Took a down day

After all the excitement of yesterday with signing the paperwork for Ocean Grove and trying to convince the boys that they do still need to do work and then staying up too late watching a zombie movie with Mark, Mike, and Christopher...well...I was tired today. I did manage to get a few things done. I pulled all the K12 stuff off of Jonathan's shelf that we won't be using so I can box it up. I'm going to *ahem* wait a bit to send back the math text since I want to just finish it up but hate the thought of having to pay for it with our funding. I'm hoping that OG has a copy in their lending library but if not, it won't hurt anyone if we keep it for an extra month or two to finish it up. I also managed to pull out a few resources from our shelves to use now that we'll have time to use them and started researching Vikings to get ideas of how to proceed with studying that since that is what the boys have said they want to do now. And I managed to get the laundry caught up (again).

And I read. and I read some more. I'm over 60% through 1984 now. I didn't pick up Beowulf today but I'm getting through that one. I haven't found it difficult to read at all except when I have kids interrupting every few lines and I have to figure out where I was again but I have that problem with any book I read. Go figure. LOL

The big thing was that Mark updated all my virus software and ran a spyware check on my computer and got a bunch of spy stuff off (no viruses thankfully). Now my computer is being much peppier which is so nice. It was driving me nuts before. I'm also working on cleaning up some of my files and getting them onto my external drive. Mostly photos and then I want to get CDs burned of them so I can make sure we don't lose anything.

Mark's also been working on getting those books that he downloaded for my Kindle onto my computer (they are currently on his). I managed to get the few books I had downloaded first onto my Kindle tho I can't find the .pdfs that I copied over. Need to figure that out. I did find out that my favorite little Tink purse will hold my wallet, my palm, and my Kindle with a little extra room. Definitely a nice thing so I can always carry whatever book I want with me. After reading on it for four days now I'm definitely getting used to navigating it and can say that the display is just incredible. It's very close to a paper feel and is easy on the eyes unlike reading on a backlit palm. Now that I have my light coming from Amazon, hopefully I'll be able to read in bed at night without disturbing Mark. :)

104:20 The Cat Who Had 60 Whiskers by Lilian Jackson Braun

Polly's gone, Qwill barely cared tho I think he cared slightly more than I did. Someone died via a bee sting but it was a footnote in everything. Really, really, boring. I mean more so than the last 10. Basically nothing happened other than Polly leaving for Paris and deciding to stay. Seriously? Whatever.

This is the last of these I had in the house. I think she wrote more but I won't be checking to find out. Matthew says he wants to read them, I told him to stop after the first couple but I'll keep the set until he decides to get rid of them but I told him they are going in his room because I won't waste my valuable book space on them any longer. I'm glad to be done with them.

Page count: 190p/5675p ytd

It's here!!!!!

What a wonderful thing to come home to! Two beautiful Amazon packages awaiting me on my front porch as we got home from zoo class. One had the Kindle and the other the cover I ordered for it. It was amazing to open the Kindle, plug it in, have it turn on and have the books I'd already ordered off Amazon (the ones mentioned previously plus a bunch of freebies I've found on Amazon for the Kindle as well). I've already started reading 1984 and have been playing around with the web functions. Still need to figure those out a little more and find what limiations can be worked around and which can't but hey, I've got my Kindle! I really like the epaper they are using as it's very easy on the eyes which I can't say of reading a .pdf on a palm and I think it's wicked cool that the "screen saver" images when you put it in standby mode are different authors and the first one that came up was Poe. How much cooler can you get?

So I'm totally jazzed with my new toy. Very few complaints so far tho I'm sure many of those will go away as I get more used to it and I'll find some new ones instead. Isn't that always the way of things? LOL

104:19 The Two Towers by J.R.R. Tolkien

Wow, you know you don't read something for years after reading it as a teenager and it's amazing how something that was good becomes out of this world fantastic. It's not like I can say anything about this that hasn't already been said to death but this book deserves it all and more. But it makes it all the more amazing to be sharing it with my son. To see his enjoyment of it, to share his throughts after reading it, to see what it is inspiring within him. That is truly without measure.

Page count: 447p/5485p ytd

The Highs of the Day

Now that I've whinged about today I want to share all the fabulous news I got in a separate post where it won't get overshadowed.

I got home from therapy today and finally received a call from the Spec Ed department at Ocean Grove to let me know that Jonathan had finally been approved for enrollment! The had a few details to go over and I'm now working on finalizing things with the head of the department. There is no problem with him keeping his current speech therapist but they are looking into if they are already contracted with his current OT. They didn't suggest anyone else in the area so hopefully even if they aren't currently contracted with her, it won't be too big an issue to get that taken care of so things can continue on as they are.

