I have so little motivation these days. Is it the heat? Too much emotional drainage this year? Just plain-old burnout? I don't know. I'm trying to fake it through, but it's not FUN. I need some FUN. I need some PASSION in my life. I mean, don't get me wrong. I'm still passionate about gardening and reading and Kaylin and my dogs and scrapbooking...but it all just feels forced. And work, Ugh! Don't even ask me. I'm still doing my job, but every little thing just feels like SO much EFFORT. Even the littlest things.
I don't really WANT to do anything...know what I mean? When I wake up in the morning, there's nothing that I'm excited about doing. Does anyone else go through times like this?
I have good ideas of what I wish I wanted to do.
I wish I wanted to write on my blog, but I don't have the words.
I wish I wanted to work on my garden, but it's too hot.
I wish I wanted to want to fix/redo/spruce up my house, but I don't know where to start, I don't want to spend any money, and....it's too hot.
I wish I wanted to paint. Well, I always want to want to paint but that's rare even in good times.
Part of it, I know, is that I haven't felt good. I sprained my ankle at the beginning of July (end of June?) and I haven't gotten back to my walks. I haven't been eating what I know I should be eating. I haven't been taking all my medication as prescribed. So yeah, it's my own fault.
So I should just suck it up, get with the program, do what I need to do. Wake up in the morning and do it. And the motivation will come back, right?
And now that I've confessed my supreme laziness and patheticness, perhaps I will be embarrassed back in to living like I'm supposed to.
And if Mr. Weather could bring us a couple of days of less than 1000 degrees, that would be helpful too.
Sunday, August 22, 2010
Sunday, August 15, 2010
Jasmine
Jasmine's fancy new haircut! She looks like a schnauzer finally! She's HEART-WORM FREE WOOT! and she actually weighs more than Greta and is now on a diet. Quite a difference from the scrawny, pitiful thing we pulled out of the shelter in December!
Missing my computer :(
Greta knocked several keys off my computer when an unbalanced washing machine startled her from her nap. Instead of running in front of me, or behind me, she ran over me, and I happened to be typing at the time.
Geek Squad has it now. I want it back :(
I'm Totally Psychic
Yesterday I needed scrapbooking glue. And I've really been wanting a circle cutter. So I jumped into Melody and headed to Hobby Lobby. Only I just had this FEELING that I needed to go to Michael's instead. And I did. And....THEY HAD THEIR CIRCLE CUTTERS ON SALE 40% off!!!
I'm totally psychic.
Today I played around with it. Love it! It's kind of like a spirograph with a blade. Which makes me want a spirograph. And it also makes me want a LARGE circle cutter. This only cuts circles up to 6 inches. Which is fine for starters.
I'm totally psychic.
Today I played around with it. Love it! It's kind of like a spirograph with a blade. Which makes me want a spirograph. And it also makes me want a LARGE circle cutter. This only cuts circles up to 6 inches. Which is fine for starters.
Friday, August 6, 2010
Trying to force some creative inspiration
So...I joined a scrapbooking page to get inspiration and force myself to get creative. They give away prizes and such and, well, I like free stuff. So here's my first ever "official" scrapbook page post. The challenge was to do a page based on a sketch - my final result is very similar to the sketch. I couldn't resist using these pictures of Kaylin. They just crack me up every time I look at them. 
Late Spring 2010
THE LIGHT FANTASTIC - 2nd book of Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. I needed another easy / comfort book. These books feel like an old warm blanket to me.
ON THE BEACH (Nevil Shute) - What would you do if you knew all the bombs, the rest of the world was over, and you were just waiting around for the end? I love a good apocalyptic book. I know, weird, but I just do. 99% of these are survivor stories though. You know - there's a handful of survivors and they are huddled together trying to defend their remaining soup cans from. But this one is different and man o man it made me really think.
THE EDIBLE WOMAN (Margaret Atwood) - I think I would have had a completely different experience reading this book had I not read it directly after ON THE BEACH. I kept overlaying the premise of ON THE BEACH on the plot of THE EDIBLE WOMAN. And how would we feel about gender roles and getting married and trying to create a "normal" life if the bombs had all been dropped. So yeah - given that in my brain, the protagonist was trying to decide what she wanted to do with her life and sort of going crazy at the end of the world...it was great.
