Did you hear about the new study that explains how our brain cells shrink when we sleep? Once the cells are all shriveled, more fluid squeezes in around the brain raisins and washes all the toxins away. In other words, sleep is important because your brain needs a bath.

(Okay, so the study didn’t use those exact words…)

I believe this explains why we have the mushy, foggy feeling when we wake up from a deep sleep: our brains are filled with water and half drowned. It takes a little for the brain to drip dry and suit up for the day.

Ever since hearing about this study, I’ve felt virtuous about my typical morning wooze because maybe I can’t walk straight but hey, at least my brain is clean.

I’ve been kind of going running in the mornings. I say “kind of” because it’s more of a weak trot than a fluid run, I don’t go every day, and I’m not training for a marathon or increasing my distance or doing anything athletic-like. Mostly I try to stay vertical and not get mauled by dogs.

(Seriously, the dogs are getting to be a bit of an issue. Up the dirt road, there’s a new-ish family with three beautiful, young dogs and no fence. The dogs are friendly, I’m pretty sure, but they swarm, charge, and bark with alarming vigor. Yelling at them to go home is useless. I’ve taken to chucking pebbles at them, but I’m afraid that might anger them. This morning the pre-teen boy was outside when the dogs charged. He called them back. I tried to run by. They charged again. So I stopped, hands on hips, and cheerfully said, “I’ll wait till you’re holding them,” and then stood there while he tried to corral them. What’s the best course of action in this situation? Talk to the family? Carry pepper spray? Scream bloody murder when they swarm me at six in the morning? It’s putting a real damper on my  runs, which are already  hard enough without adding a herd of dogs to the mix.)

Anyway, to me running feels like I’m giving my entire body—the inside of it, that is—a bath. Every bit of my insides gets oxygenated.  The blood is pumping, the heart is pounding, the lungs are doing their inflate/deflate routine triple time and it’s good. Of course, I really have no idea what’s going on inside my body because I’m no biologist, but that’s what I imagine is happening. (I also told my husband that if I don’t come back some morning, it’s because I either had a heart attack or the dogs won, so come scoop me off the gravel, please.)

I have not read a novel, cover-to-cover, in what feels like months. I start books. I tediously pick my way through non-fiction. I read articles and blogs. I read children’s lit and young adult fiction to the kids (and husband). I read emails and junk mail and magazines.

I miss immersing myself in a good book. A really good book. A book I can’t put down. A book that makes me lose sleep. Sinking into a book is a healthy form of escapism, I think. Reading requires a focus that allows me to sink down, down, down into something. I spend so much of my day multitasking and being distracted—partly out of necessity and partly out of habit—that a prolonged focus is more than I want to give. Yet putting everything else aside and plunging into a story is cleansing and rejuvenating, kind of like a deep sleep or a good workout.

In a way, I’m scared of a good book. It will derail me, eat up my time, force me to give up an element of control, and make me live another experience that may feel uncomfortable. And I’m scared of a book not being good enough. The book I read has to be perfect. I don’t want to read something that’s badly written, disappointing, or inane.

So I don’t read books. I have become a spoiled, scaredypants, finicky, lazy reader. This embarrasses me. I don’t want to be this way and so … I’m going to change it. I am going to make myself read one book—a fun book—each month. (Dang, I didn’t know I was going to do that until I wrote it. Shoot. Does that mean I actually have to do this now?)

Help a girlfriend out, will you? Pretty please tell me your true love reads?

My requirements are as follows: pleasurable, interesting, fast-paced (more or less), well-written, no dying children, nothing scary that will give me nightmares, and nothing sad that will depress me. To give you a better idea of which ones have passed muster, here are a few of my faves (* = top picks) (out of sheer laziness, no authors and no links—sorry):

Angela’s Ashes
The Bean Trees
Life of Pi*
Water For Elephants*
To Kill a Mockingbird*
Tiger Mother
Tuesdays With Morie
Poisonwood Bible*
Does This Church Make Me Look Fat?
The Kitchen God’s Wife*
The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime
The Da Vinci Code
The Brothers K*
A Severe Mercy

And some young adult that I’m crazy about: Wonder*, Okay For Now*****, A Long Walk To Water, Old Yeller, and Where the Lilies Bloom. (Though this isn’t a genre that I generally prefer to read on my own time.)

Hit me up, people. I’m gonna crack me some spines.

This same time, years previous: happy weekending, the family reunion of 2012, “That’s the story of mom and us”, and warts and all.

I’m grumpy. Everything that everyone does is irritating. I want to take issue. I want to pick bones. I want to tell people how wrong they are. I want to fight.

The other evening my husband said, “What is going on. You’ve been mean to me ever since I got home.” Which was interesting because I thought I was being perfectly decent and civilized.

Though it was true that earlier in the day, I had a number of hollering fits at the kids, the kind where a simple, “No you may not slam the door on your brother’s foot,” came out more like a crazy woman-turned-wolf shriek. My sore throat indicated that perhaps I was going a smidge overboard.

