Hello....

Hello, red leaves on my Oquirrh Mountains. You inspired me to get up my hill today.

Hello, rescue inhaler.  You are helping me breath so much better!

Hello, return of summer. Can you just last until the first day of October?

Hello, clean floors, which mean I only have bathrooms to clean today. Yes!

Hello, Wasatch Woman 10k.  Yesterday I didn't know if I could finish you, today I know I can.

Hello, date night tonight.  So excited!

Hello, 2 weeks with no soda.  I swear I am always either quitting you or trying to.

Hello, cheap Las Vegas hotels.  Who knew you could get a hotel for $32 a night?

Hello, last half hour of quiet before I have Ben home again.

Hello, new blister on my next-to-smallest toe. I guess you are what I get for wearing cotton socks.

Hello, blogging friends.  What are you saying hello to today?

Banned Books.

Banned Books week is September 26-October 2.  I found the list of the most commonly banned classics from the ALA website.  Some I have read, some I haven't.  I put notes on the ones that I did or have intentions to read.  Play along!  I'm pretty sure I did this a few years ago, but it never hurts to have a reminder.

1. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald  (Read it in 10th grade, and a few years ago. I don't love it, but I also don't hate it.)


2. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger (My dad gave me a copy of this years ago. I still need to read it.)

3. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck (have started before and put by the wayside.  Should I try it again?)

4. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee (Love. Swoon.)

5. The Color Purple by Alice Walker (Love, love, love Alice Walker.)

6. Ulysses by James Joyce

7. Beloved by Toni Morrison (Ditto Toni Morrison.)

8. The Lord of the Flies by William Golding (read in 10th grade)

9. 1984 by George Orwell

10. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner (Started it this year, didn't finish, but now I think I should get it again.)

11. Lolita by Vladmir Nabokov

12. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck

13. Charlotte's Web by E. B. White (I read this to Thomas when he was 5. We both cried when Charlotte died. It was a proud moment for me!)

14. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce

15. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

16. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

17. Animal Farm by George Orwell

18. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway

19. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

20. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway

21. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad

22. Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne

23. Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston (I've wanted to read this for a long time.)

24. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison

25. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison (Love Song of Solomon. Think about how the mother killed her son whenever I hear the phrase "I brought you into this world and I can take you out.)

26. Gone with the Wind by Margaret Mitchell  (My favorite book during high school)

27. Native Son by Richard Wright

28. One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest by Ken Kesey

29. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut (Lucy told me about this one years ago. Still need to read it. I've always imagined it being about pigs being killed or something gruesome. Glad Lucy dispelled that impression!)

30. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

31. On the Road by Jack Kerouac

32. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway (10th grade, again.)

33. The Call of the Wild by Jack London

34. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf  (Does anyone enjoy Virginia Woolf? Can I be an English major and admit that I don't?)

35. Portrait of a Lady by Henry James

36. Go Tell it on the Mountain by James Baldwin

37. The World According to Garp by John Irving

38. All the King's Men by Robert Penn Warren

39. A Room with a View by E. M. Forster

40. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien (Swoon. Aragorn.)

41. Schindler's List by Thomas Keneally

42. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton (I think I have read this, most likely in college)

43. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (They mention Ayn Rand a lot in the tv show Mad Men.)

44. Finnegans Wake by James Joyce

45. The Jungle by Upton Sinclair

46. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf  (My one experience with V.W. See above.)

47. The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by L. Frank Baum

48. Lady Chatterley's Lover by D. H. Lawrence

49. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

50. The Awakening by Kate Chopin (One of my favorite books from college.)

51. My Antonia by Willa Cather

52. Howards End by E. M. Forster

53. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote

54. Franny and Zooey by J.D. Salinger

55. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie

56. Jazz by Toni Morrison (Read in college.)

57. Sophie's Choice by William Styron

58. Absalom, Absalom! by William Faulkner (think about this book when I listen to the Old Testament. Haven't read it yet.)

59. A Passage to India by E. M. Forster

60. Ethan Frome by Edith Wharton

61. A Good Man Is Hard to Find by Flannery O'Connor

62. Tender Is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald

63. Orlando by Virginia Woolf

64. Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence

65. Bonfire of the Vanities by Tom Wolfe

66. Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut

67. A Separate Peace by John Knowles (10 grade. Was anything we read that year NOT on the banned list?)

68. Light in August by William Faulkner

69. The Wings of the Dove by Henry James

70. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe

71. Rebecca by Daphne du Maurier (Hated it. Hated it.)

72. A Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

73. Naked Lunch by William S. Burroughs

74. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh (Tried to read & just didn't love it.)

