It is official! I’ve turned in and signed my degree plan and it is making the rounds to all the important people that will say I can graduate! I have 2 classes to take in summer I and 4 in the Fall. And then I am done!

I’m a little nervous about two things. 1) I have to take speech.  2) I have to take an independent study class where I sit in on a grad level  English class because the class I really need is not being offered.  There is still a chance they might decide to offer the one I need though, so it might be ok!

My hair and I have had a life long love/hate relationship. I love that is soft and silky, and that is about it. Sometimes I think it is a wonder I have any hair left on my head after all the changes it’s been through. It’s been long, short, permed, home permed, cut at home, cut by me, cut by someone who did not speak english, red, blonde, with bangs, without bangs and around again and again. I was just looking back through all my photo albums and it is funny how much it changes only to come back to the same thing. It is also funny how there are very few pictures where I actually like the way it looks.

I’ve learned over the years that there are a few things that just do not look good on me. Super short with layers is not a good look for me for instance. Neither are perms—as several old photos will attest to. But the one thing I can’t seem to accept not looking good on me—bangs. They look so good on other people. When a new style comes out, I somehow convince myself that this will by the style that looks good on me. But alas, it is never true. I’m not bang people despite hoping against hope. They always do some wierd curly cue thing even though my hair is stick straight everwhere else. I have actually told Patrick that if I ever tell him I want bangs, he has to remind me of my Jersey Mall hair trama. (see earlier post)

Patrick is always laughing at me when it comes to my hair. Every time it is time for me to get it cut it becomes this life or death question as to whether I should cut it off or keep growing it. I ask, even though I know his answer. He likes it short and blonde. And I ask, even though I know I’m not going to listen to what he says unless it is actually what I really want to do. So now, he just laughs and shakes his head.

But it is thanks to Patrick that I actually have a stylist I like. She’s more than I’d like to spend on a haircut, but worth every penny. I grew up getting haircuts at home and then moving up to cheap haircuts. When I was 18 I colored my hair for the first time by myself and an addiction was born. ( Yes Jeff, if you still read this, this is where you insert globhead comments about my glintz days.) Sometime after Patrick and I got engaged, fairly close to our wedding I think, I had a very lovely dark auburn color on my hair, but for some reason felt the need to change it. Now my hair takes most color as red, so it could be blonde, but if it isn’t the right blonde, it will come out red. That has been another thing I’ve had to learn. Well, I’m not really sure what happened, but it came out orange. I blame it on the dye, ferria is no good for me! Patrick had been trying to get me to go see his regular stylist forever and after the orange fiasco, I had to admit, maybe it was time to splurge on my hair. She fixed it and it was great. So I’ve been going to her ever since (with the exception of the Jersey days when I was seriously considering how to afford flying home every 6 weeks.)

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I’ve been trying to decide that very question lately. I have a haircut appointment tomorrow and I still don’t know what I’m going to ask her to do. Maybe it’s a me thing, maybe it’s an all girl thing (even though I like to think I’m not a girly girl) but if I don’t like the way my hair looks, I don’t like the way I look.

For now, I think I will just get an inch off even though I’m really wanting to cut it to my chin. I’ve worked so hard over the past two years to get it this long, that I don’t want to go chopping it off and then regret it. So there, that is my decision. That is unless of course I come home with it short!

So that is a lot to write about my looks for someone who generally gets ready in about 5 minutes, but hopefully it was entertaining!

We took Brenden to get his first pair of shoes yesterday. He wore them when we went out to run errands today and he thinks they are really funny. I’m not sure if I’ve ever mentioned before that he loves to play with shoes. He unties people’s shoelaces when they are over and once they take their shoes off, he wraps the strings around his little hand and has a ball with the whole shoe. His have velcro instead of laces, but he has already discovered that velcro makes a pretty neat sound.

I’m on my spring break this week, so maybe I can get a new video made and posted like I made mention of previously. In the meantime, here is one happy shoe guy!

So sometime at the end of last year Patrick bought a laptop from one of his friends. He hemmed and hawed over it and had a great debate as to whether that was what he wanted or did he want an apple laptop. He finally decided he wanted his friends laptop and so he bought it.

It couldn’t have been more than two months later that he decided he hadn’t made the right choice for him and that he really needed a mac. I was a little perturbed needless to say. I told him this was a good lesson in thinking about the consequences of his actions!

