this and that, beaches and books

I know that I had mentioned that I wasn't going to pressure myself by joining any book reading challenges...but I forgot about this one, it's so low-key...

Dollycas of Escape with Dollycas Into a Good Book is hosting a reading challenge over on Goodreads. The challenge is the Just For Fun Reading Challenge, and you can click on the icon above to see more information about it. If you're tempted to sign up, it's open to new members until January 31st. It's pretty low-key; still, the only reason I'm doing it {remember, I promised myself not to join any more challenges because I end up failing pretty much all of them after the initial glow of signing up wears off} is because the goal of the challenge is to read one book a month just for fun. Now I pretty much do this anyway - but the catch is, to pick a book from your TBR stacks. Pick a book that's been sitting on your stacks or piled into a corner, or shoved in a bookshelf, or....well you get the point, I'm sure - anyway - to pick a book that's been in your TBR whatever for a very long time. Hell, I've had Redemption Alley by Lilith Saintcrow sitting here waiting for me to read ever since it came out. It's been so long that she's written three more books in the series since them. In fact, the sixth book is the final book. I love Lilith Saintcrow's writing, also. I've read her complete Strange Angels series (young adult - one of the few YA book writers I read)

So you can see that this is a very good challenge indeed for me. Just pick a book from my shelf full of novels that have been waiting for me to read.

I have this issue with buying books and I tend to mostly put them all in one area, but there are a few that I've LOST. I'm serious. I know I've bought them, and they are not anywhere that I can see them. :( Of course, I do have grandchildren who are allowed to get into my shelves with no restrictions. I don't believe in steering books away from kids - and even though they aren't even close to reading chapter books {much less urban fantasy or horror books, *g*} they've always been allowed to carry them around, and just look at the covers or pretend that they can read. We're so weird, I think. However, the downside of this decision is that if I'm not losing a book on my own, then it's been lost by one of my grandbabies. All my fault.

Anyway, I'm currently reading a debut novel by Tami Dane called Blood of Eden - such a melodramatic title, but then most book titles in the paranormal, urban fantasy genres do have melodramatic names. I'm closer to reading Redemption Alley by the hour, because I'm getting so frustrated reading Blood of Eden that I want to put it aside. Which would be a shame, because to have to stop reading the second book I've started for 2012 feels wrong. Then again, when I found out just how sick I am {here would be a good spot for some emo music, right? a song about a brave *g*, optimistic, slightly crazed, sometimes cranky lady who barrels through life! *g*}, I decided to no longer waste any time on books that aren't pulling me into the story, and this one is so far balancing me on the fence dividing the total waste and could be interesting areas of books. Sigh - that metaphor, or whatever those are called didn't work out that well, did it? My point is, I'm not feeling it - yet it seems like it might be a good read...but there's things that don't match, weird ....well, save it for the review. It's just that Blood of Eden seemed so promising, and it really could be an outstanding books, except...hopefully I'll feel like giving it another go later one, but I've decided to stop for now. Yup, going to go dig out my Redemption Alley book and see how that grabs me.

and now......

the beach
My poor husband has been off of work for months because he hurt his back. He's used to working 40 hour work weeks, and used to working hard. I've been trying to tell him that he doesn't need to do all the physical work, and he needs to let some of the younger men do more of the heavy lifting, but he's in his fifties, and fifty five year old working in retail sometimes has to hold on to the job by the skin of their teeth. Of course, he ended up with a back injury - which is such a horrible thing to have to deal with - the type of pain you get with a back injury is so strange and awful - the pain that radiates out from the spine to various places in your body, etc. And the minute you start to feel better, to actually do something - bam! there is goes again. So the man has been doing his daily walking, trying to do physical therapy and all the excercises at home like he's supposed to - and is just starting to feel a little more normal (ha! until he tries to do something like sit on a bar stool, walk up steps, get ...ahem... - things have changed) So anyway - long story shorter, he has been going slowly insane, being stuck at home with no money, bored out of his mind. He's not a book reader like we are. So today, he decides that we're going to take the grandchildren to the beach. So he goes to pick up the granddaughter hours earlier than she normally goes and this ends up to be the ONE weekend that the grandson's mom doesn't bring him over early in the morning. So we just took the granddaughter. And our daughter-in-law A(they've been living together for so long, they might as well be married- my youngest son and his g.f.) She wasn't doing anything this morning so we grabbed her up. The granddaughter was extremely excited.

This picture is titled "Little Demon makes a Sand Angel - how ironic"
Really, our little grand-demon, er daughter was so excited, she was having a very hard time listening to grandma. Until I told her all about how when little girls get sucked into the ocean (this is the pacific coast - treacherous waves) it's so cold, that first you have a lot of pain, then you can't breath, then you are frozen and in pain and you drown and DIE! Sometimes it's necessary to be very dramatic when speaking with your grandchild. VERY dramatic; she listened a little better after that, but it was still a little crazed. She behaved a lot better when it was just her uncle and me with her.

This picture is titled Lili-Baby. Doesn't she just look like a little angel? Don't be fooled, *g* She can be very sweet, though.

The girls {the little one and the daughter in law} played around with the water a bit, did a little sand castle building - though that activity didn't last very long, since the granddaugher was a little too hyper for it. Then came the running. Running back and forth between gramps and us.

AJ and I relaxing for a very short time. Best picture I've had taken of me for a long time (I don't do good pics, always look weird in them) It was actually a pretty nice day at the beach for a winter day. The temperature was on the cool side, it was windy, but there was no fog and the sun was shining - probably the only thing that made the weather nice. Usually it's bitterly cold at the beach in the winter. We didn't stay very long though, because after playing in the waves and getting wet and sandy, the granddaughter suddenly became extremely cold - to the point where she started to cry - she was so cold.

I had thought to bring extra clothes with her, and a thin blanket. We were sitting on a thick blanket and I had taken off my jacket because women my age have hot flashes even at the beach. So I wrapped a blanket around Lily while I was slowly and strategically removing wet clothing and replacing with warm, dry clothes - except her legs were covered with wet sand, and her hands were so cold she was crying even more. So I took a break on trying to change her pants - just took the wet ones off, covered her in the blanket, wrapped my coat around her, put my gloves on her hands, tucked her hands up inside my shirt, put my hat on her and then started making all kinds of whoops and OH SO Cold! about her freezing little hands. Then she started laughing and after just sitting all wrapped up in my lap AJ and I were able to get the warm dry clothes on her and a dry jacket. My plan was to get her in warm dry clothes and let her play a little bit longer, maybe just sit and watch the amazing frothy white waves breaking over the huge rocks in the ocean - but my husband started packing things up and next thing I knew we were halfway to the car, then IN the car. The husband was wondering why we wanted to leave so early and I said, I though YOU wanted to leave, we were just getting Lily dry and warmed up! nothing like communication! so we went to the salt water taffy store (there's probably one at every coast) and bought flavored taffy. Yummy.

We're leaving the beach - a little sad..

And now, we just left the Salt Water Taffy store - Bodega Bay - so happy!