—Heather’s list of fun/challenging/interesting things to do:

*#3. Make a strawberry cake from scratch.

I used this recipe, and somewhat oddly for me, I didn’t even fiddle with it. And not only did I make this yummy cake, but I made it using strawberries from our own garden. And of course, I had darling Heather in mind, not only as I baked but also I ate this scrumptiousness.

—Pat’s list of movies:

#25. Fried Green Tomatoes.

I’d actually seen this movie before, but sheesh, that was couple decades ago and I didn’t remember much other than the fact that I’d enjoyed it. I wanted to find a movie to watch while doing a little scrapbooking, so I started checking netflix to find a movie from Pat’s list that was available streaming. When I noticed that this was only going to be available through the first of July, I knew that was the one. Thank you, Pat–I loved seeing this movie again. All the more with you in my thoughts as I did so.

—Jean’s list of creative endeavors:

#28. Write a letter in a circle, from the outside to the inside.

Easy to Jean in mind for this one, as the letter was to her.

50×50:

#16. Bake 50 different kinds of cookies.

World’s Greatest Peanut Butter Cookies. I’m not sure their name is really accurate, but they are darn good. Though I made them with crunchy peanut butter, you know, because why wouldn’t you?!! (40/50)

#14. Drink 50 different beers.

Cardinal Pale Ale. (27/50)

Prairie Standard. (28/50)

Hayseed. (29/50)

#24. Write 50 handwritten letters.

To Care, the letter queen. (11/50)

And to Jean. (12/50)

#37. Read 50 books I’d never heard of before buying/checking out from the library.

Genocide by Jane Springer. (31/50)

#41. Read 50 non-fiction books, each about a different country.

An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President by Randal Robinson (10/50)

#44. Read 50 science/nature books.

Songbird Journeys: Four Seasons in the Lives of Migratory Birds by Miyoko Chu (16/50)

Our Million and One (most of these items have pictures with them on the linked page):

#31. Drink a beer brewed in each of the 50 states.

Nebraska–Cardinal Pale Ale by the Nebraska Brewing Company (15/50)

Oklahoma–Prairie Standard by Prairie Artisan Ales (16/50)

Ohio–Burning River Pale Ale by Great Lakes Brewing Company (17/50)

New Hampshire–Hayseed, Smuttynose Brewing Company (18/50)

#99. Eat at a diner. The Scottsville Diner on July 10th. Done!

#132. Try every type of Deans Beans.

Arctic Sunrise (1/31-ish)

#184. Go to the Lilac Festival. This was actually in May, but I’d forgotten to record it.

#185. Go back to Mount Hope Cemetery. On July 3rd.

#190. Read Neverwhere. We finished up on July 9th. We both loved it!

#211. Have a coffee at Boulder Coffee Company. On July 3rd.

#214. Visit every branch of the Monroe County Library system.

Webster Public Library in mid-June. It’s in a strip mall, which seems odd. Looks are deceiving though, as it’s actually fairly big and rather nice inside.

Scottsville Public Library on July 10th. Very small, but very cool. It’s housed in a quaint old building, that I think was a church.

#256. Eat at a deli. Went to Pelligrinos on July 3rd. I had what was quite possibly the best sub of my life–the Mediterranean sans the olives. Rich had the Cuban and really loved his too.

#334. Play bocce. At the family reunion on the 4th of July.

Reading Challenges:

*Read the World.

Haiti, non-fiction setting: An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President by Randall Robinson

*Since I Was Born.

1997–The House You Pass on the Way by Jacqueline Woodson.

*104×4.

#51. birds

Songbird Journeys: Four Seasons in the Lives of Migratory Birds by Miyoko Chu

#88. the Caribbean

An Unbroken Agony: Haiti, From Revolution to the Kidnapping of a President by Randall Robinson

*Read a million pages before I die.

I’m now down to 949,496 pages to go.

…grateful. For the glorious cool weather that has marked this summer thus far. For reaching that point in the summer where Rich gets to come early each day and do much of his work here. For having Gray’s IHIP finished and sent off for next school year.

