I’m not the best at keeping up traditions, but one thing I’ve done for the past two years is celebrate Festivus, which starts off with the Airing of Grievances. Anyone with a blog knows that blog traffic is slow during the holidays (because people are hanging with family, whether they like it or not), so YOU CAN SAY WHATEVER YOU WANT. No one’s going to be reading this anyway.

I’ll start!

• My local news stand closed this past year, leaving me having to hunt for cool pinup girl calendars online, and one less place to find unique cards and just about any magazine I could want. Stupid economy.
• Pregnancy headaches. GAH! I had a lovely 80 minute pedicure (eighty minute) (EIGHTY MINUTE) a few weeks ago, only to stand up and realize I now had a raging headache. And the tylenol-type stuff I’m allowed to take? My headaches don’t even bat an eye. The headache’s all, Bitch, I’m stronger than that! And then it cackles. Or guffaws. I’m not sure.
• People who pull out right in front of me (or anyone else, really) while driving. I don’t think people always realize how fast I’m going and how long it takes them to get up to speed. What’s most frustrating is that plenty of people have died because they pulled out in front of someone thinking they had enough room/time.
• People who say orientate. Check out the comments on this post, but this comment is the best one ever. Frustratated! Ha!
• The dad at the house warming party I was recently at who was all, Yeah, my 17 year old daughter told me not to come home Friday night so she and a few of her friends could try pot, so I stayed at our other house that night.
• The girl at my work who plays Facebook games during her “break”.
• The same girl at my work who can’t seem to make any of our one-on-one meetings on time, if at all.

Now it’s your turn. Go!

(Oh, but before you go, I want to tell you all how much I love you. It meant the world to me to have so much comment love when I announced my pregnancy. I know posting here has been sparse, and book reviews have been even sparser, and my commenting on other blogs has been non-existent, but that’ll all change when I’m back down to one job. I know I’ll then have a baby, but really, how much time can he take? So for all of the grievances I’ve aired today, this blog is my safe haven, and you all are my warm fuzzies.)

One of the really fun things about blogging is learning about all the reading challenges that people host! Reading challenges can really get you to expand your reading boundaries, read new authors, etc.

The only problem with reading challenges is you have to be fairly disciplined. It’s so fun to sign up for new challenges and to imagine how awesome this coming year of reading will be. Then the year goes by and you realized you didn’t really read for the challenges, you just continued reading whatever caught your interest at the time.

And when I say “you”, I mean me.

Last year I even hosted a couple of challenges, and probably wouldn’t have done too bad in them except that I lost about 75% of my reading time. C’est la vie, n’est pas?

So this year, I wasn’t going to join (or host) any reading challenges because I have no idea when I’ll get my reading time back. I’m anticipating it’ll be when I quit my day job, but shortly thereafter I’ll be welcoming a new baby boy into this world, so while I’m optimistic, I’m kind of waiting to see how things go.

But one of the things I’ve had to do with a lack of reading time is really take a close look at what I’m reading. I had to almost completely cut out the literary fiction, my genre of choice, because I wasn’t able to give it the attention it needs (and deserves). So in comes my guilty pleasures, crime fiction, because it can keep me up late at night, and if I put it down for days or a week, it’s okay because I can pick it back up without losing a beat.

That’s why, when my friend Jen from Jenn’s Book Thoughts decided to host a crime fiction reading challenge, I was all over it! It matches what I’ll be reading for at least the next six months or so, so it should be a lot of fun!

The challenge is Criminal Plots Reading Challenge. It starts on January 1, 2011 and goes through the year. Here’s the types of books I need to find and read:

1. A book by a new to you author who’s blurbed a book you enjoyed. So check out the cover of a crime fiction book you’ve enjoyed and see who blurbed that book and is also an author you’ve never read before.
2. A book that has been made into a movie. It doesn’t have to be a movie you’ve seen but it can be. The book, however, should be one you haven’t read before. (Examples: MYSTIC RIVER, L.A. CONFIDENTIAL, LONDON BOULEVARD, HOSTAGE, etc.)
3. A book with a protagonist opposite your own gender. So if you’re female, the protagonist should be male; if you’re male the protagonist should be female.
4. A book set outside the country in which you live.
5. A book that’s the first in a new-to-you series.
6. A book by a 2011 debut author.

