What a Life!

Since I became interested in homeschooling Ben, my love of reading has been rekindled. I must confess, I haven’t gotten very far. The books I’ve read since last summer could probably be counted on one hand. But considering I haven’t done hardly any pleasure reading since I Ben was born, it’s progress at least.

Here is a book list that I copied from And She Knits Too!. Stephannie says that, according to The Big Read, most adults have only read six books from this list. I’ve marked the ones I’ve read…and haven’t read. Feel free to copy the list and mark it up for yourself. My count is 22 out of 100. Better than six…but I intend to read a lot more of them.

1 Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen – yes
2 The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien – no
3 Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte – yes
4 Harry Potter series – JK Rowling – no
5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee – no
6 The Bible – yes
7 Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte – yes
8 1984 – George Orwell – yes
9 His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman – no
10 Great Expectations – Charles Dickens – yes
11 Little Women – Louisa M Alcott – no
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy – no
13 Catch 22 – Joseph Heller – no
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare – no, just the ones I had to read in school (and didn’t really enjoy)
15 Rebecca – Daphne Du Maurier – no
16 The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien – no
17 Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks – yes
18 Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger – no
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger – no
20 Middlemarch – George Eliot- no
21 Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell – yes, more than once
22 The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald – no
23 Bleak House – Charles Dickens – no
24 War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy – no
25 The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams – no
26 Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh – no
27 Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky – no
29 Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll – no
30 The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame – no
31 Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy – no
32 David Copperfield – Charles Dickens – no
33 The Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis – yes
34 Emma – Jane Austen – no
35 Persuasion – Jane Austen – no
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – yes
37 The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini – no
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Bernieres – no
39 Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden – yes
40 Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne – no
41 Animal Farm – George Orwell -yes
42 The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown – no
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez – yes
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving – yes
45 The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins – no
46 Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery – no
47 Far From The Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy – no
48 The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood – no
49 Lord of the Flies – William Golding – no
50 Atonement – Ian McEwan – no
51 Life of Pi – Yann Martel – no
52 Dune – Frank Herbert- no
53 Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons – no
54 Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen – no
55 A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth – no
56 The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon – no
57 A Tale Of Two Cities – Charles Dickens – yes
58 Brave New World – Aldous Huxley – no
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon – no
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez – no
61 Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck – yes
62 Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov – yes
63 The Secret History – Donna Tartt – no
64 The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold – no
65 Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas – yes
66 On The Road – Jack Kerouac – no
67 Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy – no
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding – yes
69 Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie – no
70 Moby Dick – Herman Melville – yes
71 Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens – no
72 Dracula – Bram Stoker – no
73 The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett – no
74 Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson – no
75 Ulysses – James Joyce – no
76 The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath – no
77 Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome – no
78 Germinal – Emile Zola – no
79 Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray – no
80 Possession – AS Byatt- no
81 A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens – no
82 Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell – no
83 The Color Purple – Alice Walker – no
84 The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro – no
85 Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert – no
86 A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry – no
87 Charlotte’s Web – EB White – yes
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom – no
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle – no
90 The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton – no
91 Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad – yes
92 The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupe – no
93 The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks – no
94 Watership Down – Richard Adams – no
95 A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole – no
96 A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute – no
97 The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas – no
98 Hamlet – Shakespeare – no
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl – no
100 Les Miserables – Victor Hugo – yes

My sweet little one is soon to be my sweet middle one.

Today at the midwife’s we got to hear 178 precious little heartbeats per minute. Music to my ears!

Don’t worry – I think Joey will hold his own. Don’t you think?

One of the good things about cold weather is that if you don’t get going on the pie as early you should, you can stick it out on the porch to let it cool and still be able to eat it for supper. Mmmmm…

Other Valentine’s Day projects include making Buttermilk Pancakes for breakfast (again, Steve’s favorite) and a tasty meal this evening. On the menu

• Filet Mignon – Steve will do the grilling on the George Foreman
• Mashed Potatoes – I have my list of favorite ingredients, from cream cheese to sour cream to grated cheddar, but tonight’s special ingredient is bleu cheese crumbles.
• Green Bean Casserole – speaks for itself
• And, of course, Cherry Pie

Steve and I exchanged cards this morning, and the boys got cards in the mail from Steve’s Aunt LaRhea.

