Sunday Coffee – District-wide Book Sale!

Posted on April 8, 2018 by Thistle

Every year in April, the boys’ school district hosts a district-wide used book sale. Thousands of books are donated and sold for under a dollar each over the course of three days. I’ve been most years when I’ve lived in San Antonio, and even though my current to-acquire list is quite low, I decided to head out yesterday to see if I found anything that caught my eye.

As it turns out, I did find a few things! Firstly, I found two books for Jason – an early book by James Joyce called Stephen Hero, and a nonfiction volume called Sources of Japanese Tradition. Morrigan might like that latter one as well, since he’s heading to Japan later this year.

For me, I found five books. One is a childhood favorite: From the Mixed-up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler. This is the exact same edition I had as a kid, with the same illustrations! Then there’s The Shadow Cabinet, the third book in a series by Maureen Johnson that I really like. I still need to get my hands on the second book, and of course the fourth when it comes out, but I was glad to find this one! The third is The Mad Scientist’s Daughter, which I read a few years ago and still think about quite often. Then there are two books I don’t actually know: The Invention of Curried Sausage by Uwe Timm, which I’ve been told is a modern German classic, and a random book called City of Masks by Mary Hoffman. The cover and description of this one looked interesting, and for fifty cents, I figured I could afford to risk it!

There’s a possibility my family might go back today for the last day of the sale, the “bag day” where you get a large bag and fill it as much as you can for $15, only $10 for further bags. I didn’t have much of a chance to look at the children’s books for some favorites from elementary and middle school that I’ve been trying to get my hands on. Who knows? I was told that the district got TONS of books this year and that they’re still putting out new ones on the floor as it empties. So maybe we’ll find some good ones today?

Posted in Book Talk | Tagged | 4 Comments

Tess of the Road, by Rachel Hartman (audio)

Posted on April 6, 2018 by Thistle

Tess has always been the “bad” twin, in her angelic sister’s shadow, tormented by her mother and younger brothers. Her family is completely miserable: parents estranged and impoverished, half-sister who is also a half-dragon, and Tess herself, “ruined” at the age of thirteen. Tess sees no way out, and after almost ruining her sister’s wedding and her family’s attempt to escape destitution, she sets off to wander the world on her own.

For those who have read Rachel Hartman’s Seraphina series, this is set in the same world. Tess is Seraphina’s half-sister, a minor character in the original two books. Some of the characters from the first series are players in this one, but it’s mostly a separate story in the same world. That, of course, means more world-building, and in this case it’s particularly about the quigutl species (a lizardish species that isn’t human or dragon) and their mythology/theology. Beyond that, this is the story of a traveler coming to terms with various traumas of her childhood and adolescence, learning about herself and the world, and coming to find a name for herself that isn’t thrust on her by others.

This is the second book in a row that has been a mixed read for me. On the plus side, I enjoyed learning about the quigutl. I said recently that my favorite thing about fantasy is the ability to play with real-world themes in a different-world setting. The quigutl hop genders multiple times in their lives, so that for instance a mother might be male but always a mother to her own hatchlings. I liked the exploration of gender-fluidity. Also, the quigutl have a very non-human way of seeing the world, particularly evident in their language, which include things like a contradictory case for modifying nouns and non-gendered pronouns. Outside the quigutl, I also enjoyed watching Tess’s progress over the road as she learned to overcome her past and embrace her true self.

On the negative side, I felt like the book was not much more than a series of adventures, with less of a narrative arc than I would have liked. It never felt as if the book reached a climax, but instead stayed in a solid, steady line all the way through. I also didn’t particularly like Tess as a character. That last one is entirely personal. Tess is the sort of person I wouldn’t like in the real world either – we’d probably get on each other’s last nerves! And of course, that made the book more difficult to engage with.

I kept reading despite being less engaged because I have enjoyed Hartman’s world in the past, and because the quigutl were so interesting, and because the audio narrator (Katherine McEwan) did an excellent job keeping me going. I plan to read the next book in the series as well, whenever it arrives, but honestly I’m not sure if any of these books will ever quite live up to the pleasure that was the original Seraphina.

