Many small things to mention that will hopefully equal a whole post

• I’m still slightly ill. It’s migrated to my chest but hasn’t vacated my head yet. I had days where I just wanted to take a pile of blankets and make myself a nest in the center of the living room floor. It’s a reasonable location to position myself while being partly-dead. It’s central to all activity in the house so even if I’m not feeling human,I can at least do a half-ass job at motherly supervision
• Everyone else in our household seems to be sick now too
• I finished Her Kind of Want by Jennifer S Davis .It was one I chose for The Southern Reading Challenge. Reminiscent of Flannery O’Connor, the short stories capture human authenticity beautifully.This I can appreciate .This collection of short stories has one common theme running through them: men suck, women are left disappointed,hurt and wanting. My only regret is that I read all the stories at once. That much anti-male sentiment is too much for me to take doled out in large doses.Alongside female characters who are failing to take control of their own life - they’re trying, I give them that - ….. I just feel frustrated and heartbroken after reading it all at once.
• Now I’m reading Armageddon in Retrospect bu Kurt Vonnegut and Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden . I’m also checking out recipes in The Hungry Girl Cookbook
• Nicole is moving out. This week,I think. Soon,anyway. This has enabled me to purge kitchen cabinets and linen stash to help her out in her move to independence. It’s positive all the way around.
• We found a snake yesterday sunning itself on the rocks by the back porch.He seems to have taken up residence under the back porch. We thought it was a copperhead. Not a usual find in NY but still…it’s happened. As it turns out though, it’s an Eastern Milk Snake. As much as I am grateful it turned out to be a non-venomous snake, I’m still not impressed. I’m not a bloodthirsty snake-killer but I’d rather he just go live underneath someone else’s backporch.
• My oldest son is graduating from high school in one month. That brief statement on the matter is about all I care to say at the moment
• My youngest son is now totally weaned. I’ve become reacquainted with larger doses of things I love such as caffeine and alcohol. I should contact La Leche League and tell them to add “Breastfeeding hinders a woman’s chances of becoming a beer-soaked lush at night and over-caffeinated hyperspaz during the day” to their list of “Reasons to Breastfeed”:

A rather brief update this morning. I’m still having keyboard issues that drive me insane and me and the 2 youngest kidlets have a yucky spring cold so I’m in a forced hiatus from blogging.I have however rediscovered my love for clean sheets of college ruled lined paper and found that blogging/the computer  is perhaps the sole reason I have a notebook full of writing projects that have gone untouched and underdeveloped for far too long. When I type on the computer, I get far too distracted by all the social networking devices. It’s like me going to a coffee shop where all my friends frequent to sit and write. The paper will remain very blank.

Oh…and i need to update with this:

My Southern reading Challenge list:

1. Her Kind of Want by Jennifer S Davis (already started reading this and I LOVE this author. Comparisons to Flannery O’Conner are accurate)

2.Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier

3. Welcome to the World,Baby Girl! by Fannie Flagg

Today’s Randomosity

1.It’s extremely hard to type when the spacebar on your keyboard is not functioning properly.

2. In Jurassic Park, Jeff Goldblum is kind of sexy. This has gone unnoticed by me until this morning.And really,it could be just that I haven’thad enough coffee yet.

3. Coal stoves are extremely heavy and difficult to move. They justify keeping a man around the house.

4. Tendinitis + carpal tunnel = pain. And not the good kind of pain you like when you’re a little masochistic.

5. When you’re playing croquette and find a dead baby bunny and pose for a photo with both dead bunny and croquette mallet, people might get the wrong idea.

6.

I hate my keyboard right now with a passion

7. I want to steal my son’s Kyuss tshirt.

Days gone by without a real entry. Mother’s Day stuff to write about. Other stuff to muse about, like the rock and roll conspiracy to make us all vegetarians.

But I knitted so much yesterday, my hands are killing me today.typing - ow. Just took meds.Considering wrist brace,even though I hate that thing. Must knit more.Must clean living room so someone from Freecycle can come take the coal stove and haul it away today. Must find kitchen table.Must finish multitude of projects begun . Above all…must knit.

Real content here later.

