For the Love of the Written Word

I used to be quite the reader.

In fact, my family still introduces me as the one who always holed up somewhere in the house devouring books instead of playing outside with the other kids.

The truth of the matter is...I haven't read much since I was in high school. Even then, most of my reading was required. So let's just be honest here: I traded books for boys...well, at least the idea of boys...because we're being honest, remember? Boys eventually became one boy man who married me and gave me all these delicious babies. So long story short, I traded books for babies. Well now those babies are growing up and not needing me for every second of every day and I have found myself reunited with my first loves.

Ladies and gents...I am READING again! It's pretty exciting. At least to me. And none of this Kindle, e-book, electronic crap. Real, tangible, hard copy books full of dusty, papery pages and blacky, blocky ink, borrowed from the hallowed halls of the local library. Can't you just smell them?! Mmmm!

Last year I tried to make my way through a list of 23 books some random person out there decided you needed to read to amount to something. I made it through about 5 of them before I had to turn tail and run. They were mostly anti-war novels and just so. darn. depressing. I can't help but feel a great load of guilt for hiding from this list. Am I guilty of burying my head in the sand? Of trying to deny the existence of pain, darkness, and evil? No, I'm not ignoring the bitter ugliness of the past but I just couldn't handle the emotional toll these books were taking.

Maybe I'll revisit that list later when four little ones aren't depending daily on my mental health. For now I'm devouring whatever strikes my fancy. Adult fiction, children's literature, juvenile fiction, the classics, old favorites, book club assignments. (Did I mention I'm in a book club? I'm in a book club! My first one and I LOVE it! Food, friends, AND books! Does life get any better? No. No it does not.)

There's a meme circulating through Facebook right now. "Name ten books that have meant something to you or stuck with you or something blah blah blah through your life". I've been tagged multiple times and I've purposefully ignored every tag.

Several reasons...

1- I have such a bad memory! I cannot remember most of the books I've read.

2- Most of the books I come up with are books from my childhood. Which isn't a bad thing...It just looks so...juvenile.

3- It's not a competition. But it kind of feels like a competition. All the sudden I am keenly aware of what a pseudo-reader I am. I am not the well-read lady I claim to be. Remember the whole "babies for books" thing I mentioned at the beginning? I'm a lover of books that hasn't actually touched too many in the last twenty years. The truth is out. I am exposed. I look like a Twilight fan next to a bunch of War and Peace intellectuals.

SO WHAT! As I embrace reading once more so will I boldly create and share my list of ten books. Do with it what you will, World.

TEN BOOKS. In your status, list 10 books that stayed with you in some way. They don't have to be the 'right' books, or books of great literature, just ones that affected you in some way. Tag 10 friends, including me, so I can see your list. 

1. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen. There are few books I want to read more than once. This is one I've read over and over again. Such a treat every single time.

2. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle. A childhood favorite. It makes me giggle every time I think of this one and the memory of asking my mother what "testicles" were when I misread "tentacles".

3. The Old Man and the Sea by Ernest Hemingway. While not a favorite book, it was the first book where I learned about symbolism in literature, especially "Christ symbols". And that books don't always have happy endings and that's okay.

4. The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis. A childhood favorite, but enjoyed multiple times throughout my life; once in high school when I used it as the basis for my biggest high school paper and again as a mother with my own children.

5. The Redwall Series by Brian Jacques. I loved this entire series. I remember very vividly throwing my book down with angry tears streaming down my face when a beloved character was killed and being amazed that I could become so attached to something fictional.

6. One Second After by William R. Forstchen. I'm a sucker for post apocalyptic material. This fueled that fascination as well as helped me to consider just how physically prepared I am for the end of the world.

7. What to Expect When You're Expecting by Heidi Murkoff. I poured over this book with each of my pregnancies. I was very honored to do some free lance writing for the WTE website a few years ago.

8. The Little Engine that Could by Watty Piper. I remember my mom reading this to us when we were little. Powerful message then and now.

9. I'll Love You Forever by Robert N. Munsch. I have a love/hate relationship with this book. Then and now.

10. Little Women by Louisa May Alcott. I am in the middle of reading this beautiful book right now and I can already count it as a lifelong favorite. I wish I had read this in my youth and will require each of my daughters to read it as they come of age. There seems to be a powerful life lesson in every single chapter.

And can I just add as addendum: The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett, Anne of Green Gables, anything by Roald Dahl, the Little House on the Prairie books, Stuart Little, and Shel Silverstein's A Light in the Attic (one of, if not the very first real book given to me, given by my Grandma Riley)?