…sad. Time will eventually ease the pain of losing both Baker and Lucky to a point where it’s not so palpable, but for now the empty spaces in our home are still so undeniable, so unavoidable. And Aldo’s old age is being so terribly unkind to her in ways that hurt our hearts, and we know that the day isn’t far off where her happy moments are so negligible that the cures aren’t worth the stress they cause her. And maybe this sounds silly, but I am still mourning the loss of our garden–so much work down the drain, so much food not to be.

…feeling helpless. If ever there was an understatement.

…seeing beauty everywhere. In the way the sun is filtering down through the trees to dapple the swamp. In the little downy woodpecker searching out his breakfast. In the sunflower outside the kitchen window, thanks to one of the chipmunk’s gardening skills.

…itching to make. Food. And gifts. And plans. And memories.

…looking forward. To things big and things small. To things near and things far. To things definite and things please-oh-please maybe.

Anyway, I was really excited to hear about the 24 in 48 Readathon happening this weekend. Sounds sort of perfect for my needs right now–a laid back, but not too laid back, sort of readathon. In which the goal is to read for 24 hours in the period from 12:01am Saturday to 12:00am Monday. Did I get those times right? Whatever, guess it would be easier to say on July 11th and 12th, huh? So yes, lots of reading gets done, but there need be no sleep sacrificed to the cause.

I probably won’t do updates or anything on the blog, but will more likely pop on Instagram. But yeah, there must be great care taken to not let it become a major time suck that makes it harder to complete those 24 hours. (Not that anyone is going to come along stamping readers’ foreheads with “24 in 48 Loser” or anything if they don’t read for a full 24 hours anyway.)

My very loosey goosey goals:

*Read for 24 hours. Duh.

*Finish these five books that I have started:

*Get at least a little bit of reading done for the coming school year.

*Start something new, something completely for fun. As in it’s just a book that is calling to me at the moment it’s time to pick up a new book. Maybe it will be a comic, maybe it will be a true crime book, maybe it will be a middle grade book…who knows…just something that sounds fun in the moment and that I have no ulterior reason for reading.

So yeah. Hopefully on Monday I’ll be back recording how wonderfully successful I was. Or not. But I’m not going to sweat it. Nope, nope, nope.

• “The Cask of Amontillado” by Edgar Allan Poe (reread)
• “The Fall of the House of Usher” by Edgar Allan Poe
• “The Masque of the Red Death” by Edgar Allan Poe
• “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe (reread)

Books finished:

• Little Brother by Cory Doctorow
• Tropical Fish: Tales from Entebbe by Doreen Baingana
• Skip•Beat! Volume 1 by Yoshiki Nakamura
• Skip•Beat! Volume 2 by Yoshiki Nakamura
• Skip•Beat! Volume 3 by Yoshiki Nakamura
• Skip•Beat! Volume 4 by Yoshiki Nakamura
• Skip•Beat! Volume 5 by Yoshiki Nakamura
• The Sharing Knife: Legacy volume 2 by Lois McMaster Bujold
• Skip•Beat! Volume 6 by Yoshiki Nakamura
• Genocide by Jane Springer

Categories (some obviously more meaningful than others):

–Fiction: 9

–Non-fiction: 1

–Short story collections: 1

–Manga: 6

–Authored by women: 9

–Authored by men: 1

–By authors of color: 7

–By lgbt authors/with lgbt main characters (to the best of my knowledge): 0

–Authors from countries other than the U.S.: (Canada/UK, Uganda, Japan)

–Major settings in fiction: U.S. (San Francisco, Los Angeles), Uganda (Entebbe, Kampala), Japan (Tokyo), alternate North America

***Agonizingly, the settings covered in the only non-fiction book I finished this month pretty much encompass the entire planet.

–Rereads: 0

–Classics: 0

–Print books: 9

–Ebooks: 0

–Audiobooks: 1

–Made me cry: 2

–Made me laugh aloud: 1

–People who influenced reading choices: Ana, Memory, Eva

Very brief reactions:

~Little Brother by Cory Doctorow. Holy guacamole, did I freakin’ love this book!!! It’s one of those books that makes me want to yell at people, castigating them for not telling me to read it. Except of course I can’t, because Ana did highly recommend it years ago when she read it, and was the one to first put it on my radar. It was compelling, and I pretty much found myself wanting to pick it up all the time. And it scared the crap out of me–because it’s just too. damn. plausible. And it made me cry.

