(There are 1001 things I want to blog about right now...but not much time!) I'm off to see Kendell now. I stayed with him last night until about 10:00, when my wonderful & amazing & fabulous BIL and SIL (Kendell's sister and her husband) took over for me, because he was NOT ready to be left alone. He was still very groggy from the anesthesia. He kept falling asleep, then waking up to bellow "ice!" or "thirsty!" or, one time, the name of his pain meds. (He also kept saying several hilarious things, but I won't embarrass the poor guy. Yet. j/k!)

I talked to him today, and they've got him on a fast, because he has an...illium? I think that's what he said. I'm anxious to talk to the nurse and see what's going on. He did manage to stand today for a few minutes. More when I get back!

And...Kayci! This is my poor niece, who has been trying and trying to get my directions for rag quilts, and every time I send them to her, the emails just never make it. (Without the attachments, mail goes right through.) Weird. Anyway. I am FINALLY getting around to posting them. Here they are!

Download 3_fabric_rag_quilt.doc

Download 4_fabric_rag_quilt.doc

He’s out!

They started Kendell’s surgery at 8:00, and it took just shy of five hours. I just finished talking to the doctor. He brought in the x-rays they did during the surgery. They started on his right side. They position the cup portion first—the replacement for the cartilage in a healthy hip. Then they remove the diseased bone. He said that his ball joints were completely deteriorated—like chalk. After the cup was installed, they begin installing the staff that is inserted into his femur. On the right side, he needed a size 12 (whatever that means!), but they had some problems getting it into the bone, because he really needed an 11.5. So they drilled out part of the femur to get the good, tight fit on the right side. Next they did the left side, which he said was horrible (it was the side that hurt most)—the cartilage shredded. This one went easier, as he was a perfect size 11 on the left. (Usually, when they do a double replacement, they use the same size, but as anyone who knows Kendell can attest, he is nowhere near usual.)

It was interesting to see the x-rays, especially how they line up the joints to make sure his legs are the same length once this is all over. The doctor said that he gave them quite a workout (again....not unusual for Kendell!), because his legs are so long and heavy, and his "heavily developed muscles." (I remembered that particularly to share with him!) Lastly he said that he has great bone strength, so the prostheses should have no troubles getting established in there.

I’m just grabbing a quick bite while I wait for him to be moved from recovery (where I can’t see him yet) to his room (where I can). Those of you waiting for phone calls, I’ll call you next. I just wanted to get the details down before I forgot. THANK YOU all for your support, prayers, calls, messages, and comments. I will keep you updated!

Today's a big day for Kendell. Twenty years ago, he was diagnosed with avascular necrosis in his hips. This means that over the last two decades, the balls of his hip joints---which are basically dead bone---have been wearing down. His hip joints now look like a disintigrating mountaintop instead of the smooth curve most everyone else has. Every few years or so, he'd go in for another x-ray and another spate of advice: wait as long as you can to get them done. And each year, he's been in more and more pain; just walking got harder and harder. (I'm always surprised at how many downright-rude comments he's gotten from random strangers about his gait. Seriously: he doesn't choose to walk like he's been horseback riding for way too long!)

This spring, though, through a variety of very happy coincidences, we were guided to the  very best doctor and procedure we could have found. All those years of waiting paid off in discovering a cutting-edge surgeon and a new technique---the anterior approach---that will make his recovery so much easier. They'll even do both hips during the same surgery. After getting far more than just a second opinion---I think this is our fifth or sixth opinion, honestly---I feel we were lead to the perfect situation. It is a blessing.

So...today's the day. He's having both hips replaced with new, stainless steel joints. I've been joking with him that he'll soon be the bionic man, but honestly I am just hoping for a very few things. 1---that he'll be happier. 2---that he can be free of pain. 3---that he can return to doing the things he loves to do (like hiking, say, or mowing the lawn without needing pain meds afterward). I feel like everything will go smoothly today, although I am not so sure about the recovery. (I am not a nurse for a reason!)

