Just ask the Tweety-box!
There are days when I really do turn to Twitter to make decisions. {Please tell me I am not the only one who does this!} Today was one of those days.
I was in Chapter's with the kids, picking up a last minute birthday present and a much needed soy latte at the attached Starbuck's and I decided that I wanted a new book as well. Yes, I still read and purchase actual books. I like the feel and smell of words on real paper. And finishing that last page in a book feels like an accomplishment to me, and maybe especially so now that I don't do as much novel reading as I used to pre-children!
So I sent out this tweet. (Please excuse the typo!)
And the Twitterverse answered!
I now have the following list of books recommended by people I like, whose opinions I trust and whom I follow on Twitter!
It's like the Ultimate Book Club!
And since a few of you may want in on these suggestions, I thought I would post them all in one place.
1. Night Circus by Erin Morgenstern
2. The Fault of our Stars by John Green
3. Super Sad True Love Story by Gary Shteyngart
4. Tiny Beautiful Things by Cheryl Strayed
5. Gone Girl by Gillian Flynn {This is the one I decided on for today. Thank you @CoffeewithJulie for being the first to respond to my tweet!}
6. The Alienist by Caleb Carr
5. A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry (I have tried this one before and couldn't do it, I may just have to give it a go again.)
6. Life of Pi by Yann Martel (Same as above and since I do like to read books BEFORE I see movie remakes of them, I'll try this again too.)
7. The Dovekeepers by Alice Hoffman (My second choice today and I think I may go back for it.)
8. And a great suggestion for the kids, True Story, from local writer Marty Chan. This really is a great book (we already have it!) and I highly recommend it as a gift or just to add to your kid's book collection!
Thank you to all who responded and gave me their book suggestions. It seems that along with doing this Summer Blog Challenge, I know have a little Summer Reading Challenge to do as well! And this list does not include the book that I have to read for next week for my ACTUAL book club. (PS-Does anyone have an extra copy of Diana Gabaldon's Outlander lying around? It has been a few years and I may need a bit of a refresher course on Jamie and Claire!
Anywho.... I am off to start Gone Girl before I hit the hay.
Happy Reading Everyone!
Natasha~
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This is Day 14 of the Summer Blog Challenge and I am giving you even more things to read! Sheesh!
You know the drill, visit the others doing this crazee thing called writing and follow along....
Zita at The Dulock Diaries.
Meaghan at MagzD Life
April at This Mom’s Got Something to Say
Aramelle at One Wheeler’s World
Jessica at 2plus2X2
and Liam at In the Now
Feeding the wolves
A Cherokee Legend
An old Grandfather said to his grandson, who came to him with anger at a friend who had done him an injustice, "Let me tell you a story.
I too, at times, have felt a great hate for those that have taken so much, with no sorrow for what they do.
But hate wears you down, and does not hurt your enemy. It is like taking poison and wishing your enemy would die. I have struggled with these feelings many times." He continued, "It is as if there are two wolves inside me. One is good and does no harm. He lives in harmony with all around him, and does not take offense when no offense was intended. He will only fight when it is right to do so, and in the right way.
But the other wolf, ah! He is full of anger. The littlest thing will set him into a fit of temper. He fights everyone, all the time, for no reason. He cannot think because his anger and hate are so great. It is helpless anger,for his anger will change nothing.
Sometimes, it is hard to live with these two wolves inside me, for both of them try to dominate my spirit."
The boy looked intently into his Grandfather's eyes and asked, "Which one wins, Grandfather?"
The Grandfather smiled and quietly said, "The one I feed."
~~~~~
I read this tonight and it really made me stop and think.
Which wolf am I feeding?
I woke up this morning, dead tired from a wonderful weekend at Folk Fest and ready to get back to real life. We had swimming lessons to get to, the neglected laundry to wash/dry/fold/put away and I had some calls to make on the never ending house and landscaping to do list.
As I usually do in the morning while the kids are eating breakfast, I checked in on my social media sites. And I saw something on my Facebook feed that immediately pissed me off. It's been something that has been bugging me for a few weeks and I really shouldn't care about it, but I do. I am human, I have an ego and we were both feeling hurt. It is a "little thing" and it was starting to "set me into a fit of temper".