Quote:

What if I got hit by lightning while walking with an umbrella? Ban umbrellas! Fight the menace of lightning!

Reason for reading now: Homeschooling. Source: Bought hardback new shortly after it came out. New-to-me words:

• salmagundi–a general mixture; a miscellaneous collection

~Tropical Fish: Tales from Entebbe by Doreen Baingana. Freakin’ loved this book too! A short story collection, following three Ugandan sisters growing up shortly after Idi Amin’s rule in Uganda. One story is told from Patti’s perspective, when she was a child going hungry at boarding school. Two are told from Rosa’s perspective, the first also set in boarding school and involving her trying to magically enchant one of her teachers, and the second written as a letter while she’s dying of AIDS to the man she thinks infected her. But most of the stories are told from Christine’s (the youngest) perspective, starting from when she is a small child and following her through young adulthood. We see her grow from playing with her mother’s forbidden jewelry to her first kiss to moving on her own to Los Angeles and finally moving home again after eight years in the U.S. I found Baingana’s writing utterly beautiful. She made me love these girls, and she broke my heart, and she reminded me just how wonderful and yet how difficult growing up can be. Quote:

We watch the tiny, brilliant sparks, like difficult insights, hesitant happiness or seconds ticking, fleeting by, uncatchable.

Reason for reading now: I started reading it in the bookstore, and just couldn’t stop.

Source: Bought used from bookstore.

~Skip•Beat! Volumes 1-6 by Yoshiki Nakamura. I admit that I was not immediately hooked, though Kyoko pretty much won my heart from the start. I just wasn’t sure that it was going to be a series for me, as I’m not really into show business or celebrity. But it turns out that is one of the things now intriguing me–learning about this unique world. A lot is intriguing, actually. Kyoko is freakin’ adorable, but she is so very complex. As people tend to be in the real world, right? I seriously adore her! And I love to watch her battle her inner demons. Despite the whole anger/revenge thing, Kyoko can’t seem to help being a sweet person at heart. It’s extremely early in the series, so maybe things will change, but for now it’s oh-so-frickin’ easy to root for Kyoko’s victory when it comes to obtaining her revenge against Sho. To be honest, I almost wish she’d go for the more direct route of kicking him in his pretty face and smashing his nose. (Sorry, I will put “evil Debi” away now.) And then there’s Ren. Yep, he’s definitely got me interested. I really don’t have him figured out at all yet…but something about him makes me like him. And at this point, maybe my favorite thing is watching Kyoko’s and Kanae’s burgeoning friendship. So anyway–am I sticking with it? Yep. At this point I’m having so much fun with it that I can’t imagine stopping. I think the storyline that cinched it for me was how Kyoko so very cleverly broke through Maria’s heartache over her father and made her see things in a different way. (Maria, btw, reminded me very much of Maria in Uminecko. The name thing, of course. The lone young girl amidst a bunch of teens and adults. The sort of brattishness, which comes from a very legitimate place. And they even look a lot alike.) And the audition story, well that just made my love grow! Because Kyoko and Kanae–*happy sigh* I expect I’ll have more volumes in my July reading wrap-up.

Reason for reading now: Memory’s enthusiasm was impossible to resist!

Source: Library.

~The Sharing Knife: Legacy (volume 2) by Lois McMaster Bujold. This series is sooooo different from anything I’ve ever read before. If I had to describe this series to myself, I’m not sure I’d have ever given them a chance, to be quite honest. Luckily for me, when Eva talked about this series to me and when I read her post, I somehow came away with a different picture in my mind than what the reality is. Absolutely everything she said is dead-on true, but somehow my mind just imagined something different. Anyway, this series could be described as romance or as fantasy, as the elements of both are unmistakable. And they mesh so beautifully. There are so many things I love about this series–the humor is delightful and often unexpected, the overwhelming respect that Fawn and Dag have for one another and their differing cultures, the setting brought so beautifully to life, and the fantastical elements that are so different from anything in my (admittedly limited) experience.

