Nolite te bastardes carborundorum

We are on the downhill slope of my second-least-favorite season and the weather has been damp and ooky and my mold allergies are killing me and apparently this happens every year in May, which probably means I've complained about it every year in May, so let this be a lesson to you: don't live in the past, you guys. It deprives you of the pleasure of complaining in the present.

Things that have been happening around these parts:

• In February I replaced my ancient clock radio with a clock that is not a radio, so I bought a cheap battery radio and I'm a little embarrassed by how much I've been enjoying it. I have satellite radio in my car and I've been listening to streaming playlists pretty exclusively when NOT in my car for a number of years now and hey, radio is a thing that still exists and that makes me happy. Also there are no Tejano stations in my XM subscription, but there are like 47 of them just on the FM band alone. So yay.
• In March we stripped C's room down to the studs and completely re-did it in a fit of "you're an adult now and your outer environment reflects your inner environment and vice-versa" and I'm not sure it changed anything for him in any substantial way, but it was a badly needed clearout so we're counting it a win.
• In April C turned 21 and P turned 52 and I did something weird to my foot that required (inconclusive) x-rays and crutches but got completely better on its own after a couple of weeks, so April was kind of exhausting. Also in April my hair finally became long enough for a ponytail, and I cast on for a Berroco Vine in Madelinetosh.
• So far in May: I got a new grill for Mother's Day (yay!), I removed the Facebook app from my phone (best decision EVER), and daughter H moved out of my house and into an apartment with some friends (OMG). She's only about five minutes away, so close and yet so far. Also in May son C got his learner's permit for driving a car (he already has a full-blown motorcycle license) and I don't have a photo of the used car P bought him earlier this year (2010 convertible VW bug because he needs to feel the wind in his hair, man) but yeah, he's learning to drive a car now. So that's happening. Maybe the room remodel DID work.

I have been reading lots of really good books and I have accomplished this by discarding books that aren't excellent within the first 100 pages or so. In the fiction realm I can recommend without reservation Erika Swyler's The Book of Speculation (especially if you liked The Night Circus), Barbara Kingsolver's The Poisonwood Bible (can you believe I'd never read it?), Paulette Jiles's News of the World (excellent), Emily Bitto's The Strays (fascinating), and Rachel Joyce's The Unlikely Pilgrimage of Harold Fry (which was not at all what I was expecting, in a good way). 

In the non-fiction genre, I loved Mychal Denzel Smith's Invisible Man, Got the Whole World Watching, Bryan Stevenson's Just Mercy, Scott B. Christmas's Washington's Nightmare: A Brief History of American Political Parties, Saroo Brierley's Lion, and Rebecca Skloot's The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.

Right now I'm re-reading The Handmaid's Tale for the first time in decades (I don't have a Hulu subscription so I'm not watching it, but the movie with Natasha Richardson and Faye Dunaway is seared into my mind). Next up? Probably Joyce's The Love Song of Miss Queenie Hennessy. Which normally I wouldn't go near based on the title alone because I'm such a fucking elitist, but it's a companion volume to Harold Fry and now I kind of need to know.

Pursuant to the article above re: Facebook, I'm hoping my abandonment of that medium will encourage me to write more often in this particular medium, so we'll see what happens. Meanwhile I most definitely am not abandoning Twitter or Instagram; you can find me there at @saltycrunchy for my personal accounts (my personal Instagram is private so if I don't know who you are, I'm afraid you're out of luck there) or @kmshealthcoach for my professional accounts (which are public AF, as the kids say). 

Any and all food blogging type stuff is now happening on my professional Instagram account, if that tempts you at all. If foul-mouthed liberal rantings are more your thing, I recommend my personal Twitter (which is public). Or, you know, check back here occasionally. There's bound to be all SORTS of foul-mouthed liberal ranting in the weeks and months to come.