So I checked the calendar. Sure enough, it was fourteen days until my period was due. Time to stock up on throat lozenges.

Is it socially acceptable to talk about premenstrual syndrome on the Internets? Is it TMI? Is it only something that we’re allowed to talk about in a coy, flippant, who-gives-a-damn and this-sure-sucks way? Is the truth like body odor: we all have it, we all cover it up, and we all don’t talk about it because it’s just not … nice?

When Rachel Held Evans came to town, my mom and I went to hear her speak. There was a slide show all set up and the cover photo was of Rachel sitting in a tent in her front yard. The title said something like: A year of Biblical Womanhood, or why I lived in a tent when I had my period.

Mom: “Do people talk about their periods like that?”

Me: “Well, if they don’t, they should. It’s perfectly normal.”

Mom: “Do you talk about it on your blog?”

Me: “I’ve mentioned it in passing, but, um, no. I guess I haven’t really talked about it.”

Which is kind of crazy considering it’s such a part of my life. It (the PMS, not the period) goes like this: exactly (to the day!) fourteen days before my period is due, I start yelling. Seriously, it’s just like that. Partway through the day, it dawns on me that I’ve been yelling an awful lot and, as I described in the beginning of this post, I check the calendar and bingo, whaddaya know, my period is two weeks out. The cloud has fallen. I am now in the throes of PMS.

And to think I used to believe that PMS was an annoying woman, pity-me-I-bleeeeeed cop out.

Ha.

Hahahahahahaha.

Thankfully, the worst part only lasts several days. Then either it lessens or I adapt, I’m not sure which. There’s a name for these two-weeks-of-PMS condition (though I can’t remember what it is). Some women actually take an antidepressant for it. I haven’t, not because I’m opposed to meds, but because I feel like my version is mostly manageable. Knowing there’s a name for erratic behavior is relief in itself. Also, recognizing the traceable patterns helps me prepare and brace myself for the onslaught. I slow down and breathe deep. I try to be sensitive to my tone of voice. I watch my tongue. I only make positive comments on other blogs. I’m careful about what I write about on my blog.

So what do you think? Is PMS a socially unacceptable topic? Would you write about it on your blog? What’s your experience with it?

(Note: if you’re rolling your eyes and scoffing at the screen right now, you better check the calendar. I bet your period’s coming.)

This same time, years previous: so far today, black bean and sweet potato chili, rhubarb cream pie, naked pita chips, and going to work.

Now that we have two sheep—and a few more animal-related ideas brewing—we decided it’s high time we get serious about putting in some fence.

We tend to do things backwards around here. It’s our way. We fixed up our first house before we owned it. We put a bid on another house before I saw it. We started applying for a year abroad without talking to each other about it first. (In the last case, “we” means “I.”) So it makes perfect sense that we got sheep before we had a place to put them.

There’s actually a good reason for doing things this way. See, I can talk to my husband about new project ideas until I’m blue in the face, but nothing rarely happens until the situation reaches crisis levels. I figured getting the sheep before the fence was an appropriate lighting-a-fire-under-his-butt action. However, when I started talking about a milk cow, my son said, “Mom, that’s a blowtorch, not a fire,” so I backed down. (For now.)

Because my daughter is aware that it’s her interests that are the main impetus for this fence project, she is over-the-top excited. Anything she can do to hurry the fence into being, she does. The other children tend to work for a bit and then fade off our radar, but this girl plugs away the entire time. (Confession: the fading away characteristic comes from me. My daughter’s stick-with-it, not-afraid-of-hard-work characteristic comes from my husband. The two of them love working together.)

Aside: It used to be that a project like this meant that I was stuck inside to care for four children while my husband did the work by his lonesome. Now it means that he is outside bossing and directing the children while I do my stuff, which in Saturday’s case involved hosting the Greats, cooking, and taking pictures. I love, love, love this stage of the parenting game. It’s so much more profitable and entertaining than sitting slumped on the couch, surrounded by sippy cups, board books, and drooling, fat-cheeked tots while feeling like I’m going to crawl out of my skin if I don’t get out of the house this minute.

A word about the boots. We got her these cowboy boots as a leaving-Guatemala present. She didn’t wear them much in the beginning, but now she wears them every day, all day. From what I’ve heard, once a person learns to appreciate cowboy boots, it’s all they’ll wear for the rest of their life. Is this true? And where do I go to buy cowboy boots? (“Guatemala” is not a viable answer.)

I think they got 19 posts in on Saturday. Unlike cattle ranchers and big-time farmers, we have no equipment save an iron bar, a post-hole digger (the man-powered kind), shovels, and muscles.

It’s slow going, but that’s okay. The joy is in the toil. Right, honey? 

This same time, years previously: the quotidian (5.6.13), rhubarb smothered chicken and chicken with mushrooms, I have nothing to say, the bike question revisited, and baked macaroni and cheese.