So in May, E and I went to Fl to meet my brother and his family.  I don't even know what to say - it was so strange and so emotional and so very overwhelming.  He is a lot like me - quiet, bad at small talk, introverted - plus he barely speaks English.  So communication was difficult.  Still, we talked quite a lot and I learned so much - good things like my mother telling him to continue to try and find me the day she died, and bad things like my mother was jailed for FOUR YEARS when she returned to Vietnam for her association with the enemy (ie my father).  I can't even process it all and it's been two months.  It was so so awkward, but so much goodwill.  They tried so hard to make us welcome, including making us 2 huge seafood feasts.  He gave me a pair of jade and gold earrings that had been my mother's.  It's like the whole world has skidded completely off its axis and I'm walking around in a fog.  At the same time, nothing in my life has actually changed all that much - well except that I can now expect my brother to FT me pretty much every Saturday night.  And I can barely even comprehend that I just wrote that sentence.  This has broken me wide open - I am a pulsating blubbering mess, just sort of trying to get through each day and trying to heal this wide open wound in my chest.  I can barely breathe, but I still have to live my every day life.  It is such a profound thing that has happened and I have no way to even begin to express any of it.

E is in Japan, and when he returns we will be able to apply for our visas to stay in Prague for a year (a little less actually).  That whole thing has been so hugely frustrating.  Czech bueracracy is a thing of beauty.  The Czech embassy website says one thing and the people we talk to at the embassy say another thing and the people who are supposed to be helping us say a a third thing.  It's all so second world/ex-Soviet.  We're supposed to be there Sept 1, but I suspect that Oct 1 is more likely.  But we'll get there eventually.

I was up to 44 books when I last posted, but now I'm up to 64, and I don't think I have the energy to post all 20 - just friend me on goodreads, I've got my challenge public and you can see what I've ready this year.  I am, of course, geowench on goodreads.

I wish you good people would post.  I have learned to accept that I don't have the energy a lot of the time, and especially now, to reach out and phone people, but I absolutely love reading about your lives, whether it's email, FB, or this bizarre online journaling.

It was a long, dreary winter, my friends, and it seemed spring would never come, but it is here at last, and I am so so relieved.  I didn’t do too much in April, except work a lot.  Work continues to go really well, which is so weird for me.  I’m used to being the outsider and the troublemaker at work (though not by choice), and while I am still very much an outsider, I am (very) productive and (very) competent.  Shockingly, this seems to matter, and so the bosses love me.  So, um, yay me?  I’m trying to enjoy before it inevitably all goes to shit and I’m the bad one again.

 

 I went to see R one Saturday, which was the total extent of my sociability.  I told you it was a dreary month.  Plus the whole I have no friends bit is still very much the case.  But for May I will see L next week, plus we are going to FL to meet my brother.  I am so terrified.  Thank god I have E, who has really been a champion and so incredibly supportive.  Usually he makes everything about him (Oh, you fell and hurt yourself, it’s all my fault because I should have done something different, so let me tell you how horribly I feel kind of nonsense), but really there’s just no fucking way this can be about him and he has really surprised and gratified me by stepping up and being a wonderfully supportive and sympathetic.

 

I didn’t even read much this month, because it was just too dreary.  Plus I watched a lot of Netflix, including all available seasons of Agents of SHIELD.  It’s probably inevitable that I would love that series, it’s like Jos Whedon wrote it with my personal history and problems in mind.   I love it so much I’m contemplating buying Season 6, bc it’s not available to stream yet.  Anyway, my book numbers look better than they are because I finished a few audiobooks that have been hanging on forever, plus I’m being better about counting the stuff that we read out loud in the evenings.

 

27  The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession by David Grann

 

28  The Miniaturist by Jessie Burton

 

29  Tales of Mother Goose by Charles Perrault

 

30  Ilsa by Madeleine L’Engle

 

31  The Hidden Live of Trees: What They Feel, How They Communicate – Discoveries from a Secret World

 

32  The Unknown Ajax by Georgette Heyer

 

33  The Fantastic Laboratory of Dr. Weigle: How Two Brave Scientists Battled Typhus and Sabotaged the Nazis

 

34  The Secret Life of Wombats by James Woodford

 

 

 Sheesh, I hardly even remember March.  I suppose the big new is our well had to be repaired, so we were without water for a bit (twice).  So the pump itself was repaired, plus the (old, rotting, termite riddled, falling apart) wellhouse itself was demolished, and the new one erected two days ago.  That's about as exciting as it gets around here, folks.

