rivendellrose: (Lavender)
([personal profile] rivendellrose Aug. 3rd, 2025 09:39 pm)
I'm still alive and have once again remembered that I have a journal here! And... oh dear, it looks like it's been about a year since I last posted. Um. Very basic updates are called for, I guess.

I did indeed eventually recover my sense of smell after my bout with Covid last summer, which was very nice. Shortly after that, the Squidling started kindergarten, and we had a bit of a chaotic start to the year as his teacher had... not so much actually read his IEP. Oops. Got that resolved, things calmed down mostly, to the point where we (very optimistically) adopted a dog, who we named Astro, from a local rescue... and then everything went all to hell. The Squidling loves dogs, it turns out, but is too impulsive and, frankly, unwilling to adhere to rules, to actually behave well with a dog in the house, and the chaos of having a dog (who was both younger and more high-energy than we'd been lead to believe...) meant that he never got the calm down-time at home that was required to help him function moderately well at school. Due to that and a few other issues, we eventually made the sad decision to return Astro to the rescue.

(Astro is fine: he went into the care of a very experienced foster family who had a foster-fail dog of their own, with whom Astro immediately became best friends, and at last check they were so happy running around the yard together and then sleeping all over the people's furniture together that we're crossing all available appendages that they foster-fail with Astro, too. One sticking point of his time with us was that while he liked people fine, he really wanted a dog friend full-time, and that was never going to happen with us.)

Anyway. Kindergarten didn't go great. Squidling did not like school much, because he is super impulsive and unwilling to follow instructions, and he and his teacher butted heads basically all the time, and... things did not go well, anyway. The good news is, he loved his resource teacher, Ms. A, and likes many of his classmates, and still loves learning and reading and all that, so we're hard at work with his therapist and his resource teacher on plans to develop the good sides of things, and hopefully get him some medication to help him with his impulse control (in addition, of course, to non-medication methods like helping him think ahead and give rewards for good behavior, etc.).

Summer has been pretty good, with a friend and her kiddo visiting from out of town a good part of last month, and then a big week last week where we went to Point Defiance Zoo, then met up with several of Squidling's classmates and their families to watch the Blue Angels from a local park, and then a day of hanging out and going fun places with his grandparents the next day. Tomorrow he starts his second week-long day-camp of the summer, and they are prepared with strategies learned from his first day camp of the summer (as are we), so hopefully things will go well... and at the end of the month we'll get back to school!
Photograph of a young Vietnamese couple in a sunny urban environment, with added text: Marriage of Convenience, at Fancake. A bride in a white dress and sunglasses leaves her groom behind at a bus stop. The bride is smiling and carrying a bouquet of lilies as she hikes up the long skirt of her dress and walks away. The groom is in the background, wearing a dark grey suit and sitting on a bench. He's blurry, but it looks like he might be smiling at her.
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superborb: (Default)
([personal profile] superborb Aug. 2nd, 2025 06:08 pm)
An Immense World, by Ed Yong:
Pop sci about animal senses. One scientific error (if you consider light to not be instantaneous, neither are electric fields), though of course some of the science has actually updated in the years since it was written (hypotheses on why birds call in the morning). This is probably one of the best pop sci books I've read: well written, informative, and interesting, when discussing both material I already knew or didn't know. Highly recommend.


Inspector Imanishi Investigates, by Seichō Matsumoto, translated by Beth Cary:
Police detective investigates a mysterious death of an unknown person. The best parts were about 1960s Japanese society, but I overall wasn't a fan. It's probably because of expectations around coincidence, plot holes around why someone would take certain actions, that sort of thing. Was a bit of an awkward feeling translation, but I thought it was interesting that this was abridged in order to be published as a mystery and because the original was a serial and needed polish.


Wolf Hall, by Hilary Mantel (DNF):
Thomas Cromwell during his rise. Certainly the style was interesting, but I was somewhat bored 15% of the way though... I think knowing how it ends does detract (which I don't usually find to be the case). Maybe I'm too immature a reader to enjoy this like it should be because I don't care enough about the subtleties of the language? Distinct Cromwell is my woobie vibe.


Lady Eve's Last Con, by Rebecca Fraimow:
Interstellar rom-com between a con woman and the sister of the man she is trying to get revenge on. A fun romp and I love prince type (female) love interests always, but does follow rom com logic.


Memoirs of a Spacewoman, by Naomi Mitchison:
Old school sci fi about exploring other worlds! I liked this well enough, and I appreciated the weird aliens (who still felt weird today!) But am not sure the social stuff aged as well (in terms of insightfulness / interesting newness). The fascist butterflies were a lot, but I am still thinking about them a month later...


Language City, by Ross Perlin:
The history of NYC through the lens of language. Frequently fell into the trap of lists, which I did not enjoy. I learned some things, but I think less than I wished to have (despite all the lists... density of information in the form of lists is not the way...)


Wellness, by Nathan Hill:
A couple that met as counter culture college students in the 90s in Chicago face the doldrums of middle age and marriage. I was Highly Skeptical at the superficiality of the psych major's understanding of psych (I think this is really the author's gap in knowledge) -- and I think compared to the poignancy and emotion of sections that probably were more in line with the author's actual experiences e.g. of the beauty of the prairie, Wellness the company and the supposed psychological research sections felt much less realistic and therefore frustrating. HOWEVER, overall I kind of loved it? All its disparate plot strands, spanning locations, people, and time, really came together in a perfect jigsaw puzzle way, and in the end I did really want to root for the main couple as a couple. Highly recommend.
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