Okay, here's something where I don't totally look like someone who never does anything!

The RULES

1) Look at the list and bold those you have read.
2) Put an asterisk next to those you intend to read (as in the book is bought and sitting on my shelf).
3) Italicize or underline (I am too lazy to un-underline the books already underlined here, and I can't figure out how to underline on my blog) the books you LOVE.

There are 98 books on the list.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings--J.R.R. Tolkein
   
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter Series--J.K. Rowling
   
5. To Kill a Mockingbird--Harper Lee
   
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty-Four--George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials--Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
    
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare -Not every play, but many if not most of them
    
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
    
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
    
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
    
22. The Great Gatsby--F. Scott Fitzgerald
    
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
    
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
    
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
37. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
38. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
39. Winnie the Pooh-A.A. Milne
    
40. Animal Farm - George Orwell
41. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
42. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
    
43. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
    
44. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
45. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
46. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
    
47. The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
    
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
    
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
61. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
62. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
63. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
64. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
    
65. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
    
66. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
67. Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
68. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
    
69. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
70. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
71. Dracula - Bram Stoker
72. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
    
73. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
74. Ulysses - James Joyce
75. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
76. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
77. Germinal--Emile Zola
    
78. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
79. Possession - AS Byatt
80. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
81. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
82. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
    
83. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
84. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
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
91. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
92. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
93. Watership Down - Richard Adams
94. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
95. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
96. The Three Musketeers--Dumas
    
97. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
    
98. Les Miserables--Victor Hugo

It's probably pretty obvious that I like 18th and 19th century novels, that I don't particularly care for science fiction, am stronger on "classics" than on popular novels of the past 30 years, and I love a lot of things that I read. I'm not sure who came up with this list--some interesting choices there, and some even more interesting omissions. It's rather unfortunate that at this point in my life, I can't read nearly as much as I used to. Most of what I'm reading now is, obviously, aimed at children, and that's just fine with me. Or it's non-fiction of a more utilitarian nature.

I also was on a funny little website that tells how many people in the U.S. share your name: www.howmanyofme.com. There are 3 Nancy Clendenons (I'm not sure if they have the other Nancy Clendenon that I know still listed, but she is now deceased) and 10 Nancy Renwicks (I knew one of them).

I am the most confused person out there. I think I'm maybe just sleep deprived in general, maybe dealing with a multi-month sleep deficit without a really intelligent reason for it. It's getting harder and harder for me to pay attention when there's more than one thing going on, where I used to be able to do multiple things at once. I went to our co-op today without half of what I was supposed to bring, including the main element for a craft project we were doing. It's not from sitting down, that's for sure--I felt like I was rushing from one responsibility to another--putting together something quickly for lunch, trying to finish cleaning up the disgusting counters, trying to find ornaments in the attic packed full of bags of presents and discarded boxes for all things Christmas, trying to get clothes for Rutledge, who was still in pajamas. It would probably be obvious to people on the outside that I need to make lists or concentrate on one thing at a time, or something practical like that. But for me, I know that this is a chance and a very palpable one indeed. It's one thing to lock yourself out of the car every now and then or to sometimes forget the trumpet, but for me it's become nearly predictable and a vivid contrast to how things used to be for me. I know that if I see a doctor, I'll just be prescribed more Xanax, and I know how well that works! One day they'll do an autopsy and find lesions on my brain or something like that....

My mission right now is to be more hardline about the unacceptable behavior. It would probably be best if I started with my own, but hey, I'm the Mom, so I'm going to focus on the wee ones first. This morning, Rutledge threw an XBox controller at the TV. I'm pretty sure stuff like that isn't covered by the warranty ;) Frances's whining and crying in the morning also has to end if I'm to maintain any shred of control. This morning she was threatening to throw up if we didn't watch whatever show she wanted to watch after Curious George went off. We have a reasonble, though not perfect arrangement in the mornings right now. Rutledge wakes up between 7:30 and 8, but I get to sleep for another hour or hour and a half most days while he squirms around next to me and watches PBS kids. For a while, Sid the Science Kid seemed like an exciting new find, but now everyone just groans when the doofy theme song starts up. So we had moved on to less educational channels and were on Spongebob for a while (anything for a little extra sleep!). But this morning, Rutledge was insistent about Power Rangers, a show I have serious reservations about, and Frances was even more insistent that we not watch that. There was no compromise, and to be honest, nothing really on in the first place that would have worked. We found some really bizarre show called "Handy Manny," which is about animated, talking Hispanic tools. What will they come up with next? Most of my worst injuries as a parent have happened while I was lying in bed and got stepped on in the stomach (or the gap between the muscles covering my stomach...), hit in the face, poked in the eye, or where someone has used their elbow for leverage to stand up by pushing them into my chest or side or leg. So I was ready to just say that the day had begun when all hell broke loose over what we'd watch so I could avoid the day for a few more minutes. Ugh!

