Kicking your can all over the place

I promised my family that in the first quarter of 2018 I would get my medical shit under control, by which I mean I actually would go to a doctor. I don't go to the doctor very often because -- and I am totally going to jinx it by saying this, I just know it -- I don't get sick very often. And also I look like death in a paper gown, man. And I don't like sitting in rooms full of sick people unless I'm doing it specifically to support a sick person who isn't me. So yeah.

Thanks to my newfound medical vigilance, however, I now know things about myself that I'd rather not know. Like the fact that I have the beginnings of glaucoma in my left eye, and my corneal dystrophy is getting worse in my right eye, and my diastolic is above 80 now, and my LDL is above 100 now, and all the calcium in my bones is migrating into my boobs, like HOW IS THAT EVEN A THING.

In 2017 I stopped wearing normal bras and started wearing sports bras everywhere, and I bought a pair of cute red single-vision glasses and a million pairs of cute multicolored reading glasses, and I removed color from my wardrobe and started wearing only shades of black and white and grey because ... I have no idea why I did that actually, and I bought a cheap refurbished Kindle Fire tablet when my phone screen suddenly became too small for Neflix, and I started eating a lot of gluten-free cookies which seemed like a good idea at the time but what was I thinking, honestly?

So far in 2018 I've bought TWO bras that hoist my calcified boobages back up where they belong, and I've gotten Progressives in severe black frames and surprised myself by LOVING THEM SO MUCH, and I've knitted a bunch of socks and a bunch of colorful cowls and shawls and I don't even know what, and I've ditched almost all of my print subscriptions in favor of digital publications, and I'm still eating a lot of cookies but now they're paleo instead of just gluten-free so that's better, maybe?

And today I chopped off all my hair. Well, not all of it. And I HAD it chopped off, I didn't do it myself (this time). The new 'do detracts slightly from my increasing resemblance to Fred Gwynne, so I like it. I've doubled down on the yoga this week, and I've been eating a lot of beets, and I've got three knitting projects and two crochet projects on the go, and this is the most boring midlife crisis ever, you guys.

Still to come: cardio workup! Cervical cancer screening! Colon cancer screening! More sock knitting! Binge-watching the second season of Jessica Jones! Tattoos! Dusseldorf! Daylight saving! Maybe some retinol or something! This is fifty (+1.5)!

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.

I'll fake it through the day with some help

Random thoughts in my head this week:

"Now that I'm drinking again, should I buy a bottle of tequila? Do we already have tequila? Do I even like tequila?"

"Why are all books terrible right now like you'd think a book about mysterious grizzly bear attacks would be good, right? Why can't I find a book I like? Why do I hate all the books that other people love?"

"Where was that Tig Notaro thing I wanted to watch, was that on Netflix or HBO?"

"Please oh please oh please let the weather stay sunny like this forever and ever. Please oh please. Amen and thank you."

"I swear to God if they kill Arya and don't bring her back with the Lord of Light's Red Dead Redemption ... I won't stop watching but someone will get a VERY strongly worded tweet."

"Do my boobs look as good as Emilia Clarke's? I think they do but I'm probably wrong."

"Why am I still having the high school locker combination dream 32 years after graduation?"

"Lily Tomlin's character on Grace & Frankie is basically me in 20 years so when can I start wearing muu-muus and dashikis all the time is it now can I do it now?"

"I'll never be enlightened if I can't extend lovingkindness to all the smug assface jerks but they just make me want to punch them so hard their grandchildren will feel it, help."

"Should I get my new passport photo taken while my  hair is purple or let it grow out? Are there international statutes against purple hair? What would P!nk do? They're not going to not let P!nk on a plane, right?"

"How is my tomato plant still producing fruit when it looks like something that dragged its blackened, shriveled ass up out of Mount Doom?"

"Given that you can literally die from stress, is it time to update my will?"

"Should I burn those old journals? I should burn those old journals."