Turns out he won the persistence match and I gave in and let him sell his laptop to get the money for the mac. He listed it on ebay and the auction ended Saturday. Patrick was crushed to find out that the auction had just barely met the reserve, but sadly the guy was a scammer. Ebay was on top of things though and got him his auction fees refunded. After a consultation with my ebay expert parents, Patrick decided to offer the next highest bidder a second chance at the computer even though his high bid was slightly under the reserve. The guy agreed and paid for it within a half an hour of the offer on Sunday.

We have a ton of random electronic stuff laying around that I’ve been asking Patrick to put on ebay or craigslist ever since we got home. You know, stuff that has been replaced with better stuff. And it has remained on his to do list ever since. I told him when he got that stuff listed he could go to the Apple store and buy his computer. So he had plans to go buy it tomorrow at lunch after completing his task tonight.

And we are finally getting to the quote. We were talking just now about our money situation and I suggested maybe it would be best to wait one more day until after payday. You would have thought the world had ended as Patrick put on his best pout. Frustrated with him I asked him how many babies I had to take care of. A little mean, I know, but you didn’t see him. His response: “Just me.” I said, then who is going to take care of Brenden? Patrick-“He’s not a baby. He’s an infant.” Maybe it was the tone of his voice, or maybe it was just the rest of my day adding up, but that cracked me up.

By the way, I asked Patrick how to spell perterbed and persistence and he said, ” Are you writing about me?” I think someone has a guilty conscience.

What was the rest of my day you ask? The day started off nicely enough. I was procrastinating on a writing project and my biggest topic on my mind was should I keep growing my hair long or cut it. Still haven’t come to any conclusions about that by the way.

Anway, Brenden woke up from his nap. I was moving my studying around him as he moved around the house. I ended up sitting at the dining room table. Brenden came to play at my feet. He fell forward into the chair and hit his head. There was silence building toward that awful scream I knew was coming, and then it came. He was bleeding. I called Patrick who laughed at me for wondering, “how do you know if a baby has a concussion?”

After Brenden was calmed down, I gave him a bottle and realized it was time for his second nap of the day. I put him in his crib, but not 5 minutes later I heard the dreaded scream that has come to signify that his leg is stuck in that darn crib yet again. (I’m working on writing the company about that.) So I went in to free him and as usual the longer it took, the louder he screamed, the more panicy I became. You’d think I’d be used to it because it keeps happening, but no. I finally got him out, and started to calm him down.

I decided the best thing to do would be to put him down for his nap in his play yard in our room. It wasn’t set up and our room is a mess because we are in the process of moving some things around. I’m trying to set it up and manuver around all these things all with one hand as I hold Brenden who does not want to let me go with my other hand. I then stepped on a plug to a tivo unit that is on our floor and fell down and backwards into Sam’s crate door which stabbed me in the back. And at that moment it started to storm. Literally. Which of course freaked out the dogs and kept the baby from sleeping. It turned out to be a day, but I got chick-fil-a out of it!

As of Monday, Brenden is walking! Ok, it is really only a few steps at a time, but it counts! He takes a couple of steps and then sits down. Or the dogs trip him. But he is getting better. I’ll try to get some video soon, but when I tried on Monday he kept trying to take the camera away from me.

That’s right, it is time for your monthly Brenden update! I’ve come to the conclusion that since Brenden was born on the 30th of the month then all months should have 30 days. It would just be a lot easier for me!

He loves to look out the windows, pull all of his toys one by one out of the box, use his computer keyboard, go into any room you open the door to, play with the phone cord and bang the metal dog bowls on the tile floor in the kitchen. He is also enjoying his little walking toy and pushes that until he gets stuck. And he loves to rough house as my Mom puts it (being tickled, turned upside down, trying to go headfirst off the couc, etc.).
He is able to take a step at a time and then sit down, I keep thinking it isn’t long until he will put a few together, he seems so close. He’s a bit of a stinker about eating, he seems to only want to eat what he can feed himself and he refuses to use the lid to sippy cups, he just wants a plain cup. He has four teeth, but I think more are very soon to follow. He  has gotten tall enough to reach things off the kitchen table and the tv stand, so we are running out of safe places to put things!

