I've been living instead of computering (is that a word? Ha!) this past week and as a result finished up the flower quilt this morning. Here's some photos of the finished top (click on pictures to zoom in):
Here are a few close ups of the top. I free motioned the top in a squiggly pattern using variegated thread that had the same colors as the blocks.
Finally, here's a few photos of the back. I did it in white and joined two pieces with a strip of the front fabrics joined together. I did the same thing when I made the binding. I used white bobbin thread so the quilting on the back isn't as obvious. You can see the label I made in the lower corner in the first photo.
It's going in the mail today to its owner---a friend of a friend who will be starting chemo soon. Hope your day is full of sunshine!
Every once in a long while I am struck by a wave of motivation that won't go away. I wish I felt this way everyday, but I don't so when the moment comes I just have to go. Right now I'm inspired to make a quilt for someone I don't really know but who I know needs some warmth right now. I dug through my ample fabric stash and found a bunch of fabric I purchased at a quilting expo before Tom Thumb was born. Red couldn't have been more than a year old when I bought it. Sometimes fabric just speaks to you and when it speaks you must buy even if you don't have a project for it at the time. This was the case with this fabric. One of my purchases was this panel:
At some point I had seen a design using this fabric where they cut up the panel to make new individual blocks so I decided to give it a shot from memory and came up with this:
I'm hoping to whip this quilt out quickly. I have a two week goal in my head, meaning two weeks from today, which is a feat I've never accomplished before. Can I do it? Do these flowers have power? OH YES!
I have had to completely overhaul what I've been doing for afterschooling with Red. During the summer, we went gangbusters! We were doing math, spelling, history, science, and reading. You name it---we did it. Of course, then we had lots of time in the day that needed to be filled so I didn't have to hear her whining, "I'm bored." When school got back in session, we eased up a bit and mostly did math. I let things really get loosey goosey in December and didn't require her to do anything. We continued reading before bed, but that was it other than completing the very little homework she comes home with each day.
Here's where we are today---math is causing her an undue amount of anxiety again. My little girl with perfectionist tendencies (something I wish she hadn't gotten from me) is crying in school and at home over math. This is how they teach math in 1st grade at her school. The first graders all do Everyday Math with the first grade teacher who is not Red's primary teacher. This is the required school district curriculum. They get 1-2 worksheets of homework to do at home per week. The last one I saw involved measuring your bed using the length of your hand. From what I've seen so far, there are no traditional math problems (i.e. 1+1=2) in Everyday Math. The other math she does is with her main teacher. These are math fact sheets that have 50 traditional math problems. She is currently doing subtraction with single digits or subtracting a single digit from a double digit number (i.e. 9-2=__ or 14-7=___). She is supposed to complete the same fact sheet everyday from Monday through Thursday during school and then practice at home if needed. On Friday, she completes that fact sheet under timed conditions. If she completes the sheet in 10 minutes or less with 2 or less errors out of 50 problems, she gets to move on to the next sheet in the sequence. She has been on the same fact sheet for two weeks now and has not been allowed to move on because she's making more than two mistakes. I had her do the fact sheet for me last night at home. She did it in six minutes with two errors. Whether or not she's able to complete the fact sheet really isn't the problem. The issue is that they are expected to complete and pass (passing in this case is 96%!) these sheets with no instruction on how to do the math problems from either teacher. I understand the need to know your math facts quickly, but when there is no foundation laid by the teachers doing worksheets over and over seems useless. In the end, it's Red who is paying the price for this method, and the only solution that I can see is for me to address her lack of math instruction at school by using a full math curriculum with her at home.
On a good note, she's doing great in reading (she knew how to read before attending school so I wasn't concerned about that at all), her penmanship has improved dramatically, spelling is going well, and I'm super impressed with the school's science curriculum. I don't remember doing any science until 4th or 5th grade when I was in school and they're doing it every week at Red's school. One area I do wish they got more exposure to is history.
Here is my new plan: After I give her instruction, I plan to have her complete one exercise from Singapore Math 1A each school day. Each exercise is 2-4 pages with somewhere between two and eight problems per page. I'm going to roll with only supplementing math for now. I'm hoping to add history back in by the end of February, but I want to focus on what is important today. The most important thing is getting Red confident that she can do math again and dry her tears. Hopefully this will be the No Kleenex Math Program!
