gone but not forgotten

beverly cleary died today, and this death hit me harder than any of the celebrities that died this year, or maybe ever. she was such a huge part of my childhood and the adult that i grew into and the one that i aspire to be. 

i don't remember a time that i didn't love books. my mom is a reader, and we were raised on them. there are many books that stand out to me when i think of my early childhood - from picture books that every child in the school was obsessed with to obscure titles in our little bookshelf in jeddah that we'd read every summer without fail. but the first author i loved, that was beverly cleary. for years, any book that i read for pleasure was one of hers. we had used copies with yellowed pages and covers so precariously attached you were almost afraid to touch them. i got copies, shiny and new, for birthdays and major holidays. i distinctly remember opening up a present that included ramona and her mother, ramona and her father, ribsy, and socks. muggie maggie is the first book that i remember choosing for myself in a bookstore. i can't listen to the national anthem without thinking of ramona. and it should come as no surprise that when, a couple of years ago, i started reading chapter books to my kids, her books were ones of the first that i turned to. and seeing my kids fall in love with ralph s mouse, henry and ribsy, socks, beezus and ramona, ellen and otis, mitch and amy, and emily with her runaway imagination was like falling in love with them all over again. she might have been my most read author in 2020. and while it was special to read to my kids from the same copies that i had first been introduced to these characters with, i also loved all of the reprints we got from the library with interviews with the author at the back. 

beverly cleary books were the ones that made me a reader. i'm so grateful for her and them and the fact that i can share them with my own children, and that they're still as enjoyable to read in my 30s as they were back in 3rd grade. (which also happened to be the first year i had already read the book we read in class. my teacher had told me he liked henry more than ramona and i thought he was crazy, but reading them again last year and seeing how much my son loved henry definitely endeared him to me.) 

*I'll See You Again - Westlife

 as part of my writing every day, i think i'm going to try and blog again. at least semi-regularly. it's weird that so many years of my life went by without a written documentation. most of my life i either journalled, blogged, or both, but the past few years have been nothing. and yes, the brain fog from having 3 kids in 5ish years along with everything else that had been going on is nothing to sneeze at, but still.

i'd be lying, though, if i said i was writing this right now for any reason besides the fact that my phone is being screwy and my kindle app won't work and so i can't read. i feel like kicking myself for not reading earlier when i had the chance instead of scrolling facebook. yes, the book i'm reading is a reread from earlier this year, but i listened to the audiobook then and i wanted to read it read it, and now i can't and i'm annoyed. (side note: the audiobook of oona out of order is fantastic. the narrator was excellent. she's definitely one of my top audiobook narrators and that was the first book i heard from her.)

while i'm trying to focus my writing energy on novels (although the one i've first drafted is a beast i'm not sure i really want to tackle right now), i did decide that i would try some flash fiction/short short fiction competitions just to get some more rejections under my belt. i have this block when it comes to poetry or prose poetry and i'm honestly just avoiding it altogether right now.  

this is choppy and disjointed and i just want to go to bed to read but my book isn't working and people keep talking to me. so it is what it is. 

they invent her a new world with oil skies and aquarelle rivers

is it weird that i get the blogging itch bad enough to scratch at one year intervals? maybe. it would be better if i planned a yearly post instead. anyway, things look different around here. i feel like a stranger in some place that i was once a regular. 

which fits my current mood. 

i'm reading the midnight library and i was struck pretty early in the book with the realization that nora's depression feels so familiar but so distant. i'm reading the words and i keep thinking "i was there, i was right there. and i'm not there anymore. and i don't really know when that happened?" i was sitting in that room, not in her chair maybe but it was in the same room, and i know it so intimately that part of me hadn't even realized i had left the room. but i did.

i started this blog over a decade ago - eventually i will need to sift through these posts because i know there are many that should be taken down - and some days i can barely remember the girl i was then, the anxiety and depression, the pressures and expectations that weighed so heavily on me. there was light, too, and friends and laughter. but always with the knowledge that i was three steps away from too late. that girl is still inside me somewhere, and on nights like tonight i'm kind of happy that this roadmap exists to lead me back to her. just in case i ever need/want it. 

this book is making me feel things. this year is making me feel things. and nostalgia will always be the place i feel most at home. but there are times, a surprisingly lot of them recently, when i feel like i could get pretty comfortable in the here and now. 