Sigh. Books.

Repost: The Sunday Nap

(Originally posted on my private blog 24 January 2010. Just needed the reminder...BEFORE Christmas.)

I know the decorations are put away, the music changed, and the lights gone. Christmas is over for another year. It's only been a few weeks and it already feels like ages ago that we were gathered together with cheer in our hearts and giving first and foremost in our minds.

I wanted to take a nap, but recognized I would need a little coaxing to transfer me quickly and wholly to unconsciousness. Scanning through my book shelf for something light, I picked up the small book. It had been a Christmas gift that I had yet to find the time to enjoy. Now seemed like a perfect time to dabble in it's pages a bit before falling prey to the warmth of a Sunday nap.

I opened the cover of The Christmas Jars, briefly wondering how long my eyes would remain propped open. Two hours later, I closed the back cover of the devoured book. My eyes had not only remained wide open, they had gathered in a story that caused my heart to swell and throb with sorrow and joy several times. The story had left a mark etched in my countenance, evidenced by the trace of tears on my cheeks and the runny-ness of my reddened nose.

I slowly sat up from my reading spot on the bed and, in habit, glanced around to secure the time. Instead, I discovered something that caused a shocked laugh to bubble up from my throat.

There on my dresser drawers sat a Mason canning jar.

A clean, empty jar I had inadvertently placed there the day before when my arms and hands had been overflowing with clean laundry. The jar had been destined for the storage room. Now it sat in a most chilling and thrilling coincidental place.

It was a call to make a story more than just a light read or an afternoon tear-jerker. It was a tug, a prompting, a bidding to make the story real for myself and my family.

That jar has been moved to the kitchen where it will stand sentinel around the gathering coins. It's diminishing empty space will diligently nudge us away from our own chaos and concern and revive our better selves into doing more, more often. Maybe even more than collecting pennies.

Here's to making Christmas last the whole year through!

Ten Things Tuesday

Because a list-making girl like me just couldn't resist.

1. Thank you so much to iamwoman at the Rowdy Stroudy's for the lavender parcel! My car never smelled better!

2. I don't miss Arizona. Not one little bit. I especially didn't miss it as I saw the big fluffy flakes of snow descending yesterday. But I forget Arizona was "home" to my children for two plus years. And when you're only four, that's half your life! They are rather confused about this cold weather business when to me it feels so familiar and soothing to the soul. Dee keeps asking me what the "dust" (frost) on our car is each morning as we go to school. Jeigh dashed out the front door yesterday to catch a snowflake. She made sure to grab her coat, but stopped short when her bare feet made contact with the icy cold. Poor little Arizona-born-and-raised Elle sees this new weather as uninvited and hostile. She shuffles around wrapped up tight in her thick winter coat like a little old lady. Her facial expression is a hilarious mixture of disgust and disbelief. I imagine her blood will thicken up soon enough.

3. Joe has four whole days in a row off this week! I can't wait to have a husband again! This one day off here, one day off there business is for the birds. And what perfect timing for a four day off stretch: Halloween! Now to wrangle him into helping me organize our storage unit...

4. Parent Teacher Conferences are this week. Jeigh's was on Monday and Dee's was today. I wonder...Do the teachers just tell all the parents the same thing?

5. Potty training is going great. If by "great" you mean Elle won't ever tell you when she has to go potty and still has a daily number two accident in her underwear and had one serious number two accident in the middle of Walmart yesterday resulting in her underwear, pants, and socks all being discarded in the public restroom followed by a hasty and red-faced bare-bottom-wrapped-in-sister's-jacket exit out of the store....then yep, it's going great.

6. I have wracked my brain all month trying to figure out what the heck I can do to blow the competition out of the apple-bobbin'-filled water for Sami's Symfully Sweet Saturday candy corn competition. The best I have done is kept my candy jar consistently stocked with a never ending supply of candy corn. I had my gestational diabetes blood test yesterday. Think I'll pass? I have my doubts. But, you should head over to Sami's blog and enter your coolest candy corn creations in her contest! Tell her Evelyn the Candy Corn Comatose Victim sent you.

7. We discovered this last week that Jeigh is terrified of vomit. Dee had a nasty allergy and asthma cough that caused him to almost throw up several times. Anytime he coughed she would absolutely fall apart with hysteria, shaking and crying.

