It's Hot!

June is not supposed to be this hot but it is this year. We're in the 90s and 100s almost every day right now. That usually doesn't happen til July. So hot! We are beating the heat with some early morning hikes...ok, not really but it's still pretty. Weekend cocktails and evening fire pits with friends definitely helps us all cool off!

Enjoyed a lovely birthday weekend last week. DH and I finally went out for some fantastic dinner and drinks. We have not done that in 14 months. It was so nice! The restaurant we went to had a vaccination card only policy. So we knew everyone in that restaurant was fully vaccinated. It was a very relaxing evening. We later learned that the restaurant has received death threats from anti-vaxers and threats of being Nazis...I mean, wow. We were very happy to support them!

This summer is full of house projects, work, and getting out into nature when it's cool enough.

We got good news on our kitty Nala. She is still seizure free and we've got about 4 months left before she'll be completely weaned off her meds as long as she continues to be seizure-free! We have a couple of trips we want to plan so this is very good news!

Here's a couple of pics from my latest hike. So hot so we didn't quite make it to the top but we still got some great exercise in the mountains.

Reading Life:

I just started up Written in Bone: Hidden Stories in What We Leave Behind by Sue Black. I loved her first book All That Remains. True-crime from a forensic anthropologist. G and I also started The House of the Scorpion by Nancy Farmer. Disturbing but also very intriguing. It also goes along nicely with my sci-fi challenge this month...but it's mostly dystopia.

Reading Challenges:

For my Sci-fi Readathon: 

Abaddon's Gate James S.A. Corey (Expanse #3) and The Ones We're Meant to Find by Joan He.

I finished Adulthood Rites and Imago, the last two books in the Xenogenesis series by Octavia Butler and an ARC from the publisher for Dare to Know by James Kennedy.

I Read Horror Year All Year Round: 

The Upstairs Wife by Rachel Hawkins (psychological thriller prompt). Listening to this one. It's interesting and I'm looking forward to the end but it hasn't been as good as I was hoping.

Back to the Classics challenge:

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (19th Century prompt and also for my 1000 Books Project: French classics edition). So close to finishing now! Just a few more chapters.

And Dust Tracks on a Road by Zora Neale Hurston (classic by a woman prompt).

The Second Sex by Simone De Beauvoir...I am no over halfway done and should be done with it by December to earn my 20 century classic prompt!

Nonfiction Reading challenge:

World Travel: An Irreverent Guide by Anthony Bourdain and Laurie Woolever (food prompt). I'm listening to this one and it still makes me want to cry. I'm hoping to finish by the end of the month.

I'm pretty behind this month with some of these challenges. Hopefully I can catch up soon!

Watching Life:

Mostly the NBA Playoffs.

I added in the Crime Scene Kitchen which is weirdly entertaining though I wished they'd called it Mystery Kitchen...since no crimes were committed in the kitchen real or otherwise. I guess it's more catchy but not what I was expecting when I went to watch.

I also finished off Love, Victor on Hulu. Really good show, especially the second season where they try to deal with all the life stuff they kind of blew off in the first season.

Last weekend we watched Raya and the Last Dragon and In the Heights together. I wanted to like Raya better. It was cute and funny but didn't quite have that complex punch their movies usually have. It felt a little trite. In the Heights was really fun. Really enjoyed that one.

Come True was my horror movie for the week. Really trippy but that ending was a bit off...overall quite a cerebral sci-fi horror.

Making and Doing:

I'm hoping to get to my painting of my door soon. If not this weekend then next.

I've been enjoying no-bake cookies and raspberry mojitos on the weekends.

I've been sticking to sandwiches and grilling foods recently.

Looking forward to:

Cooler temps for a few days this week. I think we will hit a hi of 75 on Wednesday. It goes back up over the weekend but it'll be nice to have such a cool day or two even for a bit.

I've got a little friend get-together on Saturday with DH and Sunday I'm hiking with a friend! Loving getting out a bit this summer.

Joining in with Deb from Readerbuzz's Sunday Salon

Nonfiction Reviews: Jane Austen: A Life...

 

Jane Austen: a Life by Claire Tomalin

Published: 1997

Genre: Non-fiction, history, biography

Format: Hardcover, 347 Pages, Own

Rating: 4 stars

Publisher's Summary:

At her death in 1817, Jane Austen left the world six of the most beloved novels written in English—but her shortsighted family destroyed the bulk of her letters; and if she kept any diaries, they did not survive her.  Now acclaimed biographer Claire Tomalin has filled the gaps in the record, creating a remarkably fresh and convincing portrait of the woman and the writer. 

