Meal Plan • 9/21/15

(recipes linked below)

The past few weeks have been an introvert's challenge, and this week looks like more of the same.  As always, there are events I am looking forward to (yoga workshop in Atlanta for the win), events that are blowing my mind (my baby's eighth birthday), and events that will require meditation/prayer/herbal tinctures to survive (a court date with a non-paying tenant).

In honor of the calendar and in an attempt to roll with the punches, this week's meal plan is heavy on convenience and lighter than I would prefer on nutrition.

We're all just doing the best we can here.

Taco night on Monday is one of my favorite ways to please everyone.  The Musician will happily brown a little meat for himself and The Boy Wonder, while I will roast some seasoned garbanzos for a vegetarian filling for Princess Hazelnut and myself.  Then we can each pile on toppings according to our individual whims: shredded cheese, chopped romaine, salsa, fresh peppers from my mother's garden, sour cream, tomatoes, various hot sauces, etc.

Tuesday will be a quiet day at home (happy dance), so there will be time for one of my favorite vegan meals.  Wednesday is madness, hence the prepackaged foods that require nothing more than a little re-heating on my part while I bust out a quick yoga practice in a corner of the kitchen during the brief time we will be at home.

Thursday will require a later dinnertime than usual, so an easy pasta meal is on tap.  Because I will be in Atlanta on Friday, The Musician will have a chance to make one of the kids' favorite meals.

I bet you can't guess which evening we are celebrating Princess Hazelnut's birthday.

As always, Sunday will be Every Man for Himself because of the long-standing labor laws in our household.

• Monday: Taco Night (garbanzo filling recipe)
• Tuesday: Roasted Buddha Bowl
• Wednesday: Thai Vegetable Gyoza & Vegetable Egg Rolls (Trader Joe's freezer products)
• Thursday: Linguine with Hot Chile, Caramelized Onions & Gremolata
• Friday: French Toast & Cheese Grits
• Saturday: Pizza & Vegan Red Velvet Cupcakes

Quick Lit • September 2015

Sometimes I read a book so overwhelmingly fabulous that it overshadows all others, and I find myself unsure what to read next.  I tiptoe around my to-be-read stack, worrying that whatever subsequent book I choose will pale in comparison to what I have just finished.  I ran into such a glorious problem a few weeks ago when I devoured 800-something pages of 11/22/63 and was left wishing it had never ended.  It was simply a phenomenal book - the kind of story that grabs a hold of you and doesn't let go.  

Stephen King, I think, is too often discounted by serious readers because of his horror novels and the pulp-like tendencies of some of his books, but did you know he has written over 50 books?  And all of them were bestsellers?  Not just bestsellers, but worldwide bestsellers?  The man should be handed a few honorary doctorates and hailed as one of this country's great writers.  Also, he makes me want to visit Maine.  

His nonfiction book, On Writing, was the kind of nonfiction that is so engrossing I read it in one sitting, staying up into the wee hours of the morning so that I wouldn't have to put it down.

Today, I am linking up with Modern Mrs. Darcy to share short & casual snippet-like reviews of the books I have read over the past month.

Small Victories: Spotting Improbably Moments of Grace is a collection of essays written in typical Anne Lamott fashion, filled with irreverence and wit and copious George W. Bush bashing. Each of the essays stands alone, though the concept of grace is the binding thread between them, so it might not be something that you sit down with and expect to read cover-to-cover in one sitting. She's a hot mess in all of these stories, and that is what makes her so relatable (and, dare I say, lovable).

Still Life is a lovely debut detective novel, refined and graceful and just suspenseful enough. The characters were quirky and eccentric and mostly loveable, escaping the tiresome hard-boiled cliches of most contemporary detective series. The mystery itself was almost background for what became a character study more than an edge-of-the-seat thriller. My only complaint was the heavy-handed, hurried manner in which the mystery was solved In the final few pages. Regardless, I will be putting the next book on hold at the library right away. I can't wait to see where the author goes with this series.

Landline was a bummer. Maybe I expected too much from this book (I *loved* Eleanor & Park, after all), but I ended up feeling pretty let down by this one. The dialogue is great and the characters are interesting, but the storyline read like just another chick lit book to me. I just don't love angst in books about adults. It isn't a bad book, by any stretch, and if chick lit is your thing, this is one of the better ones. I'm torn between two and three stars, so I'm giving this novel the benefit of the doubt and giving it three because it is very well-written for the genre.