I just got back from getting a massage with the gift certificate Patrick got me for Valentine’s Day. It was heaven! I haven’t had a massage since the one I had while I was pregnant last year in February when Patrick got me a gift certificate. I went in thinking I knew exactly where I hurt, my lower back has been hurting for a month and my carpal tunnel has been hurting my arms since December. It wasn’t until the masseuse started that I realized I actually hurt everywhere! He was using really deep pressure and still couldn’t get the knots out of my shoulders and neck. I was surprised when he asked me if I get a lot of headaches while he was rubbing the huge boulder on my neck. Because I do. And he could also tell without me saying anything that my back has hurt for some time.

The place I went to has membership where you can pay $49 a month and get one massage a month and then if you want another one in that month you only pay $39 for it. If you don’t sign up for the membership then you pay a slightly higher fee, but it is still a really good deal for a one-hour massage. I would love to join, but don’t want to add another bill to our budget. I have however told Patrick that if we ever win the lottory, I’m going to have a my own personal masseuse on hand to give daily massages. Because apparently I need them!

I was sitting at my computer typing my nice little post about the park and chatting with Patrick. I had let the dogs outside and Brenden was napping. Then he started to cry. I know that it is a lot easier to let the dogs in and feed them without Brenden underfoot so I went and took care of that. Then I quickly came back to the computer and told Patrick bye.

And here is where the bad mom part comes in….Brenden hadn’t wanted to take his nap in the first place, a pretty common occurance around here. He often wakes up crying, so I just really didn’t think anything of it. When I went into his room however, I realized right away that this wasn’t his normal cry. He was sobbing, and he was stuck! The chubby part of his thigh was stuck between the rails of the crib and his foot was pointing down and stuck between the crib and the mattress. I started off calm enough setting to the task of trying to unstick him. But I couldn’t do it. He was panicing, so I was panicing. I could not budge the thigh out because of the chub, and because when I moved the top, it contorted the bottom more. I was mere seconds from tearing that wood apart with my bare hands, but some how I finally got both parts of his leg and foot unstuck.

The poor thing sobbed and sniffed and clung to me for a good 10 minutes. He stayed a little grumpy through most of the rest of the afternoon, but ended the day in a miraculously happy mood. I really thought something was going to be broken, but all is well.

Today is such a beautiful day that Brenden and I walked down to our neighborhood park with the idea of checking out the swing situation. Ok, Brenden actually rode in his stroller, but you know what I mean! We took the short walk to the park and found the only swing for the little guys was taken. I decided to take Brenden out and let him practice his walking on the concrete. Sounds mean doesn’t it? I was holding his hands though. Then the swing freed up and after checking my fear of him being too small for the swing with another mother, in he went. He didn’t seem to have an opinion of it either way, but I think he liked his hair blowing around. Before we left he played in the dirt and wood chips. He did get one small fistful to his mouth, but I got it all out right away.

It’s only Saturday night and Patrick and I have been able to get a ton of stuff done this weekend. Last night we watched two of our Netflix selections. They were both a little odd, but very interesting.

Our first movie up was “The Final Cut” (2004) with Robin Williams and Jim Caviezel. It is a futuristic story where people can pay to have chips implanted into the brains of their babies so that every moment of their life is recorded. Robin Williams’ job is to take all the footage the chip records and turn it into a “re memory” video when someone dies. There were several parts of the story that didn’t really make a lot of sense to me, but what I did love about this movie was the idea that people don’t remember things accurately. Instead they remember them from their own perspective, with their own emotions attached, in Robin Williams case, guilt.

The second movie we watch was “American Psycho” (2000) with Christian Bale. Josh Lucas and Reese Witherspoon also had small parts. Christian Bale is a yuppie in the 80s, and oh yeah, he’s also a serial killer. But the movie sort of leaves it up for you to decide if he actually is killer or if all the events you’ve just watched happen only in his mind. Either way, we are both worried about ourselves, because we thought parts of it were hilarious! Christian Bale, who I already loved, was an awesome crazy guy. He says the most inane things and nobody listens to him. I covered my eyes and ears through the gory parts, but the rest was really funny!

Tonight we went to a grown up dinner (meaning no Brenden) to celebrate Valentine’s Day. Since Patrick is in busy season at work for a few more weeks, he couldn’t get home in time to go out on Wednesday, so we just planned on going out tonight instead. We went to III Forks, where neither of us has ever been before, and it was yummy. It always makes me feel like such a slob when the waiters clean your crumbies away between courses though! It’s like “yeah, I made a mess. Thanks for drawing attention to it!”

