My garden is actually growing stuff! I will be having a nice 3-day weekend this coming Memorial Day weekend; I’m planning on getting some tomato seedlings planted. Most of the seeds I planted directly seems to be doing very well. The spinach is coming up nicely, as are some of the lettuce varieties I planted, and the potato & pea plants are starting to grow like crazy!

The flip side is that almost all the seedlings that I started inside have suffered badly after transplanting. I’ll just keep researching, and doing my best to apply what I learn. I did get some strawberry plants from my late grandmother’s garden, and today I noticed an actual strawberry is growing! I wasn’t sure they would set fruit after being dug out of the ground and put in a planter, but they seem to be just fine.

But most of my weekend will be spent (hopefully!) enjoying the company of my husband, who will be starting his “2 weeks in the summer” part of Naval Reserves duty as of June 1st. I need to get a bunch of cleaning & organizing done too… there are lots of ideas and plans percolating in my head regarding that. [insert maniacal laughter here]

As of last weekend, we are minus one reptile buddy. Nobody died, but unfortunately as Sebastian grew up she became the unfriendliest of kingsnakes (as in “aggressively striking and biting at the slightest movement, and absolutely refusing to let go once she sank her teeth into you”), and after much contemplation, Anxiety (aka Baby, as she’s more often called at home these days) decided to let the pet store where we got her find a new home for the little biting fiend.

I profoundly wish I could take an actual vacation. The last couple of times I took a few days off from work, I did a bunch of housework but didn’t get as much accomplished as planned, since I was unfortunately felled by migraines. (It seems that I get migraines more often than not on my days off — how terribly perverse!) But I’m really, really, really freaking tired these days. And it’s not from lack of sleep… I only have part of a clue as to the reasons why, and no real handle on potential solutions. I think sometimes you just have to resign yourself to less-than-optimum circumstances until other opportunities present themselves. And at the moment, just getting one foot in front of the other is about all I can handle without imploding.

Oh my. I instantly got all teary-eyed, my heart felt like it was going to burst, and I had to choke down the enormous lump in my throat so I could breathe again. It was a good thing I was at a red light, so I had a few moments to pull myself together and blink away all the blurry tears.

As I told Anxiety, when I became a mom I didn’t exactly have a boatload of self-esteem, and for years it seemed to me that everyone constantly criticized my parenting. Not only pediatricians (who questioned my decisions to delay immunizations, and to breastfeed longer than 12 months, among other things), but also total strangers (I got yelled at in the supermarket by someone for giving my tantrum-throwing toddler a swat on the butt, for putting a preschooler on a leash, etc.) and schoolteachers (I refused to punish my kids for saying “No” to an adult in what I considered a completely-justifiable situation, and I advised my kids that if they were physically attacked by bullies, they had my permission to defend themselves physically — entirely contrary to the school’s “zero tolerance” policy) and quite often, even my own family (you never quite forget trying to explain to your crying pre-teen why a handful of relatives verbally trashed her mom).

And heaven knows I made plenty of mistakes. Many times over the last 20 years, I’ve said that I swore when I became a mom I wouldn’t make my parents’ mistakes, and how proud I was that I’d largely succeeded in that — of course, in avoiding their mistakes, I made a whole bunch of entirely new ones! But in recent years, I’ve come of believe that, while I’ll never be in the running for Mother of the Year (I’m just not nice enough — or conventional enough — by any stretch!), I haven’t done too badly, all things considered.

And hey, I raised an older daughter who is bright and beautiful, and a very talented writer, and a quirky and sassy and rambunctious young woman, who — for all her faults (most of which, I’m confident, will be resolved by time and life experience) — is unabashedly passionate about her beliefs and her relationships and her dreams. She’s always had the kind of passion that I was afraid to embrace until I reached my thirties, which led me to remark more than once as she grew up that she was the girl I wanted to be when I was her age. Her energy is full steam ahead and larger than life — things are never boring with her around!