Reason for reading now: Because I enjoyed volume one.

Source: Scribd. (Audiobook)

~Genocide by Jane Springer. As an elective this coming year, Gray and I will be delving into genocide and human rights. I was looking for a few short books to start the year with that would provide an overview of the things we’ll be delving more deeply into through the year. I’m happy to report that this book fits the bill perfectly. While I never felt that the author played on the reader’s emotions or let her own feelings interfere with the way she wrote the book, it was abundantly clear that she cared deeply about human rights–and that was something I appreciated very much.

Reason for reading now: Homeschool prep.

Source: Library.

2. Watching the garden continue to grow and enjoying the fruits (and veggies ) of our labor.

3. Spending time in my scrap area. Working on an album documenting our summer. The good, the bad, the boring.

4. Hearing happy news from friends. Can’t wait to see those first pictures of your sweet baby girl, N!

5. Venturing back into the online world again. Reading blogs. Instagram. Emailing (though I’ll probably always suck at that).

6. Friday morning trips to the downtown library, followed by coffee, and maybe  lunch out. (This was supposed to start a few weeks back, but something keeps getting in the way.)

7. Lots and lots of iced tea.

8. Starting to knock some things off of our family fun lists for the summer.

9. Trying to fill my summer reading bingo card.

Sometimes it feels like there’s only room for one thing at a time. How can I search for and experience joy when there is so much suck in the world? Or oppositely, how can I let the world outside in when I’m trying to create a happy life for this family? I *know* it’s not an either/or. In fact, I think either extreme is an impossibility. But it’s not easy for me. I wonder if others struggle with this as much as I do, or if most people have it figured out. I don’t know the answer, other than to just keep trying.

But today is a day where it’s easy to feel excitement and enthusiasm for life, as it’s our last day of school. And as I’ve been working on Gray’s final quarterly report over the last week, it’s almost ready to go so even I will be able to put this past school year in the past. We’re going out to eat tonight to celebrate. And we’re all supposed to have ready a list of 5 things we’d like to do this summer. The instructions were to make these items reasonable, with maybe one sort of big thing. (Though I strongly suspect that Max’s view of “reasonable” may force him to rewrite his list–we’ll see if “go to Hawaii” shows up. ) Everyone knows that we likely won’t be able to do everything we come up with, but we really want to focus on having fun as a family this summer. It’s unnerving to think how few summers we might possibly have left where we’re all still living under the same roof.

I don’t really believe in omens, but I have to admit that I’m tempted to take the bluebird outside my window right now as a sign of happy days to come. And hey, even if not, he’s making me plenty happy right now as I watch him…

As much as I seem willing to spill my guts when it comes to my personal life, I so very seldom talk about the things in world that matter to me. Things like social justice and the environment and mental illness. Because I am afraid of bumbling it all up because I am so horrible at putting my thoughts into words. So instead I sign petitions and write to my representatives and give what small amount of money I can. We arranged our mini-vacation a few years back to attend a protest rally and march in our state capital. Maybe most importantly, I try so very hard to make sure my children are growing up socially aware. None of these things are bad, but they’re not enough.

As Vasilly so beautifully wrote in this post,

Acts of hatred and terrorism cannot be fought by being silent or on the defense. That’s not how the world is going to change.

I will make mistakes, out of ignorance and because of my privilege. But being called out on those mistakes is a win, because I will learn and grow. I will not write eloquent essays, because I simply don’t possess the skills. This blog is is my own personal space to write about my life (and my own personal boring life will continue to be what I largely write about), but knowing that others can read it has kept me from writing about all the things that occupy my mind. Maybe if I had answers, it would be easier to shake my cowardice. But I shouldn’t be allowing the fact that I don’t keep me from writing about the questions.

