Friday's Fave Five - 28/2/25

Time to join up with Susanne and other grateful bloggers here as we remember the good things from the week.

1) Our units have been fitted in our living room!

 my photos don't really do them justice but we're really pleased with them and now we can start getting everything back in place.  

2)  The mammogram I had done a couple of weeks ago was all clear.  The next one will be in 3 years.

3)  Made it to keep fit this week and a catch up with friends afterwards.

4)  The postal service.  The books I had sent to my grandsons in the US arrived safely, despite all the snow they've had.

5)  A weekend with my son and his family.  They arrived this evening and will be here until Sunday.

Have a good weekend all.  Ours will be hectic as we'll have my daughter and her family here to visit - the cousins love getting together.

Book Review - Atticus - Juno Jakob (2025 #13)

Atticus by Juno Jakob
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Written during hospitalisation for schizophrenia and depression, Juno Jakob's debut adult novel is a look at the complex puzzle of mental illness, life on a psychiatric ward and the power of love and friendship. In October of 2008, twenty-seven-year-old Dylan Samuel is sectioned at St. John's Psychiatric Hospital following a mental breakdown and diagnosis of schizophrenia. During his involuntary stay and with the help of his psychiatrist, Dr. Francis Romero and a kind hallucination, a fox named Atticus, Dylan navigates the ward as well as the broken parts of his mind and begins a road to recovery.

This book details living with schizophrenia, in particular during hospitalization. It's a hard read in that it's graphic - bad language occurs frequently throughout the book and it's dark. But it feels truthful and although sad at times it is also hopeful.

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Wednesday Hodgepodge - 26/2/25

Wednesday means Hodgepodge.  Joyce provides the questions and we link up here.

1. February 26th is National Tell A Fairy Tale Day...have you read a fairy tale lately? What's your favourite fairy tale? Do you believe in 'happily ever after'? 

I haven't read a fairy tale recently.  Need to be more careful with some of them these days as they can actually be a bit scary.

I think we can have "happily ever after" but it will be a different thing to different people.  And even. for example, if you've found your ideal partner life often throws us a curveball.

2. Complete one of the following sentences with a thought relating to your life currently-

• Once upon a time there was order in my life.  Everything in my house had a home.  Currently it feels that lots of things are not where they are supposed to be and there are LOTS of things that shouldn't even be in my house!
• A long time ago________________
• In a place far far away__________

3. Which of the following 'fairy tale foods' is your favourite? Which have you made/eaten most recently? 

porridge/oatmeal (Goldilocks and The Three Bears), an apple (Snow White), a gingerbread cookie (The Gingerbread Man), pumpkin soup/pie/bread (Cinderella), peas (The Princess and the Pea), beans (Jack and The Beanstalk) or a cup of tea (Alice in Wonderland) 

Well I would have to go with cup of tea.  I can't start the day without one.  (Although I have had porridge, an apple, peas and beans recently.)

My daughter once took me for an afternoon tea that was Alice in Wonderland themed.  It was lovely. I thought I'd blogged about it but looking back it was in 2015.  I did take some pictures though.

It was all very yummy!

4. What's your idea of fun? 

Messing about with the Grandkids.

5. Next week's Hodgepodge lands in March. Is that right? I guess so.  Give us one noun, one verb, and one adjective that tell us something about your February. To make you think a little harder, you cannot use the words cold or snowy. 

Disruption

Lazing

Unproductive

6. Insert your own random thought here. 

Today we are due to have our new units fitted into our living room.  Once that's done we can start moving things into them and restoring the rest of the house to order.  The time frame of chaos has actually been a lot shorter than we thought it would and to be fair it hasn't really had a big impact on us day to day.  I just hate seeing the house out of order.

Book Review - The Power and the Glory - Graham Greene (2025 #12)

Start hereThe Power and the Glory by Graham Greene
My rating: 2 of 5 stars

In a poor, remote section of Southern Mexico, the paramilitary group, the Red Shirts have taken control. God has been outlawed, and the priests have been systematically hunted down and killed. Now, the last priest is on the run. Too human for heroism, too humble for martyrdom, the nameless little worldly “whiskey priest” is nevertheless impelled toward his squalid Calvary as much by his own compassion for humanity as by the efforts of his pursuers.

This book was recommended to me by my husband as it meets the "includes Latin American History" prompt for the challenge I'm doing.

It's well written and it's about the time when priests were being driven out from a southern state of Mexico. Sadly I didn't find it gripping. Thankfully it was fairly short.

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