Trigger warning: This book discusses sexual assault in multiple situations and goes into the complexities involved in the psychology around said assault.

Posted in 2018, Prose, Young Adult | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Wellness Wednesday – New Motivation

Posted on April 4, 2018 by Thistle

So I mentioned this briefly in my March wrap-up, but I just had to write more about it because I’m so excited!!! In September, Jason and I are going on a cruise!!!!

(pre-hike in Roatan, Honduras – 2012)

The longer story: Jason and I got married back in December 1999. I got pregnant the following month and had Morrigan in October. Ambrose and Laurence followed in 2002 and 2004, and so since the very early days of our marriage, we’ve almost never had a chance to have a couples’ vacation. That includes a honeymoon, as we were poor college kids when we married.

(ziplining in the rainforest of Costa Rica – 2012)

Fast forward to 2011. I made a goal that year to lose 50 lbs. At first, I told no one about my goal, or about the reward I promised myself if I made it: a Caribbean cruise honeymoon in 2012, only twelve years after our wedding ceremony (ha!). Long story short, I lost 54 lbs in 2011, and Jason and I booked passage on an 11-night trip that docked in several places in central and South America, as well as one of the Caribbean islands. I chose a cruise purely as a way to visit so many new-to-me countries, and ended up falling in love with the cruise experience itself. I fell so hard that the next year, Jason got wind of a drastically reduced price for a week-long cruise through several Caribbean islands plus Bermuda, and jumped on the chance to take me for a spontaneous vacation.

Those two cruises make up half of the four couple-only vacations we’ve ever had, excluding the occasional night alone when the kids visit their grandparents. We haven’t had some time off alone since we were in Portland in 2014, and even then it was hardly a together-vacation, since Jason was there for a developer conference and we only had evenings to spend with each other. The last few years of moving have made vacations just about impossible, and so beyond my few trips back to SA to visit family when we were away, it’s been a long home-bound time.

Which is why this sudden surprise trip Jason booked for September has me SO EXCITED! It’s a short trip, about a week long, starting in Seattle and hitting Astoria (Oregon), San Francisco, and Victoria (Canada) before ending in Vancouver. Other than the trip I just mentioned to Portland, I’ve never been further west than El Paso before, and I’ve never seen the Pacific Ocean, so this has me just giddy!

(sunny selfie in San Juan – 2013)

It also has me very motivated to keep the ball rolling on my weight loss! On my previous two cruises, I weighed 40 and 70 lbs less than I do at this moment. I know I won’t be able to get back to either of those sizes in the next 5.5 months, but I’d love to lose a good chunk so I don’t feel quite as self-conscious when I get on the boat. I’d also like to not have to worry about the weight limits on shore excursions and stuff like that. So I’m going to be pushing myself very hard and doing everything I can for the next few months. I know motivation is a thing that doesn’t last, but I also know that I can be very determined, and once I really get things rolling, I don’t give up easily. So cheer for me, my friends! I need to do this!!

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Easter Shenanigans

Posted on April 3, 2018 by Thistle

It’s funny that Easter was on April Fool’s this year, because it feels a bit like the universe decided to play a little switcheroo trick on the Gignac family!

To start with, we went out to my grandparents’ ranch in Quihi for Easter (which is normal for us). My grandparents own a 50-acre ranch where they keep cattle and there’s a lot of scrub. When it’s time for hiding the eggs, one or two of the adults herd the kids a quarter-mile down the driveway to be out of sight while everyone else does the hiding. The youngest of the cousins is now 11, so there’s really no belief in the Easter bunny, but some of the plastic eggs have money in them, which means there’s got to be a good hunt. (You’d think teens wouldn’t care about pennies and nickels, but they’re always so excited to add up the 46 cents they got, haha!) That was the plan: go to the ranch, hide eggs, hunt for eggs, have lunch, head home. But fate interfered.

