She's not completely fine. Neither am I.

I finished Eleanor Oliphant is Completely Fine by Gail Honeyman back in early March. I didn't write a review right off and then, it seems, our world has fallen into a weird, scary, confusing place. I spent the last few weeks unsure and waiting. Waiting to see what happens with COVID-19, waiting to be told what to do. Because, I sure as hell didn't know. How do I keep my mom and sister safe? Should I work remote? Will that be seen as extreme?

And here we are. Week 1 of pretty-much mandatory working remote, not seeing my family and friends as much, not getting hugs from my mom. I'm scared to death of what might still happen but I'm trying to stay in a pattern. Some normalcy. I've been able to get groceries, able to get meds, visited my family from a safe distance, but mostly stayed at home. At first, I was too anxious to read or knit. Then I switched off the TV and my anxiety decreased a bit. I'm keeping up on the news through newspapers now, real and online, but trying to avoid social media a bit (except for Mark's daily dance party which is NEEDED right now).

I'm nearing the end of The Wells of Ascension by Brandon Sanderson and am going to use this downtime to keep up on my reading and writing. I've written in my journal nearly every day because we're living in a historical period right now.

Back to Eleanor and why this woman is NOT fine. Right off the bat, you know something isn't quite right. She drinks alone, in her apartment, just enough to keep her lightly drunk from Friday to the start of Monday until she goes back to work to get through the weekend. She's seemingly uptight, precise about everything, and has a lot of reasons on why she looks down on so many people.

Then she meets Raymond. An IT guy who comes to work on her computer at the office, he somehow takes a liking to her. He's described as sloppy and unhygienic by Eleanor but honestly, being in IT myself, I think that Raymond is just a regular IT dude. Raymond is key in helping Eleanor, she just doesn't realize it yet.

Eleanor falls for a local musician, and she falls hard. It was painful reading how she researched (aka stalked) him, how she changed herself for him (but never met him), how her life revolved around a man she never met, while ignoring who was really in her life. Her weekly talks with Mummy were also painful.

Things spiral out of control, Eleanor is not fine, and she finally recognizes her life for what it is. This truly was a great novel, painful on occasion to read, but you can't help but cheer Eleanor on towards a more rewarding life, with people who really do care for her.

Gail Honeyman talks about the novel

An Interview with Gail Honeyman

I know now that what is tragic isn’t the moment. It is the memory.

The blog title is a quote from Jacqueline Woodson's Another Brooklyn. Honestly, so many sentences, paragraphs, chapters in this book are worthy to be memorized and pondered. I got this audiobook from my library on a whim. They had a section for African American History Month and this just called to me.

I've never read anything by Woodson, but she's been on my to-read list. I'm going to steal Roxane Gay's Goodreads review of this because it sums up what I thought "This gorgeous novel is a poem. It is a love letter to black girlhood." I will, obviously, never know what it was like growing up a black girl in Brooklyn in the '70s, but I was happy Woodson let me step into the moment with her.


August and her brother are new to Brooklyn. Forbidden by their father to go outside, they have to watch the kids in the streets from their window. Eventually, their dad relented and let them gradually be one of those kids, dancing to street DJs and playing in the fire hydrant water. Their mother is gone. We don't find out much right away, we just know that August keeps promising her brother that their mother was going to return tomorrow... and tomorrow...and tomorrow.


August ends up finding deep friendships with Gigi, Angela, and Sylvia. They grow up in a time that should be fun, but is often marred by men taking advantage of the teenage girls. Who is around to protect them? No one, and each girl gets marked in some way.


My heart broke for the girls, they had their enormous dreams of fame and fortune, but only a few made it out. When August finally faces where her mother really is and grows up, it's hard. Adults put such weight on children's shoulders and expect them to carry it around every day. But I suppose they still do, in this day and age.



Woodson usually writes YA but this is one of her adult novels. My gut says "Read everything this lady writes" regardless of age group.

“Maybe this is how it happened first for everyone —adults promising us their own failed future.”

Wonderful TED talk by Woodson on slow reading and keeping your story alive

Woodson on Another Brooklyn

No, YOU follow ME to the Ground

I read Follow Me To Ground by Sue Rainsford a bit ago but I didn't know what to say about it because I had no idea what I had just read. I still don't, really, but I'm going to blather on about it anyways.

