This Is Beautiful: Mindfulness

 Some backstory to introduce this: I used to be a meditation and Buddhism nut. When I was in high school it was not uncommon for me to be reading things like the Tibetan Book of the Dead and things like that. I also used to meditate for close to an hour a day at my peak. But I fell off of that in undergrad and haven't been able to get back on. These days I feel exercise serves as my mindfulness, like dancing and yoga. If there was a meditation group I would join, I had one pre-pandemic, but it has been a bit.

Then a few things happened this week. A weekly mindfulness group popped up! Only thirty minutes, but it is virtual and I am pleased it's back in my schedule. Plus I read a book about yoga, I'll have a post about that soon, but reading gives me the space to absorb these teachings and think about them so much better. And I haven't read a book about this for a while! It was really nice to get back into it.

I know there's issues with mindfulness but it's helped me so much over the years. I hope this is the start of me getting back into it.

“Searching for Dragons” by Patricia Wrede

This is the sequel to Dealing with Dragons which I wrote about in this earlier post. Again, this is a book that my partner is reading to me, so I very funnily do not know how to spell most things in the book. But, it is an excellent sequel that continues to play with fairy tale tropes in entertaining ways.

The story follows Mendanbar, the King of the Enchanted Forest. He finds a patch of the forest that is totally destroyed, along with some dragon scales. He takes these to the witch Morwen and she figures out that it’s the scales of one dragon and suggests he take them to the King of the Dragons, Kazul. However when Mendanbar gets there, Kazul is missing and Cimorene is about to go look for her. They figure out that the scales belong to one dragon who isn’t around anymore, and deduce that the wizards are likely behind this. They go looking for Kazul, and on the way meet up with a magician who can help them, a wicked uncle and crown prince, and a few cats. Of course the book ends with Mendanbar and Cimorene getting married, but that’s the only spoiler that I’ll give.

So the highlight of this book is finding all of the vague fairy tale allusions. There’s a dwarf who can spin straw into gold, but only for other people, and no one can guess his name so he’s become parent to many first-born children. Mendenbar and Cimorene suggest that he start a school, and spin gold as a scholarship which is very cute. The wicked uncle never thought he’d be an uncle when he joined this Wicked Society but now begrudgingly has to do something wicked. And the crown prince is in on it and really wants to go have adventures. But Mendenbar decides to send him off to the dwarf’s school, which counts as something wicked because the prince emphatically does not want to go to school. It’s things like that where the fairy tale gets upended, but it also serves the plot very nicely.

The book is clearly written for children though. Of course the villains are the same and of course they’re after the King of the Dragons again. The aspect that most bothered me though was Mendenbar and Cimorene getting married after absolutely no romantic interactions. The most intimate is Cimorene putting her hand on Mendenbar’s shoulder. Which is all fine, I get that kids aren’t looking for a huge relationship leading up to a marriage, but it goes against the first book. The first book really deconstructed the fairy tale trope of people getting married without knowing each other, and here we are falling into it!

Overall though, the book is good. It expands on the world from the first one and the change in perspective is a really nice way to do that. We are now halfway through the Enchanted Forest chronicles and I am excited to hear the rest of it!

This Is Beautiful: The Upper Peninsula of Michigan

 I will eventually write a full post on this, but my partner and I recently spent almost a week in the upper peninsula (UP) of Michigan. It's where my partner is from, his parents are still up there and a few friends as well. What was really beautiful though were the hikes outside. There are wildflowers everywhere, of all different colors! And there's gorgeous bodies of water, the Canadian mountains are in view, all that stuff. We only went on a couple hikes, but both of them were super pretty and very close to town. 

I'll be writing more later, but as a quick snapshot, the UP was so pretty!

“whiskey words & a shovel I” by r.h. Sin

This is another book that my housemate left when they moved out. It’s a small book of poetry about the author getting out of an abusive relationship and finding a new one. It’s really a book of grief poetry, you know the type that is just raw feelings on the page and not much else. I know when I’m going through grief it’s usually something that I need to read just to feel validated and seen, but I’m thankfully not in that state right now.

Other than that, I don’t really have many thoughts on it. Not much beyond that besides there’s also the occasional poem about sex or whatever. I also expected the book to be more linear, more of a one-to-one relationship with the author’s experiences. But that’s the way feelings work also, they go round and round.

I don’t have any real desire to pick up the second one of these, the author didn’t really write for me in my current emotional state. Maybe if I ever need to though, I’ll be able to pick it up again and more fully experience the intent of the work.

This Is Beautiful: Penny Larceny

 Recently a game team that I very much enjoy dropped their latest creation: "Penny Larceny: Gig Economy Supervillain" and I have to say that I am enjoying it so much! (You can check out the game on Steam or itch, here's the Steam link.) The characters are hilarious, the gameplay is engaging, and just social commentary all over the place! I feel like I need a notepad to keep track of the routes that I have played so far, because there is just so much content this game should be about 5x the price. Have a very satisfied feeling that this is going to be what I am focusing on until I head back into work next week!