Meet Atticus. Not long after we arrived at the ranch, this tiny cat joined the family. No one had ever seen him before, and Morrigan stopped my grandma’s two dogs from killing him. The dogs were locked away, and the cat ended up spending the rest of the day with us. He followed the kids and me when we walked down the driveway, then back up again. He let everyone hold him and pet him. He ate off our food plates and gobbled down anything we could give him. Clearly, he’d been a housecat at some point, because he recognized the sound of bags opening (food!) and responded to vocal clicks to come and jump in your lap. He purred and headbutted and generally acted like the sweetest cat you’ll ever meet. We didn’t know if he was lost or had been abandoned, but we knew that he’d been attacked and bitten up. We also knew that if we just left him there, he would be eaten by dogs or coyotes. He wasn’t a barn cat, ready to defend himself outside. He needed a home.

I guess I’m a sucker. It didn’t take long to know that he was coming home with us. Helps that the boys all fell in love with him immediately. This cat, y’all…this cat is precious. Calm. Extremely well-behaved and trained. He sat on the car floor by Jason’s feet for the entire 1.5-hr drive back to our house. He waited patiently in Jason’s lap in the automotive center at Walmart while they repaired our flat tire (as we’d run over a screw – thank goodness we didn’t have to drive the entire way home on a spare!). He didn’t complain or attack even as Jason felt his neck, belly, and toes for problems, and he was vocal but not violent as he got two baths for flea treatment that evening. –>

Yesterday, we took him in to our vet. We knew it was possible that Atticus was already microchipped and we’d be able to contact his family, if he was lost instead of dumped. However, he has no microchip, so that possibility is out. We also had him tested for feline aids and leukemia, which were both thankfully negative. He has no worms, no parasites, no ear mites – he couldn’t have been wandering around for too long. The vet estimates he’s about 1-2 years old, despite his tiny size (just under 6 lbs), and Jason guesses that someone dumped him in the country because he was no longer a cute kitten and they no longer wanted a cat. I hope that isn’t the case, but whatever the case, no one had bothered to neuter, microchip, or vaccinate this little baby, so we’re doing all that, and he’s ours.

So just when we were taking Jojo back to the cat cafe to let him find a better home for him, another kitty sauntered into our lives. It really does feel like a kind of April Fool’s prank. But honestly, I’m not really sorry. I think Atticus is going to help us heal from having to give up the last baby, and I think he’ll be wonderful in our family. He’s already integrating better than Jojo ever managed, and I think it’ll be mere days before all four cats are fast friends.

And just because I can’t let an Easter post pass without at least one picture of the kids, here are the six cousins who hunted despite all being aged 11-17, ha!

Posted in Personal | 3 Comments

March in Review

Posted on April 2, 2018 by Thistle

March was one crazy month! Good points and bad points, but overall it was a good one. To wrap it up:

Goals
The big goal I completed this month was that color-block afghan. I’m very happy for that to be done! Otherwise, I’ve been focused mostly on my health goals, which I’ll go into next.

Health
This was always going to be a difficult one for March. Birthday-month means lots of celebration food, and it’s very hard for me to get out to exercise during spring break. Landscaping the front yard didn’t help since it threw off routines and often interfered with getting nutritious food on the table. To cap it all off, the pollen counts were so high this month – due to a rainy winter – that I came down with bronchitis twice. I did my best, however, and I made some real progress for the first time in ages. Yay! Highlights:

  • exercised on 23 days, for a total of 1420 minutes (23 hr 40 mins)
  • 21 yoga sessions
  • 42 miles walked (about half outdoors)
  • averaged 9600 steps per day
  • tracked calories almost every day this month, and kept my macronutrient ratios steady and my sugar levels mostly low
  • only drank alcohol once, early in the month (alcohol makes me hold on to weight, and it increases my appetite, so I decided to spend some time without it)
  • increased my produce intake and the variety of produce I was eating

All this progress means that I finally saw some results in my weight! I’m down 3.6 lbs this month, with inches lost on many of my measurements, and my Happy Scale tracker is showing a slow, steady downward trend for the first time in ages! The biggest non-scale victory I saw involved a dress I wore both at Laurence’s birthday party on 3/10 and to an online murder mystery birthday party on 3/31. While the measuring tape claims that my bustline hasn’t changed in inches, the dress was difficult to zip up on the 10th and had plenty of room to zip on the 31st. Jason was zipping it and he noticed the huge difference too – this is real progress, my friends! Now to just keep it up!