This was the first book in Jenny Lawson's Fantastic Strangelings Book Club. Of course, I signed up to get the books because 1) I love Jenny and 2) I knew her taste in books would be all over the place and awesome.

Fantastic Strangelings Book Club sign up

Fantastic Strangelings FB page (all welcome to chime in!)

The cool part about the book club is....this book is signed by Sue. :)

I have to talk about this book now, in a way that makes you want to go read it. I know this is going to sound all weird and gibberish, so just go read it.

Follow Me To Ground is a debut novel that is on the edge of fantasy (but it's not really) and folklore (but no, not that) and literary fiction. Ada and her father can cure illnesses. They live on the edge of a village and locals - "Cures" - make appointments to come to them to get cured of whatever ails them. Nearly every ailment is curable, but there are some that are too far gone so Ada and her father do their best to give the person more time and comfort.

They cure by literally cracking open the person's body and removing the sickness. The patient is thankfully asleep because, in order to help fix the patient, Ada and her father bury the patient, alive, in the Ground. The patient is dug up after an appropriate interval and sent home, healthier than when they arrived.

Clearly, Ada and her father are not human, but Ada wants to be more than what she is. The villagers ignore Ada unless they are sick, then the happily interact with Ada and her father. Ada helps cure Samson and ends up taking him as her lover. Olivia, Samson's sister, is pregnant and comes for cures often because of pregnancy issues. Ada's father wants her to stop seeing Samson because, well, he's human and it's going to cause problems for them. Oh, little does he know.

This novel ends in the most intriguing, confusing, eye-opening, OMG way. I was thinking about this for DAYS afterwards trying to maneuver my mind around everything that happened. I plan to re-read it soon to see if I could have picked up on more clues, if they even exist. The author writes in an interesting way and I'm not sure she knows what happened (The author answers questions in the FB group - go take a look).

A talk with the author

I finished a book!

I heard about Jon Acuff's book Finish from BostonJen at Down Cellar Studio podcast. I downloaded it from Audible and then delayed starting it. I finally started AND finished it (it's a pretty short book) and really needed that kick in the ass.

I have notebooks full of ideas and plans and yet, I rarely start any of them. Even this year, I want to learn Spanish. I do well practicing with Duolingo for  5 days in a row then if I miss a day, I feel all is lost. But it's not lost! Acuff tries to pound this in everyone's head in this book. Perfectionism is really an asshole, it wants you to quit and distracts you from getting something done.

“This is the first lie that perfectionism tells you about goals: Quit if it isn’t perfect.”

Some of Acuff's tips include cutting your goal in half. Want to lose 50 pounds? Try 25. Want to read 100 books in a year? Start with 50. Or in my case, want to become an expert spinner? Start by spinning ONE skein of yarn. Or just digging out your spinning wheel because you know you will suck at it right away.

He points out things you have to drop by the wayside in order to hit your goal. You will have to say no to people. You will have to give up social media (fun fact: since deleting Facebook from my phone last month, I've finished 3 knitting projects).

Acuff doesn't say anything revolutionary, but it still just resonated with me. "It doesn't count if it's not difficult". Wait?!?!?!  That's not true? It can be easy/fun and still count?? That shouldn't have blown me away but it did. Now I have to re-evaluate my life. brb.

Seriously though, I try the occasional self help book to motivate myself into not binge watching The Simpsons for the 5th time but this one did it. Naturally, my favorite part was gathering data on your goals. I'm a data nerd so this speaks to my soul. You think you lost 40lbs in 2009 much faster than you are now? Your memory is probably tricking you, the data will show different. Make sure you track how things are going so the data, not your memory, will show you your progress. I LOVE this.

Acuff reads the audio book and he is a funny dude. Very easy to listen to and get into the zone.

Acuff - Figure out what doesn't work for you

How many people keep reading hoping it gets better?

Seriously. I had bought Crashing Heat by Richard Castle on a Kindle deal so I'm not out a lot of money but I'm still not happy this wasn't a library book. I LOVED the show Castle (for a while) and I loved the books (for a bit) but both declined, in my opinion.

