June Wrap Up

June was a crazy month. Most of the month was spent in a weird comfort reading/reading slump thing because of all that first trimester fun. You know what I mean, anxiety attacks, morning sickness, extreme fatigue. It's been a fun ride...
But as I'm nearing the second trimester and starting to feel better I'm getting back into good routines, and forming new ones in the new house, including having some scheduled reading time each day. Usually it's early morning after The Husband leaves for work and before The Toddler wakes up, afternoons during outside play time because I can sit in the lounger on the porch and read while The Toddler plays. and right before bed. I'm still reading pretty slowly but it's something.
I also made a crazy decision. I talked to my doctor about my anxiety. I've been down the road of uncontrolled anxiety and depression with a new baby and I don't want to go there again. On top of that, as my hormones and body get more and more out of whack, so does my anxiety. My intrusive thoughts are back with a vengeance and I can't deal with this on my own any more. However, the doctor I saw at my last appointment was one I've never met before and I feel like she kind of gave me the brush off. She wants me to talk to a social worker before we talk about medication and she promised to email the social worker, but we'll see if that actually happens. I know all to well that doctors say a lot of things they don't mean or intend to follow through on.

But back to the books! The last wrap up I posted was April so I'll cover May and June, try and set some new goals for going forward, and at the end I'll update on some fun stuff that might be coming up.

Books I Read in May

1. Midnight Riot by Ben Aaronovitch

2. Balanced and Barefoot by Angela J. Hanscom (Review coming soon!)

3. The Falconer by Elizabeth May (Review here)

4. 10 Things I Can See From Here by Carrie Mac (Review here)

5. The Shoemakers Wife by Adriana Trigiani 

6. Moon Over Soho by Ben Aaronovitch

Six books doesn't seem bad. But, exactly ZERO of those books counted for the RMSC. So as of May I was still at 10 out of 25. 

Books I Read in June

1. The Cat Who Played Brahms by Lillian Jackson Braun

2. The Cat Who Played Post Office by Lillian Jackson Braun

3. The Cat Who Knew Shakespeare by Lillian Jackson Braun

4. The Color of Water by James McBride

That's it. Just the four, And again zero of them counted for the RMSC. On the plus side I met my Goodreads goal for the year of 35 books and have officially upped it to 50.  

As for goals for July, I think 5 books is a good goal. Two RSMC books at a minimum. I think that's a do-able goal for the next month. I have six months left to meet my RMSC goal of 25 books, so I'm going to need to pick up the pace but I think it's still possible. I just need to get back to reading regularly.

What I'm Reading Right Now

Image from Goodreads

1. A Court of Wings and Ruin by Sarah J. Maas - I want to get into to this one so badly, but I'm just not feeling it right now. I went though this when I was pregnant with The Toddler too, this inability to read fantasy books. I'm going to keep trying with this one though because I really love Feyre and Rhysand.

2. Simplicity Parenting by Kim John Payne - I've been making an effort (once again) to simplify things in our home to A) help with my anxiety and B) make things easier to clean/maintain and C) make more time for family and less time for cleaning. I've done pretty well so far and this book was recommended on several minimalist and simple living blogs that I follow so I decided to give it a try. 

Image from Goodreads

3. Mistress of the Monarchy: The Life of Katherine Swynford, The Duchess of Lancaster by Alison Weir - I know I've written about how much I love Alison Weirs writing before. During this reading slump I had an urge to read some history so I turned to her. And (BONUS!) this one counts for the RMSC. Katherine Swynford was first the mistress and then the wife of John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster and her life, although we know little about her, was very interesting. She was the mother of the Tudor dynasty, she and John of Gaunt had several illegitimate children who were then legitimized by the Pope after their marriage, founding the Beaufort line, And Henry VII's mother was Margaret Beaufort! Of course Henry VII was born 100(ish) years after Katherine died but still, without her no Tudors. I could go on about family trees and the Wars of the Roses forever because I really love this stuff but I'll just say this; Read the books!

Upcoming (Maybe) Stuff

I've kind of taken a break from reading ARC's for the last couple of months but now I have a lot of really good books waiting for me on Netgalley and I'm going to try and get back too them. For one of those books I've been invited to participate in a Blog Tour, which I've obviously never done before. It would include a giveaway for my readers but I honestly don't know if I have enough readers to bother participating. So if you read my blog and want to enter a giveaway for a book let me know so I can let the publisher know I'd like to participate in the Blog Tour. 

Next, I got an email today that I'm being sent a box from a marketing company in California. It says it should be here by July 11th but I'm kind of nervous about this because I have no idea what it could be for, the email gives no details whatsoever. I'm assuming it's for the blog but I really don't know. So as soon as I get that I will be opening it and post on here about whats in it, regardless of what it is. Unless it something embarrassing like diarrhea medicine or underwear or something, in that case I'll spare you.  

