it’s official. i live in texas and my parents are gone and my brother and his wife are gone and the dear friend and her little babe are gone and it’s just me and the kiddos and texas. and i’ve been killing spiders (even though i don’t normally kill spiders, it sort of breaks my heart to kill spiders) but they just look so much more sinister here…. or maybe because there are so many more of them…. ?

it’s been so strange (overwhelmingly strange) to make this move, and not just because of the alarming plethora of bugs. (what in the world is the point of flying crickets big enough to be mistaken for bats?) this is the first place that has completely baffled me in terms of making friends. what do you do when you’re in a neighborhood of people who don’t go outside? and go to church with so many people (hundreds and hundreds) no one has time to say hello to you? and spend time on an air force base that is simply mammoth? truth is, i feel like i’m in a pillow fight with loneliness. only loneliness has a pillow twice the size of mine and it keeps whapping and whapping me and it isn’t laughing, it’s just whapping. which, as you may know, isn’t much of a pillow fight.

so. i’ve been doing what i always do. reading. (i am an escapist to the last.) and boy, do i have a story for you. if you liked the hunger games then read the house of the scorpion. it has a lot of the same elements as the hunger games but actually has character development and something of a less linear plot. the last page was a let-down, but the rest of it was so compelling it didn’t bother me too much. and once you’re finished with that one, read operation yes. i’m not sure if it’s because i’m new to this whole military thing or because i’m in a sort of tender emotional state right now, but this book got me in the gut. i sobbed. and i loved it. and i read it an afternoon. and now i know all sorts of things about the acronyms that get thrown around down at lackland that i didn’t know before.

and, in case you thought i forgot, i haven’t forgotten. we’ll get the book review up for july’s book trail read. you can understand, right? it’s been a crazy few months. and sometimes my crazy seeps into other things.