Hannah Keeley has stolen a page from the Flylady play book! Not like Flylady has a monopoly on the word "zone" and decluttering for a limited period of time (Flylady has "You can do anything in 15 minutes" and Keeley has the "Ten Minute Tidy"), but it seems awful suspicious to me that the tasks for today involve dividing your house into zones and then decluttering the first zone for the rest of the week.
Because I have been a Flylady disciple on and off over the years, I already have my house divided into zones:
Zone 1: Foyer/Front Porch/Dining Room
Zone 2: Kitchen
Zone 3: Bathrooms/Study
Zone 4: Bedrooms
Zone 5: Living Room/Family Room/Laundry Room
Even though I have gotten rid of so much stuff in the last year, we still have way too much. As fast as I can get it out, more stuff comes in! I just need to say no when someone offers me their crazy old Christmas vest (yes, this actually happened and yes, I took the vest...stupid, stupid, stupid).
Today I'm feeling pretty exhausted. I committed to too much this week. I spent the morning being Red's teacher's copy girl (2 1/2 hours of copying, labeling, and laminating), I fed Tom Thumb and put him down for his nap, and in one hour I have to pick up the carpool. I have no food in the house...which brings me to book club.
I performed a miracle last night --- I hosted book club at my house without going to the grocery store first and only using what we had on hand from when I went shopping a week ago. The one thing I was a little bit embarrassed that I didn't have was decaf coffee, but everything else came together. I ended up baking my mother's plum kuchen and a batch of gluten free chocolate peanut butter cookies for my GF friend in the group. Here's Tom Thumb helping with the cookies yesterday. He's squishing them flat with a glass:
I had some raw carrots and broccoli and the ingredients for dill dip. Then, I cut up some cheeses and served it with crackers. The big winner that came out of this exercise was when I figured out something I could do with crescent rolls that didn't involve running out to purchase baby wieners. I found this spinach pinwheel recipe and amazingly had all the ingredients! Everyone loved them too!
I have some serious assessing I'm going to be doing over the next few days regarding afterschooling with the kids. I'm hoping to have a plan together before the end of the week.
I don't get out with the girls too often, but last night was the second time in a month that I've seen a few of my high school friends. Through those girls nights out, I found out that an acquaintance of mine who is a mother of three elementary school age children is having health issues. The bottom line --- she has cancer and was given three to five years to live.
What do you do with that information? How do you even begin to process that as a wife, as a mother, as just a human being? I think it's different if you are given a short period to live, like six months. In that case, you decide what you want to do and then you get out there and do it because that time is going to fly. But five years? That's a whole different banana. How much of that time will you be well? What is your quality of life going to be like? How do you keep yourself going mentally and not get depressed? What would I want to teach my kids? How would I want to spend my time? I know I'm going to be dwelling on this one for days. I cannot stop thinking about her and her family.
Coincidentally, I just finished Bethenny Frankel's book, A Place of Yes: 10 Rules for Getting Everything You Want Out of Life. This is a self help book with very typical advice (like "Act on it." and "Separate from the pack.") made unique and interesting again by having Frankel's life experiences intermingled in it. Who knew that she had been an actress, a production assistant for the show Saved by the Bell, an event planner, a pashmina seller, a healthy cookie baker, and on the Martha Stewart version of The Apprentice before landing on The Real Housewives of New York without even being a housewife! I was really inspired by her ability to keep pushing even after failing, sometimes spectacularly, time after time. Again, this book made me think---what is really important in life?
I think Frankel's best bit of advice in the whole book was "Everything's Your Business." On one hand, she was referring to cultivating yourself as a brand. But she goes on to say:
"When I say everything's your business, I mean treat everything you choose to do with as much importance as if your career depended on it. Everything's your business means that every job, person, and experience is worth your full attention. Whether you are at work or cooking dinner or cleaning your apartment or reading a book to your child, make what you do matter, and do it well."
This spoke to me. This is what is important in life. Make every moment matter. I am guilty of splitting my attention or nodding and saying "uh-huh" when I'm not really listening or doing things half way or not at all if I think I might fail. I want what I'm doing to matter today when I'm gone because I listened and I acted and I loved.
