Summer Time=Less Blogging Time

It makes sense, no? The kids are home which means my time is more limited...or at least the time I have online. By no means am I complaining. I am thoroughly enjoying the time with the kids, the free schedule, the day trips to the pool and everything else that summer brings.

Emily and Katherine are off for a couple of days with my sisters. So far they have had pedicures, gone to dinner and gone to a movie. I am sure they are having an awful time! Julia has been enjoying some "Mom, Dad and Julia" time which has been nice. Ryun took her out to run errands this morning and we both took her to "Twilight Tales" at the library which she loved. Tonight was "Pajama Party" night so she went in her pj's. We listened to stories, made a dream catcher and had a snack. I am going to take her to "Story Hour in the Park" tomorrow morning. We may head to my parents to swim after that.

Ryun and I thought about going to see Eclipse tomorrow afternoon but the timing does not look like it will work out. My father was going to watch Julia for us but the movie times aren't coordinating with what will work. We may go Thursday instead but we will have to see. And yes, I briefly considered going at midnight but my brain took over. I can wait to see Edward, really I can.

On The Bookshelf

I am an avid reader. I read all kinds of books...mystery, informational, self help, romance, biographies, autobiographies, sci-fi etc. I am currently reading "Always Looking Up" by Michael J. Fox. So far, it has been very interesting. So just for fun, here is a list of books I have and will be reading and a list of books I would like to read.

On the bookshelf waiting to be read, we have the following books (in no particular order):

The Garden of Last Days by Andre Dubus III

Women, Food, and God by Geneen Roth

Winter Garden by Kristen Hannah

The Omnivore's Dilemma by Michael Pollan

Building Successful Partnerships by the National PTA

The Host by Stephanie Meyer

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser

The PTA Story: A Century of Commitment to Children by the National PTA

And on the ever growing list of books I want to read (and have yet to acquire):

The Walk by Richard Paul Evans

A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Future: Twists and Turns and Lessons Learned by Michael J. Fox

No Apology: The Case for American Greatness by Mitt Romney

Cutting-Edge Therapies for Autism 2010-2011 by Ken Siri

29 Gifts: How A Month Of Giving Can Change Your Life by Cami Walker

Liberty: Thriving And Civic Engagement Among America's Youth by Richard M. Lerner

Educating Citizens: Preparing America's Undergraduates For Lives Of Moral And Civic Responsibility by Anne Colby

Book Meme

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Italicize those you intend to read
3) Underline the books you LOVE.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - C.S. Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

Why I Feel Old...

...and oddly excited about it at the same time.

I was reviewing the summer reading list for the middle school and actually saw books on it that I remember reading as a kid. More importantly, I remember reading and loving them.

Little Women
The Ann Of Green Gables Series
Adventures of Tom Sawyer
Call Of The Wild
The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe
Tuck Everlasting
The Outsiders


So I am totally geeking out here and thinking it would be cool for her and I to read them together and then, like, discuss them. Like a mother/daughter book club.


I can't wait for "To Kill A Mockingbird," "1984" "Catcher in the Rye" and "Brave, New World." No, I am not kidding here!

Book Signing At School

Last week, Jeff Kinney was at The Burkland School as part of the PTA sponsored Scholastic Book Fair Family Night. The kids were super-excited to meet him. He did a wonderful presentation and then signed copies of his books. I have almost finished the first one myself (after his presentation I thought it might be fun for Em and I to read it at the same time) and am looking forward to the second. It was a great family night, and I was the official PTA photographer.

Here's a shot of Emily and Katherine with Mr. Kinney.

Too Early

To be awake that is. I woke up while Ryun was getting ready to leave for work (5am) and my mind went in to racing mode, so I decided rather than lie in bed, not being able to sleep, I may as well get up and be productive. I managed to have just enough time to run out and get a coffee (note to self: buy cream when you go out today) before Ryun left for the day.

