a month in the life

March 31, 2022

Two Months In The Life: February and March 2022

Well, that was an unexpected hiatus. I thought to myself surely that I’d still have the time to work on the blog once the baby was here since so much of my content is pre-written and OF COURSE I’d be able to steal a little bit of time here and there for the rest of it. Ha. Hahaha! My life is lived on whims that are not my own so posting is going to be realllll slow around here for a while.

In Books…

Founding Mothers: This account of the Revolutionary War era based on the lives of the women (wives and mothers, usually) of the Founding Fathers was interesting enough but never actually compelling. I did learn more about what a crap husband Ben Franklin was (extremely) and was introduced to Eliza Pinckney, who was genuinely fascinating, but the reality is that there are few enough documents by these women in their own words that the ones for whom the most exist, like Abigail Adams, dominate the narrative.
The Inheritance of Loss: I had high hopes for this one, as a Booker Prize winner written by an Indian author (a micro-category that has historically worked well for me!). But it turns out it is mostly one straightforward thesis (more or less that colonialism/imperialism are bad because they teach the oppressed to love their oppressors and hate themselves) turned into a nearly 400-page novel with thin, underdeveloped characters and little in the way of actual plot. There are occasional beautiful turns of phrase, but not enough to salvage it.
Luster: This was a book club pick that I missed the discussion for because I was in the hospital! I found it to be more interesting in theory than actuality, if that makes sense. The idea of a story about a young self-destructive and underemployed Black woman who ends up in the middle of a white couple’s open marriage feels rich, and while the narrative occasionally lives up to its potential, it also seems to rely a lot on the reader filling in additional context and nuance.
Made-Up: I don’t know what I was expecting from this book that bills itself as addressing beauty culture in our current era, but it wasn’t a collection of very short essays that touch as much on Grimes and the first child she had with Elon Musk as they do on YouTube beauty gurus. The writing quality is high, but the essays are too short to ever really go anywhere and often feel repetitive.
The Duke & I: I knew I wasn’t going to have a lot of time for my preferred ponderous bummers, so before I had the baby I downloaded a couple collections of the books that are the basis for the Bridgerton series on Netflix, which I very much enjoyed last year. The first book was honestly much less interesting than the show, which had more nuanced and complex characters. I’ve heard the second one is much better so I’m going to keep reading the series because my brain needs fun stuff right now.
Fire On Ice: This was the autobiography Sasha Cohen, one of my all-time favorite skaters, “wrote” (it seems like probably mostly dictated to a ghostwriter) after her silver medal in Torino. Y’all, it’s basically a book-length Wikipedia article. No tea is spilled, no secrets are shared. The most interesting thing in it is that Sasha loves ice cream.
Small Spaces: I loved Katherine Arden’s Winternight series, so was curious about her MG/YA series and her writing has lost none of its charm despite the obvious reduction in narrative complexity. It’s a kind of horror-lite (like, Goosebumps-level scary) with strong emphasis on family bonds and unexpected friendships. Definitely a book I would recommend for the actual audience that adults can appreciate as well!

In Life…

I had a baby: Cal was born on February 15th and he is the cutest and most wonderful and also most time-consuming. He’s six weeks old and we are exhausted but happy that he is here with us!
Home repair hell: We had an interesting time of it after we got home with Cal! First our dryer went out, and it turned out it was because the heat sensor got tripped because there was a tiny fire in the lint vent! Scary! And then after that, our water heater (which we knew was old but found out was from 1996!) went on the fritz and it took about a week for it to get replaced through our home warranty and do you know how much it turns out you need hot water for when you have a newborn? It turns out a LOT!

