Sunday 30 March 2014

BMBR: The Land of Painted Caves BT Jean M. Auel

I almost titled this Shelters of Stone. Does that tell me that it's all been a blur?

I'm done!

Anyway, Painted Caves was a wonderfully detailed journey in a time and place that existed a long time ago, as seen through the eyes of the peoples who lived then. The archeologist in me loved it.

I'm finally done!

The rest of me found the experience of reading the first six hundred pages or so to be an excruciatingly painful process. Painful. So, so, painful.

I can finally read something else!

Either when I was younger I appreciated the detail more readily, or now that I'm older I find that extreme redundancy in writing to be so very boring.

Thank goodness I'm done!

Sure I wanted to know how Jondalar's and Ayla's adventures ended, but I felt that I didn't need a six hundred page summary of the first five books before the last couple hundred pages.

I love that Ms. Auel does so much research for her books, I really do, but she could probably take a couple lessons from Diana Gabaldon in writing style. Sure, she does lots of research, too, and yes, her books are hundreds, if not over a thousand pages long, but you can't put them down. And, if you buy the fourth book first not knowing that it's in a series, and start reading said book, you realize by the second page that you should probably go buy and read the first three books first because Ms. Gabaldon is not going to sum up her previous books for you.

Back to The Land of Painted Caves.

You know what? I'm going to do you a favour. I'm going to presume that you've read the other books, and I'm going to sum up the first part of Painted Caves for you in one sentence, or so, and then I'm going to tell you from where to start reading the book so as to avoid Severely Repetitive Redundancy Pain.

SPOILER ALERT! I'm not responsible if you keep reading this post from this point forward and then decide to get all pissy about it. If you want to read the book in it's entirety without knowing what's happened first, stop right now.

The summary:

Jondalar and Ayla are living with Jondalar's mother's cave, their daughter Jonayla is growing up, but Ayla is really busy training as an acolyte for the Zelandonii, and what with all the traveling to summer meetings and a donier tour to see all the important painted caves, and with all the visiting and ceremonies and rituals and training, Ayla doesn't get to spend as much time with her family as she wants or needs to.

Now you can start reading from chapter thirty (page 580). It will start moving along a little faster, I promise.

If you really wanted the descriptions of the caves, do yourself a favour and find a picture book on cave paintings. I may even have an Archaeology textbook that I could lend you.

If you really want a summary of the end of a book, I can do that too. Let me know.

Are You a True Friend/Decent Person?

Are you ever on social media sites, and do you ever get those "pictures" that "ask" you to forward them on by shaming you if you don't? A friend of mine answered the challenge:


LOTS of thingies on here demanding, I mean asking, me to say in one word how we met. (And challenging me to scroll down to read the entire post.) Then I'm supposed to copy said thingy onto my wall. This, apparently, proves that I read your wall.
Ok--firstly, you know how we met. If you don't know how we met, you should probably stop drinking. Because chances are pretty good that if you are one of my FB friends, we have actually met. And I'm pretty sure I remember how we met.
Secondly, I'm not reading anyone's wall. It's called a news feed, or something. You know, that long page that you can scroll down to see what all your FB friends are doing/posting. (I barely have time for that--I'd never have time to open everyone's wall individually).
Thirdly, I don't do those "you must copy/share/repost this picture to prove that you are a decent person/true friend" thingies. (I never did chain letters when they were done by email/snail mail, either.)
Fourthly, as my friend, you know that I write all of this with humour in my heart, and a wink in my eye 
Lastly, and most importantly, I love you all 



Monday 24 March 2014

Random Thoughts March 24 2014

Traffic Circle Etiquette: signal if you're leaving the circle -- I'm not going to assume that it's okay for me to enter, and I'm going to be very annoyed with you if I had to wait for no reason. And, feel free to signal left when you're staying in. That's a nice clear level of communication right there.

It's almost daylight and it's not even seven!

Wouldn't you make sure that you hand in your time sheets so that your company's bookkeeper could write your paycheck? Cutoff dates are clearly listed, people.

Thursday 20 March 2014

Random Thoughts March 20, 2014

Did you really think that I was filling the water reservoir in the lunchroom Keurig so that you could make a cup of coffee? Really? Wait your turn.

Vincent does not get enough exercise time on Beauty and the Beast. And if someone could hide his exercise shirts, that would be great.

Does the "Terrible Twos" ever end? Because I think that there's some kind of Richter scale thing going on with the age, here. Maybe it's easier to be sassy when your vocabulary is bigger. . .