Wish us luck!

One of my favorite-ever photos is a black and white of me as a newborn. My mother—her hair perfectly coiffed in a modified beehive, despite her recent 36-hours, posterior-baby, back-labor-without-drugs delivery of me—is sitting in a hospital bed with me bundled up in one of those perfect baby-burrito wraps the nurses manage. She’s holding me up, our cheeks pressed together; everything is quiet and peaceful.

I love this photo. It might even be the only picture of me as a newborn that exists. It makes me think about my mom on the day I was born, especially in light of how much I loved the days my babies were born. That exhausted euphoria, the absolute magic of a person who previously wasn’t there and then: here; the examining of body parts and counting of toes. But there I go, putting my own experiences on top of my mother’s. Because honestly: I’ve no idea how she felt on the day I was born. I wonder: how did she feel at having her third girl—did she wish I was a boy? or: did she know what to name me when she saw me, or did it take awhile? or: did anyone bring her a gift or some flowers? or: what was her favorite part of me? (Personally, I have a thing for the backs of babies’ necks.) or even: who took the picture? And that’s why the picture I love also frustrates me: I want to know more than it can tell. I want to know what she thought, what she felt.

But my mom is just not the write-down-your-feelings sort of person. And the longer I go about my life, the more I realize that most people aren’t write-down-your-feelings sort of people. Which is a realization that makes me sad, because I think that most people want to know more of their own stories. It’s the impetus (or, at least one of them) behind a class at Big Picture Scrapbooking I am offering right now: Write Now! A Speedy Journaling Workshop. 

Honestly: this is my favorite class I’ve taught. As I developed it, my goal was to help those I-don’t-write-down-my-feelings sort of people be able to write down their feelings—well, and the stories they want to tell on their layouts. It is all about knowing that it doesn’t have to take forever to write well; I share tons of techniques for writing quickly. It’s about knowing how to get to the point without any sort of writerly agony. And it’s about overcoming that fear we all have (writers, quite honestly, probably have it the worst!) of sounding dumb or pointless or silly or whatever in our writing, meaning I also teach ways to overcome that it-has-to-be-perfect attitude. Of course, you all know that I love anything to do with words, so of course I’d love this class, right?

But it’s more than just my geekiness that makes Write Now! my favorite. It’s that I get the opportunity to help people get their stories on their layouts—real, interesting, significant stories. Because I know that people are taking more pictures now than ever, and the thought of all those storyless pictures gives me hives.

SO! Over the next four weeks on my blog, I’m going to be doing some random journaling challenges, tips-and-tricks, and ideas to tickle your writerly self into action, all in conjunction with Write Now! If you’re interested in getting the whole Write Now! shebang, you can learn more and sign up here. (Through July 30.) (The class started yesterday, but it would be no big deal to get caught up.)

Your first challenge? Choose a picture from your childhood that you wish you had the story behind—and then ask someone to tell it to you. I know—brilliant, right? Because seriously: my mom’s still here. Even though the details won’t ever be fresh in her memory like they were on the day my newborn photo was taken, I’m sure she remembers some things. And even though communicating with my mom isn’t one of my strongest points, I’m still up for the challenge, because I want to know the story more than I struggle with actually asking the questions. If you take the challenge and blog about it, make sure to tell me because I want to read your newly-found story, too!

Happy writing!

This summer marks the 20-year anniversary of my friend Chris and I meeting. Something far larger than me made sure we were in the same group at our telemarketing jobs, and we became instant friends—kindred spirits, you might say. She was one of my adolescent years’ biggest blessings; it is hard to explain what she means to me. Like no one else in my group of high-school friends, she had my back. She knew me and loved me and even took care of me when I was at my most unlovable phase. She is the keeper of all my past secrets. But we don’t get to see each other enough, now that we’re all grown up. So when the chance came up—even though I felt guilty about leaving my kids for the night—I went to The Police concert with her.

And I am so glad I did.

