Spring is here, spring is here, happy happy spring is here

(what you don't know is the title of this post should actually be sung not read and there is even a little dance I do with it)

It is crazy that on January 31 I was posting pictures of my snow day and we just had March 31 and it has been in the 80s. Only 2 months later and things have completely changed. I mean, I am actually sunburned!! I love it! Not the burn, just the sun getting/absorption.

It also blows me away how things can literally change over night. Two weeks ago my husband came home saying that he heard on the radio that "everything bloomed today." He was like "uhh things just don't all bloom overnight." Well apparently they do because let me tell you those dogwood trees had exploded into beautiful white flowery goodness and they were boring buds the day before. (Photo courtesy of my husband who snapped it while we were driving around and I started yelling at him "It's so beautiful, take a picture, take a picture, you know I would but I can't because I'm driving, bust out your phone and take a picture, quick")

Here we are 2 weeks later and again overnight things have changed. I had been watching the dogwood blossoms slowly fade with the sadness that I wouldn't be here next year to see them and when I woke up yesterday and looked outside, my car, along with every other car in the area, was covered by the yellow-green pollen that is so bright it almost looks toxic. It's a good thing I was planning on washing my car this weekend and not yesterday.

I will admit that I was an overachiever yesterday and washed my car the moment I got off work, fully aware that the pollen probably hadn't settled and would be covering my car again. I was laughing when I noticed that a light dusting had settled before I even had the chance to finish drying it. Oh well, it wasn't so much removing the pollen that was the final goal, I just knew it needed a good wash and I was all wound up so I was excited to have something to do outside.

LOTR Readalong - Two Towers: Ends - Return of the King: Begins

Well, we have finally come to the last transition in the Lord of the Rings Readalong. Teresa at Shelf Love has been a great host for The Two Towers and now Maree at Just Add Books has stepped up for the final book of our journey.

I have to admit I really missed the rest of the characters in book 4 but I love Gollum (I know I say this every post but it doesn't get any less true) so the focus on Frodo, Sam and Gollum didn't slow the story down for me. I actually thought it was going to slow it down but I really enjoyed book 4.

I will admit it started off a bit rough. I was annoyed with Sam right off the bat because he was so whiny. I threw a little post-it in to mark the spot (even though I didn't need to because it was the second page of book 4) and moved on. Then, before I knew it my little book was flooded with ripped post-its marking all the things I LOVED (see picture). I guess if only one out of all these marks something I was annoyed with we are doing all right. One of my favorite parts is when Gollum (of course it's about Gollum) promises on the ring and then becomes excited after Sam releases him from the rope:

At once Gollum got up and began prancing about, like a whipped cur whose master has patted it. From that moment a change, which lasted for some time, came over him. He spoke with less hissing and whining, and he spoke to his companions direct, not to his precious self.

I love it. I imagine Gollum frolicking around flapping his arms in a ridiculous way. Another time I love Gollum is when he is leading them across the marshes:

He went on again, but his uneasiness grew, and every now and again he stood up to his full height, craning his neck eastward and southward.

I know I'm crazy but here I am imagining a meerkat popping its heaad out of a hole and peeking around in that way they do (yes I also love meerkats and watched Meerkat Manor). My last piece of Gollum obsessiveness is when he is arguing with himself:

'No, sweet one. See, my precious: if we has it, then we can escape, even from Him, eh? Perhaps we grows very strong, stronger than Wraiths. Lord Smeagol? Gollum the Great? The Gollum! Eat fish every day, three times a day, fresh from the sea. Most Precious Gollum! Must have it. We wants it, we wants it, we wants it!'

Lord Smeagol...how can you not love that? Ok I am over my I heart Gollum ramblings. I think you get the point. It broke my heart when he finally turned on Sam, even though I knew it was coming but I can't wait to see what kind of joy and heartbreak The Return of the King brings me. Yes I have seen the end of the movie and therefore know the basics of the ending but I just know it is going to be harder for me to read it.

It killed me to wait but I haven't started reading ROTK yet because I wanted to get this post up before I started. I was worried that if I started reading I would lose sight of anythign else and this would never be written. Now that it is done...it's reading time!

When the shock wears off I'm buying a book

Holy mother....I was playing the evil little game/reality check hosted by Diane at Bibliophile by the Sea, how much $$$ did I spend on books!!!

Oh it's bad folks...it's really bad.

I went into this thinking that I would be impressed with myself. I mean honestly I didn't start buying books until March 1st. I had a deal with my husband about that and I actually kept it!!! It was a big deal for me. I had March 1 circled on every calendar I own. So imagine my shock when I added up everything and the total was.....


$92.30

In one month!!!! One month where I completely held back on my book buying madness!

What's worse is I was just at Bibliophile by the Sea and Diane has only spent $91.88 all year! Oh Diane you are so much smarter with your money. You have spent less than me (barely) but you have bought more books...so many more books! I need to take a lesson from you. My goal for this month is to spend less than you.

I just need to get over the fact that on every day off I have I find myself at the bookstore. It is the only place I enjoy in this town. And what do I do when I go to the bookstore, look around, and know that I can't leave with anything? Panic, hyperventilate, cry. I go home in a deep lonely hole of depression and sit on the couch looking at my bookshelf knowing that my books know they won't have any new company so they are sad and I am sad that they are sad and all of this sadness can only be healed by one thing...a new book. So I go to the store and buy one and it's painless and all is right in the world and suddenly I realize that I am such a drama queen. Next time I'm not going through all this "oh I'm saving money bull" because I know in the end I will break down and buy the stupid book so I may as well skip all the dramatic wallowing/rationalizing and just buy the book to begin with.