WHITE TIGER (Aravind Adiga) - I did not expect the ending here. It was good. Kind of Kite-Runner-ish but about India.
ALICE IN WONDERLAND - Movie hype got me thinking that I had never actually read the books. So I did. They were like .99cents on the Kindle.
NO ONE WOULD LISTEN - The Bernie Madoff case. And WOW this was interesting to me. The guy that wrote the book was in the same business as Madoff and realized YEARS prior that something was fishy. Tried multiple times to alert the SEC and they ignored him. I love stuff like this. The writing was not annoying, and it wasn't overly complicated. I think that most anyone could read it and understand what happened even though the mechanics of hedge funds are mind boggling.
ON THE BEACH (Nevil Shute) - What would you do if you knew all the bombs, the rest of the world was over, and you were just waiting around for the end? I love a good apocalyptic book. I know, weird, but I just do. 99% of these are survivor stories though. You know - there's a handful of survivors and they are huddled together trying to defend their remaining soup cans from
THE EDIBLE WOMAN (Margaret Atwood) - I think I would have had a completely different experience reading this book had I not read it directly after ON THE BEACH. I kept overlaying the premise of ON THE BEACH on the plot of THE EDIBLE WOMAN. And how would we feel about gender roles and getting married and trying to create a "normal" life if the bombs had all been dropped. So yeah - given that in my brain, the protagonist was trying to decide what she wanted to do with her life and sort of going crazy at the end of the world...it was great.
WHITE TIGER (Aravind Adiga) - I did not expect the ending here. It was good. Kind of Kite-Runner-ish but about India.
ALICE IN WONDERLAND - Movie hype got me thinking that I had never actually read the books. So I did. They were like .99cents on the Kindle.
NO ONE WOULD LISTEN - The Bernie Madoff case. And WOW this was interesting to me. The guy that wrote the book was in the same business as Madoff and realized YEARS prior that something was fishy. Tried multiple times to alert the SEC and they ignored him. I love stuff like this. The writing was not annoying, and it wasn't overly complicated. I think that most anyone could read it and understand what happened even though the mechanics of hedge funds are mind boggling.
Thursday, August 5, 2010
Winter/ Spring 2010
LOLITA - ok I know. Kiddie porn. But I wanted to know what all the hype was after all these years. And honestly, it by far wasn't the worst inappropriate relationship book I've ever read (I'm LOOKING AT YOU, PIERS ANTHONY, WHO CAUGHT ME OFF GUARD AS A YOUNG ADULT WITH ONE OF YOUR SMUT BOOKS, WHICH I AM OBVIOUSLY STILL ANGRY ABOUT. I've never read anything else by Piers Anthony. And when I was young I really liked that pun-ridden series of his. Now I can't even remember what that series is because of that one book of his (which wasn't even in the series) THAT SHOULD HAVE BEEN IN THE XXX SECTION AND NOT IN THE YOUNG ADULT SECTION. And I mean really. I'm not a prude. But you can't just go around catching people off guard with that nastiness.)
So yeah Lolita. Whatever. In the days of Elizabeth Smart and Jaycee whatshername that was kidnapped and found 17 years later Lolita is not all that shocking.
CLOUD ATLAS - Wow I really liked this. It was just good. And different. The whole a-butterfly-flaps-his-wings-and-500-years-later kind of thing. This is one I can actually see myself re-reading. And I never re-read books. Well.....very rarely.
And then, at about this point in the year, I lost my Dad. And then in order to cope, I lost myself in books. It's a comfort. An escape. A reminder of the blessings I do have. So I re-read THE COLOUR OF MAGIC. The 1st book in the Pratchett Discworld series. May seem inappropriate, but I knew it would make me smile, and I knew I wouldn't have to think. So it helped me through the first few days of February.
BELOVED (Toni Morrison) - Again, I just wanted to know what the hype was. And wow I was blown away. Beautiful writing. VERY surprising story. I honestly never expected either (the writing or the story). Who'd have expected supernatural occurrences in an Oprah book?
RAINBOW'S END - Ugh. It wasn't bad, but it was just sort of blah. And yet for some reason it has stuck in my head like a bad song. When I'm taking my morning walk, it sneaks up on me and all of a sudden I'm visualizing all the data I'd be bombarded with if I was "wearing".
