You would think that traveling would be good for getting reading done, but that’s not the case when you’re the one doing a majority of the driving! June was one of those months that had loomed large on my calendar for quite some time because I knew it would be crazy. Crazy with all good things, but crazy nonetheless. I hosted a quiet bachelorette weekend in Birmingham for my best friend from college, I went to the beach with my extended family, I completed my first spring triathlon, and I participated as a bridesmaid in the aforementioned friend’s wedding. And on top of that, I accepted a job that I started on June 29, so I found myself also wrapping up work with my freelance clients in preparation for that. So, I only read 4 books. Womp womp. Two were for Book Riot’s Read Harder Challenge, though, bringing my total left to complete on that list down to 7, one of which is well under way.

I bought this one on sale for Kindle some time ago and finally was in the frame of mind to read it. I loved Winner’s Girl Meets God, so I had high hopes for this one, but unfortunately it fell flat for me. I hoped to feel some kinship with the author on her journey through doubt, but it felt different from mine in a fundamental way: it seemed like, at the root of it all, Winner always knew faith would win out. Her struggle was more with the day to day of believing and not so much believing as a whole. A valid struggle, but I wanted meatier doubt. It felt much more disjointed than Girl Meets God, more like a journal than a cohesive book, which I supposed is why the subtitle includes the word “notes.”

I devoured this one at the beach. It was a good beach-y read: rather predictable, rather heartwarming. The premise was more creative than your typical chick lit novel, but it read much the same, and I enjoyed it well enough to stay up late one night on vacation plowing through it, but I won’t claim that it’s going to stick with me.

This was a difficult book to read because of its subject matter, not because of its writing. The writing, as one might expect from Erdrich, was extremely good. For whatever reason, I did not find myself heavily invested in this one, but I would definitely say it was a good book. Just be prepared for some intense and uncomfortable topics should you decide to pick it up. Sadly, that intensity is par for the course on many Native American reservations, and, in that sense, it’s good that this book got so much acclaim and adds to the repertoire of stories bringing the deplorable conditions many living on them face to light in the popular domain. This satisfied Task #9, a novel by or about a member of an indigenous culture.

I feel like a terrible Southerner, but I just Did. Not. Enjoy this book. I think I’ve also tried to read McCullers’ The Member of the Wedding and couldn’t get into it, either. This was the road block that led to my only finishing four books this month! I wrapped it up on the evening of June 29, and I’ve made it about a third of the way through an entire other book in the 2 days since then. This one didn’t hold my attention, I wasn’t invested in any of the characters, and I don’t understand what it was trying to do. I apologize to the Southern literary gods, but it was not my cup of sweet tea at all. Since I muddled through it, though, I can cross off Task #1 from the Book Riot challenge, a book published by an author under the age of 25.

I’m back to having a commute by train to my job, and I’m making sure to be intentional about reading during those ~40 minutes rather than piddling around on my phone. If the last two days are any indiciation, I will be back in business for getting some high numbers! The trick is just to make sure I look up long enough to get off at the correct stop…

I have a bone to pick with some words today. These are words I hear a lot in the bubble where I live, or see posted frequently on Facebook or other blogs. I’m at the right life stage for them to top-of-mind for a lot of people in my circle. They take on a few variations.

We’re thinking about starting a family. When are you planning to start a family?
We are excited to be starting our family!

Let’s be real: starting a family is used a euphemism for having kids. And that bothers me.

I started a family the day I said yes to Andy’s “Will you marry me?”

When you’re filling out a form at the dentist’s office and it asks about your family members, you list your spouse. My parents were married for a number of years before they had me. Does that mean they weren’t family until the day they brought me home from the hospital? That they weren’t a family when they moved across the country together? Many couples are unable to have children. Does that mean they can never be a family? Or, gasp, what if they dare to choose not to have children? Are they less of a family unit in their coupledom?

You might say it’s semantic to get so hung up on the wording, but what am I if not a pedant? I know that no one is doing it on purpose, but by phrasing the decision to have children as “starting a family,” you unintentionally discount the familial-ness of the childless.

How about we say it like it is?

We’re thinking having children.
When are you planning to have kids?^*
We are excited to start planning for a baby!

