What Alice Forgot - A Book Review

This month, I had the opportunity to read What Alice Forgot by Liane Moriarty. I loved this book and have added it to my top 10 list.

Alice is about to turn 40 when she has a terrible accident at the gym that erases the last 10 years of her life from her memory - her kids, her marriage, her friends are all gone. In her mind, she is the about to be 30, expectant mother, and recently married girl that she was and as she starts to explore this "new world" she realizes how much she really has forgotten.

I think for all of us, time, activities, obligations, and kids suck a lot of our memories away from us. We are always so stuck in survivor-mode that we forget how to be us - the people that our spouses loved, the parent that we had wanted to be, had meant to be, and what our initial dreams and aspirations were. For Alice, she has a chance to look back through the eyes of that dreamy 29-year-old with all of those ideas, all of those plans to see the alien world that she has created instead.

To me, it was the 39-year-old Alice that had forgotten the most as she raced from the gym to the coffee place to the school and on and on. She forgot to love, forgot to have patience, forgot to focus on the dreamer inside.

What Alice Forgot reminded me that I need to slow down. I need to take the time and energy to communicate and love the people in my life instead of taking them for granted and rushing through this life from one obligation to the next. I think the 29 year old me would be quite surprised to read my blog and discover who I have become instead.

I HIGHLY recommend What Alice Forgot and am super excited that it is being translated into a movie that is currently in development!

This is a paid review for the BlogHer Book Club. All opinions and statements in this review are my own. 



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My Love of Mowing

Sewing dresses, crocheting baby blankets and hats, doing laundry, or dishes all take time, patience, diligence and perseverance to ensure that they are completed the way that they should be.

Mowing is different. It's instant, it's quick. It's exercise with a purpose (God knows how much I hate to exercise). I get a great deal of personal satisfaction from looking back across what I have already mowed and seeing the straight lines and evenly cut blades of grass. 

It makes me happy. It also takes a lot of stress away when I am doing something manual, something physical.

This year, between the two jobs and everything else that has been going on the lawnmower died. Since our old mower died last year, I was determined to not buy a new mower. The grass kept getting higher and higher, and I was beginning to think that it might not even get cut this year. 

Finally, on Father's Day, I diagnosed the problem, went to the auto parts place that I work at and bought everything that it would take to make the mower run again. (The Hubs actually got it running again, because he likes to try to tinker with things like that and I needed to cook lunch.)

After lunch, I was on it. Mowing, swigging my water like a BOSS, throwing branches across the yard like I was some kind of 1980s wrestling champ and getting it DONE. 

I felt the stick poke my leg. Twice. I didn't think anything of it to be honest, it was a random stick.

Or poison ivy disguised to look like a stick!

Apparently, after last year's battle of the itchies, I am REALLY allergic to it now and by this past Sunday, my leg had become infected and I had a rash crawling up both of my legs. I cannot shave, so I am very self-conscious of showing you the grossness of my leg. (I can't shave because my reasoning of last year is so incredibly wrong, shaving will only make poison ivy worse - not better like I may have thought) I sent pictures to Houston, to my mother, who told me to go to Urgent Care. 

The Supergirl and I packed into the car and drove to the Urgent Care clinic that was about to close. The doctor looked at me and said, "You have a husband, maybe you shouldn't mow."

And that made me want to mow my grass more than I have ever wanted to mow in my life. 

Also, I have an infection, 1 antibiotic and 3 steroids and I STILL ITCH - I am not even sure that seeing the doctor was worth it. 

Miracle Grow

When I was a teenager, my parents somehow acquired a banana tree. I am not really certain how this happened or where it came from, but we had a small banana tree sitting next to the floor speakers of the stereo.

The banana tree required a Miracle Grow stick to be placed in its soil once a week. The Miracle Grow sticks were located on top of the floor speaker.

Eventually the sticks fell into the banana tree soil and were not found until the banana tree began to grow at an amazing speed. It was almost as though it was growing before our very eyes!

It grew and grew and bushed out and looked as though it might start to have bananas. And then it turned black and died.

If you know me and my family, you know that our Supergirl is extremely tall for her age. Every morning when I see those long tan legs splayed across the bed, I wonder how on Earth she got SO long.

At her well-child appointment last week, the doctor was also troubled by her height and it was no longer funny. He had her hand x-rayed for a bone age study, and the study came back indicating that she does have advanced bone age. He wants to wait until her next birthday, to see if she continues to grow at this pace. If she does then she will begin seeing a pediatric endocrinologist, if not, she is just tall and we go on about our merry way.

On Thursday, when I got the news, I was so scared, so worried. I knew that any abnormalities had to be my fault. I knew that I had fed her too much chicken, or at too much cereal when I was pregnant. Maybe it was that late term craving for Green Apple Slushies and Chili Cheese Tots every morning for breakfast. I had to get rid of the guilt, I had to know this (this, this whatever it is) was not my fault.

So I Googled.

I may have even Web M.D'd

I KNOW, I KNOW, I KNOW. 

But I did it and now I can't unsee it and it makes me a very nervous momma. I also can't but feel like a bad momma when I ask people to pray that she stops growing. She cannot gain another inch this year. And I feel like an ass to say, "Hey, let's pray for my girl to stop growing" like it's some kind of inconvenience  to me. I worry that she hears me on the phone talking about how she is too tall or that the doctor is concerned. I worry that she will start to think that something is really wrong with her. That she will become a hypochondriac like the daughter of a nurse that I once was.

I worry that she lose her self-confidence.

I am going to give that away now as well. I am going to spend the next six months not thinking about the fact that my 4 year old is in a size 13 shoe or size 7 clothing. I am going to try not to feel stabbed a little every time someone sees my daughter and the first thing they exclaim when they see her is "Oh, my goodness, she is SO big (or tall)" I am going to let the worry go and spend the next 6 months enjoying my HEALTHY, HAPPY, BEAUTIFUL little girl.

If something needs to be dealt with later, I will deal with it. Until then, I have a kid to grow.