The lion of March

The snow we're dealing with today is beyond the nuisance stage, so I decided to stop titling blog posts that way. March has come in like a lion and we can only hope that it will go out like a lamb (but I am not going to get my hopes up). It's probably a good thing that Easter is quite late this year, though the kids are now too old for the neighborhood "hunt." Nothing like hunting for plastic eggs under snowdrifts.

This photo shows the backyard, before the bulk of the snow fell. We had 5 inches as of early morning, but then it started up again around noon-ish, and we've had a couple more since then. Not a HUGE snow, but bigger than the nuisance snows of February. Big enough that shoveling actually required some muscle. I was the one who provided the muscle. I like to shovel snow on the weekend when I'm not busy doing a million other things.

I did not have much of anything on the agenda for the weekend -- that is, I wanted to sit in the living room reading and watching the snow fall, but nobody else wanted to do that, so it didn't happen. What did happen, most unusually, was a bit of cleaning. Despite the fact that none of my plans for keeping the house clean ever last long, hope springs eternal and I have recently come up with a new plan which I am attempting to put into place. This is the basic plan:

• Do the dishes every day; do not allow them to pile up for days. If Rocket Boy doesn't do them, instead of nagging, do them myself.
• Clean Pie's litter box in the garage every Friday before trash pick-up; clean Chester's litter box in the office whenever he poops in it.
• Do the laundry all the time constantly, just like always
• Every Saturday clean either the kitchen (other than dishes), the bathroom, or the living room & hall.
• Every Sunday clean either the office, the kids' room, or Mom & Dad's room.

I started my new plan last weekend. On Saturday I studied the living room and hallway but did not do anything about them. It seemed too daunting. But on Sunday, while Rocket Boy took the kids on an outing, I cleaned a section of the office. The pictures above left and to the right show before and after. I know it still looks bad, but this was several hours of hard work. Seriously, it was. The goal is to get those piles small enough that I can open the file cabinet drawer and then put the piles IN the file cabinet. It will take a few more sessions before we are there, but this was a good start.


The cleaning this weekend was supposed to be bathroom on Saturday, kids' room on Sunday. But on Saturday -- which was a very cold, very snowy, very boring day -- Kid A decided he wanted to clean off the desk in his room so that he would have a place to build Legos. So he actually did -- I had to help sort his junk pile into recycling/compost/trash and find places for a few things, but he did a pretty good job himself, including sorting out what he did/didn't want to keep, putting Legos away, etc. In the background you can see their dresser, the top of which I was planning to clean today. But it's OK. A surface got cleaned, even if it was the wrong one on the wrong day. I am happy.

So that meant that today I cleaned the bathroom. Cleaning the bathroom is a very hard job because the room itself is so tiny and I am so large. I had to scrunch my bulk down onto the floor and reach hopelessly behind the toilet to try to get that area of the floor clean. It was not fun, though it probably looked funny (no one was home to see, or worse, photograph me). Nor was any other aspect of the job any fun. But the bathroom looks a lot better now. I use a book I've had for years called Speed Cleaning and follow all the instructions exactly, because I have no idea how to clean things and cannot remember how from one time to the next.

Best of all, I have done my required cleaning for the week and do not need to do anything else (except dishes, litter boxes, laundry) until next Saturday, when I am scheduled to clean the kitchen. That is also the boos' birthday, so I don't know exactly what will get done, but I will try to do something.

Now it's almost 6 pm and I would really like to sit in the living room and read a book while the snow continues to fall, but I think there isn't time. Kid B and Rocket Boy will be home from Denver soon, and then we'll have to put dinner together (leftovers, mostly). Anyway, Kid A has already commandeered the living room for the purpose of watching television. Sigh. He spent 5+ hours at a friend's house today, playing, and I'm sure they didn't play with screens, so it's OK. I just wish I could have the living room to myself once in a while. But if I had done that while everyone was gone, I wouldn't have a clean bathroom now.