Wake up early for exercise, or for sexercise? Yeah, I picked that one, too.

Only three hundred more pages to go, and I can read other books!

Make "special surprise inside" cupcakes with your three-year-old, don't get upset about any mess that ensues, enjoy your time together, and then watch said child pick apart the cupcake to get at the chocolate egg inside. Throw out the actual cupcake.

Wednesday 12 March 2014

"Steve Martin Is a Jerk."

Completely random quote from our 3.5 year-old while driving in the car.

Well, maybe not completely random.

I once called a fellow driver a jerk (for driving too slowly. Ahem), and of course that became the word of the day. So we calmly explained that the only person that K1 can call a jerk is Steve Martin. It of course took days to explain why because we also had to explain "actors", "pretend", "movies", "characters", and "jerk." Thankfully we didn't have to explain the late seventies/eighties.

Still, that was a couple of months ago, so it's still pretty random.

Sorry, Steve Martin.

Tuesday 11 March 2014

101 Things to do for Children: # 57 - Learn to say, "No..."

Number 57 of the 101 Things Parents Can Do For Children is  Learn to say, "No," without anger, and with firmness and conviction. Not everything children want is appropriate.

Sometimes, it's hard to leave, maybe not so much the anger part out of it, but to leave the frustration part out of the word "No."

But I whole-heartedly agree that children do need to be told "No" when they are asking for things that are inappropriate, for things that are inappropriate in that moment (IE no juice/sugar before bed, thank you very much), or when instead of asking, they're whining and/or demanding for things, and are essentially being very rude.

A common utterance in our house is "What does whining (or crying) get you? Nothing."

And the word "Please" better be tacked on to that sentence somewhere (yes, we model this--even when I'm frustrated and super irritated I try to always say "Please", as in, "NO! I said please come brush your teeth, or I will take all of your trains away").

And, it's not, "Whine whine whine." "What's the magic word?" "Please." It's, "Whine whine whine." "What's the magic word?" "Please." "In a whole sentence. And without the whining. Please."

"Could I have some milk, Mommy. Please?"

That may have been a bit whiny, but it will do.

Sunday 9 March 2014

Busy Mom Book Review (BMBR): Last Hit by Jessica Clare and Jen Frederick

(Okay, firstly, I've realized that since I'm not doing much for synopses in these BR's, I should at the very least give you a genre. So far they've all been some form of romance (smut, actually - for the most part they have had lots of sex in them). Bottom line: my husband was really happy with my level of amourousness that reading these books produced. And, I didn't lose any brain cells.)

All right, let's get to the BR, shall we?

Last Hit, which I came across via Frederick (see last review), is by far one of the most erotic books that I have ever read.

;)

That's right. This post is labelled "Sex after kids".

Saturday 8 March 2014

Busy Mom Book Review: Jen Frederick

I've read Unspoken and Undeclared. For " new adult" they're pretty good. They might not be high literature, but the writing is very readable (IE I didn't feel like I was losing brain cells while reading them). They have subject matter - underground fighting etc. - that, while I've heard of said subject matter, is not part of my life, and it's a nice escape from the snot and poop and Cheerios that is my life.

 And at fiveish bucks an eBook, they're totally worth it. I see she's got a new one or two available. Bottom line - I'll buy more Jen Frederick.

Sunday 2 March 2014

I Have a Very Tidy House

Well, kind of. Regardless, I hurt. Everywhere.

K1 looked into K2's clean room (which had been destroyed last night by the both of them) and excitedly exclaimed "Let's make a mess in here!!!!"

Someone put an immediate stop to him so he'll live 😉.

Busy Mom Book Review: When it Rains by Lisa De Jong

Beautiful story about a girl and her highschool sweetheart/best friend, the assault that she suffers by the highschool football hero, and the guy who rolls into town and brings her back to life.

I won't tell you if this love triangle has a happy ending or not, but as you read, it's an easy guess as to how it's going to end.

I wouldn't have complained if I'd bought this as a real book for full price, but I don't need to do that. I'm happy that I spent four bucks or so for the Kindle version (dammit! I just went to Kindle to double check the price. After the Rain is a buck. So much for not buying more ebooks until I'm done slogging through Shelters of Stone! And, I suppose that this answers the question as to whether or not I'd buy more Lisa De Jong: yup).

Go for it. But keep a box of tissues handy...