My brother calls me almost every Saturday evening.  I look forward to it all week, despite how awkward it is.  We will probably go to Florida in May to meet him and the family.  This is an absolutely terrifying proposition.  

We are stalled out on Prague planning - in order to apply for our long term visas (required for a stay of more than 3 months), E's employer, the Czech Academy of Sciences, has to send several forms, including a hosting agreement.  Once we have the forms, then we have obtain international health insurance and a place to stay.  Once we have all that, we can fill out a zillion more forms, send it all to the Czech embassy, and wait three months and hope they grant the visas.  Well we are supposed to be there in August, but it's already April, so we're not really sure what is going to happen.  The Czechs say they are working on the forms, but they have yet to send them.  We will definitely go to Europe in general and Prague in specific, but the details are up in the air.  Perhaps we only go to Prague for three months and then spend some time in Germany.  Or Switzerland.  Don't really know yet.  

April books:

17 & 18 Seraphina and The Shadow Scale by Rachel Hartman - at the heart, these two books are about a halfbreed finding her way in the world - so a big thumb up from me.  But I also see why they are so highly rated/reviewed - I mean, come on, dragons and music and romance?  Sign me up.

19 & 20 Clockwork Boys and The Wonder Engine by T Kingfisher - A very enjoyable set of steampunky novels.

21 The Hidden Lives of Owls: The Science and Spirit of Nature's Most Elusive Birds by Leigh Calvez - one of these books that is more about how the author feels about the topic than the actual topic.

22  The Stranger in the Woods: The Extraordinary Story of the Last True Hermit by Michael Finkel - I was fascinated by this tale when it broke in the news a few years ago, and so I devoured the book, which also fascinated me, but also kind of repelled me.  But I haven't been able to stop thinking about it for weeks.

23  Return to Summerhouse by Jude Devereaux - romance, moving right along.

24  The Great Passage by Shion Miura - a Japanese novel about a group writing a new dictionary.  Quietly enjoyable.

25  The Lost City of Z: A Tale of Deadly Obsession in teh Amazon by David Grann - We read this because this is the guy who wrote The Osage Murders book, and it was pretty good, but the hero of the book really annoyed me.

26  Serafina and hte Splintered Heart by Robert Beatty - kids book, my least favorite of this series, glad there are no more.

 I read fewer books this month, partially because I tore through all 6 season of Downtown Abby in Jan and Feb.  Currently watching Season 2 of The Crown, and trying to decide if I want to get caught up in the Defenders universe, which would requires finishing the first season of Jessica Jones, watching the second season of Daredevil and watching however many seasons there are of Luke Cage, and when I put it like that, I'm thinking naaahhhh

However, I did read some good books: 

10 The Darkest Part of the Forrest by Holly Black – a very well done and quite dark YA urban fantasy/fairytale

11 The Falling Woman by Pat Murphy – archaeology, mystery, reunited mother/daughter – how have I missed this book before?!

12 John James Audubon: The Making of an American by Richard Rhodes – interesting biography of the birdman

13 Wylding Hall by Elizabeth Hand – a gothic fantasy memoir newreporty thing – very enjoyable

14 The Raven and the Reindeer by T. Kingfisher – a wonderful retelling of the Ice Queen

15 Killers of the Flower Moon: The Osage Murders and the Birth of the FBI by David Grann – Holy Crap, please read this book – I already knew the basic outlines, but I was still blown away by the absolute evilosity detailed in this bit of American history – this made me ashamed to be a (half) white person living in Oklahoma – and by the way, our land, that we legally bought from a white dude, once belonged to the Iowa tribe

16. Lockwood and Co: The Screaming Staircase by Jonathan Stroud – YA supernatural detective series – enjoyed it, but not enough to continue/invest with the series

Will try to get a February update up later today.  I know you're holding your breath to read about my fast-paced, sexy, and glamourous life ...