Now I've been told by many people that there is a huge problem getting assigned to an Education Specialist (or ES as they are known, the person who handles all the state paperwork and helps you get your funding and helps you spend it), especially mid-year and at one point (when no one I was talking to knew there was a problem with Jonathan's paperwork) that we should pursue other schools for the remainder of the school year. So imagine my complete and utter astonishment when I get an email from our ES!!!! I've now talked with her by phone, we've exchanged a few emails, and we are meeting with her on Friday to sign all the paperwork and then Matthew and Jonathan will officially be enrolled! I'm sooooo looking forward to this since it should make a lot of things much easier around here schoolwise since I can do more unit studies with the two of them instead of everyone having totally separate subjects. It's been nuts and I'm really hoping this will help streamline things for me.

On top of all this, Mark managed to download the entire English collection from feedbooks.com which is over 2600 books for the kindle. I'm going through now and figuring out which ones were already on my wishlist and then I'll have to go through my huge lists and figure out which ones are on that. Of course this makes me as happy as a kid in a candyshop but then I get an email from Amazon telling me that my Kindle has shipped a day early and will be here on Wednesday instead of Thursday and that I can go ahead and start shopping for books right now and they'll go right to my Kindle before I even get it!!! Seriously, how cool is that?! Yeah, I know I'm geeking and just wait til I start in on the Gutenberg Press site for more books. I need to figure out how many memory cards I'm going to need to store all these. All I can say is thank goodness those are small and the files themselves are relatively tiny too.

So my new toy will be here in about 36hrs and my children will be enrolled in a new charter school 48hrs after that. Now if we could just convince Nico he's not really Rum-Tum Tugger...

A Day to Drain the Emotions

Yesterday was a lot of fun as my dad's kids gathered from around the bay area to wish him a Happy 80th. My sister Liz had collected up photos from his life and put together a fantastic photo album that was just incredible to behold (tho if she had burned those pics of my teenage years I would have been happier LOL). After all the clean-up was done tho, I just kind of hit a wall. My legs were killing me and I was just drained. I still managed to get all the grocery stuff taken care of and rearrange things in the kitchen so we are once again able to walk in there but I really felt like I was pushing. Then I had problems falling asleep but once Mark's alarm went off at 4a so he could make his flight to SLC, I had problems falling back asleep again. I was up with no problems when my alarm went off at 5:45a.

Day started okay with the boys as I was trying to start implementing the schedule I worked on all last week, until we woke up Nico. Funny how that always throws the best laid plans out the window. We got through breakfast ok but then the tantrums about playing on the computer started. No doing chores, no getting dressed, just give me the computer and you can keep your hearing was clearly what he was trying to communicate. Unfortunately all the arguing with him caused us to be late to therapy (which he didn't want to do) but when I dropped off Jonathan so I could go grab Starbucks, he threw a fit because I didn't drop him off as well. At Starbucks he told me he wanted a kid's cocoa but after I ordered and paid for it brought me an orange juice and threw a fit about the cocoa. I told him Jon could have it at which point he changed his mind again and decided it wasn't so bad afterall. Once we got to therapy, he told his therapist to stop following him and screamed at her every time she got near or tried to speak to him and insisted on clinging to my leg. She did finally jolly him into working with her 1/2 way through the session but this was pretty much the tone with him the entire day. No matter what you gave him, even if it was what he had just asked for, he decided he didn't want. I think he's a cat trapped in a little boy's body and he should have been named Rum-Tum-Tugger. I wonder how hard that would be to legally change???

Needless to say that days like this are emotionally draining on me and anyone else who happens to be near him tho the more prolonged the exposure, the worse you feel at the end of the day. Add in that we had some extreme highs and it leaves you feeling wrung out like yesterday's wash. I told the boys that all I wanted once we got home this evening (they had dinner at Mark's parents because I had a YAW parent's meeting to go to) was for them to quickly do their chores and head to bed so I could watch 24 in peace. It's literally the only hour of tv I actually watch in a week. We'll occasionally put on another show but 24 is the only one I actually sit down with intent and watch from beginning to end. One stinking hour of tv a week. That's it! Could they let me have it? Of course not. Nico threw more fits about everything from bathing to eating an apple to going to bed (which didn't happen until 20min AFTER my show!). I had to constantly harp on the kids for every little thing. It was just pretty much ending on the same note we'd been on all day.