Here is a true confession: I have to take a checkbook every time I go to the libary. Just in case. And I take a deep breath and brace myself for the news when I get to the circulation desk. You never know what the fines might be--it's always a bit of a surprise even when I've checked my account online before heading out on my library trip. Today it was less than $10. Yay!

Tonight I read _The Green Ghost_, by the same author who wrote _On My Honor_, to all of the kids. I was pleasantly surprised that it was a Christmas ghost story, a genre that I love. And it was just the right level of complexity and length for a satisfying one-night read. It is also a good and manageable book for introducing the idea of flashbacks and stories within a story and intertwining stories. It took a while for the kids to pick up on the fact that this was happening, and there was special pleasure, I think, for them to come to the realization that the girl in the 1938 portions of the book was the sister of the old woman in the part that turned out to be current. After Frances went to bed, the rest of us started _The Higher Power of Lucky_, one of those Newbery winning books that I think is more appealing to adult literary critics and book award givers than to actual children. So far, I think it is really one of the finest examples of how an opening paragraph can just grab you and have elements that shake up your ideas about children's books (it's the word "scrotum" that sets this one apart). But the actual topics of the book, though it fits my protagonist-the-same-age-as-the-reader-or-younger requirement, are just not within the experience of most kids, and if they are going to continue to develop over the course of the book, it's happening more slowly than what my kids want to feel that they have a handle on what the book is all about. The girl in the book lives in a trailer in the high desert in California and eavesdrops on 12-step "Anonymous" meetings, and an ongoing theme of the book is her own desire to be in touch with her "Higher Power." Amusing and thought-provoking to 37 year olds, but perhaps less so for middle graders, for whom the book was sort of written. So every time this term comes up, I try to kind of explain again. Plus it's just a weird book in general--characters that are a little hard to relate to, lots of little stories, kind of like Because of Winn-Dixie. In fact, this feels so far to me (35 pages in), a lot like a rather more extreme riff on _Because of Winn-Dixie. Girl in a trailer with a not-quite-parent and a dead or gone mother. Quirky misfits around her, including 5 year olds who also are poor and have experienced some loss. A dog with a weird name who helps the protagonist on her quest for self-understanding. Librarian characters. Poverty and brand-specific realism (Fig Newtons, etc.). But this one is a little harder to follow, more experimental in feel. I'm not sure my kids are as titillated by experimentalism as the authors are.

Speaking of good stories, I just checked out _Big Red_, a book that I loved as a child. I am wondering if I'll find it as engaging now, and whether the boys will, too. It's come to my attention lately that I didn't read as much as a child as I thought I did. I missed lots and lots of some basic kids' books and didn't read them until I was much older (never read any Little House books, never read the Anne of Green Gables series or The Secret Garden and read very, very few of the kinds of award-winning books that I can see now would have been very special and exciting to me if someone had just pointed me in that direction). I suppose it's never too late, but I wouldn't be far off if I said that my kids have probably read or heard more books this year than I read through my entire 1st-9th grade years.

Like everyone, I'm kind of in shock that Christmas is next week. My wish right now is just that my house would be really clean so that I would feel relaxed and energized in it instead of overwhelmed by stuff in every corner and on every surface and along the edges of the floor in every room and hallway. The good thing is that there's no pressure, really. Any pressure comes purely from myself. We will be just ourselves this Christmas, with no plans for guests or parties or family visits until the afternoon that Kerry's sister comes by for a few hours, so because we're really set with presents and decorations and all that kind of thing, we're pretty much as ready as anyone can really be. I need to wrap gifts, something I'm not looking forward to (I would much prefer to just sit back and do nothing and listen to Christmas music than to deal with tape and losing the scissors and irregular shaped packaging), but I still feel like there are stretches of time ahead of me to do that. If I was smart, I'd start doing a little bit each day. But I'm not that smart :)

Super neat thing of the day: Frances came home from gymnastics tonight with the roundoff back handspring totally down! She was flipping right across the yard in a perfectly continuous motion. She's awesome! Just a week ago this seemed so far away. The open gym nights have really paid off, and it's so cool to see her boost in confidence. I guess ability and focus totally do turn on a time--one minute there's the slump, and the next minute, they're at the top of their game again. Wouldn't it be nice if everyone just accepted that this is how children learn and had patience to know that things usually work out if you give them time!