 

I hope it's not cheating to include audiobooks?  Instead of listening to NPR on my commute (about 25 minutes each way), I often listen to an audiobook, which is helping with the overwhelming anxiety of living in a crumbling democracy whilst going through menopause and having my world turned upside down by a niece I didn't even know existed (who seems to be something of a brat).

 
1. Young Jane Young by Gabrielle Zevin – A really excellent novel about a young woman who does something really stupid (has an affair with an older, married senator) and how it ruins her life, except (spoiler) eventually she refused to let it continue to ruin her life.  Sort of Monica Lewinsky from the point of view of first Monica’s mother, and then Monica herself.  This is much better than I’m making it sound.

2. Alex & Me: How a Scientist and a Parrot Discovered a Hidden World of Animal Intelligence—and Formed a Deep Bond in the Process by Irene M. Pepperberg – Non fiction – eh, it kept me reading, but there so many excellent nonfiction books out there that I can’t really recommend this one.

3. From Here to Eternity: Traveling the World to Find the Good Death by Caitlin Doughty -  Nonfiction – excellent blend of a sort of travelogue plus an anthropological/sociological look at how various cultures deal with death.  I find myself thinking about death a lot since turning 50, and this actually helped me be less afraid of it.  Surprisingly funny.

 

4. The Weight of Ink by Rachel Kadish – another one of those novels I tend to like about libraries and academics and medieval Jewish history thrown in for good measure.  I dunno, I wanted to like this, but I thought it dragged a bit.  I did learn quite a bit though, so that’s always a plus.

 

5. The Last Black Unicorn by Tiffany Haddish – Nonfiction/Autobiography – I saw Tiffany Haddish charm the heck out of both Stephan Colbert and Trevor Noah, and she intrigued me enough that I went ahead and bought her book.  She gets kind of annoying sometimes, but a good read.

 

6. Vaster Than Empires and More Slow by Ursula LeGuin – another novella/cheat – I was soooo bummed to learn LeGuin died – I already had this on my kindl, so I went ahead and read it.  This was a sort of psychological thriller in space – very thoughtful, as is everything by LeGuin.

7. The Sign of the Beast by Joyce Carol Oates – actually a novella, so might be cheating to include it.  This is a strange and totally depressing little tale.

8. Get Well Soon: History's Worst Plagues and the Heroes Who Fought Them by Jennifer Wright – Nonfiction – This was surprisingly entertaining, but I didn’t learn much.  However, I suspect it’s a pretty good intro to this sort of thing for those who haven’t already studied the history of plagues at the graduate level and taught classes on the topic.

 

9. Serafina and the Twisted Staff by Robert Beatty – supernatural thriller set at the Biltmore Estate.  This is a kid’s book, and I was needing something light and easy.

 

January, you are killing me. Today I got an email from a young woman who claims to be the daughter of my long-lost half brother George. She tried to contact me on FB and I ignored her, and then she found my OSU email (easy to do) and so I answered asking who she was and she said she was George's daughter and sent me two pics to corroborate. She says he is alive and well and they live in Florida. I assume that my mother has passed away by now, but I do not know and she did not say. I told her to have him (George) contact me. So we shall see what happens.

I am suspicious and distrusting in general, but I'm fairly sure this is legit - there is simply no reason for someone to pretend to be my long-lost half brother, especially if they are already in the states. I am freaking the hell out. Here is some backstory, some of which I may have told before.

So my father was one of the very first military advisors that the US sent to Vietnam before getting too involved in the war. We're talking like 1965. He met my mom there, in the imperial city of Hue, and knocked her up. She already had a son from a previous relationship (I think with another American soldier, but I am not certain). Then his tour ended and he came back to the states. This was in January of 1967, and they already knew she was pregnant when he left. Of course in January of 1968, the Tet Offensive happened. I was just a few months old, my brother a year older, and my father in the states. Somehow my mother kept her two halfbreed kids safe. My father got himself reassigned to a second tour of Vietnam later that year. He showed up in Vietnam again in September of 1968 and managed to send the three of us back to the states to stay with his mother and her new husband in the tiny town of Quincy, CA. To facillitate this he claimed George as his son. So we stayed with my grandparents for a year or two. When my father finished his second tour of duty, he collected his new family and took them to his new military assignment in Fort Leavenworth Kansas. 