More nuisance snow

Another bad blog post title, but these bothersome little snows just won't stop! We got a few more inches last weekend, another inch last night, and right now we are getting what is supposed to be 2-4 more inches tonight. Little dribby drabby snows, but they keep coming. I don't think you can see in this photo that the snow is actually coming down, but it is, and it's 25 degrees Fahrenheit. Now, if we end up getting huge dumps of snow in March, I will be really sorry I complained about the little snows, but there have been so many! Where is our Colorado sunshine?

So today is February 22nd, and a Friday -- a fact which makes me very happy. The first two weeks of February went by quickly, what with parent/teacher conferences, various meetings, and Valentine's Day, which was pleasantly low-key. The kids celebrated at school (their last time), Rocket Boy and I had cards for each other (his loud, mine subtle, but both on kind of the same theme), he also produced two boxes of chocolate which were gone in a few days, and we had Chinese takeout for dinner with lots of leftovers. The kids had both February 15th (Friday) and February 18th (Monday) off, so I took those days off too. And on February 17th, Rocket Boy flew to Tucson for a job interview with Raytheon. He flew back late on February 20th, but before he left he'd already received an email saying they weren't going to hire him. Honestly, so rude. However, he got to visit Tucson, eat at his favorite restaurant there (Caruso's), and drive up Mt Lemmon, all on Raytheon's dime (which of course is my dime and yours, since Raytheon is basically entirely government-funded). Oh, whatever. He has another interview (in south Denver) on Tuesday.

Anyway, it was stressful having him gone, though I keep reminding myself that he may end up getting one of these jobs -- we still can't figure out what's going on with the job in St Louis -- and then he'll be gone all the time and I'll have to cope. It would be easier if I didn't have to (a) work, (b) drive Kid A back and forth to his special school, AND (c) keep the household running (OK, it would be even easier if I didn't have to do ANY of those things, but...). Next year Kid A will just go to regular school, so I might be able to handle (a) and (c) if there's no (b).

Whine, kvetch, complain. What else is going on? I am still reading happily, though not at the frantic pace of January. I've decided to take part in the Back to the Classics Challenge, and try to read 12 "classics," loosely defined, over the course of the year. I used to read classic novels, but don't do it much anymore, so I thought a little push would be good. I'm not actually registered in the challenge (because I don't want to fill my blog up with book reviews), so I won't win the prize, but I'm following all the rules. My January "classic" was The Time Machine by H. G. Wells, which I actually read to the kids (Rocket Boy's choice). That fits into category #8: Classic Novella (Any work of narrative fiction shorter than 250 pages).

In February I like to re-read books by Barbara Pym, which would in fact count as classics according to this site's definition, but I decided that my "classic" would instead be The Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym of Nantucket by Edgar Allan Poe, which fits into category #1: 19th Century Classic (Any classic book originally published between 1800 and 1899). In fact, both books are novellas and both were published in the 19th century, but it doesn't matter. I enjoyed the experience of reading Pym, which is not to say that I really enjoyed the book itself, but it was memorable -- and surprisingly hard to get through (The Time Machine was easier). Both books, though, were thought-provoking, and have stayed in my mind more than most modern books I read. This is perhaps why they are considered classics. In fact, The Time Machine really bothered me -- the idea that we are not going to keep progressing, but rather that society will gradually degenerate and collapse. There are so many examples of it happening now, such as the demise of the free press, and the increasingly poor quality of manufactured items.

I don't know what March's classic is going to be. Possibly something from category #2: 20th Century Classic (Any classic book originally published between 1900 and 1969). I'm also planning to read a Presidential biography, so must allow time for that too. March is a long month, though, plenty of time for reading. Especially if we have a lot more snow.

Nuisance snow (and sledding)

I look at that post title and I feel ashamed of myself. We NEED snow; I shouldn't criticize it by calling it a nuisance. Is it just because I've gotten so old? Do I need to move to Tucson (at least for the winter)? I don't know if I'm that far gone, but it is true that I do not enjoy snow as much as I used to. It's attractive when it's falling, assuming one is snug at home with no need to go out to work, take children to school, pick up children from school, visit the grocery store, etc. And then it stops. When I was 30 and lived in an apartment, that meant it was time to go for a lovely walk in the new-fallen snow. And now that I am 58 and live in a house, it means that it is time to go out and shovel the walks so as not to be fined by the city. And then the ice forms, and the slush (technically I guess it's slush first and then ice). And unless you have a major extended warm-up soon after, the slush/ice problem goes on for days and days.

