Book #53: Me and Emma

Title: Me and Emma
Author: Elizabeth Flock
I feel sort of emotionally wrung-out after reading Me and Emma. It's the story of two sisters whose father is murdered, whose mother falls apart, and in her depression (or whatever it is she fell into, or already was to begin with), marries a mean, abusive drunk. The whole time I was reading the novel, I just kept thinking, "why isn't anyone stepping in and helping these girls?" I mean, after their dad died, wouldn't friends keep an eye out for them? What about their friends? What about the girls' teachers? It seems like a lot of people had Caroline and Emma sort of on the periphery of their viewpoints, but they never really saw the direness of their situation. For me, it made me think a lot about the Church, and about my current calling as a Visiting Teaching Coordinator. I know we don't have the Visiting Teaching program to "tattle" on each other, but it seems like Caroline and Emma wouldn't have been quite so neglected with a nice sister from the church showing up once a month. (I know, fantasy world, but it is fiction, after all, right?)
It also seemed like there were a lot of things in Me and Emma that didn't quite add up, like the timeline of events. But I guess that when the narrator is a child like Caroline, that's to be expected. There's a surprise at the end, and if you can suspend disbelief until you get to that point, a lot of things that confused or annoyed you as you read will make sense. I promise. If you can stomach what happens to Caroline and Emma before you get there.

Book #52: Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil

Title: Kabul Beauty School: An American Woman Goes Behind the Veil

Author: Deborah Rodriguez

My Aunt Kate recommended this book to me a few months ago, and it narrowly missed being chosen by my book club for this year's roster. If you're looking for a book club book, here are a few reasons why, after finally finishing it myself, I think it's a perfect choice:

* It's relatively short (300 pages)

* It reads quickly

* It's written by a "real" person, as opposed to an author, so the writing isn't too dense

* It's a darn great story (a stylist who goes to Kabul with a relief organization and ends up opening a beauty school to train Afghan women to become stylists themselves, earn money and liberate themselves from male domination). In the process she finds love and meets some very interesting people

* It's clean (for those squeaky-clean, easily offended book group types)

* There are a lot of books that could be paired with it (like The Thousand Splendid Suns or Three Cups of Tea) to create sort of a thematic couple of months in a book group

* Afghan food sounds good

* Everyone could come dressed up like an Afghan bride-- 12" hairdo and all!

Book #51: The Adventures of Captain Underpants (The First Epic Novel)

Title: The Adventures of Captain Underpants
Author: Dav Pilkey
Since I'm a voracious reader, I always assumed that my kids would inherit the reading gene from me. Annie taught herself to read before she was four and has been reading herself to bed at night ever since. Bryce also learned to read early, but he's used books more for information than for entertainment. Until last week. He asked me to get him a couple of Captain Underpants books from the library. I'll admit that I was sort of put off by the name, but I did it anyway. We read the first book together. I kept thinking he'd be begging me to end reading time, but we read 75 pages the first night and finished it up as soon as he got home from school the next day. He's been reading the second epic story to himself at bedtime and I love hearing him giggle as he discovers the books on his own. They are pretty darn funny books too. But then again, I love potty humor, so my idea of a funny book would probably be one that would appeal to a second-grade boy.

Book #50: A Thread of Grace

Title: A Thread of Grace
Author: Mary Doria Russell
First of all, the Fifty Book Challenge? I made it! Not nearly as quickly as last year, when I hit fifty in July, but still, I did it. And I think that the books I read have, in general, been more challenging this year than last. At least that's what I keep telling myself. Mary Doria Russell's A Thread of Grace definitely falls into the "more challenging" category. It's the story of Jewish refugees during World War II who escape into Italy once they hear of a peace agreement between the Allies and the Italians. When the Germans invade Italy, the Jews must be hidden. The story reminds me a lot of Suite Francaise, which I read earlier this year (I think) and which I also liked. But I'm so glad that I live in a less precarious, less dangerous sort of life myself. I get exhasuted just reading about the trials people went through when a war was fought on their home turf. It also makes me wonder if I'd be brave and resistant for a just cause, or if I'd find the path of least resistance to protect my family.
And just an aside-- is it just me or does every girl who has sex ONE TIME in literature or film seem to get pregnant? It's like a given that if a girl has sex with a guy who is just about to die, she will bear a child nine months later. It sort of bugs me.

My cups runneth over no longer...

I have some pretty vivid memories of seventh grade. I remember dances in the middle school gym. I remember eating pizza and ice cream and french fries for lunch every day and being ravenous when I got home from school. I remember Rob Taylor skateboarding over to my house after school and doing tricks out front to try to impress me. And I remember getting breasts.