December catchup and 2015 books

Before we talk about books, I need to tell you that daughter H turned 18 a couple of weeks ago and it's freaking me out. Both of my children are legal adults now, OMG. That is just the weirdest thing I've experienced since actually being pregnant with them. I remember 18 VERY clearly; I was a freshman in college when it happened to me. That was 31 years ago. Holy shit. (Let's not talk about the fact that C is turning 20 in April, okay? I remember 20, too. It was my Golden Birthday.) (P.S. If you're VERY clever, you might be able to deduce from one of those photos up there which college is H's first choice. Still waiting to hear. Fingers crossed.)

Okay, well, no time for an existential crisis now! Here are more or less all the books I read in 2015, grouped together by how much I liked them, though not necessarily ranked in any sort of order within those groups. Could I make this a little more complicated? Let's find out!

Five Stars
The entire Song of Ice and Fire series by George R. R. Martin. I read this series straight through in one big gulp, which took me nearly two months. I love the show and I love the books, too. Maybe even a little bit more, Dinklage or no Dinklage.

All the Light We Cannot See by Anthony Doerr. Lives up to the hype. Such a beautiful story. A must-read if you're into WWII fiction, but lovely even if you're not (I'm kind of oversaturated on it, myself).

The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins. Ditto re: hype. I loved this book, could not put it down, and even though the protagonist is sort of unlikable by design, I loved her, too.

Help Thanks Wow: Three Essential Prayers by Anne Lamott. Classic Lamott. She speaks to my soul.

House of Leaves by Mark Z. Danielewski. This is a book I will never, ever forget. I've seen it billed as horror but it's not, really. I don't even know how to describe it. But I loved it and I'm so glad I read it and that it's become part of my story now.

Far North by Marcel Theroux. Another book I'll never forget, with one of my favorite protagonists EVER. It's kind of a formulaic post-apocalyptic sort of thing, but it's just such a GOOD one. I didn't want it to end.

Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail by Cheryl Strayed. Yes, you've all already read this book. Well, now I have, too. I loved it so much that it led to me downloading like a dozen books about people walking the PCT and the AT and all those other trails that I'll never walk because: BEARS (see also: RAPISTS/MURDERERS). The movie pales in comparison.

The Martian by Andy Weir. Another book that makes the movie pale in comparison. The book was so much more fraught with tension, and the protagonist was a million times more likable, and it was just SO GOOD and so much better than the movie. If you liked the movie, read the book. If you didn't want to see the movie because Matt Damon is on your shitlist, read the book.

The Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern. I am going to go ahead and suggest you read this book in the fall, because it's all wood smoke and caramel apples and mulled cider and you'll never, ever want it to end. Just like fall.

Four Stars
Stoner by John Williams. Technically I read this at the very end of last December, but I told you it might end up on this year's list. I ... don't really remember much about this book, to be honest, but I four-starred it on Goodreads so I guess I liked it.

The Ocean at the End of the Lane by Neil Gaiman. You know, it's Gaiman. It's all mysterious and weird and children are in peril. I liked it a lot.

Started Early, Took My Dog by Kate Atkinson. The fourth Jackson Brodie. Didn't hold my interest quite as much as the previous books, and the timeline was wonky, but still, it's Atkinson. So it was good.

A Walk in the Woods: Rediscovering America on the Appalachian Trail by Bill Bryson. Well, it was no Wild, and he didn't really walk as much of the trail as I was hoping to read about, and it's really more a story of two middle-aged guys traveling than it is about a trail hike anyway, but I enjoyed it.

The Nature of the Beast by Louise Penny. The 11th Chief Inspector Gamache book. I have loved this series with only two exceptions (see below for one of them), and this book was fabulous. Thank goodness. The previous book was so awful, I almost didn't read this one.

Shaman, Healer, Heretic by Terry M. Green. I just read this as a fluffy little genre palate cleanser between meatier tomes, but I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. I have several books in this series downloaded to my Kindle and I look forward to reading the rest of them.

Shine On, Bright & Dangerous Object by Laurie Colwin. I heart Colwin. I don't always find her characters super relatable, and I like her food memoirs more than her novels, but they're still really good. (Her food memoirs are EXCEPTIONAL, FYI.)