after i had my second son, i had bad post partum anxiety and depression. i had gotten a glimpse of it with my first, but that second kid... ouch. after weeks of thinking about it and talking it through with people (some of which were the wrong people, and even though i know they didn't do anything maliciously, i don't think i can ever truly forgive them), i remember sobbing on my bedroom floor after coming to the realization that i was the worst thing that could have happened to my children. i begged my husband to take the kids and leave. to move to the other side of the world and raise the kids alone, or with his parents. i'd go to library story time with friends and mommy and me classes and playdates and then come home and just cry and cry and cry. and yell. so much yelling. and stare blankly at the wall as my kids cried or watched tv or destroyed the house. and i'd go to bed drowning in guilt. and in the midst of all of that, i stopped writing. 

i didn't notice it at first, because i have had my share of writing dry spells. but one day it hit me that it had been well over a year since i had written a single word that wasn't messages on my birth board and social media posts. and this was a different kind of not writing. this was not that i wasn't putting the words down, it was that the words didn't exist at all. november 2019 i decided to try nanowrimo again. i had written like a thousand words in 2017 and didn't even bother trying in 2018, but in 2019 i decided to try. and that first day of writing was like filling my lungs with air when i hadn't even realized i had been holding my breath. i remember telling friends (because along with an awesome kid and a decidedly not awesome time, i came out of that pregnancy with amazing friends and the best support group) that it felt like i had found myself again. i hadn't realized how lost i had been, but putting words to paper (or screen), no matter how bad they were, was like coming home.  

the midnight library goes beyond sylvia plath's fig tree that has haunted me for most of my life. you can look at your book of regrets and then choose a different life and live it and if you don't like it, you can come back to the library and choose something else. i'm the person whose anxiety spikes every time my kids watch the lion king and mufasa says "you are more than what you have become." (and they watch this movie a lot.) the idea of trying on different decisions is definitely my cup of tea. 

and yet, i also feel like i have reached the point where i've got my foundation down. after extensive talks with friends and countless hours of my typical introspection, i have come to the conclusion that entering your 30s is the best thing that could happen to a person. your 30s are where you find your why, your how, your no. you learn your who and figure out where to distribute your fucks. that's not to say anything gets less confusing or easier or anything, but, well, maybe it does. maybe you just get better at being confused. there's altogether too much pressure put on your 20s. 

but back to my point. 

a recurring thought in the book (so far) is that the only way to learn is to live. hardly groundbreaking, but still. the only way to learn is to live. 

maybe there's no real midnight library, but the girl that started this blog feels like she belongs in a different book than the one writing this post today. maybe there are lots of books within me, that start and end with my decisions. sometimes i go back and have to relearn a lesson again and again before it sticks, changing small things before i can really understand what i'm meant to. how many books within me have the same title, the same plot, but a cast that's just that side of different? 

i feel like i've learned enough to know that the versions of myself that feel the most comfortable are the ones where words are prioritized. my goal this year was to focus on writing. and i have written/worked on my writing every single day since january 2nd. for the first time in years and years, i wrote a novel. from start to finish. i didn't give up halfway through because november was done or my idea fizzled out. i wrote almost 100k words, and most of them are crap, but i know what needs to be fixed. even if i might not always know how to fix it. i've read 41 books so far this year. and yes, a lot of them are trash, but you know what? i like trash. i like silly romances and dramatic teenagers and hidden worlds. and with every word i read and write, i feel like i'm finding more of myself. i'm piecing myself back together like a puzzle. and maybe by the end of it i'll find myself in the book that i want to stay in, and the midnight library may lose, if not its appeal, at least my desperation coloring that appeal. (no, i never did learn not to mix metaphors.) 

and maybe that's why i keep coming back to this blog every time i know i'm done blogging. maybe i need some way to catalog these books, so that when i find myself in the right one, i don't forget every book that was written to get me there.

