I love how, on social media, so many people are using the end of the decade to look at how their lives have changed in ten years. Comparing changes over time is a thing I am fascinated by and I like the way a designated span of time—here, the construct of a decade, but really, it can be anything—helps you see experiences in a different light.

December 2009 family photo

But every time I thought about doing it for myself I felt a little bit frustrated. Here is the list I was making in my head about what has happened in the past ten years:

• The litany of Kendell’s surgeries. At the end of 2009 he was starting to feel recuperated from his first heart surgery; after that he had two more heart surgeries, cardiac arrest, gall bladder removed, deviated septum repaired, a knee replacement.
• All of our parents passed away.
• Kendell graduated from college.
• Haley, Jake, and Nathan all graduated from high school. Kaleb finished elementary school and started junior high.
• Haley graduated from college.
• Kaleb was diagnosed with his heart issue, a bicuspic aortic valve with an aortic bulge.
• Each of my Bigs had their first significant romantic relationships.
• I went to countless events for my kids. Soccer, basketball, and volleyball games. Choir concerts, orchestra concerts. Track meets.
• Also countless: how much we used our health insurance. Kids’ broken bones, trips to the doctor or ER for stitches, and different illnesses. Nathan had shingles, Jake was treated for depression and anxiety, and all of us were in a long-term relationship with our dermatologist.
• Jake, Haley, and Nathan all started wearing glasses. They also survived braces.
• We had some family vacations: Disneyland more than once, Yellowstone, California beaches, Hawaii, Florida.

As I thought about my list, what hit me was how I was framing myself: in the context of everyone else. The big things feel like the ways I have helped and been involved with the people I love, and I do love them. Helping them and taking care of them and cheering them on is a huge part of my identity and I wouldn’t give that up for anything. But I was frustrated—and, frankly, startled—by how my first instinct was to think more of the experiences in other people’s lives than the experiences that I had. This train of thought at first took me to a sort of dark place. Sometimes it feels like, when you’re deep into your midlife years, the only exciting things left in your life are things that happen to other people. Things you are proud of them for accomplishing, or joyful for them being blessed in that way, but it is all other people’s experiences.

That left me feeling fairly…well, probably there is a German or Swedish word for “the feeling you have when you realize all of your big life experiences are past and all you have to look forward to is aging” but I don’t know what it is.

But then I took a deep breath and tried to think: wait. I also had experiences over the past decade that were MY experiences. That happened to me. Maybe they are smaller experiences, but they are still valuable. And even though there is this voice in my head saying it’s selfish of me to want to highlight my experiences over my family members’ (because isn’t that what a woman and a mother is supposed to do? Define herself in the context of the people she loves and not think about who she is outside of those relationships?), I’m still going to list them. It’s still valuable to celebrate the experiences the Universe brought ME over the past decade:

• I got to visit Europe twice. Italy and then a whirlwind tour of England+Belgium+The Netherlands+Paris. It’s barely enough Europe but here’s a whole new decade that I hope includes much more travel.
• I got to see so much art. I stood in front of Van Gogh’s paintings and wept because beauty can still come from darkness. I stood in front of Michelangelo's Slaves and felt understood by the world. I fell in love with obscure paintings for entirely personal reasons. I have always loved art but in this decade I got to experience it rather than only seeing it in books.
• I went to New York City twice. For this person who is thoroughly From The West, New York was thrilling and exciting and enlightening and terrifying and like a whole different place.
• I went running on beaches on both the Pacific and the Atlantic. I ran in Niagara Falls, Amsterdam, and Paris. I did a half marathon in New York and one in Denver. So long as I can run and travel I will always pack my running shoes.
• I traveled to Mexico (Cabo San Lucas), Washington, Hawaii, California, Colorado, South and North Carolina, Ohio, and Pennsylvania. I am far from a world traveler but I got to see a lot this decade. San Francisco, Seattle, and Charleston are cities I got to walk around in and, as funny as it sounds, I can now say I can get around in a city if it has decent public transportation.
• I hiked Half Dome in Yosemite. This was a significant turning point for my hiking confidence.
• I got to be reunited with Elliot, the baby I placed for adoption in 1990.
• I ran two full marathons and 8-10 half marathons, and many, many miles. I actually started running at the turn of a decade, in 2000, so this year marks my 20^th year of running. I’m not always as consistent as I should be, but I am always in love with running.
• I hiked. I hiked a lot. I fell in love with hiking and I found I have always loved the mountains but actually moving upon them has fulfilled me in so many ways. I’d hiked a little bit by the end of 2009, but 2010-2020 was a decade of hiking.
• I healed from several running injuries. The two worst were my ankle sprain at the 2012 Ragnar and my torn femoral condyle which led to a cascade of knee issues. I also worked through a nagging hamstring strain (which was tied not to nothing physical but to the emotional struggles I was having at the time; once some situations with my kids got better, the hamstring pain stopped) and years of sacroiliac back pain. I also broke my finger, which wasn’t a running injury.
• Both of my parents died. Yes, that happened to them, but it also happened to me. I’m an orphan and I’m also now the oldest generation. A co-matriarch with my two sisters.
• I had a very few pieces of my writing published. (This is the thing I want to change the most over the next decade.)
• I became a brand ambassador for Skirt Sports.
• I taught the teenage Sunday School classes at church; I also taught Relief Society (the women’s organization) and doctrine classes. I’m grateful for those opportunities I had to teach.
• My relationship with my church (I am a Mormon, if now far, far on the fringe) has changed utterly in the past decade. This has been painful; a time of mourning. But it has also freed my soul from some very unnecessary fetters of guilt. I am now trying to understand what my spirituality looks like. I think this will be a process I experience my whole life.
• I fell in love with national parks. I got to visit Yellowstone, Yosemite, Rocky Mountain, Congaree, and all of the Utah parks. I hope 2020-2030 will include many more fridge magnets.
• I have learned—am continuing to learn—what it means to be the mom of adult children. It is far different than I imagined, in both difficult and amazing ways. I am excited to see what their upcoming decade brings them, too.
• I worked at the library. I became a librarian, in fact. This is the longest job I’ve held in my life. It is sometimes frustrating (working with the public can be exhausting) and my small salary makes me feel a great deal of guilt and anxiety, but I love my job. It has brought me some of my closest adult friends and given me some amazing opportunities to interact with and learn from people. And of course brought me to so many books. I never imagined myself as a librarian but it really is perfect.
• I read books. I guess I could go back and count how many, but I'm not going to. I didn't write about every book I read, I didn't love every one. But so many of them have helped me in different ways.
• I made a lot of things. I wrote hundreds of blog posts and made even more scrapbook layouts. I cooked meals and baked cookies and pies and cakes. I made quilts for my kids and my house and for other people’s babies. I wrote poems and journal entries and essays. I planted and nurtured my flowers. I hope I also made my relationships stronger and nurtured the people I love.

