The Friday Five (4)

1. Laurie Frankel, an author I have admired since reading This Is How It Always Is, released a new book this week! Family Family is a story that examines both the families we're born to, and the ones we choose. The novel goes back and forth in time and explores issues of adoption, choice, privacy, and celebrity with nuance and grace. I loved it. I got to read an early copy through NetGalley and I'm thrilled that it's now available to everyone.

2. Here is a little PSA for the week. Do you know about 988? 988 is basically 911 for mental health. This is the relatively new, easy to remember, number that is replacing the former Suicide and Crisis Lifeline. The old number will still work, but the hope is that people will remember 988 as easily as we all now remember 911. You can call or text that number for support if you are having your own mental health crisis or if you are worried about a loved one and need help helping them. You can even chat with someone to get support online. Learn more about this important lifeline here, and then pay it forward by telling someone else about 988.

3. It has rained and rained and rained this week. On Wednesday I got home from school to find that our power had gone out. The last large old tree in our neighbor's backyard let go of the saturated ground and fell, taking the power lines with it. Fortunately it didn't land on anyone's house but our street was without power for about 12 hours. Now 12 hours is not a horrific amount of time to be without power, but it is an inconvenience. We were fortunate that the temperatures are mild here this week so we were not worried about being too cold. It really helped me be thankful for so many things - we could go to the public library down the street and charge our phones, Chromebooks (Michael), and portable chargers; we could afford to stop and get dinner out instead of cooking at home; we could afford to replace the food in the refrigerator that went bad; we had places to be Wednesday evening so it was already bedtime when we got home anyway. We pulled out the battery-operated camping lanterns and got ready for bed. I don't realize, or think about, how much background noise there is in a house, even when there isn't music playing or a television on. I also never think about the bits of light that are all around: alarm clocks, the WIFI extender, the street lights, etc. My bedroom felt almost womblike that night, snuggled in bed, enveloped by silence and blackness. I slept incredibly soundly...until the power came back on at four a.m. and with it the bathroom light and fan and the furnace. 

4. There is a new professional volleyball league in the U.S. and games began this week. I've loved volleyball since I started playing in 5th grade so I'm very excited about the Pro Volleyball Federation. For now it seems you can stream the games for free online and I'm hoping we can get to Columbus to see The Fury in person sometime this spring. I'm hoping some of our favorite college players from the last few years will show up in the league. Yay! Sports!

5. About a week after heading back to school Harper caught a terrible cold and has been sick all week. She muscled her way through most of her obligations this week, but last night she called me and had a fever. Poor kid. She has been using paper towels to blow her nose because she ran out of tissues and is in kind of a sorry state. With the ease of communication via smartphones it typically doesn't feel like a huge deal for Harper to be six hours away at school, but it really stinks when she's feeling sick and I can't just drop off what she needs or, better yet, bring her home to take care of her for a few days. I know she'll be just fine, but that doesn't make it easier for either of us! 

The Friday Five (3)

 1. I'm 47 years old and there's still little as glorious as waking up to a snow day. I didn't get out of bed until almost 9 a.m. this morning.

2. I have not had a full day of school all week. Monday was a day off, Tuesday and Wednesday were delayed due to sub-zero temps, Thursday morning I was at the children's ER with Michael, and today we're off for snow. Michael will be fine, by the way, but he injured his foot and was uncomfortable enough that x-rays were in order. Thank goodness for today's day off because navigating the high school again today (he did it w/ a boot on yesterday) might have been too much. He can rest it this weekend.

3. Today's snow day feels like an extra gift because my entire long weekend last weekend was spent at a volleyball tournament in Fort Wayne, IN, and then driving Harper back to school in St. Louis. It was all good, especially hanging out with our friends in St. Louis on Sunday night, but it was not relaxing. This weekend I will watch sports (Flyers! Packers!) and take down the Christmas decorations. 

4. Might I recommend a bookish podcast? My friends Amy and Carrie have a wonderful weekly podcast in which they talk to bookish people (librarians, authors, booksellers, etc.) and discuss what they're reading. It is always such a delight to hear these two chat; it really feels like sitting down with good friends. Check out The Perks of Being a Booklover! If you have never listened to them it means you have nine (!) seasons of episodes to enjoy for the first time.

5. I made Christmas cookies today because I never made any over the break. My mother-in-law, and my mom, made cookies that we all love and it felt redundant to make more. Plus Matt had been wanting the ones with the Hershey Kiss in the middle, which I make with Biscoff spread instead of peanut butter, but Harper can no longer stand the smell of Biscoff (story for another day?) so I didn't want to bake them when she was still home from school. There's really no reason these have to be Christmas cookies and not year-round cookies, but I rarely bake outside the holidays. We are more often ice cream people than homemade cookie people. 

The Friday Five (Oops! On Saturday) (2)

 1. For quite some time I have been following Your Local Epidemiologist. I love the no-nonsense way she describes public health matters, specifically her clear communication on COVID-19. This week she posted, among other things, about a study that linked COVID-19 vaccination to a reduced risk of long COVID. Long COVID is one of those lingering things I still feel concerned about so I found this reassuring. 

