Bibliomama

I had a bit of an... odd? reading year. I don't want to say 'bad', but I was behind my reading goal all year, which has not happened in recent memory, and I went up and down about how much it bothered me. When Eve got home on December 14th she said "I have to read two books in the next sixteen days" and I barked "try ELEVEN". We both resolved to not let it bother us and then both ended up chugging one or two short books to meet our goal. I know 111 books is perfectly fine - any total is perfectly fine. I know that how much I read tends to define more of my identity than it probably should. There is a rhythm to reading, like with everything else in life, and a rhythm isn't a rhythm unless there are downbeats as well as upbeats (I have no idea if I'm using those terms correctly and also WHY is the word rhythm so hard to type).  That said, I have thought a bit about the reason for reading less because I was unable not to. I sort of forgot that I did...

I appreciate the t-shirt love! The t-shirts were about half from Redbubble, a site where I have found many, many gifts, as well as two throw pillows, three phone cases, a shower curtain and bath mat.  I scrolled through many shirts until I found one designer that really had a 'my family' vibe and ordered several of those, early in November, thankfully. Then the Canada Post strike went into effect, with several left to get. Fortunately, I remembered the lovely local woman who I've commissioned for several weird-ass sayings on t-shirts in the past: "Hi, It's me Rachel" for Collette's daughter, who always opened with this when she called Eve for a playdate, and it was adorable; "Stuffed Kumquats: It's what's for dinner" for my dad, who, since my sister and I were little and continuing with the grandchildren, would always say "stuffed kumquats!" when asked 'what's for dinner'; and "Fuck this fucking snow, Fuck!...

The 24th my parents and Davis and Jody and Chris came over earlyish (Davis is a friend of Eve's from middle school, and then I became really good friends with her mom and stepdad, and we had such a fun second Thanksgiving with them that I invited them for Christmas Eve), then my sister and her family showed up about seven-thirty and we had a big noisy houseful, which has not been a thing the past few years, and I was kind of missing it. It was maybe a tad too loud and boisterous for my parents, but in past years we've had pretty much the same exact evening Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and I wanted to change it up a little.  Christmas morning we did presents at 9:30 a.m. here so we could go over and do presents at my mom and dad's place when my mom got home from church.  We had brunch there, then came back here for a couple of hours before everyone came over for dinner. We did the turkey, stuffing and Brussels sprouts, my parents brought the mashed potatoes and baked cur...

First of all, I love you all so very much (am resisting beginning with 'Hey Sluts", because sometimes I am bad with sincere emotion and I am trying to get better at that). I think I was genuinely not fishing for compliments, and in this case sometimes any compliments received could feel like people lying to make me feel better, but every nice thing anyone said was so specific and so exactly things that I hope I AM good at, it made me feel perfectly content to not be a university provost or an effortless scarf-wearer (I can improve in some areas, but scarves look stupid on me, I don't think there's any changing that).  Comparing ourselves to other people is absolutely counterproductive. What we know of other people is usually a fraction of the truth. For every person we admire, there is likely another person who admires us. But we shouldn't give up trying. But we shouldn't try too hard. (This is me paraphrasing all of you wise, wise women). Like Swistle says - B...