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I Am Hutterite by Mary-Ann Kirkby is a coming of age memoir by a woman who grew up in an isolated religious community and grew up to become a news anchor. The book begins with a bit of an explanation of why the author decided to take this trip down memory lane, and then leads into how her parents grow up, got married, had children, and eventually reaches the point where her parents decided to take their many children and leave the Hutterite colony in which they had lived, and also how Mary Ann herself reinvented herself to become “English’, and eventually became Mrs. Kirkby and established herself in the news business.

I’m really not a memoir reader. I dislike most non-history non-fiction. For some reason, I keep choosing memoirs from Thomas Nelson’s Booksneeze program, and I’m not sure why (perhaps because there isn’t much fiction in my preferred genres). However, I loved I Am Hutterite. It read like a novel, and had very little of the “but that was to change all too soon” in it.

While I’m pretty familiar with Amish and Mennonites (I grew up in and live in Amish Country in south-central Pennsylvania), I’d never even heard of Hutterites until a few weeks ago. I’d heard them all grouped together and was intrigued, but assumed that it was simply another sect like the Amish. Within days I noticed I Am Hutterite appear on Thomas Nelson’s Booksneeze page and immediately grabbed it. I’m so glad I did. I read the whole thing through on my recent vacation to Walt Disney World (and those who know me know that I rarely have time for reading there), and have just passed it on to my mother for her vacation. I highly recommend it.

Links of interest:Thomas Nelson’s Product Page, Book Preview

Disclaimer: I received a free copy of I Am Hutterite by Mary Ann Kirkby from Thomas Nelson’s BookSneeze program for the purpose of reviewing it.

Anyone remember my post where I ranted about our neighbors next door who thought it was perfectly acceptable to have band practice (complete with microphone and amplifier) from 11pm till midnight? Well, thankfully, they moved out (or perhaps were kicked out- we don’t know for certain).

The new neighbors are nice-ish. They don’t talk to us, we don’t talk to them, it’s all good. And even though there seems to be a lot of them (teenage girl has about 6 friends over often, 20-something guy has a handful of friends over, and older couple- assuming parents- 20-something guy seems to have a wife and a baby and a toddler), we’re not really sure who all actually lives there, and who just visits a lot. Thankfully, someone in that house seems to be 3rd shift so we hardly ever hear them after whoever leaves soon after we come home.

This story is not about them, however. I’m just happy to have neighbors that we can live with. No, this isn’t about the Jamaican family that used to live across from us either, who would have loud wailing chants at midnight during full moons (and once on Friday the 13th). This is a story about a relatively normal neighbor across the way.

There was a bird. An insomniac bird. Possibly an insomniac bird with turrets. This bird, for God-only-knows-why would wake up about 9 pm and sing incessantly until about 4am, at which point all the other birds would wake up. Oddly, however, all the other birds combined managed to not be as loud as this one bird. Seriously, we hear big rigs and trains going by our house that this bird drowned out.

Several times we considered killing it. Sometimes we considered asking the landlord to rip out its favorite tree. One night, our sort-of-normal neighbor was out having a smoke just as we came home. We did the fake half-smile-just-in-case-he-notices-us-and-we-have-to-be-polite thing. But he didn’t notice us. Instead, he sauntered over to the tree and stared at it for a moment. And then suddenly shook the hell out of that tree! We, of course, started laughing and got out of the van.

Not-so-normal-neighbor sees us, shakes his head, and says “Bloody bird. I shut him up before and he’s already back at it! I may have to shoot him.” (sounded a lot funnier with his accent and body language).

Have I ever considered dating online? Ummm… yes. Have I ever dated online? Ummm… can you define it?

Believe it or not, my first boyfriend ever was someone that I met online. I was planning a trip to Scotland and decided to try to find people who lived near where I was visiting so that I could meet people more easily. One of them decided that I should be his girlfriend and he eventually convinced me, too.

Now, I met him through ICQ (does that even exist any more?) and not through online personals, but to be honest, I used to trawl through the freebie dating sites just for fun.

I met a lot of really great guys online. Some of them flirted with me, one I very nearly dated, and a few became good friends. But aside from my first boyfriend I never dated any of them. Not that it was because I wouldn’t consider the idea- on the contrary! I simply had very low self esteem and unless a guy blatantly chased me down, I assumed he wasn’t interested. To be honest, even when they did blatantly chase me down I often assumed they were joking…

Now, my husband on the other hand? I didn’t meet online. I met him at work, where he had 8 hours a day to try to woo me. I guess it worked, as we’re celebrating our 4th wedding anniversary on Wednesday.