running together

I've been reading books lately that have been set in San Francisco, and they are all first person-ish narratives, and they're all mid-thirties drifter dudes, and it is really hard to keep them straight. They are, The Dead Do Not Improve by Jay Caspian Kang, A Working Theory of Love by Scott Hutchins, and Mr. Penumbra's 24-hour Bookstore by Robin Sloan.

something new

I was listening to a book on tape with Lena tonight, and I learned something new.

Apparently I have been mispronouncing "chaise lounge" for 20+ years. (Hint, it's not "chase lounge".)

In other news, I am just as enamored with the Ms. Piggle Wiggle books as I was when I was 10 or so. I remember being in Woods Hole, MA for the summers, and every trip to the library I would check out more of the Ms. Piggle Wiggle books, and I would just read them over and over and over again. I got them for Lena to listen to at night, and right now I am literally in my room, with the lights off, listening along with her in the next room. Forget March Madness, forget Netflix. Ms. Piggle Wiggle's Farm.

Yeah, screw it, I'm getting back in bed with her.

Later, y'all.

What we choose to share

Fall, finally.

Yeesh, it's been so long I don't even know how to begin. I guess I'll just jump right in.

I've been lax about blogging lately for a lot of reasons. I've been busy with grad school apps. I've got a self imposed deadline of November 5th (before I fly off to San Fran!) for having all of my applications finalized, so I can just hand off my CV and my personal statement to my letter writers, and smooth sailing from there. Fingers crossed, knocked wood, etc. 

After that's over, I can get back to my other endeavors which means creeping myself out with Stephen King books. 

I read On Writing the other month, which was amazing. Half-memoir half-writing-on-writing, it was wonderful and inspiring manual for any writer, reader, or liver of life. Which also made me realize that I had never read any of Stephen King's books. Since then I've made my way through Under the Dome and The Stand. (No small feat, The Stand was 1000+ pages.) I've started on The Cell, (cellphone induced zombie apocalypse yesssssss) but then I had bad dreams so I'm taking it as a sign to lay off the Stephen King. At least for a week, and at least for the nighttime hours.

Speaking of writing...

I've been writing a lot more in my journal. I'm not quite sure why--but there are things I'm just not quite ready to share yet. All the quiet smiles, the bumps of mini-heartbreaks. Figuring out what kind of girl I am. This morning, in a split second decision, as Lena asking about her heritage, Am I Chinese? Am I American?  I told her that yes, you're Chinese, you're American, and you know what? You're also half Mexican. 

I am! Lena answers so gleefully, I feel silly even being worried about it. But that's something I was thinking, Gosh, who can I tell about this moment. I don't need to tell anyone...but I just wanted to share it. What we choose to share. Hmm. 

I've been watching this show Nashville, and it's really awesome. I've been listening to more country music now. So...there's that.

Little things

Here are some little things that have been floating around my brain for a while.

+I've been making Lena eat at least one vegetable per dinner, and the faces and the attitude that this kid makes is just astounding. She's going to be the most awesome teenager in the world based solely on the dramatic sighs I get from her when forced to eat half a slice of cucumber. Half a slice. And cucumbers don't even taste like anything!

+We're lucky to grow up with a diverse amount of families around us. It's making me more confident that there will be less scrutiny in her future for not having a d-a-d around. Also, L had play date the other day, and they were playing 'house', and L said to her friend, 'you can be the daddy', and the friend didn't want to, so Lena said, 'ok, we can both be mommy's.' I know it's not ground-breaking stuff here, but I just love that their family could have two mommies, and that was perfectly ok.

+I need to work on my elevator pitch of what I want to do in grad school. I'm really used to telling non-scientist people, so I end up just saying 'molecular biology!' really enthusiastically and that gets the point across. Have just realized that this does not fly with, oh, actual scientists.

+I'm about to start reading The Fault in Our Stars, which I've heard really great things about. I even requested it from the main campus library, and it's coming to the health sciences library, which is closer to my work. I'm inordinately excited about this.

bits & peices

I had this great nap-dream where Nathan Fillion and I were speaking eloquently on a multitude of topics. So clearly I fell asleep while I was watching Firefly and studying for the GRE.

Lena has this book about this bunny called Marshmallow, and it has this great line about how the bunny is really sad and if it was a kitten it would meow, and if it were a puppy it would howl, and if it were a baby it would cry, but because it was a bunny it just sat there feeling sad. WTF bunny!

Up a storm

These past few months I have been reading up a storm.

I think I've read more books this year already then I read last year combined. And they're not even all YAF!

Books I've read this year, assorted by brow-ness

Literary Fiction:
The Marriage Plot--Jeffery Eugenides (I liked it because it was angsty English majors but was nowhere on par with Middlesex which I now want to reread)
Once Upon a River--Bonnie Jo Campbell (Highly recommend, amazing characters. I want Lena to read this.)
Never Let Me Go--Kazuo Ishiguro (Surprising in it's simplicity.)

Fiction that may or may not contain zombies and the adult version of twilight and Beijing crime novels:
Patient Zero--Jonathan Maberry (Non-post apocalyptic zombies!)
Discovery of Witches--Deborah Harkness (Twilight-esque, but with Genetics!!)
Rock Paper Tiger--Lisa Brackmann (Beijing!)

Young Adult Fiction (AKA the best genre in the world):
Divergent--Veronica Roth (Dystopian Chicago.)
The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks--E. Lockhart (Boarding school and awesome girl)
(Not included, every novel by Sarah Dessen that I pretty much reread weekly.)

On my to-be-read list, and the books I'm hopefully going to get from the library today:
I, Claudius--Robert Graves
The Submission--Amy Waldman
Train Dreams--Denis Johnston
Paper Towns--John Green (who I have never read! and there are a bajillion holds on The Fault in Our Stars)
Gone--Michael Grant


Oh and I should probably pick up some books for Lena too.


And then I got a paper cut at work yesterday. And I powered through it and was like, Katniss Everdeen!!!


And scene.