all of it...

After the party, we made him the dinner he requested, sweet and sour meatballs with broccoli and cauliflower on the side. We had planned to take him to a restaurant tonight on his actual birthday, but he decided he wanted to go on Sunday instead, so we all went to Texas Roadhouse (his choice) and celebrated then.

It's amazing to see how much he's grown, and how he's becoming his own person. Eleven years old. Happy birthday, Morrigan!

Twilight, in Gingerbread

2011-10-17T07:35:00.002-05:00

Welcome to Forks!

It's a lovely place where...

...the trucks are red, and...

...the vampires sparkle, and...

...the werewolves stalk their girlfriends in the background.

Okay so it's not our most beautiful Halloween gingerbread house ever, but it was certainly fun to make, and Jason and I both got a kick out of the idea. :D

Weekend Cooking: Intuitive Eating at a Glance

2011-10-15T07:35:00.000-05:00

This week for Weekend Cooking, hosted by Beth Fish Reads, I thought I would talk a little bit about intuitive eating, which is the food plan (for lack of a better term) that I've been following on my weight loss journey. I originally posted this on Sparkpeople, where several people had asked me about intuitive eating, but I realized some bloggers here have asked me as well, so I'm copying it over. Before I start, I want to say that I've done absolutely no research into mindful or intuitive eating. Everything I know about it is second-hand. I'd advise anyone who wants to go intuitive to do some of their own research first. Having said that, though, this is what I've been doing and what really works for me.

The concept behind what I do is simple: Pay attention to your body. Eat when you're hungry - and only when you're hungry - and stop eating when you're no longer hungry, not when you're full. While you eat, savor your food and pay attention to all the tastes, textures, and smells. Pay attention to what your body is asking for, rather than what your mouth or brain wants, because your body is pretty smart and will lead you on the right path. It will tell you when you need fat, protein, carbs, fruit, veggies, salt, etc. And lastly, trust your body. Your body doesn't want to be fat, inefficient, tired, and slow. It wants to run at its most efficient level. If you pay attention to your body and let it be in control, you will get to that place.

Very simple concepts, but very difficult to do, because it requires absolute attention every time you eat or want to eat. It requires cutting out emotional and mindless eating, and learning to understand what your body wants. But once you master this, it does work.

I love doing it, because I can't personally restrict calories too much (ie under 1500 daily) without halting my weight loss journey. Intuitive eating helps me to get right in my body's comfort zone for losing weight in the fastest, most efficient way possible for me (about 1 to 1.5 lbs per week). It also allows me to eat without guilt, to satisfy my hunger without feeling stuffed, and to eat a whole variety of healthy-but-reasonable foods. In other words, I don't eat tons of junk, but I also don't live my life on grilled chicken breast and salad. Here are some examples of meals we've cooked in the last week (all home made, without chemical-laden, low-fat, fake-sugar sorts of products):

black bean casserole (black beans, carrots, home made taco meat, corn tortillas, cheese) and baby spinach salad
traditional lasagna with baked breaded zucchini
hamburgers and sweet potato coins
beef & lentil skillet (ground beef, lentils, onions, rice) with asparagus
sausage and egg breakfast tacos
chicken & black bean enchiladas with salad
Ropa Vieja (Cuban beef stew) with white rice and pigeon peas
potato-corn chowder

Some typical snacks for me include: La Creme yogurt (full fat), boiled eggs, cheese (full fat), cottage cheese (full fat), mini pretzel twists, various fruits, Quaker Oatmeal Squares or Total Raisin Bran cereal with skim milk, organic chocolate chip granola bars, tuna, mini-bagels with peanut butter or cream cheese (both full fat), Dove Milk Chocolate Promises

So that's it. That's intuitive eating at a glance, at least as I interpret it. Lots of flavor, lots of variety, no deprivation, no guilt, no food off limits in moderation (though I personally avoid fast food for many, many reasons). Using your body's cues to lose weight. This does not feel at all like a "diet." It is a solid "lifestyle change." I can definitely live this way for the rest of my life.