11/22/63 blew me away, and was almost impossible to put down (despite it topping out at close to 900 pages). The narrator travels back in time to attempt to prevent JFK's assassination, and while that part left me breathless for around 100 pages, the breadth of the story is spent exploring the narrator's years biding his time as he waits between 1958 and 1963. The characters he meets, the towns he lives in, the experiences of this modern-day schoolteacher in a time gone by are gripping and even a little haunting. Storytelling as its finest. I only wish it had been twice as long.

Attachments is a little fluffy, but highly entertaining. There is a geeky, D&D-playing male narrator and a slew of likeable and mostly hilarious characters. My only complaint is the cheese factor of the last two chapters, but the cheese was redeemed by the intelligent wit and some truly laugh-out-loud moments. Great vacation read.

Descent is suspenseful and atmospheric, with flawed characters (my favorite kind) and a dark but not overwhelmingly bleak tone.  The novel traces the story of a family in the wake of the disappearance of their daughter while the family is on vacation in the Rocky Mountains. The story is told over a number of years and follows each of the characters in turn.

Meal Plan • 9/14/15

(recipes linked below)

We just returned from a glorious 4-day camping & learning adventure at Mammoth Cave National Park in Kentucky, so interstate food had to tide us over for this evening's dinner; and after a few days of tofu dogs (with fresh spinach, jalapeños, & sauerkraut) around the campfire at night, I'm craving a little bit of variety in our diet.

I planned the lentils, rice, & cornbread for tomorrow night, knowing that we wouldn't have anything in the fridge when we returned, and would need to cook from the freezer and the pantry.  Wednesday will be a long day out of the house and I won't have time to cook before we head out again for our evening activities, so I will make sure to cook enough lentils on Tuesday to reheat for Wednesday's on-the-run dinner.

Thursday and Friday will be easy enough days, but I have plans on Saturday evening, so pasta salad will be an easy win since I can make it in the afternoon and the rest of the family can eat it whenever they're ready.

As always, Sunday will be Every Man for Himself because of the long-standing labor laws in our household.

• Monday: Interstate food (don't judge)
• Tuesday: Red Lentil Dal, served with brown rice & my favorite cornbread
• Wednesday: leftover lentils/rice/cornbread (see hot tip below)
• Thursday: Fettucine Alfredo, steamed broccoli, and lemon bruschetta
• Friday: Mozzarella-Stuffed Arancini (family favorite)
• Saturday: Corn, Spinach, & Pepper Pasta Salad (bonus naked toddler picture of The Boy Wonder included in that post)
• Sunday: Every Man for Himself

** Hot tip: When I make the cornbread batter on Tuesday, I will cook half of it in our tiny little black cast-iron skillet.  The other half of the batter will be stashed in the fridge to be cooked on Wednesday so that we will have fresh cornbread each night.  Alternatively, you could double the batter on the first night (if you need more than a half-batch) and then cook half of it each night in a regular-sized skillet.

A Sanity-Saving, Flexible Meal Plan

An over-scheduled calendar is not built in a day.  I mean, no one in their right mind would start with a peaceful blank slate and all at once add in a career, a couple children, some hobbies, a few labor-intensive long-term goals, a little volunteer work, and also think, "Oh, wouldn't it also be a lark to homeschool the kids as well?"

No.  This sort of madness happens slowly and insidiously, as one commitment at a time is added to the schedule, until you wake up one day and think, "Oh-my-everloving-goodness.  This is ridiculous, I can't keep this up anymore, and I'm about to lose my mind."

Last winter, I hit that wall.  In the midst of my busiest work season of the year, I was asked to do one more little tiny thing for an organization with which I volunteer, and the whole house of cards began to topple down around me.

I didn't even know how I got to that point.

Well, that's not entirely true.  I do know.  I got there by saying yes to a host of wonderful and fulfilling activities.  I got there by taking on a lot of very interesting work for people that I genuinely like.  I got there by loving life so much that I didn't want to miss a thing.  I got there by thinking I was Super Woman.  I got there by willfully choosing to forget that there is a limit to the number of different things one person can successfully juggle.

