“Everything is going great for me right now. My hair is turning curly, I have a loose tooth, and I brushed my teeth with my timer this morning.”

Right on, sweetie.

Like all good things that come to an end, it left me feeling a bit deflated. Now what? I often feel that way when I finish a good book, movie, or TV series. The characters have become my friends and I just don’t want to say goodbye. My sadness at the end of Mockingjay was a little different though.

The three book jackets tell a vivid story. Book one shows the Mockingjay small, almost timid, with its head down, clutching the arrow as though picking it up for the first time. Book two shows the bird as robust, surrounded by the color of flame, ready to take on the world. The cover of book three is pale blue and shows the Mockingjay with its wings spread out, surrounded by light. The book jacket radiates hope and rebirth. Then you open the first page.

Keep reading at your own risk. Highly opinionated commentary and spoilers abound.

With The Hunger Games and Catching Fire, I was consumed by them, recommending them universally to nearly everyone I knew. Do you like excellent prose? Read these books! Suspense? Depth of character? Adventure with a moral message and great social commentary? READ THESE BOOKS!!

With this book I’m sort of rethinking my universal recommendation. Do you like a well-crafted but mostly bleak and hopeless message book about how war destroys everything? This bad boy’s for you!

The message is sound. War is abominable. It kills people and breaks and destroys those who are left behind. These are truths. After what Katniss has been through, it’s likely she would be left drooling in the corner of a psych ward while nearly everyone she’s ever loved either dies gruesomely or abandons her. Real, or not real? Real.

Enjoyable or not enjoyable to read? I’m leaning towards not enjoyable. It’s a must read and a compelling read but rather than leaving you cheering and begging for more, it will likely leave you saying, “Hmmmm. War is bad. I need some time to process.” And you will process. It’s not a book that will easily leave your mind. The feeling of this book reminds me of the feeling I get when I read books by one of my favorite authors, Thomas Hardy.

The first two books were built on a solid foundation of Plot, Character and Message with excellent writing to pull us into a vivid and imaginative world.

Book three seems to have a hierarchy of MESSAGE, then plot, with a smidge of character sprinkled in. Where I can name several “moments” from each of the first two books, moments that were poignant and beautiful and left me cheering, even in the deepest sadness, I had a hard time coming up with more than one in Mockingjay.

The first two books had a building sense of hope, rebellion, and impending butt-kicking triumph. The third one slaps the first two down. There is no winner in war. There is no triumphant rebellion. All is lost.

It got me thinking about the Cuban revolution, young people fighting for a brighter future, only to find that their new leader is Fidel Castro with all the implications we now know that brings.

There’s a glimmer of hope at the end of the book but it’s just that, a glimmer, with the overshadowing message that at any moment it could be shattered again. No one is safe because at their core, people cannot be trusted to be good.

And the last several pages, which should be the payoff for reading 3 intense novels, are written like a laundry list.

-We are broken.
-Peeta and I found love. Remember that fantastic moment that was described in such lush detail in book 2 around page 351? Yeah. That happened again.
-Our lives still suck.
-Gale, who we’ve all cared deeply about, leaves with no fanfare or even so much as a spot of dialogue but it’s probably for the best.
-Greasy Sae, a semi-inconsequential supporting character, remains with me and makes me soup because my mom is AWOL helping other people.
-Haymitch. Drunk.
-Haymitch. Gone.
-Life goes on but what’s the point?

Now I like to give truly gifted writers the benefit of the doubt. Katniss is the narrator. Maybe Suzanne Collins shuts off her lush evocative descriptive flair at the close of the book to show that Katniss has shut off, that she has nothing left to give to the narrative. I want to believe that it is a conscious choice to show that Katniss’s voice has become sparse, hopeless and unemotional, that even when talking about the small bits of healing she’s experienced, she can’t bear to talk about them in a compelling way because she’s just not compelled by anything left in this world.

But there’s part of me that thinks it was unintentional, like Collins gets her message across about war and devastation and then quickly ties up the loose ends in the lives of the characters we’ve come to adore throughout these 3 novels.

If her writing truly becomes so sparse and perfunctory at the end of the book to symbolize Katniss’s broken soul, then it should have gone that route many other times throughout the series, especially in book 3. Katniss spends much of book 3 feeling broken, helpless and not acting because she just doesn’t have it in her to go on.