*Far, Far - Yael Naim

so um. wow. two years. it almost makes me think that there's no point coming back here.

almost.

surprisingly i do have thoughts to write, but hopefully i'll be back (before another two years passes) to write them. right now i have some news to record. very, very, very late.

i'm having a baby! well, had. i had a baby. almost a year ago. and despite it being so long past the event, it should be recorded here along with his brothers' announcements. i've meant to write this update, and then just kept not. writing. it. but here i am. better late than never.

let's rewind things a bit. all the way back to last april. i was due april eleventh, and i watched my due date approach with no sign of the baby coming. i wasn't too worried. his brother had been a couple of days late. there was also some confusion in the very beginning of my pregnancy. in the ultrasound my doctor took in the office, the baby was measuring a week smaller than he technically should have been based on lmp. i got the positive late so we figured that i had just ovulated late and lmp was wrong. but then on a better machine baby matched lmp age exactly. so they kept the lmp age, but at the back of my mind i kept wondering if they were wrong.

anyway. i was late, and we set up the induction date. i had done this with my second and never reached the induction, so i assumed the same would happen. it didn't. and the day before my induction i was freaking. out. i called my doctors obsessively until i reached the one that did the early measurement and she was like, dude chill. so i tried to.

the next morning i went to the hospital around 7 and got checked in and set up. as we finished the registration questions we laughed about how i had already had my second at that point. my doctor came and gave me a little pep talk, told me that unless completely medically necessary they were not going to give me a c section if they induced me and it took too long (a main fear of mine), and explained how they were the least interfering of all the obs in the area. so i got comfortable and they started the induction.

this was a year ago, so some of the details are kind of fuzzy. at some point, my doctor came in and broke my waters and oh. my. god. that was not fun. she did say that i have strongest thighs of anyone she's seen, so take that everyone in my family who thinks i'm weak. that got things moving a bit faster. when my contractions started to get uncomfortable (uncomfortable but not super painful yet) i got an epidural. and waiting as long as possible (like my first) or skipping it completely (like my second) just seemed like unnecessarily painful decisions looking back. i've always felt lowkey bad about yelling at the anesthesiologist who did my epidural with yazeed. apparently they all talk, she checked who did my epidural that time, said that she had never said anything about it to me and didn't mark my file which apparently they do if you're extra awful to warn their friends? anyway, she said to let it go.

more time passed. the nurse checked me, said i was at i think a 6? it was at a point that they still weren't worried i'd be having the baby anytime soon. they gave me a peanut thing to hold between my knees to help things along. i forgot what it was called. my family had gone to lunch and called for an update before they headed back. i told them not to come yet as it would still be a few hours. of course, they never listen to things like that and came back anyway. shortly before they got back, my doctor came to check on me before she went to her other patient who was getting really close and was probably going to be pushing soon. she just gave me her whole "you're doing great, everything is working, no c section for you. the only thing that will change is the doctor that delivers you because my shift ends this evening" spiel and then she checks my cervix and says, "oh, shit."

which is exactly what you want your doctor to say when she has two fingers inside of you checking your body and baby as you're in the middle of labor, let me tell you.

i panic for three seconds before she says, "no no wait. never mind." apparently the baby had his arm up and his elbow was on top of his head (at his head?) and if it didn't move i wouldn't be allowed to push and i'd have to have a csection right after she assured me i definitely wouldn't at this point. but she poked it and he pulled it back down to where it was supposed to be. "oh," she added, "you're also about to have this baby right now." i called my family to let them know, but they were already walking back to my room. they hung out in the waiting room as i pushed out the baby, literally two pushes in one contraction and he was out at 2:37 pm. He weighed 7 lbs 14 oz, which made him the biggest of my babies, but then went on to be the smallest infant. he was so small for so long.

my oldest went through most of my pregnancy wanting to name him lizard 7azooka alazzaz. which... didn't happen. but he got over it.

and now here we are. nearly eleven months later. crazy. 

after an entire year (gasp!) of no posts, i'm back with another birth story. if you don't like birth stories (with all the gross details), then be warned.

March 11, 2017

I was a day past my due date, and at 11 PM, I started having regular contractions. Well, what I thought were probably contractions. They weren't hugely painful or anything, but painful enough that I thought "This could be it. I could be going into labor.  If I am then I'll probably have my baby tomorrow morning. On my son's second birthday." I kept an eye on the contractions all night, and they stayed consistently 5-7 minutes apart, but were not consistently a minute in length.

March 12, 2017

I was two days past my due date. In the morning, I had some bloody show and thought, "Well, crap." So I called my doctor and she told me that if I was in labor, I was likely not close enough to warrant coming in since I was only a half cm dilated at my last appointment. But things were moving! She told me to call her when the contractions lasted for a minute each.