Anyway, I have plans to go out to the store today (Michael's perhaps) to buy gimp for Emily. Yesterday, during a "moment" of "my hormones are in that oh so fun preteen/puberty out of control stage", she said, "I wish I had gimp. Working with my hands helps calm me down." To which I responded, "Really? Maybe I will run out and get some tomorrow (no sarcasm there people, because at this point? I might do just about anything)." Katherine, not one to let this "Mommy said she'd buy Emily something because it helps her calm down, so let's work this to my angle and tell her what helps me calm down" moment pass her by, chimed in with, "Books really help me calm down." So, could they be pulling a fast one? Perhaps. I don't think so though because, there was a real honesty behind what Emily said and, with the frame of mind she was in? I don't think she could have had the reasoning skills in place to concoct a plan to get me to buy it for her (although, with Emily, I wouldn't be surprised by anything). Gimp is at least doable. It's not like she said, "I really wish I had a brand new Nintendo DS. That really helps me calm down." Because that? It isn't just a "run out to the store and grab one for her" kind of thing. As for Katherine, I think I can manage a book while I'm at it, even if it's just because of her own cleverness in taking advantage of the moment at hand. I also need to run to the grocery store for the aforementioned cream, as well as a few lunch type things for tomorrow (yay for finally making a plan to scrap with friends that so far actually seems like it's going to work out).

Other things need to get done too. I would like to read another chapter or two of my new book(Shooting and Selling Your Photos by Jim Zuckerman). I also need to watch chapter two of the Oprah and Eckhart class because tonight is chapter three and I am hoping to watch that live this time around. In an attempt to at least try and keep up with the laundry, I am going to do some of that too. It feels indescribably nice to have only one load waiting to be put in, and to have all the clean clothes folded and put away. I have serious doubts about the prospect of it staying that way for any period of time, but, we'll see. Of course there will be blog reading and perhaps blog updating as well. Oh, I also need to call the hand surgeon dude. The wrist has been ok (except for a random flare up on Friday night, it's been just a mild, annoying kind of pain) but, I figure if it was bad enough at one point to render my hand useless, it should probably be a priority.

Hit Home

I recently finished a book that drew me in from the first paragraph.

Here it is:

"When you're five, you know your age down to the month. Even in your twenties, you know how old you are. I'm twenty-seven you say. But then in your thirties something strange seems to happen. It's a mere hiccup at first, an instant of hesitation. How old are you? Oh, I'm-you start confidently, but then you stop. You were going to say thirty-three, but you're not. You're thirty-five. And then you're bothered, because you wonder if this is the beginning of the end. It is, of course, but it's decades before you'll admit it. "

-Water For Elephants-
Sara Gruen


You can see why it drew me in immediately, can't you? That situation has happened to me more times than I can remember...no pun intended!

One Of My Favorite Passages Ever

Taken, of course, from a Richard Paul Evans book, called, "The Looking Glass."

"Through the course of my own life, I have come to believe that life is not gifted by the sweep of the clocks hand or the change of the season, but rather, experientially, each experience laid upon the previous, delivering us to a loftier plane. Perhaps this best describes my concept of God-the architect of that ascent and the divine, unseen wind that propels us through the uncharted waters of our own destiny. But salvation, spiritual or otherwise, is not a solitary matter and along such journeys there are companions placed along our travels and travails, fellow sojourners who forever alter our paths and sometimes carry us when we are too weary to carry ourselves."

Reading

If you are a reader, how many books can you (or do you) usually read at once? I usually have at least 2 going at a time, but tend to save any heavy reading (or reading of the "I must remember this" type) for the daylight hours. I read every night before bed, which is when I do my "pleasure reading."

Received Via Email

I LOVE this!

As mothers, we are building great cathedrals.
We cannot be seen if we're doing it right.
By Nicole Johnson

It started to happen gradually. One day I was walking my son Jake to school. I was holding his hand and we were about to cross the street when the crossing guard said to him, "Who is that with you, young fella?" "Nobody," he shrugged.
Nobody? The crossing guard and I laughed. My son is only 5, but as we crossed the street I thought, "Oh my goodness, nobody?"

I would walk into a room and no one would notice. I would say something to my family - like "Turn the TV down, please" - and nothing would happen.
Nobody would get up, or even make a move for the remote. I would stand there for a minute, and then I would say again, a little louder, "Would someone turn the TV down?" Nothing.

