I Read All Eight Bridgerton Books, So You Don’t Have To: Part 1

Posted on March 16, 2023 by Belle of the Library

Once I completed my self-assigned project to read 26 classics, I was pretty burnt out on heavy literature. While I genuinely enjoyed all but two of the titles I chose, I realized that there’s a reason why people don’t typically read classics for fun. The pacing is far slower, the world-building is more involved, the themes are less obvious, and in many cases, the dialect can be quite difficult to follow. Reading a classic is enjoyable in the way reading a PEW Research Center study is enjoyable. It’s work. So, as a balm to my somewhat raw senses, I decided to try a modern and lighthearted take on classics, with Julia Quinn’s Bridgerton series, following the prolific family of the same name in Regency era Britain, which officially spans the years 1811-1820.

In our modern world, where everyone is watching something different, there are few titles that everyone recognizes. While others lament that fact, I’m just relieved that finally, I can rewatch the original Roswell for the 87th time in peace, without being subjected to the absolute horror that I haven’t seen Yellowstone. Bridgerton, however, is one of the rare shows that seems to have gained household notoriety, even if not everyone has actually watched it. If you’re unfamiliar with the premise and have perhaps just had it on your Netflix list, it’s about a family of eight children, the Bridgertons, sequentially named for the first eight letters of the alphabet and their adventures in love. Each Bridgerton gets their own book and, I would assume, Netflix season. Though historical romance has never been my jam, I made my way through the entire Bridgerton series, complete with lengthy epilogues, and figured it would be a complete waste not to review them.

As with my previous “I read… so you don’t have to” serial, there will be unavoidable spoilers, because… well that’s the “you don’t have to” part. I will not, however, share every detail of the plot or resolution, completely ruining the story or show for those who intend to read or watch. The show has already veered a great deal, so I suspect reading my reviews will spoil very little, but reader beware. I will be updating and reposting my reviews as the series continues, to include my assessments of each season.

1. The Duke and I – Daphne and Simon – Rank: 3

The Duke and I tells the tale of Simon Basset, the Duke of Hastings, and Daphne, the oldest Bridgerton daughter in the summer of 1813. Simon is a rake (Regency era playboy) and the best friend of Anthony Bridgerton, Daphne’s oldest brother. Having been abused by his own father, Simon has vowed never to marry or have children. Meanwhile, Daphne longs for marriage and motherhood, but finds that she’s so easy to get along with that men tend to see her as a strictly friendly or even sisterly companion, much to her despair during her first season on the marriage market.

Simon first meets Daphne when she’s being harassed by a suitor. Before he can save the day, Daphne punches the drunk herself and Simon finds himself immediately attracted to her… that is until he discovers that she’s the little sister of his best friend. Regardless, Simon and Daphne hatch a plan to convince high society, or the ton, that they’re courting. Mothers eager to marry their daughters will leave the disinterested, yet extremely eligible, Simon alone; and Daphne will attract the attention of far better suitors when they see she’s caught the eye of a Duke. Unsurprisingly, this doesn’t go as planned and the two begin to truly fall in love.

Through Regency era shenanigans, Simon and Daphne find themselves forced to marry, despite their differing plans for life. Simon informs Daphne that he can’t have children and she accepts him regardless. When innocent Daphne’s mother, Violet, explains sex to her, she’s left confused at the mechanics and goes into marriage blind. In time, Daphne realizes that Simon hasn’t been truthful with her and feels betrayed by what she realizes are his deliberate efforts to mislead her and avoid conception. Through drama and heartache, the two reconcile and babies are born into a happy marriage, some of them through the epilogues of other books.

I’ve never been a connoisseur of historical romance, finding it difficult to suspend my disbelief to accommodate these charming, young, handsome, tall rakes of the Regency era. I can never forget that the average male height in this time period was 5’6″, baths occurred on a weekly or monthly basis, and toothbrushes hardly existed. Still, I obviously enjoyed The Duke and I enough to continue the series, but I did notice a glaring issue with the show. While Bridgerton has been relentlessly praised for its diverse casting, it didn’t take long to realize that most of the Black characters in the show don’t exist in the books. There is no sassy Black queen. Marina is an off-page bit character in book five. Will, Alice, and Madame Delacroix aren’t in the series at all. Simon is the only prominent character from The Duke and I played by a person of color. Lady Danbury does become an important character, but she’s barely in the first book. It’s as if the writers wanted to appear progressive without “ruining” the image of the main characters and that’s… gross. The Bridgertons are one of two main families in their story and there’s no reason why the Featheringtons couldn’t have been portrayed by people of color as well, if historical accuracy was moot.

Despite the books souring me on the show’s faux diversity, I quite enjoyed Simon and Daphne’s story. I’ve never been drawn to the Brother’s Best Friend or Fake Dating tropes, but it was fun to read such a contemporary take on this time period. The show did a fair job of depicting the characters and their story in season one, with an appropriate touch of gloss on some scenes the didn’t age well. While fans of the show didn’t ignore the dubious nature of Daphne’s attempt to conceive against Simon’s wishes, the scene in the book was substantially more rapey. I won’t ruin it, but I will warn that it might color the character in a pretty negative light for some readers.

As with all romance, the guaranteed HEA, or happily ever after, takes much of the stress out of the story. The odds for the couple are seemingly insurmountable, but it’s always in the back of your mind that everything will work out and it does. This is not a time period about which I fantasize, but I can see how some would after reading this book. The realities of history are replaced with a story about wealthy, beautiful people, surrounded by loving and accepting families. Whether watching the show or reading the book, you’ll want to be a Bridgerton and why are we reading books such as these if not for escapism? Ultimately, Daphne and Simon rank as my third favorite Bridgerton couple.

2. The Viscount Who Loved Me – Anthony and Kate – Rank: 2

In the summer of 1814, Anthony, the eldest of the Bridgerton children, has decided that it’s time to set aside his rakish ways and marry. Traumatized by the untimely death of his father from a bee sting, however, he’s determined never to love and deliberately seeks a match that will incite no truly deep feelings. Enter, Edwina Sheffield, the shy and proper younger sister of fiery Kate. Nearing spinsterhood at age 20, Kate’s sole concern is finding a decent match for her beloved Edwina. While Anthony has decided the younger of the Sheffield women fits his requirements precisely, Kate disapproves of the match, convinced that the Viscount has not given up his rakish ways. Despite the growing friction between the two, neither Anthony nor Kate can deny their attraction to each other. Caught in a precarious position when Kate is stung by a bee, the two have no choice but to marry and reconcile their differences, eventually growing in love throughout the rest of the story.

Anthony and Kate were my second favorite of the Bridgerton couples. Just typing this makes me want to reread, though I’ve never cared for the Enemies to Lovers trope. I appreciate the concept in theory. I just always find it somewhat uneven. The conflict between the two either tips into hostile and abusive territory or exaggerates what is simply good-natured ribbing. In an attempt to avoid sullying the swoon-worthy hero, the author often writes only the heroine as truly antagonistic, inadvertently coloring her as an unlikable shrew. Anthony and Kate had the perfect balance. I’m talking chef’s kiss here. They’re both assholes to each other and it is Chuck and Blair delicious. While Anthony’s absolute conviction of his early demise seems a wee bit overwrought, the animosity and attraction he shares with Kate are simultaneously quite convincing, which I find rare among these stories. I would say my favorite thing about this book, is that the couple spends basically the last half of it together. In my opinion, it is absolutely vital in this trope, that the reader experience the couple happy after all that conflict and most authors fail here.

On screen, Jonathan Bailey and Simone Ashley did a fantastic job portraying Anthony and Kate’s chemistry. The switch-up with Indian culture felt fun and natural. The costumes were gorgeous. That said, Netflix ruined the story of The Viscount Who Loved Me. Y’all, I am not a purist when it comes to adaptations. I love a good twist on an old tale, but Anthony and Kate’s season of Bridgerton was utter crap. In The Viscount Who Loved Me, Edwina is simply looking for a husband, nearly as pragmatically as Anthony. She never loves the eldest Bridgerton. She barely has a chance to get to know him, before he’s forced to marry Kate after he’s caught scandalously examining her bee sting. What follows is a delightful forced marriage story, as the couple comes to love and respect one another for their equally strong wills, a concept I appreciate considering my prideful, stubborn, pushy husband.

Bridgerton, however, drags out Anthony and Kate’s courtship up to the humiliation and devastation of Edwina. This unavoidably paints the leads as complete assholes, not to each other but the sister Kate adores and whom Anthony respects, regardless of his lack of romantic affection. By the time the two unite, I can’t even root for them anymore, because they’re dicks, which I suppose is a minor consolation for the fact that we’re robbed of their growing love for one another. All of this was entirely unnecessary, as the original story included a great deal of drama that could have been easily adapted for the screen, such as Anthony’s conviction that he won’t live past 38, Kate’s absolute terror of thunderstorms, and a carriage crash that nearly killed the heroine. The fabricated drama of the show hurt the story and its characters, so while this was my second favorite book, I can only hope it’s my least favorite season of Bridgerton.