Book shelf organization post! I unpacked all my books without taking pictures, however they are in no way organized yet, as my motivation to do anything but watch Gilmore Girls and eat watermelon has been nonexistent. So I'll be taking some pictures and doing some organizing in the next couple of weeks. 

Book Club for June! It was my pick for June and I think I picked a good one. I'll be writing the Book Club post in the next couple of days.  

Review: 10 Things I Can See From Here by Carrie Mac

Image from Goodreads

Think positive.
Don’t worry; be happy.
Keep calm and carry on.

Maeve has heard it all before. She’s been struggling with severe anxiety for a long time, and as much as she wishes it was something she could just talk herself out of, it’s not. She constantly imagines the worst, composes obituaries in her head, and is always ready for things to fall apart. To add to her troubles, her mom—the only one who really gets what Maeve goes through—is leaving for six months, so Maeve will be sent to live with her dad in Vancouver.

Vancouver brings a slew of new worries, but Maeve finds brief moments of calm (as well as even more worries) with Salix, a local girl who doesn’t seem to worry about anything. Between her dad’s wavering sobriety, her very pregnant stepmom insisting on a home birth, and her bumbling courtship with Salix, this summer brings more catastrophes than even Maeve could have foreseen. Will she be able to navigate through all the chaos to be there for the people she loves?

(Blurb from Goodreads)

Sometimes a book comes along exactly when you need it too, and I needed this book. Today my anxiety is through the roof because today I am pregnant and I know that it won't last. I honestly don't think it will last the weekend. And it's Mother's day weekend. I'm going to miscarry on Mother's day. How ironic. I've spent today trying to keep myself busy. I've tried to ignore the fact that I'm pregnant, I've tried to hold it all together and I just can't. I keep thinking about how after the age of thirty (and I'm thirty) the miscarriage rate goes up by 12%. How 1 in 4 pregnancies ends in miscarriage. How only 76% (I think) of miscarriage women go on to have healthy pregnancies. I'm sure I read that somewhere.
I keep thinking that it can happen to anyone, and every story and blog post I read today, trying desperately to find some hope, some kind of solace to ease my mind just for a little while, was written by a woman who'd had multiple miscarriages. Multiple. So many women, and so much loss, and why should I be exempt from that? If it can happen to them for no apparent reason, it can happen to me. I think I also read somewhere, after my first miscarriage, that only like 4 or 5% of women have multiple miscarriages, and today I think I read every single one of their blogs. The 4 or 5% thing can't be accurate. There's no way that every single woman who's had multiple miscarriages has a blog and/or visits the same forum. They can't. It's not possible. 

And that's anxiety. 

And it's portrayed perfectly in 10 Things I Can See From Here. Today I was not alone in my anxiety. Although Maeve and I were worrying over totally separate things, just to know that her brain worked like mine does, and no one understands that, that made me not alone today. 

The only complaint I'd have about this book is that I wanted more. More of the characters. I want to know more about Salix and if she got into Julliard, what her life was life growing up in a bus, I want to know what happens to Maeve and Salix when Maeve goes home with her mom, I want to know how Maeve's relationship with her mom changes when she comes home, I want to know more about Billy and his sobriety. Just more. 

I need like a whole series of these characters. 

5 out of 5 stars. Highly recommend.  Read it. 

Note: I received a free copy of this book through Blogging for Books, in exchange for an honest review. 

6 Podcasts I Love

I may have mentioned this before, but I LOVE podcasts! I listen to them while I clean, fold laundry, cook dinner, basically anytime I'd have music on, I've got a podcast playing. I have a few favorites, not all of them are bookish podcasts, but they have helped me with cleaning routines, decluttering my house, being more mindful, and simplifying my life so I have time to do the things I love.

Here they are, in no particular order!

Image from Aslobcomesclean.com

1. A Slob Comes Clean -  I started listening to this one a little over a year ago, when I was really trying to get my cleaning routine down. I didn't really know where to start, and being a homemaker does not come naturally to me. I had a hard time getting motivated to clean so I started listening to this podcast while I did my dishes, and I've learned so much! I highly recommend starting with episode #1, as she gives her own 'Slob Story' in the first few episodes. I still listen to this podcast on a regular basis and I love being able to go back and listen to episodes on certain subjects when I'm struggling with something. If you're naturally clean and organized this probably isn't the podcast for you, but it's been a great help to me!

Image from Rachelkable.com

2. The Mindful Kind - I stumbled across this podcast by accident one day while I was looking for something new to listen to while cleaning. I've been surprised at how much it has helped me to deal with my anxiety and keep mindfulness as a priority as I go through my day. The host, Rachel Kable, is Australian and I love listening to her talk. Her voice is soothing and just calms me down every time I turn it on. When I first found it I didn't think there was much to talk about with mindfulness, that it could be worth a weekly podcast, but it really is worth it. Mindfulness is something everyone can benefit from and I think everyone should check out this podcast.