While most Austen biographers have accepted the assertion of Jane's brother Henry that "My dear Sister's life was not a life of events," Tomalin shows that, on the contrary, Austen's brief life was fraught with upheaval.  Tomalin provides detailed and absorbing accounts of Austen's ill-fated love for a young Irishman, her frequent travels and extended visits to London, her close friendship with a worldly cousin whose French husband met his death on the guillotine, her brothers' naval service in the Napoleonic wars and in the colonies, and thus shatters the myth of Jane Austen as a sheltered and homebound spinster whose knowledge of the world was limited to the view from a Hampshire village. 

My Thoughts:

I picked this one up earlier this year after I listened to a Great Courses lecture series on Jane Austen and her world and her books. I'm so glad I did. I learned so much about her family, especially her parents and her relationship to her sister and her brothers.

Her parents sent the older children away after they were born to local poor families to take care of them until they were old enough to not be such a nuisance in the house. Tomalin speculates Jane ended up not having a great relationship with her mother due to this early arrangement.

She spends a few chapters talking about her books and how things in her life and the people in it may have influenced her writing. Having Tomalin bring it all together really astounds me at what a genius Jane Austen was. There were years where she didn't really have a home after her father died and her and Cassandra were moved around from brother to brother and their families to help take care of children, etc. Yet she still found the time even through all of that to write works of genius.

But it's a tragedy as well. After her death, many of her letters were destroyed or lost even after decades of keeping some in tact. Her niece Fanny destroyed a huge bundle of her correspondence with her brother Henry. And she died too young. 

The Self-Driven Child: the Science and Sense of Giving Your Kids More Control Over Their Lives by William Stixrud and Ned Johnson

Published: February 18, 2018

Genre: Parenting, Nonfiction

Format: Kindle, 384 pages, Own

Rating: 5 Stars

Publisher's Summary:

A few years ago, Bill Stixrud and Ned Johnson started noticing the same problem from different angles: Even high-performing kids were coming to them acutely stressed and lacking any real motivation. Many complained that they had no control over their lives. Some stumbled in high school or hit college and unraveled. Bill is a clinical neuropsychologist who helps kids gripped by anxiety or struggling to learn. Ned is a motivational coach who runs an elite tutoring service. Together they discovered that the best antidote to stress is to give kids more of a sense of control over their lives. But this doesn't mean giving up your authority as a parent. In this groundbreaking book they reveal how you can actively help your child to sculpt a brain that is resilient, stress-proof and ready to take on new challenges.

The Self-Driven Child offers a combination of cutting-edge brain science, the latest discoveries in behavioral therapy, and case studies drawn from the thousands of kids and teens Bill and Ned have helped over the years to teach you how to set your child on the real road to success. As parents, we can only drive our kids so far. At some point, they will have to take the wheel and map out their own path. But there is a lot you can do before then to help them find their passion and tackle the road ahead with courage and imagination.

My Thoughts:

Stixrud and Johnson carefully take us through each step and the science behind these steps of allowing our kids to be their own decision makers and how we as parents can be in the role of the "consultant."

There's a chapter on homework that I absolutely loved! Especially during the pandemic and homework was something that was a sore spot for awhile. But once I read this chapter I was able to sit down and talk with G and help him decide how and when he wanted to get it done. It ended up being his choice and his schedule. And the last half of the school year went was heaven. G gained a lot more confidence on how to work homework into his schedule. He also learned how to ask for help when he truly needed it and he also decided where he wanted to put his effort and which assignments weren't quite worth it compared to others.

He also talks about stress--"It's as minor as feeling unbalanced and as major as fighting for your life." Sonia Lupien from the Centre for Studies on Human Stress has an acronym to help sum up what makes life stressful--N.U.T.S. Novelty, Unpredictability, Threat to the ego, and Sense of control.

Sense of control really stuck with me. As individuals we don't have a lot of it but how is our sense of control? They say..."if you have confidence that you can impact a situation, it will be less stressful. In contrast, a low sense of control may very well be the most stressful thing in the universe." This whole book is on how we give that high sense of confidence to our kids so they can feel like they have some sense of control over how their lives will go.

This is probably the best parenting book I've read since I was pregnant or right after G was born. I highly recommend it if you're a parent, if you work with kids, if you're a human because these are skills I didn't learn as a kid either and are helping me now!

June Is Here

First week of June is gone! I really wanted to get this off over the weekend but we spent it at the local carnival and then things get busy. It's the first time we've been to the carnival since G was a wee one. He also had his first sleepover since the pandemic began. Lots of first this weekend!

We even got out for a little hike this morning. I wanted to start acclimating him so he can go on more arduous hikes as the summer waxes.

Grateful For:

1. G getting his second dose this week!

2. Enjoying some sun and community over the weekend.

3. Vaccines: it's just been nice enjoying things normally once again. I've had two friends over for a couple of movie nights. I went to my first movie (still masked) since February of 2020...(it was Emma, BTW).