Admitting I couldn't do everything was painful, but it was also liberating.  By saying no to some things, and by pulling back my involvement in some other activities, I found that I could do a better job at the tasks that remained in my daily schedule.

At the same time, I began working on idiot-proofing the menial tasks in my day.  Time spent deciding what to wear, for instance, is mental energy that could be better spent identifying new rental properties.  Deciding each morning what errands need to be run that day is more wasted energy, and it takes me away from my desk when I could be making money.  Waiting until 5:00 in the afternoon to think about what to cook for dinner means my mental energy will be too depleted by the financial reports I just completed to think of doing anything more difficult than boiling some noodles and hoping for the best.  Decision fatigue is a thing, friends.

So I began paring down my closet even more than I already had, and I ended up with a handful of uniforms that mean I can get dressed in three minutes or less for any activity on my calendar.  I picked one day a week to get all my client errands done so that I wouldn't have to make multiple trips into town each week.  And I sat down to set up a flexible meal plan so that hearing someone ask "What's For Dinner?" would no longer send me into a panic.

First, I looked at our schedule to see which days of the week were mad rushes and which days were more conducive to recipes that required a little chopping and simmering, and I organized my ideas accordingly.  I'm not the sort of person that operates well with either rigid schedules or having to plan 30 days in advance, so I decided to create a loose framework by which to narrow down the options for each day.

The meal plan framework ended up looking like this:
Mondays - Mexican
Tuesdays - Rice bowls
Wednesdays - Emergency Night: Leftovers or Pizza
Thursdays - Pasta
Fridays - Soups or Uncategorizable Oddities
Saturdays - Vegetable Plates
Sundays - Every Man For Himself (because I only cook six nights a week)

Then I took my recipe binder and organized my recipes behind tabs labeled with the categories listed above.  For good measure (additional idiot-proofing), I used a binder that has clear pockets on the outside, and I created a title page that lists the four to six options under each category.  Having a handful of options for each category means we can go at least a month before repeating any of the recipes.

Wednesdays are booked to the gills, so I try to make sure there are leftovers of either Mondays or Tuesdays meals, but since things don't always go according to plan, we keep the idea of $5 take-out pizzas in our back pocket for emergencies.

Here is what our menu looked like last week:
Monday - Black Bean Chili
Tuesday - Cauliflower & Tofu Curry
Wednesday - chili or curry leftovers
Thursday - Spinach & Ricotta Manicotti
Friday - Frittata & Mediterranean Butter Bean Salad
Saturday - Braised Green Cabbage, Spicy Corn on the Cob, & leftover butter bean salad
Sunday - leftovers for some of us, popcorn for another, nachos for another

I resisted making a meal plan for years because I was put off by the whole idea.  Meal plans often seemed overly complicated or too restrictive, and the whole idea was just overwhelming to me.  The idea of using a theme-based framework works very well for the way I operate though (I need some choices, but for heaven's sake, not too many), and now it takes about 15 minutes to come up with a menu and a grocery list each week.  I'm currently toying with planning two weeks at a time so that I can further reduce the number of trips to the store each month, but the jury's still out on that idea.

About Last Month • August 2015

Today I'm linking up with Leigh Kramer to share what's been going on for the past month

Earlier this summer, The Musician and I began dating each other again.  Time had tripped us up, and our relationship had derailed a bit - as marriages do - so we started making more of an effort.  Effort seems like such a silly choice of words though, with its connotation of tedium.  Our dates have been too fun to use the word 'effort' to describe them, but you know what I mean, right?  Sometimes it just takes effort to not collapse on the sofa at the end of the day.

Those dates with my good-looking husband have been fabulous though, and I put a reminder in my monthly calendar to make absolutely sure that we didn't forget to do them more often.  Serendipitously, I was out at dinner with my girlfriends right around that same time, and enjoying a goofy, laughter-filled evening when one of my friends suggested we put it on our calendar to have dinner every month so that we don't forget to do it more often.  So we did it.  We decided then and there that the third Monday of every month was going to be Ladies Night.