Books
It was a mixed bag for books in March. I read seven, including three that I loved, three that were middle-of-the-road books, and one I really disliked. It was the first month in quite some time that I finished a book I wasn’t liking, and I wish I hadn’t. Ah well. At least the three books I loved were all just excellent. I had a hard time narrowing down a favorite, but I think that honor has to go to Children of Blood and Bone.

Highlights of March
Illness made the month rough in some ways, but generally this was a very good month:

(me and Nat)

• My friend Natalie – one of my oldest friends in the world – came to spend some time with me over spring break!
• I met Robert Jackson Bennett at the SAPL Pop Con!
• Multiple birthdays, of course, including my own
• Morrigan took his first SAT test and got a score of 1570 (out of 1600)!!
• Laurence auditioned and earned a part in the spring play at his school. He’s playing Mr. Darling in Peter Pan.

(my mystery character – Genoa Jackson)

• Morrigan applied, interviewed, and was selected to be part of a team of six San Antonio students to visit Kumomoto, our sister city in Japan, for a short study abroad program this summer!
• Jason surprised me by booking passage on a cruise in September! It’ll be the first just-us vacation we’ve had since 2014!
• We finally finished repairing and repainting the leak damage in our kitchen.\
• Major progress made on landscaping the front yard
• Murder mystery birthday dinner for my brother-in-law’s girlfriend in Wisconsin (via computer for those of us who couldn’t attend in person)

General first-quarter recap
There have been a lot of hiccups in the last three months: illnesses, a death in the family, the sudden leak in the roof that created a lot of sudden construction and monetary needs on the house…but really, despite all that, I feel very positive about 2018 so far. I’ve been working really hard on my 2018 word – Cultivate – to create a life that I love. My boys are making progress, my house is coming along, my health is finally getting in alignment, Jason is enjoying his job, I have a new cat to care for (in more ways than one – see tomorrow’s post!), our finances have improved drastically, and I have the tiniest hope that I might start writing again soon. It feels like the start of something wonderful, like the seeds I’ve been planting are finally starting to blossom just a little.

Up next in April!
Easter (more on this tomorrow), driver’s ed for Morrigan, college visits, Readathon, a possible new cat…lots of fun stuff happening, which will hopefully counterpoint my normal April depression. Our weather always turns definitively toward the six months of summer in April and that affects my mood as I get used to it. I’m crossing my fingers that it won’t be too bad this year.

Posted in Personal | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

Sunday Coffee – Happy Easter!

Posted on April 1, 2018 by Thistle

I’m off early to my grandparents’ ranch out in Quihi, TX, so that my kids who are way too old to do egg hunts can still do egg hunts (ha!). In lieu of a real Sunday Coffee post, I’ll just say happy Easter to those who celebrate – we’re not religious, but we celebrate family traditions! – and happy last day of March and here’s a great picture from 2008 when my boys were still tiny.

Posted in Personal | Tagged | 2 Comments

Reign the Earth, by AC Gaughen

Posted on March 30, 2018 by Thistle

Check out the Goodreads description here.

I had mixed feelings about this book. Something about it grated on me the entire time I was reading, and at the same time, I was unable to put the book down. Part of me wants to read on to the next book, another part of me wants someone else to read it and tell me the spoilers. I’m honestly not sure how to put into words my discontent or my enjoyment – hence this mini-review. I guess the best way I can put it is this: I read a preview of the book online (maybe five pages or so) and I couldn’t tell from those five pages if I wanted to read on (I usually can). My plan was to get the book, read on a bit further, and see how I felt…and that continued all through the book. I could never make a decision, and eventually I’d read the whole thing by default. Something made me keep reading, even as something else in me wanted to set the book aside. Perhaps it’s just one of those middle-of-the-road books for me. Ah well.

Posted in 2018, Prose, Young Adult | Tagged , | 8 Comments

Wellness Wednesday – The Problem With Moving

Posted on March 28, 2018 by Thistle

So there are all sorts of problems with moving, honestly, especially when you move across the country four times in three years. But one of the big ones is this: your body no longer knows how to react to the various pollen and allergens of your once-native land.