So I went along with my day. I had made Grover and Big Bird cupcakes for Cricket's birthday. We were going over to my parents' house where my dad was making a turkey dinner. (More because he had been out of the country for a while and came back to find he still had a turkey in his freezer that needed to be eaten than because it was Cricket's birthday.) We loaded the toddler and the cupcakes into the car, started driving, and I almost fainted. I couldn't breathe, my vision started going black, I was dizzy and nauseous and ready to jump out of the car. Or, open the door and topple out into the road just so I could be out of it. I felt like I was suffocating. So we went to the hospital instead.

All of my vitals were normal, I was only 1 cm dilated, and my cervix was still really high. So they gave me some graham crackers and some apple juice, had me wait around in a bed for a while to make sure I was really okay, and then sent me on my way. Halfway to my parents house, I couldn't breathe, my vision started going black, etc etc. Not wanting to go to the hospital again, though, I just fought it until we got to my parents' house (with a very concerned husband and freaked out toddler). I started to feel better at my parents'. We ate turkey. We ate cupcakes. We sang happy birthday. I only felt a few contractions during the whole visit and thought, "Huh. Guess it was a false alarm." My mom offered to spend the night at our house so she could stay with Cricket if I needed to get to the hospital, but I didn't think it was necessary. We made plans for her to stop by at 730 the next morning after dropping my brothers off at school.

That night, though, the contractions came back. Getting stronger. Getting longer. Getting closer together.  I didn't want to wake up my husband when he had work the next morning or have my mom drive all the way over in the middle of the night for another false alarm, so I just kept an eye on them.

March 13, 2017

I sat on my bed, the bathroom light slicing through the darkness of my room, rocking through contractions, timing them on my phone, wondering if I should bother people yet or not. I was always told that you should head to the hospital when you had to stop to breathe through the contractions. By the time that happened, they were just under three minutes apart.

I called my mom, who immediately headed over to my house. I called my doctor, who said, "I've been waiting all day for you to call. I told you to come in when they were a minute long (which had happened hours and hours before). Get to the hospital. I'll meet you there." I packed my hospital bag and got dressed. By this point, things were starting to get painful, and I was thinking longingly of the epidural waiting for me at the hospital. I kept calling my mom to see where she was. I went down to wait in the car. Eventually, my mom said she was five minutes away and to just go. I had a panic attack thinking of leaving Cricket in the house alone, for even a minute, but it was getting really uncomfortable waiting in the car, and I really wanted those drugs. My mom pulled into our neighborhood as we pulled out of it.

We get to the hospital, and I tell my husband to drop me off at the door to the ER and go park. I tell the guy at the reception desk that I was having a baby, and he said, "Like, right now?!" I said, "haha no, can you imagine? I think I'm probably at a 5." So he tells me to wait and he'll have someone bring a wheelchair to take me up since I was clearly feeling the regular contractions.

I get up to my room, and they hook me up to the monitors at 3:58 AM and start asking me all the registration questions. The first thing I said was, "I'd like an epidural." So while one nurse asked me questions, another checked me and said, "Um... we'll try to get you one." I asked how far along I was, but she wouldn't tell me. All she would say was, "You've progressed from the morning." That's when I started to get nervous. She went to try and get the anesthesiologist and I asked another nurse, Karen, how far along I was. She checked me, gave me a little look that let me know I was screwed, and told me I was at 9. Maybe a little past.

That's when the panic hit. "I can't be at 9. I wanted drugs. I need drugs. I can't have a baby without drugs," I told her frantically. She assured me that they'd try their best to get me an epidural. My OB still hadn't made it to the hospital. Karen kept telling me about the on call doctor, but I didn't realize why until after the fact. I talked with Karen about my stupidity about wanting to wait to come in at 7 so I wouldn't wake anyone up. She told me that with her fourth baby, she did the same thing, and then got stuck in rush hour on the way to the hospital and had her baby at the side of the road.

My doctor still wasn't there. The epidural still wasn't there. And suddenly, it was time to push.

Just as I started pushing, my doctor raced into the room. She didn't even have time to get her scrubs on. As I screamed at her that I wanted drugs, she told me that she told me to come in earlier. I remember screaming "I can't do this. I can't do this. I can't do this." I remember my doctor saying I didn't have much of a choice. I remember my water bursting, and my doctor telling me to try and stay still because she had her normal shoes on and didn't want them to get splashed. I remember Karen being endlessly encouraging. I remember snapping at my doctor and yelling at her, and her saying, "Why are you nice to the nurses but mean to me?" (I realize that she sort of sounds like a bitch, but she's really not. And I love her. And it's kind of our thing.) I remember screaming, "I WANT DRUGSSSS!"