Bats of the Republic: An Illuminated Novel by Zachary Thomas Dodson. I actually really loved this book, which like House of Leaves is very strange and relies heavily on format (weird fonts/text, folding pages, holding things up to mirrors, etc.), but I was left with so many questions at the end that I had to remove a star from my review. It's really good, it just leaves a lot of loose ends and/or glosses over things that I would have liked explored/explained in more detail. Rarely do I wish a book had been longer, but with this one, I do.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Jesus, this was grim. But wow, have a lot of people ripped him off since he wrote this.

Room by Emma Donoghue. I thought this book was pretty extraordinary and I'd never read anything like it, but something about it annoyed me somehow. I spent almost the entire book thinking it took place in the UK because of the dialog and vocabulary, but then a US location was mentioned, and I don't know, something was off about it. Like with Vernon God Little, a book I HATED, I feel like an editor should have caught the fact that all of these supposedly American characters did not speak or act at all like Americans. Geez, now I want to take another star off my review and bump this down to three and/or attend a meeting of Anglophobics Anonymous.

The Girl with All the Gifts by M.R. Carey. I liked this a lot; it's a very different take on the zombie genre. It's got movie adaptation written all over it, though -- like it reads as though it was specifically written to be adapted for film -- and for that I removed a star because sometimes a book should just stay a book.

The Magician's Assistant by Anne Patchett. This was a very good book that made me fall asleep a lot. It actually reminded me a lot of that Colwin book up there in that it deals with the loss of a spouse and dealing with the whole in-law thing in the wake of that and all the complicated things that make up a marriage and a family.

Three Stars or Less, or the Meh Books
Divergent by Veronica Roth. I'm just not a big fan of the Hunger Games wannabes.

The Same Sky by Amanda Eyre Ward. I LOVE Ward and have loved nearly all of her books, but this one didn't grab me for whatever reason. I'll still buy everything she writes, though.

Gaudi Afternoon by Barbara Wilson. I like the Cassandra Reilly series a lot and read them all out of order; this is the first one and I can tell you that they definitely get better.

The Long Way Home by Louise Penny. The 10th Gamache. Just AWFUL. There's really only one real plot point from this book that you need to know before reading book 11, and it'll become apparent to you pretty quickly in that book, so I recommend skipping from 9 to 11 and giving this one a miss entirely.

Miss Buncle's Book by D.E. Stevenson. Meh. I think I just wasn't in the mood for this when I read it. It's a perfectly sweet little book, but I wanted it over with much sooner than it was.

Hercules, My Shipmate by Robert Graves. I wanted to like this so much more than I did, but I found it oddly repetitive and just kind of boring after a while.

The Beggar King by Oliver Potzsch. (There's supposed to be an umlaut over the o in his last name but I'll be damned if I know how to get it on there.) I love the Hangman's Daughter series but I didn't love this particular installment. All the things that annoy me about some of the main characters were dialed up to 11 in this book, and I don't like it when series books move away from the principal location.

Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff. I heart Groff BIG TIME and I absolutely loved Monsters of Templeton and Arcadia, but this one was not my favorite. I feel like it suffers in the inevitable comparison to Gillian Flynn's Gone Girl.

Disclaimer by Renee Knight. This was a weird book, y'all. It started out kind of clunky and then just got super grim and sad. If you want to be hella depressed, go ahead and read it, but don't say I didn't warn you.


And also I read a bunch of stuff for work; I won't outline all of that (mostly nutrition-related) stuff for you. However, I do highly recommend Michelle Segar's No Sweat: How the Simple Science of Motivation Can Bring You a Lifetime of Fitness to anyone who has negative associations with exercise but wants to get moving (in a fun way); and copies of Kate Northrup's Money: A Love Story paired with copies of Manisha Thakor's On My Own Two Feet (which I read last year) would make great gifts for any college-aged young women in your lives who want to start out on the right financial foot. I wish I had read them both 30 years ago. It's too late for me! Save yourselves! (Just kidding. It's not too late. It's NEVER too late. #coach)

Okay. Let's get through Christmas and maybe then I'll try to start blogging more but probably not.