Memories

Posted on March 11, 2023 by Belle of the Library

I have always loved to reminisce. When I was a kid, I used to pour over the family photo albums, on a regular basis. I’d stand in my Grandma Kay’s hall looking at her photo collages and marvel over how much my cousin Kayla looked like her mother. I loved the pictures of my parents, aunts and uncles, from their high school days, when they were young, fit, and wore trendy clothes. Most kids would have been bored out of their minds by home videos, but I adored them and would often sneak off with a VHS tape and watch it alone in my room. After my home life soured, my interest became more of a longing. I’d dig through the boxes of loose photos my mother had accumulated, remembering the days when our family was intact. My mother had long since stopped compiling albums and wouldn’t display any family pictures that included my dad.

In high school, I began to make my own memories. It was 2002 and I was the only teenager who had a camera with her at all times, first film and then digital. I took photos of friends wearing goofy clothes for AP English theme days, school field trips, and teenage sleepovers. I compiled them all into my own album and put it away after graduation, when my life… took a bit of a detour.

After the dissolution of my teen marriage at 23, my life once again became one I’d want to remember. I had family, friends, hobbies, and accomplishments I’d want to look back on one day… and I took pictures of all of them, frequently reminiscing over even recent history. Finally, at 25, I realized that this facet of my personality was not going away. I was a records keeper, an archivist, and I wanted to remember everything. That’s when I started this blog, where I’ve been recording my life ever since. That’s also when I came to the decision that I needed to do something with all these photos. At the time, I had a wall in the dining area of my apartment, covered in $3 frames from Wal-Mart, that I’d regularly switch out with photos of my life. A single wall in an apartment, however, was quickly outgrown. I considered scrapbooking, but knew it to be both time-consuming and expensive. Furthermore, the books themselves didn’t seem to hold up, as bits and pieces would frequently fall out. So, I searched the internet and considered Shutterfly. I didn’t like the interface or the themes, though, and landed on the much lesser known Mixbook.

In 2013, I began compiling my photos from 2010 forward, into annual albums. It took me a year or two to catch up to current day and even longer to be able to afford to have them printed, but I managed. I even scanned and uploaded all of those high school photos and created an album out of them. I now have albums from 2002-2006 and from 2010 to the present, including a wedding album, honeymoon album, newborn photo album for the girls, unique baby book for Violet, unique baby book for Scarlet, cake smash book for the girls, aaaaand newborn photo book for Thomas. I’m also working on his baby book.

It has truly become a compulsion to catalog all of my family photos, but that is apparently not enough. Once we had children, it wasn’t just pictures I was constantly taking, but video as well. I never wanted to forget how small the girls were as newborns, the silly noises Scarlet made while I tried to get the perfect picture, or the way Violet refused to crawl, instead just dragging herself on the ground Lieutenant Dan style. Naturally, I recorded it all, as other parents do, but the videos weren’t easy to enjoy. The frugal side of me refuses to pay Google for additional storage, which means I have to download them to my computer and watch them individually. No one does that. So, in addition to the perfect photo album software, I found a one time license video editing software, Filmora.

It’s taken some time, but despite having a new baby during the holidays, I’ve managed to catch up with my Mixbooks and compile all of the videos I’ve taken since June of 2021 into watchable annual home movies. All this to say, that’s where I’ve been for the past two months. Every time I’ve had the chance to sit down and write a blog, I’ve instead opted to work on my Mixbooks of family videos. I’m here, though. I have not abandoned my blog, nor will I, because it’s one my many DeLoreans, taking me on trips through time. Now that I’ve caught up with the others, I’ll be able to service it as well.

I still don’t like kids.

Posted on December 27, 2022 by Belle of the Library

Two weeks ago, we brought home our baby boy…

… and he is perfect.

After conceiving twin girls through back-to-back pandemic rounds of IVF and nearly dying in childbirth, I wasn’t exactly ready to get pregnant again this past spring. Although Jake and I had already begun the early stages of transferring a frozen embryo over the summer, I was still on the fence, myself. I’ve always wanted four children and still found that to be the case, even with twins under a year. I wanted my girls to have more siblings. I wanted Jake to have a son. I wanted a son. I wanted more noise, more chaos, more fun, bigger holidays, crazier family vacations… what I’ve never had with the brother I see once a year on Christmas. I also wanted to be alive to enjoy all of these things, so I was still erratically swinging between the insistence that the girls were enough and the idea that I was potentially up for two more pregnancies, assuming the next went smoothly.

It was on May 5th, the day before Jake and I celebrated our fifth wedding anniversary, that I was officially no longer able to file another pregnancy under Future Belle’s Problem. I had been waiting for day one of my cycle to begin the FET process and assumed that it hadn’t come, because I wasn’t even a year post-partum. Begrudgingly, I took a pregnancy test, annoyed at having to waste the dollar, but knowing the clinic would insist. Following a few minutes of Googling early menopause and uterine cancer symptoms as possibilities for my missing period, I glanced at the test before tossing it, only to see that it was, indeed, positive. After Jake was told, verbatim, that “miracles happen” when he asked the urologist if he could get me pregnant, after spending 2020 imagining a future without children, after thirty thousand dollars worth of baby girls, I was… pregnant.

In so many ways, I am that annoying anecdote your coworker shares about her friend, whose niece got pregnant despite all odds… the woman who had severe complications the first time around, only for it all to go smoothly the second… the mother of three under two who’d contemplated a forced childfree existence just two years earlier. With all of it behind me, I can honestly say that, despite a few tearful outbursts about how I didn’t want to die, I had an easy pregnancy and a complication-free birth by scheduled C-section at 37 weeks to the day.

I now have three babies under 18 months and I love it. I love watching the girls forget they’re mid-tantrum when they start giggling as they spin in circles of protestation. I love watching them wrestle like little bear cubs until someone cries. I love seeing Scarlet run to the front door arms extended, at the sound of Jake’s keys turning. I love Violet’s contradictory stubbornness and clingy Mama’s girl status. Now, my Thomas is here and he is a dream. After months of insisting the newborn phase is boring, I adore the snuggles. Having started with twins, I’m taking full advantage of the opportunity to dote on just one, cherishing everything from feedings to sponge baths. I rarely sleep more than four hours at a time, am weeks from being able to have sex and months from even discussing an embryo transfer, still have visible bruising around my incision, and I’m already trying to talk Jake into our fourth and final.

Just the other day, Jake announced that raising kids with me was the best thing that’s ever happened to him and the feeling is utterly mutual. Watching my husband go from the rough and tumble toddler girl dad he’s become to the sweet and gentle (for him) father of a newborn boy is absolutely precious. After years of declaring mid-spat that he’s an unfeeling robot, there’s nothing quite so dear as watching my cowboy husband hold his tiny son in his callused hands and talk sweetly to him.

I spent a lifetime anticipating being the career woman and the working mom, went to college for seven years including graduate school, threw myself into my career as a librarian for another ten. I never planned to stay home with my children, scoffed at the very idea, and it’s the best decision I’ve ever made. While I fully intend to reenter the professional world one day, simply put, I just love being a mom… and I still don’t like kids.

Growing up in the South, I was raised to understand that women like children. Little girls love dolls. Teenaged girls eagerly jump at the chance to babysit. Baby fever becomes rampant in a woman’s early twenties. Any gal who doesn’t want to die alone had better start having kids by 25. Those are some Southern facts, right there, so imagine my confusion when I realized none of them applied to me.

Having lived on ten acres until age 11, I didn’t really grow up around other kids at all, let alone little ones. I had a couple of younger cousins, who I babysat once or twice, but I largely considered them nuisances who got us older kids in trouble. I never spent time with young children with any regularity. My first job was at a car lot, not a daycare. In fact, when I did get a job at a daycare in college, I made it two days before quitting. An education major in my undergrad, I still considered specializing in early childhood/elementary and even arranged to shadow my second grade teacher. That was the day, y’all. Despite my religious Southern upbringing, a childhood surrounded by suburban girls who wanted to be teachers and stay-at-home moms, a degree program that pedestalized anyone who worked with kids… the day I spent time in a well-managed second grade classroom was the day I realized that I just don’t like children.

Over the following years, I honed my affinity for teenagers, having initially assumed I only favored them due to their closer proximity in age. During grad school, I substitute taught nearly every day of the week, preferring high school, but happy to take middle school jobs when they were all that was available. More often than not, however, if elementary openings were all I could find, I’d take the opportunity for a rare day off, unless I desperately needed the money. As time passed and I moved further from my own teenage years, I loved working with teens just as much… and dreaded spending any time with children at all.

It wasn’t that I hated kids… at least not well-behaved ones. I just didn’t find them especially interesting. They couldn’t share compelling opinions or stories. Their senses of humor were undeveloped and generally revolved around the obnoxious and immature, but rarely clever. They were often oversensitive and whiney. Regardless, their parents considered them absolutely brilliant and wholly infallible. I frequently worked with children as a librarian and nearly every single reader’s advisory question posed by a parent, came with the insistence that their child’s reading level was two to three higher than their grade. I can count on one hand how many times that was actually true. When they misbehaved, in ways that were entirely developmentally appropriate, their parents wouldn’t hear it, whether they were screaming and running in the library or bullying others in programs. Teenagers, however, warranted scorn and contempt if any attention at all. When the societal blind spot for an age group I didn’t particularly enjoy was coupled with the overall disdain for the one I did, I struggled to even imagine myself as a mother in the distant future. Clearly, I didn’t feel the way everyone else felt about children. Maybe they weren’t for me after all.

A few months before Jake proposed, I became increasingly concerned. I knew Jake wanted kids and, in theory, so did I. I just… really didn’t like ’em.