There are, however, benefits to snow, and I feel that it is important to make the most of those benefits. For me, there is the brief acknowledgement that snow is pretty, perhaps when I happen to look up and notice the mountains on my way home from walking the kids to school (the problem is that I am mostly looking at my feet, so as not to slip on the ice, so I do not see the beauty). For the children, the benefits include (1) cold wet stuff to throw at one's brother, (2) huge piles of cold wet stuff created by snowplows to climb on, (3) slippery stuff to slide on while walking to/from school (yes, they think ice is FUN), and of course (4) the transformation of a grassy hill into a sledding slope.

We had a decent (5-6 inches) snowfall on Wednesday, and it hasn't gotten above the 30s since then (in fact, for a few days it barely reached the 10s) which meant that today, Saturday, was Sledding Day! Of course, first it was Library Day, followed by a quick trip to the grocery store, and after lunch we watched a movie we'd gotten at the library. But around about 2:30 we made it to Scott Carpenter Park, which has a good sledding hill, and although the crowds had thinned, the snow was still good. It was actually very slick, but Kids A and B assured me it was better that way, faster. I wouldn't know -- I don't sled. I usually don't even go along these days, but I thought it would be fun to go today, and it was. (Though cold -- it's always freezing cold on top of that hill, and I didn't have a hat.)

Rocket Boy found our old inflatable sled in the basement and brought it along, and once it was blown up the kids wanted to play on it pretty much exclusively. In fact, they fought quite angrily over it. First Kid B grabbed it and rode it down the hill by himself, then they rode it together, then Kid A wanted a turn alone but Kid B grabbed it for himself again. They can get quite violent with each other, not to mention profane, and RB and I were a little embarrassed, particularly since most of the other kids on the hill were a lot younger than them. RB and I reminisced about when the boos were babies (see http://welcometoridgecrest.blogspot.com/2010/02/sledding.html for details). Nine years ago we got that sled! Nine years ago they wore little coats with hoods that made them look like elves! and now they're so big and not cute at all. Fortunately we still love them.

Made it to February

It always feels like such an accomplishment to reach February -- January lasts SOOO long and is so boring and so dreary. I actually know quite a few people who were born in January, and I always think that must have been nice for their parents, to have this gloomy month cheered up by a darling newborn baby to care for. This was kind of an odd January for me, in that I read almost constantly during it. In fact, my book list for 2019 already has 19 books on it (18 in January and one so far in February). I looked back at my book lists, which I started keeping in 1980, and I've never come anywhere close to reading 18 books in ANY month. Some of these were kids' books, and some were books I started reading in December or even November, but still. I mentioned this achievement to Rocket Boy and he said, "Must be escapism," which I thought was unfair. On the other hand, perhaps it was escapism. I had a great wish to escape January and I succeeded through books. Good books, though -- nonfiction, memoirs, serious fiction -- not just mysteries. I enjoyed myself.

It was a fairly warm month, although we did have a few little snows. Nuisance snows, as a meteorologist described them in a news article I read. Truly they were nuisances -- just enough snow to make it hard to get to work, and then by the next day enough was gone to leave wide swathes of ice everywhere, making it REALLY hard to get to work. I worked at home on some of the icy days, but I have a hard time getting anything done at home unless I have a very clear, do-able assignment. I realized the other day that I hadn't taken any photographs of any of the snows, possibly because of what a nuisance they were. So I hurried out before it got too dark and took a couple of pictures. See? Enough snow to cover the lawn and make a mess of everything else.

