I keep encountering things that seem like they would be perfect for discussing with you. And then I promptly forget them. Perhaps I should keep a list on my phone, alongside my Target List and my Books to Look Into List and my Excellent Words List and my Grocery List. 

The one topic I did remember – the ongoing stress of figuring out how best to interact with our neighbors and their dogs – is one I have posted about before. Lucky for us all, I read the previous post before sitting down to type up my angst. Not only did I discover that things have not improved AT ALL, which is quite discouraging, but I also prevented myself from writing (and saved you from reading) pretty much the exact same post, just three years later. So now I am out of a post topic, which is also discouraging. 

But I am feeling chatty despite not having anything to talk about. 

My Mother’s Day was fairly lovely this year. Sunday is our normal cleaning day, which we moved to the day before Mother’s Day. But I was the only one who did any cleaning, so my house remains un-vacuumed, which is irritating and sneezy. (To be fair, my husband did fold the laundry.) For the day itself, I asked specifically for what I wanted (flowers, a book, Mexican takeout) and I got those things, plus my husband got me a couple of other goodies. Carla made me a coaster in school, which made me tear up at the thought of her teacher instructing all the children to make coasters for their parents. I lounged around and read all day. The only hiccup was dinner. Somehow I was the one who went to pickup the takeout, which annoyed me in retrospect. And apparently EVERYONE IN THE MIDWEST had decided to take their mothers to this specific Mexican restaurant for Mother’s Day, so it was very busy. None of the staff would look at me or address the long line of people waiting for takeout unless specifically asked (even though bags of takeout kept appearing on a long table near the cash register). And, worst of all, I did not get the margarita I had been looking forward to. They were listed as “sold out” online, so I hoped to order one in person. When I finally got a staff member to speak to me, she said I could order one at the bar. But after sitting at the bar for ten minutes, the bartender informed me I had to order the margaritas at the cash register. And it just wasn’t worth it after that. I waited for forty minutes for my food, and then only when I got home did I realize that they had forgotten the guacamole. OH WELL. It was still a nice, relaxing day. I know Mother’s Day can be fraught for SO MANY REASONS for SO MANY PEOPLE, and if yours was crummy, please know I understand just how crummy it can feel, and I hope that you have better days ahead.

Oh! Here’s something: I got my first haircut since February 2020! It is… barely distinguishable from what it looked like before the haircut. Although it FEELS 10,000 times better. My hair had grown quite long – nearly to my belly button – and I like the length. But it was at the point where, every time I brushed it, I would pull out huge brambles of tangled hair. The bottom edge was all raggedy looking and the whole mop was so lank and heavy. Now, I have some new layers and new movement to the whole thing. I wish I had been brave enough to ask her to whack more of it off. A friend of mine had similarly long hair and chopped it to chin length and it looks great on her. I could never do something that drastic – for one thing, my hair does not do chin length, it does triangle – but I was thinking about shoulder length, which would have gotten rid of a good eight inches. Oh well. It took all my courage to go INTO the hair salon during a pandemic; I didn’t have any left over for significant style changes. 

Being A Good Blogger, I had Carla take a picture of my Before Hair as we were leaving for school. But we were already late and I didn’t think about how posing in front of a tree with leaves a surprisingly similar shade to my hair would make it difficult to see. (The leaves are a very dark reddish color, not green.)

The other problem with the photo was how startlingly large I am in it. Listen, I am under no illusions about my current size. But it’s one thing to regard yourself in the mirror every day and another thing entirely to see yourself from behind, in a photograph. Well. I am working hard on Accepting Myself, because – as I mentioned in a previous post – I just cannot fathom engaging in another 1,200-calories-per-day diet, and the mere thought of trying keto again exhausts me. I do not want to think about food every second of every day, which is what happens when I diet. 

We seem to finally be getting some sunshine in these parts. I tend to turn to the topic of weather when I need to transition away from topics that make me uncomfortable. I do this in person, too, just in case you thought I reserved this particular quirk for blogging. Weather. The great conversational neutralizer! It has been cool and springy, which I appreciate. I do not like when the weather goes from winter straight into blazing heat. But we’ve had so much rain (and snow on Mother’s Day!) that I am feeling extra delighted by the sun’s appearance. 

Carla and I went to the garden center last week to pick up some plants. I have a couple of planters in the front of the house and a few in the backyard, and it was pleasant to fill them with flowers last summer (instead of with vegetables that are eaten by vermin the second they appear on the stems), so we filled them with flowers again this year. Carla really, REALLY wanted us to buy some variety of flower that said it would attract hummingbirds. I don’t think we get hummingbirds in this part of the country, and the flower was $17 which is too much for me to pay just to SEE if we could attract hummingbirds to our yard from wherever they normally live. But we did pick up some supposedly deer resistant varieties of flowers, the names of which I have promptly forgotten. We planted them, and then, of course, we got snow. And have had two separate frost advisories since, so I’m hoping they will survive. 