75. Women in Love by D. H. Lawrence

76. Look Homeward, Angel by Thomas Wolfe

77. In Our Time by Ernest Hemingway

78. The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein

79. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett

80. The Naked and the Dead by Norman Mailer

81. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys (This has been on my list forever.)

82. White Noise by Don DeLillo

83. O Pioneers! by Willa Cather

84. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller

85. The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells

86. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad

87. The Bostonians by Henry James (College. Wrote a great paper on it.)

88. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser

89. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather

90. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame

91. This Side of Paradise by F. Scott Fitzgerald

92. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand (The Ayn Rand book they always talk about on Mad Men. Love that Donald Draper.)

93. The French Lieutenant's Woman by John Fowles

94. Babbitt by Sinclair Lewis

95. Kim by Rudyard Kipling

96. The Beautiful and the Damned by F. Scott Fitzgerald

97. Rabbit, Run by John Updike

98. Where Angels Fear to Tread by E. M. Forster

99. Main Street by Sinclair Lewis

100. Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie


Wow, only 15 read, and a bunch of others with intentions to read.  How many have you read?

Snapshot

I was going through a folder and found this little questionaire. I did it last year, and I thought it would be fun to do it again.  If nothing else than to remember how old I am...

***20 YEARS AGO (1990)***

1. How old were you? 15
2. Who were you dating? In September of 1990, I would have been crushing on my date for the Homecoming dance, Jess B. Unfortunately, 3 weeks before the dance (and a few weeks after he decided to ask me!) Jess started dating Julie. Julie wasn’t happy about my being Jess’s date for the dance. I stopped crushing on Jess after that.
3. Where did you work? I taught gymnastics in my hometown.
4. Where did you live? With my parents and sister Amy.
5. Where did you hang out? With my friends at The Palace. Preferably in the “Modern” room. They played Depeche Mode’s Personal Jesus followed by Spirit in the Sky which induced people to jump around (but not bump into each other, because that was moshing and moshing was illegal at The Palace.)
6. Did you wear contacts and/or glasses? Yes.
7. Who were your best friends? Rebecca. I was starting to be friends with Cindy at this time.
8. How many tattoos did you have? None
9. How many piercings did you have? 4.
10. What kind of car did you drive? I wasn’t old enough yet, but I did have one fun afternoon with my friends when we borrowed Tommy C’s brown bomber and drove around town. Yeah, I’d never been behind the wheel in my life. Good times teaching yourself how to drive.
11. Had you been to a real party? Not yet.
12. Had you had your heart broken. Nope.
13. Were you Single/Dating/Taken/Married/Divorced? Single
14. Any kids? No, but I had 4 nieces. Britteny was 6 months old.
15. Books I liked during this time: Gone with the Wind, A Separate Peace. Lots of VC Andrews (Troy Tatterton was really hott.)  (I just added this category.  Remembering books I've read is almost as good as memories of my childhood or college. Does that make me weird?)

***15 YEARS AGO (1995)***

1. How old were you? 20.
2. Who were you dating? No one. But remember liking a guy named Paul.
3. Where did you work? No job, but would start working at Kinkos in downtown Blacksburg, VA.
4. Where did you live? Dorms. #336 Main Eggleston, Virginia Tech campus.
5. Where did you hang out? Pheasant Run. A place where multiple-keg parties were held on a weekly basis. Too bad I didn’t drink.
6. Did you wear contacts and/or glasses? Yes.
7. Who were your best friends? Angie, Rebecca.
8. How many tattoos did you have? None
9. How many piercings did you have? 4, in my ears.
10. What kind of car did you drive? Did not have a car
11. Had you been to a real party? Oh yes. Every weekend was a party.
12. Had you had your heart broken? Yep.
13. Were you Single/Taken/Married/Divorced? Single.
14. Any kids? No.
15. Books I liked and/or had to read: The Rules. Lonesome Dove. The Shell Seekers.  Huckleberry Finn (I hate Huckleberry Finn. Hate. But I had to read it for school.) I remember some VC Andrews still sneaking in.

***10 YEARS AGO (2000)***

1. How old were you? 25
2. Who were you dating? Married to Shane for 1 year, 8 months.
3. Where did you work? At my current employer.
4. Where did you live? In our old house. We would have just gotten our yard put in a few months before, and moved on to the next big project: babies.
5. Where did you hang out? With other married friends at their houses.
6. Did you wear contacts and/or glasses? Yes.
7. Who were your best friends? Amy, Rebecca, Mikkel.
8. How many tattoos did you have? none
9. How many piercings did you have? 4 earring holes, but only 3 occupied
10. What kind of car did you drive? A green Saturn without power steering, but with air conditioning.
11. Had you been to a real party? Yes.
12. Had you had your heart broken? Yes. But not recently.
13. Were you Single/Taken/Married/Divorced? Married
14. Any kids? No. We had a fish and two cats. And we were trying to get pregnant with Thomas.
15. Books I read during this time: The Poisonwood Bible, We were the Mulvaney's, Ahab's Wife, Fall on your Knees, Memoirs of a Geisha, The Blind Assassin. It was a good good reading year. Of course, I had no children, so no wonder.