A Cold = A very grumpy and lazy Jessica

Ahh folks let me tell you how NOT FUN it is to be sick.  Okay so I'm sure you are all fully aware of this fact but I feel like it has been so long since I have been sick that I forgot.  What's worse is it was just a really bad cold so I couldn't even claim something like the flu or H1N1 that was sure to draw sympathy.  I mean seriously...a cold...get over it Jess.  But let me tell you I was sucking!!

I fell asleep at work!  Shhh don't tell.  I work from home for a reading program and we are in the slow season right now where I am just answering customer service calls...so it was Saturday and I mean come on I'm sick on a Saturday and I have top work...from home, that's just a tease...the couch is right there.  I was just resting my eyes for a moment and it wasn't until the obnoxious buzzing that means I have a call coming in woke me up and I looked around trying to remember where I was that I realized I had fallen asleep!!  It was pitiful.

Moral of the story is I have been sick and anti anything that requires me to focus so my blogging and reading has fallen behind.  I think I finished one lonely chapter in a book and that took me about an hour because I kept forgetting what words meant, you know those big words like "the."

The good news is I was finally able to start thinking again today and even read a few more chapters in Lord of the Rings.  I'm almost done...which is good because the month is over so it is time for me to move on to the final book.  More on that tomorrow...or the next day...

Teaser Tuesdays

Thank you MizB for hosting Teaser Tuesday.

-Grab your current read
-Open to a random page
-Share 2 teaser sentences from that page
-Make sure you don't include any spoilers

Check out Should Be Reading to read more Teaser Tuesdays.

Your peers when you're a teenage will always be the keepers of your embarrassment and regret. It was one of life's great injustices, that you can move on and be accomplished and happy, but the moment you see someone from high school you immediately become the person you were then, not the person you are now.

-page 102
The Girl Who Chased the Moon
by Sarah Addison Allen

Mailbox Monday

Thank you to Marcia at The Printed Page for putting on the weekly Mailbox Monday, a place where I discover so many wonderful new books.

Check out her blog and post all the new books you acquired last week.


The Swimming Pool by Holly LeCraw (ARC from Doubleday via Shelf Awareness)

From the author's website:

Marcella di Pavarese Atkinson has always longed for love, warmth, understanding. Seven years ago, she believed she had found it, although illicitly, with Cecil McClatchey–a married father of two, and a longtime summer acquaintance from Cape Cod. But on the night their romance abruptly ended, Cecil’s wife was found dead, and Cecil died soon after, an uncharged suspect. Now Marcella lives alone, divorced, estranged from her teenaged daughter, and hobbled by her grief and guilt.

Meanwhile, Cecil’s grown son, Jed, returns to the Cape for the summer for the first time in years, with his sister and her young children. One morning, in an upstairs closet, he finds a bathing suit he recognizes as Marcella’s–a relic, unbeknownst to him, of his father’s affair. A hunch, his years-long hunger for answers, and the memory of a teenaged crush send Jed looking for her. But when Marcella and Jed, to their deep surprise, fall into a passionate affair of their own, they must hide it from their families and also begin, reluctantly, to look more closely at the past. What they find is shocking, heartbreaking, and, perhaps, the beginning of healing; but as they confront their shared pain, a crisis is brewing in the present that will force them, and us, to think about the very nature of love.

Lyrical and sensuous, The Swimming Pool is about devotion in all its forms: between spouses, lovers, siblings and, especially, between parents and children. It is a story of how our most essential connections entwine, in the most surprising of ways, and how they endure.

Committed - Elizabeth Gilbert

Committed: A Skeptic Makes Peace with Marriage
By Elizabeth Gilbert

Faced with the possible deportation of her love, Filipe, Gilbert has come to the conclusion that she must again get married. This is something that neither she nor Felipe thought they would do again. Having gone through an awful divorce (as witnessed in Eat, Pray, Love) Gilbert is very skeptical of the institution of marriage.

I think this is the reason I love her. I can relate to her. Although I am married and haven’t personally gone thorough a divorce, I was definitely jaded by my parents divorce and decided early on it is much better to be happily divorced than unhappily married. Yes, I am married, but I made sure that nowhere in our vows did it say anything about “till death do us part” because I just don’t believe it. My husband is fully aware of my “issues” (both with marriage and otherwise). I have to admit part of me hoped that Committed would bring me some reassurance, and it kind of did. Gilbert seemed to jump into her research with a clear plan to “figure it all out.” One of my favorite lines is after she is talking to her mother about things given up for marriage as opposed to things gained.

Therefore, the tidy ultimate conclusion is…???
It was slowly becoming clear to me that perhaps there was never going to be any tidy ultimate conclusion here. My mother herself had probably given up long ago trying to draw tidy ultimate conclusions about her existence, having abandoned (as so many of us must do, after a certain age) the luxuriously innocent fantasy that one is entitled to have mixed feelings about one’s own life.

In Committed, Gilbert bounces back and forth between her stories—including conversations with people she met while waiting for Felipe to be allowed back in the United States and her extensive research on the subject of marriage. I found it fascinating to learn about the various histories and different rituals in other cultures. Gilbert has an incredible talent for recreating her conversations and adventures and I enjoyed every minute of it.

**Source: Personal copy bought with personal money.