Seeing a Few Tics, Some Thoughts & Some Pix

Greetings Earthlings.

(Hey, before I get started - Sarakastic, go read your comments. I need you to email me.)

Seeing a Few Tics
I've been seeing a few tics with The Boy today. Actually, I noticed a couple at church this past Sunday. I can't remember what he did on Sunday. I just remember being up on stage, rehearsing some songs and looking down. I remember thinking, hmmm...his face is tic-ing. Haven't seen that in a while.

Tonight, as he watched the long awaited Sponge Bob movie, I was looking at him and saw the exaggerated blinking thing. We had our neighbors over for some of my home made chili tonight. I saw him running around with their son and noticed a few exaggerated blinks with some raised eyebrow movements as he ran. Interesting. I won't panic. I'm just sitting here trying to think if there were any stresses in his day. He didn't mention anything unusual at school. So...maybe he's just tired? Maybe it's just part of the normal waxing and waning of his tics. I'll let you know.

Either way, he's still ridiculously cute. Just kills me. I love when he smiles at me. Or when he comes around the corner going, "Mom?" as if he needs to ask me something. Then just goes, "I love you," and runs off. Man, I am storing that away to remember during his adolescence!

Some Thoughts
Can I just tell you that my home made chili rocks? I'm not bragging. I'm just telling you I've eaten it every day since I made it on Saturday. Seriously. I could eat chili every day. Except for the days that I would want to eat enchiladas.

I'm currently reading a bible study done on the book of Acts. It's a study done by my former Boston church (Trish's church). I think of it as the Cambridge Vineyard but they're now the Greater Boston Vineyard. Which begs the question if there is a lesser Boston feeling all left out.

I've blogged before about this church's concept of The 40 Days of Faith. Well, it's usually done as a whole church during the Lenten period. A very powerful thing - when prayer is approached as a unified group - all in agreement! They have this amazing guy who works up these bible studies for each year. They post them on their site and I've downloaded every one of them to my computer. And I read them as my bible time. I'm not quite to the point where I can open a bible, read an entire book and glean the myriad of information that is there - if you know historical context, geographic significance, ancient Jewish culture, Roman culture, etc. I get quite a bit more than the average bear. But not like this guy does. And he presents it in a way that doesn't bore the snot out of me. I really have trouble sticking to the daily readings. I usually want to keep reading and end up reading about 7 days worth in one sitting. If you're wanting to read the bible but feel like you might want some guidance or insights but aren't really sure how to get that? Check these studies out. I think you'll like them. I've already read the Luke & Genesis studies. I'm planning on reading the Mark study next.

Some Pix
I've been enjoying the pictures other people are sharing. I just picked a couple more to show you today for some fun. I'll show you some of my siblings.

Here is my first day home from the Babies R Us store. I mean adoption agency. Or foster home. I've always said it was my first day home from the adoption agency but it's not like they kept me in a filing cabinet or in the infant aisle filed under "3 month olds". Notice the crankypants baby. Notice the high-tech baby seat. Notice the care with which my 2 yr old Big Sis is touching my arm. Or maybe she's going, "Mommy, how do I shut her up?" Notice the joy in my Oldest Bro's eyes. He obviously realizes I will idolize him for the rest of time. He's psyched. Check out the look on Middle Bro's face. It's like, "Yup. Great. Another one."

This one I love. Big Sis loves me enough to attempt to pop my head off. If it were not such a giant melon of a head, it may have just popped off. But this is no ordinary head. That's a Fegley/Ledgerwood head. They don't come much bigger or thicker-skulled than that. My sister and I have quite a few pictures like this. And by "this" I mean, showing the disproportionate gi-normous-osity of my head. Check it: I'm three. She's almost five. My head is way bigger than hers. I have other pictures that make this point in a much more comical fashion but this is what I had at hand. I also love the disinterest I have in her adoration. I'm all, "Dude, could you let GO so I could check out this baby bottle more?" I also love the cameo of Oldest Bro and a smidge of Middle Bro's head.

Oh this is gold. GOLD I TELL YAH! This is the first day of school, 1971. Like I needed to tell you the date with THOSE clothes screamin' off the screen? I'm pretty sure mom made those matching dresses. I was rockin' that mini dress and those navy blue lace-ups. This was my first real school - first grade. We had just moved to this town in Connecticut. Middle Bro now has a son that looks almost just like that - except more contemporary. Big Sis has freaking gorgeous hair, does she not? She was long & lanky even back then. Good thing she takes such good care of me because I'd have to hate her otherwise. I just love the stupid pose I'm doing. Far be it from me to just let someone take a normal picture of me.

And there you go.