San Antonio is awful for allergies. There isn’t a day when some allergy or another isn’t super high, and there are big chunks of the year where it’s nearly impossible to stay healthy even if you aren’t allergic to the particular pollen that’s in the air. The concentrations in the air are so high that everyone reacts. December through April are particularly bad for this, with mountain cedar, mold, ragweed, and oak. Right now, it’s oak season, three weeks or so when everything outside turns yellow-green (particularly evident on cars!). I have a mild allergy to oak, so this is the worst season for me. Over the years, I’ve often had oak allergies turn into bronchitis in late March/early April. Sometimes more than once in the same year.

And this year? Oak is killer. You drive down the street and see tree after tree that are bright yellow. It looks like autumn outside. Pollen counts are through the roof, breaking all kinds of records. Apparently that’s what happens when we have a mild, wet winter – the trees over-pollinate. And if you’ll recall, I talked at length about our ridiculously rainy February that made it difficult to go outside to walk and exercise. That means that this month, oak is out to kill me.

Not just oak, either. I’ve actually had allergy symptoms devolve into bronchitis four times since the start of 2018. My body is not used to these allergens anymore! Two of those bouts of bronchitis have been this month, this last one bad enough to send me to urgent care last Sunday to get some antibiotics. I’m not generally prone to illness, but MAN I’ve been sickly this year and I’m fed up with that! Unfortunately, good nutrition and healthy living can only take you so far when your body has dealt with four changes in pollen-patterns in the last few years. Let’s just hope I can get out of the worst part of this season alive and that next year I’ll have adjusted better!

Posted in Wellness | Tagged | 6 Comments

Children of Blood and Bone, by Tomi Adeyemi

Posted on March 26, 2018 by Thistle

From GoodReads: Zélie Adebola remembers when the soil of Orïsha hummed with magic. Burners ignited flames, Tiders beckoned waves, and Zelie’s Reaper mother summoned forth souls. But everything changed the night magic disappeared. Under the orders of a ruthless king, maji were targeted and killed, leaving Zélie without a mother and her people without hope. Now, Zélie has one chance to bring back magic and strike against the monarchy. With the help of a rogue princess, Zélie must outwit and outrun the crown prince, who is hell-bent on eradicating magic for good.

Back in January, I read The City of Brass, a fantasy based on Middle Eastern culture and folklore. My feelings were mixed – it was not the book I’d hoped for, either because of the book itself or because of the mood I was in while reading. (Still, judgement reserved, as I said then – I’ll return to it one day.) This book, a fantasy based on west African culture and folklore, was everything I wanted The City of Brass to be. The characters were well-drawn. The ethical conflict regarding magic and how it could be used to destroy or help was splendidly laid out. The world-building and magic-building were phenomenal. The integration of magic and African culture was perfect. The suspense was killer. This was the sort of book that took ten days to read because each chapter was so stressful that I had to put the book down afterwards. By the end, reading through the climax chapters, my shoulders were stiff and my heart was racing and I was gasping aloud. I almost never react to books this way. I may love them and hug them and race through them; I might sometimes cry when that rare book that deeply affects me – but I almost never get so pulled into a book that I’m drawn nearly into a panic attack while reading. It was just that good.

My favorite thing about reading fantasy is that the genre allows for exploration of modern-world conflicts on a background enough removed from our world that the exploration doesn’t feel preachy. The author’s note at the end of the book talks about the police brutality against black Americans and how that influenced and inspired this book. But because the book is set in fantasy-Africa and 99% of the characters are black, the theme is played out between who has magic and who doesn’t, who could never have magic and who could potentially develop it, who is in power and who can be brutalized in every possible way because of a random physical feature (in this case, white hair). Adeyemi presents many sides to the story – this isn’t a case of everyone on one side is innocent and everyone on the other is guilty. She lets honesty flow through, the case that people can be gentle or brutal on both sides, and that in a changing world, there are no simple answers.

I loved this book so much. Back in January, I’d read a five-chapter sneak-peek on Kindle and just couldn’t wait to get my hands on the book come March. The library wasn’t fast enough, so I finally bought an ebook version, and after I was done with that, I went ahead and ordered a physical copy. It’s possible I’ll queue it up on Audible as well, because this is definitely a book that deserves multiple readings. And the ending – let’s just say that it’s heartbreaking that it’ll be some time before the next book in the series comes out! I. Can’t. Wait.