Crashing Heat was just so much about Rook and his "genius" and so little of Heat and her team, solving murders. Aside from the gooiness of Heat talking about her husband (all. the. time.) we were off to a good start with an odd murder. A college student's body was found lying on a sculpture in a park. It would have taken effort to get a body up there so we know this wasn't an accident.

Roach, our favorite team, is on the case with Heat. Heat keeps drifting into thought of Rook and his going back to his alma mater to teach. Will the distance break them up?? Good lord, it's a few months and a few hours away. We have a murder to solve here, Heat. Snap out of it!

This is why I do not read romance novels. Rook ends up framed for murder at the college. His number one fan, Chloe, is dead in his bed. In his house. Is this what Heat feared? Did he cheat on her?? How about caring about poor, dead Chloe, Heat.

Heat makes an incredibly poor decision to go to the college and investigate on her own. She keeps telling us how un-biased she is as a trained detective, but, the suspected perp IS your husband soooo.... isn't that some bias?

This went downhill from there with secret societies and Illuminati shit. I highly do NOT recommend this one. Go read some of the earlier books, those will keep you entertained!

You know, I don't even remember what happened to the college student. He was essentially relegated to the back burner.

How I Ended Up In No Shop February

I have a good paying job. I have a house, a car, and I have some debt. I don't have a shopping habit, per se, but yarn and books are a major weakness. I started using Mint.com to help track all of my spending. It turns out, going to lunch or having lunch delivered is also my weakness (or lack of preparedness). Sigh.

I saw on YarnderWoman's Instagram a reference to The Year of Less by Cait Flanders. I googled it and thought, yeah, I need to read this. My first step in saving money was going to the library to get this book! Yay me.

I have lots of financial goals. I've already paid off my car and plan to drive it til it falls apart. My mortgage is under control. I have an emergency fund and a 401k. But I want the other debt gone because I want to travel! See the world! Take in the sites! I finished reading this book while in the hospital, caught unawares by a small bowel obstruction, and I think I might need to re-read (I was on a lot of narcotics). I got the gist though.

Flanders takes us through how she decided that consumerism was taking over her life. It's not just the spending money, right? It's all the STUFF you accumulate. I amaze myself when I consider how much I filled my house in 20 years. I'm also pretty sure I don't use over half of the things I have. Flanders did a massive purge of her apartment and then started her No Spend Year. There were rough patches, where things ended up in a virtual cart and were almost bought. But in the end, she saved up $17,000 and used that to travel. And that's what I'm talking about!

Once I was home and upright again, I started making my plan. It's not just No Shop February, I really started in January. I made a list of what I can spend money on vs. what I can't (I'll be visiting the library a lot more). I made a list of exceptions. And then I started cleaning and purging. I discovered that while, some things are needed and should be purchased, such as vitamins, I had hoarded vitamins as they came on sale. So I didn't need to keep spending money on them each month. Too bad I never checked my vitamin stash first *facepalm*

I'm figuring out my weak points, my instant "must purchase" moments. And I'm employing the Dave Ramsey approach to paying off the rest of my debt. It might be a rough year, but it's going to be a rewarding one!

Check Cait out below:

Not Cait but still good!

Podcast or Book?

I'm going with book. Audible has originals you can snag for free each month, and while I snag every month, sometimes it takes time to listen. I picked up Midnight Son one month and finally got around to listening to it recently.

I guess there is argument on whether this was a podcast or a book. Take a listen to sample here and see what you think. James Dommek, Jr. lays out everything he knows about Teddy Kyle Smith. It's part true crime and part folklore. It was 100% incredibly interesting.

Smith, an Alaskan native, became an actor in Hollywood, actually getting roles in acclaimed movies. After filming what would be his last movie, he snapped. But snapped doesn't feel right after listening to the story. Something happened to Smith. His mother is found dead and Smith shoots a gun off near the detectives who responded to Smith's call about his mother. Smith is also claiming he saw Iñukuns, a tribe that everyone believes is just a myth. Something talked about in stories.

Smith gets away from the police and a manhunts is on. Dommek walks us through Smith's history as well as what he did while being hunted. The Buckel brothers were on the wrong end of Smith and his guns during the manhunt. We also get through Smith's trial. Clearly, Smith needed to be locked up but what on earth caused him to snap?

James Dommek, Jr comes from a line of story-tellers. He does an excellent job in Midnight Son.

Interview with Smith at Sundance