I’m not sure what books I’ll be reading that will qualify for the challenge, but it’ll be fun finding the books!

The word quickening, referring to the movement of a baby in utero being felt by the woman, has always been my favorite way to think about feeling a baby kick for the first time. It sounds magical, almost like the baby is zapped alive at that point.

Last night I felt the baby quicken.

I started my 22nd week yesterday, and I was starting to get just a little bit nervous that I hadn’t felt the bebe yet. I hadn’t felt anything like people described as a baby moving in your belly: popcorn popping, bubbles, gas, etc. Since I knew I was supposed to be feeling it any time now, I was paying extra close attention to my belly, but nothing was happening. I pay pretty close attention to my body, so I knew that I probably hadn’t missed anything. On Sunday I felt something, but it was quick and didn’t happen again. I felt it again the next night, but again, it was so brief that I wondered if I’d perhaps imagined it. Dave was gone Monday night and Tuesday night at a training, so I took those nights to pay attention to my belly, holding my hand there until I fell asleep, waiting to feel something.

Then last night, both Dave and I put our hands on my belly as we were lying in bed, and I felt a little pop. “Did you feel that?” I asked him. It happened three times, and I finally said, “Are you doing that?” “Doing what?” Then I felt a definite kick, and had him put his hand on my belly without my hand. That’s when we got  a nice big kick!

It’s so funny that the bebe chose last night to start being active, almost like he was waiting for Dave to get back home. I know that’s such a silly thought, but these pregnancy hormones make me want to cry when I think about that! So ridiculous.

With the quickening, I feel like I’ve finally reached my last milestone. I know there’s so much farther to go, but with this first pregnancy, the possibility of losing the baby has been niggling at the back of my mind. I think I can let that go now.

But the other thing that I’ve started thinking about a lot recently is, What the heck have I gotten myself into?! Eighteen years! And that’s just until he becomes responsible for himself, that doesn’t include all the worrying I’ll do until the day I die. Oy vey.

Sometimes, oftentimes, I’m not as articulate as I wish I could be when I discuss books.

There are things that I understand on a subconscious level that won’t bubble up to the surface no matter how much I try.

I’ve found over the years that I tend to work things out verbally, which is why I did so well in English class. The group discussions would help solidify thoughts in my head. Many times I would raise my hand and only have a vague idea of what I wanted to say. It wasn’t uncommon for me to have aha moments once I started talking.

I think this is why it’s so important for me to discuss what I read on this blog and on other people’s blogs and in my book clubs and with co-workers and friends. Those discussions help solidify thoughts and feelings that are otherwise nebulous and bokehish. Discussions also help spark thoughts that are new to me, or thoughts that were there the whole time but didn’t have the words to make them alive.

Why is it important for you to discuss books? Or do you even need to discuss books?

I was reading the great article about Jonathan Franzen in Time magazine, written by none other than Lev Grossman, and while Franzen is a fascinating writer* and I look forward to not only reading Freedom, but his other books as well, there was one thing mentioned briefly that really made me stop and think. Actually, that’s not true, there were two things that really made me think, but for purposes of this post, I want to talk about just one of them.

The way Franzen thinks about it (wanting novels to survive) is that books can do things, socially useful things, that other media can’t. He cites – as one does – the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard and his idea of busyness: that state of constant distraction that allows people to avoid difficult realities and maintain self-deception….

Reading, in its quietness and sustained concentration, is the opposite of busyness. “The place of stillness that you have to go to to write, but also to read seriously, is the point where you can actually make responsible decisions, where you can actually engage productively with an otherwise scary and unmanageable world.”

I don’t want to get too earnest here, but isn’t that what reading is about? I read to understand people and human nature and, ultimately, myself. In The Unnamed, I learned that sometimes it doesn’t matter how much you love someone, sometimes you can only go so far. Books let you see people without the facade that they want you to see. In The Sixteen Pleasures, my thoughts about trying to make your life become what you thought it should be was given words and an illustration. In Time of my Life, I thought a lot about marriage and how it changes and how roads not taken can seem so much greener than the road you took.

That’s my ode to reading today.

*Actually, while reading the article, I was thinking it probably would have been more interesting if Grossman had interviewed Franzen’s, uh, not-quite-evil twin, @EmperorFranzen. I definitely think Franzen would be cooler with a cloak.