Making this list makes me wonder, of course: what will the next decade bring? In ten years, what will my list look like? I have many hopes. Maybe I should write that list down, too. The things I hope 2020-2030 will bring me. But I’ve also learned that life is always throwing unexpected things at you, and so there will be many things that happen in the next decade I can’t even imagine now. Right now, I am trying to reach back in time to that Amy at the end of 2009 and tell her…tell her what? That things will be harder than she knows but there will also be so many good things, maybe. And I am also trying to reach forward to the Amy I will be in December of 2029 to hear what she can tell me.

But I bet it’s the same advice. Things will be hard. Things will be wonderful. And all I can do is savor and experience and act and create and love.

Family photo 2019

Your mother’s death influences you in ways you couldn’t ever anticipate. For me, one thing that impacted me after my mom passed away in January was the process of dealing with her fabric stash.

My mom has always been a collector of fabric. When we were kids she had a sewing room in our basement, and the floor-to-ceiling cabinets were full of fabric. Back then she made clothes for us, and then sometime in the 80s she transitioned to quilting. (There was also a brief stint of making animals.)

As a scrapbooker who’s been invested in my hobby since 1995, I understand how supplies pile up. You see something you love and want to do something with, you buy it, you intend to use it by making the thing, but sometimes (ALL THE TIME) other things also grab your attention and then over the years you just accumulate a whole bunch of stuff. Some gets used but not everything, and if you saw my scrapbook stash you’d understand why I’d never judge or criticize my mom for her fabric stash.

I understand.

But when my sisters and nieces and I went through her fabric, it was…stunning. We gathered fabric from all different corners of her house and piled it into different colors, and by the end her entire basement was full of fabric. A lifetime’s accumulation. She had made quilts for each of her granddaughters when they got married, and for great grandchildren as they came, but in her house she only had three finished quilts.

As we sorted and shared and discarded yards and yards and yards of fabric, that contrast hit me: so much accumulation, but only three quilts in her house. This made something shift in my crafty psyche. It made me feel determined to accumulate less and to make more.

Plus, I think that quilting was a way of processing my grief while feeling a connection to her. She didn’t teach me everything I know about quilting, but she taught me enough to have the confidence to learn and to develop. I’ve been quilting off and on since I was pregnant with Haley, and (obviously) much more since I got my own machine in 2004. (Before I had my own I would go to my mom’s house and use hers.)  But this year was a year of quilting.

I didn’t finish everything I started. I have a fat, fluffy flannel quilt I made for Jake that I just need to bind. I have a Halloween table quilt that is pieced and pinned but I feel intimidated to quilt. I made *some* progress on my black and pink quilt but I didn’t put it all together. I found a pattern and bought the fabric for a quilt for Kaleb but I didn’t start piecing it yet.

But I did finish quite a few things.

I wish I had blogged more about the process of making these. Hopefully in 2020 I will accomplish that goal, too. But I’m glad I gave myself the time this year to make things, to sit at my machine and let my thoughts wander while I pieced and measured and strung fabric together into made things instead of just accumulating raw supplies. Here's my list:

1.  Book Print Mug Rug #1. I made this for a bookish Galentine's swap I signed up for. I sent it with a copy of Lavinia by Ursula K. Le Guin. I'll probably sign up for this again in 2020!

2.  Rag Baby Boy Quilt. I made this for my friend Jamie's daughter Rachel's baby. The dark blue flannel on the back came from my mom's stash.

3.  Book Print Mug Rug #2.  I made this for my friend Mindy when she left the library. She is one of my favorite people I've worked with and I still miss her every day! I bought a TON of this book print fabric and if you look closely you'll probably notice it in a lot of the scrappy things I make.

4.  Emmy's baby quilt. A big log cabin for my grand-niece Emmy. Read more about it HERE.

5.  Running Shoes Mug Rugs. When I went to the Skirt Sports retreat, I needed to bring a gift for a basket some of the ambassadors were putting together. I decided a mug rug would be good, but why make one when you can make four? Actually I made five. I think because of the corners being cut on the bias but I had the hardest time getting the binding corners to look nice on these. Hence the fifth one because the one I kept was THE WORST for corners. I gave one to Becky, one to my friend Lynne, one to someone else I don't remember! :) 

6. Ian's Baby Quilt, Midnight Feeding. I decided I should start naming the quilts I made. I didn't actually name them all but I'll share when I did, and this is the first one I named. I made this for my grand nephew Ian. It's backed with a dinosaur print flannel because his grandma, my sister-in-law Cindy, told me she hopes one of her grandsons will love dinosaurs.

7. Gus's Baby Quilt, Imagination. This is actually one of the first things I made after my mom passed away, but Gus (another grand nephew) wasn't born until the spring and I didn't give it to him until July! This took me FOREVER because I was learning how to make log cabins and didn't know the ways to make them faster. I have a half-written poem called "Grief Cabins" inspired by making this quilt that I hope to finish in 2020. It's backed with a flannel cowboy print.

8.  Hot Pad for Sarah. I made this for a family friend's daughter who got married this fall. We've known her since she was five or six! I paired it with a bundt pan, a cake stand, and the recipe for the chocolate bundt cake I used to make and take to their house when they had us over for dinner.

9.  Aiden's baby quilt, Summer River. This is for another grand nephew, same sister-in-law is the grandma! It has some of my favorite blues and greens from quilts I've made for Kaleb, Jake, Nathan, and lots of other babies. It's backed with pieced flannel and a few other squares.