And hey, I raised a younger daughter who is also bright and beautiful (but in entirely different ways!), who is amazing with little kids and has a gleefully wicked sense of humor, and who is responsible and level-headed and determined to do the right thing even when it’s incredibly difficult for her — and has a great generosity of spirit that simply astounds me at times. Straddling the chasm between child and adult, she doesn’t let her fears stop her from reaching out, even when they become overwhelming at times. Her energy meshes nurturer and warrior with a delicate graceful strenth.

I can’t take all the credit. So many people have been part of their growing and learning and becoming amazing. But — after all my worries and fears and self-doubt over the years — I can say, based on these incredible young women, that I’ve been a good mom. Or maybe just a bewildered mom who raised good kids.

And maybe there’s not much difference between the two.

From the time I was old enough to be interested in romantic love, I’ve always said I wanted a love who was like a male version of me, with just enough differences to make things interesting! And I never felt like I truly belonged — not anyplace, or with anyone. There were certainly people with whom I felt comfortable, and deeply loved & trusted, and shared with them a sense of belonging. But, although I don’t believe anyone needs another person to “complete” them, I have felt the most complete as a person in the years since I fell in love with Geoffrey. I absolutely belong with him, profoundly and completely.

And that almost didn’t happen. We were pals who were supposed to have a summer romance, a nice diversion, a delightful little fling and nothing more. Both of us fought the feelings we began having for each another; neither of us wanted to admit to ourselves that not only was love on the menu, but very likely a lifetime of it! And considering how stubborn and tenacious we can both be, that meant a whole lot of resisting those feelings was going on.

Then one evening, his face half-pressed into my neck, he blurted a muffled, “I love you.” I looked at him and said, “What did you just say?” He tentatively repeated it — and he couldn’t possibly have missed the huge amount of relief in my voice as I said, “Oh thank God you said it first!” Four months later, he moved in with me. That was 11 years ago this month, and now I literally can’t imagine life without him.

I don’t know how long he’ll be home, since we currently have exactly zero information on the likelihood of him being deployed in the future (he’s a reservist), but I intend to cherish whatever time we get. And hokey though it may be, I truly believe that, “Le mo ghrása mise agus liomsa mo ghrá” (I am my beloved’s and my beloved is mine).

Getting to see my beloved Geoffrey (after a separation of 13 weeks!) was heavenly. I knew his commitment to the US Navy would involve sacrifices on both our parts, but not being able to spend time with my husband has been so rough. I guess that’s part of the price I have to pay for being madly in love. Quite the mixed blessing.

We really didn’t do anything “special” — it was more than enough to just be able to snuggle, and talk, and indulge ourselves in that happy “hey, sailor” way. *GRIN* Besides being crazy in love, I just profoundly like him; he’s wonderful company and absolutely one of my best friends.

We did go to see Lake Michigan, walk along the shore and look at various wildlife (frogs, snakes, bugs, and even saw some deer poo, although we didn’t see the deer themselves). I collected a couple handfuls of pretty rocks along the water line. It was so incredibly WEIRD to be walking along a body of water that looks like the ocean but doesn’t have waves or smell like the sea — really jarring!

The flight out to Chicago was fine, the departure was at nearly midnight and the flight went very smoothly. Coming back, however, was awful. Parents who don’t control their little brats deserve every last bit of the horrid karma that will come their way when the kids get older and start making their parents’ lives a living hell. Who lets a toddler scream, shriek, and holler for FOUR HOURS? Have they not heard of Benadryl?! Pets are sedated for their own good during flights, and children should be too! It would be lovely if airlines would have “no children” flights.

Unfortunately, I don’t know when I’ll get to see Geoffrey again. If he’s sent to San Diego for his final training, he might be able to visit if he gets a long weekend. I’d much rather he came home to visit than me fly out to visit him again; I’d rather not get on a plane again for a good long time. Supposedly he’ll be done with training and home by early to mid-December.

I bought some fabulous yarn at a really neat shop called Village Knit Whiz, and have at least half-a-dozen WIPs (works in progress) that I need to photograph so I can show them off. *grin* But unfortunately, today I am in a fair amount of pain from a migraine and the aftereffects of the surprise tooth extraction I had yesterday. The tooth was cracked all the way through, and came out in pieces — but with any luck I’ll feel much better in just a few days. And it really sucks when I’m on Vicodin but get a migraine anyway!!!