Posted in 2018, Prose, Young Adult | Tagged , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Sunday Coffee – Sad News

Posted on March 25, 2018 by Thistle

Hey everyone – I have sad news about Jojo. While we love him very much, he is not going to fit into our family. Honestly, I wish we’d tried integrating him into the whole house before we went through the full adoption. It was clear almost immediately that the situation was not going to work.

Jojo is very intelligent and very territorial. As soon as he met our other three cats, he began attacking them. Ash, our oldest and alpha cat, warned him off with growls, hisses, and smacks. Furthermore, Ash decided to put Jojo in his place. He used Jojo’s litter box, ate out of his bowl, claimed his toys and scratching posts – all while glaring at Jojo and daring him to complain. This appears to be the only language that Jojo respects, as he now accepts Ash as his (tentative) alpha and we’ve even seen them sleeping near each other. (I say tentative, because every couple days, Jojo will attack Ash to test if he’s big enough to be the new alpha.) If it was just Ash in our house, the situation would probably work out.

(about the closest they’ll get)

Unfortunately, things didn’t go as well for our other two kitties. Nimi is the sweetest soul, and she immediately tried to mother Jojo by bathing his face. He responded by attacking her over and over until she gave up on him. We never seen or heard Nimi hiss, growl, or swat at another creature before. Not once. After she gave up on Jojo, all three behaviors came out. Now, Jojo won’t attack her anymore, but she also won’t let him near her. If he comes close, she attacks him. This is the cat who will calmly sit there and purr while Gavroche pretends to dominate her by putting her throat in his mouth. Jojo can’t be within a foot of her without her attacking him, and really, vice versa. They have an uneasy truce of dislike.

Gavroche, though. Oh my poor Gavroche. He has borne the brunt of this. He’s always been the “omega” of the group, the silly, friendly, not-so-smart kitty. Jojo attacks him mercilessly, and unlike Ash or Nimi, Gavroche will never fight back. He loves to play-wrestle, but Jojo isn’t playing. Jojo causes pain. Jojo refuses to let Gavroche near the food bowls until Ash runs interference. (And if you know anything about my cats, you’ll know Ash has never been the biggest Gavroche fan, so to find him running interference on Gavroche’s behalf says a LOT.) Gavroche, my dear not-so-smart kitty, keeps trying to chirp and make friends with Jojo, and gets beat up for his efforts. Jojo won’t even let him run away. He spends hours attacking while we chase him away with loud noises, sharp voices, and a water squirter.

(pre-attack)

All this means, of course, that Jojo’s fear of people and noises is just getting worse. He freaks out every time one of the boys bounds up or down the stairs. He won’t let us go near him to pet him 95% of the time. He draws blood if you come close. The house situation has made him terrified, anxious, and wild.

Jojo needs a household without kids or other cats. He needs a quiet home that will help him to grow to trust people again.  That is not our house. We’ve done what we can for him. Likely he would have died without individual, specialized care. But after two weeks of trying to see if the situation here would improve, we have to acknowledge that it’s getting worse day by day. We’ve spoken to the owner of the cat cafe where we adopted Jojo and she’s going to take him back and find a better home for him. He’ll go back tomorrow or Tuesday, since they’d like him to integrate during one of the less-busy days (ie not the weekend). I’m heartbroken to have to say goodbye to him, but I also know that we did everything we could, and that Jojo (and our other babies) will be far happier in a different home situation.

ETA: When it came down to it, I could not take Jojo back the day I planned. I was too heartbroken and wanted to give him a little more time. Just another week, just to see if he could get better. Long story short, he didn’t, and by the next Sunday, he was attacking Gavroche and Nimi so badly that we almost locked him in our bedroom while we were gone for Easter (for their safety). He went back to the Cat Cafe the day after Easter, and while it was heartbreaking and terrible to do, I know it was the right thing. Now to just make my heart believe it.

Posted in Personal | Tagged | 5 Comments