I REALLY wanted to be passive aggressive and post something scathing about this thing that is bugging me on Twitter or Facebook. I wanted to say that some of the people involved don't deserve to be there and that I am just as worthy. (And, no, I am not going to tell you what it is. This is all you are going to get from me about it.) I did not post these thoughts that I was having anywhere and the reason for that was becauseI realized that the real issue here is...
That I was jealous.
Jealous that I was not asked to be part of something and others were.
And these feelings, this jealousy, this negativity, this anger that I am feeling is FEEDING THE WRONG WOLF!
So, instead of going on a public feeding frenzy, I shut it down. I logged out of my social media sites, the kids and I had lunch, and then we all snuggled together in my bed and had a much needed two and a half hour nap.
I don't know about you, but I am seeing WAY too much of these kinds of wolf feeding patterns EVERYWHERE on the Internet lately and the Big Bad Wolf population is getting a bit out of hand.
Don't like how someone is raising their kid--feed the bad wolf!
Don't like the mama breastfeeding her child at the restaurant - FEED the bad wolf!
Don't like pictures of babies on the Internet - feed the bad wolf! (Or just download a ridiculous App for that.)
Don't like the way a company or a group is running their business - feed the bad wolf!
Don't like a certain group of anyone in particular for whatever ridiculous reason - feed the bad wolf!
This list could go on and on and on. It seems that as human beings, we have no shortage of things that piss us off. Things that make us angry and hateful and overly critical and judgmental and yes, jealous too. The Internet and social media, for all the amazing things that they can do in terms of connecting us all, they are also havens for these big bad wolves just waiting for feeding time!
Today I made a decision. I looked inside of myself at the two wolves fighting for dominion over my spirit.
And I chose the Good Wolf.
I chose to feed her, to let go of the hurt that I know was never intended to hurt and to find harmony with those around me. I chose to find harmony with myself as well. When feeding the good wolf today, I really thought about why I do the things that I do, particularly blogging. I realized that although recognition and accolades and sponsorships and all the rest of it is nice, it is not what keeps me here.
This chronicle of my life and my thoughts and my journey, it is what it is and it is for ME. I write to become a better writer. I write to share thoughts that otherwise clog up my brain and keep me awake at night. I write to share my experiences in the hopes that others will be inspired, will laugh, will cry and will perhaps take some grain of knowledge or wisdom or silliness away with them into their own lives.
I write to feed the Good Wolf.
And that is enough for me.
Natasha~
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This is Day 13 of the 31 Days of Summer Blog Challenge.
Not quite half-way, but it is practically all downhill from here. Right?
Please keep reading and encouraging the other participants as well.
Zita at The Dulock Diaries.
Meaghan at MagzD Life
April at This Mom’s Got Something to Say
Aramelle at One Wheeler’s World
Jessica at 2plus2X2
and Liam at In the Now
no words, just song
We came, we danced, we sang, we drank, we made new friends and visited with old ones.
Today we have an Edmonton Folk Music Festival hangover!
Until next year my Folkies!!
Love and love and love,
Natasha, Little C, and Folk Princess L.
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This is Day 12 of the Summer Blog Challenge!
Folk Fest weekend is over, back to some serious blogging, you know, with more words and stuff.
Please visit the other challenge participants and comment and like and share and all that jazz...
Zita at The Dulock Diaries.
Meaghan at MagzD Life
April at This Mom’s Got Something to Say
Aramelle at One Wheeler’s World
Jessica at 2plus2X2
and Liam at In the Now
folk fest friends
At 11 o'clock at night when I am taking down my tent in the dark, at least one of my children is having a meltdown of epic proportions and you see me trudging back up to the South Gate at the top of the Edmonton Folk Festival hill with all of our day's paraphernelia, you may wonder to yourself, why does she DO this? I was quite late to the Folk Fest game for an Edmontonian. I did not discover the amazing joy of this weekend until my early 30's. And then I was HOOKED! The music, the hill, the LOVE and yes, the beer tent. It's all just so good.
It is not an event that Natural Urban Dad enjoys (he likes to call it the Hippy-Gypsy festival and likes toilets that flush way too much to even step on the hill), but it is something that I love and that I wanted my children to love.
