Year 2, week 19: We Have Always Lived in the Castle

This week's book:
We Have Always Lived in the Castle
by Shirley Jackson

So this post is a little late. I am currently writing this while riding in my Jeep on 380 in Hawkeye land while my hubby drives in the sleeting icerain. We are driving to Des Moines to do our sixth and last Christmas of 2018. Due to all the travel and packing, this post is going to be short and maybe not as in depth as other posts have been.

This week's book is We Have Always Lived in the Castle, which was written by Shirley Jackson. If the title or author sound familiar, that's because Jackson wrote The Haunting of Hill House, which which as been adapted a few times. Most recently Netflix did a loose adaptation this Halloween season. If the title We Have Always Lived in the Castle sounds familiar, it might be that there was a little independent film adaptation this past fall as well. I had read The Haunting of Hill House in middle school back when that horrible film adaptation with Catherine Zeta-Jones and Owen Wilson came out. I had such a bad recollection of the book that it took me three episodes of the Netflix series for me to remember I had read through book. My sister read We Have Always Lived in the Castle and really liked it, so she wanted me to read it. It's a really quick read and really flipping random and of course weird. I enjoyed it but I can't really explain why or what it's about. There are two sisters who live in this big house with their uncle. The family is odd and wealthy so of course the town folks don't like them. The rest of their family had been poisoned a few years back. They talk about the deaths/murders constantly and act like it's no big deal. The whole book is really weird. I would recommend it, but definitely check it out from the library or try to find a cheap copy due to how short it is.

Year 2, week 18: The Life of Pi

This week's book:
The Life of Pi
By Yann Martel

This week's book is all about wild animals, and how one young man gets stuck on a lifeboat with a tiger. All this talk about wild animals made me start thinking: the easiest way to make me come at you like a spider monkey or tiger or fill in the blank wild animal, is trying to harm my child. Be it being rude or telling them something scary...I will find you and I will give you the worst tongue lashing you have ever had. Even before we left the hospital with our first born child, I realized I was going to have to always have my child's needs met. Our little monkey baby (he was very fuzzy and looked like a little monkey) had a patch of hair on his lower back the made the doctors think he might have spina bifida or a tethered spine. After an MRI in Indianapolis, a week after we lost my mother, it was discovered our son was just a fuzzy little man. The next day we had to rush him to the ER for one of the worst case of croup that the hospital had ever seen. While I sat in the hospital room trying to not completely lose it I thought to myself “okay this is as hard is it's going to be.” Before we had even introduced food we had discovered our little fuzzy man had asthma, eczema, and was allergic to EVERYTHING………(dairy, eggs, chicken, peanuts, strawberries, pineapples, honeydew, cantaloupe, green peppers, raspberries, bees, mosquitoes, cats, dogs and all the seasonal crap that's always in the air). I had to fight every doctor I was faced with telling me that it could have just been that one time he tried something for the first time. Every cold or sniffle sent him into a horrible coughing fit that would lead to him to vomiting so much. It has made my husband and I into label reading, food tasting, fighting with family members fools over our child's health. I have actually had to make printed off lists and given it to all of my family so they can know the ever changing allergies that our little man has. When he started school my biggest fear wasn't his grades or bullying, it was a Reese's cup. Even though some of his allergies have lessened, I still have a hard time not reading every label before I put it in my shopping cart. On Halloween I pray that he doesn't sneak a piece of candy because even though he knows to avoid the orange wrappers, they change candy wrappers for every holiday every year. My husband and I have to educate the school nurse because she doesn't have students that need ep-pens or have a whole plan for an allergy attack, or asthma for that matter. Everytime I think I have a handle on this whole parenting thing or all his allergies in check, something throws me for a loop. Little man's kindergarten teacher gave up on him after a month of school, so what happened when they set up a team meeting about our little guy….I opened a whole can of Mama Bear protection on the whole team.

This year has been so much better, I'm pretty sure his teacher is an angel in disguise. So the hubs and I take a sigh of relief and wouldn't you know it, the bus driver that was just amazing last year has called me more than once to complain about the kids on his bus. I'm not going to lie to your face, I know our kiddo isn't perfect but I didn't need to be verbally talked down to by the driver for twenty minutes during my husband's Christmas Party. Maybe if was the half a glass of wine or the fact that this was the second time he called me, but I went off and told him he wouldn't need to worry about our son being on his bus anymore because I was going to be taking him to and from school. Don't call and complain about other children singing songs about porn stars and calling the driver naughty words when my son has done neither. The children on this bus had been shoving our son, calling him stupid and one kid even was nice enough to tell him the plot of IT and nothing was done about it.  As parents, we are never done standing up for our children. Perhaps little man's health scares have made me a more protective and more of a helicopter mom, but I don't think I can turn it off at this point. I had imagined the kind of mom I was going to be, and allergies and Benadryl have blown that image into a million pieces.