I'm trying to think of what else to say about January, now that it is over and can't hurt me. We didn't do much, just amused ourselves with simple pleasures like reading, watching videos from the library, and the occasional chess game. Every January my insurance company sends me some big bills (one due in January and one due in February), and every January I am surprised by these bills and wonder how on earth I will ever pay them. And then the property tax bills arrive. So one of our traditional January activities is called "Making do with less," i.e., not eating out and not buying anything except at the grocery store and the pet store/vet. It always reminds me of how much I hate cooking, but we also make do with a lot of cheap packaged stuff. I used to be so good about making soup from scratch on the weekends, but this past year we've embraced the world of Progresso canned soup. In fact, almost every Monday that's our dinner. Sometimes we fix two different cans of soup -- maybe chicken pot pie soup for the boys and split pea soup for Rocket Boy and me. Sometimes we have something we all like, such as clam chowder (that's on the menu for tomorrow). RB makes his special garlic bread (olive oil, various spices, and slices of garlic), and we're all happy. I always take a moment to feel bad when I take my first spoonful, thinking of the delicious homemade soup dinners of my childhood. It's sort of like saying grace. And then I think, well, you're clearly a dreadful mother, but here we all are around the dinner table enjoying our canned soup, and it's going to be OK.

And now it's February, which always seems like it's over before it really gets going. We have lots of things on the calendar already: the kids' last ever elementary school conferences, various school-related activities that I've signed up to help with, Valentine's Day, two days off school (the 15th and the 18th) which I will take as vacation, and Rocket Boy is scheduled to go to Tucson for a job interview (he'll be gone the 17th through the 20th). He made the arrangements for this trip in early January, assuming at the time that he would have heard from his St Louis job prospect by then and would have to cancel this trip. But as the trip draws closer, the other organization has been silent, so it looks like he's going to Tucson. We have no particular hopes for this: the company has flown him out for job interviews before and then never contacted him again. But he's looking forward to having them pay for a trip to Tucson, where he went to graduate school. So it'll be a busy month, as well as a short one. This photo shows what our front yard looks like today, as the nuisance snow slowly melts into mud. Happy February!

Resolutions revisited (yes, it's January)

I don't have any fun trips or activities to report on today, except for the lovely Super Wolf Blood Moon Eclipse Saturday night (the photo shows the very beginning of it). It's just been January. During the day on Saturday Rocket Boy took the twins and Z from next door to the Botanical Gardens -- and I wanted to go, wanted to see the orchid show, but when it came right down to it, what I really wanted to do was stay in bed. I'm a good sleeper, generally, but I don't get enough sleep (stay up too late reading, mostly). Last week I had some sort of nightmare or otherwise disturbing dream almost every night, so by the weekend I was TIRED. So I got some rest while they went to the Botanical Gardens, but the disturbing dreams have continued.

Last night I dreamed I was cooking a lot of Indian food over a Coleman stove, including rice pudding. I decided to make waffles using the rice pudding as batter, so I set our old iron waffle maker on top of the Coleman stove and did so. I kept accidentally unplugging things, and once the waffles were done I unplugged something that caused a gas jet to explode. I called to Rocket Boy to help fix the disaster. "Just a minute," he said fussily, finishing his breakfast and then washing his hands. I wake up from these dreams thinking, "what was the point of THAT?" Why did I have to upset myself over something as silly as THAT? We won't even discuss my dream about trying to write my dissertation while a penguin.

So, anyway, with nothing especially fun to write about today, I thought I'd revisit my New Year's resolutions, the ones that made me so unhappy a few weeks back when I made them. I've studied them a few times since then, considered dumping them and starting over, and eventually decided to keep them but tone them down.

See, the problem I have with New Year's resolutions is that I still make them the way I used to, when we had some money and I wasn't tired and depressed all the time. I look around the house and I think, I'd like to get this room fixed up. So I make a resolution about it. And then I look at that resolution later and think, oh my god, no. And yet I still have the wish to improve our lives, to make things better. But the resolutions need to be things that (a) don't cost money and (b) don't require a lot of time and energy. Which leaves me back where I started, with nothing.

So I took another look at my resolutions.