Can you resist this little winter face?

It's funny how life seems to go in these waves of everything seeming to work out just peachy and you're all cruising along, and suddenly it hits a trough of disequalibrium. I think we're in that disequalibrious phase right now. Ollie is back in a socially awkward place, and I'm realizing that there are probably things I could be doing to help him out, only my own low social skills are retarding me from really having a cogent plan. Walter is struggling in his electronics class and having meltdowns every time he has to do any work for it. He is supposed to do one lesson a day 5 days a week, but right now his class officially ended yesterday and he is two weeks behind. There is absolutely no way I could ask him to do that much work at once, and it's just plain too late anyway. Frances's ballet teacher pulled me aside on Friday to say that she is not keeping up in the class and doesn't know basic ballet technique (of course, there is this part of me that says that this is her 5th year of taking dance classes, so even though right now she isn't in a ballet class, whose fault is it if she doesn't know basic skills?). She also is behind her class in gymnastics for some reason. I'm seeing a general lack of focus from her, and I'm not sure if it is bad eating, not giving her enough attention in general, my own lax discipline in all areas of life, and not pushing her to work hard or behave appropriately or stay focused. And her attitude in general has just been extremely difficult--demanding, rude, whining. I feel like all of it has a root somewhere not very far from myself. I have allowed this all to flourish, and now it's going to take some hard work to prune it back.

My schooling and parenting dilemma of the week is whether I am being a responsible homeschooler by noting areas where they are not yet ready for the work or where the presentation method is not compatible with the way they learn and saying hey, this is a poor fit right now and I didn't choose to homeschool so that they would feel incompetant or have to persist in something that clearly wasn't working at the expense of everyone involved. On the other hand, I also don't want to send the message that we'll just drop out of everything or not show up any time the going gets rough. The boys are really struggling, as is most of the class, in Latin. It's moving too fast. My own personal opinion is that they are covering too much too fast at this level, and it would be better to slow down and get mastery, rather than forging ahead with 30 adjectives at this point. They can't remember all of the 1st and 2nd declension noun endings, they have a lot of vocabulary, they're confused at what some of the grammatical terms mean, and the participants are only 10 and 12. To me, there's no rush. They don't even need to study Latin at all at this age, and maybe there are other 5th graders moving through at a faster clip, but mine don't happen to be among them. They're covering at about the same rate in Latin what I covered in my own 1st Latin class in 8th grade, but I was older and was there 5 days a week for 45 minutes. I knew that they would fail the test this week because they simply do not recall 3 declensions of endings and reliably distinguish those from the personal endings on 1st conjugation verbs. And they're crying during homework and before and after class. That is not the recipe for successful learning in any sense of the term to me.

So I said I would let them skip class this week, and it turns out that almost no one was there anyway. Ollie took me up on the offer, but Walter wanted to see how he'd do on the test, so he stayed. Result? The test has been postponed until this week, when hopefully more the whole group of five will be there. Ugh.

Then there's the matter of electronics class. A 5th grader doesn't *need* to learn electronics. This is purely an enrichment class on a topic that I thought he'd enjoy. He's not having a great time. He's having meltdowns. When he melts down, we all do, and it's just not worth it to me to suffer or have him suffer for something that was supposed to be fun. There was something else that happened this week that also fell into that category, though I'm forgetting what it was. At any rate, I feel bad that I'm not teaching them persistence or that I'm demonstrating that I'll let them take an easy way out if they just complain enough, but I also want them to follow their own interests and to not associate learning and education with agony, especially when the classes were imposed by me and are totally non-standard curricula. Still, I feel like the biggest slacker mom.

Here's what also makes me feel like a slacker. I just seriously lost two Monopoly Jr. games in a row to people who are also too old to be "financially ruining," as Ollie put it, each other in a game like this. And speaking of games, I'm a bit bummed because I ordered Settlers of Catan from Amazon on Wednesday for $27, and today I looked and it's only $19.99. Bummer. And another gift I paid $34 on amazon for last week is now $23. Sigh.... He who hesitates wins. Meanwhile, the American Girl doll claims that I shouldn't count on her to arrive before Christmas, since I ordered her yesterday. It's hippie Julie, the girl whose parents are divorced, who lives in the Bay Area, and wears a necklace like Carrie on Sex in the City. Alas, her accessories, including her Carrie/Julie necklace are backordered until sometime in January. I'm learning that it's kind of lose-lose to have a vexed relationship with shopping late. Remember how high and mighty I was back on Buy Nothing Day??!! And I can rest comfortably in the fact that the reason my games and Eyeclops cost more less than a week ago are that I was contributing to their meteoric rise up the Amazon charts, which caused their current rock-bottom prices.