At 4:29 AM, screaming louder than I thought I ever would in a public place, I delivered a healthy baby boy. The first words out of the doctor's mouth were, "Look at that noggin!" He was 7 lbs 4 oz and 21 inches. I felt every stitch as my doctor stitched me up, and resentfully told her afterwards, to which she replied with exasperation, "You should have said something! That is a pain you didn't have to feel." I remember feeling spent and proud and incredulous.

The nurses at the hospital (Karen for labor, Jessica in the maternity ward) were amazing. Just like my last delivery. My mom stayed with me in the hospital while my husband went home with Cricket. Cricket came to see his brother that day, and it was the most heartwarming moment of my life. Ducky (baby number 2) wanted to nurse all. freaking. night. But I was used to not sleeping from Cricket, and had actually gotten to nap during the day, and was still feeling a little euphoric. I remember Jessica saying, "I can't believe you can still smile at the nurses after not sleeping all night." And all I could think was, "Oh my God. I did it."

February 25, 2018

In a little over two weeks, Ducky will turn one year old. This year has absolutely flown by. He has such a big personality, adores his brother more than anyone else, and lets you know exactly what he wants. He's sweet and funny and eager to copy his brother. The year has had its ups and downs, but he is such a blessing, and we couldn't be happier that he joined our family.

And was not born in the car.  

laugh about it, shout about it

as the world turns into a crunchy-leaves-pumpkin-everything-sweaters-and-scarves-oh-look-a-skeleton whirlwind, i can't help but feel the tingling excitement of fall arriving myself. and while i love a pumpkin bagel as much as the next person and wait all year for hoodie weather to hit, i have to say that the thing i'm most excited for is that little voice in the back of my head, the itch in my fingers, that tells me that it is time to write.

i have been exhausted lately. like falling asleep at eight kind of tired. a toddler and a pregnancy will do that to you. but more than once in the past few days i have been overcome by the urge to write. the spark of something right on the very edge of my mind, that will only come into focus if i put fingers to keyboard. unfortunately, i haven't actually done much writing. you know, because of that whole exhausted-toddler-pregnancy thing i was just talking about plus about a million and three other things going on in my life right now that can all be thrown into the "oh my god why is this so stressful?" drawer. but fall means november. and november means nanowrimo. and nanowrimo means the one month a year that i allow myself to put my writing first. to ignore everything else that needs to be done and churn out a couple of thousand words a day. and i. am. ready.

i have my story premise, a sort of almost plot, a nearly complete main character and the urge to write. the urge is strong. the words are there. the inspiration is waiting. i just need the time. i can't wait. i'm even looking forward to the annoying dry spells when my story suddenly seems like the worst thing to ever hit a word processor and i'm cursing my brain for ever thinking it was worth my time and energy and i am trying to learn magic to pull words out of a hat because i certainly can't find anymore inside of me. that's how desperate i am to start writing again.

in other news, this pregnancy is almost half finished and i have honestly forgotten that i was pregnant for a good chunk of it. like, one day a few weeks ago, i was in the middle of a few really stressful things when one thing led to another and i thought "oh crap, what if i'm pregnant? i can't be pregnant right now! how will i tell my husband?! there's too much going on!" i was in the bathroom getting ready to pee on a stick when i remembered that, oh yeah, i am pregnant. i already knew that. duh.

surprisingly, all of this stuff has not been as bad on my schoolwork as i would have thought it would be. i mean, yes, okay, i didn't get anywhere near the amount of stuff done in september that i had planned to (really, nowhere close to my optimistically stupid summer me wanted), but i still feel like i have a pretty concrete idea of where i'm going. no wandering alone, lost in the woods of academia feeling for me. i may not be as passionate about this new topic as i was about previous ones, but i have to say, this feeling of knowing what i have to do and where i have to go next is actually pretty good.

the weather is cooling down. i may actually be able to finish this stupid degree which i honestly wasn't sure about last year. i have started to feel baby kicks and turns... i may be sleep deprived and stressed and stretched way too thin, but it is october. and i have the urge to write. and i think things are starting to look up again.