Some of them are OK.
(1) Keep my job (or get another).  We'll focus on the non-parenthetical part of that sentence. I don't love my job, but I love my little paycheck, and I especially love my health insurance.
(3) Maintain the home front if RB has to move away for a job. I mean, what else am I going to do? Unplug something and let it explode?
(11) Read at least 78 books. So fun and so do-able. And so free (thank you, Boulder Public Library).

Some of them are too vague.
(10) Help Kid A and Kid B with their issues. Well, that's sort of the definition of being a parent, right? Maybe I should revise it to "Don't forget you have two kids."
(22) Keep in touch with friends. Keep in touch how? Send birthday cards? Go out for coffee? Or ignore this one because it's so vague and thus lose touch with more people?

Some of them are nuts.
(17) Get the trees trimmed and the volunteer elms removed. Yeah, right. Maybe someday.
(20) Set up a cleaning schedule (or get a cleaner). This is just fantasy. I'm constantly setting up cleaning schedules, none of which I adhere to, and we can't afford a cleaner. "Embrace chaos" might be a good rewrite.

But some of them might work with a little tweaking.
(5) Start saving money for taxes, emergencies. This is tricky. Last year, after two different people asked me why I couldn't set aside a LITTLE money each month to save for a vacation, I started setting aside a little money each month. And then we had a couple of bad months and I had to dip into the savings and spent it all. However, that doesn't mean I couldn't try again. So I've now rewritten this one, as follows:
(5a) Put $50/month into my savings account and try not to spend it.
(5b) Figure out how much I SHOULD be saving each month to cover property taxes and insurance -- and maybe even a vacation -- so that if our financial situation changes, I could start setting aside the correct amount.

Another problematic category is the diet & exercise one.
(7) Try to walk 5 days a week.
(8) Try to lift weights 2 times per week.
Both of these are things I used to do, effortlessly. For a variety of reasons, they are no longer effortless and they no longer happen. So what can I do about it? I decided to scale them back.
(7a) Try to walk 1 day a week
(7b) If I happen to start doing that, try to increase to 2 or more days a week.
(8a) Find my hand weights. They're around. I can see the pink 5-lb ones from here.
(8b) Try lifting them once a week
(8c) If I actually do that, try to increase to twice a week.
(7x/8x) Keep revisiting this every month. January is a pretty crappy time to start an exercise program unless it involves skiing. February's not much better. I just have to keep trying.

You get the idea. Instead of berating myself about my inability to improve my life in any way, I'm trying to figure out the least, tiniest thing I could do that I might actually DO. It's a start.

Catching up -- how we amused ourselves over vacation

Looking over my posts I see that I didn't write much about our winter vacation activities. And since this blog functions partly as a diary and partly to let my relatives know what we've been doing (and partly what else? hmm), I should spend some time catching up.

Seventeen days the kids had off, counting three weekends, and I had those days off too (that is, I took seven days of leave, four holidays, and the weekends). I worried about how we'd spend all that free time, and made various plans to fill it, but in the end it turned out not to be important. We were all so happy not to have to get up early and rush off to school/work every day that we were all in pretty good moods much of the time.

Which has changed, now, of course, because we've been back to school/work for a week, and it's January, and bleah. But the merry Christmas season is always followed by bleah, January. Some day we'll be retired and the twins will be grown and gone -- and I'll miss them!

But back to vacation activities. We did two special holiday light things: Blossoms of Light at the Denver Botanical Gardens and Zoo Lights at the Denver Zoo. We went to Blossoms of Light (not expensive at all, because as members we got two free tickets) two days after Christmas. We drove to Denver in the afternoon so I could have coffee with my old friend Betty and her husband Mark, who were visiting other friends in Denver. Rocket Boy and the twins spent that time at the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, and then we joined up again and went to the Botanical Gardens.

I enjoyed Blossoms very much. Of course, we went last year, and it wasn't very different this year, but that didn't matter to me. The boys, though, were not especially enthralled last year, and definitely not enthralled this year, at least not by the lights. Mostly they complained about the cold.