10.  Patchwork Scrappy Pumpkins hot pads. I totally meant to write a tutorial for these and will do that next fall when it is seasonally appropriate! 

11. In the Stacks Quilt. I made this for a beginning quilting class I helped to teach at the library. I have a tutorial all written up so I definitely should write a blog post about it. I keep this on the chair in my craft room.

12.  Gloria's Quilt, Aspirations. This one is for my friend Julie's granddaughter. The baby's mom has a fashion degree so I HAD to make something for her with those dresses. I can now whip up a log cabin square in the blink of an eye! I had this one quilted because it needed some elegant curves. I love the way the arrangement of the logs also suggests a circle without actually making a circle.

13. Baby Patchwork Quilt in a Day. I made this one for one of Kendell's coworkers. He was in Denver for a conference and I was going out later in the week to meet him, and I literally made this is a day. It was fun to challenge myself!

14. Halloween Table Quilt. This one ties for the oldest thing I finished, along with #15. I made this quilt top in 2006 I think; when I finished it I didn't love it at all and so I put it in the closet under the stairs and forgot about it. I found it when I was organizing my fabric this February and March and decided, why not use it anyway? I redid the back because it was too small, had it quilted, and then bound it. (I LOVE the binding. Fabrics with prints are my favorite.) It still will never be my favorite quilt I've ever made, and I actually love the back more than the front, but it's OK. I like it because it reminds me of all the things I've learned since I first started.

15. Dancing Skeleton Hot Pad. I have had this little pieced piece sitting in the drawer with my Halloween scrapbook supplies since I made the above quilt. This was my FAVORITE part of the panel and I wanted to showcase it somehow. I think I thought I'd maybe make a pillow, or maybe put it on a piece of wood somehow so it could hang on my wall, but I never did anything with it. When I found the quilt top it matches I decided to pull it out and make a hotpad instead. I know...how many hotpads do I need? but I love her. I backed it with purple polka dots. I didn't remember to take a picture of it before I packed it up with my Halloween decorations, but here it is before I quilted it. I will likely use this image if I ever get around to writing a tutorial about self binding.

16. Hotpad for Margot #1: Anne of Green Gables. I got to meet in person my friend Margot this year, who I've been friends with online for a long time. I gave her three hotpads—one was a Christmas one I made last year—this one, and #17. I picked Anne of Green Gables because we are kindred spirits!

17. Hotpad for Margot #2: Utah National Parks. Margot came to Utah mostly so she could hike Utah's redrock desert. I found this fabric online and it was perfect. I need to make one for myself, too! I had fun setting each park square at a random angle; I wanted it to look like a scrapbook page with photos on it, because she is also a scrapbooker!

18. Black & Pink Hotpad. This is a wedding gift that I still need to get something else to go with and then actually give it to the person I made it for. I have SO MANY black & pink half square triangles because I just keep making them and finding a new piece of black I love and then needing a pink to go with it and then suddenly I have 16 more matches which means 32 more HSTs...so, yeah. Probably a black-and-pink something is in a lot of people's future. I quilted this using masking tape which is another thing I want to blog about!

19.  Autumn Leaf Table Quilt. I had so much fun making this and I learned that I can freeform quilt. Not perfectly but clearly what it takes is just some practice.

20. Anne of Green Gables Hotpad for Chris. Chris is my oldest best friend and definitely a kindred spirit AND she has red hair so how could I not make this for her for Christmas?

21.  Christmas Table Quilt. I will still write a blog post about this. It's highly imperfect but I love it anyway. And I'm including a photo of the back because I might like the back more than the front.

This is the front.

And here's the back. I love the back so much.

22. Another Running Mug Rug. This one has yoga ladies on the back. I made it for a secret Santa swap. 

23. Christmas Tree Hotpad. This made me happy for all the days I had it out—I finished it relatively late in December, though, so I will get more love out of it next year. It reminds me of my mom but it feels like my style. Still annoyed I ran out of the striped background fabric!

24. The Kitty Quilt, or, Misty, Noelle, Emily. I made this because I wanted Haley to have something comfy to sleep with when she was home—home sleeping on the floor because we don't have extra beds! I don't think she actually slept with it, but that's OK. I love it. I will blog about this one too. It was my last finish of a very productive year!

Not sure if I will quilt as much in 2020 as I did in 2019. BUT I do have a 20 projects in 2020 sheet that my local fabric store gave me, so, we'll see. I do know that quilting this year has brought me peace and happiness and a few pretty quilted things, and that is enough.

‘Does a slag kiss boys? Because I have and I probably will again. But so have lots of you. You can call me a prude and you can call me a whore, but really you’re just calling me a girl. I am a girl. But those other things are yours. They’re in your minds, not mine.’

I like books that mix a contemporary story with a historical one, especially when the stories take place in the same place but different time periods and yet influence each other. So when I read about The Burning by Laura Bates (I have no idea where I heard about it, sorry), I knew I had to read it. It tells the story of Anna Clark, who’s just moved to a small village in Scotland from a city in England to start over—she is trying to start a new life after a boy posted the naked pictures he’d manipulated her into taking for him. The historical story is of Maggie, a village girl who is accused of witchcraft after the wealthy man she accused of rape is drowned at sea.

There are many things I loved about this book. I especially appreciate its willingness to go there—to the many horrible ways that people can manipulate, both the people they are in relationships with and media itself. How social media creates an identity that sometimes can never go away, even if it is based on nothing but technology and malice. I loved the friendships that Anna finds in her new home, and the realizations she has about her old friends, and the way her relationship with her mom evolves. I love the ways she finds to take back her power.

I also really enjoyed Maggie’s story, and I enjoyed learning more about witch hunts in Scotland…there were so many women killed who had no power to save themselves. Women being accused of witchcraft is a topic that has interested me since eighth grade, when I wrote a research paper on it and have been fascinated ever since, but I didn't know much about this time or place. 

