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Sunday Matters

By now, you’ve heard that the entire West coast is burning. It started here with a Gender Reveal gone wrong, and then continued Northwest and I can’t even tell you how many fires there are or how many structures lost. The skies here are yellow and it feels like the end of the world. I keep thinking about Chicken Little and “the sky is falling!”

This is the Bay area which is much worse than where we are:

Right Now:

This week was hard for a number of reasons so I plan to focus on self-care today. I am at the point in this pandemic where I am “done” with it but of course, you can’t be done with a pandemic until it’s done with you!

Halloween was cancelled for LA County and then later that day they walked it back and said it was not banned but not recommended. My neighborhood is always packed with van loads of kids and parents strolling around with wine. I want to join in but I don’t want to die so if we hand out candy I will probably do some sort of table setup and just supervise from afar.

This Week:

We are deep into the college application process and will continue to be this week and probably all of September and part of October. We visited a couple of schools this past weekend but most of the schools my daughter is interested in are out of state.

I just realized I need to read a book for a discussion this week. It’s Kindred by Octavia Butler. I better get on that.

It was announced on Thursday that the Cal State Universities will be virtual for Spring 2021. I expected it but at the same time it was like a punch in the gut. This decision affects my campus as well as my son’s. He is fine with it. I don’t know if that means I will remain at home though.

Reading:

As I mentioned above, I will be reading Kindred here pretty soon for a discussion but I just finished Heart-Shaped Box by Joe Hill and should have the review up soon. Wowie! That book gave me all the Halloween vibes.

I think I may also read Wendy Walker’s new one, Don’t Look For Me.

Watching:

Ratched comes out on Netflix this week (9/18)! Yes, that’s NURSE Ratched to you. I cannot wait! I need something to pull me away from the news.

Grateful for:

We got our flu shots on Friday. Grateful to have gotten them early.
Instagram cooking Reels. I’ve been browsing some simple meal ideas and it’s giving me hope. SO tired of planning what to cook but lately these short videos have been helpful.
Like-minded friends who get where I am coming from politically. I am not at ALL into politics but for this election, how can you not be? I am voting for decency this term. Period.

Tell me something that is going on in your life. Something I can pray for or something great that has happened recently. I’ve felt very disconnected from everyone this week even though I try so hard to connect with others.

To be honest, I believe I am sick of myself.

What Alice Forgot
By Liane Moriarty
Berkley, 9780425247440, 2012, 496pp.

The Short of It:

Took some time for me to get into this one but once I was in, I was IN. Moriarty is a storytelling queen.

The Rest of It:

Alice faints during a spin class and upon waking, realizes that she’s lost ten years of memories. She doesn’t remember having children, or that she’s in the process of divorcing her husband Nick. She has no idea why she’s at the gym at all having shunned exercise for most of her life and how can she be 39 years old when she was 29 just a little while ago? One other thing that she can’t remember is the death of her best friend Gina, who played such a large role in Alice’s life.

The first quarter of the book was bordering on silly but was also humorous and entertaining. Alice’s realizations about life as those around her continue to fill in the gaps, got some giggles out of me but can you imagine not remembering your kids or your husband?

Memory-challenged Alice finds that she’s not all that likable. She’s lost friends, alienated her husband and grown apart from her sister. She was this driven, busy person who did all the things class moms do but in total excess. Now, as she looks around at things she can’t make sense of, she wonders why? Why is she getting a divorce? What went wrong?

This turned out to be a very touching story about a woman who is given a chance to turn things around. Plus, it’s not just about Alice, it’s about her sister Elisabeth and her family and how the past few years have created a lot of tension, but perhaps the damage can be repaired.

I really ended up liking What Alice Forgot. It’s not as dishy as Big Little Lies and it didn’t center around a suburb like Truly Madly Guilty, but it was sweetly sentimental and I was satisfied when I turned the last page. It’s been optioned for a movie, actually has been for some time but I don’t see any mention of it actually being in production.

Have you read it? It does give you some food for thought and the questions in the back of my copy confirmed for me that it would make a good discussion book too.

Source: Purchased
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