The Simple Life

This morning I finished reading The Simple Life. It was a collection of essays by various simple living/frugality writers--"thoughts on simplicity, frugality, and living well. It is kind of on the "old" side and so some of the essays are by authors that I'm not familiar with now--also, many of their newsletters and such (which sound great and interesting!) don't seem to be in print any more, which is too bad because I want to subscribe to some of them. Maybe it is time for one of my own...

The book is an interesting collection ranging in topic from Dumpster Diving to vegetarian cooking/animal rights to investing to financial independence (with Your Money or Your Life excerpt) to living cheaply in college to coupon clipping strategies. So, things to appeal to various tastes and interests, but kind of lacking unification--so, you get into the whole Dumpster Diving thing and then are abruptly shifted to an investment approach.

The Bodacious Book of Succulence

Also from the JC book sale, last week I read in about one hour The Bodacious Book of Succulence
by SARK. I've seen SARK books and posters before, but this was first book of hers I've actually read. It was interesting, inspiring, cute, and creative. I want to live a Succulent Wild Life! Of course, after I finished reading it, I then move right on to the next book and forget to pause and try to implement what I've recently learned. Recently, I have been pondering my attraction to self-help books--I think I honestly think that if I just read the right book and did the RIGHT thing, I would finally be PERFECT!!!! I also wonder if all the reading I do mutes my own intuition--how can I know what I truly feel and believe, if the words of 5 dozen self-help authors are chasing around inside my brain and each making the "most sense"? (I feel similarly about parenting books--I try so hard to parent the "right" way and wonder if I've lost touch with my own sense of what the right way is, by always reading and trying to incorporate other people's right ways...?)

I like the way this book emphasizes that you are succulent right NOW--you don't have to do anything (of course, I still get the "do something and you'll finally be wonderful" message anyway!). Near the end, she says, "We are succulent with our shredded fantasies, our unread books, our misguided perfectionism, our hiding in bed eating rows of cookies, or neurotically running to and away from things. We are succulent just like this. Just the way we are NOW!...." Of course, this is all in her delightful, handwritten prose that does not jump off the computer screen and way it does off of her pages.

Hey! Who's Having This Baby Anyway?

Yesterday, I finished reading Hey! Who's Having This Baby Anyway? by Breck Hawk. I was not very engaged by the book (maybe because it is geared toward a "clueless" audience and so it all felt super elementary??) and I don't think I'm going to keep it. I thought it might have elements that I could pull into my childbirth education classes to help people "get" things, but it doesn't really have much to offer me in that way. I am undecided about whether to keep it in my personal library as a loaner for people who need the more basic information it offers.

So, not much more to say about it, I'm not really a fan of the style in which it was presented and I didn't find it particularly helpful or engaging.

Real Moms

Another recent arrival from Bookins, Real Moms: Exploding the Myths of Motherhood. It is published by MOPS & so has associated Christian underpinnings/Bible verses, etc. Anyway, even though it isn't a book I expected to identify with that much, I actually really enjoyed it quite a lot. It explored a series of mothering myths & I identified with a LOT of them & it was reassuring and helpful to have a dose of, "I'm not the only one." I needed it and the book came at just the right time. I also found the book to be overall positive in tone (not whiny!), while also acknowledging the less-rosy elements of mothering (but not getting bogged down in negativity, while still addressing the "darker" side, still leaving you with a positive outlook). It was also fairly funny, which is a bonus--not angsty at all (also, commensurately, not v. deep or intellectual either!)

Unholy Ghost

This weekend, I finished reading Unholy Ghost: Writers on Depression. I bought it at the JC library book sale and I think I read it to see if any of it sounded familiar ;-) Luckily, it didn't really. Though I have my ups and downs and sometimes my downs feel more extreme than "normal," I am no where even close to incapacitated by melancholy, as are some of the writers in this anthology. I did identify with a few comments some made about a sense of depersonalization--sort of like I don't feel real sometimes. I notice this feeling most often when I've been home alone all day with the kids--maybe it is because there is no peer to "reflect" off of? I never feel that way when I'm alone (which is so rarely nowadays!) or when I'm with M *and* the kids. Well, maybe I do occasionally have a disembodied sort of feeling--like I'm outside myself looking at our family--when we're together, but I always feel like a real person when there is another adult person around....

Okay, it is late and I sound a little nuts....

Book Sale!

