anagramofbrat | Feb. 20th, 2012

While I'm glad to have an explanation for the bad crop of brain weather I've had for the past few days by way of rather dramatic UTERINESPLODE yesterday, there's always a part of me that's always viciously annoyed by how my hormones affect my mental state. I hate comforming to stereotype. Probably don't help none that I crave fried greasy chicken like hell while I'm PMSsing. Pretty much all I need is some damn birkenstocks to complete the stereotype trifecta. Growl.

It's been a Studio Ghibli heavy weekend. Saturday night's movie with Kidzilla was My Neighbor Totoro, which Kidzilla didn't remember watching as a very small child (but nevertheless loved anyway). Yesterday we went to see The Secret World of Arietty, which we both enjoyed, probably for very different reasons, mine having more to do with taking in the lush, painterly quality of the animation and backgrounds and bursting into giggling at the commentary being whispered by extrajoker and friends, into whom we ran at the same showing. But seriously, I think it was cell23 that observed how after seeing trailers for all the current animated offerings trying to outdo each other in terms of style and cleverness and then you see one for a Miyazaki movie which instantly makes everything else look, well, amateurish. Not just that. Cartoony. Bah. Well, while I have no interest in seeing the bastardization of The Lorax, I'll probably go see the Aardman pirate movie. It looks just silly enough to appeal to me, and well. It's about pirates. I'm kinda required.

I'm not sure what I'm doing right, but things seem to have taken a turn for the better with regard to my everyday gut complaints. Things still hurt, but not like as often or as bad, and I'm a little bemused to note my appetite seems to have rebounded, so I'm eating slightly more than normal sized portions of things again as opposed to my tiny little bites of meals I'd been confined to before. I also seem to have put on weight, but that could well be ladytime bloat, so I'm not going to put that much store by it. Really the only change I've made diet-wise is trying not to eat too much in the way of candy (the only thing I can definitely say sets things off) and just basically eating more in general. I think just having more of everything - calories, nutrients, what have you - available for self-repair is probably the key.

We have the kids a couple extra days owing to school vacation this week. Pros are yay kids, and getting more time to hang out with them. Cons are Lil'Beast being four and actually having to deal with that. He had a DAY yesterday that made both cell23 and I want to curl up with a bottle of Mr. Jameson's finest offerings at varying points of the day, though this was contrasted with him curling up in my lap and telling me how he wasn't actually angry when he threw tantrums, just sad, and didn't know why. Also with his periods of being a little gigglemonster. Poor kid. It's rough being four. Once again I'm reminded of a passage from Peter Pan when it's remarked upon that fairies are so small they only have room for one emotion at a time. I think the same could be said for very small children.

We're having a spate of gorgeous early-spring weather these past few days. Warm (by which I mean high forties/low fifties) and, well, that sort of not-quite cold that's fresh and clean feeling, not merely freezing. Crisp. Like an apple. It's delightful AND incredibly strange, it being not even March yet. I mean, we had a picnic on Saturday. Outside and stuff. In February. What is this madness?

Also been doing a LOT of reading lately to the point where Goodreads says I'm on track again for my 75 book challenge. I have five books out from the library plus I finally got past the initial hurdle of the first few chapters of Lois McMaster Bujold's Sharing Knife series and subsequently demolished my way through the first couple of volumes. Nothing like as good/fun as the Vorkosigan saga, but readable nonetheless. I enjoy authors that can create believable character interactions despite or even because of their circumstances/setting, goodness knows internal character bickering have kept me reading some series long after they jumped the shark into soap opera-y dreck (*cough* Black Jewels, Kushiel Legacy *cough*). Aside from that, I'm also enjoying Laura Gilman's Paranormal Scene Investigations series and The Child Thief, Brom's cracked take on Peter Pan, though I did have to get over my initial disappointment that it wasn't a graphic novel. Somewhat less engaging was the second volume of Sarah Monette's Doctrine of Labyrinths, which had way too many passages that bored me silly between the actually interesting bits. I'll probably pick up the last two volumes at some later point, but I don't quite have the give-a-fuck to push through them right now, especially as most of the conflicts set up by the first novel have pretty much been dealt with.