Now they are all finally asleep and I'm too tired to enjoy a few moments peace and quiet before they are all up again. With Mark being gone until Wedn night this week (and I hope it's only til Wedn with the current weather), I'm really hoping that tomorrow goes better.

The Great Question has been answered

And no, the answer in this case is not 42. In truth, the answer will be much, much more than that eventually, just not today.

The Great Question was "What will be the first book(s) to get for my new Kindle?" A serious question that required great thought, consideration, and deliberation. There are so many good books out there, I don't want to duplicate ones I have in good condition in the house, I don't want something that I'm going to end up wanting to loan to someone, preferably something that I can read and stop for periods of time. I'm not sure my first choices will fulfill that last requirement but oh, well, it was hard enough to fulfill everything else. Of course there were the fun titles thrown out which were all books worthy of consideration for the simple fact that I want to read them but didn't meet enough of the other criteria.

So the first six books to be downloaded (in order) are:
1984 by George Orwell
A Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
1776 by David McCullough
John Adams by David McCullough
The Letters of John and Abigail Adams
American Lion by Jon Meacham

Next stop will be Gutenberg Press to start downloading everything I can off of there. Of course, all this has to wait until Thursday when it shows up.

Tick...tick...tick...tick

Yes, I'm counting the minutes. I want my new toy NOW!!!!

104:18 The Cat Who Dropped a Bombshell by Lilian Jackson Braun

*yawn* One more left and then I won't ever pick up another book by her again.

Page count: 187p/5038p ytd

That's a first...

The mom of the other two girls in Nico's swim class came up to me yesterday to say how thrilled she was that Nico was in their class. Huh?! Someone is happy that Nico is in a class with their kids?! Wow! Apparently her older daughter (5yrs) has decided that if Nico can do it, than she can too and has gotten a bit of a competitive edge going. Her younger daughter is still pretty fearful (3½) but she's hoping that seeing her big sister and a younger boy swimming all over the place will help motivate her as well. I have to admit, Nico is VERY comfortable in the water and swims like a fish. I don't know if it's the influence of the girls in the class, not having mommy there, being on best behavior for a teacher, or some combination thereof, but he always does exactly as he is told in class, never swimming off, and always waiting patiently for his turn.

It gives me hope.

104:17 Dragonheart by Todd McCaffrey

This is Todd's 2nd solo foray into Pern and I thought he acquitted himself well. He definitely seems intent on staying in the time period he is exploring and fleshing out those characters and that time in society. I found some of the story very reminescent of the earliest books by Anne, you can definitely see the influence and even the total copying of some of those ideas tho he goes on to embrace them and do his own things with them which was good (otherwise, what's the point).

I enjoyed this one and look forward to reading more from him. On the other hand tho, I do hope that Anne or Todd will eventually come back to Pern present day (as we know it) to the characters that we grew up reading about. Yes, they are starting to fade away but their children and those that they were training were also becoming interesting in their own rights and I'd like to see how Pern adapts to its new technological advances.

Page count: 538p/4851p ytd

Stick a fork in me

Seriously, I'm done. I'm so tired of the same fights every day. It's not even a different fight. It's the same couple of fights. Every. Single. Day. and it's old. So freaking old. And I'm just freaking tired of it.

I've spent the last week working on trying to put together a schedule again. I was hoping to have it done over the long weekend so we could start implementing it this week when we had no activities but that was not to be. So tonight I tried to get our calendar system back up to do some preschool stuff with Nico. Um, where are the number pieces to the 100s counter? "We don't know" Where are all the holiday cards to our big perpetual wall calendar? "We don't know" Where are the rest of the January date cards so I can put them away? "We don't know" End result was that half of those things had dropped on the floor under the coats and the kids had noticed but hadn't bothered to do anything about it (nevermind the fact that they put them in the place from which they could fall from in the first place) and the holiday and date cards and gone with the wind tho we did find the cards for the other set. This is typical.

This is all taking place at 10p while Jonathan is still trying to vacuum but can't because Christopher hadn't actually bothered to pick up the crap that was on the floor so he could. It's a simple system. One child cleans off the tables and vacuums, the other picks up the floor (properly but that never happens) so they can while the other two bathe. Obviously, other people pitch in when it's Nico's turn to pick-up. Christopher was doing a horrid job on vacuuming so Jonathan took it over voluntarily but now Christopher does a crap job on picking up. I had to call him over to pick up the same area 3xs and then a 4th time because all he'd done to pick it up was throw the stuff on the table that Jonathan had just cleaned. Seriously?! WTH?! This after he spent his afternoon rearranging the kitchen drawers and cupboards because he never bothers to put the dishes away where they actually belong. He just sort of throws them in the general direction and considers himself done but when I go to find something to cook with, it takes me forever to pull it out and then put away all the other crap I had fall on me while I was pulling it out and I'm sick of that too.