Spent 3 hours at a book sale in Jefferson City last night. It was huge and really busy. We spent $240, which is about $200 more than we usually spend at a sale (they raised their prices pretty significantly this year and I didn't want to have traveled all that way for nothing!) We got 163 books, so the average was $1.47 per book, which isn't awful, but isn't eleven cents either (which is what we averaged last year at box day). There was a lots of competition from other book sellers (most with little scanners--I felt at a definite disadvantage because we don't have one of those yet!). I've only gotten part way through one of the boxes and not hitting a lot of good resale books yet :-( I hope we didn't waste our money! At least we found a LOT of books that we want to read personally (or, want to read if we can't sell them, that is!). I also found several books that I want to keep just because I actually want them--I found two from my Amazon wish list, a couple of old birth books, and a couple of old breastfeeding books (I kind of have an inadvertent collection of old birth and breastfeeding books going on...)

Circle of Stones

A couple of weeks ago, I read Circle of Stones but it has been sitting in my to-blog-about pile for quite some time (I'd started a post, but didn't get beyond the title, LOL!) My mom had an earlier version of this book when I was a little girl and it always had a certain allure for me. So, I saw it on Bookins and couldn't resist adding it to my list. Basically, it is a weirdly written book--way too Jungian analyst for my taste. The subtitle is "woman's journey to herself" and it sort of (theoretically) guides you through a life journey imagining "a place for you" in a circle of women during each of your transitions.

Barbara Kingsolver

Last week, I got into a "fiction" mood and read High Tide in Tuscon by Barbara Kingsolver. The book isn't actually fiction, but is a series of essays from her life experiences. She is one of my all time favorite fiction writers though, which is why my mood led me to her book. Reading it then led me to read another one of her books that I had my shelf, Animal Dreams. I've read it before, but it has been like 6 years, so it was fun to read again. She is such a talented writer. The book is about two sisters (one is the narrator and the other one is never really "in" the book, just talked about by the narrator sister) who were born and raised in a tiny town in Arizona. The second sister goes to Nicaragua (following the 1979 revolution) to help them rebuild/restructure and rehabilitate their cropland. The narrator sister returns to hometown to sort of re-find herself (she has been "floating" sort of, through her life without a sense of roots or direction). The book is an interesting blend of flashback (told in present tense), dreams/hallucinations, and present time, with little distinction between them--you eventually figure out as you are reading, "oh, this isn't actually happening right 'now.'"

A quote I liked from Animal Dreams--"people worry a lot more about the eternity after their deaths than the eternity that happened before they were born. But it's the same amount of infinity, rolling out in all directions from where we stand." (Of course, technically speaking the eternity before we were born isn't infinite, really, because at some actual point in history humans as we know them showed up, but it might as well be infinite as far as our individual lifespans are concerned!) The quote appeals to me, because of my obsession with meaning and what really matters in life, etc.

More another time...I have SO much more time to read than I actually have to write about what I read. I have all these thoughts while I'm reading that I'm desperate to share about. Then, time passes--another day, another book and those thoughts become lost before I get a chance to write (or, I have such a backlog of things/thoughts I want to write about, that I have to let go of the things that came before. Maybe a good life lesson?)

(added finally on 3/26) In a discussion in High Tide regarding preparations for war:

"Any talk of closing down a military base raises defensive and reverent ire, no matter how wasteful an installment it might be. And yet, public debate dickers and rages over our obligation to fund the welfare system--a contributions of about $25 from each taxpayer on average, for keeping the poorest among us alive. How can we haggle over the size of this meager life preserver, while shiploads of money for death sail by unchallenged?" So true! One more reason to reduce our income to below taxable level (federally)--taxes are one of our largest annual expenses.

Later in the book upon reflecting on Thoreau and the intensity of study he engaged in:

"What a life it must have been, to seize time for this much wonder. If only we could recover faith in a seed--and in all the other complicated marvels that can't fit in a sound bite. Then we humans might truly know the glory of knowing our place."

What Mothers Do

Last night I finished reading, What Mothers Do. This was the second time I've read it and I enjoyed it as much the second time. I felt like I was reading it with a different "eye" this time--I read it the first time when my first son was 2 and so I read it with more of a retrospective feeling. Now, my second baby is 9 months old. So, reading it now I noticed all kinds of different things and the book took on new relevance now that I'm mothering an infant again.

Speaking of infants, he needs me. I'll have to try to post more later!

The Home Based Bookstore

This morning while I was waiting for the boys to wake up (they slept until 10:00 this morning due to the time change and I stayed in the bed with them, because if I get up, Z pops awake too), I read The Home Based Bookstore by Steve Weber. It is a great book! It inspired me to plan to go to the book sale in Jefferson City this week after all (I was considering simplifying my life by NOT going, but it is back on my calendar). I do enjoy selling books online. It is a simple, reliable, and profitable secondary source of income.