For most girls, I think getting breasts is sort of a gradual process. They go from being flat, to having little nubbins to having those nubbins flesh out and turn into breasts. Not me. I went on vacation to Florida over April Break. I had just turned 13 and I was flat as a washboard. I returned home ten days later as a C-cup. For the rest of my middle school years, I had to endure the tauntings that I stuffed my bra. Kids drew boxes of Kleenex in my yearbook. I felt like I was cursed with breasts, and would have preferred to stay flat. I've always admired those skinny ballet dancers and runner girls with long legs and flat stomachs and no boobs.

So, for nearly 20 years, I've had pretty substantial breasts. I mean, they haven't been huge or anything, but they've definitely been noticeable. My high school boyfriend's mom used to call them cantaloupes, if that gives you any idea. They were there, they were a little lopsided, and they were perky.

And then I had kids. And they were still there, but not so perky.

When Oprah went on her "90% of American women are in the wrong bra size" kick a while ago I went out and got measured. I was in the wrong size. The right size, I learned was a 34D. Over the last seven or eight months, those 34D bras have gotten big on me. Finally, they got to the point that I could stick my whole fist into the cup of the bra with room left over. So I got measured again, and I'm now a 32C. I know, it's not tiny, but it's, um, a lot smaller than it used to be. I'm still nursing too, so I'm anticipating even more shrinkage a few months down the road. I don't think people would look at me anymore and say, "Wow, she has nice boobs" or "Wow, she has cantaloupes." It would probably be more like, "Ho-hum, I've seen limes before."

The funny thing is, this is the look I've always aspired to. I had the long legs covered (thanks, Mom). Now I've got small boobs. But a flat stomach isn't going to happen. I think that everything that four kids have been responsible for removing from my chest has found its way right to my tummy.

Week in Training: September 17-22

Mon-- 4.5 mi run with jogger (done)
Tues-- run 2 mi hills, spin class, a little bit of yoga (done, spin class interrupted twice for potty problems in the childwatch and it's hard to do yoga with a kid on your leg)
Wed-- 4.25 mi speedwork (5K time 20:05) (done)
Thurs--abs class, spin class
Fri-- 6.3 miles with the jogger.
Sat-- 15 miles. First six took me 50 minutes. Second six took 43 minutes. Last three took 20 minutes. I guess I wasn't pushing myself very hard at first.

The mornings are finally cooling off here, which is making me think I just might be able to pull off this training thing after all. I really had to overcome some serious inertia this morning to get myself out the door, but once I did, it really felt great. The afternoons are still in the 90s here, but I feel like "fall" (we really don't get a true fall in Texas) is just around the corner when I wake up and it's in the 70s or even the upper 60s!

Total running miles: 32
Total other stuff: one abs class, two spinning classes and a very short portion of a yoga video

Eight (Seventeen, actually) Random Things...

Eddie is guest-authoring the first part of this post, so you can see just how well he knows me and how much he loves me...
1) Shelah keeps her toenails clipped VERY short and is missing the middle toenail on her left foot.
2) Her favorite jokes are those dealing with bodily functions.
3) She has a thing for NBA small forwards.
4) She HATES to lose totally inconsequential competitions like board games.
5) Favorite TV show: Feasting on Asphalt with Alton Brown (Food Network)
6) She cooks and does the dishes really fast (about 1/3 of the time it takes me).
7) In her frenzies of cleaning the house, she has a tendency to throw away valuable and irreplaceable documents.
8) She falls asleep with the light on EVERY. SINGLE. NIGHT.
bonus:
9) She loves babies so much, she would probably have 12 kids if I would let her. (Shelah says, "they knew that already.")

Since I don't want to tag anyone new, here are eight random things about Eddie (payback time)
1) He has great recall for books that he read in middle school (like The Good Earth) but can't remember things that actually happened to him in real life six months ago.
2) He knows the names of pro sports referees. One night last week, I was watching an NFL game with him and commented on the impressive arm muscles of one of the refs. Eddie said, "you mean Ed Hochuli?" Um, yeah, the one in that striped shirt over there.
3) He prefers baked goods that started their lives in factories to those produced with love in our own kitchen. Grossness. He won't eat at all things produced in other people's non-commercial kitchens. And you wonder why my kids are picky eaters.
4) He kicks butt at playing Guitar Hero. He's even been taken into Guitar Hero heaven. Pretty amazing, considering that he doesn't play all that much. I bet his mom is so proud that all those years of threatening him with a wooden spoon while he tried to get out of practicing the piano have paid off.
5) He talks to each of his brothers and his father at least three times during each BYU football game. We were at a concert last night and his brother called TWICE to update us on what was happening with the game.
6) He drinks ridiculous amounts of soda. I buy two or three twelve-packs a week. Sometimes I feel like I do nothing but walk around and pick up the empties.
7) He has a prodigious mind for pop culture trivia. And I think he's going to secretly be sadder than I am when our subscription to Star magazine runs out next month.
8) After ten years of living outside of Utah, he has lost his Utah accent. Not that he ever thought he had a Utah accent in the first place (but he did).