Guess what I'm getting for Christmas??? A bread machine! The bread machine of my dreams! I'm absolutely convinced that we should all be gluten free for a wide variety of reasons for each of us. But gluten free stuff tastes really yucky much of the time, and I'm the laziest cook out there, so I don't do well with it in that regard. So I think I'm going to contaminate the ol' Zojirushi when I get it with regular wheat flour. All I need to do not is get that Wondermill and I'll truly be worthy of that Prius. But seriously, my aspiration is to give the GF thing a serious go. Will I be able to embrace the resolution in the New Year?

Have I mentioned I'm in love with how the Prius just kind of knows me even when I can't find my key? It doesn't even ask for me to be responsible; it loves me just the way I am. I show up, it forgives me for all of my trespasses of the day, and it open its doors wide. To show my appreciation, I went to the Wally World tonight and bought it some spiffy new rubber floor mats.

Tonight I took Frances to Open Gym, and she was awesome! She actually looked like a gymnast (rather than like a spaz, which is what she has been looking like). Of course, the point of Open Gym is to be able to boing out of control on the trampoline and wallow in a pit of foam without anyone yelling at you or trying to eke some grace out of you. She has the back handspring just about down now on any kind of mat--definitely on the Tumble Trak, on the thicker foam, and now on the resilient floor as well. And she almost has it continuous with the roundoff. Whew!

And a note on timing: just when we were ready to pull her from dance as soon as we fulfill all our current obligations to the company because she's a currently sucky ballerina, Ana has her usual impeccable timing. Our lousy ballerina was invited to go to North Carolina with the professional company on Thursday to dance in Legend of the Poinsettia. She'll be leaving at 6:30 a.m. and hopefully will be back at dinnertime. This meant a scramble for appropriate underlayers for costumes: the new black adjustable camisole strap leotard from the dance store with the fancy bags. Because she was whining and I am a pushover, she also got a red faux fuzzy bun for her hair with light-up fiber-optic stuff shooting out the top. I have to admit it's a nice touch and matches her flamenco skirt, but I doubt it will fly for she show. They're more into a corona of loud colored artificial flowers....

Milestone of the weekend: we went to see Santa yesterday, and Walter and Ollie opted to go to a friend's house instead.

Santa couldn't understand a word that Rutledge said, but he was great at responding with a lot of "Uh-huhs." I think Rutty was saying something about a battleship, but even I'm not sure.

We all know what Frances wants: An American Hippie. A charm bracelet. A make-up set. She did admit to not being such a good girl this year. Maybe her blunt honesty will sway the old red guy in her favor and he'll be generous after all. I know where there's some coal...


Hot chocolate on a cold day.

The barrel train. Obviously, in this family we find all of the barrel trains that we can ;) This one wasn't really barrels, but little wooden cars by John Deere. I think that's kind of cheating.


What I'm proud of myself for: getting to level 55 on Strawberry Shortcake Popping Fruit game, earning Frances 929 "tickets" to spend designing ice cream sundaes. Your Money or Your Life would be totally after me, since I spent about two hours of my Life Energy on this particular accomplishment. Laugh if you will, but I call it worthwhile. Go ahead...try to beat me!

We just finished _Anne Hutchinson's Way_ and in about 30 minutes we'll be done with _Willow Run_, which we haven't liked as much as _Lily's Crossing_ but still has been a great treatment of the emotions of the home front during World War II. Far, far better than any textbook! This book rocks. Highly recommended! Woo hoo for Patricia Riley Giff!

I dream of the day when we have enough time to sit around playing board games. I don't know where our time goes.

We've been hitting it hard trying to get through Eragon. I lost Walter about 5 CDs ago, and Ollie says he likes the book much more than he expected, but I don't see him in any hurry to finish, and I don't think it's because he is trying to savor each moment. It is by force he that he seems to listen. They both made it pretty clear they have no intention to read it on their own. I'll be really happy when book club is over tomorrow. It's always a source of a fair amount of stress. Why we don't drop out is just beyond me. The kids want to stay in, even though they are over critical of the books chosen, aren't tactful, hurt people's feelings, refuse to read the books most of the time, and have behavior problems that disrupt the class. My fantasy book club would be more like an adult book club--cozy and relaxed surroundings (RES is a great venue, but totally uncomfortable for a book club), focus on having fun and being together, rather than academics or competitive reading ability, and participant focused: when they stop talking about the book, they kind of stop talking as much about the book, just like our book club. I suppose it's just hard to have a club for kids who really aren't in a position to run it themselves and who don't have the necessary social and organizational skills to determine what would be the best way to keep everyone sane and respectful. At any rate, I always hold my breath through book club and am always a tad sorry we went when it's over because my boys have always done something offensive, disruptive, or otherwise unsociable.