What enthralled them was the hot chocolate bar, which unfortunately I don't have a photo of. But basically you got your cup of hot chocolate and then you could add whipped cream, chocolate chips, toffee bits, peppermint bits, and a variety of flavored syrups. Kid A added everything, while Kid B was a bit more selective. Then we took their hot chocolate with us into the Seeds cafe where we had sandwiches for dinner (and RB had a cup of coffee, no peppermint bits and flavored syrups for him). It was a nice evening -- cold but lovely -- and Rocket Boy did all the driving, which made it especially nice for me.

Three days later he drove us back to Denver for Zoo Lights, which we had not seen before. Even though we're zoo members, we had to buy all four tickets, and even with our discount it was pricey. But it had its own charm. The night we went, it was sold out, and we had to wait in an enormous line to go in, but the line moved quickly, and once we were inside nothing seemed crowded. In addition to lights in (some of) the trees, there were all these light sculptures of animals, some of them moving. I particularly liked a moving light sculpture of an eagle. The zoo website had warned that we wouldn't be able to see most of the (real live) animals, since it would be dark and many of them would be indoors. In some cases (elephant house, giraffe house), you could go inside and see them. But some of the animals were still outside. We could see a little blotch of white up on Sheep Mountain -- presumably the Dall's Sheep, sleeping out of doors. We walked past a llama pen and you could dimly make out a llama, lying down and looking at us. And all the penguins seemed to be awake.

We rode on the zoo train and the kids rode the merry-go-round. Everything seemed just a little bit more fun in the dark, and it wasn't as cold as Blossoms was. And, helpfully, there was no charming cafe in which to spend a lot of money on sandwiches. I bought each kid a bottle of lemonade (for some reason, they were thirsty), and that plus the tickets and the train and the carousel was all we spent. I'd do it again next year if the kids want to.

What did we do besides attend lighting displays? Well, we played with our new toys and we ate a lot of treats and we watched a lot of movies. We got the boys to read (or write) every day, and in exchange we let them have an hour of computer time. They had a playdate or two, and once or twice Rocket Boy took them on outings. There must be more than that. How did we get through 17 days?

One of my plans for the holiday was to get some form of exercise every day, and not surprisingly, that didn't happen. The weather wasn't bad, but we did have a number of very cold days. But the main problem is that I have gotten to be a real slug, and that is why I wanted to get a dog, and instead we have Chester the wonder kitty. Mr. Fluffypants does not encourage one to exercise the way a dog would.

But Rocket Boy desperately wanted us to go on hikes, because hiking is as important to him in his role as a parent as reading is to me. I don't get as stressed about hiking with the kids, because that's not something I learned to enjoy until I was older. I have faith that the boys will grow into it. But I do understand that getting kids out in nature is important, and we did manage to take two hikes (in 17 days, sigh). The first was on Christmas Day, and oh my did the twins ever not want to go. We settled for a low-key walk down the Bobolink Trail, and of course they ended up having a lovely time. Silly twins.

The second hike was just before we went back to school/work, and it was the Lichen Loop at Heil Ranch, where we'd gone last summer when my old friend Rita and her kids came to visit. We always said we'd go back in the fall, and didn't, but the winter landscape was fine too, especially since there was barely a patch of snow anywhere on the trails. It just had that barren January look, reminded me a bit of Death Valley at that time of year. Dry and cold, with a sense that almost everything's gone to sleep. And it wasn't really cold, either (you'll note that Kid B is wearing shorts). We even had a picnic, though it was just slightly too cold for it (or we were just slightly underdressed, except for Kid B who was exceptionally underdressed).

When we were there in August, we saw wild turkeys, but I suppose they've gone somewhere else for the winter. But we did see several deer, as tame as sheep. Colorado is such a lovely place to live.