Damn, I miss Geoffrey so much. Absence does sometimes make the heart grow fonder; I love him like I never imagined I would be able to love. He is such a huge blessing to me, and I can’t wait to have him back in my life full-time again.

The Tualatin flood of 1996 was the closest I ever came to being flooded. Just a couple of years before that flood, I moved into Tualatin. I had to choose between an apartment literally next to the river, or an apartment further from the city center but about 100 feet higher elevation. I chose the latter apartment — and thank heavens, because the riverside place ended up flooding to a depth of over 8 feet! The only personal impact that the ’96 flood had on me was, since the post office was awash in several feet of floodwaters, I didn’t get mail for a few days. Here’s a link to some more excellent pics of the flood.

Oh, and I couldn’t take my girls for their usual weekly Happy Meal because the McDonald’s parking lot was underwater. Then-7-year-old Angst wouldn’t believe me when I told her, so we actually walked down (with little sister in a stroller) to the flooded area and took pictures. Of course, Angst wanted to wade in the water, and I had to frighten her with tales of horrible diseases that she would catch if she got a single molecule of floodwater on herself. That was possibly the most fun I had that whole week!

I’ll just sum up the last 12 months by saying it’s been fraking exhausting, with no end in sight. (Not a complaint, mind you — I absolutely LOVE most parts of my life, and I fully expect it to just keep on getting better! But it is tiring.)

Okay, alright, to hit just the highlights –

bought an awesome 2005 Dodge pickup truck (too bad the damned thing is red, but they were all out of purple), moved a rather large household’s (3 humans & 9 pets) worth of stuff into a rather small condo that already had (1 human & 2 feline) inhabitants, got sucked into Facebook despite years of resistance (because of some stupid farming game, on which I’m currently level 75), cut nearly all of Geoffrey’s waist-length hair off (at his request, so he could get used to having short hair for the first time in 20 years, before he went to Boot Camp), performed my elder spawn’s wedding ceremony on her 21st birthday (oy and vey), had a Yule season frought with tension, helped elder spawn move house when she decided her marriage was A Big Mistake, had to deal with the most gawd-awful high school in the state until I finally told younger spawn that she didn’t have to go back (she’s now enrolled in an awesome “alternative” school & will probably graduate ahead of her year-mates), got to go shooting with my beloved Geoffrey and our friend The Bastidge a few more (awesome) times, managed not to bawl like a stoopid girl when Geoffrey left for US Navy Basic Training (miss him miserably, constantly, fiercely), was only able to visit hubby for 3 days in the last almost-four months and won’t get to see him again for another month yet, have done about 8 times more work on a garden this year than the cumulative total of my prior gardening, got a kick-ass purple netbook for natal anniversary number forty-one and named it Tinhead (shout out to F.M. Busby), have done about 4 times more crocheting this past year than the cumulative total of the previous 21 years since I learned how (and invented the term “yarn porn” to describe my fast-growing crocheting magazine & book collection), discovered my eldest cat has hyperthyroidism and has to be given pills twice daily to keep her alive (gee, that’s fun), and am still adapting to living with FIVE cats (not *quite* as much fun as I’d once thought it might be) and very little sex.

Yeah, I’m at the theoretical best years of a woman’s sexual lifetime, and my husband — light of my life, joy of my heart, fire in my loins — is over 2,100 miles away. (That’s something in the neighborhood of 3,400 km, for the rest of the world.) My new motto? “Navy Wife: Sexually Deprived For Your Freedom”

Hey, but I’m crocheting a lot. (A. LOT.)

I’m vaguely amused at the fact that I’m writing this on what would have been my 23rd wedding anniversary to my first husband, if he hadn’t been such a completely abusive dick who — among many other horrible things — stole & destroyed my most treasured childhood things, tried to take a breastfed newborn permanently away from her mother, lied in court documents & forced me all the way to divorce court, all just to hurt/punish me. (Guess what, Mick? My life is AWESOME now, and yours probably sucks. Karma is a stone bitch, babe.)