With genuine distress, I shared as much with a coworker in her 50s, who had two young adult children and two still in Catholic school. If anyone could shed some light on my situation, it was a woman living exactly the life I thought I wanted.

Me: “I don’t think I like children.”
Coworker: “Of course you don’t. It’s the end of Summer Reading.”
Me: “What if I don’t at all? Jake wants kids. I thought I wanted them. I’m not sure I like them, though.”
Coworker: “I don’t especially like other people’s children, either. I like mine, but I never really cared much for their friends. You’ll be fine.”

I didn’t know that was allowed!

In the nearly five years that followed this moment of enlightenment, I met a few others who shared this thought process. A friend at the Northside Library had little to no patience for… well, most humans, but she loved being a mother. At the same branch, a friend living with her parents had more of a sisterly relationship with her young son, yet doted on him all the same. A coworker at the Cherokee library had a surprise baby just before 40, after having accepted a childfree existence. A veteran who named Sarah Connor her hero, she’d never really considered herself maternal… until her son arrived. She still had little feeling toward children in a random sample, but adored being a mother. I’ll admit, it still isn’t a common sentiment among suburban and rural Southern women, but evidently it happens… such as in my case.

Apparently my robot husband and I are quite the pair, because I find myself in the company of Other People’s Children far more frequently these days and I feel little on a personal level… neither disdain nor joy. As with other random folks, I passively wish them health and wellness and go about my day. I do my best not to judge other parents, while still generally finding most small children grating. Yet, somehow, I seem to have endless patience for my own. Objectively speaking, I’ve no illusions about my offspring somehow being superior to others’… except that they’re mine, so they’re naturally cuter, smarter, funnier, and less disgusting by my incredibly biased assessment.

I, of course, still smile encouragingly and affectionately at little ones during storytime, just as I’d expect others to do with mine. I’d never intentionally hurt a child’s feelings and that’s all I really ask of others. I love my nieces and nephews out of necessity, whether I feel much connection to them at this age or not. I do try, but it still doesn’t come naturally to me to snuggle someone else’s baby, tickle their toddler, or get down in the floor and play with their kids. As utterly smitten as I am with my own babies, as I attempt to cajole Jake into our #fourthandfinal while still being on lift restrictions, Other People’s Children… they still don’t really do it for me. I still don’t like kids.

I want this. I’m thankful for this.

Posted on November 24, 2022 by Belle of the Library

Twelve years ago, the day after Thanksgiving, I kicked my abusive ex out once and for all, starting my life over. Seven years ago, Jake proposed to me, four days before Thanksgiving. Two years ago, after spending $30,000 funded primarily through a lucky Bitcoin investment, we found out our second IVF cycle was successful. Just before Christmas, we found out we were having twins. Now, our miracle baby boy is arriving in just 12 days… if things go as planned with our scheduled C-section.

I love the holidays, y’all. There’s just something about this time of year that makes life feel cozier and more comfortable. The colder weather gives me an entirely acceptable excuse to play the hermit. When I do go out, the world is one of cute winter wardrobes, costumes, colorful leaves, twinkling lights, cheerful music, delicious food, and massive amounts of glitter that even my southern husband finds begrudgingly acceptable. This is my time of year… yet somehow, I’m just now realizing how many great things have happened to me during the holidays, the latest of which will be my baby boy.

I feel so many simultaneous emotions about this baby. Foremost is gratitude that Jake and I get to have a son, in addition to our two beautiful daughters. We’re not a #girldad or #boymom. We get to be both. This baby will be the first grandson of six kids and only the third great grandson of fifteen on Jake’s side. Where I cried when I thought the twins were boys, after our struggles to get pregnant, Jake was thrilled with any healthy children. Now he’s the most amazing dad to our girls, especially considering his cliché cowboy status. I am so happy to give him a boy, not just because he deserves a son, but because the world needs more men like Jake. I’m grateful we got pregnant like normal people, as opposed to in a clinic with thousands of dollars worth of injections. I’m relieved that I won’t have to count down the days until I return to work. I’m thankful that Jake has been able to arrange to stay home through the entirety of my six to eight week C-section recovery.

Beyond gratitude, I admittedly feel fear that things will go as or even more poorly than they did when the girls were born. Never one for birth plans, I had zero expectations for the arrival of my twins and it still went so much worse than I could’ve imagined while still taking home healthy babies.

No one looks that pretty after four days in the ICU, by the way.

I won’t rehash my birth story in detail, but suddenly diagnosed with severe pneumonia and heart complications at 35 weeks, I underwent an emergency C-section and began the most terrifying week of my life. Almost immediately after the death of my estranged mother at 60, I dealt with the very real possibility that I might not see my own girls grow up, or that I might be chronically ill their entire lives. Rushed to the ICU, I first saw my twins at three days old and that was only because I woke up in a drug-induced hysteria screaming that they’d taken my babies. When I was finally released to labor and delivery, I was still receiving intravenous antibiotics and too sick to stand. It wasn’t until day seven that I was able to leave, though the girls had been discharged two days earlier. Say what you will about American healthcare and the $9,000 bill we received, but those doctors did save my life. As grateful as I am for my miracle baby, I admit that I’m petrified everything will go wrong again, perhaps with a far worse ending.

I have more standard concerns as well… that my existing babies will feel replaced and have trouble coping, that I’m having this baby during an unprecedented RSV season, that another child will be another expense during difficult economic times, and as always, that I won’t be the mother I so desperately desire. I’m also hopeful and excited. I’m hopeful that I’ll have a standard delivery with no drama, having scheduled my C-section for 37 weeks to the day. I’m hopeful that I’ll get an uneventful post-partum season, holed up for the winter with Jake by my side to help transition the girls into their new roles as big sisters. I’m hopeful that things will be better this time. I’m excited to meet my son and introduce him to the girls. I’m excited to not be pregnant, at this point. I’m excited to start dieting and exercising. I’m excited for a quiet baby’s first Christmas. You know what I’m not?

I’m not dreading any part of the coming months.

I’m not sorry that my children are going to be so close in age.

I’m not worried about having three under two or three in diapers.

I’m not in need of snarky well-wishes from people in the grocery store.

I’m not looking for sympathy or pity.

I’m not interested in hateful predictions about how I’ll feel when my children are teenagers.

Quite frankly, after my dysfunctional upbringing, my… trying early twenties, my struggle with infertility, I’m not interested in any negativity toward my family planning. I’m also not clear on why anyone thinks it’s okay to chime in on the subject, with assumptions that this child will be my last, simply for having a penis.

What exactly is the greater tragedy, that I might intentionally have more children or that I don’t care to share those plans with a nosey stranger at the grocery store? Why exactly does someone think they can apologize to me for the existence of my precious daughters, who are doing nothing more than playing peek-a-boo in the shopping cart? How exactly does someone come to the conclusion that this is an appropriate thing to say to a very pregnant mother with her hands full?

I know, I know. People are just looking for something to say. Well, they can say something a lot less presumptive and a lot less ugly, because I’m not interested in keeping the peace with strangers who think saying negative things about my children (who can hear perfectly well, I might add) constitutes proper small talk. I grew up in a volatile home with parents who loved me, but weren’t that great at it. I desperately wanted this life that I have, shopping cart peek-a-boo and all. I hoped my hands would one day be full and my bank account empty. I prayed for this stress. I wept for these blessings, because I want this. I’m thankful for this.

So perhaps, this Thanksgiving, people can pull their heads out of their asses and be thankful for the families and lives they have, as well.

The Minivan Stigma

Posted on November 22, 2022 by Belle of the Library

It’s been a big year, y’all. Jake and I celebrated five years of marriage, continued the adventure of raising our IVF-conceived twin girls, and began planning an embryo transfer in hopes of growing our family. We even met with our fertility doctor and scheduled the procedure… only to find out it wasn’t needed. Day one of the cycle that would have kicked off our frozen transfer never came and we celebrated our little ladies’ first birthday just before announcing our miracle baby due in December. We spent the summer arguing over boy names, transforming our larger extra bedroom into the girls’ new room, and preparing to have three children under 18 months.

An incessant reader of news, it was some time in early June that I stumbled across an article declaring that while the used car market had improved, it would most certainly worsen in the fall. Jake had briefly mentioned upgrading the Kia Sorento we had bought when we found out we were having twins, but I’d brushed him off, insisting the SUV would suffice, as long as we could fit all three car seats in the middle row. The Sorento was paid for, comfortable, said to seat seven, and had relatively few miles on it. Buying another new car less than 18 months later seemed superfluous and needlessly stressful. Regardless, I decided to make sure that we could indeed fit three across the middle row, since the back would be virtually inaccessible with car seats in front of it, only to realize…

When Jake and I bought the Sorento, we’d intended it as a ten-year car, assuming a seven seater would actually, you know… seat seven. It really hadn’t occurred to either of us that we’d be in the market for a minivan when we began planning for baby number three. After the fiasco that was buying our Kia Soul in 2019, struggling to find just the right SUV in 2020, paying it off early with Jake’s lucky Bitcoin earnings, I truly did not want a new car… any new car, regardless of type.

Ever responsive toward and utterly dependent on research, however, I immediately accepted that not only was the market in the best shape we could hope for, but that it wouldn’t get any easier or less stressful to shop for a minivan later in my pregnancy. So, I texted Jake about our predicament and began searching for the best model within our price limit.

