Well hello friends. Yes, SHE… is me.

My remaining gray cells have percolated a title for today’s post. Here’s what came: She Got Up Out of Bed.

If you’re new around here, I post mostly delicious during the week and muse on the weekend. Try to fill you in behind the scenes around here, write about family, whatever’s on my mind.

She Got Up Out of Bed might ring a bell if you’ve read Haven Kimmel’s childhood memoir A Girl Named Zippy. I love that book, she makes me laugh. Out loud. (More books to love here.) The sequel to Haven’s A Girl Named Zippy is She got Up Off the Couch which also makes me laugh. (Not quite as loud.) So thanks for the inspiration, Haven.

Yeah, so it’s been an odd month around here. A lot has happened and some of it involves me being in bed. And finally getting up. Involves other things too. Things have been a little stormy, and they’re hopefully gonna calm soon.

A few weeks ago now I ran out of Cover Girl Perfect Point Plus self-sharpening eye pencil in espresso. Don’t think that’s happened in nearly a decade. (Tho’ I did find a Mary Kay violet one from the 90’s in an old makeup bag. I know I know, pitch it every six months.) Didn’t really matter anyway. Didn’t need eyeliner because I didn’t go anywhere. However, I have been meaning to update my makeup and skincare collection. Maybe this is the perfect opportunity! I am definitely keeping my Cover Girl, but I’ve been reading a lot of The Ordinary reviews and I’m liking what I see!

One morning on the way down to breakfast I passed a very large black bug on the threshold of the stairs. A hundred legs. I froze, breathlessly bolted to grab a shoe. I returned to a long fuzzy black thread looped over. Yeah. Not sure if it’s the eyeliner that helps my vision or these 43-year old eyes are just failing fast.

There’ve been other things. Nearly a month ago I was making dinner. Spaghetti and meatballs for my boys. The water at a full boil, I drop in the pasta. I’ve done it a hundred times. This time the water surges up when the pasta hits. Practically leaps out of the pot. No kidding. My feet are bare, I jump fast. Water on the stove top. Water on the floor. Hear a strange noise coming from the oven below. It shorts out from the water. Automatically puts itself into auto-lock mode – like for the self-clean cycle. Here’s the weird thing: the auto-lock feature for my self-cleaning oven hasn’t worked in years. Crazy, huh? The digital clock starts blinking, then disappears altogether. The kiss of death.

We let it dry out for a week, flip the breakers, etc. Nothing. The stove’s fifteen years old. So the age-old question. Do we call the repair guy, pay the hundred bucks to find out it’s history? Or put that Ben Franklin towards a new oven? We opted for the latter because it’s a wall oven, has a separate gas cooktop. Width of the old styles are different than the new ones. Meaning a custom installation for a new oven, shaving down cabinets etc.

The GE guy arrives. Completely devoid of personality, informs me with deadpan face:

“No screws on the outside of this oven. No way I can even get inside for a look with it locked from the inside. You’ll seriously have to take a sledge hammer to get it out. Tape up the glass good with masking tape because the glass is tempered — the beads’ll be everywhere.”

Really? (That’ll be $100 ma’am.) I know I know, don’t shoot the messenger.

That, my friends, is how I found out I was in the market for a new custom-installation oven. And then there’s the month with no oven. Nada nada. Gotta get creative cooking for a family of six, let alone posting blog recipes.

So not too many days later my brother has a bad accident, falls off a ladder painting his house. From twelve feet up. Breaks three limbs. It’s been quite a long road for him so far, and he’s got quite a ways to go still. He’s making good progress and he’ll be ok longterm, thank God. (Learn more about the accident here.) So naturally I go to visit him in the hospital. As I leave, I purposely wash my hands in the last restroom I pass on the way out. Consciously think, “Sure don’t want to pick up any germs.”  Seriously, the hospital’s the only place I went that entire week.

Two days later, I get a tickle in my throat. Grows and grows into the full-blown flu. And then I land in bed for five days straight. Headache, terrible headache. Fever. Congestion. Cough. Never had the real flu before. No fun and I don’t recommend it. And seriously, who gets the flu in September?

A kind friend offers to shop for me, so I finally venture out of my bed to check the pantry, refrigerator. Pen a grocery list. Bleary eyed, sit at the counter, paper in hand. And that’s when little Hudson spies the nearly full, uncapped 30 oz. jar of roasted peanuts on the counter. (Hudson’s five, has Down syndrome.) Quick as a wink he flips it hard. Watches with interest as the contents pour down fast, like a rainstick, hit the floor hard. It all happened so fast.

Friends, it’s been an interesting month or so around here. I’m so glad to be feeling better, but maybe I’ll just crawl back in bed after all.

(And set my alarm for when the new oven arrives.)

