words, words, words

"I'm not where I need to be, but thank God I'm not where I used to be." Its almost New Year's Eve and I like to be reflective upon the year that has passed before diving into the new one. Like every year of life, there has been ups and downs. The older I get the more I realize its not about the volume of highs versus lows that matter but the way we handle them. I'm still working on that. The year started off with my husband and I both collecting winnings in the college bowl pool which gave us a much needed financial boost (yay!). We also celebrated our 2 year wedding anniversary with a decadent dinner at our favorite restaurant, "Steakhouse 85."  Then because there were 2 highs, there came a low:  I got sick. Well, I was sick for a while without knowing but the symptoms of my illness started to really show in the end of January while I was in the midst of interviewing for a new job. Not ideal. I started having debilitating migraines, hot flashes, d...

I have to start this off by talking about the live television version that aired last week of one of my all time favorite movies, "The Sound of Music." Any female of around my age and older is in love with the 1965 Julie Andrews version movie and if they are not, they are aliens or just stupid. It is a classic childhood favorite that moves me every time I see it. Even though it is almost 50 years old, it never feels dated or irrelevant. Naturally, I was nervous that they were attempting a new version of this beloved classic for television but I tuned in and hoped for the best. Well, If you were one of the millions like me that watched, than you know what a piece of crap they turned it into. Ok maybe that is harsh but really what were they thinking by trying to put a country singer who has never acted a day in her life in such an iconic role? Maria Von Trapp is supposed to be flighty and awkward and headstrong - essentially a loveable mess hence the song, "How do you solv...

“God gave you a gift of 86 400 seconds today. Have you used one to say thank you ” ― William Arthur Ward This quote made me realize that even though Thanksgiving, the one day set aside to give thanks, is just around the corner, we should find time every day to be thankful for what we have. It is so hard to do this amongst the business of our every day lives and I'm happy we have a full day where we can stop and say thank you to everyone in our lives that make it a little easier, a little more joyful and a lot more bearable. I have much to be grateful for this year. Maybe more so than any other year of my life not because of what I have which is plenty, but for where I am mentally and spiritually. I feel more at peace and more content than I have in a very long time. Its not perfect and it never will be but its as close as I have gotten since I can remember and I am savoring it. This is the first time in 5 years where I am not unemployed, hating my job, living somewher...

“Nothing in life is as important as you think it is while you are thinking about it.” ― Sonja Lyubomirsky , The Myths of Happiness This quote is from a book I just finished reading called, "The Myths of Happiness." It intrigued me initially at the library because the description of the book was touching on a lot of points I often talk about here: how people follow a specific path to happiness (i.e. getting married, buying a house, having kids...) but it doesn't always make them happy. It was an interesting read. The author says that it is human nature to always crave more than we have. We think that once we found our dream job, finally meet Mr. Right, land a promotion, buy a house, etc. than we will be happy but what happens when those things do indeed happen in our lives and we find ourselves still unsettled? That is the ultimate question that drives this book. She contends that we must find ways to enjoy our everyday lives more and not focus only on...

"All I can say is what you already know: some days are treasure. Not many, but I think in almost every life there are a few. That was one of mine, and when I'm blue  when life comes down on me and everything looks tawdry and cheap, the way Joyland Avenue did on a rainy day  I go back to it, if only to remind myself that life isn't always a butcher's game. Sometimes the prizes are real. Sometimes they're precious." Stephen King, "Joyland" When people think about Stephen King, the words that often come to mind are: gory, supernatural, weird and creepy but if you have read as many of his books as I have, you know that there is so much more to him as a writer. He is actually a beautiful words craftsman and master storyteller. The above quote from his latest should give you a glimpse of that.  I fell in love with him when I was just a teenager and ate up every one of his early novels even though they caused me to lay awake at night scared out of my wit...

“Regret hung from the hem of everyone's lives, a rip cord reminder that what you want is not always what you get. Look at himself, outliving Aimee. Or Az, trying to find his daughter, only to have her wind up dead. Look at Shelby, with a child who was dying by degrees. Ethan, born into a body nobody deserves. At some point or another, everyone was failed by this world. Disappointment was the one thing humans had in common. Taken this way, Ross didn't feel quite so alone. Trapped in your whirlpool of what might have been, you might no be able to drag yourself out - but you could be saved by someone else who reached in.” ― Jodi Picoult , Second Glance I just finished reading this book by Jodie Picoult. I know I make fun of her a lot and some of it is justifiable (she forces plot twists, she has similar characters in all her books, she tries intentionally to be shocking,and she churns out books as often as Peyton Manning films a new commercial...)...