Shockingly, his Vietnamese wife did not adjust too well to life in Kansas in 197whatever and he decided it was time for divorce. This is like 1970, and the war is in full force now. So my father puts me and my brother and my mother on a plane and ships us back to Vietnam, because he is a prince of a guy.  My grandparents showed up at the airport in San Francisco and took me from my mother, and let her and her son go back to a country in middle of fucking civil war.

So here we are.  Have I mentioned that I am freaking the hell out?

E got the official approval for his sabbatical for the 2018/2019 school year, and so we are definitely going to Prague for a year!  He will be working at the Nuclear Physics Institute of the Czech Academy of Sciences and his title is something ridiculous like "Excellent Visiting Foreign Scholar," - he tried to get them to dump the Excellent, but that's actually the official title, so he's stuck with it.  We will probably go in August and stay a full year.  And that's all the info I have at the moment.  We have nowhere to live.  We have no one to take care of our house in OK while we are gone.  We don't know about health care or anything like that.  All stuff to figure out before we go.  I also want to have wills or a living trust drawn up for us before we go.  It turns out that two professionals in their 50s who have worked all their lives and don't have any kids have actually accumulated some assets and we need to figure out how to handle them if one or both of us goes klunko.  

2017 was a mixed year for me - on the positive side, lots of travel.  On the negative side, lots of health issues.  I don't want to recap or do one of those questionaires.  What I want to do is look forward to the coming year.  I actually have a couple of resolutions for 2018.

1.  Live in the present and try to enjoy it.  (Instead of, oh, life will really start in August when we go to Prague kind of stuff.)

2.  Pilates or yoga 100x this year (stealing the 100x a year idea from Mopie).  This is part of a more general Take Care of Myself and Improve My Health type of goal, but more concrete.

3.  Write more; specifically 
     3A.  50 online journal entries
     3B.  3 completed pieces of any kind (academic, essay, chapter of a book, etc.)
     3C.  Continue paper journal, 2-3 entries a week (have been consistent with this since about July)

Yes, there are still 2 days left in 2017, but I don't expect to finish anymore books this year, and if I do, I will count them in 2018. I will do fiction and nonfiction year end favorites in the next day or two.  Somehow my count is off, my written list only goes up to 83, yet here we are up to 87 - whatever, it is short of my goal of 100, and I am hereby officially changing my yearly goal to 75.

82. The Invisible Library by Genevieve Cogman

83. Any Witch Way You Can by Amanda M. Lee

84. Frederica by Georgette Heyer

85.  The Book of Atrix Wolfe by Patricia McKillip

86.  Black Dog by Rachel Nuermeir

87.  The Butchering Art by Lindsey Fitzharris (nonfiction)

 It's been a rough Fall, y'all.  Some of it is expected - there is always a letdown after a big wonderful trip, but most of it was drug related.  I've been on the antidepressant Cymbalta for maybe two years?  I started it when the menopause symptoms because too much to bear and I was just overwhelmed with emotions.  Well it helped, but then I decided I didn't want to be on it indefintely, and I especially didn't want to be on it in Prague (getting prescription meds is going to be a challenge while we are gone).  So my NP dropped me down to half dose and I did that for a month with no problem.  Then she told me to start taking it every other day.  After about four days I thought I was having a stroke - constant intense headaches, plus these weird brain zaps, and I just could not function.  We were about to head to Europe so I decided to go back on the half dose and deal with the withdrawal when we got back.  It was a wise choice! 