Reading a book from the perspective of a broken hero is exhausting. It doesn’t help that she has little real meaningful interaction with other people. Maybe she can’t. Maybe war really kills all relationships. In the first 2 books it felt like it made them stronger, made reunions sweeter. Book 3 says, “Nope.”

I’m currently working on a novel. It’s nothing deep or world-changing. It’s fun to write and hopefully fun to read. I read Collins’s work with a student’s eye, trying to figure out how she does what she does so masterfully. I would be unbelievably grateful if I had her talent for suspense, character development and narrative brilliance. Even on the third book, I found it hard to analyze her writing because I was so absorbed in it most of the time.

Some good moments were Katniss’s speech into the camera after the hospital attack and I absolutely love the last sentence before the epilogue. It is beautiful. I wish it were enough for me.

One friend asked me what I would change and I keep asking myself that same question. Would I wanted it to end in flowers and rainbows and Katniss standing in Peeta’s embrace atop a parade float? No. Resoundingly no. I think the characters needed to suffer real consequences for what they’d been through. However, I feel like the first two books set you up for one thing in tone, character and momentum and the third book pulls the rug out from under you.

I can’t say I didn’t like Mockingjay but I can’t say that I enjoyed it either. Suzanne Collins is a gifted writer and she kept me glued to the pages of her novel from beginning to end. She didn’t take the easy, appeal-to-the-masses cop-out and tie everything up in a nice neat package. However I think she chose message over character and that’s a bit disappointing.

Now discuss. I’d love someone to prove me wrong, make me want to re-read it to find what I missed the first time.

But today is a new day. I was nicer to the kids. The fridge situation got all sorted out and the new one is lovely and spacious and if we were gonna cash in our life savings for a fridge, then I’m glad it was this one.

Laylee’s hearing aids are still under warranty and will be replaced by the manufacturer. I told her that they “gave us one more chance.”

Yesterday was bad. Today was better. Tomorrow my in-laws are coming and we’re gonna have all kinds of fun.

The chickens are angry.

When I fed them but did not let them out to roam, they vocalized their displeasure. I have a feeling they will lay non-free-range eggs tonight in retaliation. These eggs of rage should be avoided.

I wonder if they know that if they combined forces against me, they could do significant damage with their sharp beaks and talons. I don’t think they know. I escaped the property unharmed.

[Read more at Parenting.com]

If they’ve ended hunger, then why are my kids still begging for lunch and should I still donate to the food bank this year?

So now Nintendo has asked me to be a Brand Ambassador. I’m not totally sure what it means but I do keep getting free stuff, which is nice and they have not yet set fire to my house so I think both of those things must be part of the agreement. As far as I can tell, we come in peace and bearing gifts.

Last weekend, they sponsored a little get-together at my house with some friends. We had a game and movie night with food and games provided by Nintendo. They also sent along a sweet little flip video camera to capture the fun and we did have a great time.

However, I’ll warn you that as I tried to edit this little baby together, I discovered that there’s not much in the world quite as boring as watching video of other people playing video games and watching movies. There is a really cute shot of Wanda in the middle of it all which I think makes it worth watching.

We downloaded Haunted Mansion Party with the free points cards they sent us, kind of a board game with interactive Wii-play arcade-type games along the way, and ended up playing some old favorites, Big Brain Academy and Dr. Mario as well.

Then keeping with the Dr. theme, we streamed Dr. Horrible with our Netflix disc. I think everyone enjoyed themselves. We’d do it again for sure.

Nintendo provided some Nintendo Points Cards to give out to our friends and since I consider you all friends, I’m extending the party and I’ll send cards to a few of you if you’d like. Just leave a comment listing your favorite game for the Wii and I’ll draw 3 winners to receive a couple thousand Nintendo Points each so you can download fun software for your Wii or DS.

The timing was a little funny to be throwing a party celebrating streaming Netflix because we’ve had some issues with it lately. We’d been really enjoying it until a couple of weeks ago. There are a lot of great movies and TV series available and it’s nice to have them on demand.

But two weeks ago, we left Magoo inside playing Lego Batman while Dan put together the play set in the back yard and he got into some trouble with the Netflix. He knows he’s not allowed to use it without me or Dan there but like most 5 year-olds, he thinks he’s smarter than us and he “totally knows what movies are for kids.”