Wow that was much more than I thought I was going to say. But just this week I have had two friends find out their little boys have very scary allergies and I truly am sad for them. As a mom of a very allergic kiddo, I know it's very scary and hard sometimes. It's manageable and it can be done, it just seems like being a mom is pretty hard without having to watch every single thing that goes into their mouths for the next fifty years.

So you don't think I have totally gone off the rails, I listened to Life of Pi on CD while I did some quilting/napkin making and wasn't super impressed. It's just a lot of information about different animals thrown together and then at the end there is an alternative option and you don't know which is “true”. If you haven't read The Life of Pi yet, you can skip to the next book on your to-read list.

Year 2, week 17: The Secret Life of Bees

This week's book:
The Secret Life of Bees
By Sue Monk Kidd

This week's book had been on my to read list forever. I mean literally ten years or more. Someone had bought a copy for my mother after one of her cancer surgeries. I don't know if she ever got around to reading it.

Every time my mother needed surgery, so many people would send my mother gifts and flowers. She was so loved, that mama of mine. I clearly remember a copy of The secret Life of Bees sitting on the table by that recliner my mother recovered in after every surgery. Now I'm not sure if the copy I recently read was the same copy, I'm pretty sure I picked it up at a used book sale or Goodwill or something like that. I kept meaning to read it and then I would read something else. Well, since I have been listening to audiobooks while I quilted, I decided to get all those books I have been meaning to read and never gotten around to reading. The library my family has had library cards for didn't have a wide selection of audiobooks so I sort of just had to pick books that I've been meaning to read. I got a new library card that I have been told has a much better selection and a much better staff of nice people who want to help you.

I started the Secret Life of Bees not really knowing much about it other than every lady over the age of fifty had suggested it and that Queen Latifah was in the film adaptation. Well, ladies and gents, the book was very good. It tells the story of Lily (whom my daughter thought was hilarious when she overheard the book in the car) and her caregiver running away from their dreadful lives. Lily accidentally shot and killed when she was a child. She then lived with her abusive father before running back to the home where her mother used to live. She befriends three sisters that raise bees and collect honey for a living. The book is about the strength of women and how women don't need a man to be happy. The story made me think of other books I have read that have to do with the south during the civil rights movement. The Help and The Ya Ya Sisterhood are just two examples of the feel of the Secret Life of Bees. I very much enjoyed the book and wanted to either listen to or read it until it was done. Although I think the ending seemed wrapped up a little too well, all the plots are wrapped up with a neat little bow, I think it was still a good book. When I took the book to my book group Christmas party for its book exchange, everyone who commented on how they either had loved it when they had read it or been dying to read it at some point. I would definitely recommend this book.

Year 2, week 16: Jubilee Christmas quilt

Jubilee Christmas Quilt

This week is the beginning of December, so I think we can finally start enjoying the holiday season. I'm a firm believer that the Christmas tree doesn't go up until the weekend after Thanksgiving. Not that Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday, but I still think it should have it's fair share of time and, let's be honest, a few more days of pumpkin-smelling things before we dive into peppermint-flavored EVERYTHING is good, too.

As a child we had many Christmas traditions that we're always very important. One of the most generous traditions was from the church I grew up in had a thing called “The Giving Tree.” The tree would appear around the holiday season and it would have tags on it instead of ornaments. Each “ornament” would say the age and gender of a child and a few things that they might want for Christmas. Every year my sister and I would pick an ornament with a child around our age and we couldn't wait to pick out a gift for that child in need. Giving Tree Sunday was always one of my favorite Sundays of the year, right up there with Palm Sunday when we kids waved Palm leaves sing Hosanna down the ridiculously long aisle of our church. On giving Tree Sunday, everyone that was giving to the cause had the opportunity to walk them up to the altar and stack them for the children they would go to. As a child I was always so excited to give our gifts. It was a great lesson for a child to remember to give in the holiday season.

I was so excited when I realized that our church here in West Lafayette had a program kind of like my beloved childhood Giving Tree. Our church's Christmas giving project is called Jubilee Christmas, and it's pretty nicely done. Similar to the giving tree, Jubilee Christmas has a tree in our greeting area that people get to take an ornament with a child's age and gender, but no gift suggestions are on it. My hubby and I have followed in the tradition of letting our children pick a ornament with their age and gender as well. The thing that makes Jubilee Christmas different is that the parents of these children get to come to our church and “shop” for a gift for their child, because the gifts haven't been picked for certain children. The families also receive knit hats and afghans, along with books and many other things.

The quilt that I made this year for Jubilee Christmas is a Grinch themed quilt (and of course we also had the kids pick out toys as well). All the fabric from this quilt had been donated to the church's quilting group. This weekend is Jubilee Christmas at the church and I really hope all the parents find everything that they really wanted to get their children. I also hope all of those children have a very Merry Christmas!