But where does one begin?!! How do we rid this country of racism, when so many people refuse to acknowledge it exists?!! Black men and boys are murdered on a regular basis, not uncommonly by the police, and what do we hear? People proclaiming that if the victim had just done such and such/had not done such and such, blah blah blah bullshit bullshit bullshit…instead of holding the actual murderers accountable. Every time some horrid racist act is committed, there are people spouting every ridiculous reason they can dream up to explain why said atrocity was not an act of racism. Nine black people are murdered in a racist massacre, nine families are devastated, not to mention countless friends and a church and a community. Contrast the words of forgiveness of some of the relatives of those slain with those of the many assholes trying to preempt this tragedy for their own purposes (such as those claiming it was a hate crime against Christians or the jerkwad NRA official blaming the pastor of the church because he was for gun control).

As a human being, this all hurts so much, so deeply. And I’m white and privileged and can actually choose to not think about racism and hatred, to not listen to the news and stay off the Internet, for a few hours or a few days when it feels like too much. What must it feel like to be black or brown and not have that luxury? Worry seems to come part and parcel with parenthood. But my children are white, and based solely on that, I’m free of countless worries that black parents have to face on a never-ending basis.

I don’t have the answers. I know that we all need to be part of the solution. I know that white people need to stop and listen, REALLY LISTEN, to the voices of people of color. I think it’s far too easy sometimes, when you have a liberal outlook and truly believe that all people deserve equality, to think you know what others need. Probably more so when you have friends and neighbors and coworkers and relatives of color. But face it, that doesn’t give one perfect insight into what it is truly like to live as a person of color in a racist society. Yeah, I really don’t know the answers. But I will continue to listen.

I had hoped that somehow, knowing this was coming would make it easier. How ridiculous was that.

Two weeks to the day after saying goodbye to Lucky due to colon cancer, we had to say goodbye to Baker. He’d been battling congestive heart failure for a year and a half. The fact that he fought it for a year and a half (most dogs don’t last a year after diagnosis) says a great deal about his stubbornness. As crazy as his stubbornness could drive us all, it was one of things I loved about him. There were so many damn things to love about him. His patience with Lucky and Aldo–seriously, he was so incredible with his kitty siblings. His funny pig snorting when he caught the scent of something. His classic beagle howl. The way he always had to sing along when we sang “Happy Birthday.” His never-ending puppyhood when it came to snow. His complete and total love of Christmas.

We’re all walking around in dazes, our home has been irreparably changed, the emptiness left behind is vast. But will all carry Bacon in our hearts forever, right there beside Luck.

–Okay. So first up: 50×50. I can’t remember when I started this, but it’s over 5 years ago. Six maybe? Seven? My lack of progress is seriously shameful though.

• I only have 2 items completely finished (#15–try 50 new recipes, which I completed in 2012 and #47–watch 50 seasons of TV on DVD/Netflix, which I completed this March).
• I’m at least halfway through 7 items (#8–donate 50 trunk-loads of stuff to charity thrift stores, #11–watch 50 documentaries, #14–drink 50 different beers, #16–bake 50 different kinds of cookies, #37–read 50 books I hadn’t heard of before buying or checking out from the library, #38–read 50 books borrowed from someone else, and #45–read 50 short story or essay collections).
• There are another 21 items that I’m at least a fifth of the way through (#3–visit 50 parks, #7–make a donation to 50 different charities, #9–give away 50 of my books to someone specific because I think they would enjoy it, #10–support 50 local independent businesses, #12–try 50 new restaurants, #18–can/freeze/dry/otherwise preserve 50 different items, #19–feed 50 different people in our home, #20–buy 50 fair trade gifts, #21–buy 50 Etsy or other handmade gifts, #22–make 50 one-of-a-kind gifts, #24–send 50 handwritten letters, #29–upcycle 50 things, #30–do 50 environmentally friendly things, #31–take 50 pictures I absolutely love, #39–read 50 classics, #40–read a book set in each of the 50 states, #42–read 50 memoirs, autobiographies, biographies, etc., #43–read 50 award-winning books, #44–read 50 science/nature books, #48–find 50 new bands/artists that I like enough to download something by them, and #50–have sex in 50 different places).
• If I’ve tabulated correctly, that means I have 20 items that are less than 20% completed. Yikes.

(I will update these as I hit the 10, 25, or 50 mark of an item.)

