A Happy Reader, A Healthy Eater: I hate crappy weekends

Although, in theory, I guess not too many people do tend to enjoy them, now do they?

Actually, today wasn't a bad day at all- it was quiet and very low-key. I slept in, went to the gym, chatted with my roommate for a while, did some yoga in the afternoon, and finished up my book. But yesterday... yesterday was honestly one of the worst days I can remember having since my dad died. First, I screwed up my driver's side tire pretty badly from hitting a median strip (I so do not want to talk about and rehash it... let's just say it was a ridiculously stupid error in judgment, and leave it at that), and I didn't blow it out completely or get a flat or anything like that, and I was able to drive to my mechanic's and they noticed a leak and were able to patch it enough to make it driveable until I can bring it back on Tuesday, but my front tire will definitely have to be replaced, and my back tire might as well, but they're going to try to save it (they actually said "save it", and it made me realize yet again how much mechanics are quite similar to surgeons!), and I might need a realignment as well. I have no idea how much this will all cost me, and I spent the day so mad at myself for doing something so incredibly stupid. And little things just went wrong all day, and I started thinking about my dad and how I missed him and wished I could call him, and it all just kept spiraling downward into a pretty bad "mental health day", if you know what I mean. My emotions were just all over the place, and my hypersensitivity was just raging. So every little minor thing, those little everyday annoying nuisances that happen to everyone on a daily basis, were just elevated and exaggerated because of my heightened emotional state, you know? Ugh... I was just a mess yesterday. I just had one of those days where you want to crawl into bed and pull up the covers and wish the day had never happened. Oy.

But, we all have bad days, and rather than dwell on them and beat ourselves up over it, the best thing we can do is move on. We suck it up and take it for what it was and just hope for a better tomorrow.

Anyway, so I finished the Natalie Wood biography. I did enjoy it, but I was also looking forward to finishing it, because it was a very long, intense, and kind of depressing read. Natalie Wood led quite a sad life for the most part, and the cruel irony of it all is that she was finally at a place where she was at her happiest in her life that she had ever been, when it was tragically cut short. It just makes it all the more heartbreaking. The book also goes into depth about the circumstances surrounding what happened to Natalie on those last few hours on the night of her death, and while we'll never completely know, the details that were provided were quite interesting, and what made them so interesting is that there were three other people on the boat with her on the night of her death- one of which was her husband- and they all gave very different, contradictory statements as to what happened on that night. Makes you wonder what they're trying to hide... but it's been almost thirty years since Natalie Wood died, and we'll never know what happened. Everyone probably has their own opinions and theories and speculations. Mine? That her husband's statements are sketchy and inaccurate, and I can't help but wonder why. I wonder if his daughters ever thought the same thing.

So yes, a good read, but I'm glad to have it done with. It's not a must-read, but if you're a fan of biographies, and the whole old-glamour Hollywood world, it might be a book you're interested in.

My next book is the exact opposite of the Natalie Wood biography... it looks like a really fast read with a really silly plot. Just what I need! Plus, the font is big (the font size of the biography was kinda small!):

Outtakes from a Marriage, by Ann Leary. I must confess that I picked a few others before I stumbled across this one. One was a fiction book about politics called Primary Colors, and the other was The Fountainhead. Coming off the Natalie Wood biography, I knew I was not feeling either of those picks. I needed something fluffy and stupid. This looks like it might fit the bill. It's about a woman married to a successful TV soap star who overhears a voicemail from another woman, suspects him of cheating, and starts freaking out, compulsively checking his voicemails and e-mails, showing up on his sets, getting Botox and hair extensions in an attempt to "resexify" herself for him, etc. All the while, she's battling against the ever-popular "Mommy clique" that seems to dominate every Manhattan elementary/private school (it's always Manhattan... you never, ever hear about these preschool "mean-girls" Mommy cliques in, like, Salt Lake City or Chattanooga, Tennessee). The cool thing about this book is that it shows glimpses and flashbacks to the duration of their relationship, from when they first met and onward. So we'll get some history and back story of their romance. Excellent.

I don't have any really exciting food pics as of late, but I will give a shout-out to tonight's potato concoction, which was all BBQ-ed up:

Healthy BBQ! A sweet potato topped with carrots, broccoli, cubed grilled chicken breast, and all-natural BBQ sauce on the side. Tasty fun! This was enjoyed while watching a new episode of The Amazing Race. Any fans of that show out there?