^*Side note: How about we also stop asking anyone this presumptious question, ever?

Is “child” a bad word? Is “baby” offensive? I’m anti-euphemism in most cases, and especially here, because there’s nothing at all dirty about using the real words.

Andy and I are a family. Full stop. When you think about it that way, it makes you realize how weighty a thing marriage is, really. You were born into a family, and maybe you get along with them, or maybe you don’t. You’ll always be part of that family. But when you leave the nest and get married, you have the amazing opportunity to build the family you want.

Your family isn’t born the day your first child is. Your family is born the day you reach out to a friend and invite her into your brokenness. Your family is born the moment you welcome a displaced friend to share your home while they’re down and out. Your family is born when you vow “for better or for worse, in sickness and health.” A friend of mine used the hashtag “framily” (FRiendfAMILY) on Instagram recently. She had just opened up on her blog about her struggles to conceive, and I know how much that “framily” means to her. She is in a family, baby or no.

Sometimes when Andy gets home he says, “Hello, family!” to me and the cat, and my heart swells a little at the word. (I’m not saying my cat is like your child. It’s totally different. But in my case, she happens to be a part of what I call my family.)

Andy and I are both only children, and last year my parents hosted a joint Thanksgiving celebration with my in-laws. We’re probably going to do that again this year. That’s what I call my family.

I know couples that have taken on a shared name when they married, such as HerLastName hyphenated with HisLastName or a portmanteau of the two (Hartley + Draper = Harper). What a lovely idea, to make that claim in your very name. “We are a family.”

But shared name or no, your spouse is your family. You can add to it by having a baby, you can welcome a new member into it, but you HAVE a family. And that’s beautiful and important and not something to be discounted with a euphemism.

Y’all, I killed it in May and read 8 books. Most of them were fluffy. One of them was a graphic novel that I read in an afternoon. BUT STILL. I read 8 books.

I’ve read 16 of the 24 for Book Riot’s Read Harder Challenge. This month I totally stalled out trying to read The Last of the Mohicans as my book published before 1830. Anyone have a recommendation for that category that might strike my fancy a little better?

Also pretty much abandoned this month: The Zen of Social Media Marketing. Nonfiction has to be really good to keep my attention.

I enjoyed this one enough to give it 4 stars, though I think Weiner’s wit and verve come through a bit better in some of her other books (i.e. I really like Cannie Shapiro). It would be a great beach read, but it’s not overly fluffy. The relationships have enough heft to them that they give you food for thought.

Goodreads reviewer Susan nailed the review of this one:

We didn’t like this book. We don’t like stories told in first person plural. We felt this made the story unnecessarily vague and lacking the personalization that would endear the story to the reader. We felt that the author perhaps told the story in this manner to avoid having to be detailed. But we felt that lack of detail lessened the impact of what was taking place.

I read a similar book about the wives of the first astronauts, and it was the individual details that made it fascinating. I did learn a lot I didn’t know about Los Alamos, and I flew through the book while on a backpacking trip, but it wasn’t particularly enjoyable. 2 stars on Goodreads.

This was a fun, light read. I like Sophie’s voice a lot. It felt as familiar as reading a blog, which makes sense since she is a blogger! I found the Scripture mentions to be a bit jarring. It was clear from the whole book that the author is a person of faith, but the exact Scripture references felt forced, as if “Oh, this is being published by a Christian publishing house, we’d better put some Scripture in!” Other than that I enjoyed the book.

This was a lovely, engrossing book. I’ve read it described as a teenage love story, but I think that’s far too reductive. It was quiet, but in an enjoyable way. May’s book club read (though we aren’t meeting to discuss it until June!)

I probably don’t appreciate the illustrations as much as I should (I am the girl, after all, who, as a child, told her mother, who had bought her beautifully illustrated books, “I just want to look at the WORDS!”), but I’ve enjoyed both of the Maus books. It’s an interesting take on a fascinating and horrific survival story. Very readable, and quick to get through. I wonder if there will ever be a third! My heart sort of broke over the father-son relationship and how distressed the father always seemed to be.

