Confessions of a Book Lover: Nonfiction

So, I'm trying something new. I think on some Tuesdays--ideally every Tuesday but probably more like every two--I might go over what we're reading right now. Some of my books will be the ones I've read over the last 6 months, by theme.

Right now, Autumn's favorite book is Mickey Meets the Giant. It's an older book that actually once belonged to my little brother and sister.


It's not the best book in the world, haha, and it's painfully long but she likes it so whatever.

Mike isn't reading much lately because he's been so busy with work stuff. He's kept up better with the book we're supposed to read for community group, The Great Divorce by CS Lewis. I've only read the first 5 chapters. The weird thing is that I think I've read the book before. Either that or one of my old college professors was so influenced by it that he or she taught it a whole, whole lot.


As far as me, I've been chugging along on my book goal. I'm at approximately book 33. I am pretty sure I've forgotten to write down a couple of books. I'll remember what they are at some point, I'm sure. I thought I'd share a couple of great nonfiction books I've read.

The first two are by Erik Larsen. I can't remember how I found out about Larsen but I've read two of his books. I really enjoy true crime novels but I have a hard time reading things that are too gory or too recent. I guess I spend enough time thinking about attacks (I think most martial artists probably sit around choreographing fights in our heads way more than the average person, ha) that I don't want much to add to the weirdness that is my head. It's a reason I don't read (or watch) a lot of horror or super violence. Anyway, the first was called Thunderstruck and it combined the stories of Guglielmo Marconi, who invented the wireless telegraph, and Hawley Crippen, a murderer. The stories seem pretty random to put together at first but the author does a remarkable job of making the communication race exciting and brings the two tales together in a way that doesn't seem like a major stretch.


I like the second Erik Larsen book better, Devil in the White City. It's funny, I was able to look up the Chicago World's Fair in wikipedia so it's not like it was a big surprise what happens. But in all three of the books I'll mention in this post, the writers managed to create really intense narratives that made me want to keep going. The Chicago fair brought about a lot of changes that we'll recognize today--labor laws, architecture, landscaping styles--and, honestly, that alone would have made a fascinating read. But Larsen weaves in the story of a charming serial killer who basically builds a death chamber in his home...and leaves a trail of dead and missing women on the road to his special building.


The last book is Hellhound On His Trail: The Stalking of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the International Hunt for His Assassin by Hampton Sides. I heard about this book on the Drake and Zeke radio show, of all places. The show is even thanked in the acknowledgments which I thought was pretty funny and random. Anyway, the book was a page turner. Even though Hellhound is primarily about the events immediately preceding assassination of Dr. King and the hunt for James Earl Ray (who is only spoken of as his various aliases until nearly the end), Sides does an excellent job of describing the charged atmosphere of the Memphis area before and after April 4th as well as giving the reader a rundown of the state of the civil right movement at the time. I've been somewhat involved in a few local race relations and community building events around town. One I attended last year was the White Privilege Conference and I really wish I had read this book before attending (I couldn't have, because it just came out) because there were some people there with ties to the SCLC and some of the other organizations mentioned in Hellhound. At the time, I was a little confused about who did what with which organization and when but I feel a little more clear now. I'm planning on getting this for Stephan for Father's Day. I've also added Ghost Soldiers: The Epic Account of World War II's Greatest Rescue Mission by Sides to my "to-read" list.


And now! A monkey photo for making it this far. :D

What Did Autumn Do at the Beach?

She played in a lot of sand.


In the adorable hat that Aunt Lindsay got her...


And wearing a different swimsuit every day.


She did some other stuff, like wear her princess crown to dinner...


She relaxed and sunned herself in a beach chair.


Autumn floated on the sea turtle she named Prissy (don't worry, P'd is back there hiding).


She entertained the condo guests by strolling her beach toys down every day...


And discovered that the beach can, indeed, be a very cold place!

We live!

It's been a while since my last post! It's just been craziness around here, like usual. Hopefully things will be calming down in July since it's looking like we might get to move into our house around the end of June. Anyway, what have we been doing over the last week or so? Welll...working on the house of course:


Nursing busted lips. This one was bad. Autumn was running through the new house and tripped on a piece of plastic. There was so. much. blood. I seriously even had to stick my finger in her mouth to wiggle her teeth (they were fine) which, as many of you know, was a huge sacrifice for me because I haaate teeth. :P


For the weekend, Autumn and I went to the beach with Mike's family and had a great time.


Poor Mike had to work (poorly timed work project) so he just stayed home, worked, and sent me photos of his salads.


And today my new kids aikido class started at Mullins! It was a little messy but not too bad at all!


More to come!

If monkeys could blog...

My birthday was last Friday but mama is very slow. It was a fun day. Aunt Penny took me to Dunkin Donuts and we had a donut hole toast! I like donut holes. I reallly like to lick them.