If they do, somehow, live through the frost, they will also have to thwart the very brazen rabbits that live in our yard. 

Oh! I thought of another thing I wanted to tell you. I read a very good book recently. I don’t think I’ve felt as strongly about a book as I did about The Friend by Sigrid Nunez. That book was, to me, a real masterpiece. But that may have something to do with the subject matter, which was extremely well-suited to my particular personality and situation and career goals. ANYWAY, buy The Friend, the paperback is under $10 right now, but that is not what I want to recommend today. And, in fact, I don’t know why I am even bringing UP The Friend, because this other book is NOTHING LIKE IT IN ANY WAY. I am going to need a new paragraph here, to distance myself from The Friend.

There we go. The book I would like to urge you to read is A Burning by Megha Majumdar. Three things to know before rejecting it: First of all, it’s a fairly short book – 304 pages, but the book itself is somewhat smaller and narrower than a typical hard-bound book – plus, the chapters are very short, so it goes by quickly. Secondly, this book is described as a thriller, but I think that’s a mistake; it implies things about the way the book will unfold that aren’t actually true. I’d call this literary fiction with some elements of suspense. Third of all, if you read the description on the dust jacket, you get one sense of what the book is about… but it is not really about that. (This reinforces my usual practice of not reading the jacket copy before I read something.) Here is what the book is about, according to amazon: “Jivan is a Muslim girl from the slums, determined to move up in life, who is accused of executing a terrorist attack on a train because of a careless comment on Facebook. PT Sir is an opportunistic gym teacher who hitches his aspirations to a right-wing political party, and finds that his own ascent becomes linked to Jivan’s fall. Lovely—an irresistible outcast whose exuberant voice and dreams of glory fill the novel with warmth and hope and humor—has the alibi that can set Jivan free, but it will cost her everything she holds dear.”

I mean, that sounds (potentially) appealing, right? And, sure, the book addresses all those things. But it is just so much MORE than that. It’s told from three perspectives – you get chapters in Jivan’s voice, in PT Sir’s voice, and in Lovely’s voice. And there’s the underlying story of Jivan’s arrest and trial. But it’s really about the three characters, who live totally different lives from one another in the middle of contemporary India, and whose lives intersect because of the case against Jivan, and who all share the desire to better themselves and rise above their current stations. Ugh. I don’t even want to say too much about the plot, because I don’t want you to think, “Oh, I don’t want to read about a terrorist.” or “I have no interest in another book about ambition.” It is exquisitely written – beautiful, descriptive writing without being flowery AT ALL, and, in fact, being rather spare and simple. The characters are so different from one another and so distinct in behavior, voice, and morals. The depiction of contemporary India was, to me, utterly fascinating; I have never been to India, and know very little about day-to-day life there. And the commentary on morality and social aspiration was cutting and concise and never preachy or overbearing. It’s not even commentary, which implies that Mujamdar was sitting above her characters and pointing out how what they were doing was amoral or justifiable or whatever. She was masterful at allowing these characters and their actions to speak for themselves. I don’t want to push too hard, because of course we are different people and you may not like it all. But I really really recommend it. I found it simultaneously crushing and deeply hopeful. 

Oh, by the way, I have a separate book blog and book Instagram if that sort of thing appeals to you. I feel weird bringing it up but also weird keeping it from you, but I would love to discuss books and writing with you, so there it is.

I am resisting the urge to start discussing the weather again.

My husband and I have a few small projects in mind for the coming weeks/months. One of them is to finally make progress on the gallery wall that I have been putting on my New Year’s aspirations list for YEARS. The other is to install a new mailbox. The snowplow people hit it sometime in mid-winter, and it listed sideways for awhile until the arm holding the mail box sagged away from the main post. The post is half-rotten and the whole thing looked very precarious. The person who came to trim the giant oak in our backyard kindly secured it with a bungee cord. And then during one of the April snowshowers, the snowplow people hit it AGAIN, knocking the entire mail box off the post. I nailed it back into place. But we need a new one. In fact, we HAVE a new one; it’s sitting in our garage, alongside a bag of quick-setting cement, waiting for us to install it. Perhaps we shall tackle the project this weekend!

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Carla is done with school the second week of June this year. I keep thinking it’s still so far away, but we have less than a month now! I still feel grateful, every single morning, that she has been able to attend school in-person for the better part of this academic year. 

Well, I am going to go pour another cup of tea and work on editing my manuscript, so come by and chat with me. I want to know what projects are in the works, what you’re reading or watching, how your hair is doing, what you’re eating for dinner or right this very minute, or literally anything else you want to tell me.