Which got me to thinking, if my soul can derive such satisfaction from scheduling more date nights and monthly dinners with my girlfriends, what else can I do monthly that will bring more intentional fun into my life?

Intentional fun.  What a concept.

So I began a monthly list to Things I Should Remember to Do Because I Love to Do Them: date my husband, have dinner with my friends, plan monthly family dates, and schedule a self-care activity each month.

August was the first month that I added in the family dates and the self-care activity, and I have felt almost giddy in taking the time to plan and look forward to these things.  We took the kids tubing on the Chattahoochee River one Saturday, took them kayaking down another river in lieu of schoolwork one day, and reserved a site for an epic camping trip for next month.  For self-care, I finally - at super long last - scheduled an acupuncture session this month and bought a ticket to a yoga workshop at an Atlanta festival for next month.

Intentional fun, it turns out, is what was missing from my life.

The rest of the month has been filled with the hilarious beginnings of a new homeschooling year.  The Princess Hazelnut has begun taking trapeze lessons, the kids have started their classes at the homeschooling co-op, and we're all finding our groove with the schedule changes (and challenges) of a new school year.  The languid days of summer already seem like light years ago.

What I've Been Watching

Absolutely nothing.  I have been spending my evenings either writing or reading, and it has been very restorative.  I go in phases though, so if Netflix or Hulu ever posts last season's episodes of The Good Wife, I'm going to pop up a batch of popcorn, set down my books, and binge watch to my heart's content.

What I've Been Listening To

Jason Isbell released his new album, and streaming it on NPR's First Listen finally spurred me on to purchase his last album, Southeastern.  I swear he's the best songwriter around right now.

I've also just discovered Elizabeth Gilbert's Magic Lessons podcast, and I am devouring the episodes that have been recorded so far.  To call them inspiring is to put it in the mildest terms possible.

What I've Been Reading

I just finished Stephen King's 11/22/63 last night (very late last night), and my mind is officially blown.  I could hardly put it down over the past couple of days, and it might just go down as the best book I've read this year - all 880 pages of it.  I wish it had been twice as long.

Kale & White Bean Risotto

I love this recipe so much that I'm willing to overlook my embarrassment over this less-than-flattering photograph of the meal.   I would totally take another picture right now, in better light, and with a better camera than my iPhone, but both children greedily slurped up second helpings and scraped the pan clean before I could take a second shot.

It's that good.

I mean, it's so good that two young children fight over the last few bites even though there are copious amounts of kale involved.

More impressive than how delicious it is though, is how utterly easy it is.  Risotto is often shunned because of its fussy preparation with the constant stirring, the slow addition of liquid, and the stickiness that occurs when one of the steps goes ever-so-slightly wrong.

This recipe is like risotto for dummies.  There is no constant stirring, no slow addition of liquid - you quite literally dump everything in at once, plunk the lid down on the pot, and walk away.

It is a one-pot, sinfully-easy, extraordinarily-healthy, comfort-food meal, AND ITS DELICIOUS enough to satisfy both children and a meat-eating husband.  I'm telling you, it's magic.  Magic risotto.  Actually, it would be more magical if it were really extraordinarily healthy (I may have stretched the truth a little bit on that claim).  Arborio rice isn't exactly chock-full of nutrients, you know, but it isn't exactly bad for you either.  Let's call it reasonably healthy and just move on.

This is one of my emergency meals, thrown together when we don't get home until 6:00 or so, and I need to start dinner cooking right away, yet still be able to walk away to put away the groceries and change clothes and answer a few emails while it cooks.  It is especially wonderful on those evenings when we're all a little frazzled and need something creamy and soothing for dinner.

The kale and the white beans are tender, but not mushy, and the arborio rice manages to effortlessly melt into that creamy alchemy that happens when the starch disperses into the flavorful broth.  The seasoning is simple - just vegetable broth, sage, and a little salt and pepper.

Sometimes the most surprising results come from the marriage of the simplest ingredients.