I'm still doing the Total Mom Makeover, but in this case I am going to do it half way. My friend Michelle told me that maybe the reason I don't have much to write about some of the tasks is because I'm already there. Maybe I don't need a Total Mom Makeover...maybe just a Partial Mom Makeover! So I've decided to do the parts of the book that are actually going to benefit me instead of doing the whole thing and have it be an exercise in futility.
In that spirit, the exercises for over the weekend were to develop an AM and PM routine. I have both of those already. Do I do them as written everyday? No. I am especially bad with the PM routine because I hate doing dishes. Sometimes the dishes just get left until the next morning if I have an especially large pile of pots and pans. In the end though, I think they can still work with some finessing.
The Week 2, Day 1 tasks were to do the following: -Create a sanctuary (get off your butt and make your bedroom clean and nice looking) -Move your body (do some stretching in the morning to get yourself moving) -Drink up (get your hydration on!) -Squeeze in a nap (YAY!) -Graze (she advocates eating healthy snacks like fruits and veggies throughout the day) -Take your vitamins (she's a B vitamin fan) - Breathe (do some deep breathing to start your day) She also suggested writing down things that were sapping your energy and coming up with ways to attack those in a positive fashion. She also wanted you to make your bed when you get up.
This all felt pretty basic to me (which I guess is why Week #2 is actually called "Basic Mom." Really it is.) I'm feeling pretty good about these areas although the top of my dresser could use a 15 minute clean up and running the vacuum through there couldn't hurt.
I found the Week #2, Day #2 tasks to be a little R rated so I'll let you read that yourself if you're interested. My blog is geared towards education, but not necessarily sex education, so if you want the author's advice about how to get down and dirty with your loved one feel free to consult pages 63-71.
So live in the moment today, my friends! You never know how long it's going to last. Give your little ones big hugs tonight...
The Night Circus is another book with more than one piece of art for its cover. Here's the art from the one I read:
I think the UK one, however, is more delicious and evocative of the novel:
And delicious it was! The Night Circus is the debut novel for author Erin Morgenstern. It came up in my Amazon recommendations a couple of months ago and I added myself to the wait list for it at my library. It showed up for me last week and I dove in.
I want to reveal very little detail about the plot in this review because I don't want to take away from your own reading experience. In the beginning, I genuinely had no idea where the plot was going and I liked it that way. The book is written very similar in style to the book The Time Traveler's Wife. Each chapter is headed with a location and a date with the year. The chapters are not in chronological order. At first this threw me off and I did a lot of page shuffling (I imagine this might be kind of annoying for those with e-readers), but I finally settled into it. The story is set mostly in the late 1800s and has magic at its core---not illusions like pulling a rabbit out of a hat, but real ancient magic. There are two magicians introduced at the beginning who pit their students, Celia and Marco, against each other in a magical battle that cannot end until the other is defeated. The venue chosen is a circus created specifically for the competition by an acquaintance of one of the magicians. Part of the way Celia and Marco compete is by using their skills to add attractions to the circus, like a garden made entirely out of ice, a maze made of clouds, and a tree that grants wishes. This is what makes the book so special --- the circus becomes a character itself. In the midst of their duel, Celia and Marco realize they are in this together. How will the competition end? Who will win? Can the circus survive the battle?
Morgenstern seriously outdoes herself with the descriptions of the people and acts within the circus. I could smell the circus (she often references the scent of caramel and smoke), I could taste the circus (the characters are constantly purchasing delectable tidbits to munch on as the wander from tent to tent), and I could see the circus in my mind as clearly as any room in my house. I looked at some of the reviews on Amazon and some reviewers found all the descriptions to be tedious. I, on the other hand, loved it! While this book could have been ordinary and forgettable, the author's knack for detail really pulls the reader into the story effortlessly. One minor issue is that Celia and Marco could have used a wee bit more character development. Especially early on in the book, it's very hard to tell what their motivation is for engaging in the competition when they weren't the ones who started it or agreed to it. I understood why this was the case after reading this quote from Erin Morgenstern:
"The circus started as a tangent. I would come up with a vague idea and a handful of characters. The last week of October, in ’05, I had a concept that I liked and I got really bored with it, so I sent all the characters to the circus, and the circus was much more interesting. The next year, I wrote all about the circus. That’s where the book came from. It didn’t have a plot at that point. It started as vignettes."