Here’s the scariest — nay, the most terrifying — part: if anyone had told me 10 years ago that I would be 1) married, 2) married without being traumatized by it, 3) married to a US Navy Sailor, 4) happy about owning a pickup truck, 5) excited about gardening instead of disliking it, 6) rabidly excited about crochet instead of just liking it, 7) a rather enthusiastic gun owner, and/or 8 ) a registered Republican, I would have said to them with complete and absolute seriousness, “Just how high are you, dude?”

And they say people don’t change. Well, one little thing hasn’t changed one little bit…

I am still a snarky bitch.

Newsweek’s Top 100 Books of All Time (Orly?)

Bold the ones you’ve read, italicize the ones you tried to read & couldn’t finish, and underline those you’d recommend (plus comment freely in parentheses).

1. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy, 1869
(You. Have. Got. To. Be. Kidding.)

2. 1984 by George Orwell, 1949
(The drudgery of finishing this book stuck with me for a long, long, loooong time.)

3. Ulysses by James Joyce, 1922

4. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov, 1955
(I read it because it’s supposed to be naughty. It’s not naughty, it’s ridiculously stupid.)

5. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner, 1929
(Is this about a ship? Did I maybe see the movie? Or was that Master and Commander?)

6. Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, 1952
(This wasn’t science fiction, was it? If it was, I may hunt it down and read it.)

7. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf, 1927
(Didn’t she kill herself? I know nothing else about this.)

8. The Illiad and The Odyssey by Homer, 8th century B.C.E.
(Oh, the boredom. I couldn’t even finish the Cliff Notes, it was so boring.)

9. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen, 1813
(19th-century chick lit, right? I don’t even like modern chick lit, why would I read this?!)

10. Divine Comedy by Dante Alighieri, 1321
(I hear it’s snarky. Maybe someday I’ll try reading it.)

11. Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, 15th century
(Wasn’t this a bunch of medieval soap opera stuff? I don’t like modern soap opera stuff, for crying out loud.)

12. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift, 1726
(Hated the movie. At least I think it was a movie based on this book. There was teensy people tying the guy down with ropes, right? Boring.)

13. Middlemarch by George Eliot, 1874
(Wasn’t George Eliot a chick? That’s all I know about this.)

14. Things Fall Apart by Chinua Achebe, 1958
(Never heard of this book. Or this author.)

15. The Catcher in the Rye by J. D. Salinger, 1951
(Aren’t crazed shooting-spree murderers supposed to like this book?)

16. Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell, 1936
(I read it because Lyse loves it. It actually wasn’t bad. Pretty sure it wouldn’t make my personal Top 100, though!)

17. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez, 1967
(Never heard of this book. Or this author.)

18. The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald, 1925
(Wasn’t this about a reporter? I can’t imagine any book about a reporter being interesting.)

19. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller, 1961
(Not a clue.)

20. Beloved by Toni Morrison, 1987
(Figures, the only book in the top 20 written after my birth, and I’ve never heard of it. Or the author.)

21. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck, 1939
(I read the synopsis of the movie and decided it sounded too depressing to bother.)

22. Midnight’s Children by Salman Rushdie, 1981
(The author that someone put a hit out on because he pissed off some Muslims, right?)

23. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley, 1932
(I tried, honestly. It’s a “sci fi classic” and I really love science fiction…but I couldn’t do it. Boooring.)

24. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf, 1925
(Never heard of this book.)

25. Native Son by Richard Wright, 1940
(Never heard of this book. Or this author.)

26. Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville, 1835
(I might read this some day just because it sounds like it would make a good documentary. But a French guy writing about the USA, when the USA was less than 60 years old and the rest of the world thought democracy was pure nonsense? I have my doubts about it…)

27. On the Origins of Species by Charles Darwin, 1859
(I bet that 99.9% of the people who are against the theory of evolution have not read this. I bet that 99.5% of people who are for the theory of evolution have not read this. I know I haven’t.)

28. The Histories by Herodotus, 440 B.C.E.
(I’ve heard of this guy in documentaries, and he sounded cool, so I might read this someday.)