Our New Tree, Part 2

2011-10-13T18:40:00.005-05:00

So yeah, I'm not sure anyone really cares about the saga of this tree, but I want to post about it anyway.

Our tree got delivered today, and the delivery guy said our hole looked plenty wide, but not quite deep enough. He said another six inches would be fine. Sigh.

So I went out this evening and dug another six inches out of the hole while Jason cooked dinner. Then we pulled the tree out of its bucket and put it in the hole, only to find out that the delivery guy was wrong - it was actually about four inches too deep now after my new digging, at least according to what we were originally told at the nursery. They said the hole needed to be twice as wide as the bucket, and the same height.

This is what our tree looked like sitting in the hole, which turned out to be wider and deeper than necessary. But we figured this was close enough, and that covering up a couple inches extra of the tree wouldn't be a terrible thing, especially once the dirt ends up sinking a little. We shoveled all that pile of dirt back into the hole after loosening up all the roots like we were told, packed it all down, mounded it as much as possible, and watered it.

In the end, this is what our new burr oak tree looks like.

Hopefully in a year or two, it'll be much fuller than this and provide some good shade to the house. That will be nice!

Personally, I'm thankful to be done with this, even if I'm happy to have the tree. I'm really sore from yesterday and I know I will be even worse tomorrow. I plan to do some yoga tonight to hopefully offset some of that soreness. The good news is that all that physical labor really conked me out last night, so that for the first time in a few weeks I didn't suffer any insomnia at all. Hurrah! Perhaps tonight will be the same.

And now my arms and legs shall fall off...

2011-10-12T19:32:00.010-05:00

So yesterday, I went to a Spark rally with a bunch of local Sparkpeople. Sparkers from around the country were doing jumping jacks for a full minute in order to attempt to break a world record. My whole family went with me, and a couple Sparkers got good pictures and a good video of the event. ~~I hope to eventually get larger size copies of those pictures as well, but for now, I'll just link out to MJ's and Lillie's blogs so you can see the pics and video.~~ I have the full-sized pictures now, and will include a few here. The rest, plus the video, you can see at the above links. These photos are credit to MJ's sister-in-law, Sarah Broadmeadow-Thomas.

(me, TaMara, MJ, Leslie, Jenne, and Lillie)

(two pictures of the jumping itself)

(the entire crew in a victory hurrah after the jump)

So that was yesterday. It was followed by a ridiculous night of only four hours of sleep, when I woke up at 3 and couldn't get back to sleep. Eventually I fell asleep at 7:30 and slept until 11:30...but still, I felt groggy and weird all day long! Still, life goes on, and we had things to do today. There was one specific item on the agenda:

Today, we picked out a new burr oak tree to plant in our backyard near the four windows that get the most direct sunlight during the day. It will get delivered to our house tomorrow, but of course, Jason and I will need to plant it ourselves. Planting it ourselves means digging up a hole twice the diameter of the bucket that the tree currently sits in, and at least as deep. And by digging, what we really mean is waging war against clay and rocks, because the soil in our area is more of those things than dirt. It doesn't help that until this past week, we hadn't had rain in a year.

So we dug. And pitchforked. And hoed. And shoveled. And eventually got the last of the dirt out with our bare hands. For 45 minutes, we worked on this hole:

Yes, the yard is pretty much dead. That's what happens after a year of drought. But anyway, to give you an idea of the size of this - it doesn't look nearly as big in the picture - here's a picture of Jason laying in it. Remember that Jason is six foot three.

Of course, I had to get a picture of me, too, since I know that even six months ago I wouldn't have been able to do this much physical labor.

Jason took the second picture from above to try to show the depth of the hole. And if you notice I'm wearing the same shirt here as I was in the jump pictures from yesterday, that's on purpose. I knew this would be hot, sweaty work, and my shirt from today wasn't well-suited to hard labor. I figured it would be better to pick out something that was already hot and sweaty, rather than something new and clean.

Lastly, our boys wanted to get in on the picture. They were in charge of throwing the big rocks we pulled out over the back fence into the ditch. As usual, Laurence is making a sad face on purpose. It's either this or showing off his muscles...