So this is a hard review for me to write. I enjoyed all of those pieces, but I was frustrated with how the pieces were put together. Anna and Maggie interact in a sort of supernatural way, via a necklace Anna finds. To me, this felt clunky and inauthentic to the tone of the story. The themes of the two stories click; the way that girls are still up against impossible choices hasn’t changed much in the last 400 years. Anna’s friend Lish explains it as girls being like marshmallows you’re trying to roast, and you can never get it right. Either too cold or burned. “Like girls, right? You’re too cold and frigid and not giving guys what they want . . . until you do, and it’s too much, and you get burned.” Just as Maggie lets her guard down with the wealthy man who eventually causes her death.

I totally see the connection.

But it still didn’t mesh for me, the way the two stories interact. Which really makes me sad because I am here for all of it, for the witches and for the witch trials and for the layering of stories and the layering of time in stories, for one person's story reaching back or forward through time to touch someone else's. But the two just didn't fit together well. Like two patterns that, while beautiful on their own, simply don't go together.

Also: does Great Britain not have laws against online bullying? No one, not one single character, ever suggests calling the police and prosecuting the boy who started this whole thing. He is never held responsible for any of it. Although there is a pretty great scene near the end where Anna’s mom finally stands up for her daughter, I was still annoyed and frustrated with this.

But, all of that aside, I am still glad I read The Burning, and I’m glad it’s a book that exists in the world, because it puts into the world this story, this thing that can happen to almost anyone and that in some form or another has been happening forever.

Ten years ago, I was in a fabric store falling in love with a line of Mary Englebreit Christmas fabric. I made a quilt with it (the only quilt I’ve ever made with pre-cut fabrics) but I wanted to also give it to some people I loved. So I asked one of the salesclerks at the store what I could make other than an entire quilt to give to someone.

She suggested I make some hot pads, and I loved that idea, so I bought some yardage, too, and she gave me a pattern idea (a modified log cabin). I started working on them the second I got home that day. Except, Haley came home from school sick with the stomach flu, so I set up a little table in the hall and started cutting, taking breaks to be with her in the bathroom.

(Oh those years when no holiday could pass without at least one of my kids getting the stomach flu, and often more than one.)

In my memory I made 25 or so hot pads that November (I didn’t actually finish the quilt until the next December), but when I stop to think about it, I’m not sure. I know I gave one to my mom and my mother-in-law; when Beth passed away she had hers in a drawer and Kendell had me bring it home with the other stuff we inherited from her. I’m not sure what happened to my mom’s (maybe one of my nieces has it?) but I don’t know…did I really make a lot of them? Or just a few?

At any rate, that was my start of making hot pads. I have loved making them ever since. They are actually an integral part of my kitchen cleaning process, as I use them to set wet, hand-washed dishes on to dry. The ones I make now are much larger than those first ones I made, and I love the little pop of color and hominess they add to my kitchen.

Also, I love making them because they come together quickly; you can easily make one in just a couple of hours. And your options for making hot pads are only limited by your imagination and your piecing skills!

To make one, you need:

• A pattern for the top block. It can be as hard or as easy as you like. I’ve made improve blocks, lob cabins, stars, patch work, squares with fussy-cut holiday fabrics, whatever.
• A piece of fabric for the back. A fat quarter is great for this! This should be about 4" larger than your finished block if you want to self bind, or 2" longer if you’re making a separate binding.
• A piece of cotton batting that is about 2" larger than your finished top block. (A thin batting is perfect here.) (This is a great use for your batting scraps!)
• A piece of Insulbrite batting that is about 2" larger than your finished top block. Insulbrite is an insulated batting; it is what makes this a hot pad because it protects your counter from heat. They used to sell it at Joann but I haven’t found it there all year. So finally I just ordered a huge piece from fabric.com.
• A piece of fabric for the binding if you choose to make a separate binding. The size of this depends on how big your finished hot pad will be and how wide you like to cut your binding.

Here are the basic steps; for more details see THIS blog post.

1. Make the top block.
2. Make a quilt sandwich: the backing fabric face down, then the Insulbrite, then the cotton batting. Smooth out the top square on the top.
3. Iron once more to smooth out any crinkles.
4. Pin and then quilt as you like.
5. Square up. If you are going to use binding strips, you just cut through all four layers. If you’re going to do a self binding, trim the top three layers so they are square, and THEN square up the backing. (This can get tricky. Be careful to NOT cut the backing! Fold it underneath the square as you trim.)
6. Wash and dry.

Two years ago, I made another round of hot pads at Christmas. This time I made thirty of them, for nieces and sisters and friends. I made one for my mom but that was the December she got sick so I don’t know if she ever used it. I had a few people who said, “ummm, thanks for this quilted…little square?” so now when I give them as gifts I include a little card I had printed that explains what it is and how to use it. (YOU CAN’T PUT INSULBRITE IN THE MICROWAVE! Very important!)

Some notes on binding:

I go back and forth on making a traditional binding (there are several ways to do this, but I make mine like THIS) or doing a self binding (like THIS), which means binding the quilt with the quilt backing. Self binding is easier, but you have to pay attention to how you quilt the hot pad because the ending of the quilting won’t be covered. Regular binding takes longer, but it’s also more durable and it’s fun to add another fabric into the mix. I’ve improved my binding skills a lot by binding hot pads, so that’s great, but depending on how small the pad is, it can get frustrating to bind traditionally because that last step when you join the ends in a diagonal seem is HARD to do with a tiny piece. (I almost ALWAYS self-bind anything smaller than 9", unless, like the one I made over the weekend as a gift, I accidentally cut the backing fabric on step 5.

I have several Christmas hot pads, but I still made another one this year.
(I like having a Christmas-themed craft I work on during December.) I love the two fabric lines I used, Swell Christmas and Sweet Christmas. I think it is a fabric my mom would like, but I also like it, which is great because our tastes are really pretty different. It has a mod, 60’s feel and I confess, I love pink in Christmas designs. I used a the "Christmas Tree" block pattern from The Sewing Loft to make the tree, except I modified it because I wanted a rectangle instead of a square. Modifying it pushed me a little bit and I had to recut the plaid part of the tree THREE times, which left me short on the striped fabric on the top triangle, so then I had to piece it, and I’m a little bit bitter about it. (I even went back into the fabric store to get more of the stripe but they were out. Sadness.) I used washi tape to mark the lines for quilting, which I think I need to write a separate blog post about.