Tomorrow is another nonstop day, and I am so not open to a sleepover. This is a topic we visit every weekend. Tomorrow morning they are going to the Poe Museum for both a tour and a CSI type program about the Mystery of Poe's Death. Then they have chess club, which seems to have been an overwhelmingly positive event for everyone except my kids, for whom it seemed to stress relationships. Then there's book club, which is always a shot in the dark. Since we lost a couple of days of schoolwork this week and didn't have a lot of time for reading because we were trying to make our way through Eragon, I just really am looking forward to a little time to connect over the weekend, which is, I'm realizing, a huge joke as the kids get older. Weekends in general are times when they are absolutely consumed with video games from morning until night and are with their friends from sunup until long after sundown, so there's never any time for the relaxed family time I always imagine. And there's the ever-present three year old, ready to overturn a board game at any moment or climbing all over me, droning in my ear so I can't concentrate or creating some major disaster that requires immediate and distracting attention. Ollie and I are pretty far into the book _Willow Run_, which we both want to find out what happens in. Walter wants my undivided attention helping him do some of his Webelos badge requirements. I feel like I've never played a board game with Frances that is all about her and her needs. And they still haven't visited Santa at all this year.

Speaking of Santa...oh my goodness am I glad that I'm not one of those self-congratulating people who has their Christmas shopping done months early. As sure as I get things in September or October (or worse, back in the previous spring or after last Christmas...), the kids are going to change their minds and become fanatical about something in the second week of December. I'm not kidding. It happens year after year. Frances has been saying that she wants an aquarium and an American Girl (actually she wants several, but I've assured her that this is not even something that is up for discussion). We had talked with her about her priorities and about what we think is best, and she was all excited about the aquarium. Last night, Kerry and I went out and did our final look and chose the one that we think will work best. At exactly the same time, Frances seems to have decided that "fish are boring and don't do anything" and doesn't want anything to do with them and she has decided that she will likely die if she doesn't get an American Girl doll. Now she's not one of those budding little intellectuals who is fascinated by American history. No--she wants the 70s girl who has the long braids and the crocheted cap and hip purse. She doesn't need no stinkin' books about these characters. She just wants a roomful of expensive scale-model accessories. I'm so tired of whining that right now I don't even care. I'm going to order that doll tomorrow and be done with this whole Christmas shopping thing! I'll miss the aquarium myself--I was totally looking forward to it and how it would transform our family room.

Perhaps while three of my children are gone tomorrow I will get some of the cleaning done that is hanging over me like a big black cloud. I just cannot relax in a house that is messy from one to end to the other. I think given my brainlessness lately that I really need simplicity around me if I'm going to have a ghost of a chance of not losing track of everything in life. Today when I dropped Frances off at gymnastics I lost my keys within 5 minutes. For once, they truly were in the trash can--and we're talking a huge, deep, public trash can here. I had briefly checked in there and so had Kerry, but it wasn't until I started taking out each piece of trash in this full can one by one that I saw that oh my gosh, I really am that absent-minded! It is actually starting to scare me more than I want to admit. It wouldn't be hard to see how I could make all kinds of mistakes and lose things, given how much we do and how little I use a calendar or other physical reminders, but up until now, I've managed to magically juggle a lot of things without these props, even if no one knows how I do. That seems to be coming to a total halt lately, and I have to wonder what has changed in me--and why--that has made this happen. I find myself worrying about dementia or something pressing on my brain or something like that. I don't feel like I have undue stress on me right now, and schedules and what I need to pack for this or that is at about the same complexity it has always been. I'm just way off my game. And I've never thrown my kids (or a fork or whatever else) into the trash can!

I also need to find a sitter for Saturday night. I confess, I don't know where to begin! I haven't had a sitter in probably 8 months, and the sitter we used then lives fairly far away and so adds about 45 minutes onto the evening in pickup and drop-off. We're still running at a grand total of maybe 7 or 8 instances with a sitter in our entire 10 years with kids, and only 4 since we've lived here. I also know that people are very protective of their sitter information, so I hate to ask for recommendations or suggestions from anyone who has kids of their own. I guess I will see what works out as tomorrow unfolds; I'd hate to miss the party because I couldn't figure out what to do with the kids.