Long story short, he ended up watching some really offensive content. It was animated so he thought it was okay but it was WAY R-rated and honestly I don’t know any adults who would not have been offended by it. It was awful. Luckily Netflix keeps track of what’s been watched so we could go back and see what he’d seen and address it, but it was a wakeup call.

Nintendo products tend to be so family-friendly, a big part of the reason I chose the Wii and the DS over other gaming systems when I had money to spend. However, the Netflix disc does open up a whole new can of worms. We now have the whole Wii on lockdown so I have to enter a passcode for the kids to use any game or the Netflix disc. I’ve also set our Netflix rating max to PG in case I leave it unlocked someday.

So, be wise. Use it for the good but protect your family from the bad.

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So I’m going to start sharing my re-rememberings with you in little mini-posts called Daring Dos, things I dare you (and myself) to do or at least to keep in mind as you go about your day.

Today – I want to remind you that tomorrow starts tonight. If you want to have a great day tomorrow, go to bed at a decent time tonight. You’ll be happier, more patient, more able to handle your life. You can’t wake up early if you don’t go to bed early, not and maintain peak sanity throughout the day.

Tomorrow starts tonight. Go to bed early!

As I reach channel 9 late at night, I am often sucked in to the droning convention center hubbub that is Antiques Roadshow. I’m drawn in by the people and their stories.

“This was my great grand-daddy’s Civil War drum.”

“My mammy made this quilt for me out of shards of canvas that she says were ripped up pieces of a Picasso painting.”

“Sometimes I just go online and buy ornamental snuff boxes and hope they’re worth something someday. Of course I’d never sell any of them but I dressed up in my finest jeans to come down to this sound stage and find out what they’re worth for no apparent reason whatsoever but it sure is fun to be on the TEE-vee.”

There’s always the bustle of people wandering around in the background, shuffling in their jeans. Everyone wears jeans but the experts. They are the only ones allowed to wear professional attire.

Watching tonight, I couldn’t help but wonder how awesome it would be if it were suddenly exposed that Antiques Road Show was entirely staged, like The Bachelor. They’re all actors. None of the artifacts are real. It really is just a bunch of random junk from garage sales that the producers dig up, bring into the event hall and assign to the various actors.

The more personal/incredible/inane the story, the more money the actor gets paid to tell it. If they let the hair and makeup people give them an eighties perm, they earn an extra $200.

I would love to be an extra on Antiques Roadshow. You wouldn’t get real face time in the two-shot in front of the camera, with the deer-in-the-headlights look of confusion mixed with anticipation, but you could stand in line behind them and try to get in the shot, staring creepily off into the distance, clutching your circa 1860 Pez Dispenser.

No, I don’t think it’s a staged hoax. At least I’m not willing to investigate it at this time. I don’t think the world’s ready for the truth.

It’s summer and it’s swimsuit season and I am sick of hearing myself talk smack about my own beautiful body every time I slip on that little black swimming suit. Sick of it. I’m sick of other people complaining about their bodies. I’m sick of hearing everyone enumerate all their many flaws.

I’m raising daughters and I want them to love their bodies. I get angry at the way media portrays physical “perfection” and insinuates that anything less than a photo-shopped super babe is unacceptable.

For almost 30 years, I’ve been complaining about my body’s flaws and it needs to stop if I want my girls to have a fighting chance at loving their own bodies. I frequently look back at old pictures of myself 2, 5, 10 years ago and think how great I looked and then remember that at the time I thought I was a tub of lard.

Yesterday Laylee was in a bathing suit and she said, “I like my body. I like being skinny.”

I looked her in the eyes and said, “I’m so glad. I love my body too. All the little wrinkles and parts show the journey I’ve been on in my life. I think my body is beautiful.” She seemed surprised because I’ve so often talked about the weight I want to lose and the improvements I want to make.

“Really?” she asked.

“Yeah. Really. I’m grateful for this body.”

She told me she loved my body too and I decided that if I really want her and Wanda to grow up loving who they are, then I’ve got to stop putting myself down and start trying to really feel the love for myself and be confident.

Please commit with me this summer to not flinch, cringe, make faces or put down your body verbally when wearing a swimsuit. Wear it with pride. Have fun in the water with your kids. Remember that the people who you have fun with are not the ones constantly ripping on themselves. The obviously fat people are the ones constantly tugging and covering up and talking about how fat they are. Don’t be that person. Get your confidence on.

Leave a comment if you’re ready to join me in the swimsuit revolution.