ALACE Labor Assistant Program

Last Thursday, I was thrilled to get the ALACE Labor Assistant training and certification program manual in the mail (I wasn't sure if they would mail be anything prior to the actual training or not and July seems like a long way away). I read the whole thing cover to cover right away, of course. I'm very excited. For someone who has said many times that she doesn't want to be a doula, I'm really looking forward to this training!

The Power of Intention

Several weeks ago I finished reading a wonderful book called The Power of Intention
Wayne Dyer is one of my favorite authors and this is one of my new favorite books. It was life-changing. I hope I can implement all of the great stuff into my life! (I need to get a bracelet that says WWWDD--for What Would Wayne Dyer Do, LOL!) We also have the CD program, but we haven't finished listening to it yet. It is a 6 CD set and we've listed to 2 of the CDs. My husband and I enjoy listening to it together and discussing the ideas/insights as we go. It is really nice.

Birth & Breastfeeding

Last night I finished reading Birth & Breastfeeding by Michel Odent. I know many people really like him and he has really been a radical and devoted champion of women in birth, but I find that I just don't really "connect" with his style of writing. I love his "birth works" style and his "hands off the laboring woman" message (this book focused heavily on privacy in birth, which is really important, as well as discussing the damaging undertones to the common conception that women must have "support" in order to give birth successfully), but I find it hard to stay engaged with his books and this one I almost put down several times and didn't finish reading (I got more interested in the latter half of the book though and kept going. There was a great section about colostrum and about becoming a "colostral society" :-) I forget to emphasize sometimes just how truly liquid gold colostrum is--what wonderful, wonderful stuff (and how long devalued. He explored the near universal restriction of colostrum intake by the baby and how it serves to interfere with the natural motherbaby connection).

Another interesting (and I confess odd) section was about polygamy and how extended breastfeeding is best supported in polygamous cultures (?! This was one of the things I didn't connect with in this book).

He also talked about "new-style" childbirth educators--"for the most part, these are mothers who have no special qualification but, having given birth to their own children, feel the need to help other women who could benefit from their personal experience. They organize meetings, often at their own homes. They do not usually encumber themselves with any particular theoretical basis for their teaching, but may find it useful to give this or that school of thought as a reference. Their aim could most accurately be described as being to provide information and education, rather than specific preparation." This quote speaks to an idea that keeps floating around in my mind about hosting a birth group (vs. a CBE "class").

Friends of Missouri Midwives newsletter

Of course, I had to post about reading the latest issue of the Friends of Missouri Midwives newsletter! It was riveting and delightful! (I'm the editor ;-) Luckily for the next issue, I have already received several great contributions from the membership and so the spring issue will not be "the Molly newsletter," but will also have vibrant content from several different locations in the state. Yay!

Fruitful

On Tuesday, I finished reading Fruitful, by Anne Roiphe. The subtitle is Living the Contradictions : A Memoir of Modern Motherhood. Like, Of Woman Born, it was written before the more recent wave of "momoirs" (that is kind of a dismissive/derogatory term I guess, but it does help me classify the genre) and focuses heavily on feminism & its relationship to mothers/motherhood (so, different than momoirs in that the focus is less on personal experience of motherhood and more on motherhood and its social/cultural/political connections, I suppose). It was less "heavy" and depressing than Of Woman Born though. The focus of the book is on the tension between feminism and motherhood (i.e. can you be a "good" feminist and also be a "good" mother!) and she explores that issue throughout. She is a feminist and yet critiques some elements of the movement's impact on mothers and motherhood. She is also very pro-father and I appreciated her exploration of men/fathers as people vs. "evil patriarchy--down with them!"

Again, I have much more time to read than I have to write, so I'm going to have to cut myself off. I was just getting started too! Maybe I'll come back to this one...

I did have some more time--this is a quote about the crux of the mother/feminist issue: "Motherhood by definition requires tending of the other, a sacrifice of self-wishes for the needs of a helpless, hapless human being, and feminism by definition insists on attention being paid to the self. The basic contradiction is not simply the nasty work of a sexist society. It is the lay of the land, the mother of all paradoxes, the irony we cannot bend with mere wishing or might of will. "

This reminds me of my journal entry from my early months as a new mother--"is it possible to balance motherhood with person-hood?" I'm still figuring it out! (some days it seems to work, some days it really doesn't!)