“Life will break you. Nobody can protect you from that, and living alone won't either, for solitude will also break you with its yearning. You have to love. You have to feel. It is the reason you are here on earth. You are here to risk your heart. You are here to be swallowed up. And when it happens that you are broken, or betrayed, or left, or hurt, or death brushes near, let yourself sit by an apple tree and listen to the apples falling all around you in heaps, wasting their sweetness. Tell yourself you tasted as many as you could.” ― Louise Erdrich , The Painted Drum LP I like this quote because yesterday I looked out of my window and the late afternoon sun was casting a golden shadow across a tree and it was such a serene, beautiful, simple thing yet it made me stop what I was doing and take a breath.  We forget how simple life can be; how beautiful like crisp sweet apples on a fall day. That simplistic beauty reminded me of my favorite place in the w...

“Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new eyes and extra colors. And the people there see you differently, too. Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.” ― Terry Pratchett , A Hat Full of Sky I have been reflecting a lot lately on growth and how past influences present and future. I have also been thinking a lot about what I wrote previously: that I make things far more difficult for myself than need be. When I wrote that, it opened my eyes to a way of being that I hadn't seen in myself before. That is the magic and power of writing - it is better than a shrink at revealing secrets about yourself. I don't allow myself the easy route and maybe its because I don't think I deserve it or somewhere in my mind I believe that good things only come to those who have toiled hard and earned their place. What else explains my absolute disgust at rich people who ha...

“We believe in ordinary acts of bravery, in the courage that drives one person to stand up for another.” ― Veronica Roth , Divergent   I just finished reading the first two books in a young adult series akin to the "Hunger Games" trilogy called "Divergent." It is about a post apocalyptic world where groups are divided by the values they believe in. There are 5 groups and they represent courage, kindness, honesty, knowledge and selflessness. The driving idea behind the book is that even though the world has been divided into factions, no one is ever truly one thing. Some people may embody more qualities of one value over another but everyone has elements of all of them inside. We may connect more strongly with one over the others but we should never be forced to be so one dimensional because it is just in our nature to do so. In the book, war breaks out because of this very idea. It got me thinking about which one of these values I connect more c...

I just finished reading a book called, "In Harm's Way," by Doug Stanton. I picked it up in the bargain book section of Barnes and Noble for 8 bucks and it was money well spent. It is one of many books about the sinking of the Indiannapolis in WWII; the ship that delivered the atomic bomb that was to be dropped on Hiroshima. I am always fascinated with anything and everything to do with this time in our history and I hadn't yet read anything on this particular topic. It was engrossing, suspensful and ultimately very sad. The book mainly focuses on what happens after the ship, hit by a Japenese torpedo sinks and 900 of the ships crew goes into the ocean. Only 316 of the original 900 survived the ordeal being rescued 4 days after the sinking- the others died of hypothermia, sharks, dehydration and exhaustion.  It is heartbreaking and sobering to think about what these men went through to preserve our freedom. I've always had an uwavering respect for anyone who...

“Luna had decorated her bedroom ceiling with five beautifully painted faces: Harry, Ron, Hermione, Ginny, and Neville. They were not moving as the portraits at Hogwarts moved, but there was a certain magic about them all the same: Harry thought they breathed. What appeared to be fine golden chains wove around the pictures, linking them together, but after examining them for a minute or so, Harry realized that the chains were actually one word, repeated a thousand times in golden ink: friends . . . friends . . . friends . . .” ― J.K. Rowling , Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows   No, I am not reading the Harry Potter series for the 11th time, I just went searching for quotes online about friendship and this was my favorite one -if  it just happened to be from books that I am deeply in love with, well than it was not a coincidence. I have been thinking of friendship lately because I have reconnected with some friends that I lost touch with years ag...