And of course the kids are complaining to me about how they can't see to pick up their room because their ceiling light burned out. Well, it burned out days ago but the floor in there is such a mess that your dad doesn't have anywhere to put the ladder so he can reach the freaking lightbulbs!! You've only been told every single day of your lives to pick up your toys when you are done playing with them. I've gone through that room more times than I care to imagine (I believe the number is a multiple of a googleplex) to help them sort through their toys, get rid of stuff so they have room for everything, make sure they know the place for everything so that nothing EVER has to be on the floor. But yet, it never fails, within 2 days of me spending my entire weekend in there, the room is just as trashed as if I'd never ever set foot in it. Disheartening doesn't begin to cover it.

And they treat the rest of the house the same way. Pick up something, walk two feet and drop it on the ground, and then keep walking. Why? Just because. I seriously can not believe the level of slovenliness they display as a matter of breathing.

Obviously, the first thing at the top of my list is to try to change these behaviors but I've been trying everything I can think of for years and they just keep wearing me down. It's exhausting trying to follow after 4 of them all day pointing out every single time they don't put something away. Yes, I've heard that whole FLYLady thing of just keep working on making the house neat and they won't want to mess it up. Sorry FLYLady, but that is soooooooo not the case here. They see a flat surface and they can't wait to put a pile of crap all over it. Christopher's desk is the perfect example. It has wires up above to sort his books by subject and wires to hold his file folders neatly to the side. Every single day, every single subject he has worked on is on the surface of his desk. All he would have to do is rotate his chair and put out his arms to put his folders away and that is too difficult a task for him. Let alone the unthinkable act of actually standing up to put the book in it's place. Yes, reaching out an arm or standing up in place are both too difficult if it's to put something away but if it's to hit your brother, well, no effort is too great.

So get out the pitchforks and let's make a bonfire. I'm thinking I should just set it all ablaze and then they can just live in the ashes. I'm not sure they'd notice the difference.

Double the fun **Warning, gross content**

Thankfully Morticia is still with us. Unfortunately, we aren't 100% sure what we are dealing with. The good news, it's nothing systemic, all congestion appears to be located in the nasal cavity, the lungs sound clear. The bad news, as the vet was telling us it was likely just a head cold but we'd do antibiotics to make sure, Tisha spit out a tooth. The roots were still attached so it didn't rot out and there was a bloody hole where it had come from. Best guess, abscess. Less likely but possible, cancer. Problem is the diagnostic procedure for this would run around $700 that we just don't have right now so we are doing the antibiotics and hoping that it's just the abscess.

But this means that in addition to having to administer meds to Padme 2-3xs/day, I have to make sure I know Tisha has eaten so I can administer her meds once a day. Wheeee!!! This is more fun than dosing kids. NOT

Sick Kitties :(

Padme started sneezing up a storm today so Mark and Matthew took her to the vets. She was running a fever of 104F plus has worms. Lovely. She has a pain medicine with anti-inflammatory liquid we have to give her once a day for the next three days plus an antibiotic 2xs/day for the next 2wks. The vet also wants her separated from the other cats for the entire two weeks. We are hoping for a week before they all drive us nuts. We made sure to get worm pills for all the indoor cats tho Leia decided that it would be more fun to vomit it back up rather than just take it. Yep, she's the pain.

As if all that weren't enough tho, when Morticia came in tonight we noticed that her breathing was labored so I've put another call into the vet to bring her in tomorrow. We are just praying she lasts the night. She's almost 14yrs old now and has lost several teeth and has just generally been showing her age lately but this is Christopher's cat. We brought her home when he was just 6mos and all his photos for the next several years at home had her in them. They were just inseparable. Considering he still has a hard time with Pugsley's death which was 3½yrs ago, I can't imagine how hard this would hit him. We are trying to prepare him for the possibility that this is her time to go but also telling him to hope for the best and we will do everything in our power to see her healthy again. I'm just praying she's around for another couple of years.

And to top the evening off, Mark lost Nico's melatonin so he's wide awake and refusing to settle down. It's not pretty. Not pretty at all.