Folks, buying a minivan was exactly the nightmare I had feared, perhaps worse. Not only was I shopping for a completely different, more expensive, unfamiliar class of vehicle, in a competitive market, I was wading through a newfound swamp of Mom Snobbery. Review after review, I simply could not escape the elitism behind some of the brand names and their elevated prices. Models that seemed to offer exactly the same number of features, safety ratings, and comfort levels were tens of thousands of dollars higher. While many objective articles described the Dodge Caravan as a budget model with a rougher ride and lower mileage, listing the Chrysler Pacifica Hybrid as a top option for the fuel conscious, I never did figure out what made the Odyssey and Sienna such premium vehicles when all specs remained the same. After reading some of the reviews himself, Jake still points out every Honda Odyssey he sees, with mock awe.

Ultimately, we ended up with a black, 2019, Chrysler Pacifica Limited 35th Anniversary. It isn’t fully loaded, but does include some nice bells and whistles that are new to us, such as leather heated seats, a heated steering wheel, and remote start. Though finding it was a month-long headache, once it was ours, we were excited… and confused that when we shared the news, everyone seemed to expect us to feel defeated at having purchased a minivan. Even after highlighting the benefits of more leg room, dual climate control, flat-folding seats, and remote doors, everyone seemed to be waiting for our response to some kind of minivan stigma.

Before Jake and I had children, I actually do recall insisting that I’d never own a minivan. For purely practical reasons, I didn’t want to spend substantially more money to drive a much more cumbersome vehicle with worse gas mileage. As far as I understood, an SUV would accommodate just as many people, at a lower price. I just didn’t see the point. I certainly had no distaste for what it would say about me or my stage of life. Upon further reflection, in fact, at one time, I’d dreamt of having and eventually becoming a Minivan Mom.

Growing up in the 90s, minivans were at the height of their popularity and said something to me even then. They were a symbol of all the things I wanted as a child, gradually progressing from the frivolous to the completely justifiable.

Parents who owned minivans lived in three bedroom ranch homes in suburban neighborhoods with ice cream trucks and friends just down the street. We lived in a trailer on ten acres, with few children nearby.
Minivan moms either stayed home, worked part-time, or were teachers, so their kids didn’t have to attend daycare. The dads were home every night and weekend and in good spirits. My mother was a nurse, my father a lineman for the electric company, both exhausted after working long hours, nights, weekends, and call shifts.
Minivan families lived in clean houses and the children wore cute clothes and practiced basic hygiene. Even when we moved to a traditional house, it was a borderline hoarder home, only cleaned when we hosted holiday celebrations. In time, my parents became too wrapped up in their crumbling marriage to pay much attention to grooming and fashion and it showed.
Minivan families ate at the kitchen table, played board games together, and the kids were never allowed to watch anything beyond a PG rating. When I was nine or ten, my parents started spending evenings arguing in the garage, leaving us to call Gramma to bring fast food and entertain ourselves however we may.
Minivan parents took family vacations and had loving, supportive, intact marriages. My dad stopped coming along on trips when I was eight and left a month after my mom’s brain surgery when I was 10. Not long after, my brother moved in with him and I stayed with my increasingly violent mother, while my father tried to recapture his youth.

Growing up, our trailer was just down the street from a foster home, where the parents were known to be abusive to their children, so I fully understood that other kids had it worse than I did. Objectively speaking, I didn’t have a miserable childhood, and see no reason to rewrite history to better or worsen it. Still, I perpetually envied what I deemed my normal classmates, who seemed to come from happy, functional homes, lead by parents with appropriate rules and boundaries. They were good at sports, from ballet and cheer to soccer and basketball. They were never blacklisted from sleepovers, because their moms explained the purpose of edible underwear to their friends when they were nine or let them watch Leprechaun when they were ten. They were slender and sweet, wore their hair in high ponytails with big bows, and the boys thought they were cute. Their parents budgeted for the bills first, so the electricity and water never got cut off. Their moms taught them to apply makeup and talk to boys they liked… and somehow, it seemed they all drove minivans.

You also don’t walk around the block for an hour to repeatedly pass by the boy you like, when he’s outside playing basketball.

As I got older, the minivan association morphed from a symbol of the ideal childhood to that of an ideal adulthood. My southern suburbia was particularly known for its Nicholas Sparks-esque young marriages, right down to the dysfunction and drama, minus the geese.

While I was far from the only 23-year-old divorcee in Shetland, there existed many more young marriages, between high school and college sweethearts. I’d like to assume at least a few were and are still happy. Though I’m no longer active on social media, I’ll never forget the time in my life when I thumbed through the profiles of my old classmates with envy. All those years, they told me my middle and high school bullies would amount to nothing and the Mean Girls were posting photos of grand Southern weddings to oilfield men, who paid for the degrees they’d never use after having babies immediately upon graduation. They bought cookie cutter McMansions in gated communities, carried Coach purses, outfitted their baby boys in Air Jordans, and drove minivans... all while I struggled to keep my head above water, massively overweight, living off of financial aid in a seedy motel after another eviction, while my ex swore he had paid the rent with money from the job he swore he actually worked. Spoiler alert: he didn’t.

My senior year of college saw a miscarriage, my first year of grad school a divorce, while I worked two jobs substitute teaching and cleaning rec equipment at the local community center… and things started to get better. I moved into a comfortable apartment, where my ex could no longer sneak in and steal things to sell. I met the young men I was so close to in my early twenties, along with Niki, who plays DnD with Jake and I to this very day. I started working for the library system, while continuing to substitute teach and earn my graduate degree. Life was better… safer. I cultivated hobbies, lost a lot of weight, learned to dress and apply makeup. I dated on and off, as I recovered from the trauma of my first and only relationship and tried to decipher whether or not I wanted another. I worked on my credit and learned to manage my money. I grew into someone I liked, someone I wanted to be… but I still felt so far behind the classmates who’d graduated alongside me just six or seven years earlier. They were only in their early to mid-twenties, but they’d finished school, were presumably happily married, bought homes, had babies… and many of them drove minivans.

Ten years later, I of course realize how valuable those single girl years were for me. While the ages of 18-23 exist in something of a fog of memory I rarely allow to clear, 23-27 were the years those should have been. I learned to take care of and depend on myself, mentally, physically, and financially. After a near lifetime of feeling less than, I started to value and respect myself, acknowledge that the only one who had any right to decide I wasn’t worthy of more was me. I could be smart, successful, cute, funny. I could be a happily single respected academic who was really great at crafts, a worldly traveler and career woman who relocated every five years… or I could earn the minivan life I’d so envied at different times. It wasn’t about proving myself… okay, it wasn’t just about proving myself, but choosing the path I wanted, regardless of who my parents were, how I’d grown up, who I was in high school, the mistakes I’d made as a young adult. I finally realized that none of that actually mattered when it came to shaping my future. I had a right to any life for which I was willing to put in the work. I could leave the past in the past.

I’d never put much thought into what a minivan said to or about me today. It was just the obvious choice until people seemed to expect negative feelings on the subject. To them, buying a minivan meant becoming their parents with their socks and sandals, little league coaching jobs, mom jeans, and pumpkin spice. When I thought about it, it meant surpassing mine. It meant finally having the life I know my mother always wanted and was never quite able to grasp, the life my dad looks back on and wishes he’d valued more. Just as I could have been the academic, the career woman, being a Minivan Mom is an accomplishment worthy of celebration for me. Perhaps others look on and see the pretention and falsehood of middle class suburban white folks. That’s fine and I take no offense, because I wasn’t always in that class.

Twenty-five years ago, I was the the smelly kid with social and behavioral issues. Twenty years ago, I was the fat nerdy girl in overalls and a turtleneck. Fifteen years ago, I was mourning the house fire my ex started, killing all of my pets. Fourteen years ago, I was evicted in the middle of an ice storm, staying with in-laws I didn’t like until we could get into the aforementioned motel. Thirteen years ago, I was conflicted over how to feel about the miscarriage of a child that would have tied me to a sociopath forever. Twelve years ago, I was filing for divorce during my first year of grad school, wondering if I’d ever have the life I’d wanted… if that was even still the life I wanted.

After ten years in a successful career, I spend my days making grocery runs, attending library storytimes, and having dance parties with the baby girls who will never be neglected into outsider status, knowing that one day I’ll be the career mom once again. I’m happily married to a man who’s never known what it feels like to be ostracized, yet handles me with care when I feel left out. I host bi-weekly game nights with good friends and feel included with my in-laws and Jake’s high school buddies when we visit. I fit in and I’m happy. I’ve transcended. These are the best days of my life so far and unrelated or not… I drive a minivan.

Seven Birthdays

Posted on October 18, 2022 by Belle of the Library

We only had 3’s, no 8’s.

Years ago, I was entering my mid-late 20s in the South and had spent the time since my divorce trying to figure out if I wanted the things I thought I’d wanted, or if everyone had just told me I wanted them. Growing up in the early 2000’s suburban/rural town of Shetland, marrying one’s high school or college sweetheart wasn’t just the dream, but the expectation. Shetland’s welcome sign declared it A City With a Vision, but the Kasey Musgraves quote “If you ain’t got two kids by 21, you’re probably gonna die alone,” would have been more fitting. Indeed, by the time I found myself reclaiming my maiden name on my undergraduate diploma, I was one of a dozen young divorcees from the class of 2006, most of whom did have two children. While I’d initially felt behind at 23, thumbing through all of those Facebook posts of engagement rings, wedding photos, new homes, and ultrasound pictures, I eventually came to the realization that I had it all to do over again. I could choose something different… if that’s what I actually wanted.