Because going to a concert like that reminds me of how it felt to be my old self. The scents of beer, cigarette smoke, bodies, warm grass, surrounded by pieces of conversation and laughter, and then the music: a sensory time-machine that made me remember things I forgot I had forgotten. I kept thinking that everyone else should be there, not just me and Chris, but all the friends I had sloughed off of me through processes of betrayal and back-stabbing. In between the opening act (Elvis Costello, who did a cool version of "Allison" with Sting himself) and the main event, we set off to find the bathrooms but instead actually did discover an old friend, Jennifer. If Chris is the keeper of my old secrets, then Jenn is the keeper of my hardest self. During our senior year Jenn and I were always together (Chris was working in Maryland as a nanny then), rebellious and angry and stupid. I made many life-changing decisions that year, and the Amy Jenn knew was almost nothing like the Amy I am now.

Jenn and I both nearly cried when we saw each other. Maybe we both felt the same way: that the other held memories that almost no one else does. What I wanted the reunion to feel like was equal, three old friends comparing life stories. A scene from a book. Instead I felt vaguely ashamed of my current existence, the smallness of a small-town librarian and mother. What happened to all that fiery ambition we both used to have? She’d done something with hers (ad-agency employee approving press passes and doing other glamorous things), but it was hard to confess I still haven’t managed to accomplish much. Plus, she’s still rail-thin (she always was) while I am...well, not.

After Chris and I said good-bye to Jenn (with promises of keeping in touch) and finally made it to the bathroom, I found myself thinking about that Amy I used to be, the one whose environment was founded in rebellion-as-religion. My greatest contempt was for people who seemed to be pretending. (Still is, really.) And yet, standing there surrounded by ghosts, dancing a bit to "Message in a Bottle," I wondered: when was I pretending? Was my down-with-church, vodka-drinking self who I really am? Or is it the person I am now, trying to live my religion and be a good mother, feeling guilty over not achieving housewifery-goddesshood? They are two nearly black-and-white different versions of myself, and I’m not sure which is the authentic one.

But what I did decide: I wasn’t ever pretending when it came to music. That is the truest face of my goth-girl incarnation, loving good music. How many concerts have Chris and I gone to together? Erasure and Boingo and Depeche Mode and INXS and Book of Love. Jenn and I, too: PIL, Peter Murphy, Ministry at the Speedway Café. I still listen to a ton of the same music I listened to at 17, or to musicians who were influenced by those bands. It wasn’t until the first encore, though, that I remembered just exactly what I loved most about The Police: their song "King of Pain." When they played it, another mini time-travel machine shoved me back to my despondent adolescent nights, when my soul really did feel like a black spot caught up there. It is good, despite my unsurity of authenticity, to no longer feel that black despair.

Twenty years ago, when Chris and I went to see Erasure together, going to a concert wasn’t just about the music. It was also about keeping an eye out for spottings of The Boy (the one you loved beyond reason or hope), or perhaps even sitting with him for a few minutes and feeling that never-to-be-repeated feeling of pure, hormone-edged adoration; about illegal substances snuck into the concert in the hidden inner pockets of leather jackets; about wild abandon. Now, of course, it’s about hanging out with old friends and telling yourself you deserve an evening away, worrying about traffic afterwards, checking the cell phone for missed calls from the kids. And about old friendships themselves, how they carry that unseen bundle of memory and old selves. How they matter as much because of the past as of the present. But it’s still about the music, how it weaves, somehow, around nearly every one of those old memories and old selves. Along with Chris, it was music I took with me from that Amy version, and I am glad to have both.

The DH has been bugging me lately about reorganizing the freezer. It's just one of those things I never get around to doing (put another tick mark by my ever-growing row of them in the "horrible housewife" column and lets move on).

Last night, though, fate, or karma, or bad luck, or whatever, conspired against me. Jake, being helpful, took a few things out to the freezer yesterday for me. And yeah...he didn't close the door all the way. So, when I left this morning for my yoga class, I discovered an enormous puddle under the freezer. Sigh.