29. The Social Contract by Jean-Jacques Rousseau, 1762
(Never heard of this book. Or this author.)

30. Das Kapital by Karl Marx, 1867
(I bet that 99.9% of the people who are against Marxism have not read this. I bet that 99.5% of people who are for Marxism have not read this. I know I haven’t.)

31. The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli, 1532
(One of the few books I tried to read & couldn’t finish that I might actually try to read again someday.)

32. Confessions by St. Augustine, 4th century
(Sounds naughty. But I bet it isn’t. I bet it’s boring.)

33. Leviathan by Thomas Hobbes, 1651
(Never heard of this book. Or this author.)

34. The History of the Peloponnesian War by Thucydides, 431 B.C.E.
(Sounds like a documentary on the History Channel. This means I might actually try reading it someday.)

35. The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien, 1954
(Oh, the boredom! The shrieking boredom! I didn’t see the movies, either.)

36. Winnie-the-Pooh by A. A. Milne, 1926
(The first 6 or 7 years of my life revolved around Pooh, but eventually I GREW UP. Utterly ridiculous that this book — or any other book that only requires a third-grade reading level — is on the list.)

37. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe by C. S. Lewis, 1950
(Read it in childhood, and I remember almost nothing about it. Didn’t see the movie either.)

38. A Passage to India by E. M. Forster, 1924
(Wasn’t this made into a movie with Meryl Streep? Or was that Out of Africa? Anyway, never read either one.)

39. On the Road by Jack Kerouac, 1957
(Wasn’t this guy the original poseur? That whole beatnik thing was all about being poseurs, right?)

40. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee, 1960
(I read this because my kid was forced to read it for school, and I couldn’t believe it was as bad as she made it out to be. But it WAS. Absolutely THE most boring piece of crap I’ve forced myself through. I watched the movie, hoping it would somehow redeem this tedious waste of time. Nope. It was simply atrocious.)

41. The Holy Bible by ?
(I’ve actually read most of it. And despite being very much not a Christian — in fact, I’m a witch/pagan/heathen type — I highly recommend it. Some of it’s just morbid fascination about the oddities of beliefs of certain cultures in history, and some of it’s flat-out prurient entertainment. However, some of it really IS incredibly good stuff. I’m personally shocked and dismayed that it didn’t make the Top 10 on this list. <--not sarcasm!)

42. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess, 1962
(I tried, and really wanted to finish it. Couldn’t do it…it just made no sense. Watched the movie and was mildly creeped out. Not by the story so much as by the horrible acting of Malcolm McDowell.)

43. Light in August by William Faulkner, 1932
(Never heard of the book. Vaguely heard of the author. Did he write Thorn Birds?)

44. The Souls of Black Folk by W. E. B. Du Bois, 1903
(Sounds like a winner. I’m only being a smidgen sarcastic in saying that. It really does sound like it could be fascinating. It also sounds like the kind of book a bunch of white people would claim was amazing because it’s politically correct of them to do so.)

45. Wide Sargasso Sea by Jean Rhys, 1966
(Never heard of book or author. Sounds like a bad romance.)

46. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert, 1857
(Really sounds like a bad romance.)

47. Paradise Lost by John Milton, 1667
(Poetry? Really?)

48. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy, 1877
(From the guy who brought you War & Peace? Please.)

49. Hamlet by William Shakespeare, 1603
(Forced to read it in school. Hated it. Really tried to like it when I dated a guy who was a theatre major and wild about Shakespeare. Still hated it. Tried watching the movie, figured anything with Mel Gibson couldn’t suck too bad, right? Wrong. Still hated it. My 16-year-old really likes Shakespeare, though — she bought the “complete works of” at a used bookstore completely on her own initiative. Go figure.)

50. King Lear by William Shakespeare, 1608

51. Othello by William Shakespeare, 1622

52. Sonnets by William Shakespeare, 1609

53. Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, 1855
(Poetry sucks. Unless it’s by Shel Silverstein or Rudyard Kipling, thanks.)

54. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain, 1885
(Another “forced to read in school” book. Another author that I can’t, for the life of me, understand how he gets such rave reviews.)

55. Kim by Rudyard Kipling, 1901
(Based on the multiple recommendations of science fiction authors that I respect and admire, I am determined to read everything by Rudyard Kipling sooner or later. What I’ve read so far is pretty impressive.)