I really love June. It's still slightly cooler than the rest of the summer. School's out and it's nice to enjoy some lazier days as a family. My mint is in full bloom so mojitos on the weekends are always a must. It's my birthday month, too. But the older I get the less I enjoy the birthdays...but I try to embrace it even though I can get a bit depressed as it rolls around each year. And the sunsets! We get some great sunsets in the summer.

Posts this last week:

Memorial Day Weekend

Sci-fi Readathon

Cat Thursday--Cats and Boxes

Reading Life:

I finally finished Jane Austen: A Life by Claire Tomalin! I really enjoyed getting to know more about Austen and her family and her inspiration for her novels. So many things I did not know. Fantastic bio of the great novelist. She died too soon.

I also finished The Name of the Rose by Eco Umberto. So interesting. It wasn't quite a page turner but it had some interesting historical tidbits and the mystery was interesting as well. Overall, I enjoyed the read, even though it was a bit slow from time to time. Glad I read it, though.

G and I finished up The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. We cried the whole last 100 pages. Tear-jerker. But it was so good and we were able to talk about a lot of things like anti-Semitism and how it's on the rise.

I've got a couple of self-help books going that I switch between Mindset: The New Psychology of Success: How We Can Learn to Fulfill Our Potential by Carol Dweck and Parenting from the Inside Out by Daniel J. Siegel and Mary Hartzell.

All Things Cease to Appear by Elizabeth Brundage. I started this one after I heard about the Netflix movie adaptation...I'm about halfway through. I'm hoping to finish it up by the end of the month. But it's a bit slow. The movie looked like a horror and the book is more philosophical with some supernatural elements. But I shall not give up!

I'm also reading sparingly but enjoying it whenever I can get a chapter in The Trespasser by Tana French (#6 in the Dublin Murder Squad series).

Reading Challenges:

For my Sci-fi Readathon: 

Adulthood Rites by Octavia Butler (book #2 in the Xenogenesis series) and Abaddon's Gate by James S.A. Corey (book #3 in the Expanse series).

I Read Horror Year All Year Round: 

The Upstairs Wife by Rachel Hawkins (psychological thriller prompt). Listening to this one. It's interesting and I'm looking forward to the end but it hasn't been as good as I was hoping.

Back to the Classics challenge:

The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (19th Century prompt and also for my 1000 Books Project: French classics edition). I will be done by the end of the month!!! July will begin the unabridged Les Miserables by Victor Hugo! And Dust Tracks on a Road by Zora Neale Hurston (classic by a woman prompt).

Nonfiction Reading challenge:

World Travel: An Irreverent Guide by Anthony Bourdain and Laurie Woolever (food prompt). I'm listening to this one and it still makes me want to cry. I'm hoping to finish by the end of the month.

I have two others I am going to try and finish before the end of the month but I have not started them yet. I need to get moving. I'm so behind...

Watching Life:

More NBA Playoffs and some WNBA games as well.

LEGO Masters on Fox with DH and G. G and I also started up Sweet Tooth on Netflix. It's fantastically dark, sweet, and funny. I don't know how they get that balance but it works and G loves it. It kind of reminds me of A Series of Unfortunate Events series. Silly and dark all at the same time but I like Sweet Tooth a lot better.

G and I went to the movie theater for the first time in forever last week! We saw A Quiet Place II. Really well done and scary. We both enjoyed it highly. That was the movie to go back to the theater for!

I also watched Conjuring 3: The Devil Made Me Do It on HBO with my friend for our horror movie night. Not great. I don't recommend it.

Making and Doing:

Lots of grilling the last week or so. Trying to keep that oven and stove off. 

We've also made plans for some house repairs and upgrades. New blinds and screens, painting our door, staining our little deck, basement organizing and cleaning. We have a two-year plan to move so we gotta keep on our list!

Looking forward to:

G gets his second jab this week!

My birthday is this weekend and we're planning a little night out up at the big city(not super big just Salt Lake, but hey I'll take what I can get). The restaurant actually requires vaccination cards so everyone can feel comfortable at their restaurant. Looking forward to getting out with DH. It's been a very long time since we've done this!

Cat Thursday-- Cats and Boxes

Welcome to the weekly meme (hosted by Michelle at True Book Addict) that celebrates the wonders and sometime hilarity of cats! Join us by posting a favorite lolcat pic you may have come across, famous cat art or even share with us pics of your own beloved cat(s). It's all for the love of cats!  

Cats and boxes...I had to find some good ones! All of these images are on Dodo....the article has a few more to look at too.

Sci-fi June Summer Readathon

Michelle over at Seasons of Reading is hosting her annual Sci-fi readathon for the month of June! It's the perfect excuse to dive into those sci-fi books on the TBR pile.

I have plans to finish off the Lilith's Brood series by Octavia Butler, Abaddon's Gate by James S.A. Correy (third book in the Expanse series), and The Ones We're Meant to Find by Joan He.