Silly Internet Quizzie
I got a kick out of these results. There are people who can’t stand me?? Oh, I never heard of such a thing. Everyone loves me!

You Are Cilantro

The bad news is that there are some people who can’t stand you. The good news is that most people love you more than anything else in the world. You are distinct, unusual, fresh, and very controversial. And you wouldn’t have it any other way.

Things I Managed To Do This Week

1. Rearranged the girls’ bedroom.
2. Learned that Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz never had ruby slippers (in the book) - she had silver boots
3. Won a Bitch of the Week award
4. Started knitting a sweater for my mother
5. Planted herbs and veggies
6. Developed a little crush on Josh Homme .
7. Cleaned out the kitchen cabinets and got rid of a ton of crap
8. Cleaned & organized my Pretend Studio space (it might feel less pretend if I wasn’t sharing it with the washing machine and the litter box)
9. Revisited childhood favorites Le Ballon Rouge and The Secret Garden.
10. Weaned The Little Guy and got him to sleep in his own bed.Allllll night long.
11. Made some business deals
12. Mastered the art of dealing with anger & resentment in a passive-aggressive manner.

I’m ready for the weekend.

Debi and Heather are bad influences. They urge me to do things I shouldn’t do. They’re those kids you hang out with in junior high - the ones always getting you to do stupid things like set fire to the desk in math class or add something vile to Ms Brown’s coffee when her back was turned.

Wait…that was high school.Nevermind.

Junior high shenanigans were probably sillier and now the things I do that I shouldn’t involve finding ways to swallow up already my limited time and giving me things that help me avoid doing dishes.

After stating that Southern fiction is probably my favorite genre, Debi insisted that I must sign up for The Southern Reading Challenge . Must. She forced me,I tell you! There was much coercion. I was forced to surrender and add my name to the Mr Linky .

Book list to come.

Then Heather…evil Heather…pointed me in the direction of The Summer of Socks knitalong . I do love knitting socks,you know. Well, I think everyone knows that. Heather promised there would be cookies or at least dpns. I’m sure these are empty promises but there are socks involved,so I’m in.

She also suggested I need to spend more time on my Ravelry account . I do agree with this. She’s right. No pushing needed there.

It’s all good,though. Actually, this will ensure I have plenty to keep me occupied at the playground and wherever else life takes me this summer. A good Southern read in the hot sun and small,compact socks instead of a mountainous pile of wool and/or other fiber to knit.

Now I need to find people who want something other than black socks on their feet. I’m a little bored w/ black socks,honestly!
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Some Twelve Word Reviews

The Torture Playlist: Music used in American military prisons during interrogations,as breakdown tactics and to drown out screams - Metallica says they’re honored to contribute to “war against terror”.I’m disgusted.
(Rage Against the Machine- not honored. Sent letter to State Department to say so. This is why I love Rage Against the Machine.Metallica - not so much)

The Rainbow Fish (revisited a thousand times over)- Capitalist fish hoardes sparklies. Gets lonely. Spreads wealth evenly. Communist conversion complete.

These things are never right for me. This one ,however, is pretty damn accurate.

What Rebecca Means

You are wild, crazy, and a huge rebel. You’re always up to something. You have a ton of energy, and most people can’t handle you. You’re very intense. You definitely are a handful, and you’re likely to get in trouble. But your kind of trouble is a lot of fun. You are friendly, charming, and warm. You get along with almost everyone. You work hard not to rock the boat. Your easy going attitude brings people together. At times, you can be a little flaky and irresponsible. But for the important things, you pull it together. You are full of energy. You are spirited and boisterous. You are bold and daring. You are willing to do some pretty outrageous things. Your high energy sometimes gets you in trouble. You can have a pretty bad temper at times. You are very open. You communicate well, and you connect with other people easily. You are a naturally creative person. Ideas just flow from your mind. A true chameleon, you are many things at different points in your life. You are very adaptable. You are usually the best at everything … you strive for perfection. You are confident, authoritative, and aggressive. You have the classic “Type A” personality.

Well, after deciding to not particiapte in any more online reading challenges,I changed my mind and signed up for this one: The 1% Well-Read Challenge

Based on the books listed in 1001 BooksYou Must Read Before You Die, the challenge is to read 10 books on the list in 10 months (10 of 1001 is about 1%,you know).