It all makes sense now. No wonder the circus is stronger than the main characters! The supporting characters, however, are quite wonderful. I felt like I was opening a little present with each person I got to meet in this book. I was particularly taken with...geez...just about everyone. Poppet and Widget, the Burgess sisters, Chandresh, Herr Thiessen, Tsukiko---she made all the characters special in some way.
Okay, now that I'm done gushing, I discovered that I'm not the only one who is taken with this book. In the book, the circus has groupies called reveurs (dreamers) that follow the circus around from location to location. They identify each other by wearing all black with a splash of red in the way of an accessory like a scarf or a flower. Get this---there are literally people dressing up like reveurs and attending the book signings for The Night Circus! Check out some of these photos:
The movie rights to the book have been acquired by Summit Entertainment, the same production company responsible for the Twilight movies. Do I foresee lines of people clad in black with red scarves lined up for midnight viewings a la Harry Potter? I believe I do.
And since it is the new trend in book promotion, here is the trailer for The Night Circus:
I hope you pick it up and enjoy this one. I have a feeling I'll be reading it for a second time sometime soon.
Here I am five days in on this one and I'm thinking there is not enough meat to the assignments from the Total Mom Makeover to devote an entire post to them. Maybe they'll get tougher? I'm thinking of relegating them to the bottom of my post each day. We'll see how it goes...
We're back to our four categories again today --- Home, Health, Family and Life. Today you're supposed to write down some ways you may negatively respond to those areas and how to replace that response with a positive one. Here are mine:
Home - My negative response: Making excuses for leaving things messy because the kids are just going to mess it up again. Positive response: Setting some reasonable goals for cleanliness each day. If there's a little mess leftover, don't sweat it.
Health - I don't know how to respond to this one really. I'm doing really well with going to the gym and menu planning right now. I do get angry when my body starts behaving in ways that make no sense (e.g. last year I had some digestive issues that came out of nowhere. Turned out I had developed an inability to digest tree nuts as an adult). I'm going to try to be kinder and gentler to myself in this department. I need to realize that other than exercising, putting good food in my mouth, and going to the doctor when sick, my health is out of my control.
Family - Negative response: Screaming on the inside. Sometimes when the kids are dawdling and not listening, I feel my temper rising. 99% of the time I just get through it, but in my head I'm screaming "WHY!?!?! ARGH!!!" Not like this is totally awful (we all get mad, right?), but I think it might be more productive to take a deep breath and close my eyes for 10 seconds. Get refocused and move on with my day.
Life - Negative response: Avoiding doing things. When I get worn down, I go into serious avoidance mode. I find anything to do (i.e. surfing the net, watching TV, having a snack) to not do what I need to do. Positive response: Take a break, but then do one small task to get myself back on track.
Your second task is to mentally rehearse the positive responses. I always find suggestions like that a little hokey, but really I've found visualizing what I want to be very helpful. Time to visualize the Legos all over my dining room being cleaned up...
On an entirely separate note, if you need a new bathing suit Victoria's Secret is doing their semi-annual sale right now. I was able to get three bathing suit tops and two bottoms for under $50. Why do I need so many? First, nothing ever seems to fit me properly so I'm anticipating taking back some if not all of them. Second, I go through bathing suits like water. I guess it's because I swim a lot with the kids, but I need to replace my suit every year or I get baggy butt. :-)
Well, since I'm an insomniac tonight I'm actually off to bed for round #2. I went to bed at a decent hour, but for some reason can't sleep. It's now 435AM. I normally leave for the gym at 545. I'm off to grab a banana (the early morning munchies call!) and try to clock in one hour of sleep. TGIF!
Today's post is just going to be a quickie because I have to rush off to run my children around for evening activities. Mondays and Thursdays always seem to be crazy! One of today's Total Mom Makeover assignments were to get yourself a calendar or day planner if you don't already have one. I no longer use a day planner (I've let my trusty Palm Pilot leftover from my corporate days collect dust for nearly eight years), but I've always been a huge fan of this calendar. It's all date squares and no pictures. So while it's not the most exciting in the world, it is surely one of the most useful.