It was at 26, while substitute teaching an elementary school class that I realized exactly the life I desired. I didn’t like young children and only took such assignments if I was desperate for money, like when the school year was ending and I was staring down a summer with only my half-time librarian position to pay the bills. It was an easy enough day, overseeing a music class and watching Frozen on repeat, broken up by an end-of-the-year assembly in the early afternoon. “Assembly” probably wasn’t the proper term. It was more like a show, where Ronald McDonald performed childlike slapstick comedy to a crowd of children roaring with laughter, as I cynically rolled my eyes.

After ten or fifteen minutes of silly props and noises, however, I noticed that it wasn’t just the children who were laughing themselves sick. The parents in attendance were in similar hysterics at seeing their little ones so innocently amused. I looked around the gym full of kids, still lacking the affection expected by Southern women, yet suddenly more aware than ever of the enjoyment they brought their parents. That’s when it hit me that I wanted this… not because of some animalistic biological drive or archaic gender standard reinforced by life in the South, but because I wanted it for myself. I’d spent years considering more adventurous paths less traveled only to finally realize that I wanted exactly the mundane life expected of me… and that was okay. I would, however, need to get serious about dating. It was then that I began to pray, every night, for God to bring me a good, hardworking, even-tempered man, who would make a great husband and wonderful father… and most importantly to open my eyes and allow me to recognize such a man despite the fog of unreasonable expectations and my own self-sabotage.

My first date with Jake started with a pep talk, as I reminded myself that the worst that could happen was another funny story… only to sigh because I was getting awfully tired of funny stories. It had been a year since that day in my elementary school gym. As much as I had enjoyed the single stage of life, I was ready to move on to the next adventure. I was ready to fall in love and be on my way to the marriage and family I’d failed so miserably to secure previously. I didn’t want a romcom Meet Cute or soapy drama. I wanted someone to come home to, curl up with on the couch while I read and he did his own thing, a presence to feel in the middle of the night. I wanted to laugh, argue, grieve, and plan a life with someone. Odds were, my first date with the fluid engineer I met on Plenty of Fish would be forgettable at best, but perhaps… just maybe… it would be my last first date…

… and so it was.

It was on my first birthday with Jake that I realized he didn’t really do birthdays. When I responded with fitting horror, he explained that such occasions were for children and no one in his family really celebrated them after the age of twelve. Even so, on our three month anniversary, Jake made the trip to Shetland and joined me in a two day birthday celebration, meeting my parents for the first time and humoring all of my ridiculous 28-year-old whims. A month or so later, he indulged me once again, as I insisted we celebrate his birthday, not with all the hoopla and whimsy of mine, but by doing something he specifically wanted to do, which turned out to be Topgolf, pizza, and a movie.

Over the years, I’ve gotten no less demanding with my own birthday, insisting on celebrating the struggles and triumphs of the previous year and the excitement to come in the next. There have been numerous ice cream cakes, trips to the zoo, and even a new puppy. There was the Post-IVF Failure Quarantine Birthday of 2020, where we watched Belle Movies all day and ate takeout. There was the first birthday with our baby girls and just last month, our first family lake trip. Surprisingly enough, Jake has begun to look forward to his own birthdays over the years, as well. Friends have visited from Texas. We’ve eaten poorly made boxed carrot cake, sat through Lord of the Rings movie marathons, baked stuffed pizzas, and even unveiled a pricey gun safe in the hopes we’d need it soon, with small children running around.

Regardless, I’ve no doubt that Jake would let his birthdays slip by with little to no acknowledgement, were it not to humor me. With his quiet, stoic affection, though, he brainstorms ways to make the day special for himself, because he knows doing so is important to me. Whereas I see my own birthdays as a celebration of the adventures past and the welcoming of those to come, Jake’s are a celebration of the answering of those many fervently, even desperately, made prayers. This weekend, as Jake bathed our girls, after I sorted and folded laundry, I looked around and really acknowledged my life as it is, the life this man has helped me create.

Friday night, Jake and I hosted our bi-weekly game night, where we ate ourselves sick and laughed ourselves silly with friends in honor of his birthday. We spent Saturday getting lunch with our beautiful, hard-won babies, before hitting the local pumpkin patch, where we took pictures and all four played and laughed in a trough full of corn. We came home tired and dirty, with dried corn in our shoes, as the girls vacillated between fussing and giggling, having missed most of their naps for family fun. None of it had been a farce, staged for appearances in person or on social media. It was true contentment and joy, ending at the home we own, as a happy family unit. The house was clean and comfortable. There was plenty of food in the pantry and the bills were paid. I fed the girls and cleaned the kitchen, while Jake made soup to freeze for our new baby’s arrival. We discussed what movie we would watch and what kind of pizza we would order for our own private birthday celebration.

Compared to where I once was, my life is utter financially strained, middle-class bliss. There have been many times when I thought I would never have this. I prayed every night for half the man Jake is and God delivered. My husband is good, hardworking, funny, smart, ambitious, and an absolutely fabulous father. He’s a prideful, stubborn, know-it-all, who rarely shows any serious emotion, seldom apologizes, and drives me absolutely crazy. He’s also built a new career from the bottom, taken on every home improvement project I’ve dreamt up, financially supported us even through two rounds of IVF, and slept in an ICU chair for four days when I almost died delivering our girls. He’s gotten up in the middle of the night to clear the drains during a storm, chopped wood in freezing weather, and scraped my windshield without my asking. He’s changed countless diapers, soothed epic tantrums, and come home for lunch every day to help feed and play with his girls. He’s made it possible for me to stay home when I couldn’t handle leaving them. He’s comforted my every rational and irrational fear. Simply put, Jake is everything I ever prayed for and more.

We celebrated our first birthdays together when I turned 28, looking back on my single life; and when Jake turned 31, looking forward to new possibilities. My husband still isn’t one to anticipate his birthday with as much excitement as I do my own, but I find myself looking forward to it with increasing giddiness each passing year. I might have my very own holiday every September 9th, but every October 14th, I get to celebrate my best friend, whether that means cake and DnD or pizza and another viewing of the movie Warcraft. I get the chance to give my husband a day that’s all about him, where I can express my gratitude for the man that he is and the life he’s built with me. Jake wasn’t my way out, exactly, but he was the ultimate destination for a gal who wanted nothing more than a blissfully exhausting family life.

My mother once told me that she never minded getting older, until she no longer had anyone to do it with her. This past month, Jake and I celebrated our seventh set of birthdays together and with our girls: 35 and 38. I don’t mind those numbers even a little bit, as long as we get to celebrate the rest as a family, too.

The Worst Witch: Free on YouTube and Worth Every Cent

Posted on October 7, 2022 by Belle of the Library

When I was little, the 1986 film The Worst Witch was one of my favorite Halloween movies. I could never catch it when it was on TV, though, and eventually forgot all about it, replacing it with cinematic classics such as Halloweentown and Twitches, both of which could probably win Oscars when compared with the former. Ten years ago, I remembered this old favorite of mine, bought it on DVD, and now watch it a weird number of times throughout the month of October… and sometimes, like… March. Jake must occasionally wonder if he did, in fact, marry an awkward, chubby, 12-year-old, as he comes home for lunch to see me singing along to this terrible children’s movie, eating “candy salad” from a ramakin.

While Netflix has recently produced a much more polished version of The Worst Witch, based on the 1970’s book series, there’s something about Tim Curry passionately singing “Has anyone seen my tambourine?” that can’t be beat. Don’t you worry, though! You don’t have to buy this gem on Amazon. It’s free on YouTube, in its entirety, and it is worth every c. cent. Here are my thoughts, approximately 25 years after my first magical viewing.

Why does Mildred get all of the blame when she and Maud make the wrong potion? Maud was the one caught trying to sneak her spell book in, so she could cheat. Both girls were equally cavalier about the amount of each ingredient used. Why was Mildred the only one sent to Miss Cackle’s office?

As a kid, I really empathized with Mildred, but as an adult, I realize she’s kind of a mess… even for her age. She insists that she tries and can’t help the fact that things always go wrong, but she also admits to blatantly ignoring simple instructions, like gathering pondweed at midnight. How hard is it to read a clock, Mildred? These problems are of your own making…

… and yet, nothing excuses an educator speaking to a student like this: “Oh dear, Mildred. Oh Mildred, oh dear. You must be the worst witch in the entire school.”

Seriously?!?! She’s twelve. The conversation even ends with a playful “Was I nasty enough for you?” You mean when you told her that she ranked last in the whole school, because she made a potion incorrectly? How much room for error is allowed? Is not the punishment for failing a test a bad grade? This wasn’t even supposed to be the cruel teacher! Speaking of which…

… when Mildred and Maud are gossiping about Miss Hardbroom and she appears in their room to yell at only Mildred, did she curse her name like Lord Voldemort or is she always watching this child? That’s disturbing and I don’t think she should be allowed within 300 yards of a school.

I understand that the girls are awarded their cats in order of excellence, meaning the lowest performers get their cats last, but they still get cats. I don’t actually think this is a bad system. We coddle weakness too much, today. There’s nothing wrong with rewarding high performers and I am decidedly anti-participation trophy. That being said, who was in charge of procuring the cats and why couldn’t they find enough black ones? Black kittens are literally the most common color put up for adoption. Even if they couldn’t find a black cat for the lowest performer, why couldn’t they change the color in a world where humans can be turned into animals?