*Mrs. Robinson - Simon and Garfunkel

hey look! a new post!

while you take a minute to pick your jaw up off the floor and dust off your memories about who i am and why you liked to listen to me ramble (through your eyeballs...), let me catch you up on what i've been doing since the last time i checked in here.

[one] i am still dragging my feet on this whole phd thing. (surprise surprise.) but i changed my topic for, hopefully, the last time, and as long as i can manage to carve out some me time to work on this, i should actually be able to finish this stupid thing. fingers crossed.

[two] i am pregnant again! yup, in a few months cricket will have a brand new sibling, ducky. we still don't know the sex. we still can't settle on any girl names. i have complete confidence that cricket will be an amazing older brother.

[three] i tried this recipe for pumpkin banana bread and i was so excited for it and it was such a disappointment. like, i don't think i've been that disappointed in food in such a long time.

[four] i actually did manage to finish that poetry chapbook a couple months back (all the surprise from before with none of the sarcasm) and submitted it to a couple of contests. (that's a lie. i submitted it to one contest. my dream poetry publishing place, which i will likely not win, but i didn't want to risk any slight change chance i had by simultaneous submissions and by some miracle getting picked up by somewhere that is not my dream. so.) when i lose this one contest then there are a few edits i want to make to the collection before sending it out to other places (which are already carefully chosen). if (read:when) i don't get it in anywhere from the list then i have a mass list compiled of places that i should just start sending it to to cover all my bases.

[five] the past few months have been straight out of a sitcom/movie where the main theme is "what ELSE could go wrong?" the answer: everything. i have so much stress overwhelming me these days that i don't even know what to do with myself. except to keep moving. i must keep moving, or else i will be buried.

so i'm sitting at mason, just like the good old days that never freaking ended and turned into the good lord what am i still doing here days, and i was meaning to write this fabulous amazing blog post (because i should be reading a technical article but my brain has given up on life), and just as i started the floor i'm on got SO. LOUD. like, i'm not sure what happened, but i would really like these dudes to shut up. they are disturbing my peace. and my day was super long (and included being drenched in the rain walking around DC for over an hour) so the steam that i had coming into this thing has completely fizzled. so instead of a fabulous amazing post, this pathetic catch up post will have to suffice.

but i have mason days where i need to work, so i think i may be hanging around here a bit more than i have been. gotta say, i've missed it. i always do. 

you know what i really want to do? i want to take some time, a year at least, and just really focus on my writing. writing has always been what i want to do with my life, and i feel like i owe it to it and myself to actually try it for real. i want to get a babysitter for a few hours a day and force myself to write and edit and just do this thing already. i want to turn writing into a career. 

and i know that there are so many authors that balance their writing with their day job, but i find it really hard when i don't have a real "day job." all of my roles overlap too much. my day has no real structure. i do the whole stay at home mom thing with the keeping a kid alive and doing cleaning and laundry and stuff (which, if i'm being honest, is the bane of my existence. the domestic chores, not the kid. the kid is the light of my life.) and throughout my day i throw in all of my TAing stuff (answering emails, grading papers, having appointments, etc), and - while admittedly less than i should be - do my dissertation research stuff, and do everything everything that goes hand in hand with being a professional people pleaser. 

part of me has always sort of wanted to be one of those people that moves to saudi arabia for one reason or another and then complains about there being nothing to do and feeling trapped in the house. i always secretly harbored the thought that, if i was stuck at home all day, i would get so much writing done. i convinced myself that that was exactly what i needed. 

in reality, though, that's not what i need at all. i am the queen of doing nothing all day. stick me in a house with internet and i will waste my life on tumblr and netflix. take away the internet and i'll lose myself in books. i'll stare at a wall. i'll eat my weight in junk food. what i won't do, though, is what i "should" be doing. 

what i really need is structure. 

i have actually added a little bit of structure to my day, and it's amazing. after breakfast every morning, i let the rabbit out to play with the baby and i wash dishes slash clean the kitchen. it's small, and to a normal person laughable, but i haven't had a mountain of dirty dishes in the sink in a while, and it feels great. so what i think i need to do is start structuring in writing. i'll structure in TAing and studenting and people pleasing. i will no longer have loose, flowy, do whatever days, because obviously i am not responsible enough for that.