“Me Talk Pretty One Day” by David Sedaris

My housemate left this behind when they moved out and I’ve never read any Sedaris so I figured I should check it out. It’s a book of essays, of course, and it spans throughout Sedaris’ lifetime but a lot of the later ones talk about him living in France with his boyfriend.

I thought it was entertaining, the essays are humorous enough. After awhile the self-deprecation gets to be a bit much though. Like this is all being written by some white guy, yes I know that you’re a piece of shit.

What I didn’t fully realize is that the book was published in 2000. That’s over 20 years ago now! I only bothered to check because there is an essay complaining about the existence of computers and e-mail while Sedaris wants to take his typewriter with him everywhere. You never see a typewriter anymore!

I doubt that I’ll actively seek out other books by Sedaris, but this was a good enough experience. It is incredible that Sedaris has been writing for so long and I guess in that sense it’s a neat little slice of history.

This Is Beautiful: Lupin

 While I've been at home recovering, I've been binging a few shows. The first one I tackled was "Lupin" on Netflix. I've been meaning to watch it for a while, I heard it was amazing back in 2021 but I just didn't have the time. It is just as good as everyone said it was!

The best episodes are ones where they show the heist or the trick or whatever, get you invested in it, and then go back and show how he pulls it off or does the trick or whatever. The writing and filming is amazing, I totally bought it every time even though after a few I could see it coming. And the lead, Omar Sy, is absolutely incredible. Watching a huge Black man pull the wool over everyone's eyes is just so fun anyways.

Just an incredible show, I'm so excited for it to come back with more episodes in the fall.

“Dealing with Dragons” by Patricia Wrede

This is the first book of the Enchanted Forest chronicles, and a favorite of my partner’s when he was growing up. He started reading the books to me while I was recovering from surgery, it’s really cute. The fun side effect of this is that I have no idea how to spell the characters’ names, so go easy on me if I make a mistake while Googling.

The book follows the Princess Cimerone who gets tired of her life as an ordinary princess. She tries to learn fencing and then magic and then Latin and every time is told that this just isn’t how a princess should behave. Enough is enough though when her family tries to marry her off to some prince, she decides to take the advice of a talking frog she met and runs off. She finds a cave full of dragons, and volunteers to become a dragon’s princess.

The dragon who takes her in is Kazul, a kind dragon who likes her cooking and has her sort her vast treasure rooms. While working for Kazul, Cimerone meets a number of fascinating characters such as a witch, some wizards, and other princesses who are also working for dragons. Of course, there’s a bunch of knights who come and try to rescue her, she has to shoo them away since she does not want to be rescued.

Eventually it is revealed that the wizards are up to no good. Cimerone meets a wizard collecting dragonsbane, a plant that is poisonous to dragons. Not long after, the king of the dragons dies and the trials to pick a successor go underway. Cimerone needs the help of her friends to foil their plot and ensure that the dragon working with the wizards isn’t unfairly crowned king.

This is an extremely fun book for a fan of fantasy and fairy tales! It is clearly written for a young audience, but Cimerone is such a fun and feisty protagonist you can’t help but love following her around. There are plenty of cute references to other stories too, such as how there’s a princes school that makes mention to a student named Art who pulls a sword out of a stone. And all of the princesses are said to be airheads who are happy to be kidnapped by giants and dragons to only get rescued by their future husbands. Making these allusions and purposefully taking tropes to ridiculous conclusions only to turn them on their head is what makes the book so fun, even for older readers.

Of course I think there are also a few plot holes as a result as well. And a few things that are a little too convenient for the sake of the plot. My only major gripe is that at the end the dragon colluding with the wizards is turned into a toad. Not by a wizard or anything, it’s just because he stopped acting dragon-like. Apparently all of the dragons have this emergency biological switch where they turn into toads and it only comes up at the very end of the story? It’s a little much for me to take.

All that aside, I’m excited for the rest of the series if it continues this interesting dialogue with existing folktales and fairy tales. It’s a cute way to pass the time while recovering.

This Is Beautiful: Top Surgery

 I'll probably write a longer thing on this eventually, but I'm really excited to say that I got top surgery back on the 21st! I'm still recovering but finally feeling better after the procedure. For about a week after surgery, you get 2 drains, one on either side of your chest. They feel horrible and itchy, plus you have to clean out all of the blood and pus multiple times a day. I finally had those taken out and everything felt soooo much better. Still in a compression vest and can't drive or lift anything, but it's feeling less like I'm home sick and more like I'm taking a break from work. Not that it ever was horrible, I was pretty much on Tylenol since the surgery and have pretty good arm mobility. 

I am still having some reservations about my body image with this, I feel like my stomach has swelled up and I look huge, but I'm pretty thrilled with my chest specifically. I'm excited for it to heal up and see how this develops!