Ethel Hallow is one of the villains of this story. She’s a bully and deserves the criticism she gets for it. That being said, much of Mildred’s distaste for her is voiced in regards to her successes, getting upset at how often she does well in class or is chosen first for games.
“Just like her to be the first one to get her kitten to ride.”
Well, Mildred, if you actually made the effort you keep claiming you’re making in a high-pitched whine, perhaps you’d be more successful in school, too.

These villains are fabulous. I love that they plot their evil moves in song and dance, while wearing multi-colored robes, that match their hair. Once again, I am Team Villain.

Miss Hardbroom is clearly the Severus Snape of this tale and just like Snape, she never redeems herself.
“Ethel Hallow shows promise, Mildred Hubble, anything but. Mark my words, Mildred Hubble will never graduate as a witch from this academy!”
“That’s very good. Who’s that? Oh. Mildred Hubble. Four.”
What are the professional standards for educators in the wizarding world?!?! What does the interview process look like? Do they require teachers to hold vendettas against their least favorite students? Just as the Dursley’s made me cautious of British CPS, Miss Cackle’s Academy for Witches makes me pretty wary of their education system. Why doesn’t Miss Cackle take this Miss Hardbroom down a peg and remind her that her role is to support Mildred and build her up? Then again, why didn’t Dumbledore intervene in Snape’s abuse?

How did Mildred think ketchup was blood? She might not be the worst witch, but she might be the dumbest.

Mildred didn’t just scream in terror at the sight of ketchup, she screamed literally 21 times when Ethel came out of the bathroom wearing a mask. Why do these witches scare more easily than humans?

Why wasn’t Mildred suspicious of Ethel for being so generous as to loan her a broom, especially with the pointed and sinister comment “It’ll take very good care of you”? It wasn’t just Mildred, though. No one raised a brow to the school bully loaning a costly piece of equipment to the spaz who bested her in front of the whole school. Now that I mention it, are there not school brooms? My schools always had optional communal equipment, even if it wasn’t as high of quality as something you might buy personally. Hogwarts had school brooms and I have a hard time believing that an almost 400 years old international academy for witches wouldn’t. Is there a school-wide conspiracy to humiliate Mildred?

Why do these girls want huge, sexy noses if no one else in their world has them? This seems like an offensive stereotype of witches, when even the young and attractive ones, like Miss Spellbinder and Miss Cackle’s niece, Donna, don’t have them.

What frigging crossroads demon did Tim Curry make a bargain with and how many years are left in his deal? This man is a household name and has starred, almost exclusively, in movies that can only be described as fabulously terrible. You have not lived until you see Tim Curry’s disturbingly sensual music video cutaway from The Worst Witch, as he flies around in a cape singing about how gremlins are going to mess up every cassette from London to Idaho.

“Oh Miss Hardbroom, your girls? … I love it, Miss Hardroom. Let’s get this show on the road.”
I want to give the writers the benefit of the doubt, here, and assume they were going for flirty towards Miss Hardbroom, a consenting adult, but the Grand Wizard might be a sex trafficker.

“I was a fool to trust you! You abominable child, Mildred! Get out of my sight!”
“Go to bed without supper and I’ll see you in my office, tomorrow at noon.”
“If these are the witches of the future, I hate to think what the future will bring. What is this generation coming to? I’ve got to split. I’ve got another gig.”

It was a performance put on by children. It’s like a flashback to my years of softball… and basketball… and volleyball… and just gym class.

Why does “turn these witches into snails” turn witches in to snails, but “Ethel Hallow is now a frog” turns Ethel Hallow into a pig? Why does no one believe the former, when they saw the latter? I don’t understand the rules of magic in this world.

Why would Ethel confess to Maud, Mildred’s best friend, that she bewitched her broom, humiliating not just Mildred, but the entire school, in front of their Celebrity Rockstar King? Furthermore, why wasn’t she expelled for this, when Mildred is repeatedly threatened with expulsion for innocuous mistakes? Are there actual guidelines for expulsion or is this just the 80s?

“Once in a purple moon, there is a special young witch, who shines above the rest. Often, she goes unnoticed, because she’s out of step. I have seen this girl trying to fly. Oh, yes, I have. I’ve watched her at play and seen how her friends treated her. The best witch isn’t always the girl who comes out on top of tests. A true witch has witchcraft in her at all times… and this is what you have, Mildred Hubble.”

I… I don’t even know where to begin, folks. First of all, these are bold words from a man who cut his visit short, blowing off a feast that was prepared for him and dismissing an entire generation, because a child made a mistake in what amounted to a school play. Second, on what is he basing his praise of Mildred? He’s never even met her, which brings me to my third point. When was he watching her?!?! The Grand Wizard visits for the first time on Halloween night, but he’s “watched her at play and seen how her friends treat her”? I once had a man show up on my doorstep in a hoodie at 9:00 at night and tell me that he was a Mormon and wanted to come inside and speak to me about Jesus Christ… and I didn’t piece together the fact that that probably wasn’t entirely on the up-and-up for years. Y’all, even I can tell that the Grand Wizard is 100% buying children.

“Now, Mildred, have you made any plans for this unexpected holiday?”
“No, Grand Wizard. I suppose I’d better practice my flying.”
“Would you like to practice with me?”
“With you?!?”
“Oh, absolutely.” ::he said seductively::

The Worst Witch, y’all.12/10… would absolutely recommend.

Why does everyone have more money than we do?

Posted on September 23, 2022 by Belle of the Library

Just recently, Jake and I found the nicest public lake nearby. Living on the outskirts of the county, it’s nearby no one else, but the exact distance to the swim beach is 18 minutes from our front door. It’s small, clean, has picnic tables, grills, restrooms, and allows for boating, fishing, and swimming. After the distance, the second best thing about this little lake, is that it costs $5 per car, per day. The nearest aquatic centers costs more than that per person.

Last Christmas, my step-brother announced that he’d booked a company-owned luxury cabin, in Crested Bute, Colorado for Labor Day weekend. The whole family was welcome, at a discounted rate, which depended on how many committed. Because the cabin could only be reserved for four days, the plan was for everyone to stay at a nearby hotel for three to four more. My parents and all of my step-siblings were enthusiastically in, without private discussion, while Jake and I offered non-committal responses, knowing we’d talk about it in the car.

Though we didn’t wish to share the details of our financial situation with my entire family, from the beginning we felt it was optimistic, at best, to think we could take a family vacation in a year when we planned an embryo transfer, which costs about $4,000. So, with the final total up in the air, we tabled the idea, under the heading of “Wouldn’t That Be Nice?” In April, Zane clarified that the cost would be $100 per adult for the full stay at the cabin. Jake and I tentatively agreed that we could probably swing that, but that the hotel was out. In May, we received the wonderful news that we wouldn’t have to pay for an embryo transfer after all. In June, however, I read an article about how the used car market was going to get bad again and finally admitted that we couldn’t actually fit three children in rear-facing car seats in my Sorento.

So, we found ourselves the proud owner of a 2019 Chrysler Pacifica… along with a $1500 pending tag and title and a $100 car payment, when both of our cars had previously been paid off. It wasn’t a lot of money, but it was $1500 on our emergency credit card. All the while, my pregnancy was progressing and we needed to move the girls into the larger bedroom, so we could ready their old one for their baby brother. After purchasing a new closet kit, wood and brackets for the 360° shelves Jake built, stain, paint, brush and roller kits, curtains, and additional shelving to make the most of their small shared room from 1980, we were easily looking at another $1200 on said credit card.

In August, I conceded that Colorado just wasn’t doable. A 12 hour drive with 14-month-old twins would be miserable. With gas prices as they were, it would cost an additional $400 just to get there, making it no cheaper than flying. Flying on a holiday weekend sounded even worse with the current transportation issues, all for the equivalent of an extended weekend. We’d already put so much on the emergency credit card, yet still felt we could pay it off completely with our tax return, avoiding any interest. While we could justify charging new baby preparations, we just couldn’t bring ourselves to put a leisure trip on credit, even if it was during my 35th birthday. Instead, we would take our girls on their very first lake trip and save approximately $1,495. While everyone else was in Colorado, our family vacation would comprise a few hours less than 20 minutes away. So, in this time of 40-year-high inflation rates at 8.4%, historically high gas prices, soaring electric bills, and general financial discontent across the country, I sent a group text bowing out of the family vacation… and I was the only one.

Y’all, I try to remember that what other people do with their money is none of my business… and I have a lot of practice doing so. Even before I quit my job to stay home, I never got manicures. I cut my hair and Jake’s. I owned one purse, a leather Fossil bag, which I’ve been carrying for three years, as I did with each of the previous three. My clothes have always been bought on sale from Kohl’s, Target, Old Navy, or Amazon. I keep the newest or last edition phone, only for the camera, because I make annual photo albums. Jake’s was five years old until he got a free upgrade. We don’t have cable and keep our streaming services to a minimum. We rarely eat out, cooking at home with groceries we buy ourselves, sans meal kits. My weekly splurge is maybe a $10 sushi bento box, with Jake’s equivalent being beer. When we do get fast food, we literally always split something we buy with a coupon.