"The Italian looks from Claire to Shane and back again. 'Dee Moray' he says...And Claire feels a tug in her chest, some deeper shift, a cracking of her hard-earned cynicism, of this anxious tension she's been fighting. The actress's name means nothing to her, but the old guy seems utterly changed by saying it aloud, as if he hasn't said the name in years. Something about the name affects her, too - a crush of romantic recognition, those words, moment and forever - as if she can feel fifty years of longing in that one name, fifty years of an ache that lies dormant in her too, maybe lies dormant in everyone until it's cracked open like this - so weighted in this moment she has to look to the ground or else feel the tears burn her own eyes, and at that moment Claire glances at Shane, and sees that he must feel it, too, the name hanging in the air for just a moment...among the three of them...and then floating to the floor like a falling leaf, the Italian w...

I'm back from hiatus - new look to my blog and hopefully some new keen insights and observations about books, about life, about anything. Since I've written last, a lot has happened. Remember those pesky migraines I was having? Well, turns out that it was symptomatic of a larger problem in my body with my thyroid. I have an over active thyroid which basically means that I produce too much of the hormone and when that happens, every system in the body goes into overdrive. My heart rate was crazy, my blood pressure abnormally high for a fit, healthy eater, I was hot all the time even in the dead of winter, exhausted but had insomnia, was in the bathroom constantly (is that an over share? maybe but I don't care), bloated and fat and so irritable that people started being afraid of me at work. So maybe after hearing all that, you can understand why I didn't write for 3 months. I could barely drag myself to work never mind try to be witty and creative on my off time which I ...

In "A Moveable Feast," Hemingway's memoir about his time in Paris, he writes:                   "With so many trees in the city, you could see the spring coming each day until a night of warm wind would bring it suddenly one morning. Sometimes the heavy cold rains would beat it back so that it would seem that it would never come and that you were losing a season out of your life. This was the only truly sad time in Paris because it was unnatural. You expected to be sad in the fall. Part of you died each year when the leaves fell from the trees and their branches were bare against the wind and the cold, wintry light. But you knew there would always be the spring, as you knew the river would flow again after it was frozen. when the cold rains kept on and killed the spring, it was as though a young person had died for no reason....In those days, though, the spring always came finally but it was frightenin...

Every winter my husband and I hibernate. We pick a show that has several seasons on demand that we can watch to keep us entertained until the first blossoms bud and the breeze has a warmth in it that whispers of spring. This year we chose "Lost." We watched all 6 seasons in a month. Yup that's how bored we were. Stick a couple of snow days in the mix and we were really bored. If you have never seen the show watch it. Please. Its one you won't forget and one that will keep you thinking for a long time. At first I thought it was about people getting shipwrecked on an island. I don't know about you but anything involving plane crashes scares the crap out of me and so I was reluctant to watch but aside from the first few episodes the crash is irrelevant. At its core the show is about the meaning of life. Deep I know. Its about the time honored struggles of good vs. evil; darkness vs. light; science vs. religion; choice vs. fate. I was most interested in the idea of th...

I was watching "Chopped" the other day and one of the contestants said that she was going on the show to prove that you can do anything you set your mind to. I hear that phrase a lot and its supposed to be inspiring but honestly, I find it incredibly dumb and naive. Think about it, if you set your mind to being an opera singer but you can't carry a tune, your screwed. You can try and "set your mind to it" but the end result will be failure because not everyone is blessed with the gift of a beautiful singing voice. The phrase should be "you can do anything your god given talent allows you to do." Everyone has some kind of talent and some kind of purpose in life but it may not always be what we want or think we will do. I get pissed when people say banal cliched phrases like "you can do anything you set your mind to" because it is simply not true. Maybe you think I'm being angry and bitter right now but I'm really not. I have been known...

It's been a really long time. Over a month I think since I've written. I guess you could say I've been uninspired, underwhelmed by books, by life these days. It's the dead of winter,  too cold to do anything outside, dry and too hot inside and no signs of life in nature. I'm always a little off this time of year and considering that I seriously injured my toe maybe even broke it, I'm really off right now. That's what I get for trying to be committed to yoga: one false slip of the foot moving into downward dog and I'm writhing in pain on my brand new mat. I guess I was about due for an injury...its been too long. I just finished reading the wildly popular, "Gone Girl" and I was not impressed (see above). It was good but not the gripping masterpiece people seem to think it is. I think maybe therein lies the problem: too much hype. I couldn't help but be disappointed. There were times I was intrigued and it was a very fast paced book but I wa...