Lofty Goal: Poorly Executed (A Meme)

I saw this meme out on Ellesappelle's & Stacy's sites. I love the meme. And - although I haven't read all of the books they mention - I got a lot of their life lessons references. I mean, with many books, you'd have had to live under a rock to not have some snippets fall into your head. And, though I have lived in many places, under a rock is not one of them.

So I'm taking on the meme. Even though I, a lowly math/physics/compSci college drop out, don't really have at all the same tastes in reading material, I'm giving it a shot. And it was a challenge. Because the books I have read? Well, I doubt anyone reading these blogs would have read them or would get the references. But I dug up a few that some of you might get.

Here we go.

Things I learned from reading.

1. To be a total class act, do the following: Survive a public divorce from a public sports hero where he and his new musician girl thing are plastered on magazines and are made a celebrated celebrity couple. Write a book about surviving the first year of divorce and never even mention either of the two afore mentioned people.
   'Happily Ever After' by Kristin Armstrong
2. If your livestock lives in the house with you? You'll probably wipe out more than 3/4 of an indigenous population when you land on their beaches.
   'Guns, Germs & Steel' by Jared Diamond
3. Never eat anything bigger than your head.
   'Never Eat Anything Bigger Than Your Head & Other Drawings' by B Kliban
4. This is advice for anyone traveling to India, Bangladesh or any other country with man-eating tigers: If you see a live tiger? Just have your parents with you. Upon seeing them, it will immediately turn into a stuffed animal. No one has to die. It's a beautiful solution.
   'The Days Are Just Packed: A Calvin & Hobbes Collection' by Bill Watterson
5. Don't discount a book just because the author looks like your fashion & style nemesis.
   'The Power of The Praying Wife' by Stormie O'Martian
6. NEVER forget your towel.
   'The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy' by Douglas Adams
7. Just because you can write a killer book doesn't mean it needs a follow up.
   All sequels to 'The Sword of Shannara' by Terry Brooks
8. Don't skip the forward. You don't want to admit you thought it was real.
   'Why Cats Paint' by Heather Busch & Burton Silver
9. I have a brick of cheese in my pants.
   'I, Gregory' by Marc Hempel

There you have it. Little gems I've picked up along the way in my pursuit of the literary lobotomy.

A Break From My Ranting

I thought we all could use a break from my kvetching about the dissolution of my marriage. I know I sure as hell could use one! And seeing as how a whole bunch of my fancy-pants, book learnin', writer-type blogger pals are doing this hoity toity meme that makes you realize just how pathetically read I am, I'm gonna do it, too.

Now I already gave Stacy the caveat that I will have to adjust the book list for nerdly geeks like me. Because:
A) I was a computer science/physics/math major in college
B) I dropped out of said college
C) I read voraciously throughout my college years and 20s but only sci fi and myth & fantasy.

Hello, my name is L y n e t t e and I'm a total dork.

So if Stacy could make her own book meme, well, I'm makin' my own. Now I can make you all read a list of books where you'll all go, "Who? What book? Huh?" But I will leave a few of hers on there just to keep me humble.

Here's how it goes:

Directions:

• Use blue font for everything you’ve read
• Use red font for everything you’ve started but never finished
• Use purple font for everything you’ve read but wish you hadn’t
• Use yellow font for everything you’d never read, even if you and that book were the only things to survive the apocalypse
• Use black font for things you’ve never read
• Use green front for things you want to read
• Use orange font if you’ve read the author but not that particular work
• Use pink if you've never turned a page of it but you saw a play, movie or TV show based on the work (I added this just so my list would have more than just black)
  

Stacy's List:
The Bible (I'm probably one of the few people who is being honest here and saying I'm not sure I made it through all the minor prophets and I am sure I never finished Revelations)
Medea, Euripides (I was actually IN the play)
Oedipus Rex, Sophocles
Odyssey, Homer
The Canterbury Tales, Geoffrey Chaucer
The Inferno, Dante Alighieri
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, William Shakespeare
Tartuffe, Moliere
Pride and Prejudice, Jane Austen (oh dear - I know I just lost some blogger friends with this admission)
The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, Samuel Taylor Coleridge
The Eve of St. Agnes, John Keats
Frankenstein, Mary Shelley
Wuthering Heights, Emily Bronte
The Scarlet Letter, Nathaniel Hawthorne
Moby Dick, Herman Melville
Great Expectations, Charles Dickens
Little Women, Louise May Alcott
War and Peace, Leo Tolstoy
Madame Bovary, Gustave Flaubert
The Count of Monte Cristo, Alexandre Dumas (and I give myself extra points because I used to make his sandwiches as a prep-cook - not easy, that)
The Awakening, Kate Chopin
The Turn of the Screw, Henry James
Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
Ulysses, James Joyce
Anne of Green Gables, L.M. Montgomery
The Great Gatsby, F. Scott Fitzgerald
The Sun Also Rises, Ernest Hemingway
The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck (I read the last page...)
Brave New World, Aldous Huxley
The Sound and the Fury, William Faulkner
The Fellowship of the Ring, J.R.R. Tolkien
To Kill a Mockingbird, Harper Lee (Gregory Peck, you rock)
Lord of the Flies, William Golding
The Catcher in the Rye, J.D. Salinger
Lolita, Vladimir Nabokov (extra points because I got this book only because The Police sing about it)
Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, Tennessee Williams
The Bell Jar, Sylvia Plath
A Good Man is Hard to Find, Flannery O’Connor (never read it but boy do I know it!)
Their Eyes Were Watching God, Zora Neale Hurston
Where Are You Going, Where Have You Been? Joyce Carol Oates
Love in the Time of Cholera, Gabriel Garcia Marquez
White Noise, Don DeLillo
The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison
The Satanic Verses, Salman Rushdie
White Teeth, Zadie Smith
Middlesex, Jeffrey Eugenides
The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, Michael Chabon
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban, JK Rowling
Everything is Illuminated, Jonathan Safran Foer
Gilead, Marilynne Robinson