You know, dietary restraint is all to blame. After dinner last night, I kept talking myself down from an ice cream bar. If I'd just given in, I'd have discovered the open door much earlier. Lesson learned: always give in to ice cream cravings.

I had big plans for today. Instead, I'll be cooking half-way defrosted hamburger meat all day. And feeling grateful that, while the freezer was cluttered, most of the stuff was in the back, and hardly defrosted at all. Mostly I just had to throw away ice cream and Popsicles.

Plus, the DH got his wish. The freezer is now reorganized.

When I was about eight or nine, I saw a poster in my library for the ALA Book Awards. It freaked me out for a second, because ALA were my initials, and I was certain, for a few heart-pounding seconds, that I had won some sort of award. (I was a fairly weird child, obviously!) A kindly librarian explained what the poster really meant; the ALA is the American Library Association, and they give—surprise!—awards each year to great books.

Once I got married, my initials became ALaS (I didn’t keep my married name on paper, but it is still part of me, hence that lowercase "a"). And, since I’ve been an inconsistent reader lately, unable to finish any book but with these three books I did manage to finish waiting to be written about, I’ve decided to write this book note as the ALaS Book Awards. Just because. Here we go!

The ALaS for Book Everyone Should Read, It’s That Good:

Life as We Knew It by Susan Beth Pfeffer. The basic concept: an meteor, large enough to be seen on earth, is set to hit the moon. What scientists don’t realize, though, is that the meteor will knock the moon off its axis. The resulting effects get recorded in Miranda’s journal. Food vanishes, electricity is sporadic at best, winter’s coming with no natural gas. Plus: tsunamis, earthquakes, flooding, volcanos. The way the novel makes you fear is by presenting something so plausible. It is a fascinating story. Serioiusly: you will love this book!

The ALaS for Coolest Book

Just In Case by Meg Rosoff. Rosoff’s first novel, the unforgettable How I Live Now, is one of my favorite adolescent-lit reads. So when I spotted her new book, Just In Case, waiting to be put on the new-book shelf at the library, I confess: I didn’t put it on the shelf. I checked it out to myself and read it. This is entirely different than her first novel, but still delightful. It’s about a boy, David Case, who decides that Fate is out to get him. And everyone he loves. To trick fate, he changes what he wears, who he hangs out with (namely: almost nobody), what he does (he becomes a long-distance runner), even his name (to Justin—get it?). The book is alternately hilarious and sad, filled with real characters and difficult situations. Ultimately it makes you think: just how is it that we become who we are? Is everything decided beforehand, our choices simply illusions? For example, Justin wonders "whether the things that killed you were not only the crashes and explosions from without, but the bombs buried deep inside, the bombs ticking quietly in your bowel or your liver or your heart, year after year, that you yourself had swallowed, or absorbed, and allowed to grow." He wants to be able to trace the arc of his decisions to a preferably safe and happy ending, and he is finally able to snap out of his funk when he realizes that no one gets to do that.

The ALaS for Weirdest Book:

The Iron Dragon's Daughter by Michael Swanwick. I wanted to read this book based on just two things: I loved Swanwick’s Bones of The Earth  (time travel to the epochs of the dinosaurs), and I thought the title sounded intriguing. When I actually started reading it, I discovered something much different than the typical fantasy novel I had expected. What I really kept thinking was this is the kind of book my dad would have liked. There are foul-mouthed dwarves, back-stabbing lamias, seductive and ruthless elves, all mixed up in this strange society of magic and metal. The iron dragons of the title are a conscious, thinking mix of technology and magic. The main character, Jane, is a changling who works as a child laborer in a plant that makes steam engines, and she escapes by making a pact with an ancient, rusted iron dragon. It’s a sort of cyberpunk world, ruthless and edgy, with throwbacks to pagan rituals mixed in with technology. It’s also a story about how our fates (there it is again, fate) intertwine with each other, how some people seem to be almost unavoidable in our lives, what we do with the choices we have. How to change our circumstances, as in this idea: "There is a logic to the shapes of lives and relationships, and that lgoic is embedded in the stuff of existence. . . . We are all of us living stories that o some deep level give us satisfaction. If we are unhappy with our stories, that is not enough to free us from them. We must find other stories that flow naturally from those we have been living." Definitely a weird book, but I also really, really enjoyed it; I wanted to know how the story ended, and the new world Swanwick creates is just that: no throwbacks here to Tolkein or any other fantasy you can think of. Don’t read it, though, if you like your fantasy soft, because there is nothing gentle here.