Old year, new year, and what I read/plan to read

I usually write a post about New Year's resolutions, and I'm sure that's coming sometime soon, but I'm kind of stalled on those resolutions right now. I wrote them, as I always do. I took a piece of paper and drew a line down the middle of it. On the left I wrote all the things I could think of that might be called "accomplishments" in 2018. On the right I wrote all my plans for 2019, 24 resolutions in all. And then I looked at them and I felt really really depressed. These plans aren't fun, they're a slog. They're things like "Get at least 7 hours of sleep each night" and "Lift weights at least 2 times a week." There are plans for housecleaning and plans for fixing the house and yard, plans for losing weight and plans for saving money. It's all so ghastly that it makes me want to run away screaming.

So, instead, this post is going to be about one of the very few "resolutions" (and "accomplishments") that's fun: read a whole lot of books, with 78 being the specific goal for 2019. In 2018 I read 86 books, so 78 is not unreasonable, though I won't necessarily make it -- but if I don't, that just means I'll have less fun than I'm hoping to. Reading continues to be my absolute favorite activity in life. I'm so sorry that my own boys don't like to read, but they like to be read to, and maybe someday after I'm gone they'll make books a part of their lives. I cannot imagine wanting to go on living if I couldn't read (or at least listen to) books.

Specific goals for those 78 books? Not really, though I would like to read a lot of the books that have been in my "to read" pile for years now. I'd like to either read them, or get rid of them, make room for other books that I really do want to read. Beyond that the goal is to read whatever pleases me, read widely, read things out of my comfort zone -- but nothing that makes me unhappy (unless it's for the book group or my kids want to read it).

And here is a review of what I read in 2018, by category.

Children's Books (29): In past years I haven't counted children's books, but in 2017 I started to, and in 2018 I went all out. Almost everything on this list I read aloud to the kids, though we did also read a few adult books and I read one or two of these on my own.

• In the Footsteps of Crazy Horse by Joseph Marshall
• Flora & Ulysses by Kate DiCamillo
• Howl's Moving Castle by Diana Wynne Jones
• Escape from Mr. Lemoncello's Library by Chris Grabenstein
• Mr. Lemoncello's Library Olympics by Chris Grabenstein
• Schoolhouse in the Woods by Rebecca Caudill
• Mr. Lemoncello's Great Library Race by Chris Grabenstein
• Dragon Overnight by Mlnowski, Myracle, & Jenkins
• Betsy and Tacy Go Over the Big Hill by Maud Hart Lovelace
• Diary of a Wimpy Kid by Jeff Kinney
• A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
• Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
• The Lost Rainforest by Eliot Schrefer
• Up and Down the River by Rebecca Caudill
• PIE by Sarah Weeks
• Matilda by Roald Dahl
• Castle in the Air by Diana Wynne Jones
• A Wind in the Door by Madeleine L'Engle
• Zane and the Hurricane by Rodman Philbrick
• Story Thieves by James Riley
• The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
• The Penderwicks at Last by Jeanne Birdsall
• Story Thieves: The Stolen Chapters by James Riley
• Prince Caspian by C.S. Lewis
• A Little Princess by Frances Hodgson Burnett
• The Voyage of the Dawn Treader by C.S. Lewis
• Jennifer, Hecate, Macbeth, William McKinley & Me, Elizabeth by E.L. Konigsburg
• Story Thieves: Secret Origins by James Riley
• Land of Stories: The Wishing Spell by Chris Colsen

Books for the Book Group (9): My book group tries to meet every month, but sometimes life interferes. Our choices are pretty random: mostly we read whatever someone in the group has just heard about. This is, as always, an eclectic list: fiction, nonfiction, mystery, science fiction. My favorite might have been Annihilation. I really wanted to read Lincoln in the Bardo, but ended up being disappointed by it.

• January: Everything I Never Told You by Celeste Ng
• February: My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante
• March: The Baker's Passage by Colleen Jiron
• April/May: Lincoln in the Bardo by George Saunders
• June: The Woman Who Smashed Codes by Jason Fagone
• July: Death in Cyprus by M.M. Kaye
• August: The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson
• September/October: Annihilation by Jeff VanderMeer
• November/December: The Three-Body Problem by Cixin Liu

Mysteries/Thrillers (18): Usually my biggest list, but this year it was eclipsed by the children's books. I find that after all these years of reading mysteries, I'm growing a little tired of them, and have been choosing more psychological thrillers, with Tana French a current favorite. I read her first standalone novel, The Witch Elm, right before Christmas and was so disappointed with it. I hope she goes back to her series.