Optional:
Untitled Memoir, Trish Ryan
Masochism is Always Funny: a Novel, Stacy Brazalovich

The Nerdly Geek Adendum:
The Unbearable Lightness Of Being, Milan Kundera (this should be pink then blue because I saw the movie as I see all things Daniel Day Lewis. It made me want to wear bowler derbies. I got the book to see how the movies stacked up. I liked the book but liked the movie better. I'm a dork.)
The Last of the Mohicans, James Fenimore Cooper (this should be pink then blue. Again, I'll see anything with a partly clad Daniel Day Lewis. But what a bonus I got with his hotter than hot adoptive brother Uncus. Yes, please!)
Anna Karenina, Leo Tolstoy (honestly, what is with the Russian agriculture minutiae?! I read this one because the heroine in The Unbearable Lightness of Being carried it around with her. What a wonderful story this could be if we didn't have to read through all that at crap.)
The Posessed, Fyodor Dostoyevsky (a well meaning, well-read friend tried to up the caliber of my reading list. If I thought Tolstoy could drone on, this made me want to put my eyes out with my own thumbs)
Guns, Germs & Steel, Jared Diamond (I have yet to finish this one thanks to the loss of my long commute once I started working from home. But it should be required reading for all high school history buffs.)
The Hobbit, JRR Tolkien
Every other Lord of The Rings book, JRR Tolkien
The Silmarillion, JRR Tolkein
The Sword of Shannara, Terry Brooks
The other two Shannara books from the original trilogy, Terry Brooks (it should have stopped here)
The four really bad books that make up the Heritage of Shannara, Terry Brooks
The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant The Unbeliever, Stephen R Donaldson (Now THIS is what a fantasy trilogy should be. In my book, these blow away the LOTR. Blasphemy, I know. But there it is.)
The Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Stephen R Donaldson (the last book of this trilogy was one of the first books to actually make me cry on a Boston subway)
The five books of The Gap Series, Stephen R Donaldson (I'm loyal to good authors, what can I say. This stuff ventured into sci-fi and it worked.)
The two books of Mordent's Need, Stephen R Donaldson (did this really surprise you?)
The Awakeners - Northsore & Southshore, Sheri S Tepper (she rocks - even if you don't like the genre)
The Gate to Women's Country, Sheri S Tepper (again, you don't have to like the genre to love this one)
Pretty much anything I can find by Sheri S Tepper, I've read
Druids, Morgan Llewelyn (can't type that without hearing Spinal Tap in my head)
The Mists of Avalon, Marion Zimmer Bradley (a disfigured Lancelot, a wimpy Gwen, and a Morgan that kicks butt - Camelot from the women's perspective)
A Dream of Eagles (Camulod Chronicles), Jack Whyte (I've read every single one and love love love them. The most probable telling of the Arthurian legend.)
The Foundation Series (Original & Extended), Isaac Asimov
The Robot Series, Isaac Asimov
The Galactic Empire Series, Isaac Asimov (you can see where this is going...)
Anything written by Isaac Asimov
Incarnations of Immortality (all 8 of them), Piers Anthony
The Xanth Series, Piers Anthony (there are over 30 of these. I think I stopped after about 12)

There are so many more that I just can't think of. I have huge collections of Arthurian legend, all things Robin hood, all things druid and Celtic legend. I have started reading up on Rome, it's history, it's leaders, everything I can find - yes, thanks to HBO's short lived series.

Some day I could just bore you all to tears by listing all of the books I've read. Based on the books you all tell me you read, none of you would really know any of them.