56. Frankenstein by Mary Shelley, 1818
(Possibly the first “science fiction” novel ever. I kinda have to read it, yes? Someday I will.)

57. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, 1977
(Never heard of the book or author. I must admit being prejudiced against it simply by learning it was featured by Oprah’s book club.)

58. One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey, 1962
(Honestly can’t remember if I read it, or just was really, really impressed by the movie.)

59. For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway, 1940
(Meh. Doesn’t sound interesting.)

60. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut, 1969
(Wasn’t the author some whiny peacenik with a chip on his shoulder who couldn’t write decent science fiction so he wrote this?)

61. Animal Farm by George Orwell, 1945
(I think they tried to make me read this in school, but by then I was so disgusted with the required reading list that I cheerfully took an F.)

62. Lord of the Flies by William Golding, 1954
(I may actually read this someday because I hear it’s gory and creepy. Sweet.)

63. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote, 1965
(Didn’t they make a movie about this guy writing this book? How good could it be if they made a movie about him writing the book, rather than a movie about the subject matter of the book?)

64. The Golden Notebook by Doris Lessing, 1962
(Never heard of the book or author.)

65. Remembrance of Things Past by Marcel Proust, 1913
(Never heard of the book.)

66. The Big Sleep by Raymond Chandler, 1939
(Okay, wait a minute. A detective novel? Are you fuq’ing joking?!)

67. As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner, 1930
(Never heard of the book.)

68. The Sun Also Rises by Ernest Hemingway, 1926
(So this is chick lit for tough guys? Stupid.)

69. I, Claudius by Robert Graves, 1934
(Sounds like Gladiator meets My Left Foot. Interesting apart, not so much together.)

70. The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers, 1940
(Never heard of the book or author.)

71. Sons and Lovers by D. H. Lawrence, 1913
(Sounds kinky. However, there’s no way kinky would make this list. Therefore it must be dull as dishwater.)

72. All the King’s Men by Robert Penn Warren, 1946
(Politics? Yawn.)

73. Go Tell It on the Mountain by James Baldwin, 1953
(Never heard of the book or author.)

74. Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White, 1952
(Okay, this is a great book. However, it’s not THAT great. The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett was tremendously better.)

75. Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad, 1902
(Never heard of the book or author.)

76. Night by Elie Wiesel, 1958
(Isn’t this the Diary of Anne Frank revisited?)

77. Rabbit, Run by John Updike, 1960
(Never heard of the book. Not real clear on why Updike is considered a great writer.)

78. The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton, 1920
(Never heard of the book or author.)

79. Portnoy’s Complaint by Philip Roth, 1969
(Never heard of the book or author.)

80. An American Tragedy by Theodore Dreiser, 1925
(Never heard of the book or author.)

81. The Day of the Locust by Nathanael West, 1939
(A cheesy horror flick. Oh, wait, that movie probably wasn’t about this book. Okay, I’ve never heard of this book or author.)

82. Tropic of Cancer by Henry Miller, 1934
(I hear this is a naughty book. I doubt it’s all that. Didn’t this guy get famous for being in a three-way?)

83. The Maltese Falcon by Dashiell Hammett, 1930
(Another private dick novel? Clearly someone who likes fedoras stacked the deck on this list.)

84. His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman, 1995
(Fantasy, and quite yawn-inducing fantasy at that. I lost interest two chapters into The Golden Compass.)

85. Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather, 1927
(Never heard of the book or author.)

86. The Interpretation of Dreams by Sigmund Freud, 1900
(The dude was seriously twisted in some ways and a total whack-job in others. I can’t imagine wanting to read this, other than for the sheer amazement of how much he got wrong.)

87. The Education of Henry Adams by Henry Adams, 1918
(Never heard of the book or author.)

88. Quotations from Chairman Mao by Mao Zedong, 1964
(Brainwashing, anyone? Hey, wasn’t this the guy who made our nation’s “nanny government” look like a utopia of civil freedoms? Ew.)