Patrick also got the taxes and grocery shopping done while I studied for a test I have on Monday and cleaned up around the house. We balanced the checkbook and paid bills too. Busy busy. Tomorrow, more studying, cleaning and relaxing!

The Burleson’s came to watch Brenden yesterday and they brought along a toy for him. He had it figured out by the time I got home from school. Well, mostly figured out anyway. Take a look.

We spent our Friday night doing homework. Patrick went to a friends house to get some help with his calculus before taking his first exam on Saturday. I stayed home, and once Brenden was in bed, started to work on a paper I had due by the end of today (Sunday). We wore both up late, but we got our stuff done!

Yesterday Patrick went and took his test. He’d been freaking out because his homework had been so easy, but when he went to do the on-line lab Thursday night, it was way harder. But he got a high B on his test, and since the class average was in the 50s, he felt pretty good about that.

After his test we went the Scottish Rite hospital for a Hands Down meeting. Brenden got to play with a bunch of other kids and had a lot of fun with that. This meeting was less business and more sharing than the last one we went to. We sat in a circle and shared our stories, which I thought was going to be not fun, but actually turned out to be really nice. So people mentioned their initial reaction to their children’s hand was to feel cheated. I never felt that way though, and now, it seems obvious Brenden more than makes up for whatever he may be missing.

Today we worked on organizing the garage. A task I’m sure Patrick was thrilled to tackle, but our garage was pretty bad. We only got half way done, but we got a good start. Then we were off to a wonderful lunch at my in-laws were we of course ate too much.

Oh, I also got my diabetes checkup results back and my numbers are finally going back down! Yeah. I don’t have to try to convince any more nurses and doctors that I’m not an alcoholic! (Last time my liver levels were crazy high.) So I’m happy about all that.

Tomorrow starts another busy week. I have two tests on Wed., but then I think things should slow down.

Here are some of the latest pictures.

The stinker has 4 teeth now, but he’ll be darned if he’ll show them to you!

You are getting sleepy….

My boys are tired! Late Thursday night after Patrick got home from work and just before Brenden’s bedtime.

Man the time is going fast. That is one thing that everyone tells you and you think you understand, but you really don’t until it happens. Brenden had a great checkup today where the doctor stressed several times that he is a big boy! Here are the stats : 30 1/2 inches long (75 %)  and 20 lbs 9.2 oz  (50%). He got his finger pricked for an anemia test and didn’t cry at all for that. He only cried for a second when he got his two shots, one for polio and the booster flu shot. He did really great! Even if it did take 3 of us to hold him stillish.
He won’t go back for another checkup until May 1st, the day after he turns 1. Right now he’s working on 3 teeth that are coming in and getting more confident with cruising. He gets into absolutely everything and won’t stay still for diaper or clothing changes (unless it is for Patrick).

He has finally, thanks in large part to my parents being patient and consistent, started to get into eating solids. I started at 5 months, but he ws never very excited about anything. Then when we went to NYC we didn’t take solids and when we came home he pretty much refused to open his mouth for anything other than applesauce. But now he is eating some finger foods and lots of baby foods. The doctor recommended starting on table food with him now.

Brenden today after the doctor visit.

Brenden a few days ago posing for his own personal gap ad! Kelli won this jacket for him at a charity auction for her work. It is still a smidge big one him, but if he doesn’t wear it now, it will be a crop jacket by the time the arms fit him!

We had a lazy morning Saturday. Kelli had spent the night with me and as we walked her out to her car, we noticed that it was a really beautiful day. We decided to postpone our homework until today (which we have now finished) and head to the Dallas Zoo.

In the time it took to shower, gather all of Brenden’s stuff wait for him to wake up from his nap and drive to Dallas, the weather turned a bit chilly, but still bearable. So we set off to explore the zoo. I can’t say that Brenden paid attention to many of the animals. He was still sleepy for some reason and he was more interested in the people. He did laugh at some pink birds in a tree and sort of looked at the kangaroos, but kept missing them bounce! Patrick and I had fun though! By the time we left, a little over two hours later when the zoo was closing, it had become very chilly and I was happy to head indoors!