*****

KALE AND CANNELLINI BEAN RISOTTO, serves 4 as a main dish

• 6 to 8 oz kale, stemmed and chopped
• 1 cup Arborio rice
• 3/4 tsp dried sage
• 4 cups vegetable broth
• 1/2 tsp salt
• 1/4 tsp black pepper
• 2 Tbs Earth Balance or butter
• 1 15-oz can cannellini beans (or Great Northern beans)

1. In a large pot of boiling water, cook the kale over high heat for 3 or 4 minutes, until bright green and wilted.  Drain, and press as much water as possible out of the cooked kale.
2. In that same pot (because there's no need to wash more dishes than absolutely necessary), combine the cooked & drained kale with the rice, sage, broth, and salt & pepper.  
3. Bring to a boil, then cover the pan, reduce heat to low, and cook for about 20 minutes.  The rice should be tender, but al dente, when done.  If more liquid is needed to get to al dente, add a tiny bit more water.
4. Stir the beans into the risotto, turn off the heat, and stir in the butter.  Taste and adjust for salt & pepper.  Serve hot.

Morning Pages

The Artist's Way has been on my bookshelf for the past twenty-something years, if my memory serves me correctly.  I do not recall exactly where I got it from originally.  Bookstore?  Mail-order book club?  Gift?  I dunno.  The early nineties were a long time ago, and the details are fuzzy.  I do distinctly remember that it was on the bookshelf next to my rickety sofa-on-wheels in that tiny studio apartment I lived in during my second year of college.  

And if it was on my shelf in that apartment, then that means I boxed it up and moved it into the next NINE places I lived over the years.  Clearly, it means a lot to me, that book.

Except that I never cracked the cover in all those years and all those moves.

I know.  If it weren't so absurd, it would be embarrassing.  

Over the past few years though, The Artist's Way kept coming up in conversation, on websites, and in social media posts.  Each time, I would have an aha moment, and would then immediately forget about it again.  Recently, as I sat at my desk one afternoon, filled with frustration over how blocked I felt creatively, I leaned back in my chair and glanced towards the bookshelf to the right of my desk, and there it was.  That book.  Just sitting there.  Waiting for me.

If you are unfamiliar with it, The Artist's Way is a bestselling 12-week program designed to break through your creative blocks and to help you find your voice - whether you are a writer, photographer, sculptor, painter, dancer, or whatever.  The two main, non-negotiatible activities at the center of the program are the daily morning pages and the weekly artist date.

The artist date is cool, and I have found inspiration from it, but the impact of the daily morning pages has blown my mind.  Morning pages are designed to be stream-of-consciousness writing, about literally anything that comes to mind, and are not meant to be re-read or shown to anyone else.  Not because they're top-secret or filled with your innermost thoughts, but because what you write in your morning pages is unimportant.

What I have found is that the morning pages acts as a brain dump, allowing me to empty my head of all the tedious and mundane thoughts that occupy entirely too much of my head space and which distract me from what really matters.  Every morning, I brush my teeth, drink my hot lemon water, pour a cup of coffee, and sit down at the kitchen table with my notebook.  I open to a blank page, click my pen, hold it over the page, and even though I cannot think of the first thing to write, the pen begins moving and I fill up three pages in a matter of minutes.  Every time.

Solutions to nagging, boring problems come to me during this time, revelations about emotional hang-ups come easily, and unimportant things over which I have been obsessing lessen in perceived importance once they're put down on paper.  Most surprising, though, is how the rest of the day flows so much more smoothly after I close the notebook, pour another cup of coffee, and get on with the rest of my day.  Without those tedious and mundane thoughts bouncing around in my head like a pinball (and driving me mad), I work more efficiently and find myself better able to avoid pointless distractions.  I focus more clearly on the important tasks in my day, I relax more fully in the evenings, and I sleep better at night.

Mind-blowing, I tell you.  It is as if my brain is being re-trained.  

Whether your goal is to become more creative or not, the value of morning pages cannot be overstated.  Journaling has been shown to have a positive impact on physical well-being, regular writing is known to have mental health benefits, and daily journaling can help you reach your goals.

A fancy hard-cover notebook is unnecessary.  You do not need a special pen.  Your grasp (or lack) of rudimentary spelling and fundamental grammar is utterly beside the point.  The idea is to pick a time each day, whether it is first thing in the morning, over lunch, or before bed, and just do it.  Open the notebook and pour the noise in your brain out onto the page.  Burn the pages after you're done if you would like.  The quality of the writing does not matter.  