89. The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature The Varieties of Religious Experience: A Study in Human Nature by William James, 1902
(This may possibly be the only book on this list that I’m extremely eager to read. Apparently it’s about “spirituality” in the sense of “nature religion/paganism without the deities”. Sounds intruiging.)

90. Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh, 1945
(Isn’t this a PBS soap opera for old fogeys? Yawn.)

91. Silent Spring by Rachel Carson, 1962
(So ridiculously overblown and overrated, it’s not funny. Twisted into a manifesto by the eco-terrorist wing nuts. She died in 1964, and probably would be appalled at how people have used her work.)

92. The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money by John Maynard Keynes, 1936
(The only thing more boring than politics? Economics! Not to mention there’s far more fortune-telling in economics than anything resembling science or sensibility.)

93. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad, 1900
(Never heard of the book or author.)

94. Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves, 1929
(You know what they call people who find reading autobiographies fun & interesting? Fanboys/girls, that’s what!)

95. The Affluent Society by John Kenneth Galbraith, 1958
(Never heard of the book or author.)

96. The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame, 1908
(I may have read a page or two of this. I can’t recall and it looks drearily dull anyway.)

97. The Autobiography of Malcolm X by Alex Haley and Malcolm X, 1965
(See my note above about autobiographies. Besides, militantly angry stuff is just stupidly annoying.)

98. Eminent Victorians by Lytton Strachey, 1918
(Never heard of the book or author.)

99. The Color Purple by Alice Walker, 1982
(Looked angry and depressing. So not my cuppa.)

100. The Second World War by Winston Churchill, 1948
(Politicians writing about history that they just got done making strikes me as absurdly short-sighted, not to mention way too biased to be anything other than fan service.)

I rather enjoyed reading the comments on the Newsweek article. Here are excerpts from my favorite comments:

“An absolutely ridiculous list…you might as well have just given us Oprah’s word. Way too American in fiction, way too leftist and pseudo-scientific in other fiction.”

The Golden Compass? Are you smoking crack?

Yeah, that about sums it up.

Geoffrey and I got married today. Still mind-boggled by it. Details soon, but for now I must collapse…sooo exhausted. It was a pretty amazing day, all told.

Are you fuq’ing KIDDING?! That much money for some dead flowers and a stickpin?!

I’m beside myself. Thank heavens he only ordered corsages for the moms and me, and boutonnieres for himself and his dad. (When I heard boutonnieres are only $8, I said he should have gotten those for all of us.) He ordered purple roses, which is really sweet…but, if they have ANY scent whatsoever, I won’t be able to have a corsage, because rose oil is one of my strongest migraine triggers.

I’m still mind-boggled. EIGHTY-FIVE DOLLARS for a bouquet? (Do you know how many books I could buy with $85?!) Clearly, not liking flowers has saved me a fortune over the years. I will never understand how some people are willing to pay that kind of money for something so incredibly useless.

• Buy a new bra (and probably shoes)
• Get some speakers for my iPod
• Dye my hair (I may be 40 but I refuse to be gray!) & get it trimmed
• Buy the sparkling cider & grape juice
• Finish getting the ceremony written
• Order the corsages for the moms & boutonniere for Geoffrey’s dad
• Check the site for logistical surprises & do a brief walk-through
• Finish sewing the dresses!

It may seem like there’s a lot left to do, but actually most of the preparations are already finished. We have a dinner at Geoffrey’s parents house on Saturday night (eve of the wedding), so all this has to be done by late Saturday afternoon. I am hugely glad that I took these vacation days to prepare, or we would be completely FUBAR.

And my sixpence arrived in the mail today!!! It’s gorgeous, and the lady who took my order was so incredibly nice. When I called to order, she asked if I had a special year in mind, and I said no (they stopped making them 2 years before my birth year, which was the only year which popped to mind). Then she suggested one that’s a century old, to commemorate the year of the wedding, and I thought that was brilliant! So I have a 1909 King Edward VII sixpence for my shoe!

So tonight Geoffrey & I will do a bit of wedding-preparation shopping. Normally I hate all shopping unless it’s for books, but I promised myself a bra from Vicky’s, and I don’t mind shopping there too much. Except for all the ridiculous pink decor.