The bleak mid-winter

Hello, I have decided that winter sucks. Or at least THIS winter does, with its unrelenting gloom and damp. I know there are much colder temperatures and snow and whatnot elsewhere, but for reals y'all, I can only take so many days of grey skies and temps barely above freezing and cold cold cold rain/drizzle/mist before I start to go all Jack Torrance on your collective asses. I guess we had ONE sunny day this month because I took a photo of it but apart from that it's been SAD city up in here, and also ALLERGIES. Bleh.

I am combating the cabin fever with books, specifically the series known as A Song of Ice and Fire written by one George R. R. Martin. I'm determined to read the whole thing right through and have all five (so far) books finished by the time the TV show starts back up again in April. That might sound do-able unless you know that (a) I am the world's slowest reader and (b) each book is like 48,000 pages long. But whatever, it's not like I have any other hobbies.

(I've been assured by those who know that upon finishing the fifth book I'll suddenly feel compelled to write Mr. Martin VERY strongly worded letters explaining that he IS TOO my bitch and should write faster, perhaps mailing hardcopies of pages to me one by one as he knocks out the sixth book, but that's just crazy talk. I don't even know his mailing address.)

In other January news, the Ohio State Buckeyes football team gave my dad a National Championship for his birthday, so that was nice. Nutrition school is moving right along and getting more awesome by the day. I've started working out again, and meditating again, and taking photos again when I'm not reading. But I'm usually reading. Or napping. Or sneezing.

Yeah. That's about it. Wake me when the temperature is higher than my age. Or better yet, my dad's age.

My week of yoga pants

So this happened:

Yep. Tore the MCL in my left knee while moving a chair. (I've got to come up with a better story for that. Tore my MCL while kickboxing Chuck Norris? Tore my MCL while two-stepping with my movie star boyfriend Ted Levine at the Broken Spoke? Tore my MCL while jumping out of a helicopter, over a waterfall, to bring much-needed medicine to ... orphaned river otters? Yeah. Let's go with that. I'll send the otters a check; it'll be fine.)

I don't know how badly it's torn because I haven't followed up yet with an orthopedist AS INSTRUCTED but Doctor Google says the treatment is more or less the same, it just takes longer if it's a really bad one which I don't think it is, so whatever. All I know is that it is VERY VERY HARD to dress around a knee immobilizer that goes from your crotch to your ankle. I don't mean dressing UP, to look NICE -- I'm old so who cares -- I mean actually wearing clothing items that prevent me from flashing my granny panties at the world. IT'S HARD, Y'ALL. TINY VIOLINS.

I was supposed to wear this ferkakta thing through tomorrow but screw that, I graduated myself to a fairly sturdy drugstore knee brace as of yesterday and it feels totally fine. I still can't wear jeans over even this little brace, though. I miss my jeans, you guys. TINY CELLO.

It could be worse, I suppose. Six years ago this month, this happened:

TINY BASSOON.

I sprained the shit out of (I believe that was the official diagnosis) my right ankle (no followup again, DOCTOR GOOGLE IS MY PCP, quit judging) in October 2008 and that took a REALLY long time to heal and also I had to use CRUTCHES which meant I was catapulting myself all over the place because I am super bad at crutches and I COULDN'T DRIVE. For like a month. OMG. That sucked so hard. THE WORLD'S SMALLEST TUBA.

This time I can drive. It requires some whack-ass origami contortionism to make it happen, or it did before I ditched the immobilizer, but IT IS/WAS POSSIBLE. And thank God for that, because you wouldn't like me when I'm forcibly housebound. It ain't pretty.

Anyhoo, the point is that every six years or so, October tries to kill me. Good to know. If I plan ahead now, maybe I can spend October 2020 in a nice medically induced coma or something, just to be safe.

Meanwhile, right now I am ...

... reading Tana French's Broken Harbor. This is the fourth book in her Dublin Murder Squad series, the one that began with In The Woods, and I dunno, you guys. I love everything she does but this might be my least-favorite book in the series so far. It's still GOOD, it's just ... not In The Woods. Or The Likeness. Or Faithful Place.