I got to see a lady and a man and their dog riding on a motorcycle! It was so cute. Mama took their picture and they were nice and waved to me and told me happy birthday.


Then I got to go paint! I painted a plate and a picture frame for Lula's birthday. I got to play with stamps and sponges and water and it was so fun. Thank you, Aunt Penny!


A lady painted my hand and put it on my plate. I like purple. I wanted another handprint but mama said no.


I had to take a nap but then I got to go eat lots of rice. I love rice.


And there was fire. It was a little scary.


But I also got to see Uncle Donnie and Aunt Liz. And Uncle Justin and Aunt Valerie.


I love my p'd. He gave me a birthday purse with a shovel and a rake and sunflowers seeds and pots. Big Bird is on it.


I love my Nanny and my Boppa. I like to boss my boppa a little. Nanny thinks it's funny.


I got to meet baby Roxie! She's little. And cute. I love baby Roxie. I want her to come to the new house and play with my shovel. I got in my lula's lap to lay down like a baby. I tried to sleep like baby Roxie, too!


I'm tired. Yeah. Byyyyyyeeee! /blows kisses

**disclaimer: the above post is a dramatization based on true events and conversations. teehee.

A Game of Pass the Monkey

Autumn's birthday was Friday and we had a super fun day! But I want to go ahead and post our photos from Mother's Day because I have some really nice ones of everyone. I know a few of Nanny's friends read this so I definitely wanted to get the ones I have of her up here!

We decided to take a day off from working on the house to do some mama stuff. My mom was going to join us for lunch with Mike's family but she wasn't feeling well. Poor Lula! She missed a fun time. We pretty much played a lot of Pass the Monkey. Autumn started with me...


And traveled to Nanny and Lainey...


And then she traveled to Uncle Brad. They paused to do their latest trick. It's kind of crazy how comfortable Autumn is hanging out in the air.


Then they spent the rest of the time pretty much being cute,


While the other Colley men looked hungry...


And Nanny and Lainey posed for a pretty picture.


After lunch we exchanged gifts. Mike gave me assorted chocolates, including a chili chocolate. I gave my mom, Nanny, and Lainey the same thing, these silhouettes of Autumn that I made and framed. I'm pretty happy with how they turned out, especially the blue mat. Sorry about the blackberry picture, I'm too lazy to go get my camera to upload the real one now that I realized I don't have it on my computer, haha.


I gave these waterproof labels and bag tags to my sister. They aren't realllly mother's day gifts but the timing worked out that way!


I guess, speaking of making, I will go ahead and show you a couple pre-birthday pictures! Autumn's actual birthday was Friday but when she went to school Thursday, I put her in a birthday dress and sent her with a treat and some Mickey Mouse Clubhouse napkins for her class. I took pretzel rods, dipped them in chocolate, and then covered them in these neon nonpareils. They turned out really well. I figured her teachers would like something a bit less messy than cake!


I don't have a really good photo of the dress, but Penny got her this adorable Mickey applique dress a couple months ago and I had been saving it for her school birthday. Autumn was soooo excited about this dress, Mike's dad told me good luck getting it off her, haha. Here she is Thursday morning, serving tea to Mickey in the bathroom while I got ready for work.


More happy birthday fun to come!

The Week in Review

It's been a remarkably busy week. I had no idea that doing things like picking out ceiling colors could suck so much life out of me, haha. I'm not complaining too much...I'm not only super happy to be getting an awesome foundation for our dream home (even after all we're doing there will be more renovations in our 5 and 10 year plans) but I've had the most wonderful help from people like Nanny and Boppa who have painted many walls and entertained a little miss; Lainey who is a well of information and energy who can advise on everything from windows to lanscaping and whisk away a baby girl just when I need it; Papa D who does miracles with drain and electricity; and Brad who spent a short trip home glued to a color deck with me and mama lainey...I mean, that's the just the tip of the iceberg but I just wanted to say a very public thank you. Note that all of these people are on the list of Folks That Autumn Likes Better Than She Likes Her Mama and Papa, ha! Here she is copying boppa.


And this tickled me almost more than Autumn trying to sit like Boppa. They sat together and played with Autumn's My Little Pony whose name is Pinkie. At one point, Boppa was helping her comb Pinkie's hair.


Now, this tickled me even more that Boppa and Pinkie...I love Nanny with power tools.


Kind of on a less fun note, some of you have heard that when Autumn and I were headed from the Germantown house to the Lakeland house, we had a wreck. A man pulled out of a parking lot and hit our car, causing about $3k in repairs that his insurance is going to pay for. Autumn and I are fine...I've got some minor issues from getting slammed into the door (I want one of those 5 point harnesses like they have in the car seats!) but nothing that's going to be long term other than a little added damage to my already messed up left eye (I have some retinal degeneration there that I don't actively worry about but I do get it checked out yearly). Autumn was awesome...she was just surprised, I think. And the Collierville police officer who came on the scene was wonderful. He gave Autumn a panda bear that we've been keeping in the car for her.