I'm so close to my 100th post on this blog. I still feel nearly physical pain when I think about how much I lost when I lost my hard drive last Christmas after my .mac subscription expired. Boo hoo. So 100 posts represents an acceptance of the new beginning and hopefully not crying too much over past spilt milk.

Alia iacta est. We have the new car. Black. Beautiful. I'm envious. Our two payments scare me to death.

I have a decision to make about Latin. The boys have a test tomorrow and they are absolutely not prepared. This class is not going well for them and is not a good fit. They are not learning at the rate they're being expected to, and I'm okay with that. They have horrific study habits and are still confused about what all of the endings mean. They don't do a very good job of writing down what their homework is, and I can't help them if I don't know what it is. All of this makes the negative cycle continue: they don't write down what they're supposed to do because they don't really understand what is going on. Then they don't do it. Then they do poorly in class because they aren't prepared. Then they have a bad attitude. Then they don't get their homework assignment written down or can't read their writing. And on and on it goes.

Practical? Love?

It's a shame that in America we put so much pressure on our vehicles to speak for us. Or that they speak even when we want them to shut up. It made buying a car more of an event than it would be if it was simply about getting from point A to point B.

We started out by getting our rental car, an icky Cobalt that wasn't even properly cleaned. The fellow at Enterprise nearly threatened us into purchasing the extra insurance for $17.99 a day, which drove up the cost to nearly $45/day, which feels like highway robbery for a crappy car. Our insurance pays for $25 of it, but of course that means that we are stuck with Enterprise, whether we like it or not. As we were being strong-armed into the insurance, I felt like if we didn't get it, they were going to go over the car with a magnifying glass and charge us for something, anything, and get their money. It was icky.

Fortunately, the Volvo dealership was within walking distance, so we did just that. And we came this close to buying one. The XC-90, which has long been our 'dream car,' was the same as always--disappointing on the interior but exciting on the outside. I'm shallow and superficial, but I'd love to have it in my driveway. I'd love to experience my little fantasy life in it, where I'm someone who drives something kind of cool and sleek and dresses fashionably and maybe has one of those Collegiate pawprints on the back right corner. But the reality is that the interior is really very, very tight, and the rear row seems like it was designed for leg amputees. Even Walter's Ethiopia-skinny legs would be squished if the middle row of seats was not pushed forward as far as it goes. And it requires a lot of climbing and pulling levers to get in and out. But it does seat everyone in our family, which is practical. The inside feels a bit antiquated, but then again, Volvos aren't really known for their extremely forward design, so there's no huge surprise there. We test drove two wagons as well, but both felt a bit old (they were a 2005 and a 2006) and both had some miles on them, and ergonomically they weren't working well. One turned out to have a broken seat lowering mechanism, which put Kerry's 5 ft 11 inch height almost through the roof (and we know from experience that one little issue with a seat moving mechanism costs many hundreds of dollars), and then the steering wheel was so low that it was in his lap and was in its highest position. So those were stricken from our list.

Our next visit was to drive a Prius, and I have to say for myself, as soon as I was driving, I felt like I had a hands down winner. Triple the gas mileage of the XC, a very new and modern feeling interior and features (nifty touch screen), more legroom and breathing room, smooth and quiet feel. The price was slightly lower, the car is brand new to the XC's 3-ish year old and 38k miles age, and financing might be slightly better. So while it does have the rather large negative that it doesn't seat an entire person in our family, I think for purely practical reasons it's our best option.

What we don't care that much about is making a statement. And this car is pretty self-referential, self-centered even. It has an entire screen devoted to tracking itself and congratulating itself on its fuel efficiency--real time dynamic graphs of miles per gallon, then five minute averages of fuel efficiency. That's great, but I don't need to see it all the time, think about it all the time, and pat myself on the back for being holier than thou or thriftier than thou or greener than thou or whatever else. And given that we're buying this car because someone in our family ran smack into the back of another someone while they weren't even distracted by an electronic device, we really don't need one more thing to put our eyes on obsessively other than the road.

But there it is. At 6:30 p.m., Kerry called to tell me he had decided on the Volvo. He was waiting to hear back from them about whether they had met our price requirement. They did. Then they kept calling and wanting him to come over and give a $500 deposit, even though we weren't clear on the finance rate, which wasn't terribly low because it is a used car.