The other assignment was to take your four vision categories --- Home, Health, Family and Life--- and write an action statement for each of them. Here are mine:
Home - Spend 15 minutes each day getting rid of things I no longer use or need. Health - Continue exercising three times each week and look for more tasty healthy meal recipes. Family - Deliberately teach each child something each day. It doesn't necessarily have to be something new or earth shattering. Today I got Tom Thumb to put his shoes on by himself...over the course of 20 minutes. Sigh... Life - Write a little bit each day.
None of these is major, but I don't think they have to be. I just want to make some tangible progress each day.
On a completely separate note, I finished reading The Night Circus this afternoon while Tom Thumb was napping. I'm seriously in love with that book. I'm so in love with it I think I want to read it again right now. No, I'm not kidding. Watch for my review over the next few days...
Before I get started about what I did for the Total Mom Makeover today, I have to tell you about my new favorite place to buy gifts online ---Von Maur. There is a brick and mortar Von Maur about 20 minutes from my house, but I never seem to be able to haul myself over there. It is a very upscale store that often has great sales. The beautiful thing about their website though is they offer FREE shipping with no minimum and FREE gift wrap! How awesome is that?!?! I have a girlfriend who lives out of state who is going through a rough time right now. I wanted to let her know I was thinking of her, while not breaking my budget. I was able to mail her this super cool bracelet that was originally $42, gift wrapped and shipped, for $21! They have other cool things in their sale section for under $20 too. Just wanted to share my find!
Today on Week 1, Day 3 of the Total Mom Makeover you are supposed to write a short vision statement for each of these areas of your life --- Home, Health, Family and Life. Here are the sentences I wrote:
Home - My home blesses my family.
Health - My body is a temple and I will treat it as such.
Family - My family is my crowning glory.
Life - I live in the present. I am grateful.
My home statement is very Flylady. I have followed her website for years and have always been inspired by the notion that keeping your house clean and maintained blesses your family. Thinking of my body as a temple reminds me to treat it right, both by exercising and by what I choose to put in my mouth to fuel it. Viewing my family as my crowning glory reminds me that who they are is a reflection of me. Finally, I worked on my life statement quite a bit. It was initially longer and more complex, but then I thought more about it. The simpler the better. I want to enjoy each moment and be happy for each positive thing that shows up in my life.
The second task of the day is to write down any negative phrases you use around your kids and find suitable replacements. I usually am able to keep my mouth under control, but I tend to mutter things under my breath. I didn't realize that anybody heard anything until one day I heard my daughter saying to herself, "Ugh, I'm so pissed off." Yeah, that was fantastic.
Here are my top 3 negative phrases and their replacements:
1. "Butthead." Not my shiniest moment when I refer to Tom Thumb as this to my husband, e.g. "Tom Thumb was such a butthead today!" My replacement: Tom Thumb was so difficult today.
2. "I'm so pissed off." Replacement: I'm so angry OR I'm so upset.
3. "Oh mother of God." I guess "mother" could be followed with something worse, but still not the best choice. Replacement: "Oh my goodness." I feel very Julie Andrews writing that down. Maybe I can go twirl around on the top of a mountain now--- ha ha!
I'm off to volunteer in Red's classroom. Hope your day is filled with beauty and wonder!
On Week 1, Day 2 of the Total Mom Makeover, you're supposed to look at your "should" list from Day 1 and use it as a springboard to come up with a vision for what you want for your life. You're are supposed to be as descriptive as possible. Here's mine:
My Vision I am grateful for each moment. I show and tell my husband and children daily that I love them. Being a stay at home parent and maintaining our home blesses me and my family. I prepare healthy meals and exercise at the gym three times each week. Commitments I make bring joy to our lives and the lives of others. I wear stylish clothes, accessorize, and do my hair and makeup each morning. I spend my free time on hobbies I enjoy and don't waste this precious time.
Again, I'll probably have to finesse this statement a bit, but I think it says what I want to say. Luckily, some of this stuff I already do. I have the meals and exercising down, but I need to work on the other areas. Baby steps...
The next thing you're supposed to do is get some photos together that illustrate your vision. Here are mine:
I started reading The Night Circus last night while I was at tae kwon do with Tom Thumb. So far it is awesome! Very Something Wicked This Way Comes! Today I really need to get my act together and go out grocery shopping. Holy cow we are down to the nitty gritty! I barely was able to scrape together a lunch for Red.