My husband is forbidden from getting me flowers or a box of chocolates. Flowers are so expensive – if he’s going to spend that kind of money on me, there are many other things I’d rather he spend it on. [Yarn, maybe?] And I hate Russel Stover chocolates. Lindt chocolate is the only chocolate I like [I got spoiled during the semester I studied in Europe]. A little bit of chocolate is okay, but it is something I could easily live without. Really, no tears.

I’m having a very relaxing day. The boys tend to hang around Steve when he’s home, which gives me a break. So I can do fun things like cook and bake. Maybe this afternoon I’ll even read a book for a little while. Such an indulgent luxury. And knit a little. I watched the NASCAR race, and am looking forward to the Daytona 500 tomorrow. All in all, it should be a very good weekend.

Before closing, I must mention…Of all the wonderful Valentine’s Day posts I’ve read today, this one is my favorite. Enjoy!

There’s an ongoing joke at our house…if you want to know what the weather is going to be, call up my dad. He probably knows more about it than we do. Even though he’s in Florida. And we’re in Nebraska.

This afternoon, I got an out-of-the-blue call from my dad.

“Is it snowing?” he asked.

“Yes.”

“Is the wind blowing a lot?”

“Well, a little. The snow isn’t coming straight down, but it isn’t drifting either.” [I hope I answered that question sufficiently. Was it blowing? I don’t know. What is blowing?]

So Dad, this snow report is for you.

This is a picture of our house this morning. It actually started snowing after Steve left for work. Apparently the ground beneath his truck was warmer because you can see the snow is just starting to stick to where it was parked.

This is a picture of our house this afternoon. According to radar, the snow has stopped…at least for a while. They’re predicting more overnight, though.

The neighbor cleared the sidewalk with his snowblower. It seemed to be pushing the snow more than blowing it, so I’m thinking the snow is what they call “wet” snow. But I don’t know for sure because I’m inside where it’s warm, and I have no plans to go out.

As we speak, the After-Snowstorm Testosterone Contest is going on. Everyone gets out their snowblower and demonstrates how big it is and how quickly they can remove snow with it. If you have a certain tough spot, don’t worry – someone with a bigger snowblower will come over and help you out.

If you’re wondering about our current standing in the After-Snowstorm Testosterone Contest, this is the first year we’ve had an actual snowblower. Steve had a super-duper snow scoop which worked fine for our purposes. Last summer, his brother sold us his snowblower which he didn’t need any longer. The one used to clear the sidewalk (which was pushing the snow more than blowing) is smaller than ours. Ours won’t have any trouble with this snow, but it is by no means the biggest in the neighborhood.

The one owned by the neighbors who own the white house you see across the street in that picture – it’s bigger than any snowblower I’ve ever seen. It’s a walk-behind, but the wheels are big like on a rear-tine rotor tiller, complete with tractor treat. In fact, the blades on it are bigger than I remember on the one attached to our lawn tractor in Michigan. It’s a serious snow blower.

But it’s not just a contest as to who has the biggest snowblower, though. There’s also the Nice Guy I’ll-show-everyone-how-big-my-snowblower-is-by-clearing-everyone-else’s-sidewalks-too Contest. That, as well, is amusing to watch. How much clearing everyone does is different every time. Last snowstorm, a neighbor four doors down cleared our sidewalk, which really surprised us.

Steve will be home soon, and I’m sure the boys will enjoy watching Daddy clear the snow. I’m just grateful I don’t have to go out and do it. [Shiver]

The other day, Joey brought Steve’s work boots up from downstairs all by himself. [Quite a feat!]

The boys had great fun playing with them. I snatched a few shots you can see here. Enjoy!