We won't know until the tree arrives tomorrow if the hole is deep enough. It might need to be six inches or so deeper, though I hope not!! I know I'm going to be super sore already tomorrow! That's an incredible amount of arm, shoulder, leg, and back work, especially after following a jump rally! Perhaps a hot bath is in order tonight so that I don't start losing random body parts to severe fatigue and overuse...

Getting Ready for NaNoWriMo

2011-10-11T07:20:00.003-05:00

In January, when I announced that I was taking a long hiatus from writing, I wasn't sure if I would do NaNoWriMo this year. I've loved doing NaNo these last two years, no matter what the results have been. To me, NaNo is more than just writing a book. It's about getting together with fellow writers, forming friendships, and being with people who are as geeky as me about writing. I love the socials and write-ins and dinners - one of the rare opportunities during the year when I have a chance to be social in real life and not just online. I didn't want to miss that this year, but I really needed a break from writing, so I decided not to worry about it and to just wait until NaNo came around to make a decision about my participation this year.

Even though (or perhaps because) I'd been working on novels and stories nonstop since 2006, I spent most of this year without any real desire to write. Due to events between late 2009 and fall of 2010, I'd lost all desire to write, publish, or do anything that might lead to people knowing my name. For the first time since I was a young child, I considered leaving writing behind altogether - a very scary thing for someone who has put writing first through most of her life! As time passed and no desire to write came to me, I really did start to believe I was through with all that, that the dream had broken for me.

Then, in mid-August, my writerly world re-awoke. It was like coming back from the dead. For the first time since December of 2009, I felt really alive in a way that only writing can make me feel. Since then, while I haven't written steadily, I've spent at least one day every week working on writing projects. As NaNo has approached, I decided that I indeed want to participate again this year. Excitement began to build, until I am now giddy with anticipation.

Of course, I had to decide what novel to work on. The idea I got in August is not quite ready for me yet. Perhaps it will be by next year. The one novel I've been working on for the last two months is a slow, character-driven book that would not work for NaNo. I wasn't sure what to do, and then I started getting the itch to rewrite some ideas that turned out like crap on first draft. Perhaps technically that's not what you're supposed to do for NaNoWriMo, but I figure since I'm rewriting from scratch, not reusing words and also changing around characters/plot significantly, I'm okay with that.

I've settled on rewriting the novel I wrote for NaNo in 2009, The Magician. At the time, this was a YA occult thriller and I can now see it had some major problems. The writing wasn't terrible in it, and the story was fun, but there were things about it that bother me and it wasn't until this last month when I've really figured out how to fix it up. I'm keeping some of the characters and elements from the first book, but aging my characters, going more magical realism than occult thriller, moving it from first to third person POV, and weaving together several plotlines rather than having the massive amounts of backstory that existed in the first version.

I've spent the last two weeks working on timelines and plotting, inking up my white board and making Excel charts. I still have another two weeks of work to do, mostly on cutting up scenes and arranging them in the right order. I'm one of those people who does massive amounts of planning for NaNoWriMo, because otherwise I'd freeze the moment it came time to write. One reason last year's novel turned out so terribly is that I didn't plan nearly enough! There are literally huge time gaps in it where all I wrote was "stuff happens for the next four years, figure this out and write it later." Yeah. I can't even read what I wrote last year, it was so bad. It will definitely be rewritten from scratch one day!!

But I am excited to rewrite The Magician. I'm really happy with my plot and my characters and what I want to say through this book (something that was missing last time). I'm really happy to make the GLBT subplot more prominent, and to talk about the true nature of love, and to have a semi-fantastical structure to lay my story out on. I am now every bit as excited about the book I plan to write as I am about all the socials and write-ins of NaNoWriMo! Now I just need to make sure I can balance the super-focused writing drive with my continuing efforts to lose weight...

So...anyone else doing NaNo this year?? Let me know and add me as a buddy! (Well, add me as soon as the site has re-launched the writing buddies part of itself...sigh.)

