Writing tidbit- Grandmere

“De's
chil'ren today gots no respect, dey don'- you tell dem you see
sum'tin and 'is Grandmere senile. Grandmere supasticious ol' Creole.”
The old woman pulls her ornate shawl closer over her frail seeming
shoulders. Time worn and line ridden- her face is a testament to a
life well lived, rather than some beauty commercial.
“Dey
say 'Grandmere, dey bones is supasticion- dey don' say nothin'.
Dey be no such thing as HooDoo- you jus' ol'. An'
fo' dem- mebee dey righ'- me own daughta- mah blood runnin' in heh
veins tell meh des no such t'ing. She don' los' dey sight afore it
was said an' don' fo' heh. Dem spirits was all roun' her de las'
visit me- I BEG her de las' she come not ta leave; but Mere jus' a
crazy ol' cajan- what I know 'bout de weatha dat da fo'casta's didn'?
“I
knew she was goin'- I did. Dos'e spirits- me own mama with um- dun
tol' me- warn me- brace me-I s'pose since she was goin' one way or
t'other. De rains started righ' afta she left and dey road washed
out- heh cah with it.”
Her
long gray hair is pulled back into beautiful braids and on the end of
each is what she calls a juju-
a luck charm. One is a clear quartz. There are feathers, stones,
beads, and even tiny beautifully carved bones dancing in the masses.
She
shakes her head, sending the trinkets tinkling against each other
merrily. Her hands, ancient with age, but seemingly steady as rocks
lift the delicate bone china cup from its saucer in age old fashion.
Though we sit in a hotel room at a tiny linoleum table. The coffee
certianly isn't Creole's best- she drinks as if we are in her
greeting parlor with a treasured guest. A greeting parlor which no
longer exists- because I just burned it down...

So THIS is where I left my Blog!

OK so the last year has been a rush of mish-mesh crazy. First Shaun had School from March until October and then we moved cross country from Washington to Maryland- stopping of course in Indiana for a nice visit.

Our good old 1991 Ford Explorer decided (after faithfully getting us to Maryland) to die on us and we ened up getting a 2007 Mercury Mountianer. Nice car...horrible payments! LOL. His car needs work and is currently on sick leave down at his mom's house.

We moved into a great house on Fort George G Meade- 2 story, 4 bedroom HUGE house. I adore it. We are on a dead end street with a nice size park at our end and the Community Center (complete with GYM and LAUNDRY ROOM!) at the other.

Our neighbors on both sides are awesome- the kids have kids their age to play with and I honestly don't see them after homework most nights til dinnertime!

Shaun (DH) is a ton happier too, it seems. He comes in from work smiling and is cheerful (ok not CHEERFUL but you know). He loves his "super secret" job. I think he gets a kick out of the I can't tell you or I have to kill you, thing. ;)

I am pretty happy here. I miss the folks in Washington- especially my boys and Sally and Emily and Miss Jenny and Meadow and Ericka! LOL ok I pretty much totally miss everyone! But I am making friends here and having a lot of fun.

All in All it has been a helluva year- with a great visit from Shaun's Mom and my uber bestie, Lilly, over the summer; moving cross country; and starting a new life in a new place.

It is freeing to move and have a fresh start. I am trying to make this a great one and who knows what is in store for us as the Holidays come and then the new decade begins!

Who Stole My Bon Bons?!?

OK so seriously, I want to hit the person who came up with the term "Stay At Home Mom". I am NEVER at home! This week alone I have taken the kids to school, taken Isa (DD2, Age 2) to Speech therapy, gone to the school for Keira (DD1, Age 7), taken Keira to her Doctor's appointment, gone to the pharmacy, fielded an hour long call from the school councilor (AT the pharmacy) got off the phone to realize I am 20 minutes late picking up Shaden (DS, Age 5) from school- made a frantc call to the school to find he is safely at the office playing with LEGOs, rushed there- got him. Then got home, fixed dinner, googled directions to Fire station 56 on Seabeck HW and after a hurried dinner dragged Keira to a Girl Scout Cookie Meeting.

Did I mention that was all Monday alone?!? Tuesday involved a nuteritionalist, another Doctor appointment, the pharmacy an aborted library trip and an exhausted mom crying in the doctors office out of sheer frusteration...

It has been a long week and its only the second day of it...

I am sure I was promised Bon Bons and told that I wouls stay home all day in pajamas and watch Oprah and Soaps- when exactly does that come in? I can't even remember the last time I watched something that wasn't DVRed a month before.

And my husband, Goddess love him asks why I am so stressed out...

Novels List!

The BBC believes most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here. How do your reading habits stack up?

Instructions:
Copy this into your NOTES. Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read. Tag other Book Nerds and Publish. Put your total in brackets in the title!

24 for the moment but this is a great start for my 100 classics goal!

1 The Bible

2 The Lord of the Rings

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling x

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee x

6 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen x

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte X

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens X

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott x

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy X

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 Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell x

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald x

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll X

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia x

34 Emma - Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe x

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 x

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown x

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 x

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 - 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 x

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville x

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens x

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett x

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Inferno - Dante

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray x

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens x

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 x

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 x

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 x

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo