7ToF: Socks, Wine, and Books. Sounds like a self-care basket.

1. I will not be posting next week because I'm off to visit one of my cousins in Northern California. I love Northern California and haven't been there for at least a dozen years, so I'm really looking forward to seeing Anne and spending some time in their area.

2. How do I know I'm old? I wear compression socks on the plane. I've just discovered this in the past year. Since my mid-forties, every time I fly my ankles swell up like grapefruit. On our 11 hour flight to Cambodia, by the time we arrived my ankles were so swollen I was in pain. Enter compression socks. I can't tell you how much I love them, and thank goodness they make cute ones now. (Google "cute compression socks" for proof. Shout-out to Vim&Vigr, which is a Montana company that makes the best.)

3. I've never been much of a wine drinker. I've tasted red wines that are OK, but I've never found a white wine that didn't taste thin and astringent to me. And besides, I'm more likely to get a headache after drinking wine than any other trigger I know. I can enjoy wine if you dump a bunch of fruit juice or sugar in it (sangria and wine coolers, yum), but that doesn't solve the headache problem. And besides, everybody knows that people with real taste in wine disdain sweet wine. 

4. But I've frequently found myself drinking wine because it was the thing to do. Then several months ago I read this article from the New Yorker: How Science Saved Me From Pretending to Love Wine and finally I have just started saying, "No, thanks, I don't drink wine." Apparently, some people are genetically incapable of appreciating wine, and I'm pretty sure I'm one of them. That's not going to stop me from accepting a glass when it would be rude to refuse, but I'm relieved to have a "legitimate" reason to admit I don't like wine, rather than feeling like an unsophisticated slob because I'd rather have a microbrew.

(although I probably am an unsophisticated slob, but that's beside the point.)(isn't it?)

5. When I was about ten, my great-grandmother gave my sisters and me each five dollars for Christmas. We were at my grandmother's house, which was three blocks from a local shopping center. So we walked down and I spent way too much time browsing in the bookshop and came out with two books. I still have one of them, The Egypt Game by Zilpha Keatley Snyder, but the other, The House with a Clock in its Walls by John Bellairs, is long gone. #sadpanda because gone are the days (cue violin music) when you could get two new hardcover books for less than $5 and still have money left over to get candy at the dime store.

6. A couple of weeks ago, I saw the trailer for the movie they are making from The House with a Clock in its Walls. So I decided I should re-read it. It's a bit slow and clunky by current standards, and Lewis, the 10-year-old main character, is the most reluctant hero I can imagine. But he finds his courage in the end. There are some really creepy bits that I'm sure they will make the most of in the movie. Harry Potter (which you know I love) had some tense, scary moments, but it was never creepy. This is (occasionally) creepy.

Given my evangelical upbringing, I can't imagine at age 10 that I was OK with some of the themes in this book (necromancy, black magic, a haunted house)--but honestly I can't remember my original impressions. I guess the fact that I didn't keep it says volumes. It also has themes like courage, belonging, bullying, being true to yourself, and the consequences of not telling the truth, so really it's a pretty straightforward kid's book minus the creepy bits. Recommended if your kids don't scare easily. Or maybe grandkids, given my audience. :-) It has the potential to be a really great movie, I hope they do a good job with it. 

7. You know what I've decided I need? I need for people to quit writing books. And I need publishers to quit publishing. So I can freaking catch up. I've got TOO MANY books in my TBR pile (which is both a literal bunch of books on my shelves and a list that exists on my phone-- probably more than 100 books combined)(and that's after culling the books I decided I don't really want to read). I can only manage about one book a week, maybe more if I'm on vacation. (As I will be next week!) #readerfrustrations #problemsthatarentreallyproblems

and that's it for me. Have a great weekend, and a fabulous week. When I get back, I'm going to get serious about decluttering, so if you have any tips or hints, let me know.