Then I went to my cookie exchange Christmas party, loaded up with the 6 dozen cookies I threw together starting at 5:00 this afternoon. While I was having a few glasses of wine and loading my gullet with sugar, Kerry seems to have done a 180. I think he got annoyed by the pressure tactics of the Volvo dealership, and he reported some "buyers remorse." Plus he had finally gotten a call back from the husband of a tennis friend who works for a Toyota dealership (not the one where we did the test drive). They had worked out a price and financing, they had a black Prius in stock with the features we wanted--actually no one did...we wanted a totally stripped on, but no dealership around here has that--and Kerry was able to get pre-qualified for the financing we'll need and they have the car on hold for us. We pick it up tomorrow at noon.

I think it's going to be a good choice. I am embarrassed to admit that I've already put 15,000+ miles on my car since we bought it in May, so having something that doesn't cost us quite as much to operate is a good move. We've spent our share on car repairs over the years, including a series of $3000+ repairs on Subarus at times in our lives when we really, really, really didn't have that kind of money to throw at a vehicle that was letting us down. So having a car known for reliability and longevity, with a lengthy warranty, and without a past history is really comforting. Gas is our third largest expense each month, after our mortgage and food, so anything that keeps it down some, especially now that gas prices are so comparatively low, is going to have a positive impact on our budget. Imagine filling up for under $20 and getting to work and back for two weeks! Then there's me, filling up twice a week much of the time because of one thing or another. You know how it is--it's always something: picking up the kids in Lynchburg, going to a play or a museum in town, a LLL meeting on the opposite side of town, running over to West Broad to buy this car tomorrow, playdate at a far-flung friend's house. Even when I swear I'm going to cut back, something seems to come up that guzzles a pile in a short amount of time. I am not virtuous girl with a small carbon footprint ;)

I want to say that today was very educational. It about drove me nuts because kids and car shopping don't go well together, but seeing us weigh our passion versus our practicality, listening to us blather on about finance rates, the potential differences between new and used rates, the various financing options (dealer, bank, credit union, different percentages of down payment and how they might affect interest rate), noticing ways to negotiate with a dealer because of flaws or issues with a car, seeing how you have to be proactive about addressing issues you see, dissecting the hard sell tactics of people working on a commission, and comparing miles per gallon and the impact of different types of engines and energy systems on highway and city driving were all good ways to let them see what goes into a big financial decision in a family. Ollie was a chatterbox, giving his opinions, observations, asking questions, and generally just being himself. Woe to the salespeople who will deal with him in his adulthood.

And I don't know if I wrote about this yesterday, but it's very sobering to think that Walter and Ollie will likely be driving this Prius one day. Barring any unforeseen disasters, this car will be passed down to them in fewer than 6 years. By then, when Kerry has filled it completely with dirty, inside-out gym socks and coffee cups and junk mail (and some important mail, too) and refillable water bottles now growing funky mold, it will be the gross car of the family, and hopefully it will still be chugging along, despite the inevitable problems that seem to beset the things we drive. There was the Volvo with the rear gate that didn't latch for almost 5 years and that flapped around whenever you hit a bump, the same Volvo that had almost no AC and where the floor carpeting had to be excised because someone spilled something on it and then dropped a book on it and it all mildewed and was making people sick. There was the Saturn where you could never take the key out or put the car in park if you ever wanted it to start again. The Volvo with no side molding because Walter had picked it out when he was three and it never fit back on again. And the floor mats that floated down into a storm drain because I didn't get them back into the car in a timely fashion after power washing them with a hose.

Anyway, I hope that this new car will be treated with the kindness and respect it deserves. It didn't ask to be adopted by our family, and we owe it some decency. Whenever we get something nice and new and pretty, we promise ourselves up and down that we are going to be different this time. Who knows, maybe we'll really mean it!

What a great day! The gingerbread houses were awesome. My counter is overflowing with them, and I suppose they'll be a fixture there for the season now. The royal icing wasn't all that super today--I don't think I did anything wrong, but it just wasn't holding as well as the leftover icing from the sugar skulls last month. I think I need to tweak that aspect of the project for the future--more squirtable frosting, especially for the vertical surfaces.

We also made these adorable snow globes (for some reason I can't type that word and kept writing "bloge" and "glove"). Frances and Walter spontaneously made one a few days ago that had a sculpey bear in it, and Hilary hyped it up a bit with a tree and some snowmen and santas and reindeer and these trees with stars and tiny candy canes on them.


We are so thick with boys. Poor Lainey and Frances were nowhere to be seen most of the time. 10 boys and 2 girls = imbalance. This is the way it always used to be, and I shouldn't be surprised that little has changed. I was talking with a friend from Massachusetts this morning, and she was saying that she wants to know where all the 7-9 year old boys are because the groups she's in don't have enough of them. Of course, I could say that 8-11 year old boys are in my homeschool group or at my house, but the truth is, it seems like groups or neighborhoods or other congregations of children grow in fits and starts. At one moment, they're full of one age or gender, and then you turn around, and suddenly the tide has turned to something else. At any rate, we do have a lot of boys, and there's no arguing with that!