PS - I'm also very excited that my two oldest boys have decided they want to do the Young Writer's Program this year! Morrigan, who is almost 11, is setting himself a goal write 15,000 words in November, while Ambrose, who is 9, wants to completely 6,000 words. I hope to get them both signed up later today!

**Update: Laurence decided to join as well! He's 7 and decided to write 1,000 words in November. Jason also surprised me by signing up for NaNo, so now the entire family will be writing in November. Hurrah!

Weekend Cooking: Tomato Couscous Soup

2011-10-09T07:25:00.005-05:00

I'm back for my third time participating in Weekend Cooking, hosted at Beth Fish Reads. I've come to rather like this event! Funny that, since I'm not really a big cook. My husband does 98% of the cooking in our house. I'm still not sure how often I'll have something to put up, but I'll just keep posting whenever I've got something foodish on my mind.

This week I'd like to talk about one of my favorite meals, and one that I actually cook myself. I've been making it for about a decade now and it remains a staple in my diet. This originally came from Taste of Homes, modified a little to suit my tastes.

Tomato Couscous Soup

Ingredients:

- 1/4 c chopped onion
- 1 clove garlic, minced
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1 1/2 c broth (I personally use beef broth, though chicken and veggie are fine too)
- 2 Roma tomatoes, seeded and chopped
- dried oregano to taste
- 4 tbsp couscous

To make the soup, saute onion and garlic until tender. Add broth, tomatoes, and oregano. Bring to a boil, cover and simmer for 20-25 minutes, stirring occasionally.

Remove from heat. Add couscous. Cover and let stand five minutes.

Yield: 2 servings, about 1 1/3 cup each

The soup is wonderful with a baguette or some fruit on the side, healthy and filling and delicious!

The Haunting of Hill House, by Shirley Jackson

2011-10-07T07:12:00.000-05:00

I first read this book in 1999, when I was 20 years old. I'd seen the movie version of it in theatre with some friends and decided to try the book version, because of course I usually figured the book would be better than the movie. I read the book and was disappointed. It felt old-fashioned, clichéd, and ridiculous. The characterization made no sense. The tone and atmosphere were borderline silly, and I found myself giggling at the sheer awfulness of the book all the way through.

What I didn't realize at the time was that the book wasn't modern. I thought it was a recent book, not one published 40 years earlier, and so I was reading it with modern expectations. Those clichés? Not cliché at all, but more likely the invention of things that later became clichéd when other authors copied them. I dismissed the book through lack of knowledge and information, and I knew, after reading (and loving) several other Shirley Jackson book over the last few years, that I needed to give this one a second chance.

I'm so glad I did! Having the perspective of the book's age, as well as a better understanding of tone, characterization, and writing than I did at age 20, made this a far better reading experience. I was struck right away by the ominous creepiness of Eleanor's mind. While it was in third person narration, the narrator stuck by Eleanor, who never seems quite right. I found myself wondering if she was mentally handicapped, or mentally ill, or downright psychotic! Even before she gets to Hill House and the various phenomena start happening, her way of thinking is warped.

I love the doctor's initial hypothesis of a house being able to drive people into insanity because its corners and lines are all slightly off-center, out of alignment, and not quite square. In a way, it makes me think of the ideas about modern living many US cultures have: that in order to have a good, happy, upright life, you must live by a specific, standardized set of rules, and those people who live contrary to them will slowly dissolve into degradation and unhappiness. Or maybe I'm reading too much into it. I don't know. Still, it was fun to think of the book and of Hill House itself as a metaphor for what happens when you step out of line with the status quo, especially given that the book was published in 1959.

Even after a second read, I'm not sure I fully understand everything that went on in this book. There are so many jumps in the narrative, so many mood changes in Eleanor, and as the book goes on, everything unravels! It gets more and more surreal, until you're left sort of blinking in confusion and wondering what went over your head. I imagine that's the way it's supposed to feel, sort of unsettled and not-quite-complete. It was perfect for the story.

I still can't say that I liked this book more than We Have Always Lived in the Castle or The Lottery, but I am very happy to have reread it and straightened out my 20-year-old thoughts. Plus, I proved to myself, once again, that sometimes even books I disliked are worth a second chance.