We go to his 9 month appointment on Tuesday, more posting to ensue.

He looks very jaunty in this hat! Apparently Patrick decided I shouldn’t be in pictures, he cut me off 🙂

He only wanted to look at the fish after we got up and were going to leave them. He loves looking at the sad little fish we have at home….

He was just too cute in this outfit he got for Christmas. He’s usually a much more cas kind of baby, but we went fancy for the zoo! We saw punk babies, hippy babies, preppy babies. It is so funny to me how parents put their personality into the kids outfits!

When I was in AP English my senior year, my teacher gave the class a list of books that she felt all college-bound students should read. I vowed I would read every one of them before I died, and then I never looked at the list again. But I kept it. And I thought of it recently and pulled it out. I haven’t made much progress on the list, but I was able to say that I’d read a few of them. So I am renewing my vow—at least to read as many as I can. There are some I’ve never heard of and some I’ve tried to read and know that I don’t like, but there are just as many that I’m looking foward to reading just as soon as my reading is no longer a required thing. Though there are a few I will be knocking off this semester.

Since I know my family and a large majority of my friends love to read, I thought I’d post the list with the books I’ve read noted. Feel free to make suggestions for additons.

* = I have read
Wold Literature
The Bible
The Orestei Trilogy: Agamemnon, The Libation Bearers, The Eumenides-Aeschylus
Lysistrada-Aristophanes
Pere Goriot-Honore de Balzac
The Stranger, The Plague-Albert Camus
Don Quixoite-Miguel de Cervantes
The Cherry Orchard, The Sea Gull, Three Sisters-Anton Chekhov
Madame Curie-Eve Curie
The Inferno-Dante
Crime and Punishment,The Brothers Karamazov-Fyodor Dostoevsky
The Three Musketeers, The Count of Monte Cristo-Alexander Dumas
Medea *-Euripides
Madame Bovary-Gustave Flaubert
The Diary of a Young Girl *-Anne Frank
The Prophet, Tears and Laughter- Kahil Gilbran
Faust-Goethe
Kon-Tiki, The Ra Expedition, Aku-Aku-Thor Heyerdahl
The Illiad *, The Odyssey *-Homer
Les Miserables, The Hunchback of Notre Dame- Victor Hugo
Steppenwolf-Herman Hesse
An Enemy of the People, A Doll’s House-Henrik Ibsen
The Metamorphosis, The Trial- Franz Kafka
The Prince-Machiavelli
Death in Venice, Buddenbrooks-Thomas Mann
Short Stories-Guy de Maupassant
The Misanthrope, The Would-Be Gentleman-Moliere
All Quiet on the Western Front, Bobby Deerfield (Heaven Has No Favorites-original title)-Erich Maria Remarque
Giants in the Earth- O. E. Rolvaag
Cyrano de Bergerac-Edmond Rostand
The Little Prince, Wind, Sand & Stars – Antoine de St. Exuprey
One Day in the Life of Ivan Denisovich, Cancer Ward- Alexander Solzhenitsyn
The Hobbit *, The Lord of the Rings, Silmarillion- J. R. R. Tolkien
Resurrection, War and Peace, Anna Karenina-Leo Tolstoy
Fathers and Sons-Ivan Turgenev
Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea-Jules Vern
Candide-Voltaire
Oedipus Rex *, Antigone *-Sophocles
Mythology, The Greek Way, The Roman Way- Edith Hamilton

