Tuesday, June 4, 2019

May 2019 book list and a few small updates

Here are the books I finished up in May:

M is for Malice. Sue Grafton.* Kinsey Milhone is still doing her thing where she solves mysteries in the late 1980s, and I am apparently still doing my thing where I check out these books and read them in order.

An Event in Autumn. Henning Mankell, translated by Laurie Thompson.*  I saw this at the library and did a double take because I thought I had read all the Kurt Wallander mysteries that existed.  But this was translated in 2012 and I missed it somehow.  It was a nice surprise, and very much needed.

Wicked Autumn. G.M. Malliet.*  A standard cozy mystery except!  The mystery-solving priest is a former MI-5 officer with a tragic past! And he became a priest in a rural English village to get away from danger and horror!  Which is ridiculous because everyone knows that the moment a new priest comes to a quaint, rural village the dead bodies just pile up from all the murders.  This is the first in a series and I'm enjoying it enough to keep going even though the pacing is not my favorite.

Other things from May
-Little neighbor boy and baby of the family, Dallas, graduated from high school!  We were proud and happy.  He was tall and only somewhat embarrassed by us.


-We had a little family gathering around Mother's Day!

4 generations of women who just love to have their picture taken.

-Evelyn got glasses!  She's so cute in them and can see all kinds of things she didn't realize she was missing.  Also, she thinks we might look alike now that we have glasses.  Apparently we didn't before this.


-At the beginning of the month, we found out that Evelyn's school was closing down.  It was a whole thing.  It was unexpected and sad and now we're going to send her somewhere that costs significantly more, which we didn't budget for because we thought she was going to her little school for a few more years.  I hate everything about this, but I'm trying to remember to be grateful for the time she had there and all the things she learned in a wonderful environment.

-Not unrelated to the last thing, we're on a bit of a no-spend at the moment!  It's going okay.  I still signed Evelyn up for swimming lessons and she had her first lesson today.  After she ate her little sack lunch we went to the library and read for over an hour and a half.  This is mostly what I checked out.


-I went part-time about 6 weeks ago.  It's a temporary thing that will last until the fall, but I'm really happy that I get to do this (even with the smaller paychecks at an inconvenient time).  I spend the first few days off frantically rushing around to take care of tasks I'd neglected for months before it was time to pick up Evelyn from school.  By the time I was ready to relax, I wound up spending the time touring schools.  But last week I took Evelyn to my parents house and got to play with my nephews for a bit before all the cousins spent the next 3 days together.  And yesterday Evelyn and I did nothing.  And today we barely did more than nothing.  I can't wait to do more of it.