IN THE SANCTUARY OF THE OUTCASTS - Note to self: I need to write a blog entry about my experiences @ Carville (and also the word DisEase). This is a book that was written by a guy who was in the minimum security prison at Carville at the time when half of the facility was the prison and half was still the Hanson's Disease Center. Hanson's Disease used to be called Leprosy. I have been out to Carville many times over the years to work in their credit union. It is one of the most amazing places on earth. There are several books written by patients - this one is from a different perspective. I totally get it.
ALREADY DEAD: A NOVEL - Jason had this downloaded on the Kindle so I read it. I'm sick of vampires. Sick.
MARCH (Geraldine Brooks) - Great book. Pulitzer winner 2005. Remember the March sisters from Little Women? Remember that their Dad was off to war? Will this book from HIS perspective. His commitment to the Civil War and the sad consequences of having too much pride.
ok I think that's all through about....Feb? Mar? Sometime around there.
Here's what I read up until the summer:
So yeah Lolita. Whatever. In the days of Elizabeth Smart and Jaycee whatshername that was kidnapped and found 17 years later Lolita is not all that shocking.
CLOUD ATLAS - Wow I really liked this. It was just good. And different. The whole a-butterfly-flaps-his-wings-and-500-years-later kind of thing. This is one I can actually see myself re-reading. And I never re-read books. Well.....very rarely.
And then, at about this point in the year, I lost my Dad. And then in order to cope, I lost myself in books. It's a comfort. An escape. A reminder of the blessings I do have. So I re-read THE COLOUR OF MAGIC. The 1st book in the Pratchett Discworld series. May seem inappropriate, but I knew it would make me smile, and I knew I wouldn't have to think. So it helped me through the first few days of February.
BELOVED (Toni Morrison) - Again, I just wanted to know what the hype was. And wow I was blown away. Beautiful writing. VERY surprising story. I honestly never expected either (the writing or the story). Who'd have expected supernatural occurrences in an Oprah book?
RAINBOW'S END - Ugh. It wasn't bad, but it was just sort of blah. And yet for some reason it has stuck in my head like a bad song. When I'm taking my morning walk, it sneaks up on me and all of a sudden I'm visualizing all the data I'd be bombarded with if I was "wearing".
IN THE SANCTUARY OF THE OUTCASTS - Note to self: I need to write a blog entry about my experiences @ Carville (and also the word DisEase). This is a book that was written by a guy who was in the minimum security prison at Carville at the time when half of the facility was the prison and half was still the Hanson's Disease Center. Hanson's Disease used to be called Leprosy. I have been out to Carville many times over the years to work in their credit union. It is one of the most amazing places on earth. There are several books written by patients - this one is from a different perspective. I totally get it.
ALREADY DEAD: A NOVEL - Jason had this downloaded on the Kindle so I read it. I'm sick of vampires. Sick.
MARCH (Geraldine Brooks) - Great book. Pulitzer winner 2005. Remember the March sisters from Little Women? Remember that their Dad was off to war? Will this book from HIS perspective. His commitment to the Civil War and the sad consequences of having too much pride.
ok I think that's all through about....Feb? Mar? Sometime around there.
Here's what I read up until the summer:
The rest of 2009
Here's what I read in the remainder of 2009:
THE YEAR OF THE FLOOD (Margaret Atwood) - Atwood is growing on me. This one was actually pretty good, although being the nosy investigator that I am, I want to know what happened and why. This is a post-apocalyptic book. Really good. But I wanted more about the actually apocalypse I guess. I'm morbid that way.
THE CORRECTIONS ( Jonathon Franzen) - ok Franzen must be a supercool guy, right? Because David Foster Wallace was his BFF or something. And Wallace couldn't put up with just any random dumbass. And yeah, Franzen's writing style is fine. Unmemorable which is good, at least it didn't annoy me. But I don't really get they hype over this story. I didn't find it any different than the 100 stories written in that "stories of american life and poor us and our 1st world problems" John Updike / Philip Roth genre. Maybe I missed something.
MY NEW ORLEANS (essays by various authors) - I actually turned down some pages to which I could refer back. I liked some of the thoughts presented here. As with any multi-author collection, I liked some and didn't like others. Worth reading.