–I have 14 different lists that people I love very generously made me for my happiness project. I freakin’ love working on these, so it’s sort of ridiculous that I’ve made so little progress.

• Three of Chris’s TV shows/movies.
• Five of Chris’s books.
• One of Pat’s movies.
• Two of Annie’s books.
• Three of Heather’s books.
• Six of Heather’s fun/challenging/interesting things to do. (Plus one bonus one.)
• Eleven of Ana’s books.
• Five of Ana’s songs.
• Three of Kara’s books.
• Zero of Kelly’s Canadian books. (Don’t quite have a full list of 50 yet.)
• Five of Rich’s books. (Don’t have a full list of 50 yet.)
• Zero of Eva’s non-fiction books. (Don’t have a full list of 50 yet.)
• Zero of Eva’s documentaries. (Only have one for this list so far though.)
• Zero of Jean’s creative endeavors. (Some are underway.)

(I will likely update every item for this project, because every item is precious to me.)

–I started my “read a million pages before I die” project on Nov. 27, 2013.

• As of the end of May, I have 953,788 pages to go. I’d better live a long life at this rate.

(I think I’ll update this at each 10,000 pages mark.)

–I have several personal reading challenges, none of which I’m particularly kicking butt on.

• Classics Won’t Kill You. The goal is to read 50 classics in 10 years. I started on Jan. 1, 2014, and I’ve only read 5 in that time. So yep, behind schedule.
• Read/reread all of Stephen King’s books. Started on Jan. 1, 2012. I’ve completed 9.
• Read/reread all the Prey books by John Sandford. Started on Dec. 1, 2011. I’ve completed  4.
• Read/reread all the Alex Delaware books by Jonathan Kellerman. I decided to do this because Mom keeps passing them along to me after she reads them, and I have a big box of unread ones under my bed. But I decided that I really should go back and reread the ones I read ages ago first. Started this in July of 2014. Have only completed 1.
• Read all the Printz winners and honors books. Sheesh–I’ve only read 12.
• Read all the Carnegie Medal winners. I’ve only read 6.
• Read all the Newbery Medal winners. I’ve read 16.

(I will probably update each of these each time I hit a 5 book mark.)

• Since I Was Born. The goal is to read a book published in year since I was born. I started in November of 2013, and I’ve thus far completed 36.

(I will update this one each time I fill in a year.)

• 104×4. The goal is to read 4 books from each of 104 categories. The categories are mostly topics, but there are a few genres and miscellaneous things thrown in as well. It’s purely at my discretion as to if a book works for a category, but I am keeping them meaningful (for example, the mere mention of an island wouldn’t qualify a book for inclusion in the “island” category. I started this in November of 2013, and thus far have completed 11 categories (mythology, war, ghosts, feminism, mental illness, post-apocalyptic/dystopian, boarding school/private school, glbq, superheroes, islands, and racism).

(I will update this each time I finish a category.)

• Ana’s Ladies: Diana Wynne Jones, Frances Hardinge, and Eva Ibbotson. I’ve been throwing around the idea of doing this for quite a while, but just never made the time to actually write it down. Figured now was as good a time as any to get this underway. There are actually tons of authors that I associate with my dear friend Ana. But for some reason these three ladies just form a trio in my mind. I have zero doubt that I will adore their books, and yet I’ve only read a single work from their combined oeuvres.

(I will update with each 5 book mark.)

• Read The World. The goal being to read 3 works for each country–1. a novel or short story set there, 2. a non-fiction work set there, and 3. a book of any sort by an author of that country. I’m not entirely sure when I started this, but from what I could deduce, it must have been in late 2011 or early 2012. Thus far I have only completed 3 countries (Japan, England–because yes, I divided the U.K. into England, Wales, Northern Ireland, and Scotland, and the U.S.)

(I will update each time I finish a country.)

–And last, but far from last in my heart, is our (as in Rich and me) million and one project. Started in September of 2013. We’ve only completed 13 items so far.

(I will update with each item, because, like with my happiness project, each item is precious to me.)

So yes, Debra Anne, you’ve got loads of fun stuff in your future…and I think it’s time you got cracking!