One Thing:

Let’s talk about post-partum mood disorders, y’all. I have a long history of depression, and that was a part of what I felt after Cal was born, but more punishing than that was the incredible anxiety I was going through. I was terrified that every decision I made was the wrong one, that I was going to put my baby in danger because I wasn’t washing my hands often enough (I was washing them so often I gave myself broken and scaly patches), or wasn’t sterilizing bottles after every wash, or wasn’t watching him closely enough and he was going to slump wrong and suffocate. I talked to my OB and was put on medication and I don’t feel 100% again, but I feel like a person who is anxious rather than a bundle of anxiety with legs. I am a better mom because I’m not crying all the time. If you’ve had a baby and feel like you’re not in a good headspace, there’s help. Talk to your OB or pediatrician, or reach out for support. It’s hard, but it’s the first step down the road to feeling better.

Gratuitous Baby Picture (don’t worry, we’ll be doing pug pictures again too):

October 31, 2021

A Month In The Life: October 2021

October is always my favorite month! It’s the one with my birthday and my husband’s birthday, after all. And, now that I live in Nevada, Nevada Day (which is technically today but we celebrate on the last Friday of the month to make a three-day weekend). Usually we can count on October for some lovely weather in the upper 60s and low 70s to enjoy the last of the long days, but once the heat broke, it plunged firmly into the 50s and 60s so it’s definitely been a properly “fall” fall.

In Books…

Alice: Alice Roosevelt Longworth was the first child of Teddy Roosevelt, and his only child with his first wife, who died within days of her birth. She had a fascinating life, exerting a lot of soft power in Washington, DC, with her background as a First Daughter and wife of the man who would one day become Speaker, but dealt with plenty of darkness as well. This biography is competent enough and definitely provides a solid overview of her life, but has a hard time sustaining itself and kind of drags by the end.
French Concession: This was a noir thriller set in 1930s Hong Kong, and was the first book translated into English of a successful Chinese writer so I decided to try it despite not being a particular devotee of the genre. This was a mistake, I found it needlessly complicated with characters too thinly sketched to actually care about.
Land of Big Numbers: I think this is the last time I read short stories for book club, y’all. I just don’t like them. This collection set mostly in China or featuring Chinese characters, written by a Chinese-American journalist who spent several years living in China, is fine. I found none of the stories interesting, either in a good or bad way. They were all just kind of there.
Uprooted: I had high hopes for this book, which I’ve had recommended to me several times, and they were mostly satisfied. It’s a standalone adult fantasy (adult here in the sense of “not-young adult”, not “x-rated”) based in Eastern Europe, rooted in the journey of a young woman, Agnesiezka, discovering her magic under the tutelage of a wizard known as The Dragon, who finds herself having to fight to save her home and kingdom. There’s a little too much plot here, I wish just a bit had been edited out to make room for a couple character moments to fully develop, but it’s very good and I enjoyed reading it.
The Night The Lights Went Out: Drew Magary is one of my favorite writers on the internet, and I remember following along with reports on Twitter when he had a bad accident in late 2018 that it seemed like he might not recover from. He did recover, though, and wrote this memoir about his experience with traumatic brain injury and the long process of recovery. I found it strongest in the first half, but Magary’s skill with words makes the second half (in which he tries to cope with the fallout of a loss of his senses of hearing, smell, and taste) work despite being often repetitious. It’s definitely something to read if you like him/his work, but otherwise might not be especially compelling.
Cleopatra’s Shadows: This is an unusual take on a Cleopatra-era historical fiction about Ancient Egypt, in that Cleopatra herself barely features as a player in the drama. Instead, it concerns itself with the story of her older sister, Berenice, and younger sister, Arsinoe, during the brief reign of the former prior to the death of Cleopatra’s father. I appreciated that it was a side of the story we rarely see considered, and it was written well enough to keep my attention and interest though wasn’t more than solid-to-good.

In Life…

I turned 36: Birthdays do get much less exciting as we get older, don’t they? Turning 36 felt like the opposite of a big deal, so we just watched college football and ordered Mexican food take-out. This is the first major milestone where I keep thinking that the next time this one rolls around we’ll have a kid!
I went to Skate America: My best friend and I love figure skating, so we went to Las Vegas for Skate America, the first major international competition of the season that will end with Worlds in March (though few but the hardcore will pay much attention once the Olympics are over). It was super fun, we got to watch some incredible skating from everyone from Russian teenage phenoms to 30something multiple-time Olympians. This was our second time going and we definitely want to make it a tradition!

