Thinking, Reading, Playing

Thinking:

“Being a missionary isn’t just about traveling to the other side of the world. It’s about being love and light right here, in this moment. It’s rocking the brand new baby, and hugging the whiny toddler. It’s feeding the hungry teenager and lovingly welcoming a husband home even when you’re as tired as he is. It’s looking your grocery store cashier in the eye and listening when you ask how she’s doing. It’s paying attention and being willing to care.”

Rachel Balducci

More here, on salt and light, love and truth.

Playing:

I only have three dressing up this Halloween, and only one “ready” in the costume department. (Janey is wearing a hand-me-down from Abbey, a cute little hand made nurse costume.)  We dressed up the house though, same as usual.

Reading:

Our fall favorites…

Those Darn Squirrels Fly South

Hilarious, and our squirrels are crazy here in the fall, way too brave, (and some pay that price as one can not take a walk without averting one’s eye to fresh squirrel road kill) so it makes us laugh all the more.  

Room on the Broom

I love this sweet story of witch and her friends.

The Attack of the 50-Foot Teacher

A grumpy teacher gives homework on Halloween, and then has a change of heart.

Slinky Malinki (Hairy Maclary and Friends)

Thank you to the reader who recommended these books-they are so funny!  A naughty cat goes on nightly adventures and wreaks havoc in his home and neighborhood, but always pays the price for it.

We love these!

As for me, I am on an early 1900’s British stint here.

Below Stairs: The Classic Kitchen Maid’s Memoir That Inspired “Upstairs, Downstairs” and “Downton Abbey”

This is a memoir of a kitchen maid (and then cook), who tells of the hard work involved in servitude in a funny light-hearted way-I laughed out loud at her take on things.  If you are looking for a nice easy read this is your book.  I think I could have found a funny quip that I wanted to jot down on each page.  She speak of poverty and wealth, dating and marriage and it’s all so true and funny.

Here are two I had to chuckle at:

“Would I have been happier if I’d been able to do what I wanted when I was young? I might have been. I’m not one of those who pretend that because you’re poor there’s something wonderful about it.  I’d love to be rich.  There’s nothing particularly beautiful about being poor, having the wrong sort of clothes, and not being able to go to the right sort of places.  I don’t particularly envy rich people but I don’t blame them.  They try and hang onto their money, and if I had it I’d hang onto it too.  Those people who say the rich should share what they’ve got are talking a lot of my eye and Betty Martin (nonsense);it’s only because they haven’t go it they think that way. I wouldn’t reckon to share mine around.”

and

“Any fellow I met who had a face like the back of a bus and who I wouldn’t have looked twice at if I’d have been stone-cold sober looked like Rudolph Valentino after a beer or so. Mind you, I had to be careful not to have too many, there was a borderline, you wanted enough so they they would kiss you and make a fuss of you and so that you could leave them thinking that next time it might be all right to go a bit further, but you didn’t want them dashing at you like a madman the very first time they took you home.  After all’s said and done, you’ve only go one lot of goods and if you’re going to distribute them to all and sundry you haven’t go anything worth keeping when the real one come along!”

Anyways, it is a nice pick me up after…

My Dear I Wanted to Tell You: A Novel

A warning here-it was dark and deep (and contains some strong profanity and a couple very risque scenes-I almost stopped reading from a scene in the first couple chapters but I’m glad I didn’t), but I couldn’t put this book down. It is a war-torn love story. I think the author has an original prose, and an amazing way of bringing alive the emotional horror of war (WWI in this case) that not only the soldiers experience but those left at home, and those nursing the mental and physically wounded.

Up next is A Spoonful of Sugar: A Nanny’s Story-really liking it so far.  I was a nanny after college for a few different families, and I learned so much.  It definitely shaped the kind of mother I am today and influenced the choices I made in my own life-it really is a behind-the-scenes objective study in family life, marriage, child-rearing.