Don’t get me wrong .We’re not destitute or struggling without. We have nice computers, a 75″ TV, and quality furniture. Jake owns the newest XBOX and I the latest Cricut machines. However, these are already paid for, so we spend a lot of time at home and rarely do things that cost actual money when we go out. When we go to the zoo, I get a free pass from the library. We go to the park, farmer’s market, free festivals, church events, rodeos with tickets from Jake’s uncle. We stream new movies or check them out from the library. We host two separate DnD games every other week to maintain a pretty decent social life for parents of small children. For fun, I do various crafts and read, while Jake works in the yard or plays video games. Our tax returns go, primarily, to pay off the 0% emergency card or home improvement projects. Our mortgage payment is a little high, but it’s most certainly balanced out by the fact that we have very little debt beyond that.

I’m not complaining about my circumstances. I live in a nice, spacious home on over an acre, in a safe neighborhood, in a small suburb, in the state with the third lowest cost of living. I love my used car and Jake has no complaints about his 12-year-old truck. I like saving money and enjoy the challenge of finding coupon codes. Target clothes are enough for me. I enjoy painting my own nails. I don’t want a new purse. I’m content to be able to buy and cook good food. I’ve done the math on meal kit subscriptions and they’re a terrible deal, only slightly worse than eating out. I just don’t understand where people are getting their money and why they have so much more than we do. No matter how hard I try to be a good and non-judgmental person, I’m frequently left scratching my head at how people are affording their lifestyles.

With Jake’s friends and family, their circumstances at least make sense. His friends have largely gotten loans to start their family farms and run cattle. His sister has land and cattle because her husband once won quite a bit of money at the NFR and started his own business. One cousin is high up in oil and another helps run the family rodeo company. They’re also all 10 years older than us and most of them can’t even comprehend the term vacation, they work so hard. It’s not these folks who are confusing me and I genuinely hold zero bitterness toward them for their success. When looking at people our age, in similar life situations, though, I’m not bitter, but I am at a loss.

I’m not even on social media, but I still see some of my own family members, who’ve just bought their first home and had a baby in the same year, taking vacations, getting manicures, hitting Starbucks every day, and trying out expensive subscriptions, knowing that how much they earn annually places us firmly in the same bracket. They make similar money to what Jake and I do now or what we did before, but while paying for daycare. Still, they buy new cars, don designer handbags and jewelry, shop at pricey boutiques, and eat out all the time. They never seem to financially struggle during the holidays, whereas Jake and opted out of trading gifts between adults years ago. They had elaborate weddings, live on just enough land to cost some serious upkeep, and own farm animals that earn no revenue and essentially amount to expensive, but Instagrammable chores. They buy hundreds of dollars in gifts for their kids, keep them in stylish clothes and the latest tech, and take so many family vacations. I don’t even like to travel, but I’m still wondering how all these middle class people with small children are affording to do so, while Jake chooses a vacation horror movie on Netflix and I Google “fun and free family activities?”

I did not rejoice in the fact that my family all had to miss their flights and sleep on the airport floor with their many babies, came down with altitude sickness, got food poisoning, and experienced several Covid-19 cases during their Colorado trip… but I did rejoice in the fact that Jake and I didn’t put $1500 on a credit card to share in that experience. Similarly, I try not to somehow console myself with the idea that all of these people are drowning in debt. I truly hope that’s not the case, because although Jake and I had to pay $30,000 to have some babies, our house payment, new car payment, and minimum on the 0% credit card are the only monthly installments debts to our name. We also have investments, outside of Jake’s retirement. While they’re not as robust as they once were, with Bitcoin having bought us our babies, they still equal around $35,000. Additionally, although I’m staying home and these other couples earn two incomes, were I still working, the cost of daycare would have voided my pretty decent earnings when our boy arrives.. Even when Jake and I were both working, earning six figures together, we weren’t even able to daydream about keeping up with the Jones’s the way everyone else seems to be doing, so effortlessly.

What is it? Is everyone investing without me? Have they all inherited money? Are they printing it? Are they somehow not paying $4 per gallon in gas and $250 a month for electricity? Are the seemingly normal life expenses Jake and I experience so ridiculous? Do other people not need to have their thermostat replaced, upgrade their car with the increasing size of their families, repaint the occasional room, and save up for a new front door? Are these people, who seem to be living so lavishly in such similar circumstances to ours, somehow living in a pocket dimension where it’s the 1990s and a bag of frozen chicken doesn’t cost $30? Are they just spending more money? Do they have no savings? Are they all drowning in debt? Am I missing something, here? Am I just blind?

Ultimately, of course, I try to remind myself that the answers to these questions don’t actually matter. I have a nice life, one I’d have only dreamt of at one time. While we do make sacrifices to allow me to stay home, they’re both worth it to us and not that much greater than what we’d have been making were I working to pay for daycare. I wouldn’t turn down manicures, fancy haircuts, and massages, but I don’t feel my life is poorer without them. My children are too young to enjoy movie theaters, eating in a restaurant, or vacations. Jake and I appreciate the option to pause the movie on HBO Max and discuss or rant. We like cooking together every night, feeling it makes our marriage stronger. As for the Colorado trip, in hindsight, it seems we had much more fun watching The Hills Have Eyes after taking our girls to our new little $5 lake.

Still, no matter how hard I try to just mind my own busines, be thankful for all of many blessings, keep from looking into other people’s bowls… I can’t help but wonder, why does everyone have more money than we do?

I hate HGTV.

Posted on September 16, 2022 by Belle of the Library

Having grown up the fat, frumpy, awkward girl from a dysfunctional home, it has essentially been my life’s goal to be a cliché Basic White Girl. I jest, but sprung from an unstable foundation, I have genuinely always aspired to be an unremarkable suburbanite. At first, I aimed to be the working mom with an ideal career for a family. When life… shifted those plans, my new ideal became the stay-at-home mom and wife, who returns to work as a teacher or librarian, when her children reach school age. I want to spend my thirties and forties sitting in school drop-off lines, chaperoning field trips, having family game nights, hosting fantastic slumber parties, and embarking on family road trips, all without pretense.

While I’m well on my way to this hard-won life, there are a few trends that will forever expose me for the convert I ultimately am. I do love me some printed leggings, Converse shoes, Friends reruns, avocado toast, and romance novels; however I consider Starbucks and iPhones to be for shmucks, bestsellers virtually unreadable, reality television completely unwatchable, social media an utter waste of time, and wine reminiscent of Mass. Most of all, what keeps me on the outside of all Basic White Girl social circles, is my absolute hatred for HGTV.

I’ll enter my disclaimer here. I realize that a love of HGTV is, for *most*, another medium of the same time wasters and fantasy fuel I myself enjoy. I carry no actual judgement for these *people*. If you adore HGTV so much that you’ll find my *intense judgement* of the *channel* *itself* upsetting, I wouldn’t recommend further reading.

Aside from a handful of shows about families with over a dozen children, I’ve never been a fan of reality TV – a fact that will forever contribute to my inability to converse with my family at holiday celebrations. It’s not an elitist viewpoint, by any means. I watch plenty of trash television. I just prefer even slightly better acting and production values. While I wouldn’t cite that as a main reason for my HGTV loathing, it is a contributing factor. The disasters are just so telegraphed, the drama so rehearsed, and even a cursory Google search on the experiences of those who’ve actually been on the show will reveal that the “makeovers” are falsified in many ways. This is an issue with all reality TV, though. It’s not unique to HGTV. However…

HGTV largely disparages normalcy.

Does your patio lack acrylic hanging retro bubble chairs? Do you have family photos on your mantle, as opposed to an awkwardly large nautical statement piece? Have you yet to set up a Caffeinated Corner in your living room? Does your home actually have rooms? Well, that’s because you’re normal.

HGTV is fantasy fuel, but these things are fantasies for a reason. Living in spaces as formal, as loud, as stuffed to the brim with furniture would be overwhelming for most people. A couple of statement rooms and pieces, like a green kitchen, a deep blue velvet reading chair, or a plant corner, are enough of a “pop” for the average human, without lowering resale value. Of course, no one wants to watch a show where an average looking home is transformed into a slightly less average home with the addition of a single colorful accent wall, a patterned rug, or some new light fixtures. Unless you’re Pee Wee Herman, though, that’s likely going to be enough for your senses. I just don’t have the suspension of disbelief to look at the after photos of an HGTV room without a headache coming on at the very idea of spending every day there.

On the same topic, a common criticism of HGTV is the careers and corresponding budgets of their chosen contestants. Why does no one have a real job? Why is the budget always $900k?!? Is living in the state with the third lowest cost of living blinding me to real finances? No, actually. I just checked and it’s not. The average cost of a home in the United States is $354,649. The average in my state is $181,574. Jake and I paid $210,000 for a flip from 1980 with 2,300 square feet, counting the converted garage. It sits on 1.13 acres and has no HOA, because we’re not communists. Were we contestants with our budget on House Hunters, we’d be looking for garage apartments in Flint, Michigan.

Everyone’s house looks the same.

Somehow, while simultaneously looking down on average home décor, HGTV also manages to define the concept. When I was a kid, my mother refused to paint any room in the house any color other than white, insisting that it “makes the room smaller.” When I asked how that was possible, she conceded that while the room would still be the same size, colored walls would create the appearance of a smaller space. In hindsight, I understand her reasoning. It was the 90s, after all, and the average person knew very little about decorating and color theory.

