READING: All The Way Home: Building a Family in a Falling Down House

I made one of my bi-weekly forages into the local bookstore the other day. It seems I get a rather peculiar itch when I haven't read a book in the last 72 hours. In order to assauge the longing that overcomes me, I regularly pillage my own bookshelves and those of family and friends and neighbors and people I barely know as well as the shelves of the local bookstore.

I know what I like. Or at least what I like at the moment: Nonfiction. Memoir. A bit gritty. A lot of heart. And something for me to really chew on.

Fortunately, last week, I happened across this book by David Giffels, a journalist in Ohio, about a journey he undertook 10 years ago with his wife when they purchased a decrepit, condemned, old mansion and spent the next several years turning it into a home while raising a family.

I liked the book so much, I now want to buy my own falling-down mansion and rebuild it.

Giffels and his wife bought the house for 1/3 of its original value and then had to evict racoons, spiders, termites, squirrels and birds from its rafters. In the first thirty days that he owned the home, he had to install a new roof, new plumbing, new electricity and a new heater so that they could live in the house. He then spends the next few years fixing every entrance, every floor and every wall. Not one surface in the home has not been damaged by years and years of neglect.

The tension comes as we watch this young father with limitless energy and workaholic attributes try to build a nest for his growing family while spending less and less time with them. He spends so much time away from them and absorbed in this project of rebuilding that his family begins to suffer. He thought he was going to shape a home for his family but the house actually begins to shape him. He is so obsessed that one night his pregnant wife pleads with him to just sit with her for a little while and leave the house alone for one night. He can't bring himself to do it. As she drifts off to sleep he tiptoes out their bedroom door and downstairs to work on the house for several more hours. Eventually he has to decide which means more to him: the house or his family?

It's a good read. It wasn't deeply intellectual or highly spiritual or even particularly emotional, but I just loved it. The high drama for me was watching someone work and work and work to make a dream a reality and doing it for all the right reasons.

I could use some of that kind of drama in my life.

Whatchoo Doing?

Just a sampling of some of the thoughts that have been running around in my head today. None of it is enough for a more formal review yet, but each of these items have made me think in some way and I wanted to capture these thoughts. I may choose to review the books or movie later or I may not. But these are some of the things that have my temporary attention.

Reading:

• The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan, [go organic, locally-sourced food and sustainable farming! I want to live just like this.]
• Desperate Marriages by Gary Chapman, [Can any marriage truly be saved? This book seems to give that hope. Bless his heart, I hope so.]
• All the Way Home: Building a Family in a Falling Down House by David Giffels [Can I buy a broken-down mansion too?]

Watching:

• The Business of Being Born

I wrote about wanting to see this movie a few months ago. I'm completely inspired by the power and vulnerability of a woman giving birth. So, I finally got to see the movie and loved it in some ways and took issue with it in other ways. I really loved how it ended too. The documentary deals with a lot of ideals in birthing and then ended with a not-so-perfect birth situation and that was heartwarming to me too. Likely because it reminds me that I can have ideals too but sometimes life doesn't always play out according to my ideals.

At times the movie felt a bit too much like a girlfriends' klatch with "girl power" reigning supreme. But then that is exactly the feeling I think needs to be inserted more into our birthing views. More welcoming of women's keen intuitive powers and emotional support systems. Science is very good and well in its proper place, but in our too-strong reliance on science's narrow focus, we sometimes forget words like: magical, powerful, warmth, unity. The spirituality and emotion that can accompany the miracle of birth seems marginalized and anesthetized away at times. There is a rare glimpse of true beauty that comes from holding and helping a woman who is bearing down as blood, water, pain and joy erupt into new life. It isn't the kind of experience that can be neatly packaged and produced before the 5 o'clock news or after a good night's sleep.

I like what this movie makes me think about: greater respect and greater attention to this oh-so-powerful and oh-so-daily miracle of life.

Reading: Gluten-Free Girl

I finished reading this book, Gluten-Free Girl: How I Found Food That Loves Me Back . . . And How You Can Too, over a month ago. It comes from one of the first websites I happened across a few years ago when I really started getting interested in blogs. The blog and the book are by a woman named Shauna James Ahern. She was diagnosed with celiac disease when she was in her mid-thirties and writes that learning to eat gluten free revolutionized her life.

Always a cook, Ms. Ahern really pulled out all the stops once she was diagnosed with celiac disease and had to learn to eat in an entirely different way. That is how her very popular blog Gluten-free Girl began. She would spend hours in the kitchen each night cooking and baking delicious, succulent, yummy food that was free from gluten and that made her fall in love with food all over again. Then she photographed and wrote about it on her blog.

In the space of three years, Shauna's health improved dramatically as she ate gluten-free, her blog became well-known, she changed jobs, she was given her first book deal, she met a man who is a chef and who she refers to as "Chef" on her website, she married Chef, and now she is expecting her first child at the age of 41. It has been quite a ride for her and she has blogged about it all.

I find Shauna's blog writing is thick with descriptions of tantalizing, amazing food. Sometimes I get hungry just reading her words. She is also a romantic in her writing--which isn't a bad thing, it just wears a bit thin at times for me when everything she does is inspiring and beautiful and chock full of meaning.

Her book is a bit different than the blog. She doesn't just compile a bunch of her blog entries into a book which is what other bloggers have essentially done with their book deals. Shauna instead writes a sort of "food history" of her life: what she typically ate growing up (white bread and packaged foods), how her food tastes changed as a young adult (she experimented with all kinds cuisines: ethnic, vegetarian, organic, etc.), how certain foods ultimately made her very, very ill (the symptoms of celiac disease), and how she experienced her own food revolution when she cooked and ate gluten-free. I really enjoyed this part of the book as opposed to some of her other reviewers who found this part a bit tedious. In fact, I was so inspired by Shauna's writing that I wrote a food history of my own.

Shauna also delves deeply into the challenges of eating gluten-free: the shopping, the investigating, the limitations, and the triumphs. I think what I like best about her book though is her attitude. She does not feel deprived by eating gluten-free. In fact, she feels like it is a great blessing because it has given her her health again.

So, pick it up and give it a perusal the next time you are at the bookstore. You might find her journey as interesting as I did.