British Literature
Everyman-Anonymous
Pride and Prejudice-Jane Austen
Jane Eyre-Charlotte Bronte
Wuthering Heights-Emily Bronte
Sonnets from the Portuguese-Elizabeth Barrett Browning
Poems *-Robert Browning
The Pilgrim’s Progress-John Bunyan
The Way of All Flesh-Samuel Butler
The Canterbury Tales *-Jeffery Chaucer
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner *-Samual Taylor Colridge
Lord Jim-Joseph Conrad
Robinson Crusoe-Daniel Defoe
Great Expectations *, A Tale of Two Cities *, Oliver Twist, David Copperfield-Charles Dickens
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes- Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Rebecca-Daphne DuMaurier
Silas Marner-George Eliot
The French Lieutenant’s Woman, The Magus-John Fowles
The Forsyte Saga-John Galsworthy
The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire-Edward Gibbon
Lord of the Flies *-William Golding
She Stoops to Conquer, The Deserted Village-Oliver Goldsmith
The Mayor of Casterbridge, Far From the Madding Crowd *, Tess of the d’Urbervilles, Return of the Native, Jude the Obscure-Thomas Hardy
Green Mansions-W. H. Hudson
Brave New World-Aldous Huxley
A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, Ulysses-James Joyce
Poems-John Keats
Captains Courageous, Kim-Rudyard Kipling
The Screwtape Letters-C.S. Lewis
Sons and Lovers, Lady Chatterly’s Lover- D. H Lawrence
Morte d’Arthur-Sir Thomas Malory
Of Human Bondage, The Razor’s Edge-Somerset Maugham
Faustus *-Christopher Marlowe
Paradise Lost *, Paradise Regained, Areopagitica-John Milton
Utopia-Thomas Moore
Animal Farm, 1984-George Orwell
Cry, The Beloved Country-Alan Paton
The Rape of the Lock-Alexander Pope
Ivanhoe-Sir Walter Scott
Julius Caesar *, Macbeth *, Hamlet *, Othello *, Romeo and Juliet *, A Midsummer Nights’s Dream *, The Taming of the Shrew *-William Shakespeare
Pygmalion, Androcles and the Lion *, Caesar and Cleopatra, Saint Joan-George Bernard Shaw
Frankenstein *-Mary Shelley
The Rivals, The School for Scandal-Richard B. Sheridan
Kidnapped, Treasure Island-Robert Louis Stevenson
Queen Victoria-Lytton Strachey
Gulliver’s Travels-Jonathan Swift
Poems-Alfred Lord Tennyson
Vanity Fair-William Thackeray
The Once and Future King, The Book of Merlin-T.H. White
Poems *-William Wordsworth

American Literature
Swiftwater-Paul Annixter
Nobody Knows My Name, Go, Tell it on the Moutain, The Fire Next Time-James Baldwin
Herzog, Henderson the Rain King, Humbolt’s Gift-Saul Bellow
Fahrenheit 451-Ray Bradbury
The Good Earth-Pearl S. Buck
Silent Soring, The Sea Around Us-Rachel Carson
My Antonia, Death Comes to the Archbishop-Willa Cather
The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, The Innocents Abroad, A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur’s Court, Roughing It- Samuel L. Clemens (Mark Twain)
The Last of the Mohicans, The Deerslayer-James Fenimore Cooper
The Red Badge of Courage-Stephen Crane
Life with Father-Clarence Day
Poems-Emily Dickinson
The Story of Philosophy-Will Durant
An American Tragedy-Theodore Dreiser
The Invisible Man-Ralph Ellison
Essays-Ralph Waldo Emerson
As I Lay Dying, The Sound and The Fury-William Faulkner
The Great Gatsby *- F. Scott Fitzgerald
Autobiography-Benjamin Franklin
Poems *-Robert Frost
The Scarlet Letter *, The House of the Seven Gables-Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Old Man and The Sea, For Whom the Bell Tolls, A Farewell to Arms-Ernest Hemingway
Hiroshima, A Single Pebble-John Hersey
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow-Washington Irving
The Rise of Silas Lapham, A Modern Instance-William Dean Howells
The Turn of the Screw, Daisy Miller, The American, The Portrait of a Lady-Henry James
One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest-Ken Kesey
The Story of My Life-Helen Keller
Andersonville-MacKinley Kantor
A Separate Peace *-John Knowles
The Night Thoreau Spent in Jail, Inherit the Wind- Jerome Lawrence and Robert E. Lee
Arrowsmith, Babbit, Main Street-Sinclair Lewis
To Kill a Mockingbird *-Harper Lee
The Ugly American-William Lederer
The Call of the Wild-Jack London
J. B. –Archibald MacLeish
Spoon River Anthology-Edgar Lee Masters
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter, A Member of the Wedding-Carson McCullers
Moby Dick-Herman Melville
Death of a Salesman *, The Crucible *-Arthur Miller
Bridges at Toko-Ri, Hawaii, The Source-James Michner
The Octopus-Frank Norris
The Emperor Jones, A Long Day’s Journey into Night, Desire Under the Elms, A Moon for the Misbegotten-Eugene O’Neill
The Yearling-Marjorie K. Rawlings
Poems-Edwin Arlington Robinson
Catcher in the Rye *- J. D. Salinger
The People, Yes. Abraham Lincoln-Carl Sandburg
The Human Comedy-William Saroyan
The Jungle-Upton Sinclair
The Red Pony, The Grapes of Wrath, Travels with Charley, Of Mice and Men, The Pearl-John Steinbeck
The Agony and the Ecstasy-Irving Stone
Uncle Tom’s Cabin-Harriet B. Stowe
Walden, Civil Disobedience *-Henry D. Thoreau
Thurber, Carnival, My Life and Hard Times-James A. Thurber
Trinity, Exodus, QBVII-Leon Uris
Up From Slavery-Booker T. Washington
Leaves of Grass-Walt Whitman
All the King’s Men, A Place to Come To-Robert Penn Warren
Our Town *, The Skin of Our Teeth-Thorton Wilder
Summer and Smoke, The Glass Menagerie, A Streetcar Named Desire, Cat on a Hot Tin Roof-Tennessee Williams
The Friendly Persuasion, Except for Me and Thee-Jessamyn West
Look Homeward, Angel-Thomas Wolfe
Black Boy-Richard Wright

