Dark Places - Gillian Flynn

I really liked Gone Girl, it was one of those books I just flew through, enjoying all the twists and turns along the way.  So when I came across Dark Places I was eager to read another Gillian Flynn novel.  Unfortunately it didn't quite hit the mark for me.  I found all the chopping and changing a bit annoying.  Possibly I just wasn't in the right frame of mind for having to remember what happened in the chapter before last - life was particularly busy when I was reading it so my attention span probably wasn't what it could have been.  Ultimately I finished it without the sense of satisfaction I had while turning the last page of Gone Girl.  Don't you hate when you're all psyched up to love a book but it just doesn't deliver.

 

Live and let live

Imagine knowing with absolute clarity at a very early age who you are.  Imagine standing up for who you are despite other people telling you not to.  Imagine having a family who supports your choices. 

How someone can ask a L G B T or Q person when they "decided to be that way" baffles me.  No one ever asks a straight person when they decided to be that way.  It's as ridiculous as asking me when I decided to have green eyes and brown hair.  I didn't decide, its just the way I am and it is a tiny part of who I am, it doesn't define me.

I read an article recently which said that in terms of human genome coding, we are 98% the same.  If we are all so very similar, then why do some people insist on focusing on the 2% that differentiates us? 

 

Isolation

I'm generally a get on with it type of person.  When life gets hard or busy I just put my head down and power through.  It's a defense mechanism I suppose, my way of coping when I don't want to have to deal with emotions because if you are busy doing then you don't have time to stop and feel.  This week I've been having a bad week.  A sad week.  A week where it all seems too much to power through, where I don't have the inner resources to just keep going and get on with things. 

Nothing in particular caused it, probably more likely to be a build up of stress that needs to be vented somehow.  Being in a really bad mood is usually my go to method of venting, or crying in the shower when time permits.  I think what's getting me down is the isolation.  It's bloody lonely living on the other side of the world from everyone you know and love.  I'm still struggling to make real connections here.  I have lots of acquaintances, even one budding friendship but this week I feel very alone.  There hasn't been much in the way of communication at home this week - from both sides, I haven't exactly been talkative, it's hard to make conversation when you are just about holding it together, so that has been adding to the sense of isolation and having no-one to talk to.  

There is a line in the film Brooklyn about homesickness being just like any other form of sickness.  You have it for a while and then it moves on to someone else.  This week everything just felt so hard, I feel so far away from everything and everyone.  I'm sure it will pass but right now, I feel like I could leave in the morning without a backward glance.  I don't feel connected to this place.  I don't know that I ever will.   

Life in a small town

There are pluses and minus when it comes to living in a small town.  It only takes me 5 minutes to drive home from work and traffic is practically unheard of but it takes 1.5 - 3 hours to access a decent selection of shops.  No-one seems to care what you wear or what you look like.  Which can be a good thing when you're having a bad hair day and a bad thing when it looks like half the town got dressed in the dark.  The most pressing issue in the letters page of the local paper concerns punctuality and the modern world's lack thereof or God and the modern world's.... you get the drift.

Would I swap it for life in the big city with access to all the great festivals and exhibitions, amenities galore and a huge array of shops to chose from?  Not unless I could magically get rid of the traffic, the crazy house prices, the length of time it takes to get anywhere and the rush, rush, rush that tends to accompany life in the city.  So for now I think I will stick to the pace of small town living with occasional forays into more populated areas when my need for variety and culture becomes too stark.

Tastes change

I don't like olives.  Never have, never likely to.  Big fan of their oil, just not the little green and black things themselves.  Apparently some people take to olives later in life.  It's one of those things that if you didn't grow up eating them, people seem to think you will become a fan when you are older and your taste buds are more mature.  Do taste buds actually mature though?  Or do we just like eating what we like eating regardless of age or whether we grew up on it or not?

I never had spinach as a child as my mother had been forced to eat it when she was a child and subsequently hated it so much that she never cooked it for us.  So I came to spinach somewhat late in life but love it none the less.  The same with sweet potatoes.  As a child growing up in Ireland in the 70's/80's,  sweet potatoes only existed in the cool American picture dictionary I had (same goes for yams and bison).  Now give me some sweet potato fries and a splodge of aioli and I am a happy girl. 

I can see how if you were forced to eat something you didn't enjoy or ate it so often you got sick of it that would put you off eating or cooking it.  My aim for this month is to try to shake off my pre-conceived notions of what I like and don't like, try new things and make my children try them too! 

  

The recipe for a quiet afternoon

Take one large bag of books from the library.  Add two children.  Check intermittently and add snacks as required.