I quilted with droopy curvy lines inside the tree (sort-of like Christmas tree lights?), an outline of the tree, and then the background is a double line set at a 30 degree angle. I wish I would've outlined the tree twice before sewing the background lines, but: onward and upward!

This has been an emotionally difficult December so far, but my two quilting projects have nurtured me through so far. Plus it just makes me happy to see this on my counter!

At my core I knew, and I’d known since I first suspected it was a possibility, that a baby was not right for me, not now. Every cell of my being rebelled against the idea. There was no question.

The young adult novel Unpregnant by Jenni Hendriks and Ted Caplan tells the story of Veronica, who discovers she’s pregnant when her ex-best-friend, Bailey, walks in on her taking the test in the high school bathroom. Veronica, pretty and blond and popular enough doesn’t tell the group of three friends she loves being the Queen Bee of (but not really in mean ways, just slightly superior); she might just become the class valedictorian and has her college scholarship all tied up. Girls like her don’t end up unexpectedly pregnant in high school. Especially purity-ring-wearing girls with conservative, pro-choice, religious parents. So even before she discovers that her boyfriend Kevin poked holes in the condom (because he didn’t want her to go away to college while he stayed in their Missouri town), she decides she will get an abortion.

But then she discovers that in Missouri, you have to have your parents’ permission to have an abortion, and this is something her parents would never consent to. The closest state where she can get an abortion in secret is New Mexico; Albuquerque is almost 1,000 miles away but is her closest option. After telling her parents that she’s going on a weekend study trip with her friends, and telling her friends she’s going to have a romantic weekend with Kevin, she heads off on a road trip—with Bailey.

Honestly, this will be a hard book for me to review. Partly because it is billed as “that funny book about abortion.” I do think the authors pull off the humor, except for me none of it was funny. This isn’t because they didn’t write it well, but because almost everything that is supposed to be funny never feels funny to me. Slapstick and coincidental humor especially, and there is a lot of that in this story. So, for me, one of the major points of the story just didn’t resonate, but again: this is because I’m just not the audience for this kind of humor.

That said, I liked many things about it. While “making up with my ex-best-friend who I abandoned because I was cooler than her in high school” is a common YA trope, I enjoyed the process of Bailey and Veronica mending their relationship. It wasn’t simple and it required both of them to change. I also enjoyed watching Veronica process her choices and realize some hard truths about herself. And I loved Veronica realizing how damaging her relationship with Kevin was. Finally, it makes a pretty strong case against individual states’ rights about abortion. No one should have to travel that far for a medical procedure. (And, yes, I would be devastated if my daughter didn’t trust me enough to seek out my help if she were in Veronica’s position, but in the end I firmly believe that once you are pregnant, the choice of what to do is yours, not your parents’ or anyone else’s, because you, as the pregnant person, have to live with whatever choice you make. Ideally all teenagers would have fantastic, open, trusting relationships with their parents but how many ideal situations involving teenagers and parents do YOU know?)

That said, I had one huge problem with this book. Veronica has been raised in a strict Christian family. She’s gone to a church that made pro-life signs to wave around at abortion clinics and she made that purity vow. Yet, when she finds out she’s pregnant, her first choice, without any real hesitation, is to get an abortion. After the long road trip and when she is at the abortion clinic, she does move through some deeper emotions about her choice before she decides to go ahead with it. But for me, I couldn’t get past her never hesitating at the very beginning. I mean, clearly if she’s been having sex with her boyfriend, she has moved away from her parents’ teachings and beliefs. But it just didn’t feel authentic that she went to abortion so quickly and surely. I think that someone who was raised in that way would have to work through a process of coming to that decision because while sure, people absolutely change and have their own beliefs that are separate from their parents’, we are still all products of the environment we grow up in. The lack of any really processing was my biggest hang up with this book.

Again, maybe that is because of what I bring to the book. I don’t believe that anyone makes the decision to have an abortion lightly. I think that when you are a pregnant teenager especially, it is an enormous choice. And portraying the choice in such a lackadaisical way, and then tossing in a bunch of slapstick humor, evangelical strippers, cow tipping and raucous hijinks…to me, it felt like it just made light of the whole situation.

Except it redeemed itself a little bit in the end, when things get real and far less silly.

So…mixed feelings on this book for me. I appreciate novels about teenage pregnancy, rape (poking holes in the condom is assault), and abortion because they have brought the discussion out into the light. There is far less shame and stigma associated with these things now than when I was a teenager, which I see as a positive. I enjoyed many things about the plot. But in the end, I think that it is a larger topic than the humor and lightheartedness this novel gives it.

But of course, you wouldn’t be the first person to accuse me of being a humorless stick in the mud, so take my opinion for what it’s worth.

I’ve wanted to run a race on Thanksgiving for a long time, but it’s never felt like I could do it. Not the race itself, but working it in with the busyness of Thanksgiving morning, especially the past few years when I’ve made the whole meal on my own.

This year, though, since we were going out to eat, I decided to run the Thankful 13 race in Lehi, Utah. I’ve wanted to do it for a long time, partly because I ran another race done by the same company a few years ago and I LOVE the shirt from that race. (It was a Halloween race so I can really only wear it in September and October without looking weird, but it’s perfect: exactly the right fit and thumb holes!) They added a 10k option this year, which is perfect for me right now, as I’ve been concentrating on building my base and consistency (and improving my form and cadence) over adding mileage. Plus it took us awhile to decide for certain what we were doing for Thanksgiving, so I didn’t have enough time to train properly for a half.

10k it is!

My friend Wendy was going to walk the 10k with another friend coming from Salt Lake, so we drove together. I almost never go to races with a friend so this was so nice for me. We were a little worried about the forecasted snow but it was just barely starting to swirl when we got to the parking lot, so I left the hat I’d brought and the warmer gloves in her car.

One way to judge a race: are there enough porta potties at the start? There were roughly 50 and no bathroom line so I took that as a good sign! Wendy and I timed it pretty well, so we just parked, walked over to the bathroom, met up with her friend for a picture, and then they were calling for the 10k racers to gather at the starting line.