There you have it: the first (annual? weekly? bi-monthly? ever?) ALaS awards. Happy reading!

The other day, I found myself searching through my photos from the first two months or so of Kaleb’s life. I was looking for a picture of him with me. And much to my annoyance and downright sadness, out of the 2,605 photos I took during his first six months, there are two of us together. TWO! I know I always intended on handing the camera over to someone else and just asking them to snap a photo or two. I just never managed to do it. Plus, I know I had an idea in my head for a photo shoot...a lovely black-and-white with his sweet downy cheek pressed against mine. Why didn’t I? I always feel a little bit silly asking someone to take my picture. Now that the opportunity is long gone, I regret being controlled by my fear of looking silly (or selfish or just downright weird).

I wish I had that photo I wanted of me and Kaleb in his newborn perfection.

Which has lead me, once again, to think about how I take photos. It seems I’m always adjusting my approach anyway, thinking about what I take pictures of and why. I went through a fairly long phase of always wanting the perfect photo, with immaculate, beautiful lighting and an uncluttered background. While I still love that kind of picture, I also am finding myself wanting more snapshots, the stuff that chronicles our decidedly non-perfect life. I need to be better about thinking of the camera on days when hair’s still messy, and clothes don’t exactly match. And I need to be better at handing the camera over to someone else once in awhile. Even if that "someone else" thinks I’m strange—I don’t always want to be behind the camera. If I stop to think about the photos from my childhood, what I remember are the snapshots, anyway: that photo of me at about 11, leaning over my mother while we’re sitting on the back patio in the sun. Technically imperfect (in fact, there’s a 90% chance that it’s blurry), but still meaningful.

So! What I wanted to do with this post was issue a challenge. If you’re the mom who’s usually behind the camera, hand it to someone else and get into those photos. Even if you feel silly, or wish you weighed less, or you didn’t get around to make-up today. Just do it!

And, a bonus. I’m always looking for better ways to photoshop my pictures (as I’m pretty much self-taught, and I don’t really know what I am doing most of the time). This is a technique for making colors really pop in your photos. I discovered it this weekend at Jessica Sprague's blog;, and I think it’s awesome. Here’s a recent photo of Kaleb that I adore (the baby version of rebel-without-a cause), processed with Jessica’s tip (the top version is straight out of the camera, the bottom uses her Shazam! process):

If you’re into Photoshop, you should try it!

I stole this meme from Molly, who got it from someone else. It's the Top 100 list of books from The Big Read, which averages that most people have read six or fewer books from the list. Of course, I took that information as a personal challenge. I've read way more than six, and someone should know it! ;) Here's the meme:

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.

2) Italicize those you intend to read (as in the book is bought and sitting on my shelf).

3) Underline the books you LOVE.

Ready? OK!

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen. As you all know, this is my favorite Jane Austen. Haley has also recently fallen in love with the movie. As has Jake. Nathan can take it or leave it.

2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien. Four times so far. There’s so much there to love!

3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling. I’m geekily excited for the next movie installment!

5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee. This is our town’s Big Read book for the fall—sort of like a town-wide book club.

6. The Bible. Dare I confess that I have not read the entire Bible? Most of the New Testament, bits and pieces of the Old. Gah...I should make that a bigger priority.

7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte. I sort of love this novel. I hate the characters. But it’s also a fairly compulsive story. Alice Hoffman’s novel Here on Earth is a fairly good modernization of Wuthering Heights.