One Thing:

I’m trying to stay healthy and at least somewhat active during this pregnancy, which feels increasingly important but also increasingly challenging as I approach the third trimester. I’m too paranoid to go to the gym and risk COVID exposure (at least until I get my booster shot in a week!) so I’ve been working out from home and really appreciate the workouts put together by BodyFit by Amy. She has a TON of home workouts for every kind of fitness need, but it’s surprisingly hard to find good pregnancy-friendly workouts that I like so I especially appreciate her list of workouts for those of us growing tiny humans. I definitely intend to continue using her material even after I have evicted my passenger!

Gratuitous Pug Picture:

July 31, 2021

A Month In The Life: July 2021

The summer after session is a glorious time…there’s still work to do, of course, but it’s such a dramatic stepdown from the headlong rush of the session that it all feels very leisurely. It would be a great time to hang out on the deck outside, but unfortunately, Reno is not really cooperating with those sorts of plans. It has been beastly hot, so we are very grateful that our air conditioning is working at least!

In Books…

The Snow Child: I love stories based on folklore, and had heard good things about this, so I was really excited to read this take on the Russian tale of “Snegurochka”. An older couple who can’t have children move to Alaska to forget their woes, and after a night where they build a snowgirl together, they start seeing a child in the woods. I just never got drawn in and thought the attempts to play both sides as to the child’s origin worked against the book.
Pachinko: I came into this having gotten tons of hype from friends, which can be a double-edged sword, but it delivered for me. Multi-generational family stories often appeal to me, and this one taught me quite a lot that I hadn’t known about the relationship between Korea and Japan while telling a powerful story. I really loved it!
Homeland Elegies: Another month, another book club selection that didn’t quite come together for me as a reader. I’m always a little leery of autofiction, and this was the sort that I tend to find irritating (where the memoir-esque elements are very strong). And while I understand the vignette-type structure, I rarely enjoy reading it and that held true here as well.
Dreamland: In 2021, we’re reading headlines about players in the pharmaceutical industry settling enormous, multi-state lawsuits. But in 2015, when this book was published, the opiate epidemic was really just starting to fully come into focus. This is sometimes repetitive and bounces around a little too much for my personal taste, but it’s a wide-ranging look at the factors that came together to create one of the most devastating public health crises of our time.
The Council of Animals: This is a short little book, about several animals trying to decide what to do with a small group of surviving humans that have been discovered after a never-specified-but-human-caused Calamity. I was worried it was going to go hard in an Animal Farm direction, which it didn’t, but it also failed to really capture my attention. Pleasant enough but insubstantial.
Nabokov in America: I’d been looking forward to getting to this one for ages but honestly, I was really underwhelmed. Lolita is one of my all-time favorite books, so reading about the author’s time in America (where he wrote the book) seemed like it would provide an interesting perspective, but this was criminally boring. I’m always wary of a non-fiction book that constantly excerpts large chunks of its sources because it seldom has much original to say, and books like this are why.

In Life…

It is smoky and disgusting outside: Wildfires are a fact of life in the West in the summer, but it feels a little early for it to be as bad as it is. This is especially dismaying because recent research has shown that the smoke makes COVID symptoms worse and COVID numbers in Nevada (mostly in Clark County where Las Vegas is, but in northern Nevada too) aren’t looking very good recently

One Thing:

I’ve long had mixed feelings about the current state of YA, a genre I read heavily as a teenager but only occasionally now. It seems like virtually anything with a teenage central character (particularly a girl) is labeled as “young adult”, even when it seems much more directly targeted at an adult audience. This article, written be someone who was a literal teenager at the time the YA boom really started taking off and writes about what it was like to be in the Twitter community around YA, allegedly the intended consumer, and experience the intensity and harassment of the adult participants. It’s a really interesting read!

Gratuitous Pug Picture:

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