Why?
Because yesterday, we were sitting in front of a group of twenty-somethings at Stage 6 and one of them started helping L make a grass tower. He told me how he took his first steps on this particular hill and has been coming ever since, first with his family and now with his friends.
So don't look at me trudging up the hill and think, why not just leave the kids at home? Think WOW, what incredible memories and life experiences and MUSIC that mom is sharing with her babies! Expereinces that one day they will share with their own babies, or with someone else's little one building a grass castle on the hill!
Feeling the hippy-gypsy love of Folk Fest!
Natasha~
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This is my Day 11 post for the Summer Blog Challenge. I say it counts because I totally wrote it all in my head last night.
Check out the other posts from these fine folks too!
Zita at The Dulock Diaries.
Meaghan at MagzD Life
April at This Mom’s Got Something to Say
Aramelle at One Wheeler’s World
Jessica at 2plus2X2
and Liam at In the Now
what I did on my summer vacation-part one
This year we had a HUGE family trip planned. The in-laws have been on us to join them for a trip to Singapore for a few years now. We figured that the kids were old enough to remember such a trip and we did not have any major projects (ie, the Natural Urban Home) on the go. The flights and hotels were booked, travel vaccines done, and our days all planned with the amazing and wonderful sights to see and places to visit in and around Singapore and our planned side trip to Kuala Lumpur and Penang.
And due to circumstances WAY beyond our control (suffice it to say that CANCER can SUCK IT!) we had to cancel our trip. The day before we were supposed to leave.
I had to break this to the kids on the Friday before our planned departure. Yeah, that was not fun. They cried, they asked why so many times I stopped counting. And they were so, so disappointed.
I felt that we could not just cancel outright any chance of us taking a family vacation this summer and so I hit the interwebs to find a suitable (and relatively close-by) alternative.
Maui? No, the flights were just too much.
Mexico? The Carribean? Nope, surprisingly most all-inclusives are rather costly in the summer months.
So I started to look closer to home.
And then it hit me.
Vancouver Island.
My parents have been yammering on for years about this place on Vancouver Island that they love and visit as often as they can. In my mind, I somehow pictured tit as the Canadian version of Boca Raton and just dismissed it as a retirees haven of golf and well... more golf. And more imporantly, neither I nor the kids have ever been to the Island, so it just made sense.
It looked like the perfect spot for us to get away for a week and just chill.
I am talking about the lovely little town of Parksville, British Columbia.
I headed over to VRBO (Vacation Rental By Owner) and started to look for a nice cottage to rent for the week.
And two hours later I had our flights booked (on Westjet of course) and I found and reserved a great fully-equipped vacation rental just minutes from the beach.
We had a plan.
When the kids woke up on Saturday morning, we told them all about our NEW holiday plans. And because they are kids, they were just as excited about this trip as they were about the one to Singapore (which is still on the books for sometime in the next six months or so)!
We left on the following Monday and flew into Comox airport. We rented a ridiculously small, yet surprisingly roomy and EXTREMELY fuel efficient car (the Mazda 2) and headed to our final destination.
Parksville is this little wonderfully tourist-y kind of town on the east coast of Vancouver Island, 25-40 minutes from the airports in either Nanaimo or Comox and it is the perfect family vacation spot.
On our first day we headed to Cathedral Grove. A forest of ancient Douglas Firs that my kids (and my husband) loved. It was magical walking through the trees and watching L look for 'fairy houses' {giant mushrooms} and C trying to figure out how high the trees were. I personally loved all the moss-covered everything, it made me feel like I was in a Rivendell forest scene from Lord of the Rings.
On our way back from the forest we stopped for a picnic at the Little Qualicum Falls park and inadvertently took our kids on what turned out to be a 2.5 hour strenuous hike on some pretty rocky terrain (which we learned later is also bear country!). We got lost {twice} and eventually made it back to our car. All I have to say about this is THANK GAWD I had my toddler carrier. Now if only I had brought more water with us...