In our modern world, this is no longer the case, as anyone who’s ever shopped for curtains or throw pillows can see from the targeted ads directing them to numerous interior design articles Yet, somehow, everyone’s living room is still painted a ridiculous shade of white called “gilded linen,” accented with “minimalist” furniture and light fixtures of wicker, bamboo, and rattan. The entire house is fitted with light colored wood, subway tile, shiplap, or marble, depending on the year it was decorated. The “eye-catching” features comprise a couple of plants, a gold-trimmed mirror, a neutral patterned rug, a wall of crosses and/or a sign declaring this .13 acre dwelling to be a “Farmhouse“. Chip and Joanna Gaines seem like lovely people, really, but my stars have they leached all the color from the world.

While the above accurately describes the varying degrees of Farmhouse Chic in the quintessential suburban/rural home, the trendy urban dwelling is positively bursting with retro 70’s colors and mod style art and furniture. Bonus points are awarded based on the number of thrifted, antique, or locally commissioned finds. Emerald green velvets, tropical patterned wallpaper à la my parents’ prom backdrop, yellow gold light fixtures, and so much wicker positively overwhelms the senses in these homes. One can’t decide if they should look at the vaguely pornographic statuary, the funky red velvet sofa, or the geometrically patterned accent wall.

None of these individual trends are bad things. A white room with light-colored wood can feel airy and light. A thrifted retro chair and brightly colored shelf or desk can draw the eye to a nice reading corner or home office space. The problem arises when normal folks in normal homes attempt to perfectly copy the spaces they see on HGTV shows, forgetting that humans will actually be occupying these showrooms. Perhaps in some cases, this look is truly what these individuals love, and it’s just not to my taste. I know people who detest color and others who abhor what they consider the mundane. If that’s the case, more power to them! I have seen so many variations of both of these extremes, though, from people who’ve visited Waco or the art museum one too many times, that I’d wager in many cases, it has more to do with getting the “right” look than the right look for them, whatever that might be… and I blame HGTV.

The choices are often impractical.

A researcher at heart and once by trade, I have actually taken quite a bit of care to avoid biased searches for this post, keeping my inquiries as general as possible, such as “interior design trends HGTV.” Still, I’ve found numerous examples of recommendations that are just completely and utterly pointless and/or impractical. The pointless ranges from a wall of clocks, to a fake mantel, to mounted decorative wooden doors, to words on the wall, my foremost detested popular décor since the first time I read the words “live, laugh, love.”

While I can ascribe what I see as pointless to a matter of personal taste, I simply cannot forgive the impractical, such as a chalkboard wall anywhere but a children’s space. Who is going to take the time to clear those shelves and counters to etch out cutesy diner drawings and phrases? How quickly is it going to get smudged? How thoroughly is it going to have to be cleaned to avoid that 1980s second grade classroom look? Who is going to dust all those knickknacks on that open shelf? What books are in those decorative stacks? Is that giant fig real? If so, what are the care instructions? If not, does it look fake up close? Why is the fireplace in the middle of the room, taking up so much space? Is it functional? If so, how does the room not fill with smoke when there are no doors? If not, why isn’t this space being occupied by something more useful or, at the very least, less structurally permanent?

Jake and I moved to our almost rural suburb of Cherokee, on the outskirts of the county, five and a half years ago. Do you know how many brick houses were painted white in 2017? Zero, because we live in a state known for it’s wind and red dirt.

What in the actual Hell, y’all? How do people not realize that these homes are going to be pink in five years? No amount of power washing is going to fix that and you can’t unpaint brick.

Why, oh why, would anyone want marble countertops? They’re more costly. They stain and are prone to etching if exposed to acid. They’re not especially heat resistant. They need to be sealed annually. There are arguably better options, but according to my research, right behind painted brick, marble is the trend of 2022, along with subway tiles. Just as with the chevron printed walls of 2010 and the grey on grey of 2015, these fads will also fade, only this time, it’ll be far more expensive to remodel.

Trendiness is expensive.

As you can see, the issues I have with HGTV all fall under the umbrella of their constant promotion of trendiness. I got a few of my examples for this post from an article titled Interior Designers Forecast 2022 Design Trends. It opens with a paragraph on the environmental impact of fleeting interior design choices and the importance of developing a long lasting personal style, before going on to push in vogue furniture, “more marble,” and even tiny homes. Other HGTV articles recommend contemporary furnishings, brightly colored chandeliers, and gold-touched wallpaper. Unless these things specifically appeal to you, they are going to get old fast, as they become just as dated as the Tuscan style décor of the early 2000s. They aren’t going to be cheap to replace, either.

When Jake and I bought our home, open floorplans were all the rage and had been for quite some time. While this is still a prominent layout in new construction, in a post-Covid world, people often find themselves working from home alongside their spouse and children. In time, open floorplans might become less popular… and that’s okay with me. Jake and I love the spacious feel of our great room, just as we love our granite countertops. We’ve no desire to erect walls or install marble to keep up with the times.

If you love your loud dining room wallpaper and furniture as much as I love the papasan chair in my red reading space full of plants, everyone else can go kick rocks. If you’re prying off your shiplap to put up subway tile, because you’ve heard that shiplap is on it’s way out, you need to turn off the TV. While it can be fun to play around with throw pillows, floor lamps, and wall art, as HGTV does encourage, the larger furniture purchases and makeovers really should be built around genuine personal preference. While I’ve seen numerous homeowners pushed to make pricey, fleeting, or impractical decisions, I have never seen personal taste come before modern style on any HGTV show… and as much I detest it, I’ve watched a lot of HGTV these last few years, which brings me to my final point.

HGTV gives me wartime flashbacks.

While all of the above reasons for my HGTV hatred are true, I’ll admit that I do possess a certain level of bias that has thrown that general distaste into flat-out loathing. Folks, I confess that I cannot watch HGTV without having flashbacks to Covid-19 infertility appointments. That chipper over voice plays, those preppy Urban White People costumes flash across the screen, someone says the words “open concept”… and suddenly I’m sitting alone in a waiting room, next to a chair with an ‘X’ taped on it, wearing a medical mask, Googling adoption horror stories to take my mind off the news.

There’s something about HGTV that is just so totally innocuous, that it has apparently been endorsed by the American Medical Association for it’s calming effect on anxious, primarily female, patients… because I rarely see it playing in any gender neutral office, such as the dentist. I get it. There’s simply nothing truly objectionable about the programming, in a broader sense. What could possibly be less threatening than home décor? Most certainly, in a year when every news story was about the number of deaths in various cities, it was the obvious choice. I suppose it worked in my favor, after all, that this experience didn’t ruin something I truly enjoy, like reruns of Friends or Bewitched… because even before it gave me flashbacks to one of the most difficult times in my life, I hated HGTV.

35th Birthday and 10th Blogiversary!

Posted on September 9, 2022 by Belle of the Library

I’ve been dreaming of writing this post for several years now. Having started this blog on my 25th birthday, I wondered if I’d ever make it here, still sharing my story with Future Belle and her readers. I imagined how my life would unfold over ten years. Would I ever get the job, meet the boy, buy the house, have the babies? I’m sure the overall picture is quite different in several ways, but I am undeniably happy.

You see, today I am 35 years old, a big number in the world of infertility, and I am a mother of two, soon to be three. While I never fully joined the online infertility community, I do occasionally dip my toe in and read stories from women still struggling and others who’ve survived. From the happily married and trying for years, to those still searching for love and unsure of whether they’re ready to take on single parenthood, it’s no secret that women hoping to conceive often dread and fear their 35th birthday. While we all rationally know that every body differs, we still hear echoes of generalizing doctors, aunts, and old wives’ tales warning us that if we’re not calling ourselves mothers by 35, there’s a strong chance we never will. We turn 31 and tell ourselves we have plenty of time. At 32, we get a little more anxious. At 33, we feel rushed. At 34, we start to panic. It’s positively triggering for women struggling with infertility to even think about 35.

There are so many choices in life, so many doors closed after one is opened, by the time we reach our mid-thirties. Over the years, I’ve coped with these missed opportunities through my own (probably scientifically inaccurate) interpretation of the Many-Worlds Theory. Somewhere, in a parallel universe, there is a Belle who works as a veterinarian specializing in large cats… in another, a successful travel blogger… in yet another, a respected theologist or historian. For years, I’d often slip into one of these imagined realities for a time, escaping the monotony of real life for a bit of adventure. Yet, I find myself doing so less and less often, these days. I’m not reporting a fascinating life to Instagram. My father does not live vicariously through me. I’m not a renowned academic, publishing scholarly articles. I’m not even a librarian anymore, something I’d never have imagined on the day I started this blog, ten years ago. Nope. I took the road more travel and I wouldn’t slip into one of these more interesting worlds for anything.

I’m a wife and a stay-at-home mom. My days are filled with sing-alongs, story times, and Target runs. I no longer lead meetings, attend trainings, or make schedules. The only emails I send are links for my Gramma, when she wants to buy something for my girls or the new baby. In ten years, on my 20th Blogiversary, I’ll likely be that respected professional, once again. I’ll put my master’s degree to further use and earn new anecdotal stories from my dad. Right now, though, my most wonderfully average dreams are being fulfilled. There have been several times in my life, when I’ve feared I would never have this, when this was the universe I visited. I’m happily married to my best friend, living in a home on one unremarkable acre, enjoying the most amazing days of my life to date, raising precious babies. One day, I’ll be interesting again, but here, on my no longer triggering 35th birthday, I am truly happy.

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