Just the other night my husband and I were out at a party. We'd been there for about three hours and I was ready to leave. I noticed he was talking to a friend from work. So I walked over, and when there was a break in the conversation, I whispered, "I'm ready to go when you are." He just kept right on talking.

That's when I started to put all the pieces together. I don't think he can see me. I don't think anyone can see me. I'm invisible. It all began to make sense, the blank stares, the lack of response, the way one of the kids will walk into the room while I'm on the phone and ask to be taken to the store. Inside I'm thinking, "Can't you see I'm on the phone?" Obviously not. No one can see if I'm on the phone, or cooking, or sweeping the floor, or even standing on my head in the corner, because no one can see me at all. I'm invisible.

Some days I am only a pair of hands, nothing more: Can you fix this? Can you tie this? Can you open this? Some days I'm not a pair of hands; I'm not even a human being. I'm a clock to ask, "What time is it?" I'm a satellite guide to answer, "What number is
the Disney Channel?" I'm a car to order, "Right around 5:30, please."

I was certain that these were the hands that once held books and the eyes that studied history and the mind that graduated summa cum laude - but now they had disappeared into the peanut butter, never to be seen again. She's going. she's going. she's gone!

One night, a group of us were having dinner, celebrating the return of a friend from England. Janice had just gotten back from a fabulous trip, and she was going on and on about the hotel she stayed in. I was sitting there, looking around at the others all put together so well. It was hard not to compare and feel sorry for myself as I looked down at my out-of-style dress; it was the only thing I could find that was clean. My unwashed hair was pulled up in a banana clip and I was afraid I could actually smell peanut butter in it. I was feeling pretty pathetic, when Janice turned to me with a beautifully wrapped package, and said, "I brought you this." It was a book on the great cathedrals of Europe.
I wasn't exactly sure why she'd given it to me until I read her inscription: "To Charlotte, with admiration for the greatness of what you are building when no one sees."

In the days ahead I would read - no, devour - the book. And I would discover what would become for me, four life-changing truths, after which I could pattern my work:
No one can say who built the great cathedrals -we have no record of their names. These builders gave their whole lives for a work they would never see finished. They made great sacrifices and expected no credit. The passion of their building was fueled by their faith that the eyes of God saw everything.

A legendary story in the book told of a rich man who came to visit the cathedral while it was being built, and he saw a workman carving a tiny bird on the inside of a beam. He was puzzled and asked the man, "Why are you spending so much time carving that bird into abeam that will be covered by the roof? No one will ever see it." And the workman replied, "Because God sees."

I closed the book, feeling the missing piece fall into place. It was almost as if I heard God whispering to me, "I see you, Charlotte. I see the sacrifices you make every day, even when no one around you does. No act of kindness you've done, no sequin you've sewn on, no cupcake you've baked, is too small for me to notice and smile over. You are building a great cathedral, but you can't see right now what it will become."

At times, my invisibility feels like an affliction. But it is not a disease that is erasing my life. It is the cure for the disease of my own self-centeredness. It is the antidote to my
strong, stubborn pride.

I keep the right perspective when I see myself as a great builder. As one of the people who show up at a job that they will never see finished, to work on something that their name will never be on.

The writer of the book went so far as to say that no cathedrals could ever be built in our lifetime because there are so few people willing to sacrifice to that degree.

When I really think about it, I don't want my son to tell the friend he's bringing home from college for Thanksgiving, "My mom gets up at 4 in the morning and bakes homemade pies, and then she hand bastes a turkey for three hours and presses all the linens for the table." That would mean I'd built a shrine or a monument to myself. I just want him to want to come home. And then, if there is anything more to say to his
friend, to add, "You're gonna love it there."

As mothers, we are building great cathedrals. We cannot be seen if we're doing it right. And one day, it is very possible that the world will marvel, not only at what we have built, but at the beauty that has been added to the world by the sacrifices of invisible women .


This excerpt from Nicole Johnson's novel The Invisible Woman, which I may just have to read next, upon finishing A Thousand Splendid Suns.

Tomorrow...

...my take on the ADHD controversy.

Tonight...finishing up The Kite Runner and going to bed.

That is all.