After re-reading my last post and realizing that I'm having trouble goal setting right now, I've decided to take the plunge with The Total Mom Makeover by Hannah Keeley, a homeschooling mother of seven. I checked it out from the library previously in early 2008, but didn't finish it. I've decided to give it another whirl!
The book is supposed to take you six weeks to complete. There are tasks (usually journaling) for each week day and then the weekends are for catch up. I'll probably take the week off while we're on vacation next month, but I'm ready to rock and roll! I'll write out the daily tasks and then post what I did so feel free to join in if you want. In 2012, I want to be a person who owns her life and knows where she's going.
So the first task from Week #1, Day #1 is to write down all the "should" burdens that you carry around with you. Here are mine:
I should keep a cleaner house. I should be more patient with my children. I should spend less time goofing off on the computer. I should be more attentive to my husband. I should be doing more charitable work. I should call my sisters more often. I should be more organized. I should let go of the past. I should be kinder when speaking of others with whom I don't agree.
I still have the journal that I wrote my should burdens in back in 2008 and the first two about housekeeping and patience are identical. Clearly, I still think I need work in those areas. You have to understand---I'm not a hoarder, and my house isn't gross. I was just raised to have my house cleaned a certain way and if it's not at that level I am dissatisfied. With my patience, I just have to acknowledge that I'm not going to be a perfect saint all the time. I am a far more patient person than I was prior to having children. I need to take pride in where I'm at and let perfectionism go.
The second task for Week #1, Day #1 is to write down what you desire for your home, health, family, and life with a sentence that begins with "I have decided..."
My sentence is: I have decided to be proud of my life and my choices. I will show my family love by caring for them, maintaining our home, and looking out for their best interests without sacrificing my health. When I am faced with a decision, I will choose joy.
This statement is still in flux. Maybe I'll change it later, but for now it seems like a good fit. I'm looking forward to learning something about myself in this process and have a clearer vision of where I want to be when it's over.
When I went to the library this past week, I had the opportunity to browse the new books section. The Cobbler came with me and the kids (which NEVER happens) so I was able to actually look around BY MYSELF! I came across the book The Art of Forgetting. The title was familiar to me so I must have read some review of it somewhere. Then, I noticed the author's name. Again, familiar. So familiar in fact that I immediately flipped to the back inside cover to see if there was a photo of the author. There was and I recognized the face. I went to high school with the author Camille Noe Pagan. I mentioned my discovery to my younger sister and her response was, "Oh yeah. I ran on the cross country team with her." Needless to say, I was interested to see what a peer from high school had produced in the way of a novel.
The Art of Forgetting opens on the main character Marissa, a health and fitness magazine editor in New York City, waiting to meet her best friend Julia for dinner. Marisa catches a glimpse of Julia through the restaurant window as she gets plowed down by a taxi while crossing the street. Julia suffers a traumatic brain injury that forces her to abandon her life in New York and move back to Michigan to live with her parents. The book tracks Marissa's struggle to come to terms with the changes in Julia's personality post-accident and how Julia's past influence on her life has affected her. Because Julia has lost her filter on what is appropriate, she begins trying to reconnect Marissa with her college boyfriend whom Julia forced her to break up with a decade earlier. Can Marissa be her own person and live her own life without being under Julia's thumb?
As I began reading The Art of Forgetting, I was a little distracted by knowing the person who wrote the book. I was not friends with this girl, but I remember her because she was popular and well liked. She was of the student council/cheerleading squad variety, except unlike in the movies, she had a warm personality. Getting back to the review --- as I started reading I was distracted by the narrator seemingly being a thinly disguised version of the author. I even let a surprised laugh escape when I realized she named the main character's boyfriend's mother after another girl who went to our high school. Trust me---she has not met anyone else with this name. In the end, I was pleasantly surprised with this book. The Art of Forgetting was an easy read with a few cringe worthy moments, courtesy of Julia and Marissa's weight obsessed mother. The smoothness of the narrative was similar to the books I just read by Sarah Addison Allen. Although the subject matter was a bit heavy, you always felt like you were reading something that could easily be made into made for TV movie. It was a worthy debut with an uplifting ending. I'll be interested to see Pagan tackles next in her writing.