The race started right on time (another indication of a well-run race). It had started snowing for real—not thick snow, but a consistent flutter fall of pretty white flakes. The bridges we had to cross were pretty slippery, and then the course went onto the Thanksgiving Point golf course. The path there is stamped concrete and holy cow it was slippery. As a fall is one of my biggest fears whenever I go running, I ran as much of this part on the snowy grass instead of the paved path as I could.

After the golf course, there is an out-and-back section on the Jordan River pathway. I’ve run this path a lot of times (I used to go and run there while Kendell was taking tests at the MATC building when he was working on his degree) and I thought about several memories I have at that section. Most strong is the day Becky called me because she was having an anxiety attack on the freeway and I stopped running to talk to her until she was OK. That feeling is that spot of the trail, which is a weird thing I can’t entirely explain.

On the –back part I passed Wendy going the other way and it was fun to wave! A little bit later, the trail merged with the 5k runners and HOLY COW. I did not like this. It was annoying to be in the middle of a 10k and all of a sudden feel like you were in the first mile, dodging and swerving in a crowd of other runners. Plus there were a lot of kids and they don’t really know race etiquette (like, don’t stop in the middle of the path to wait for your friend) and they were dropping stuff and everyone was forming clumps of people who were hard to get around. I had to remind myself at this point that everyone was there to have fun and it wasn’t like I was going to win, so if I had to slow down a bit it would be OK.

I was still glad when the 5k peeled off though.

(This was a tiny loop off the main trail just before the 5k and 10k merged. Literally not one person around me, swoon. But only for, like, 30 seconds.)

I am still doing walking breaks. (I think that with my knee condition I will probably always do walking breaks now. Part of me feels some sort of embarrassment about this. Part of me doesn’t care because as long as I can keep running I’m good.) When I stopped at about 4.5 miles, the woman who was about 15 feet in front of me also stopped to walk. Then I heard a man behind me who said “don’t stop sweetie! You’re doing great, you’ve got this!” and I said “Oh, thanks! I’ll start running again in two minutes!” and then the man who said that passed me and I realized it was the other woman’s husband and he was talking to her.

HA! I giggled for a bit about this!

Another nice thing about this race: you can download the race photos for FREE if you just want social media sized files, and for $1.99 for printable sizes. It's pretty rare I actually get a good race photo anyway (I'm still sad about the race photos from my last marathon), but it irks me to have to drop another $50 for the race photos. Not that I don't value photographers, I know their work is difficult, but I think the RACE should pay them. Two bucks is reasonable! I'd even go up to ten! Anyway, the first photo spot was in the mixed-with-5k-mess and I was behind a big group, but for this last one no one was really around me AND I spotted the photographer with enough time to wave!

I texted Kendell so he would know I was getting close and started running again. And I had to laugh at my body at that point. The longest training run I’d done was about four and a half miles, so when I started running again at 4.5 miles, I swear my legs complained. They resisted moving again. They were like…ummmm, what are we doing? It’s stopping time! But I persevered and finished. Kendell was at the finish line and I have to say: I’m always so glad to see him there. Not just because he takes some awesome photos but because it is so good to see a friendly, supportive face in the crowd. He thought I was wearing something different so he didn’t recognize me at first; I finally caught his eye by waving at him.

The snow fell the whole time I was running but it never got so thick that it felt dangerous. I started regretting my second layer about five minutes in to the race but left it on until about two miles in. (I really hate running with something tied around my waist.) Since there was just snow but no wind, it was just perfect running conditions. I’m glad I ran it, but I do have one complaint: the shirt! I got a large because that’s the size of my Halloween race shirt I love…and it is way too small. Still has thumb holes but it’s way too tight on my chest (which is hilarious if you know me!), so maybe I’ll have to try it again next year.

Once I’d confessed to my own mother that I thought God was a woman, because who but a woman would care so much about the oceans and the plants and the animals, who but a woman could build a whole world in seven days? (Pearl)
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Nothing is funny about war. But one must find reasons to laugh anyway, especially when nothing is funny. Sometimes joy is the only defense you have, and your only weapon. (Sister Bert)
❦ ❦ ❦

Why does the world demand girls be beautiful, but when they are, punish them for it? Why does it punish girls either way? Why does the world want girls to be sorry, some even more than others? (Pearl)
❦ ❦ ❦

Hell wasn’t fire and brimstone. Hell didn’t burn. And the only devils to be found were the ones you find on earth…Hell was empty. Hell was nowhere. A dead silent plain of echoes and dust and empty arms rocking. Where people didn’t even care enough about you to hate you. Where the people who’d promised to love you forgot your name. (Frankie)
❦ ❦ ❦

If you can’t be happy, just live as much as you can. Be like Francie in A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, be something every minute of every day, be sad, be cold, be warm, be hungry, be full, be ragged or well dressed, be truthful, be a liar and a sinner, only be something every blessed minute. Make art, make the most beautiful art…and when you sleep, dream all the time so that not one little piece of living is lost. (Loretta)
❦ ❦ ❦

It isn’t often that I read a book, finish it, and realize: I wouldn’t change one thing about this. I loved the whole thing. But when I finished Thirteen Doorways, Wolves Behind them All by Laura Ruby that is exactly how I felt.*

This historical YA novel tells the story of Frankie, her brother Vito and her sister Toni. They live in an orphanage in Chicago near the end of the 1930s, not because they are orphans—their mother is dead, but their father is still alive, repairing shoes at the shoe shop he owns—but because he can’t afford to feed them. I didn’t know this happened after the Depression and before World War II, people abandoning their children to the orphanages because then at least they were fed, which is the first thing I love about this book: it taught me a piece of history I didn’t know. Frankie’s father is dating a new woman, Ada, and one visiting Sunday—the day that the parents can come see their children in the orphanage if they want, the day that Frankie’s dad brings her meatball sandwiches and buttered spaghetti—he announces that they are moving to Denver. “They” meaning him, Ada, her children (who were also in the orphanage), and Vito.

But not Frankie or Toni.