8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell. Go dystopian lit!

9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman. I even wrote a book note on it.

10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott. I think I read this nine or ten times during the fifth grade. I wish my mom had bought me my own copy so I could...well, I’m not sure I would read it again, as I am afraid that I would be disappointed—that it wouldn’t be as good as I remembered. But I’d like to hold the copy I read that many times, as it was a good friend.

12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy. My absolutely favorite classic novel.

13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller. Read so long ago, my memory of it is fuzzy. I need to re-read it!

14. Complete Works of Shakespeare. I haven’t read everything by Shakespeare. I once wrote an essay on his sonnets that demanded I count how many times he used the word "love." I can’t remember the total, but I do remember counting. Richard the Third, The Tempest, Much Ado About Nothing, and Macbeth are my favorites. My least favorite Shakespeare is Julius Caesar. Especially when I had to teach it to two classes of rowdy sophomores as a student teacher. That is a special brand of torture I tell you!

15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien. Despite my adoration of LotR, I have only read this one once.

17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks. I don’t know this book at all.

18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger. Geez...can I confess to not having read this and still call myself the English Geek?

19. The Time Traveler’s's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger. Loved it, although not as much as my sister Becky does. If you’re in a book club, think long and hard before suggesting this one, because it tends to be a divisive novel—all the sex and swearing.

20. Middlemarch - George Eliot. Notice how this one is not underlined? I think this is my least-favorite classic novel.

21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald. Again...sketchy on the details of this one and need to reread.

23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens. Apparently I am not a Dickens fan?

24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams. What is wrong with me? I’m fairly certain I’d love these if I read them.

26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck. I’m a fan of Steinbeck, although this isn’t my favorite of his.

29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll. Several times as a kid, and once to Haley while she was still in utero. I’m weird that way.

30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis. You KNOW how I feel about these!

34. Emma - Jane Austen. Again...not underlined. I cannot STAND Emma. She’s mostly likely my least-favorite literary character. Except maybe for that horrible mother from Flowers in the Attic, but then that’s not exactly literature, is it?

35. Persuasion - Jane Austen

36. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini. I have tried to read this one. It’s on my shelf. But it’s not grabbed me yet.

37. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

38. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

39. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne. When Haley was two, she went through an intense Winnie-the-Pooh phase; I read them to her then.

40. Animal Farm - George Orwell

41. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown. I waited until all the hype was past, though. I think I borrowed my dad’s copy. I might even still have it. It might be one of the last books we both read and talked about.

42. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

43. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving. J. Irving is one of my dad’s favorite writers. I’ve just not gotten around to him yet.

44. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

45. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery. All of them, several times.

46. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

47. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood. Not my first Atwood novel (that would be Cat’s Eye), but my first introduction to feminist ideas. I wanted to name a daughter Moira because of this book.

48. Lord of the Flies - William Golding

49. Atonement - Ian McEwan

50. Life of Pi - Yann Martel

51. Dune - Frank Herbert

52. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

53. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

54. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

55. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

56. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

57. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley. A book most people should read, despite its racy bits. I dare you to teach it, as a student teacher. Go on—stand up there and talk about feelies and the morality of promiscuity while you’re still a raw and terrified almost-teacher. Dare you.

58. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

59. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

60. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck. I taught this one, too. I can’t even tell you how many angry phone calls I got from parents on this one. More, even, than Brave New World.

61. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

62. The Secret History - Donna Tartt

63. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold. Really? OK, I read this book and liked it. But I am surprised to see it show up on a "Top 100" list.

64. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas. I bolded only part because I’ve only read part.

65. On The Road - Jack Kerouac. Ditto #64.

66. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy. I love Tess so much I am afraid to read Hardy’s other novels.

67. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding. Again...not sure why this is on the list. OK as far as chick lit goes.

68. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie. Although I have read The Satanic Verses.