On a separate but related note, 2012 is off to an uneven start for me. I've been suffering a bit with a still unidentified illness (I don't want to elaborate because that would definitely be TMI :-). I want to beat my head against the wall on this one---I just can't see why I can't stay healthy! Because of feeling under the weather, I haven't even considered my goals for the upcoming year which is very unlike me. I've also been thinking a lot about dreams. It was kind of a shock seeing that book on the shelf in the library and thinking "Wow, someone I know has published a novel!" Then, I found out that another girl I was friends with in high school just came out with an album of Christian music and was named one of Billboard's Artists to Watch in 2011. When we were in high school, she was constantly talking of how she wanted to get a record deal one day. I have to hand it to her. Our 20th high school reunion might be only two years away, but she did it! I bought the MP3 copy of the album and the songs are pretty darn good too.
So where does that leave me? I learned a long time ago that you can't compare yourself to others, but sometimes it's hard not to---especially when you were the one voted "Most Likely to Succeed" in high school. Do I want to be a professional singer? Nope and I don't have the singing talent to be one anyway. Do I want to be a novelist? That would be nice, but I don't think I have the motivation in that area to produce anything epic right now. The Cobbler reminded me that I'm a great wife and mother, although it's my nature question that daily. When the kids are driving me out of my mind, of course I'm wondering if I'm doing the right thing! My bucket list has been pretty much checked off. I did all the skydiving, hot air ballooning, and European travelling I wanted to do before we had kids. So what now? That's what I'm going to be considering over the next few weeks. I am glad to be doing what I'm doing. I'm grateful for my life. To steal a quote from The Art of Forgetting:
"Oh Marissa," Julia said, sounding almost weary. "You're so lucky. And one day you'll realize it. But I think luck isn't nearly as important as what you decide to do with it."
So it's time for me to decide --- what am I going to make of my luck? What are you going to make of yours?
When I found out my book club had selected The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks as the book for our January meeting, I had never heard of it. I didn't know if it was fiction or non-fiction, and I didn't know who Henrietta Lacks was. I'm so glad I read this book. What an amazing and crazy story!
Henrietta Lacks was a real person. She was a black woman born in 1920 that grew up to be a rural tobacco farmer. She was treated for cervical cancer at Johns Hopkins and died that year in 1951. While she was treated there, a doctor took a tissue sample from her cervix without her permission. Ultimately, that tissue sample was cultured and grown into a cell line named HeLa, after the first two initials of her first and last name. It was the first cell line that was considered "immortal." Most cells die after 50 divisions, but HeLa does not. HeLa was used in developing the polio vaccine, was shot into outer space on the space shuttle, and blown up in an atomic bomb. HeLa samples exist all over the world today and are still used in research. Henrietta's children would not find out about the existence of HeLa until over 20 years later.
Author Rebecca Skloot first heard of Henrietta Lacks in a biology class when she was 16. Thus, her obsession with finding out what happened to Henrietta began. She spent over a decade researching HeLa and interviewing people for this book. She went to the town where Henrietta lived, she interviewed the doctors and other involved in the case, and she developed a personal relationship with the Lacks family. She even went so far as to travel with Deborah, Henrietta's daughter, as she did research for the book. The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks really takes a deep dive into the pain that the family endured and the ethical implications of what happened. Reading about the anxiety that Henrietta's daughter endured about her mother's cells being experimented on all over the world was heartbreaking. The family had such a roller coaster of emotions about it that Skloot often did not talk to them for months at a time during the process of writing the book.
Who do human tissue samples belong to? Until I read this book, I thought my cells and tissue belonged to me. According to the U.S. law, they do not. Once cells leave my body they are no longer mine. HeLa does not belong to the Lacks family and none of the profits that have been made from its sale or discoveries related to it do either. At the time of publication, a test tube of HeLa was available for sale for $167.
This book was a really eye opening story for me. Did this really happen in the United States? It did and the story continues to go on. This book explores the issues of race, class, and medical ethics using a novel-like narrative. The story is about science and medicine, but doesn't let us forget that HeLa isn't just a cell line. HeLa has a human face, and her name is Henrietta Lacks. I recommend this book wholeheartedly.