Image from stitcher.com

3.  The Simple Show - This podcast covers variety of subjects, travel, books, decluttering, slow living. The host, Tsh, is awesome! She's traveled the world with her family and has made simple living and doing whats right for her family her top priority. She's got some amazing co-hosts, always has excellent guests, and I can always scroll through the episode list and find something that applies to my life and what I need on any given day. She even has an episode on Gilmore Girls!

Image from Modernmrsdarcy.com

4. What Should I Read Next - This is a the purely bookish podcast from the Modern Mrs. Darcy blog. Anne, the host and writer of Modern Mrs. Darcy, covers everything reading, from reviews and recommendations, to ways to track your reading (which is a newer episode, and one of my favorites because, in case you haven't noticed, I LOVE tracking my reading). I love the blog as a whole, because she covers life, not just books. The blog is about books, but she throws in recipes, or a make-up post every now and then. There's posts about moving, about personality types, organizing, and life goals. It is a blog about the life of a reader, the whole life, not just the book parts.

Image from Itunes 

5. Simple Life Together - The is another podcast about simplicity. It's a husband and wife who host it
and they are so much fun to listen too! They are so funny and just listening to their banter back and forth and their conversations makes me smile. They haven't posted new episodes in over a year but there is a lot of great inspiration and tips on simplifying in the 70 or so episodes that they do have.

Image from Literary Disco

6. Literary Disco -  This is like a podcast/bookclub. They are so funny and have great book selections. They don't post episodes very consistently, depending on the hosts work schedules and things there can be some big gaps, but there are over 100 episodes so there's plenty to catch up on. Plus, Rider Strong, Sean from
Boy Meets World, is one of the hosts so that's pretty awesome!

Those are my 6 favorite podcasts! I'm actually listening to The Simple Show while I type this and I've got an episode of The Mindful Kind to listen too while I clean up the playroom! I'm having a hard time with my anxiety today so listening to these is helping me find my calm as best I can. I'm always looking or new podcasts so if anyone out there has some suggestions let me know!

What I'm Reading Right Now

This week was not as great as last week, for reading. Well, for anything really. I've been having a really hard time with my anxiety this week and not done as much reading as I could have. It's so easy to get wrapped up in Youtube, or Pinterest, and not have to think, when I'm having anxiety problems. However, I have to admit, the anxiety is for a good reason.

Our house sold! Someone actually wants it! I was so shocked when we got the email that there was an offer. So now I get to have anxiety over all these inspections and paperwork and all the boring, stressful, crap that comes with selling a house and buying another one. Luckily we already knew what house we wanted to buy, we were just hoping it wouldn't sell before we could make an offer, and it didn't! We had our inspection of the new house on Wednesday and the buyers are having an inspection on our current house on Tuesday. The inspection on the new house went really well, we thought there may have been some electrical issues but it turned out to be nothing, so now I just have to stress about the inspection coming up on Tuesday and hope our buyers don't find something they don't like and decide to back out. In reality there's not much they could find but my anxiety likes to tell me the opposite.

As far as reading this week, I find myself, once again, in the middle of way too many books. Or rather, the beginning of way too many books. I seem to have started a new book every day this week and made zero progress with any of them. So next week is about finishing all these books I've started, and hopefully I'll have time for that with packing and things going on. One of the books that I did manage to finish counts for the RMSC which brings me up to 7 out of 25. The updated 'Whole Deal' post can be found here.

This week's finished books;

SPOILER ALERT! ONE OF THESE REVIEWS CONTAINS SPOILERS FOR A SERIES OF UNFORTUNATE EVENTS! IF YOU ARE READING AND/OR WATCHING IT ON NETFLIX AND DON'T WANT TO KNOW THE BAUDELAIRE PARENTS BIG SECRET THEN SKIP THE FAHRENHEIT 451 REVIEW! YOU'VE BEEN WARNED!

Image from E!Online

Image from Goodreads

Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury - This was the book club pick for March. I read it in 9th grade, but it was so long ago and I paid so little attention since it was an assigned book. that I remember almost nothing from the first time I read it. With everything going on in the world today, it was an unsettling read. However, I think that unsettling reads are the ones we need to read the most sometimes. I also saw where this book may have influenced a few other books that I've loved, and I never saw the connection before. The two that stand out the most are A Series of Unfortunate Events and The Uglies series by Scott Westerfeld.
A Series of Unfortunate Events had VFD (Volunteer Fire Department) and the schism between those who start the fires and those who put the fires out (Count Olaf starts fires and the Baudelaire parents put them out, until Olaf killed them anyway). In Fahrenheit 451, the firemen start fires, burning books and sometimes people, there is a bit of talk about whether it's true that firemen used to put out the fires instead of start them and my brain went straight to Count Olaf and VFD.  In the Uglies series, the main character is Talley, someone who, much like Guy Montag, buys into the popular beliefs in their respective worlds and comes to realize that there is a whole other world, a whole other truth, outside of everything they know and makes the choice to abandon everything in order to seek that truth.
Overall, I thought it was a very relevant book, I liked that it made me think about what I was doing, or not doing, and the consequences that inaction might have in the world. 3 out of 5 stars.

Image from Odyssey 

Image from Goodreads

Bury the Hatchet by Catherine Gayle - I really liked this book! Hunter is by far my favorite book boyfriend this year, so far. It was well written, and well edited (which can be a problem with romance), and the characters were great. I loved the dynamic between Tallie and her mother and Lance, it was the perfect source of tension and I ended up really liking Tallie. I thought at first that she'd be boring but she had some sass in her and she was a great match for Hunter. I just downloaded another book by this author, from a different series, but still a hockey romance. The hockey aspect was the part that surprised me the most. I don't watch hockey even though it's easily the most popular pro sport where I live. I'm a football girl. I've got Packers jerseys. and hats, and PJ pants, and pillow cases, and a whole Pinterest board dedicated to Clay Matthews. But the hockey aspect of this book didn't bother me. I thought that it would really take away from the story for me, since I don't know much about hockey but it really didn't. It was so character driven that the sport that, essentially, brought Tallie and Hunter together wasn't a big factor. 4 out of 5 stars.

Books I'm currently reading;

Deadhouse Gates by Steven Erikson - Yes, still.

Outlander by Diana Gabaldon - Because reading one huge book at a time isn't enough.

A Court of Mist and Fury by Sarah J. Maas - Because the third book is coming out in May and I preordered it so I want to be ready to dig in when it gets delivered. I loved the first one and read it in less than two days.

The Wall of Winnipeg and Me by Mariana Zapata - Football romance because there's nothing football related until the draft at the end of April and I miss football.

Last Play by Taylor Hart - See description above.

Naughty Professor by S.J. Bishop & Jeni Brown - This is an ARC from one of my favorite romance authors. I've done ARC's for her before and they've always been good. This one is a little different. It was co-written with another author and it's not a sports romance, which is usually what she writes. However, I will say that I was totally hooked after the first chapter so I'm thinking it's going to be just as amazing as her other books.

What's up next;
There is a book club meeting on the 28th so, whatever the book club pick is
Throne of Glass
American Street
The Perfect Girl
The Storied Life of A.J. Fikry

Upcoming on the blog;
Reading Habits Post #2; Coffee Shops! Because I love to read in coffee shops. I guess I'm basic like that.
Books I Want to Reread, because if it's good once is never enough.
Book club pick for April! This is C's month to pick, post should be up middle of next week!

Last thing; this is Clay Matthews, who I mentioned in the Bury the Hatchet review. Just in case you need some eye candy today.

Image from Packers.com

General Update on Everything

So, yesterday...

Now that I'm on the other side of that I realize that it was probably the longest anxiety attack I've had in a year. I was either crying or on the verge of crying from when I woke up at 6:30 am to when I went to bed at 10 pm. So today is a recovery day, and tomorrow probably will be too. Sundays are a family day so that counts too, I think. So far today I've drank three cups of coffee, ate a good lunch with my sweet little girl, started watching Gilmore Girls for the first time ever, snuggled on the couch and watched The Tigger Movie (yes, again), and pretty much ignored most social media. Tomorrow we are going to look at a few houses, clean up the house a bit since I'm not doing much today, did nothing yesterday, and we have a another showing on Monday. So, I'm okay. I'm taking care of myself, I'm relaxing, and I'm okay.

As far as the RMSC goes...

I'm in the middle of three books. I've not made much progress in the last couple of days due to general stress and busy-ness but I'm still going, and I'm still totally in line to meet all my goals for the year. Hopefully this weekend I can make some real progress. I'm sure there will be lots of coffee/tea, snuggling, and quiet time this weekend so I should be in good shape at the end of the week. The three books I'm reading are the same books I was reading last week so I'm not going to type out another what I'm reading post about them, but if every goes well I'll have new books to post about next week.

I hope, that if anyone ever reads this, or my post from yesterday, that you don't have to go through anxiety like that, but if you do, when you come out on the other side of it love yourself. Let yourself heal, allow the messy parts of you have their moment, and when that moment is over remember that you are stronger because of it. Be kind to yourself and know that those messy moments will pass and they don't have to define you.