69. Moby Dick - Herman Melville. Does Ahab's Wife count?

70. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

71. Dracula - Bram Stoker

72. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett. Another childhood favorite.

73. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

74. Ulysses - James Joyce. I don’t know...has anyone ever actually finished Ulysses?

75. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath. At a very formative age I was a Sylvia Plath Fan. HUGE fan. Still am. The image of Esther letting all her clothes fly off the balcony of her New York skyscraper is one that pops into my head every now and then.

76. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

77. Germinal - Emile Zola

78. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

79. Possession - AS Byatt. I recommend this book to anyone who asks me for a good book to read. I also give permission to skip the poetry if you’d like. But not the folk tales—they are excellent.

80. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens. At least I’ve read one Dickens!

81. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

82. The Color Purple - Alice Walker. One of the first books I ever owned. I still have it.

83. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

84. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert (and hated it with more passion than it deserves)

85. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

86. Charlotte's Web - EB White

87. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

88. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

89. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

90. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad. Once was quite enough, so when I was in two classes during college that read H of D, I was in despair and didn’t read it again even though I should have.

91. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

92. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

93. Watership Down - Richard Adams. If you’ve never read this book, read it! Yes, it’s told from the rabbit’s perspective. It’s not a book about bunnies though.

94. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

95. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

96. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

97. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

98. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo. I want to have read this book. I loved the movie. I just haven’t gotten around to it!

Let me know if you play along on your blog!

Last Sunday, Kendell and I spoke in church. (It went OK...I think, though, that I spoke for WAY too long. I forgot to look at my watch when I started, so I don’t know exactly how long I droned on, but I think I definitely talked too much. Heads were bobbing, eyes struggling to stay open, you know the feeling. Yeah.) One of the quotes I found while researching my topic has continued to stick with me in a haunting sort of way:

"We will not be forlorn if we come unto Christ, if we learn patiently that we cannot accommodate everybody's estimate of what we ought to be or do, if we walk in the way our own conscience will approve, if we seek to measure as God measures, and if we esteem ourselves and others as he esteems us." Marion G. Hanks

I have a tendency to be forlorn. I tend to see in myself only my flaws and faults, and my thoughts are often full of ideas like "could I be a bigger idiot?" I used to think this was how it was supposed to be, that everyone walks around full of self-mockery. But over the past year—and I am not really sure what the impetus was for this change—I have begun to see different things about myself. "We cannot accommodate everybody’s estimate of what we out to be or do." I didn’t have those words yet, but that is something I am starting to realize about myself. Kendell has an estimate of the type of woman I should be, as does my mother, and my children; images abound in magazines and TV of perfect wives and perfect mothers. But I am finding within myself this desire to be myself, the person I am rather than the person other people want me to be. I find myself pushing back against expectations. I want to find my own peace. I want to cast off my forlornness about who I am.

Maybe this seems like an odd thing for a thirty-something person to be realizing—finally. Maybe I am too old for self discovery? Maybe I should have figured out who I am before I got a husband and had a few kids. But then, I think the things I am learning are coming to me because I did those things, because of the experiences I’ve had. For whatever reason, I am ready to say: Yeah, sure, I didn’t turn out like I thought I would—but that’s alright, because I still have time to figure the rest of it out.

Of course, the trick is knowing how to do this. It is an old, old habit to break, self-deprication. I think I use it as a defense mechanism: if I point out to myself the things I get wrong, then I won’t be surprised when other people notice. The trouble, though, with defining myself with my mistakes is that I’ve simply made it easier to make more mistakes in the future. If I made this mistake, then it’s far more likely I’ll make that one in the future, right? So why even bother?

What I am left with, after my talk and all my thinking, is the crystalizing idea presented in that quote from Elder Hanks: how might Christ see me? Would he focus only on my mistakes? Or would he also see the good things? I know that if he looked at someone else, he would see their good things. I am working on believing that he would see my good things, too. I am working on having more Christ-like esteem for myself, which might sound odd or selfish or just downright silly. But I want the change to happen.