A Polka for Losing 60 lbs

2011-10-05T07:10:00.000-05:00

I thought I'd do something different for hitting the 60-lbs-lost milestone, rather than just doing a big photo-comparison post like I did for my 50-lbs-lost blog. This time, I persuaded my husband to do a happy dance with me on camera. :D I consider it my reward for losing 60 lbs.

Keep in mind before you watch this that 1) it was shot at night in a hotel room, so the lighting isn't great, and 2) it was shot from THE WORST POSSIBLE ANGLE. It's highly embarrassing, but part of my goals over the summer was to lose my self-consciousness, and I'm not going to stop doing that now! So here goes...

We must be good! Listen to all that applause!!

Now I won't leave this post without some photo comparisons. Here are a few that really show how far I've come.

Then versus Now. 255 lbs versus 195 lbs. Awesome. This comparison makes me very happy.

Then versus Now. I still have a ways to go, but I'm happy with this progress!

Book festivals, October 2010 versus October 2011. 240 lbs versus 195 lbs. This very well might be my favorite!

Losing 60 lbs has been great in more ways than I can name. I can do so much more now than I could before. I can't wait to see what doors open up for me in the remaining 40 lbs!

Pottermore!

2011-10-04T06:15:00.000-05:00

It's been a couple weeks since I've been on Pottermore now, as a beta tester. I was lucky enough to find the Magical Quill back in early August, and gain access to Pottermore a few weeks before the site opens to the public (especially since they're delaying the public admission now, eek!). It's been fun so far. The things I looked forward to most were getting my wand and being sorted into a house.

My wand is perfect: Cedar with Unicorn Hair, 12 1/4 inches, "reasonably supple." Cedar is one of my favorite woods, and I love the description of its magical properties: strength of character, unusually loyal, not so easily fooled, perspicacious, perceptive, and potentially frightening as an adversary when harm is done to those of whom they are fond. So yes, I'm very happy with my wand! Wandlore is some of my favorite stuff in the Harry Potter series. If I were a witch, I think I would be leaning towards a career in wandlore.

Then, of course, there was the sorting. I really wasn't sure if I would end up in Ravenclaw or Slytherin. I knew I could go either way, having many characteristics of both houses in me. I tried to be as honest as possible with the Sorting Hat, and it put me in...

Slytherin! The longer I'm on Pottermore and the more people I see on there, the happier I am to be sorted into Slytherin. While I love Ravenclaw, too, nearly everyone I know is there! I like being slightly different. :D I guess that really does make me a Slytherin, haha. Ironically, I would be perfectly happy if all my friends were sorted into Slytherin with me. So I guess yes, I really am a Slytherin. Besides, we have a common room under the lake, and since I'm really very water-oriented, this is perfect for me!

The only thing that makes me sad about Pottermore is the pet I chose (which became my avatar). I love toads and really wanted a common toad avatar, but I worried that if I didn't choose an owl, I wouldn't be able get mail later on the site. I didn't know exactly how the pets would be used, and had no one to ask. So I chose an owl instead of a toad, and can't undo it now. I even tried to buy a new pet, but it wouldn't let me. Ah well.

The rest of my family got into Pottermore as well, though later than I did. Jason knew he would be sorted into Hufflepuff, and there were no surprises with his sorting. It's what happened with our kids that really surprised us.

Our three boys are, from oldest to youngest, Morrigan, Ambrose, and Laurence. They have distinct and very different personalities, and generally fit into Slytherin, Ravenclaw, and Gryffindor, respectively. That's what we expected from their sorting. Morrigan ended up going into Slytherin as expected, but Ambrose joined Jason in Hufflepuff, and Laurence joined Morrigan and me in Slytherin! We are a fully Slytherpuff family, it seems, haha! I guess the apples fell a lot closer to the trees than any of us expected.

Are you on Pottermore? I would love to make friends with all my blogging buddies there! I'm SilverCloak33 if you'd like to add me. Just make sure to let me know who you are! The anonymous username system is a bit cumbersome...