AMERICAN GODS - I like Neil Gaiman a lot. For some reason, I can't read his stuff back-to-back. This was the first novel of his I'd read in awhile. It was probably my favorite. If you are fan of any sort of mythology, this is one you'd get a kick from.
THE HELP - yeah yeah sometimes I get caught up in the hype of the day. This was a good one though. I can never remember character names but that one woman - you know which one I mean - is a BE-YOTCH. And so is Karma. She'll get hers.
WHY I LIVE @ THE P.O & OTHER STORIES (Eudora Welty) - Although I love Eudora Welty as much as the next Mississippi girl, her writing is not actually something I've ever just easily picked up on a whim. However, I've always wondered just WHY this woman did live at the P.O.? And so a while back, I read Mississippi Sissy. I wrote a blurb about it on this blog previously. And Mississippi Sissy made me think of Eudora Welty in a whole new way. I way that involved bourbon. So when I saw this one on the bookshelf I picked it up. And now I know why the woman lived in the P.O. And yeah, it's pretty funny.
AMERICAN PASTORAL (Philip Roth) - I was thinking this was the 70's version of The Corrections, but actually, it was a way better story with some craziness and intrigue and murder and heartbreak. Glad I read it.
UNSEEN ACADEMICALS (Terry Pratchett) - It's Terry Pratchett. I laughed. That's all I need to say about this one.
THE MOVIEGOER (Walker Percy) - ok I'm glad I read it just because it's a local guy and whatever. And yeah - I read a lot too and probably don't interact one on one with people more than I have to. Sue me.
OK that does it for 2009.
THE YEAR OF THE FLOOD (Margaret Atwood) - Atwood is growing on me. This one was actually pretty good, although being the nosy investigator that I am, I want to know what happened and why. This is a post-apocalyptic book. Really good. But I wanted more about the actually apocalypse I guess. I'm morbid that way.
THE CORRECTIONS ( Jonathon Franzen) - ok Franzen must be a supercool guy, right? Because David Foster Wallace was his BFF or something. And Wallace couldn't put up with just any random dumbass. And yeah, Franzen's writing style is fine. Unmemorable which is good, at least it didn't annoy me. But I don't really get they hype over this story. I didn't find it any different than the 100 stories written in that "stories of american life and poor us and our 1st world problems" John Updike / Philip Roth genre. Maybe I missed something.
MY NEW ORLEANS (essays by various authors) - I actually turned down some pages to which I could refer back. I liked some of the thoughts presented here. As with any multi-author collection, I liked some and didn't like others. Worth reading.
AMERICAN GODS - I like Neil Gaiman a lot. For some reason, I can't read his stuff back-to-back. This was the first novel of his I'd read in awhile. It was probably my favorite. If you are fan of any sort of mythology, this is one you'd get a kick from.
THE HELP - yeah yeah sometimes I get caught up in the hype of the day. This was a good one though. I can never remember character names but that one woman - you know which one I mean - is a BE-YOTCH. And so is Karma. She'll get hers.
WHY I LIVE @ THE P.O & OTHER STORIES (Eudora Welty) - Although I love Eudora Welty as much as the next Mississippi girl, her writing is not actually something I've ever just easily picked up on a whim. However, I've always wondered just WHY this woman did live at the P.O.? And so a while back, I read Mississippi Sissy. I wrote a blurb about it on this blog previously. And Mississippi Sissy made me think of Eudora Welty in a whole new way. I way that involved bourbon. So when I saw this one on the bookshelf I picked it up. And now I know why the woman lived in the P.O. And yeah, it's pretty funny.
AMERICAN PASTORAL (Philip Roth) - I was thinking this was the 70's version of The Corrections, but actually, it was a way better story with some craziness and intrigue and murder and heartbreak. Glad I read it.
UNSEEN ACADEMICALS (Terry Pratchett) - It's Terry Pratchett. I laughed. That's all I need to say about this one.
THE MOVIEGOER (Walker Percy) - ok I'm glad I read it just because it's a local guy and whatever. And yeah - I read a lot too and probably don't interact one on one with people more than I have to. Sue me.
OK that does it for 2009.
Monday, August 2, 2010
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