A Wednesday list

1. We have family visiting from out of town this week! I always love family visits, especially when they are long enough to be leisurely.

2. The littlest munchkin turned 2 yesterday (thus the family visit). It surprises me every time I think about it! But I hear that's how it goes with kids. He's a pretty cool kid (even with the beefed up toddler emotions). He's funny and silly and affectionate and joyful.

3. Reading-wise: I read Girl on the Train recently. More accurately, I read the first two-thirds and skimmed the last third. I was spoiled on the ending, and while that doesn't always mean I don't finish a book, sometimes it does. Overall it was was a pretty good mystery, but not my favorite. After I finished it I shopped my own bookshelves and finally picked up a book someone had given me to read several years ago. I gave The Heart is a Lonely Hunter a solid chance, but it's going to be a DNF for me. Party of my problem may have been the writing style -- it was written in the forties and the phrasing and style felt a little clunky -- but nothing really sparked my interest enough to keep going. It wasn't really depressing, but definitely leaned toward melancholy. I have a guess that any book written post WWI and pre-WWII probably leans that way, and if I were feeling scholarly I might seek out a large sample size of books written during that time and put my theory to the test (I mean...think about Hemingway). But I'm not feeling all that scholarly so....

4. I picked up Buried Heart, by Kate Elliott, the third in a trilogy I'm looking forward to finishing. I'm also slowly working my way through Business Boutique by Christy Wright and would like to get started on my pre-release copy of Finish, by Jon Acuff. Naturally, with all these books I want to read, I'll probably waste time re-watching episodes of Friends on Netflix.

5. I'm pretty much over summer. Let me rephrase that: I'm over sweating and trying to keep my house from being run over by bugs. However, the reality of living in Houston is that we've still got a ways to go. So I'll say it and take a deep breath and then accept reality and try to find some silver linings (like the nice long growing season in Texas and the plentiful and cheap fresh and delicious produce). Because there's no point in getting too worked up over something that you can't change.