now it's time for me to take control

my birthday snuck (i know the right word is sneaked. i still like snuck) up on me this year. it was one of those times when you are forced to realize that even when world-stopping things happen, time moves on. i had just caught my balance the other day. sure, i was still reeling a bit, but i was stable for the most part and ready for life to start up again. you can imagine my surprise when my husband asked, "so what do you want to do for your birthday?" and i was hit by the fact that life had never stopped just because i thought it should. it had continued on, ready or not. (don't you hate it when people allude to some big life-changing thing that happened and then never actually tell you what it is? yeah, me too.)

luckily for me, i'm pretty sure there is no one left here to be annoyed by my lack of telling. (i mean, an entire year of sporadic blogging. goodness. the thing is, in my head i had never "stopped blogging." like, i can't even really wrap my head around the idea that so much time has passed between posts. occasionally i come on here and write up a draft, so maybe that's why i feel like i never stopped? or it may be because time for me has lost all meaning so honestly, a year is the same as an hour is the same as a month. and by that logic, it really hasn't been so long.)

anyway, back to my birthday. despite my sporadic posting, there was no way that i couldn't come back here and write a birthday post. this morning i woke up in an ugh mood, but instead of letting outside forces dictate my mood and ruin my birthday, i decided to take action. so as soon as cricket woke up, i got him dressed and took him to ihop for a birthday breakfast of cupcake pancakes. it helped.

that simple action is going to play into the theme for the upcoming year, but i'll get to that in a minute.

i think that one of my most defining characteristics is that i am a people-pleaser. one hundred percent. i know every single way that this has been helpful and self-destructive in my life, and i cannot change it anymore that i can change my brown eyes or love for reading. it is embedded deep within what makes me me, for better or for worse.

due to my pleasing people all the time, i have pushed a lot of my own things to the back burner. when my ship starts to sink, the first things that i throw overboard are mine. this year, i'm pulling myself out of second place. this will be the year of me.

last year, when things got stressful with a new baby and family drama and just, life, i dropped reading and writing. and while i love reading, writing is part of who i am. it is how i work through everything. it is how i celebrate and how i mourn, and stopping writing felt like i had completely lost myself. i woke up one morning without my identity, and it was like i had woken up without the ability to breathe. i was floundering, but there was no time or space to flounder because there were things to do, and people to please. so i kept pushing it aside and pushing it aside, and having a series of mental breakdowns to my husband, and then one day i decided that enough was enough.

i have always dreamed of being published, and so after doing nanowrimo and writing through some depression crap (my story was literally about depression, but it was like a separate world type thing that at first seemed like magic? and then there was this giant-winged-cliche-shadow beast? and a girl got trapped? and there was a lot of self-isolation and very thin metaphors and it was just... i want to say really bad but i also kind of love it.) and writing a bunch of poems/scenes into my phone, i decided to come up with a defined goal.

my writing goal is to write a poetry chapbook and then send it out slash enter it into contests. i will complete this by the end of the year and i will feel like i have done something. something only for me.

and everyone else can kick rocks. i am done with them.

just kidding, i'll still be over here people pleasing, because that is what i do. and obviously the whole putting myself first thing will not be an always kind of thing, but will be an overarching part of everything this year. the thought that i have stuck to the door of the refrigerator in my mind. i have worn myself thin for others, and now it's time to collect myself and do it for me.

*On My Own - Whitney Houston

so before i had cricket, i had resigned myself to the fact that i would spend the next few years of my life without getting lost in books. i had heard, "i used to read, but then i had kids, and you know, you really can't anymore," so many times that i had accepted it as absolute truth. but then i had him and learned something about myself. i learned that a lot of the time, i will choose books over tv. i will choose books over movies. i will choose books over sleep. i will choose books over music (i went from music in the car to audiobooks. it's awesome.) it may take me longer to get through books, i may have to put it down way more often than i like, but i still pick then back up again (most of the time). i had kids, and i did not give up my stories.

so, without further ado, here's a post about my 2015 books. when i realized i was still reading, my goal was to read 15 books. i surpassed that, obviously.

my list of books that i read this year (mostly in the order that i read them in):
bold: favorites of the year
italics: this was a bad book and i read it so that you don't have to
*: disappointing (this doesn't necessarily mean that it was bad)
anything linked goes to my review of the book on goodreads