Robin's house. As usual, the adults were still at the table and decorating long after the kids were swatting each other and racing through the house with weapons.


These festive scenes just warm my heart. This is what I hope I'll remember most about our schooling days. Lots of good friends, lots of kids, and happy, messy projects.

That's the good of today. The bad, verging on truly ugly is that Kerry was in a pretty bad car accident. His car was totaled, one of the other cars he hit was totaled, and another car had some damage. We were not really planning to buy another car at this time, and though we've been thinking about what kind of car he might get when he replaces my old van for quite a while, fantasizing and planning for the future are quite different than having to choose something right away, especially in this economy. Especially when we already have a car payment that we hadn't intended to keep as a car payment.

What's sort of fascinating about the choice is that we now have to take into account that whatever we are buying now will likely be passed down to driving children in 6 or so years. It's a humbling realization. Ollie has suggested a Ferrari, a Mustang, a Hummer, a Rav-4, or a Jeep Wrangler. Hmmm. Though we really should probably look for something used, we are thinking about a Prius (no longer any tax credits) or...well, we just really don't know. Because we don't really have the money for it now, none of it feels all that exciting. And gas prices are down at the moment, but who wants to pay more than they have to. On the other hand, we have six people in our family, and it's important to have a vehicle that will hold at least five of us because sometimes someone has all of the kids at once, and five seating positions are absolutely required. Obviously, something that held all of us would be even more practical, but you really pay for that in fuel efficiency. It's all overwhelming. Tomorrow will be spent getting a rental car, clearing out the dead van, and possibly seeing a doctor for any lingering soreness (the airbag did not deploy).

I still haven't decided what Frances is getting for Christmas. I have a stash of Calico Critters and other small things for her, but she has said she wants an aquarium and an American Girl doll. Up until now, she hasn't been much of a doll kid, so $100 or more for a doll really seems excessive. She tends to draw on her dolls, do interesting things to their hair, give them spontaneous baths, or leave them places to be tortured by her brothers. Also, up until just a month or so ago, she declared that American Girls were "creepy looking." I don't quite see that--they look fine to me--but I'm still not sure what the big turnaround is all about. I'd really prefer fish myself ;)

The trouble with fish, though, is that they are expensive. And now we're buying a car, hoping we're not going to get sued, and who knows what might happen with the economy and Kerry's job. Fish, however, could be quite soothing to look at if life totally tanked. I have been weighing the virtues of column tanks versus ones that are slightly deeper and higher than your typical rectangular tank versus the standard and least expensive shape. Bow front? I hate making decisions...hate it.

Last night, Frances went to the open gym session at her gym, where she was able to get a private lesson on back handsprings. I am getting worried that the rest of her class is going to move forward and Frances is going to have to stay behind because she seems resistant to learning the steps in the process of the handspring. She thinks it looks goofy to put her arms up next to her ears when she comes out of a roundoff, and it has been near impossible to get her to suck in her belly in the way they teach them for the back handsprings. But it sounds like she was able to master the skill of roundoff to back handspring on the tumble track, and then she was able to execute it non-continuously onto the "fluffy," but after practice tonight, she said that she is "awesome" on handsprings now and that she can easily do them on my bed. I hope she doesn't hit that fan :)

Here was her cutest comment today. We were in the Lowe's parking lot because I was getting some more lights for our house, and she said, "I love Rutledge. He's awesome." I asked her what was so awesome about him, and she said, "He's just awesome because he speaks a different language and he's so cute and cuddly and so chubby." I just love that she thinks he's super-cool. I hope he always stays really cute and special to her.



I just love this picture of Frances and her new friend, Gabi. This was from the sleepover in Lynchburg two weekends ago. She has been making artwork for Gabi and has gotten them identical silver bracelets that she is planning to send for Christmas. Frances is so adaptable and finds friends everywhere. I don't know if this is a girl trait or just her personality, but it's so neat for her to be able to find a fit almost anywhere and to connect so easily with other people of all ages. I really envy her that facility in interpersonal relationships.

Oh shit. This is what I get for staying up too late. Hanna Andersson has all their sweaters on sale for $19. I just got an email. I am practically salivating at these adorable sweaters that would be so cute for the Christmas picture I haven't taken this year. And Kerry would kill me. But he doesn't have to know, does he?