There’s this awesome Excel spreadsheet made to calculate what percentage of the 1,001 books you’ve already read but unfortunately, I only have Excel viewer and couldn’t seem to edit the spreadhseet to annotate which books I’d already read.Pooey. There are quite a few books on the list I have already read and many that I’ve been meaning to and just haven’t done so yet.

I tried to pick books that were already on my bookshelf that I want to get read so I can make the decision to keep or not to keep (part of that whole decluttering process I’m so into lately). Here are the 10 I have chosen:

1. Little Women ,Louisa May Alcott (I read it when I was 11 years old. I think it’s time to re-read it. I think I’ll follow it up with March by Geraldine Brooks)

2. Memoirs of a Geisha,Arthur Golden

3. Mrs. Dalloway,Virginia Woolf

4. Heart of Darkness , Joseph Conrad (one of my son’s favorite books and one he has been urging me to read)

5. Smilia’s Sense of Snow,Peter Hoeg

6. Sister Carrie, Theodore Dreiser

7. The Name of the Rose ,Umberto Eco

8.Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole

9. The Once and Future King,T.H. White

10. Undecided

Dear Person Who Fucked Up My Bike Trailer,

What the hell did you do to it??? Both tire rims are bent.Both. Did you just completely run over it and then back over it? I don’t know what you did but I’m pretty pissed. See, my bike with the attached trailer are sitting in MY driveway. Usually, when a driveway belongs to another person, you don’t try to park you’re vehicle in it and if you do feel the need to pull into someone else driveway, it’s standard operating procedure to look and see if there is anything IN the driveway that you might hit.

I guess I should just be glad it wasn’t one of my kids you hit.

My bicycle is my only mode of transport and the attached trailer not only carts around my smallish child but enables me to haul things,such as fruits & veggies from the Farmer’s Market or thrift store/yard sale find or the cat the the vet(yeah,she didn’t really like that but she survived) or returnable bottles and cans to the store or library books or packages to be mailed from my entrepreneurial endeavors.

Hence, with a fucked up bike trailer, you’ve made my life more difficult than it needs to be. You suck.

The Jane Austen situation amuses me. I have English teachers who I have the utmost respect and admiration for confessing that they’re not crazy in the least about Jane Austen, people I consider to be well-read and intelligent categorizing Austen as a great cure for insomnia and then there’s others who assert that “Jane Austen is a requirement for any reader who claims to be in any way literary.”

The sagacious Sanity suggested I go ahead and watch the movies and see if there’s any interest beyond it to explore Jane Austen further. I say this is a great idea.

Look forward to Twelve Word Reviews - The Jane Austen Edition.

Now for some recent non-Jane Austen reviews:

A Concise Chinese-English Dictionary for Lovers by Xiaolu Guo-First-person broken-english.Seldom heard cultural perspective coming of age story.Delightfully intriguing.
(Another Blogger has a book review here.
She found the protagonist to be “a moron” and annoying but when I read it,I just thought of it as driving the point home that she wasn’t educated and extremely naive because of the culture and environment she was raised in. The stupid things she did were all part of her learning experience as she’s thrown into a culture she doesn’t understand and with limited social experiences.)

It doesn’t count as part of the 12 words if I put it in parenthesis,right??

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11th Hour-The earth has all the time in the world and we dont.
(check out the special features for the “Religious Perspectives”.Nice addition)

Lars and the Real Girl - Lars’ girlfriend is a sex doll.Not trashy like it sounds. Wonderful.

Does this Clutter Make My Butt Look Fat? by Peter Walsh - a dieting book that’s more about how you live. It makes sense!

Mouse Guard: Fall 1152-graphic novel featuring mice my cat would be scared of.Beautiful illustrations.

Arrested Development,Season 3- Episodes 1-6 - I love Charlize Theron as Rita. I even have the same backpack.
(ok,except my backpacks are a moose & a bee, not a duck)

Big Love,Season 2,Episode 20:Kingdom Come - Nicolette/Nicki thinks oral sex is gross.One more reason to hate her.