This Week in My Life: Week 23 of 2016

The view from here:

Reading on the backyard patio under this vibrantly orange umbrella.

Celebrating National Chocolate Ice Cream Day!

Finally planted some herbs. My 2 absolute faves: Cilantro + Basil. 

I've been seeing a lot of these intensely colored bugs lately.

Clouds are cool.

Got my vitamin D from the upstairs balcony for the first time. 

Went to the Spring dance concert put on by my dance teacher friend. It was great!

What I made this week:

Some pink + gray origami elephants for a baby shower.

What I read this week:

I've finally been able to relax and have time to read more this week after finishing up a few huge orders last week. Yay, book time!!!

For the past few weeks, I had been trudging away at the super long Lark Rise to Candleford by Flora Thompson (technically a trilogy of novels in one volume) but I finally finished it this week. I LOVED the BBC Series, which is why I read the book, but ultimately it wasn't all that great of a read. It was really just 500+ pages reciting facts about life in a specific area at a specific time period. Interesting, yes, but I wish there had been more of the personal stories (there was some of this in the book, just not enough for me) and that it would have been more like the show. However, they did pull tons of material from this book to make the show and turned it into something pretty great. I don't necessarily recommend the book, but I do recommend the show. If you like BBC period pieces, check it out! I would liken it kinda-sorta to a British Little House on the Prairie, so check it out if you were a fan of that show as well.

Finally read Harper Lee's Go Set a Watchman. On the one hand, it of course pales in comparison to To Kill a Mockingbird. But on the other hand, it is a good book in its own right, and it made my heart so happy to read of these characters again. Scout, or Jean Louise, at 23 is just as lovable as she was as a child. Not every character lived up to the ideals you might have expected, but Scout did. Bizarre that this is the first novel Lee wrote, that this was actually written before Mockingbird.

Finally finished the Divergent trilogy with Allegiant. Totally loved the whole series. I was very resistant to reading it at all for some reason, but I'm glad I read it anyway! [Traci: get on it! You're the only sibling left who hasn't read it.] Now I'm excited to watch the movies.

And in MS Reading:

STUPID SH*T PEOPLE SAY from Tripping on Air. I even left a comment sharing the worst thing I've ever had said to me about my MS, and a not-MS-related awful thing I once said as well.

Yet another story of people saying awful crap to someone with MS for parking in a handicapped space when they have every right to park in said space. Saw this shared quite a bit on Facebook this week. 

This story by Matt Cavallo, How Health Insurance Led Me into a MS Relapse, made me nod in recognition and shudder with rage and grief.