8. Mary Shelley's Frankenstein is only about 200 pages, but it is taking me FOR-EV-ER to get through it. I have already re-checked it out from the library once and it is currently late, but I WILL FINISH IT!

So far my favorite line is: (in regards to the death of a close loved one) "These are the reflections of the first days; but when the lapse of time prove the reality of the evil, then the actual bitterness of grief commences. Yet from whom has not that rude hand rent away some dear connection? And why should I describe a sorrow which all have felt, and must feel? The time at length arrives when grief is rather an indulgence than a necessity and the smile that plays upon the lips, although it may be deemed a sacrilege, is not banished."

And: (speaking of becoming obsessed with a pursuit or activity) "A human being in perfection ought always to preserve a calm and peaceful mind and never to allow passion or a transitory desire to disturb his tranquility. I do not think that the pursuit of knowledge is an exception to this rule. If the study to which you apply yourself has a tendency to weaken you affections and to destroy your taste for those simple pleasures in which no alloy can possibly mix, then that study is certainly unlawful, that is to say, not befitting the human mind."

9. I am craving caramel apples, but am too lazy to make a big mess of my kitchen to make one or two...dozen.

10. Is it too early to listen to Christmas music? What am I saying?! It's never too early for Christmas music!

The Little Mother That Could

All morning I have been struggling to come up with anything to post here today. I finally conceded that it would be a no blog post kind of day. No big deal. I just didn't have the energy or mentality to think of anything creative or original or productive or humorous. Not because of a bad mood...just a too-tired mood.

I picked up Jeigh from preschool and before we left, my girls each checked out a book from the preschool library (basically a book shelf crammed with old discarded books). When I saw the book that Elle had picked, my heart cheered a bit.


The book was obviously aged and I loved that it was. This was a book my mother read to me when I was little. I remembered the pictures and the words so vividly as it was one she read to us often. It had been burned into my memories. I had just forgotten it had been stashed away in my memory until I saw the book in my two-year-old's hands.

We left the school and needing to be busy for the forty minutes in between pick up time for Jeigh and pick up time for Dee, we drove to a convenience store. With the way I had been feeling all morning, I felt the need for a little liquid courage to get through the rest of the day. Liquid courage meaning a tall, cold, fountain Dr. Pepper.

We drove back to the school and waited for the last bell of the day, sipping on our fountain drinks, hoping the caffeine would do the trick to shake me from my sluggish funk. I looked on the dash and saw the book. What a perfect time to sneak some of our reading minutes in. So I opened the cover and began to read.

As I read the words that were so familiar to my mind, I began to think this book could be just the trick for teaching my children that they can do hard things. Like picking up their backpacks and coats off the floor or eating onions or staying away from the tempting soap dispenser. Hard things like that.

But as I read the words I think I can-I think I can-I think I can my voice started to quiver and the words blurred as my eyes filled with tears. I hadn't remembered this book being a sad story...

I realized quite suddenly and with some shock it was me who needed the lesson. So many days, like today I feel...exhaustion. Most days, especially with pregnancy, I feel physically exhausted. Many days it's mental exhaustion that gets me. A lot of days I feel emotionally exhausted or spiritually exhausted. I find myself thinking and even verbalizing I can't do this!

I just can't. It's too much. I'm too tired. I can't do it right so why even try? What is the point?

I feel overwhelmed and under-qualified. I get bogged down with anger or sadness or despair. And my load might as well be a train that needs to be pulled over a hill.

As childish and simple as it sounds, I realized I need to be like the Little Blue Engine and hitch myself to my load.

She tugged and pulled and pulled and tugged and slowly, slowly, slowly they started off...

Puff, puff, chug, chug, went the Little Blue Engine.

"I think I can-I think I can-I think I can-I think I can-I think I can-I think I can-I think I can-I think I can-I think I can."

Up, up, up. Faster and faster and faster and faster the little engine climbed until I last they reached the top of the mountains.


I can do hard things.

Even when I don't think I can.

I can mother these three, almost four children like no one else can. I can tackle that project (or two) I have been putting off. I can forgive others for heart breaks they have caused. I can approach each day with purpose and passion.

I can push and pull and tug and I may go slowly, slowly, slowly at first but at least I am trying and moving forward.

Who knew a long forgotten children's book could put more pep in my step than 20 oz of caffeine?

Now, how to not forget this revelation I had today... Think Jeigh's preschool teacher would mind if I hung onto this book, just so I have a daily reminder???