At last, Pride and Prejudice

For all my big talk about books and love of literature, I've never read Pride and Prejudice! Never! Jane Eyre is my favorite of all time -- I think I've read it 3 times -- but never P&P.

So today I downloaded it to my Kindle. (Hooray for Amazon Classics costing $0.00!)

One reason I chose it is that I just read Anne Tyler's A Spool of Blue Thread, which I thought was a complete waste. Totally disappointing. So I wanted something "meaty." The other reason is that I also saw this book -- Longbourn, the "downstairs" account of the events in P&P -- and that intrigued me! But I won't allow myself to read it until I read the original.

I've had a fun year reading free e-books through my county library. Want the mini-reviews?

1. Time Traveler's Wife - loved it. I had tried to read it several years ago and couldn't get interested, but once I did, I didn't want it to end.
2. Scythe - YA dystopian fiction that Alex chose on a table at the bookstore. Was awesome.
3. Shadow of Lakecrest - chose it because it was on sale for .99, and really liked it. Think about it still.
4. Man Called Ove -- loved, obviously
5. The Heart Goes Last - weird Margaret Atwood. Too weird.
6. Good Harbour - awful, sappy, cheesy annoying "ladies who are friends at the beach" story
7. Hagseed - awesome Margaret Atwood, loved it (from the Hogarth Shakespeare re-imaginings)
8. Life Below Stairs - meh. non-fiction and dry
9. The Goldfinch - I think it's controversial! some people hate it! But i loved it a LOT. Deep and sad and intriguing
10. Code Name Verity - loved it. WWII fiction with female heroes, set it England/France? of course it was good!
11. The Secret History - since I liked The Goldfinch so much I thought surely another Donna Tartt would be good. It was a good story, but not as heart-rending as the other one, I thought. Still, the setting in New England was lovely and the characters... weird and interesting.
12. Station Eleven - kept hearing about it online. It was only OK, I thought. But nice how it had several plotlines that came together in the end. I love when books do that
13. Remarkable Creatures - as much as I adore Tracy Chevalier, I was not planning to like this one. The preview descriptions just did nothing for me. But then I loved it! Read it at the beach, which was perfect.
14. Room - excellent. Disturbing.
15. The Arsonist - meh. just something to tide me over. I think I read the whole thing in 5 hours on the way home from the beach
16. A Game of Thrones - as epic as its reputation on TV. loved it. can't decide, however, if I want to read the rest.
17. Chains - Alex read for school, and recommended. Excellent. 
18. Bridget Jones Mad About the Boy - so nostalgic to go back to Bridget Jonesey. Fun read.
19. High Mtns of Portugal - one of the weirdest stories I've ever read. There were 3 distinct sections, and they came together in the end, but they were all totally bizarre (and sometimes boring)
20. The Glass Castle - already reviewed. Excellent.
21. Wild - loved it
22. In the Unlikely Event - renewed my love of Judy Blume, and a fascinating (based on true) story
23. State of Wonder - only okay. I wanted it to be better. Total bummer of an anticlimactic ending
24. Spool of Blue Thread - disappointing and banal

Pride & Prejudice will be book #25 and might take me through Christmas. I'm pretty impressed with myself - it's the most I've read in a lonnnnng time.

Any recommendations for next year?

I might be going a little crazy

I find myself with nothing to do. We have projects in limbo because of yet another "re-configuring" of our work, this time led by a top exec in the company who... still hasn't hired us a Director of Marketing. Instead, she's decided to start making sweeping declarations herself. Such as, the product catalog we've produced every year for millions of years will no longer be produced. The Magazine-of-Much-Angst which we decided NOT to print any longer, 2 years ago, may now come back into print production. Slash! this brochure. Cut! that brochure. While we're at it, we're going to rework all 12 global websites in 12 languages and do that all by April 6, she declares. With a flick of our magic wands, apparently. 

Anyway, no one's assigning work right now as we await further instructions/clarifications, and the work we had been planning to do might not need to be done. Our Content Strategy could be out the window, despite all the work we've done to get it in place. Just because. Or so it seems.

It's super fun. Anyway, I've been online reading and reading to keep occupied, everything from "how much should I feed/bathe my cats?" to the usual reactions to mass shootings (how sad that we have "the usual" reactions). But at the moment it seems a lot of websites aren't loading. Such is the life of a desk jockey like myself. Sigh. Look busy.

At my lunch break I went to PetSmart again. ;) It's right across the street from my office, which is very handy, and they so kindly emailed me a $10-off coupon after taking my email address the first time we visited. It expired tomorrow, so I wanted to go spend it. Nothing exciting, just 2 more bags of dry food (one kitten and one adult), 6 little cans of wet food, and ... another set of kitty dishes. I couldn't resist, Shawn, I'm sorry. They are cute and now we can stop serving the wet food on my 2 random little pieces of yellow Fitz and Floyd china. HA! Everything matches. We are now pet owners from Pinterest.

I had to make the cats' feeding area cute because the current dilemma of the day is what to do about them while we're at Disney in 3 weeks, for 5 days. We're asking a neighbor if she wouldn't mind feeding them (and thus, be in our house and see the pet feeding area and it needing to be cute). We don't feel right about boarding them, this early into their having found a home. And gosh, I love those little critters -- the actual thought of being away for 5 days makes me sort-of want to ...stay home! Don't tell my mom! Not really, but... I'm crazy, right??

Leave the cats reluctantly to go play with a giant mouse. Heh. 

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In other news, we have a teenager in the house. He feels he is old enough to express his opinion to me now, which is a good thing in the long term but not so wonderful sometimes in the short term. I don't want to dwell on the specifics of just how he's judging me, but I'm trying to remind myself that he's growing his independence and learning to test his limits just as he should. He said it lovingly (I think?) and meant no disrespect, but it hurt a little. 

Oh, alright, I'll tell: it doesn't make sense without the context. He said he respects my parenting and all, but gets annoyed when I give in to his sister sometimes. It didn't really bug me so much immediately - I told him that there are days when I just don't have the energy to fight with her, and I choose my battles - but the more I think of it, the more it bugs me. Last night when Kate was giving me The Business but I was Sticking To My Guns, Alex then had the gall to stage-whisper "good job!" to me as she went on and I didn't. !!! The nerve. I mean, encouraging nerve, and of course he's probably right, but. 

But.

As for Kate, she learned that she can, indeed, boil water and egg noodles even though she's only 9, when meatloaf and mashed potatoes (nor any "non-dinner" thing like yogurt and sandwiches and cereal) are not to her liking.

So that's how the kids are. Otherwise great -- basketball and drama are in full swing, so Saturday mornings are shot for a while, but still, that can be great. I'm eager to Stay somewhat Present in all of the busy-ness and taxi-driving, and to enjoy This Time of Their/Our Lives, because I know, I KNOW that when it's all finished, it's finished and you can't ever get it back again. Some days it's a challenge. Especially the driving. But we keep on plugging, and juggling the drop offs and pickups as best we can, saying hello to each other, Shawn and me, when we remember to (sad sad sad) and just marching to the calendar. Every time a new Thing pops up needing to be done (a form, a donation, a volunteer opp), I either:

1. Remind myself that it's OK to say no sometimes, or

2. Immediately set a reminder for the Thing on my phone.