• Faithful Place by Tana French
• Broken Harbor by Tana French
• Y is for Yesterday by Sue Grafton
• The Monogram Murders by Sophie Hannah
• The Spy Who Came in from the Cold by John Le Carre
• Call for the Dead by John Le Carre
• Closed Casket by Sophie Hannah
• Last Bus to Woodstock by Colin Dexter
• The Secret Place by Tana French
• Song of the Lion by Anne Hillerman
• Death in St. Petersburg by Tasha Alexander
• The Trespasser by Tana French
• The Likeness by Tana French
• A Map of the Dark by Karen Ellis
• A Minister's Ghost by Phillip DePoy
• The Witch's Grave by Phillip DePoy
• A Country of Old Men by Joseph Hansen
• The Witch Elm by Tana French

SciFi/Fantasy/Horror (7): In 2017 science fiction was a big part of my list, but this year I took a slight break from it. I enjoyed discovering Jeff VanderMeer, though. After reading Borne, I convinced the book group to read Annihilation (no one liked it but me) and then went on and read the rest of the Southern Reach Trilogy on my own.

• Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman
• Emergence by C.J. Cherryh
• A Winter Haunting by Dan Simmons
• Borne by Jeff VanderMeer
• The Strange Bird by Jeff VanderMeer
• Authority by Jeff VanderMeer
• Acceptance by Jeff VanderMeer

General Fiction (9): This is a seriously random list, nothing caught my fancy and led me to read more of one writer or another. The two Pyms are from my annual re-reading of some of her books, every February.

• Hetty Dorval by Ethel Wilson
• August by Judith Rossner
• Jane & Prudence by Barbara Pym
• Less Than Angels by Barbara Pym 
• Help for the Haunted by John Searles
• Contenders by Erika Krouse
• The Novel Habits of Happiness by Alexander McCall Smith
• Journey into Christmas by Bess Streeter Aldrich
• What If It's Us by Becky Albertalli & Adam Silvera

Memoirs/Biographies (Presidential and other) (10): I like biographies and memoirs, but none of these really thrilled me, though Lost Cat was fun. I read four Presidential biographies this year, but they were all short bios, just checking minor presidents off my list. I'm planning to read a longer biography of Pierce this year, and will also try to read one of Buchanan and then start reading about Lincoln.

• The Goldfish Went on Vacation: A Memoir of Loss (and Learning to Tell the Truth about It) by Patty Dann
• The Blue Jay's Dance: A Memoir of Early Motherhood by Louise Erdrich
• James K. Polk by John Seigenthaler
• Zachary Taylor by John S.D. Eisenhower
• Calypso by David Sedaris (is this where this belongs, or do I need a humor category?)
• When Breath Becomes Air by Paul Kalanithi
• Millard Fillmore by Ted Gottfried
• Lost Cat: A True Story of Love, Desperation, and GPS Technology by Caroline Paul
• Franklin Pierce by Michael F. Holt
• Every Love Story is a Ghost Story: A Life of David Foster Wallace by D.T. Max

General Nonfiction (4): I didn't read a lot of regular nonfiction this year, though it is true that nonfiction and memoir are really hard to separate these days. Every one of these four books contained some personal stuff. I found Lauren Slater's book on antidepressants and other mind drugs very interesting (if depressing), and I would recommend No-Drama Discipline to any parent.

• Monster Hunters: On the Trail with Ghost Hunters, Bigfooters, Ufologists, and Other Paranormal Investigators by Tea Krulos
• Blue Dreams: The Science and the Story of the Drugs that Changed Our Minds by Lauren Slater
• Cat vs Cat: Keeping Peace When You Have More Than One Cat by Pam Johnson-Bennett
• No-Drama Discipline: The Whole-Brain Way to Calm the Chaos and Nurture Your Child's Developing Mind by Daniel J. Siegel & Tina Payne Bryson