Yee-haw, it’s rodeo time

Posted in Weekend Update by

This past weekend marked the annual Rodeo Weekend in my hometown. It draws a huge crowd, including the majority of my family members, and it’s always a good time! On Saturday morning my mom, Isla, step-dad and I piled into the truck and headed “home” for the day to visit, laugh, and take in the sights and sounds of the annual parade. (And feasted on freshly made bannock – a parade-watching staple!) I didn’t go to the rodeo itself since Isla is still a little too young, but she did enjoy watching the parade.

Here’s some photos from the day:

Listy Friday

Posted in Listy Friday by

So, I was going to make this a “Confessions” post, but changed my mind half-way through since there’s other fun and exciting things going on in my life. Sorry for the garbled mess going on.

– Shows I have saved on my PVR and are am little ashamed to admit I watch include Breaking Amish and Hell’s Kitchen. I don’t know why, but it’s like watching a train wreck happen in slow motion.

– When I’m trying to get ready in the morning and all Isla wants to do is be near me, I’ll put her in the bathtub (with no water, obviously) and let her play with her bath toys while I finish.

– I only enjoy watching the movie Casino if it’s the censored version on AMC. Why? Because I find the scene where Ginger (played by Sharon Stone) is cussing at Sam (Robert De Niro) to be hilarious when it’s censored. Actually, the whole movie is hilarious censored, mostly because there’s so much cussing, the “clean” words just get ridiculous. Here’s a clip, with my favourite scene at 1:30:

– Isla gets to experience her first Ashcroft Rodeo this weekend! I’m pretty excited to go and visit with family and have a nice, relaxing time, but I’m bummed that Kyle has to work. Boo :(

– It’s Father’s Day on Sunday, and I’m at a loss for what to do for Kyle. He has everything, doesn’t want anything special, and has to work that nice so will be sleeping all day, so I have no idea … Thoughts?

– The vet bills for Daphne keep adding up. Now it appears that she has a really bad UTI. Or at least I hope that’s all it is. She’s on antibiotics for it, but the vet is sending away her urine for MORE testing and if the UTI (or whatever it is) doesn’t clear up, he’s making talks about ultrasounds for kidney stones (which would mean surgery – which we cannot afford), and running tests for cancer (which is something I don’t even want to talk about because I know what that means …). If you wouldn’t mind sending some happy & healing thoughts Daphne’s way, I’d greatly appreciate it. I’m really hoping that it’s just a bad UTI.

– I’ll leave with a happy, cute photo of my kid being exactly that:

We were having a very intense conversation.

Happy Friday!

What I’m Reading: Inside

Posted in Book Review, What I'm Reading by

 

Synopsis from Goodreads.com:
When Grace, an exceedingly competent and devoted therapist in Montreal, stumbles across a man who has just failed to hang himself, her instinct to help kicks in immediately. Before long, however, she realizes that her feelings for this charismatic, extremely guarded stranger are far from straightforward. In the meantime, her troubled teenage patient, Annie, runs away from home and soon will reinvent herself in New York as an aspiring and ruthless actress, as unencumbered as humanly possible by any personal attachments. 

And Mitch, Grace’s ex-husband, who is a therapist as well, leaves the woman he’s desperately in love with to attend to a struggling native community in the bleak Arctic. We follow these four compelling, complex characters from Montreal and New York to Hollywood and Rwanda, each of them with a consciousness that is utterly distinct and urgently convincing. 

With razor-sharp emotional intelligence, Inside poignantly explores the many dangers as well as the imperative of making ourselves available to—and responsible for—those dearest to us.

My review:
I wasn’t completely sure what to expect out of this book, considering it wasn’t the usual happy & fluffy genre of chick-lit I usually steer towards, but I decided to go for it anyway. While I didn’t LOVE love the book, I did enjoy it.

Each character has their own storyline, all while being intertwined at the same time. I think I enjoyed following Grace’s story the most, mostly because of the relationship she develops with the man she found while out skiing. If there were a main character of the book, I suppose it would be Grace as she has the most interaction with all of the other characters.

**SPOILER ALERT!**

The book drew me in by pulling on my psychological heart strings; every page turn made me want to figure out each character a little more, and this leads to the reason why I didn’t enjoy Inside as much as I had hoped I would, because I really wanted to know MORE. I found that there were a lot of loose ends in the character’s stories – Why Grace closed her practice (To give a better life for her daughter? Because it was pulled by the board after Annie’s incident?), why Annie chose to run away, why Mitch and Grace split up to begin with … I suppose this is a reflection of the underlying theme of the book. A need to know more about a person’s life is something that therapists and psychologists are always battling with, so it makes sense why the author chose to write this way.

Overall, I’d give Inside 3.5 stars out of 5. I really wanted more out of the characters, but the style of the book wasn’t allowing that.