Really.  The quality of the writing does not matter.  Just drain your brain.  And then move on.  You just might find, as I did, that you can control your thoughts.  You do not have to dwell on every little thought that pops into your head.  You do not have to obsess over those thoughts that don't deserve your time.  Write them down.  And then move on.

Write it down.  And move on.

Quick Lit • August 2015

From the moment I wake up in the morning, I find myself yearning for that luscious time at the end of the day, when the kids are in bed and The Musician is upstairs in his studio and the whole house is quiet. I wash my face, put on my eyeglasses, fluff up my giant throw pillow, and stretch out full-length on the sofa with a good book and a bowl of popcorn.

It's pure bliss, I tell you, and lately that coveted evening reading time has been filled with a spate of excellent books.  Books so good that I have had to talk myself into going out in the evenings for date nights and other events.

Today, I am linking up with Modern Mrs. Darcy to share short & casual snippet-like reviews of the books I have finished over the past month.

I put In the Unlikely Event on hold at the library the day it came out, and it was well worth the month or more wait.  It was wonderful (maybe even a little comforting and nostalgic) to read a Judy Blume book for the first time since adolescence.  This novel reads like a grown-up young adult novel, if that makes any sense.  It has the coming-of-age elements that defined some of her older, beloved books, but is more sweeping in scope.  The true story that it is based on is a fascinating one (of which I was completely unaware until I heard an interview with Blume on NPR earlier this summer).  There are a lot of themes in the book and a dizzying array of characters, but it all works very well.  I not only didn't want it to end, but I may have shed a tear or two on the final page when I had to leave the main narrator behind.

I might be the last person to read The Secret Keeper, and I feel like a dunce for not picking it up a few years sooner.  Don't be fooled by the romantic cover and the silly book jacket description.  This historical novel is so well done, with rich characters, a surprisingly fast pace, excellent sense of time and place, and twists you'll never see coming.  I was so enthralled by this book that I completely forgot about an art event I meant to attend.

Rules of Civility was a stunning debut novel.  Set in New York City in 1938, with a cast of unforgettable characters and a deliciously stylish tone, this book tells the story of one year in the life of an independent and ballsy young lady with a secretarial job and a room in a boardinghouse.  A chance encounter on New Year's Eve with a well-heeled, handsome man changes the trajectory of her life, and the details of the events of the next year make for a compelling and entertaining read.  Many reviewers mention the parallels to The Great Gatsby, and I do not discount that comparison, but I found this book to be much more enthralling.  

Lessons from Madame Chic is a light and quick read with a few useful little nuggets of advice on living a fuller, more sensual life.  It was only slightly interesting though, and is a bit repetitive, as if a few blog posts were expanded in order to have enough material to fill what was already a very short book.

Simultaneously heartbreaking and hopeful, Everything I Never Told You deftly handles teenage angst, housewife boredom, marital struggles, race issues, grief, and the decade of the 1970s.  The story is told with a light hand, the dialogue spare and subtle, the reader left to decide which, if any, of the characters to relate to.  

I would love to hear what books you guys have been reading lately.

The first day of (home)school

There are seasons in life when everything is challenging, seasons when it all flows smoothly and easily, and seasons when we are stuck in ruts.  Lately, it has seemed like a season of having the rug pulled out from under me and forging a new way of living.

The details of a few of these metaphoric rugs are either too boring or too personal to share in a public forum (or are still in flux - God help us all), but the latest rug-yanking incident was a doozy.  

The school year begins quite early in the South, and last week, on the day before our county's public school year began, I received notice that my children's beloved cottage homeschool academy was permanently shutting its doors.

There I was, blissfully going about my day, thinking that we had three weeks before the cottage school year began, and believing I had another easy year ahead of me in which lesson plans would be emailed, science experiments would be done in class, math lessons would be taught by an actual teacher (read: not me), and two days a week in which to focus on my work while the children were on campus.

A single expletive received by text from my girlfriend, also a parent at the cottage school, shattered that illusion and I sat at the breakfast table crying angry, frustrated tears while I read the email from the headmaster.  And then I felt all the feelings.  Was this a neon sign?  Should I rush down to the public school and enroll the children immediately?  Could I even pull that together in time for them to begin public school the very next day?  Could I prepare the kids for that kind of major life change with less than 24 hours notice?