***5 YEARS AGO (2005)***

1. How old were you? 30
2. Who were you dating? Married for 6 years.
3. Where did you work? At my current employer.
4. Where did you live? In our old house.
5. Where did you hang out? With John and Melanie at our house and their apartment.
6. Did you wear contacts and/or glasses? Yes.
7. Who were your best friends? Melanie, Shelly, Amy.
8. How many tattoos did you have? none
9. How many piercings did you have? 4 earring holes, but only 3 occupied
10. What kind of car did you drive? Nissan Xterra which was really Shane’s but he pretended it was mine.
11. Had you been to a real party? Yes.
12. Had you had your heart broken? Yes. But not recently.
13. Were you Single/Taken/Married/Divorced? Married
14. Any kids? 2 kids. Ben would have been 7 months, and Thomas was 4.
15. Books I read: Sleeping with Schubert, Harry Potter 6, Those who Save Us, March, Mists of Avalon (for the 122 time, or nearly), My Sister's Keeper.  Read Highlander but wasn't impressed.  So many of these I remember reading while pumping breast milk at work for Ben. Lovely way to remember books, isn't it? 

***TODAY (2010)***

1. How old are you? 35
2. Who are you dating? Just my husband
3. Where do you work? Insurance company
4. Where do you live? In our house, half a mile from our old one.
5. Where do you hang out? At John and Melanie’s, and at home.
6. Did you wear contacts and/or glasses? Yep.
7. Who are your best friends? Amy, Melanie, Shelly, Rebecca
8. How many tattoos did you have? None
9. How many piercings did you have? 4 earring holes, 2 occupied
10. What kind of car did you drive? Mazda
11. Had you been to a real party? Yep.
12. Had you had your heart broken? Yes, but it’s been a long time
13. Were you Single/Taken/Married/Divorced? Married
14. Any kids? 2. 9 and 5 and getting sassier by the minute.
15. Books I've read this year: Little Bee, Little Stranger, Girl in Translation, Time Traveler's Wife, The Knife of Never Letting Go, Mockingjay.

Dear Breathing: I miss you!

We have had a really, really long relationship. Probably the longest relationship of my life. Wherever I've gone, whomever I've been with, whatever I've done, you have joined me. In and out, in and out, since the day I was born.  Given this longevity, I feel that I can be blunt.

Please stop being hard.

This new reluctance is strange. And even a little scary sometimes. Granted, you've been wheezy at times in the past. Usually in the fall, when the cold wind blows against you as we run.  But your little stunt last Monday night freaked me out a little.  I didn't love waking up, not being able to find you.  I was glad when you calmed down a bit, you even let me stop coughing.  I gave you the week to stop pouting, and we seemed to return to our more normal, symbiotic relationship.

But today, during my run, I didn't love you.  Where have you gone?  Have I taken you for granted for too long?  Do we need to see a professional?  Please come back.  I just want to return to our old, easy going, in and out, in and out thing.  Can you help me out?

Love, Me.

It isn't likely to happen again...

I ran a 5k with my old ward this morning. And even though I came in second, the first girl left before awards(and apparently doesn't eat sugar. A far better person than me, obviously!)

So I brought home this, my first ever (and probably last) running prize. Who knew?

And while I am on the subject of wards, it made my little heart happy to see all my friends this morning. I used to scoff at those who called wards "families," but I don't anymore. I am getting used to my new ward, but I still feel most at home in my old one. I know there is the time factor (10 years versus 4 months) so I just need to give myself a chance.  It will be fine.  A few weeks ago we had stake conference.  The fondness I felt for people from my old ward was mixed with excitement at seeing new friends from my current ward.

Yeah, it will be fine.

But in the meantime, I am going to help myself to a little candy rootbeer float.  Well, as much as I can get until my kids find it.

They get me every time...

Remember this post?

Well, I haven't gotten any better at resisting Micky Dee's Madame Alexander dolls.

I can't wait to find Hansel and Gretel and Little Red Riding Hood. Not sure if I'll bother with Wendy pretending to be the Big Bad Wolf or not.

But Cinderella and her prince and Alice and the Mad Hatter have been hanging out in the drawer with Dorothy and the gang from the last batch of dolls. Sure I buy them, but I still don't quite know what to do with them.

I think Ben looked up Cinderella's dress when I bought her.  Boys, boys, boys.  They just roll their eyes at me and my drawer full of McDonald's dolls.