It also tells the story of Pearl, who was a young girl during World War I, living in a big house on Lake Michigan. She is the narrator of the story, and also: she is a ghost. When the novel opens she keeping track of Frankie; she likes to see the babies in the nursery at the orphanage, as well as all the other stages the girls are in, but she is especially interested in what Frankie is doing. As the story progresses, she learns more about her nature as a ghost through her interactions with other ghosts, and a huge arc of the story is her figuring out what really happened to her.

I loved so many things about this: the structure, the inclusion of the ghosts’ stories (which help the book give more illustrations of what girls’ and young women’s lives were like during those times), the writing style. No, really: the writing style. I had this same response with the other book I’ve read by this author, Bone Gap. Her writing isn’t transparent—you notice the style, in other words, which I know not everyone loves—but it isn’t so highly stylized that it gets in the way. (AKA, John Green’s novels; I also love his books but sometimes they are too stylized.) Then there’s the Italian food, the angel in the orphanage courtyard, the grittiness and the way it contrasts with the moments of happiness Frankie finds. The romance—just wait until you get to their first kiss! The way the war is a part of the story but it isn’t really a World War II novel.

What made my loving of it most complete is the afterword, where Laura Ruby writes about this story being based on her mother-in-law’s life. The way she had to work with her mother-in-law’s reticence to get the story, and the bringing to life of her family history: sniff. But also it is that it’s her mother-in-law’s story, not her mom’s. She doesn’t have a genetic connection to the women, but she still loves her and finds her story fascinating. (That this has meaning to me is a hint about Dumb Things Amy Worries About; high on that list is “if my sons decide to get married, will my daughters-in-law want to have a relationship with me?”)

Definitely read the afterword! And if you read this one, let me know. I’m curious to know if others love it as much as I did!

*Spoiler-y sidenote:

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It was only as I wrote this that I realized there was one thing I wished was different. Very close to the end you discover that Frankie’s mom is not dead, but has been living in an asylum all of these years. I think this fits well with one of the novel’s themes—all of the different sorts of damage that men and society do to women—but there was only one scene with her mom in it. It’s sort of left hanging; does Frankie establish a relationship with her? I wanted this line to be developed a little bit more.

If you look at all this water and distrust the olive leaf, you’re forgetting how little you know. You’re thinking yourself more than you are, and yet using that to belittle yourself and your life and the world . . . I use my understanding of the unknowable world to call myself to be unique and wondrous among its wonders. I don’t become arrogant about what my eyes can see and what I can understand. I don’t dismiss myself or my life either.

I originally decided to read the novel Naamah by Sarah Blake because I thought it would be a good addition to my library’s book group collection. I am the collection developer for those books, so honestly, every book I read I think “would this be good in the book group collection?” But this one specifically I read thinking it would be a good add. I live in a highly conservative place and I have offended several local book groups by including books with any one of the dreaded “this is not a good book!” trifecta of sex, violence, and swearing.

(The order of offensiveness, if you’re curious, is 1. Sex, 2. Swearing, 3. Violence. Which is always strange to me because violence is the top thing I avoid in novels, if I HAD to be pushed into saying I “avoid” anything. Really what I avoid is bad writing, stupid plots, pointless stories, books that only mirror back the way I look at the world…Oh, wait. Tangent over.)

This is definitely not the book for the book group collection.

Naamah is a retelling of the bible story of Noah’s ark through the perspective of Naamah, Noah’s wife. A queer retelling of Noah’s ark. And there is entirely too much lesbian sex for the book group ladies. (There is also married sex and sex with an angel, if you're curious.) I know exactly what they would say. They would be horrified that someone would turn Noah’s wife—whose name is of course not mentioned in the bible, but is included in Jewish midrash—from a decent, God-fearing woman into a bisexual woman. They would also say that the story is obviously wrong. Noah and his family were saved because they were the last good people in the world, yes? And if Naamah were bisexual, she wouldn’t be good, so she wouldn’t be saved, so what’s the point of this book anyway?

However, that was not how I took this story. In fact, I think it would make an excellent book club choice because it asks you to consider: What is good? What makes a person “good”? What is the nature of God? What is the nature of our relationship with God? Where do we draw the line between what “God” says is good (and by “God” I mean “the interpretation of God by religion” which is different than God most of the time) and what we as individuals think is good? (“How does God get something wrong?” is the question that Naamah says is the first question.) What does it mean to be a woman? How do we balance shaping our lives with the other lives we have to take care of? How does one individual fit into the world and how do we love and see the world we live in?

All of these are questions I am wrestling with myself, in my own life, so to slip into someone else wrestling with them helped me to feel…validated, I think. Not in my answers, really, but in the struggle itself. Naamah’s defining question as she lives on the enormous boat with all of the animals is “Why was I saved?” She is also fairly mad at God for destroying the world; she isn’t sure if she wants to ask them her questions or simply turn her back on them. (Or maybe that is where I am in my life, and I am projecting my issues onto Naamah. If I had a book club I would raise this question.)

As the story moves along, she begins swimming in the flood waters, where she meets an angel of some sort who she falls into a sort of relationship with; she also meets the spirits of some of the children who drowned, who are living with the angel instead of progressing into whatever comes next. She helps and loves her family on board the boat, too. I loved seeing her relationship with her daughters-in-law; each one is unique (one is a painter who makes paintings of the world as it used to be) and she is able to give them the unique things they need. She sleeps and dreams—I think about a quarter of the story is Naamah dreaming, but they are the story, in some sense. She plants and tends to a small garden; she loves her husband. She also takes care of the animals, in both brutal and tender ways. There are several scenes with animals that broke me in both painful and beautiful ways, and I’m not sure I could decide which one I liked the most. The moths? The lambs? The tiger.

No, the tiger scene was pivotal.

The book draws to a close with Naamah and her family on dry land again. There are no real answers given; she doesn’t come to understand why God erased the world, other than it is their creation so they could. But she comes to a sort of peace, and is able to move forward in recreating her world.