The answer was no, of course. Anytime I find my hand being forced to make a major decision without enough time to think it through in true introverted/introspective fashion, I know the answer is to wait until an answer comes in its own time.  Big life decisions require time, preparation, prayer, research, and wise counsel (and occasionally a nervous breakdown, but that's for another post).  It is likely that The Boy Wonder and Princess Hazelnut will attend regular school at some point, and we discuss the possibility every Spring, but when that day comes, we intend to have plenty of time for the children to get used to the idea first.

So I did what I always do when confronted by something that rocks my well-ordered world: I had a panic attack.  Seriously.  I had trouble breathing, and thought I was going to pass out.

Then I called in my troops.  My BFF was already coming up with a list of alternatives for our children.  My husband talked me down from the ledge.  My mother prayed.  I made a cup of tea, put a little kava kava tincture under my tongue, and threw myself into my work, knowing the best course of action was to keep on keeping on until the initial panic passed.  I kept a notepad next to me, and jotted down ideas as the day went on.

By nightfall we had a brand new, less expensive, extraordinarily cool educational plan in place. 

This year will require some adjustments and some juggling, and a whole slew of new experiences for both the children and for myself.  It is exciting and scary and more than a little unsettling for the parent who likes to know what to expect each day, but if I've learned anything in this season of unsteady rugs being yanked out out from under my comfortable and predictable life, it's that our comfortable and predictable life wasn't serving us well and it was time for a new direction.  Complacency brings boredom and restlessness, not excellence and happiness.

The very next morning, in the middle of the work week, we declared a holiday in order to celebrate the first day of our family's school year.  The four of us slept late, went to Waffle House for breakfast (always an education in itself), and then gleefully kayaked six miles down the river, and it was glorious.  It was invigorating and unusual and outside of our normal routine.

It was perfect.

Here's to new beginnings, and a new way of approaching our foundational family priorities.

A God in Ruins

Mind-blowing books make my world go round.  They also bring my world to a screeching halt.  And they devastate me.

In a perfect work of literary fiction, the outside world is a source of confusion, and I look up (blinking blankly like an awakened mole in a children's movie) from the pages only to make sure my family is coping without me.  Don’t worry.  The kids are alright.  They are readers, too, and they understand.

These aren’t real problems, of course.  A Saturday will continue just fine without my attention.  The Musician will feed the children breakfast and will even bring me a refill on my coffee.  The children will tiptoe into the bedroom, sidle up next to me on the sofa, or peek outside to find me on the porch swing, and they will ask whether I need anything.  They will also ask if they can have ice cream, knowing I will say yes just to gain myself a little more reading time. They are smart little hooligans.

The true problem begins shortly after the book ends, though it isn’t when I shut the book and sit quietly for some time, closing my eyes to savor my last thoughts on the story, weeping (as happened yesterday) at the beauty and magnificence of the story-telling, or rushing to social media to see if my reading soulmate has put this book on her list yet.  Those are normal companion activities to my reading.

The issue is what to read next when all else (no matter how exquisite) will pale in comparison, when all other characters will appear vapid and one-dimensional (no matter how well-drawn), when all plots will seem contrived and trivial (no matter how well-crafted), when all dialogue will come across as stilted and uncomfortable (no matter how well-written).  

There are, I think, some works of fiction that just cannot be followed by another work of fiction.  A break will be necessary.  Nonfiction might be in order, or possibly one of the recent glorious YA novels (eleanor & park, I’m looking at you).  Maybe nothing short of a movie or a Netflix binge will provide the gap needed to let the next book shine on its own and to give a much-needed palate cleanser to an actual mind blown.

There have been a handful of books that I have read over the past two years that have left me reeling and unable to appreciate anything else for a time.  Life After Life. The Goldfinch. Fourth of July Creek.  The Enchanted. A God in Ruins.  

I will be thinking about A God in Ruins for a long, long time to come.  

Have you read any masterful novels recently?  I would love to hear what books have moved you.  And if you have not read one of the books mentioned above, I cannot recommend them highly enough. These are novels that have stayed (or will clearly stay) in the forefront of my mind for many months, and from which I hope to never recover.