Another beach-y read. I’ve never read any Dorothea Benton Frank before because I had written her off as total fluff (although, who am I kidding, acting like I’m above that), but this was really enjoyable. Except for the habit Frank has of writing dialogue where the speaker starts every sentence with “Ashley?” or whatever the listener’s name is. That drove me a little crazy!

I really liked this book. As a blogger myself, it was fun to read about a character who was a blogger (though I was jealous of how easily she seemed to grow her audience!). I loved the main character’s voice, and the sense of place evoked in each new location she called home. My only reasoning for the 4 stars I gave it on Goodreads is that I felt the ending was a bit too easy. I won’t spoil anything, but I thought the relationship that becomes central to the book deserved some more weight when it was rekindled. BUT, I now really want to read Adichie’s other books!

An absolutely delightful book! I honestly can’t come up with a single critical thing to say about it, except maybe for the fact that it defies description, because no summary of it I’d ever read before had made me want to pick it up. It always sounded weird and vaguely creepy and not like something I would enjoy. It was Modern Mrs. Darcy’s inclusion of it on the summer reading guide that finally convinced me to give it a shot, and boy am I glad I did! I would follow that woman into the pages of any book.

Currently reading: Still: Notes on a Mid-Faith Crisis by Lauren Winner. I’m sure I’ll have a lot to say about that one.

Next week I am going to the actual beach and have purchased a book that I intend to read on said beach, which darn well better be beachy!

On Monday I rode my bike 10 miles along the Silver Comet Trail.

6 months ago, those words would have been unfathomable to me. First of all, that I even have a bike. Second of all, that I strapped it onto my car and drove it to a trail. And finally, hello!, that I RODE it, for 10 miles, no less.

I never learned to ride a bike as a child. I mastered a tiny one with training wheels, but when my dad took them off for me and I started off down a small hill for momentum, I got to the bottom and forgot to pedal. In my memory, I crashed. In my dad’s memory, he was right there and he caught me (the latter is probably true). But either way, the experience was traumatic and embarassing enough for me that I didn’t touch a bike outside of a gym for nearly 20 years.

A photo posted by Laura L. (@lclindeman) on Mar 18, 2015 at 2:12pm PDT

I skirted the issue of my inability for most of my life. As a competitive swimmer, my afternoons and summers consisted of long hours in the pool rather than lazy cycling trips around the neighborhood. And in the sprawling, car-loving cities where I’ve made my home as an adult, commuting by bike is relegated to a brave rank of which no one is an assumed member, least of all me.

My husband Andy took it upon himself to teach me one of the first summers we were married. I tottered around a church parking lot near our apartment complex a few times. We bought me a helmet. But with little easy access to riding paths, I never progressed from there. We sold my bike when we moved because it was never ridden, and Andy’s was stolen shortly after we arrived in Atlanta, so we’ve been bikeless for awhile.

And yet. I’ve wanted to do a triathlon for years. Everyone always says the swimming is the hardest part, and I’ve got that down pat. I can run when I put my mind to it. It was just the biking, looming large in my psyche, scaring me away.

For whatever reason, I decided 2015 was the year, and I signed up for a sprint triathlon on June 21. But where to begin with learning to ride a bike?!

A friend turned me on to a True Beginners class offered by the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition, so I decided to start there. I woke on the designated Sunday with a belly full of nerves, which were quickly assuaged once I got to the class. Here were 7 other competent adult people who shared my dirty little secret of not knowing how to ride a bike! We each told our bike stories, all of us with slightly different reasons that we never conquered the two-wheeled beast and all of us with different motivations for finally wanting to learn. It was equal parts therapy and instruction. You can hardly imagine the relief it was to realize I wasn’t alone, the fellowship I felt with these people, the validation of myself it was to meet them all. With some guidance and some patient gliding, I eventually found myself peddling before the class was over.

A photo posted by Laura L. (@lclindeman) on Feb 8, 2015 at 4:44pm PST

Every step of the process was a new fear for me to overcome. Ordering a bike rack for my car, which I needed to do before I could buy a bike, elicited an afternoon’s worth of anxiety over 1-star reviews. How would I know if it would damage my car or if it would fly off in the middle of the road?