A couple days after the wreck, my friend Annalise asked me if I'd snap a couple shots of her before her baby Aliza is born. Aliza is due in, like, 2 days so I'm glad Annalise was able to come out to the house. I'm barely an amateur photographer so I was really hoping I'd be able to take at least one or two nice photos. I snapped a LOT and there's a handful of pretty shots...this is one of them.


Another nice thing, we got to go eat at Salsa on Friday night. :D And, look! There's even a very rare decent photo of me! It's hard being the photographer...no one ever takes my picture! I'm trying to be better about that. I don't want 10 years to pass by before I realize I have no photos of myself and my family. :P


Actually, I guess this isn't going to be a Week in Review so much as a Monday-Friday of Last Week in Review. I have some nice mother's day stuff to post but I think I'll save it until later!

I hope everyone has had a great week!

One person's disaster...

...can be another person's divine intervention.

As you might have heard, we had a pretty wild weekend. There were so many tornado warnings that it seems like sirens are still ringing in my ears. The northern part of the county experienced some pretty nasty flooding. Last night, they treated parts of Millington, where my mom lives and works, like a disaster zone. You could only get in or out if you had ID. I think there's even a curfew. Neighborhoods, businesses and the navy base have been evacuated. My mom's apartment complex partially flooded. Her stuff is ok because she's on the second floor but I made her come stay with us just in case she got stuck there with no way out...and also to save her car. This is a photo of the back of her apartment complex, taken from the Ledger's facebook page. She lives in the front and it wasn't as bad there.


Saturday morning, in between tornado warnings, I went over the the new house where Mike's dad had already started working. I saw the water on the back patio earlier but didn't think anything of it because the previous owners mentioned that the patio flooded sometimes...our current home's patio occasionally did the same thing before we found a good trench path so no big deal, right?


Well, I was in the breakfast area cleaning the nastiness that the previous owners left when I noticed that water was coming in. Papa D ventured out to see what was up while I tried to mop up the water that was swimming around the room into the pantry and laundry room at an alarming rate. He was able to figure out that leaves had gunked up the gate and the drain and once he cleared it, most of the water left. We also found out that one part of the flower bed back there is too low and will have to be raised. Some of the work in the photo above is P'd, Mike and Donnie's hard work from today: digging a ditch to put in a new drain on that side of the house. P'd also got on the roof to clear gutters that hadn't been cleared in over a year during Saturday's rain. This is under the living room window where they installed the drain to reroute water in the future:


Later that night, Donnie came by and happened to have his moisture tester with him...he works at service master corporate in the insurance division but he used to do disaster restoration at one of their franchises. He looked at the breakfast area and said it was wet but not terrible and gave us some tips on helping it dry. I asked him to check some of the upstairs windows and, since I had seen the pooling water, under the living room window, even though no water had come in there. It was about then that we realized that the paneling was all bumpy and swollen. The meter registered so much water that they pulled out the baseboards and part of the paneling to find this:


It looks like that area has been getting waterlogged and then drying for years. Honestly, I'm so glad this epic Noah's Ark flooding happened so coincidentally on our first weekend of ownership. I confess I was in the dumps when it happened...some of our boxes got wet and our move-in has really been delayed but, you know, it could have been worse. This "potentially mold" stuff could have grown. The water could have kept rotting the wood over the years. And then we'd have to do this with all of our furniture in the house and with no other house to live in while we reconstruct:


There's even a small side-benefit. The living room is painted paneling. So, we're (well, Papa D and Mike are) going to put sheetrock in the rest of the living room. So much for move-in ready, huh?? Between this and getting rid of the popcorn ceiling, I can't believe this is a house we thought wouldn't be a big project!


As far as our open house tonight, it was nonexistent. We had nice weather but open houses are notoriously slow and it probably doesn't help that half the county is underwater and people are also catching up on the things they couldn't do Friday and Saturday because of the rain. Ah, well! I got to do some work work (as opposed to house work) and my house is clean. Plus I have pretty sodas and flowers that I got for the open house:


I guess all this should get me down. But I was really feeling bad about the house not selling and now I am grateful that we have someplace clean to live while we do all this work. And...no one can tell me it was chance that I was there when it flooded. That Papa D was there and single-handedly stopped the rest of the house from drowning. That Donnie came by for no reason with his moisture meter. It's encouragement in a discouraging situation, really. Plus I have a little miss who has been awesome through all this upheaval.


Can't beat that! Well. I guess having a healthy house without old and new water damage and smooth ceilings would beat that but I'll take my happy where I can get it.