Patrick and I started a New Year’s weight loss competition to help us get in shape. I am currently winning, but that is only because so far, Patrick isn’t competiting! We are both somewhat competitive, so I thought this would help keep us on track, but so far, not really.

So I found this picture to help inspire me and I’m gonna win! I don’t generally think I’m very photogenic, but I like this picture.

When I left school back in ’01, I had about 15 hours left to complete my journalism degree. When I went back last year, I figured that I had about 30 hours to complete a degree in English instead. Somehow, that number just kept growing until it seemed like maybe I’d never finish. Especially after a frustrating advising session at the end of last semester. But I sat down this past Thursday and finally got it all planned out on paper.

I’m taking 4 classes starting this Wed. I’ll have two American Literature classes, Spanish 3 and social psychology (to complete my psych minor). This summer I will take two classes leaving me 12 hours for the Fall. Then….graduation. Then I can finally start being whatever it is I’m going to be when I grow up! Too bad that when I told my advisor what I was interested in doing he told me repeatedly that I should just write childrens books because I could use my psychology and writing skills for that. And while I would love to do that, I can’t exactly just whip up a book and earn a living. And whatever happened to being supportive? Oh well, who needs him! I’ve got a great support system when it comes to giving encouragement on finishing up with school.

So maybe it has taken longer to finish up school than I ever thought it would take me, I’m doing it. And I do believe that often it is the things that are hard that are worth the most.

Brenden has his first tooth coming in. It started yesterday and is slowly pushing it’s way up. We can actually see it and feel it. Teething Brenden=Cranky Brenden, but he has been making up for it by giving me lots of kisses with sound effects and lots of his version of raspberries. It’s pretty cute. And just enough not to make me wanna run screaming from a house of crazy dogs and a teething baby:)

And as of last Saturday night, he is occassionally using the furniture to help him with walking! He grabs the couch and takes a few steps to the side or moves from the couch to the side table. He’s very busy, he’s got places to go!

Here is a cute video of Brenden playing peekaboo with his Grandfather (my Dad) on Christmas day. For some reason, he thought my Dad covering him up with the quilt was the most hilarious thing in the world.
peekaboowithgrandpa.mov

In case anyone wonders what I do with my day, here I try to keep up with Brenden as he uses his mad skillz to explore some of his new Christmas toys. It may be just a little long, sorry about that if it is.

brendenplayswithchristmastoys.mov

And finally, a retro look at Brenden on his first day home from the hospital with commentary by Patrick.

brendensfirstdayhome.mov

Patrick and I spent a quiet New Year’s Eve at home playing board games. May sound boring to some, but we had fun. For probably only the second time ever I beat him at Trivial Pursuit! And I beat him good! We just got the 80s editon for christmas and I was on a role! But then he paid me back by crushing me in the Monopoly here and now game that we played. He won free parking about 4 times and one of those times there was over $50 million in the middle. Neither of us like to lose, so I have a feeling a rematch will happen.

Speaking of not liking to lose, starting today, we are having a competition to see which of us can lose the biggest % of the weight we need to lose. We both need the motivation, so hopefully making it a showdown will help.

Patrick has to go back to work tomorrow, but I’m at home until the 17th.