When we got back I started the withdrawal process.  Since it is a capsule, you have to open the capsule and count out the beads.  You're only supposed to go down 10 beads at a time, but dude I don't have that kind of patience, so I would dump out bout a quarter, then about half, then about 2/3, and then about 3/4.  This process took me about 2.5 months, and it was horrible.  The brain zaps were weird, the raging emotions were a PITA, but the worst was the pain.  I was in constant, overall body pain pretty much all the time.  To the point where I seriously thought I that I needed to go be diagnosed with fibromyalgia or some other autoimmune disease.  However I kept telling myself to wait it out and see if it got better once I was off the Cymbalta.  I've been totally off it for maybe 3 weeks now, and things are much much better, though still not back to normal.  The headaches are pretty much gone.  The brain zaps are less frequent and far less intense.  And the body pain is maybe 75% improved.  

So now I'm off the Cymbalta, I'm recovered from the pneumonia, I'm newly turned 50, and I feel about 900 years old.  Oh and the menopause is STILL perimenopause; I'm having (weird, gross, frequent, and random) periods still.  I've worked my way back up to 25 minute walks and I'm telling you, they totally kick my butt and leave me exhausted.  And the knee pain and the foot pain and the lower back pain are challenging too.  Not too mention menopause symptoms.  So my task over the next several months is to work my way back into some kind of decent physical condition.  I'm back at my high weight, too, of course.  But I'm not up to dieting right now (or possibly ever again) - I'm just going to focus on moving my body and making sure I eat enough fruits and veggies, and not worry about calories or carbs, at least for now.  

So how are you guys?  Is anybody even still reading???

Guess I'd better write about out our European adventure before I've totally forgotten.  This trip was planned around two European conferences for Eric, and I decided to come along and call it my 50th birthday trip.  The first conference at the end of August was in Strasbourg.  We spent a full week there.  I found us a little (too little) AirBNB just a block away from the university where his conference was and an easy (though longish) walk or quick tram to the city center and tourist spots.  It was a good time, although I often felt underdressed - last time we did this two years ago, I never wore any of the fancier clothes I brought - so I didn't bring any fancy clothes this time, and regretted it, amongst all the tres chic French women, including the very stylish wife of the organizer, with whom I spent quite a bit more time than I was expecting. 

We went to several museums, a castle, a provincal village, and of course the Notre Dame cathedral, which is truly impressive - a gothic masterpiece.  We had a good time in Strasbourg, though not fabulous time, partially because we ended up spending much more time than anticipated with conference folk.

On Saturday, we took the train to Brugg, Switzerland to see our friends E and S, who are Brazilian, lived here in Stillwater for awhile, and now live in Brugg.  We stayed with them for the weekend.  They showed up around Zurich (a quick train ride), we relaxed, we ate, we talked, we really had a great time.  We are so lonely in Stillwater, and we miss our only friends.

On Monday we had a quite long (6 hours or so) train ride to Turin, for the second conference.  We were there only 5 days at the beginning of September, and E spent almost all his time at the conference. so I was pretty much on my own.  Which was fine - I ended up feeling quite at home in Turin, and really enjoyed myself.  I went to quite a few museums on my own including the small but incredible Museum of Criminal Anthropology and the Museum of Human Anatomy.  These were both basically untouched since the early 1900s and I could have happily lived in them.  Neither allowed photographs, unfortunately.  I also went to the Egyptian Museum, which was enormous, like 5 floors, and utterly exhausting - you could go there every day for a week and not see it all properly.  I also went to the Royal Palace, which now houses half a dozen museums, including the archaeology museum, which focussed on Turin.  While I have of course seen tons of Roman archaeology, I found it almost jarring to see Roman archaeology in situ in Turin (and also in Strasbourg, actually).  E had one day free, so I decided he'd most enjoy the Palace and it's various museums.  Despite his busy schedule we had dinner together every night at various streetside cafes, eating (usually) delicious pizza and beer.  All in all I enjoyed Turin far more than Strasbourg.

So then of course we had to come home, and we both came down with colds, and we are still not fully recovered ... mine actually devolved in pneumonia, and I was off work for 5 days.  It never got truly bad (I didn't have to hospitalized) but it was unpleasant all the same, and I'm still coughing away and can't yet manage my daily 30 minute walks - I did 20 minutes on Thursday and it exhausted me.

So anyway, that was our big adventure - I've failed to convey how much fun it was and all that we saw and did, and how it has inspired me in my daily life back here in Oklahoma.  Next time I will talk about what I am doing to keep myself sane in Oklahoma.