... watching Live Free Or Die, and I am probably the only one, but I kind of love this show! It's about several different people who for whatever reason choose to live off the grid and off the land. Not in a weird Doomsday Preppers kind of way (I don't actually watch that show so I may not know what I'm talking about) but just because, you know, they like it.

... listening to Diane Sanfilippo's Build a Badass Business podcast. Because I guess that's what I'll be doing as a health coach. Diane is super rad and her tips are so amazing and they seem DOABLE, which is key.

... eating all the things. I don't know why, but this injury made me super hungry. I'm big on sweet potato noodles (made with one of these contraptions) right now. And kale! Which I used to not even like it, but now I love it, because I've become one of those annoying people! I've mostly been making chips with it, because CHIPS, but later this afternoon I'll be whipping up a kale salad with bacon and honeycrisp apples and pomegranate arils and probably pumpkin seeds and who knows what else. GOD I AM SO HUNGRY RIGHT NOW.

... drinking mineral water (this one specifically). I don't know why. I originally bought it to make fake martinis (mineral water, a drop of vermouth, a couple of olives -- it's vile, don't try it) but then I just started drinking it and now I like it and I don't know.

And that about brings you up to speed. I hope your month is going well and that October isn't trying to kill you. Because if it is, maybe we can form a support group.

Ain't no cure

H and I spent two glorious days in Corpus Christi last week and all I have to show for it are sunburned feet. And a big bag of shells. And a shirt; I did get a pretty awesome shirt while we were there. And a bit of a tan on the parts that aren't sunburned. But THAT'S ALL I HAVE NOW.

It was a very fun trip. H and I travel well together. We should do it again, like, next week. And every week thereafter. Yep.

But no, we can't, because it's almost time for back-to-school and I am really busy watching television, you guys. Rectify is back on and I love it but I'm kind of hoping Amantha gets killed off sometime real soon now because she's ALMOST ruining the show for me, I hates her so much. The Bridge is back too and I love that one and everything about it is perfect and my GIANT crush on Ted Levine continues unabated. (I. Love. Him. SOMUCH.) Falling Skies is back but it's terrible now (except for Pope -- I heart Pope), so boo. Face Off is back too but I haven't watched last night's season premier yet, so shhh on that for now. The Strain is stupid but I can't stop watching it, and I'd like to take this opportunity to implore Hollywood to stop putting terrible wigs on hot bald guys, because some of us like them JUST FINE the way they are, thankyouverymuch. And finally, Drunk History is rocking my world right now. Up, down and all around. LOVE it!

And also I've been reading stuff! I know! Look at me, with the culture and shit! I can't remember what I was reading when last we spoke about reading but I'm still loving Karin Fossum's Inspector Sejer books and Kate Atkinson's Jackson Brodie books. I read The Silkworm, the second Cormoran Strike book by Robert Galbraith, who as you probably know is actually J.K. Rowling, and I loved it so much that I didn't want it to end. I bought a paperback copy of Tom Rachman's The Imperfectionists to read at the beach, and I didn't read ANY of it at the actual beach, but now that I've finished it my feelings are mixed. I liked it while I was reading it, but ultimately it was pretty depressing. Now I'm re-reading The Last Policeman by Ben H. Winters, which is SUPER fantastic and highly recommended, because the third book in that series is just out and I hadn't even read the second one yet. So many books, y'all. So little time.

Aside from all the back-to-school stuff with H, my 30-year high school reunion is the next thing up for which I must gear. The tricksy organizers have totally thrown me off by declaring the event casual dress, like what does that even mean? What is casual?! WHAT ARE WORDS FOR WHEN NO ONE LISTENS ANYMORE??!! In Austin, "casual" could mean anything from that bikini up there to "you can totally wear cowboy boots and a bolo with that tux, bro," so I am stymied. Except I'm pretty sure I'm not wearing that bikini. Maybe a DIFFERENT bikini? Maybe a cocktail dress with flip-flops? Is that casual? Bermuda shorts with a ripped concert tee and heels? Cutoffs and pearls? Are the pearls too much? WHY IS THIS SO HARD?

Anyway, yeah. That's what's going on around here. And how has YOUR summer (or winter) been?