I think that no matter when your baby wakes up for the day....

...it's probably at least an hour earlier than you'd like it to be.

My wonderful friend Janet called me the other day. She has been sick over the last few weeks and as a result, she and her husband are both, to put it mildly, very tired. She also has an adorable four month-old baby, who, she lamented, keeps waking up so early. I asked her how early was "so early" and she said, "most mornings it's exactly 7:1.3"

For Janet, 7:13 is excessively early. It's her first baby, and she and her husband have always been of the "late to bed, late to rise" persuasion, so it shouldn't surprise you to find out that I spent a lot of Friday and Saturday nights during the three years that we lived down the street from each other asleep on their couch or their living room floor while they watched movies with Eddie.

I am an early-riser by nature.

Maren is an earlier-riser. This morning, she chose to get up for the day at 4:55am. I tried everything in my power to get her to GO BACK TO SLEEP but it was no use. By 5:40, she, Bryce and Isaac were all running around the house. After lunch today, I snuck into my bedroom to finish the book I was reading (about neglectful parenting, ironically) and immediately fell asleep. An hour later, when I woke up, I found Isaac sitting by himself downstairs, looking out the window forlornly. He had closed the baby gate behind him when he went downstairs, and couldn't get it open to come upstairs to find me. Unlike my three other kids, who would have raised holy hell at that point, he wandered around the downstairs, tried to take a nap himself (evidenced by the blanket on the couch), tried to get himself a drink (evidenced by the milk jug on the counter) and probably tried to get back over the gate.

Maren's up. Again. Gotta go. Lucy, I saw your meme and I'm doing it, I just need a little more brain power than I have today.

I know I always say that I feel like a single mom...

...but this week Eddie is gone all week and I really feel like a single mom.

I don't know how all of the real single moms do it. I can "just keep swimming" most days until six or seven, as long as I know that when Eddie walks in the door, he'll hold the baby, supervise the homework, and yell at the kids to get back in bed for the millionth time. Most days, I pull about a twelve-hour solo parenting day. Yesterday was a sixteen-hour solo parenting day, and I'm telling ya, those last four hours were killer. Even call nights aren't always so bad, because I know that it's just one night (well, two if you count the next night when he's sleeping off the lack of sleep from the previous night, but that's still not five nights in a row).

I've decided that no matter how annoying he gets, he's too valuable to me as an extra set of hands to divorce for at least another ten years (and yes, I'm totally kidding about that one).

Besides, I miss him. So do the kids.

Friday can not come soon enough.

Pimping my ride?

Though I haven't bought any testicles for my minivan lately, I have become slightly obsessed with finding the perfect bumper sticker. When I was a kid, I thought bumper stickers were so cool. I begged my parents to put one of the "My child is an honor student..." stickers on their car (they never did). My dad had an beat-up station car, unaffectionately called "the brown bomb" which spent the last year of its long life with the driver's side door tied shut with a rope. It would have been the perfect car to plaster with annoying bumper stickers (RULDS2 anyone?). If it distracted the drivers behind us to the point that we got rear-ended, all the better.

But my parents never bumper-stickered that car. Instead, my mom, in a fit of I don't know what, put a "Give Blood, a Gift from the Heart" sticker on the back of our minivan. From that point on, the van was known by my friends as "the heart van." Pretty soon, I grew out of my affection for putting my personal mantra on the back of my vehicle. My parents surprised me on my 21st birthday with a red Dodge Neon with "Shelah" license plates, which attracted more attention than any annoying bumper sticker ever would (especially when my brother inherited the car the next year) and I decided I'd rather live in vehicular anonymity. I did put a see-through BYU decal on the back of my parents' van when I went off to college, but Eddie drew the line a few years ago when I bought a BYU license plate holder for him ("we graduated five years ago, get over it").

Since I've become passionate about running, I want to shout to the world that I'm a runner. These are three of my current favorites.

But I think I might just wait until I can get this one.

What would your sticker say if you were pimping your ride?