This was a hard review for me to write in a certain way, because my connection to this book is deeply personal. It is a book brought to me at a time I needed to read it. I didn’t get any of my questions answered, either, but that is OK because that is the process I am in right now. But it helped me to see that the questioning itself, while painful, is not only valuable but necessary. My world sort-of is a post-flood world, except I was the God who has been creating the flood. Or, at least, part of the starting-over is coming from my decisions to act instead of to be acted upon. Or, to be more precise: in a sense, I am like Naamah was on the boat. Using the time while she doesn’t have answers to look for answers. I haven’t made it to dry land yet. When I do I think a part of Naamah will be with me, helping me to scout out the best place to build.

Rather than adore your shell, you sought the love of those who ridiculed you. This is a great tragedy.

In the middle-grade reader Lalani of the Distant Sea by Erin Entrada Kelly, Lalani lives on the island called Sanlagita, with her mother, her abusive step-father, and his horrible son. Her mother is a seamstress, a job held by people of lower status because if you prick your finger with a needle, for reasons no one understands, you can be struck with a terminal illness no one knows how to treat. Lalani spends her time helping her mother by running for wool thread that is allotted each day to the seamstresses. She escapes the darkness of her house as often as she can by visiting her friend Veyda’s house. At Veyda’s, there is still a lot of work to be done, but her mother tells stories, and Lalani loves stories, those about the distant island of Isa where the magical Fei Diwata lives, and, especially, those about Ziva, a village girl who long ago dared stow away on the ships that sailed, trying to reach Isa but never coming back.

The social structure on Sanlagita (isn’t that a lovely word? Say it out loud and it clangs and lulls all at once) is like this. There is a menyoro, a leader who makes all of the rules. Everyone is assigned work and the village manages to survive because everyone does their work. The boys go to school, to learn basic things and how to build ships, but girls are just for running errands. Every night, everyone says benedictions, asking the mountain Kahna to stay sleeping and not destroy the village the next day. Everyone is forbidden to go to the mountain, because some sort of demon lives there.

Yet, one day Lalani tries to save a shek (the animals who make wool) who has wandered too close to the mountain. This sets off a series of events that she feels responsible for, so she sets out to try to fix them. She has all sorts of adventures that test her and push her to discover her own strengths.

The setting is so vivid, Sanlagita in a drought, the tropical island with its volcano, the trees, the sea, the island of Isa which is entirely different from Sanlagita. It is both beautiful and deadly, dangerous for everyone. “Nature is shifty,” the story tells us. “It takes advantage of how comfortable you are in your surroundings. Humans make the mistake of believing they know best, but nature is there to remind you, at precisely the wrong time, that nature was here first.” I don’t have a lot of experience on tropical islands, but this idea resonates with how I felt in Hawaii: everything was beautiful but if I wasn’t careful there were so many sources of damage. I don’t feel that way in my usual environment, so maybe it is just that difference, and maybe I need to be more aware because I do tend to just be comfortable, even on the edges of cliffs.

I loved this sweet book, which builds a whole mythology based on island tales that become wholly unique to the story. It is a book about finding your own version of courage and embracing and loving who you are, rather than who your society might want you to believe you are. In one of my favorite spots of the story, Lalani is crammed inside a hollow tree trunk with a friend she has made in her travels, Usoa. Usoa is bleeding and possibly dying, and she asks Lalani to tell her a story. “Tell me a sad story,” she says, and so Lalani—whose love of stories is one of her strengths—invents a sad story about Anya, a girl born with a shell on her back. She is ridiculed her whole life for her shell, until finally she finds someone who can remove it, thinking that then the villagers will love and accept her. They do not, so she throws her shell off a cliff and wanders her island, looking for another village to live in. She finally finds one where all of the occupants also have shells, but they won’t take her in because she has discarded her shell. This is the sad part: that if Anya could have embraced and carried her uniqueness, she would’ve eventually found her place.

I don’t read a lot of middle-grade books, partly because I don’t work in the Children’s department and so I have less knowledge about them. Partly because even the really good ones sometimes feel too facile in their resolutions. (This is not a criticism; they are consistent with their audience.) But this book is one I think anyone of almost any age could love. It is beautifully written, with each section starting with a new myth or fable, challenging the reader to imagine she is one of the island’s inhabitants, and Lalani is such a great character. She grows and changes with the story, but in ways that felt authentic.

Isn’t that crazy: here I am, almost 50, but touched by a character written for young girls to relate to. But that story she made up for Usoa…gah, it hit me. I think that in some sense, everyone is like Anya, with a part of them that feels unique but also makes it so they don’t quite fit in. I haven’t broken my shell or had it removed—but I do often feel like I am wandering, just trying to find my tribe. I hope my shell is intact if I ever do manage to find them.

The damage one man can do…The bitterness of the bruised ego, the cold-blooded wrath of a man scorned: the repercussions impossible to overstate. On can only hope that, as a culture, we have left such things behind, and yet—

I like to read something spooky or witchy in October, and this year’s read was The Furies by Katie Lowe. I picked this one because it has a bunch of things I like in a novel: a girl gang, explorations of that powerful, sweet, dangerous feeling of friendships between teenage girls, a private school, and hints of witchcraft. As I got deeper into the story, I found even more things I like: deep connections to history, passionate teachers, a secret society.

It tells the story of Violet, whose dad and sister were killed in an accident. Her mother entirely falls apart, but she manages to get Violet accepted to the private school on the edge of their small town in England, paying for it with the settlement money. She doesn’t really fit in there, at the school full of kids with old money, but she is drawn into a friendship with Robin, who dresses in black a lot, and seems edgy and exciting, and her friends Alex and Grace.

Mayhem ensues.

The cover text makes this seem like it is a book about adults revealing what happened in the past, in a way that will create consequences, but it’s not really that. There are several murders to figure out, but it’s not really a mystery. It’s not a twisty thriller, despite the marketing spin. (Even though it is twisty, and has some unreliable characters.) Really, it’s a book about how damage of all sorts impacts individuals and then spreads out to the people they know. How someone else’s damage influences you, but how that is baffling because you don’t know what their damage is.

This resonated with me because this was exactly my adolescent experience. (Not the setting and the details but that way you are impacted by your friends’ baggage.) It was a perfect October read!