Day Two was filled with more tourist-y sights and we headed out to the famous Goats on the Roof Old Country Market in nearby Coombs. It is an eclectic little place to visit, with lots of cute shops, a fabulous {and very crowded} market filled with all kinds of imported and local foods and gifts and yes, there really are goats munching away at the living roof of the main building. We also found the giant limestone statues and carvings a block over, while completely odd and out of place, rather awe-inspiring. And for some reason, my kids were particularly drawn to these ones.
We visited the Butterfly World and Gardens on the way back and although the kids thoroughly enjoyed it and I got to fool around with my new macro lens for my iPhone, the price to get it was rather steep and the kids were quite obviously DONE!
Day Three was declared a beach day and we headed out in the morning to stake our spot on Rathtrevor Beach. With the tide out in the mornings at least a kilometre, small pools of water get warmed by the sun and you can spend your whole day exploring the ocean floor and finding lots of great treasures. The kids dug a huge trench and just sat in it for the longest time. We tried to walk to the ocean's edge, but a kilometre trek at the end of a day in the sun was too much for everyone and so we headed back home for a nap instead!
After our much needed nap and discovering that when you offer to put sunscreen on your husband's back and he says "Don't worry, just do my shoulders." you SHOULD NEVER LISTEN TO HIM (um, hello sunburn!), we headed to Parksville Beach to check out the sand sculptures created for the Canadian Open Sand Sculpting Competition and Exhibition. The sculptors get a truckload of sand and 24 hours to create their masterpieces and then they are on display for the next 4 weeks. We all got to vote for our favourite one and the competition was tough and provided some awesome inspiration for our next beach day!
There really is so much to do in and around the Parksville area on Vancouver Island that you can't go wrong with a family vacation there. Check out this great website for a lot more information about what to do, where to stay and more while in the area. I have 4 more days of fun to share with you, but this post is getting quite picture heavy. I will post Part Two later this week and I leave you tonight with this.
My little monkey man climbing around at the COOLEST playground ever!!
What about you? Have you vacationed or explored a new part of Canada for the first time this year? Where should we go next?
Natasha~
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Today is Day 10 of the 31 Days of Summer Blog Challenge.
Please visit the posts from my fellow bloggers and encourage them to keep going by commenting and sharing!
Zita at The Dulock Diaries.
Meaghan at MagzD Life
April at This Mom’s Got Something to Say
Aramelle at One Wheeler’s World
Jessica at 2plus2X2
and Liam at In the Now
Testing, testing
Just a quick little post to see if this is working properly. I just enabled Wordpress on my iPhone so that I can write my posts all weekend from the hill at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival. And I also downloaded the free Folk Fest app (just search for it in the App store) for the weekend. I am gonna be one connected folkie!
I will have both my little folkies with me too! Dancing and playing and living our weekend of music!
This is my "I am getting excited" face! And see? I can even do this all one-handed with a sleeping child on my lap!
See you on {or from} the hill!
Natasha~
LOTS of Words Wednesday: A Vlog Post.
It was a gorgeous morning. I found a shady spot at the park and then I recorded this.
Enjoy!
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XwQzkUsodKw[/youtube]
Mwah!
Natasha~
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This is the Day 8 post for the Summer Blog Challenge and look how EARLY I am posting it! Woohooo me!!
These are the links I was talking about. Click, read, comment, subscribe and join in on all our fun, fun, fun!
Zita at The Dulock Diaries.
Meaghan at MagzD Life
April at This Mom’s Got Something to Say
Aramelle at One Wheeler’s World
Jessica at 2plus2X2
and Liam at In the Now
Feminism.. you are doing it all wrong!
I am one confused woman... and mother... and, dare I say it... feminist. And I apologize ahead of time if this post goes a bit all over the place {see statement above} and if I am about three months late on this band wagon! .
I have been trying for the past week or so to read Elizabeth Badinter's book, The Conflict: How Modern Motherhood Undermines the Status of Women. And I just can't do it anymore.
It is hurting my head and my heart and my very soul reading her words.
And it is doing so on so many levels.
It hurts me because of her blatantly condescending attitude about pretty much everything that I value, hold dear and practice as an attachment parent mother.
