Making time to read...

How do you make time to read?! I need to figure that out...

I'm not sure the last time I picked up a book I wanted to read. I've read lots and lots and lots of How Do Dinosaurs Say I Love You, Elephant, I'm Gonna Like Me (yes, I know she's too young, but she loves it,so I figured it wasn't going to hurt anything), and Sometimes I Like to Curl Up in a Ball in the past couple of weeks, but not a lot of adult books. I've had a ton of reading to do for work, but it's not going on here...

For a while I was going to bed half an hour early so that I could read...this worked, kind of...either I'd read for half an hour, I'd fall asleep (or put my book down early) or I'd stay up WAY TOO LATE. This week if I went to bed half an hour early, I can guarantee that I'd be sound asleep before I even opened the book (I might just do that tonight, because, hey, sleep is good...

Strategies for getting more reading time in anyone?!?!

It was a gift...really...

Teaser Tuesdays is a weekly bookish meme, hosted by MizB of Should Be Reading. Anyone can play along! Just do the following:

• Grab your current read
• Open to a random page
• Share two (2) "teaser" sentences from somewhere on that page
• BE CAREFUL NOT TO INCLUDE SPOILERS! (make sure that what you share doesn’t give too much away! You don’t want to ruin the book for others!)
• Share the title & author, too, so that other TT participants can add the book to their TBR Lists if they like your teasers!

Apparently this book changed the lives of my brother-in-law and my sister-in-law. So my mother-in-law thought I might be interested in it...umm...anyway, when (IF) I finally get through this, we can talk about that more....

When you are feeling good feelings, it is communication back from the Universe saying, "You are thinking good thoughts." Likewise, when you are feeling bad, you are receiving communication back form the Universe saying, "You are thinking bad thoughts."

The Secret, Rhonda Byrne, page 33

PLEASE LEAVE A COMMENT with either the link to your own Teaser Tuesdays post, or share your 2 ‘teasers’ in a comment here (if you don’t have a blog). Thanks!

The Amazing Mackerel Pudding Plan

I know, I know, I'm posting this a day late. But. September was nuts.

Crazy.

So glad it's gone.

And reading, ha! That's a pastime for those who are retired, independently wealthy, or who aren't trying to juggle a toddler with a new daycare and essentially a new job and, because of a temporary change at their spouse's workplace, all of the meals and grocery shopping and most of the housework life.

I seriously went to bed last night a bit disappointed with myself. I thought I'd failed September.

I have about three books in progress. I've been writing tons. I've been reading tons, actually, but for the purposes of this challenge I had to finish a book. And magazines, they don't count. And browsing through cookbooks, that doesn't count. And reading about 50 million blogs a day, that also doesn't count (although on that note, I have culled a number of blogs from my feed. This morning there were only 96 posts for me to read. I skipped most of them. It makes me sad.) And reading articles and papers for work, well, that doesn't count either.

So sad. I only survived three months of my challenge.

But then I remembered this AWESOME birthday gift from my brother-in-law.


It's not literature. It's not a biography. It's not thoughtful or instructional. It might qualify as thought provoking.

But it made me laugh. And cringe. And possibly throw up a little in my mouth.

And, best of all, IT'S A BOOK!

The premise: A woman found her grandmother's (she assumes, since no one will own up to actually being the original owners) set of Weight Watchers recipes from the 70s. She keeps them, because, wow, easy laughs! And the book is great. It pokes fun at the actual recipes. It pokes fun at the names of the recipes. It pokes fun at the staging of the food.

I loved it! I don't know which recipe was my favourite, but this book had me cracking up. Even Alex read a good chunk of it.

What I do know now though, is WHY people lost weight (and probably lots of it) on Weight Watchers in the 70s - the food was just too gross to eat. And if they did eat it, it probably made them have tummy aches, so they didn't eat much.

I'm glad Weight Watchers uses a healthier model for weight loss these days!

I just googled the book and you can see some of the cards and commentary here.

EDIT: Also check out this page - it's got Weight Watchers information from the 1970s...scary stuff!