2. I pay fairly close attention to politics and if there was a universe in which I could just learn about things full time, instead of needing to work for a paycheck (and insurance, etc.), I think I would enjoy the classes that would lead to a political science degree. (Incidentally, being a librarian feels about as close as one can get to learning for a living.) I often forget that not everyone pays as close attention to politics as I do and it messes with my head, but I think remembering this fact would help me understand some people, and their offhanded comments, better.

3. A groovy little independent bookstore near me has started hosting a monthly "silent book club." Basically people get together to read and have snacks in a communal setting but there's no pressure to read anything other than what you want and no pressure to speak with anyone. I am perfectly comfortable in a traditional book club, but I really love this idea and I'm happy it exists for people who want to be part of the bookish community and are shy or introverted or just don't want to be told what to read.

4. Are you using Goodreads? While I know it isn't a perfect platform by any means, I enjoy Goodreads as a place to keep track of what I read and books I want to remember. I also like seeing what other people are reading, though I'm not necessarily in need of recommendations. Occasionally I win one of their book giveaways. I am motivated by the yearly reading challenge - last year I ended up reading 90 books. That feels like an accomplishment, but I also feel like my total should come with an asterisk because I read middle grade and young adult, as well as adult books, and I have started counting picture books and early readers when I have to review them for a local group I'm a part of. I spend a much longer time with a picture book if I'm trying to review it than the few minutes it would take me to read it just once. And I'm really only keeping track on Goodreads for myself, there's no prize involved, so I'm not sure why it feels like cheating? 

5. Speaking of book reviews... about a year ago I joined a local book review group made up of public and school librarians and a couple of teachers as well. Publishers send books to the group for us to read and review. We meet every other month. Each of us takes a stack of books home from the meeting and reads and reviews them for the next meeting. We use a form to send the reviews to the publishers and then we give an oral review for the other group members at the meeting. It has been an awesome way to learn about different books and we get to keep the books we review so it has also been a great way to add books to the library or share them with family members and friends. 

I have to make a confession. I find book reviewing to be so difficult! I don't know why. I've always found it difficult to summarize things (succinctness has never been a gift of mine). For a person who has spent 10 years talking about books with people for a living, you think I'd be better at it. But no, it feels hard every time and I feel awkward and self-conscious talking at the meetings. I'm pretty sure my face turns red whenever it is my turn to share. I suppose I will just press on and hope it gets easier over time. Or they'll eventually kick me out for being terrible. 

The Friday Five (1)

1. Let's try something new! I'm blatantly stealing this idea from Sarah Dessen, an author I have long followed and admired. Not long ago she started posting a Friday Five on Substack (via Substack?). I love getting the weekly news/reflections, especially as a person who has missed her old blogging updates. Clearly I'm still not ready to let this blog go, and a Friday Five seems like a reasonable goal for 2024 so we're just going to see where this thing goes.

2. I finished rereading This is How It Always Is by Laurie Frankel because that was our book club selection for this month's meeting. I love a lot of the things I read but this is the book that comes to mind when someone asks what my favorite book is. It sounds cheesy but this novel really opened my mind and my heart and it was just as beautiful/powerful upon rereading as it was the first time I encountered it. My favorite passage goes like this:

You never know. You only guess. This is how it always is. You have to make these huge decisions on behalf of your kid, this tiny human whose fate and future is entirely in your hands, who trusts you to know what's good and right and then to be able to make that happen. You never have enough information. You don't get to see the future. And if you screw up, if with your incomplete, contradictory information you make the wrong call, well, nothing less than your child's entire future and happiness is at stake. It's impossible. It's heartbreaking. It's maddening. But there's no alternative.

Read it.

3. I've been sick, with a cold, since just after Christmas. It's not strep, it's not the flu, it's not COVID, I'm not even feverish, but MAN has it been miserable. I have had the odd bit of congestion or scratchy throat here or there, but I don't think I've had a full blown, can't breathe through my nose, sinuses so full my teeth hurt cold since pre-COVID times. Thank goodness I'm still off school this week because I haven't been sleeping well and I have no idea how I would make it through a whole work day under these conditions.

4. Matt and I visited a restaurant new to at least one of us each week in 2023. Yes, there are a TON of places to eat out in and around our town. It was great to have a designated date night every week, although it was occasionally challenging to fit it in our schedule. After independently ranking our top seven places, we came up with a top five and will revisit those the first five weeks of 2024. I highly recommend this experiment.

5.  I got a couple of new CDs for Christmas. Yes, you read that right, CDs. I still like to own music from my favorite artists. Streaming is great, but I don't always want to have to use my phone or a computer to listen to music. My two newest CDs are 1988 by Lori McKenna and A Great Wild Mercy by Carrie Newcomer. I've listened to both of these artists since the late 1990s and they are still producing incredible music.