It hurts me because of her "look how wonderful WE the French women are at everything we do". From having the highest birth rate in Europe to, you know, getting perineum therapy after having a baby to make sure everything gets all nice and tightened up again 'down there'! {I am serious!! This is a THING people and French social insurance COVERS it!!}
It hurts me because of my own French heritage {my mother was born in Nice} and the beautiful extended French family that I have and love and how it is skewing my view of all things French.
And it hurts me in my feminist heart. Because she is basically saying that I am doing IT {feminism} all wrong.
And she is not the only one.
According to Elizabeth Wurtzel, who wrote how 1% Wives Are Helping Kill Feminism and Make the War on Women Possible for The Atlantic this past June, I am not a REAL feminist either. Her reasoning for this?
Let's please be serious grown-ups: real feminists don't depend on men. Real feminists earn a living, have money and means of their own.
So that's it I guess. I must hang up my feminist hat because my husband and I made a decision for our family that I would stop working. A decision that made sense to us both financially and emotionally. And I'd like to point out that although it was ultimately my choice to leave my very well-compensated and highly fulfilling career to fully embrace motherhood, it was Natural Urban Dad who had a harder time wrapping his head around the idea of someone else beingthe primary caregivers for our children during the day.
So, I love the earth, am a breastfeeding, cloth-diapering, organic baby food making, babywearing, stay-at-home-mother, and I don't earn a living. Therefore...
I am NOT a good feminist.
Wurtzel argues that feminism is not something that you FEEL. That it is an absolute and that if you are not living up to the definition by doing all things equally to men than you are ruining it for all women. Badinter pushes this even further and implies that if you are not only not working and earning a living , but also are not getting yourself all back to your pre-baby sexy self and self-indulgent lifestyle in a matter of weeks (Psst, she is the heiress and Board Chair to the PR firm that has contracts with Nestle, Pampers and such, so consider her position in this with a boatload grain of salt!), then you are a slave to that anti-feminist movement she likes to call modern "naturalist" motherhood.
This is what I find highly amusing about both of these women going on and on about what is or is not killing feminism. Wurtzel is saying that it is the 1% super-rich mamas who have nannies and are stay-at-home parents who get pedicures and go to Jivamukti classes (I had to google that one. As one of my daughter's favourite book characters would say, it's a fancy word for YOGA!) who are to blame. And Badinter, herself one of those 1% (if not the 0.1%) of the super-rich, who truly believes that sending children off with nannies or to daycare (with the help of the state who picks up the cost of this) so as to pursue other ambitions (career or social) is the perfectly logical and very French way to go about being a mother.
Neither of these arguments really make any sense to me, and I am not sure that either of these ladies has a clue as to how the majority of mamas out there in the real world manage our day to day lives. Some of us working full-time, some part-time, some from home, some out of the home, and some of us fortunate enough, YES, fortunate, to have the option to stay at home with and for our children.
Cécile Alduy, Associate Professor of French Studies at Stanford and a regular contributor to the Los Angeles Review of Books, wrote an amazing review of The Conflict. It is a long and detailed analysis of the book and in the end she says that,
Not surprisingly for the heir of existentialist Simone de Beauvoir, Badinter seems to posit that a woman’s existence precedes her essence. You are what you do, not what your XX chromosomes tell you to be. It is unfortunate that second wave feminists like her tend to limit the range of worthy self-defining actions to the mandated “work as self-fulfillment” imperative that serves a capitalist economy so well.
Wurtzel seems to be of the same opinion and for me, I tend to believe that it is THIS kind of thinking that continues to fuel the "Mommy Wars", the war on women and is what is destroying feminism for my generation and likely the next as well.
Trust me, it is not me breastfeeding my child, hiring a babysitter a few times a week to hit up a yoga class and not having a 'real' job.
AND for the record, my sense of self-worth is not defined by what I do...
I am defined by who I am.
And I am a woman... in every sense of the word!
Natasha~
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And here is Day 7 of the Summer Blog Challenge. It's starting to get a bit easier... I think.
Check out what the other participants have been up to today...
Zita at The Dulock Diaries.
Meaghan at MagzD Life
April at This Mom’s Got Something to Say
Aramelle at One Wheeler’s World
Jessica at 2plus2X2
and Liam at In the Now