1. Pwned by Matt Vancil
2. Ready Player One by Ernest Cline *
3. Dragon Run by Patrick Matthews
4. Hey Natalie Jean by Natalie Holbrook *
5. The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
6. Six Moon Summer by SM Reine
7. All Hallows' Moon by SM Reine
8. Long Night Moon by SM Reine
9. Gray Moon Rising by SM Reine
10. Falling for Hamlet by Michelle Ray
11. Emma and Elsie Meet Fitzwilliam Darcy by Maddy Raven and Monica Leonelle *
12. The Demon King by Cinda Williams Chima
13. The Exiled Queen by Cinda Williams Chima
14. The Gray Wolf Throne by Cinda Williams Chima
15. The Crimson Crown by Cinda Williams Chima
16. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone by JK Rowling (reread)
17. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets by JK Rowling (reread)
18. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban by JK Rowling (reread) 
19. Home by Clementine von Radics
20. Mouthful of Forevers by Clementine von Radics
21. Healing Old Wounds with New Stitches by Meggie Royer
22. The Golden Compass by Philip Pullman (audiobook) (reread)
23. Wings of Fire: The Brightest Night by Tui T. Sutherland
24. The Boyfriend List by E. Lockhart (audiobook)
25. Love, Rosie by Celia Ahern
26. The Epic Adventures of Lydia Bennet by Katie Rorick
27. A Great and Terrible Beauty by Libba Bray (audiobook) (reread)
28. Rebel Angels by Libba Bray (audiobook) (reread)
29. The Sweet Far Thing by Libba Bray (audiobook) (reread)
30. The Rest of Us Just Live Here by Patrick Ness
31. Deception Point by Dan Brown (audiobook)
32. Carry On by Rainbow Rowell
33. Carry On by Rainbow Rowell (reread)
34. Fangirl by Rainbow Rowell (reread)
35. Isla and the Happily Ever After by Stephenie Perkins *
36. Anna and the French Kiss by Stephenie Perkins (reread)
37. Lola and the Boy Next Door by Stephenie Perkins (reread)
38. Isla and the Happily Ever After by Stephenie Perkins (reread)
39. Beautiful Creatures by Kami Garcia and Margaret Stohl *
40. Dramarama by E. Lockhart (audiobook) *
41. Stargirl by Jerry Spineli (audiobook)

and i started but have yet to finish:

1. Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein
2. Beauty Queens by Libba Bray *
3. Emotional Vampires: Dealing with People Who Drain You Dry by Albert J Bernstein

stats (only counting the completed books):

75.6% of the books read were YA or middle-grade books (this year i'm thinking of reading for my age group more)

7% were poetry 

29% were rereads

80% of my favorite books of the year were rereads

43.9% were standalone books

notes:

i feel like i have to talk about the seven realms series (the chima books). i had so many issues with the writing and the consistency and the wasted potential of the characters and the predictability and just so many things, but it took me almost all summer to get through them because i was traveling and mothering and stuff, and by the time i was ending the series, i was legit sad. after spending so much time with these characters, i had fallen in love with them. i read the books on the kindle app on my phone, but i feel like they now deserve a place on my shelves. i just can't bring myself to buy the series again when there wasn't much difference in price between the ebooks and hard copies. anyway, i wasn't sure if i should bold it or not because i did love them, but i also really didn't. 

isla was another one that i was on the fence about. i remember being over a third of the way into the book and thinking "there is no tension!" (which was actually very helpful because that's always been a problem for me (starting the book too soon) and i never really knew how to fix it but seeing it in someone else's work was a very a-ha moment) and then when the "tension" hit i couldn't get over how contrived and stupid the problem was. but i still liked it? i dunno. i reread the rest of the series to see if that changed anything, but it actually did more damage than good because it made me see how problematic things in the other books were, and those were my go-to fluff in times of stress and now they're ruined. sigh. 

overall, though the titles are every bit as embarrassing as usual (and by that i mean you should all wish to have my taste in books), i'm actually pretty proud of the number of books i managed to get through. honestly, it would have been more if i didn't drag out the bad books because i refused to just put them down but couldn't seem to pick them up either. next year i'm hoping to branch out a bit. i'm also planning on getting through the books that i keep buying but not reading. my to-be-read list is getting a bit ridiculous. i think those two hopes may be contradictory.