Paths to Becoming a Midwife

This weekend I finished reading Paths to Becoming a Midwife, published by Midwifery Today. It was really excellent--most of the authors were so skilled that each article convinced me that THAT was the best path! (even though they represented a variety of viewpoints and ideas.)

Sad baby = short entry! I've got to go!

Born to Buy

This afternoon I finished reading Born to Buy by Juliet Schor (last year I also read her The Overworked American and The Overspent American). It was pretty good--I got a little bogged down by the charts and data analysis (maybe not the best idea for naptime reading!) and I also felt like it wasn't as "exposé" quality as I had been expecting. I had read most of the "shocking" details
already in magazine articles or book reviews. While reading it, I found myself feeling depressed and dismayed about the state of childhood in America--it evoked images of heartless, consumeristic, selfish, totalitarian tots running about disrespecting adults and the very fabric of society disintegrating beneath our feet! Her own research didn't seem to fully support that image though, so maybe there is hope after all.

Something I found particularly interesting was this: "today's average (i.e. normal) young person between the ages of nine and seventeen scores as high on anxiety scales as children who were admitted to clinics for psychiatric disorders in 1957."

A Good Birth, A Safe Birth

I forgot to mention that I also finished reading A Good Birth, A Safe Birth, which also arrived recently from Bookins. This book is the source of the oft referenced quote, "if you don't know your options, you don't have any." This book didn't contain any new information for me, but it was still a good book and I'd recommend it to people having their first babies. It was published in 1992, so you have to read it with that eye--skimming past information that has since become dated. However, almost all of the information is still valid and research is research--if numerous studies have demonstrated numerous times that fetal monitors are not useful, it doesn't really matter how "old" the studies are if the use of the "technology" disproven hasn't changed and is still being used in current times in the debunked way that the "ancient" research showed to be harmful. It is interesting that several Amazon reviewed critiqued the book as being "outdated," instead of getting the point that our "up to date" hospitals persist in using very "outdated" (or disproven) approaches/techniques.

I also found it distressing that the "disturbing trend" the authors reference in the introduction to this third edition--the trend toward high-tech birth--is still accelerating 15 years after the book was published (this is what I mean about "old" info not being "old" if the problems are continuing despite mountains of evidence to the contrary!). Namely, cesareans and induction.

I'm planning to donate this book to my HMN chapter library when the chapter gets of the ground (I'm still working on the application process, so it might be a while! :-)

The Doula Book, Sharing Birth, & Mind Over Labor

This weekend, I finished reading The Doula Book. In the middle of it I stopped to read Sharing Birth: A Father's Guide to Giving Support During Labor, that had arrived in a timely fashion from Bookins. Sharing Birth is by Carl Jones which led me to another book by him that I already had on my shelf: Mind Over Labor. Anyway, I don't think I'll be keeping The Doula Book--it was okay, but just not that interesting and the breastfeeding information given in the final section was poor (in the "notes from a postpartum doula" section, not the section before it about asymmetrical latch, which was pretty good). It DID make me think again about the huge value of a doula during labor, particularly for hospital births. I would think that having one in an out-of-home setting would be nearly essential (if what you want is as natural-and-intervention-free-as-possible-in-that-setting birth). It also made me feel excited about the ALACE doula training coming up in Rolla in July! (I signed up at the end of last month!).

In Mind Over Labor, I marked several good relaxation exercises that I plan to incorporate into my childbirth classes.

Mother Nurture

Last week I finished reading an absolutely excellent book called Mother Nurture. I read an excerpt from this book last year in New Beginnings (the magazine of La Leche League International) and immediately purchased it from an Amazon Marketplace seller. However, it took me until January of this year to actually read it (other books kept jumping ahead of it in the to-read line). The subtitle of this book is "A Mother's Guide to Health in Body, Mind, and Intimate Relationships"--this pretty much sums it up! The book is very thorough and comprehensive. I think every mother should read it! I'm planned to buy another copy for my LLL Group's lending library and also to start giving copies as gifts to new mothers. The book is primarily focused on the needs of mothers of young children (5 and under). I especially liked it because all of the strategies seem fresh, doable, and yet new--unlike some self-help books that offer the same or similar info over and over again (i.e. "make sure to take time out for yourself, like taking a nice bath, blah, blah, blah"), this book offered new ideas and things you don't read about other places. The book also explores Depleted Mother Syndrome in depth, which is a very interesting and relevant concept in itself, and gives step by step information on how to remedy the condition.