The post She Got Up Out Of Bed appeared first on Through Her Looking Glass.

Hi friends!

And how are you today?

Happy 4th of July and Happy Birthday America! Hope you’re out and about, enjoying the festivities of the weekend with friends and family today. It’s a bit of a different 4th for me. As I write, Jon and my older boys are airborne, on their way to Romania with a missions team. It’ll be quieter around here and I’ll be missing them. Looking forward to hearing of their adventures. So glad they have this wonderful opportunity, and the little guys and I will make the most of our 4th here. Might even light a few fireworks. That’s what Charlie says anyway. (Gulp.)

So if you’re a book lover, keep reading. Truth be told, I’ve been dying to write this Summer THLG Reading List 2015 for some time now. I love to read. There’s nothing better than a great book to take along on vacation. And if I can’t get away, a good book is vacation. There’ve been stages in life when I’ve read like a fiend. Other times, I’ve barely picked up a book in months. It’s all a matter of available time….

I’ve read all the books on the list below. Some I found on The New York Times Best Seller’s list. Others in the library. But most from friends, word of mouth.

In my book (pun intended), a good book is a real luxury.

And uninterrupted time to read? Now that’s extravagance.

This isn’t a comprehensive list, just a few favorites that came to mind.

Summer THLG Reading List 2015

• A Girl Named Named Zippy by Haven Kimmel. Haven’s a storyteller. And that’s why I love this memoir. She’s quirky and she’ll make you laugh (out loud) with tales of her unusual childhood in Moreland, Indiana. Moreland is a sleepy little town with one stop light. And a boatload of characters. (And you know I do love characters.)
• A Thousand Splendid Suns by Khaled Hosseini. Novel by the author of The Kite Runner. Hosseini is also a storyteller and he weaves a fantastic and believable tale set to true to life events in Afghanistan’s history during the last four decades. This is a moving book, violent at times, draws you in from the beginning. I was particularly struck by the poignant relationship of two women, main characters in the book. They start out as enemies by a strange twist of fate, but realize on the journey they desperately need each to survive. What an incredible friendship.

• Gift from the Sea by Anne Morrow Lindbergh. A mother of five. Aviator. Deep thinker, writer. In 1955, forty-nine-year-old Anne spent two weeks alone in a New England coastal cottage, penning her thoughts on aging, relationships, solitude, being a woman, caring for the soul. Those thoughts morphed into this thought provoking book.

• The Glass Castle by Jeannette Walls. Jeannette is an accomplished writer and journalist, a former MSNBC news correspondent. Had the most unusual upbringing in a very poor and highly dysfunctional family. Her mother: a distracted starving artist. Her father Rex: a brilliant man, but an alcoholic out of touch with reality. Can’t hold a job, moves the family from state to state avoiding bill collectors. Draws blueprints for a glass castle he’ll build as the family estate when his latest invention takes off. But it never does. You’ll laugh and you’ll cry.
• The Insanity of God by Nik Ripken. But it’s not really Nik Ripken. That’s just a pseudonym. “Nik” traveled around the world preserving the stories of more than six hundred Christians in over sixty “closed” countries. True stories of how faith survives, let alone flourishes in places that are overcome by darkness, despair and hopelessness. These God stories will floor you, blow your mind. This is what’s happening behind the scenes, the insanity of God.

• Essentialism: the Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. Greg outlines a “systematic discipline for discerning what is absolutely essential, then eliminating everything that’s not so we can make the highest possible contribution toward the things that really matter.”
• The Invisible Wall by Harry Bernstein. Harry Bernstein recently passed away, but he penned several memoirs, his first after he turned ninety. His is an amazing story. On the eve of World War I: “In a small English mill town, Harry Bernstein’s family struggles to make ends meet. Harry’s father earns little money at the Jewish tailoring shop and brings home even less, preferring to spend his wages drinking and gambling. Harry’s mother, devoted to her children and fiercely resilient, survives on her dreams…. Then Harry’s older sister does the unthinkable: she falls in love with a Christian boy. But they are separated by an “invisible wall” that divides Jewish families on one side of the street from Christian families on the other. When Harry unwittingly discovers the secret affair, he must choose between the morals he’s been taught all his life, his loyalty to his selfless mother, and what he knows to be true in his own heart.”
• The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid by Bill Bryson. Laugh out loud funny. Definitely one of the funnier memoirs I’ve read. Don’t be deceived by the cover. This book is not intended for children and has considerable language. ( Cuz that’s how it was…..)

So have you read any of these books? Throw in your two cents today. I’m always pining for a great read, and I know others are too. Take a second and give us your book recommendation today!

The post Summer THLG Reading List 2015 appeared first on Through Her Looking Glass.