February Gratitude & Some Reading

To My Children

Words can be spoken or written as no more than hollowed vessels that propriety and circumstances may dictate be served up and spiced at the appropriate intervals. These customs surficially demonstrate to others that we love, we care, we rejoice, we are grateful. But to render them with every depth of feeling that is in them…perhaps we can never give that to another who shares not our hearts, our souls. Whatever I may say about what my reflections on my experiences or difficulties are, never would I want anyone to doubt that my love for my children is powerful beyond the limitations of language, and an unconditional motivation for many things that I do. Only the parts where I goofed would I ever want to have done differently. I love you both with everything in me that is deeper than words convey, and I am grateful every day for you both.

Busy As A Mom/Hab Therapist/Instructional Aide

Y’all, I’ve had a busy, busy few days. And, I just had part of a dental crown crack off today, so…I’m going to be even busier. Posts are going to be short for a while so that I can take care of all of the everything that needs to be done (the pictures below are from this morning’s hab session). Much love, Ari

Some Reading To Consider

The Trouble With Witches, by Kristen Painter

When things have been very stressful, I need reading that isn’t baring any scary plot teeth. And that is definitely this book. For my more religious loved ones and friends, it’s a clean read. None of the principal characters die. The ending is happy (even if the timelines for being so are maybe less plausible). My only real nitty picky criticism other than how quickly the characters fall in love is the use of “luminos” by one of the characters to turn lights on with her magic. It hedges too close to the Harry Potter lumos for my comfort levels. (As I said, nit picky!)

Otherwise, I feel like the story is creative, the characters mostly communicate in a healthy manner (love that!), and while there are some moments of tension, all of those are resolved pretty quickly and the book always seems to give you the sense that they will be. There are a couple heavier themes in the background (the heroine’s mom is a con artist that tries to use her magic to set her daughter up to take the fall for a major theft, for example), but neither those nor the emotional trauma that could have resulted from them are really dwelt on in much detail, the characters involved seem to default to the positive and solution finding so it didn’t weigh the emotional feel of the book down much for me personally. So for all of my spread thin friends looking for a quick read that won’t fan the stress flames, this is a cute book that could be just the right amount of distraction you need.