Next to buy a bike, which was equally as foreign for a novice. Who knew what I should be looking for in Craigslist posts? Who knew what questions I should ask of the bike shop clerk? I found an inexpensive refurbished road bike that seemed fine. The price was right. But it was the strangest feeling not to have the confidence to try it out. I bought it practically untried because the path behind the bikeshop was so crowded as to make me nervous.

I loaded it on my rack and got it home. The rack stayed firmly put, which was a small win. I was wobbly when I finally got on the bike, as it had been weeks since my beginners class and I hadn’t touched one since then.

It was frustrating, to feel so unsure of myself. To want to be able to do something so badly and yet to have my body so ill-attuned to my wishes. I felt a flutter of worry every time I swung my leg over that uncomfortable seat. And yet I kept doing it. I rode a little at a time, every week or so. I got less wobbly, I trusted my abilities more. I was worried, though, that my triathlon was coming up quickly and I still hadn’t ridden any substantial distance at a time. Could I even do it? Was I capable? I finally decided I just had to try.

On Monday, a holiday, I loaded up the bike. I drove to the trail. I unloaded the bike. I put on my helmet. And I rode.

At various points on the path I found myself with a big goofy grin on my face. “I’m doing it,” I thought, “I’m really, truly riding a bike!” I rode from mile marker 0.0 to a bench at 5.3, and stopped to eat a granola bar and text Andy about my triumph. I climbed back on and rode back to the parking lot. Thanks to months of intense spin classes, my muscles were in fine shape. It was the mental block I had needed to overcome.

On Monday, I rode my bike 10 miles along the Silver Comet Trail.

And isn’t that a microcosm of every scary thing we ever confront in our lives? You start out with questions you aren’t even sure how to ask. You tackle the smallest step to equip yourself. You shakily take the next one. You shy away and cower for awhile, too fearful to make progress. You chip away again. And finally you do it. You do it. You do the scary thing. You ride the bike.

On Monday, I rode my bike for 10 miles. I’m finally excited, rather than fearful, for my triathlon in just a couple of weeks. Who knows if I will ever be comfortable riding on the roads and using my bike to commute? But it doesn’t really matter. On June 21, I’ll be able to say that I’ve achieved a long-held goal of completing a triathlon. And I can already imagine how sweet that will feel.

I think every woman should own a solid pair of black pumps. They should have a sturdy heel and be relatively comfortable. The heel should be high, as high as you’re comfortable with, and they should click and clack on the hard floor. They should make you stand up a little straighter, stride a little more confidently, and look like you have legs for miles.

Mine are by Naturalizer. Yours can be from Payless, or from Christian Louboutin. You should pull them out to wear to that wedding with the kick-ass dress. They should be your go-to for the interview and the nerve-wracking meeting at work. Your jeans look amazing with them when your husband takes you out on a date.

Maybe they’re shiny. Maybe they’re suede. Maybe they’re stillettos, or maybe they’re not.

Whatever they are, they should be yours. Your power pumps.

I hate the word “pumps.” It sounds so dowdy and old-fashioned. And yet dowdy and old-fashioned are anything but how I feel in my shoes.

I hear ya if you hate wearing heels. Maybe your power pumps look more like ballet flats, or construction boots. It doesn’t really matter what they look like. What matters is how you feel when you slip them on your feet.

I was tearing apart my closet last night trying to decide what to wear for an appointment today. I wanted to strike the balance of casual but put together. I didn’t want to go business-y, but I didn’t want to wear flip flops, either. I had the shirt and dark jeans. I even had the necklace and the earrings. But I couldn’t get it quite right on the shoes.

Until I pulled out my trusty pumps. I forgot about them because I wasn’t going for business wear. They were literally dusty from sitting on my shoe rack since whenever the last time I wore them was. I stepped into them and my head snapped up a little higher. I stood in front of the mirror and whispered to myself, “Nailed it.”

I felt like a million bucks. And that–that’s what the power pumps are for. They’re not for making me taller, or for proving my femininity, or for fitting into a certain mold. I couldn’t really care less what mold you put me in, as long as I’m comfortable in my skin. Call me whatever you want. I’ll just be over here beaming with pride in my power pumps.