ETA: Of course, after I posted this, the melatonin was finally found. Of course, now he's overtired tho, still wound, and super cranky. I can only pray it works quickly.

Pretentions Book Meme

The pretentious book meme
Apparently the BBC reckons most people will have only read 6 of the 100 books here.
Instructions:
1) Look at the list and put an 'x' after those you have read ENTIRELY
2) Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE.
3) Star (*) those you plan on reading.
4) Tally your total at the bottom.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen X
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien X+
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte *
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling X+
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee X+
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 X+
12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller *
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare *
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien X+
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger *
19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger X
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell X+
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald X
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams X+
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky *
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck X
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll X+
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame *
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis X+
34 Emma - Jane Austen *
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen *
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis X+
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini *
38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden X+
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne X+
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell X
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown X
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding X
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel *
52 Dune - Frank Herbert X+
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen X
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens X
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley *
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez *
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck X
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas *
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac *
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville *
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens *
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker X
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett X+
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens X
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert *
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White X
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Alborn
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle *
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad *
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery *
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams *
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas *
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare *
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl X+
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo *

So if I counted right that's X-29, +-14, and *-27.
But why is The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe on there along with The Chronicles of Narnia? Last I checked, it was part of those Chronicles and not a separate thing.

(and I just checked and there are another 15 on my wishlist)

Expensive day

So the boys finally saved up enough money that with Mark trading in his PS2, they could afford the PS3 bundle at Costco. Mark also traded in some My Points for Amazon GCs so the house will buy that from him and that meant it was only an extra $60 for the Guitar Hero World Tour bundle. Big problem was that after trading in the PS2 he found out that yes, earlier models were backwards compatible but newer ones were not so all of our PS2 games would not be playable on the new system. Can you say "What a piece of crap?" Yeah, thought so.

So he moved on with the plan which included taking Nico to TRU and using his birthday money to buy Rock Band 2 for the PS3 and then taking the boys to Game Stop where thanks to the lack of backwards compatibility, the boys turned in their disks not for a new game for the PS3 but an older, used PS2.

Then they get home and we find out that Nicholas had stuck his favorite powpow game (and the one that was Jonathan's present from Santa) into the old PS2 before we turned it in. It's still there. It's also about a 30min drive away. We decided it wasn't worth the time to go get a $20 game back. So mom to the rescue, I ended up buying the PS3 game they wanted and the PS2 game that was lost but which they will have to pay me back for.

But you know, since I was on Amazon...

They had this thing in the corner about the new Kindle 2....

And it will read .doc files, browse the internet, read .pdf, and do some of the other features I was looking for.

So I bought it.

My bookshelf is thanking me.
A lot!

I'm going to have to go see if I can import my contacts and calendar onto the Google or some other private internet site so I can have access to that stuff and then I can say good-bye to my palm and just have the Kindle.

I'm totally psyched and can't wait to get my new toy!

104:16 The Cat Who Went Bananas by Lilian Jackson Braun

Seriously reaching on the book titles. As per the new norm, Polly is busy in something so Qwill is upset. Enter in some new people we've never heard of to keep him busy. Koko is too busy stealing banana peels to do any sleuthing except to be gone when one person shows up. Whatever. Only two more of these in the house to read and then I'm never picking another one up as long as I live. There even losing any appeal as bathroom reading at this point.

Page Count: 223p/4313p ytd

104:15 Men of the Otherworld by Kelley Armstrong

A collection of tales that really revolve around Jeremy, the Alpha of the WolfPack. We find out the strange circumstances regarding his birth and find out more about why his father had such animosity towards him. We then jump to his early 20s when he finds and saves a young Clayton and how their relationship evolved, all from Clayton's point of view. We also get to see his ascension to pack leader, again from Clay's pov. The last short story is set in the modern day where he is already involved with Jamie. In it, he learns things about his past that he never even imagined.

A wonderful book. I really enjoyed learning more about Jeremy's mysterious past and I feel like I have a better understanding of him now. I can't wait to see how this plays into things later on down the road.

But now I'm all done with the series until a new one comes out and I don't even know when that will be. I wonder if stalking her would speed things along???? LOL

Page count: 369p/4090p ytd

104:14 Living with the Dead by Kelley Armstrong

This was a slight departure from the norm as the main protagonist is not a supernatural but rather a friend of Hope's (from Personal Demon) and ends up involved in a murder mystery where the true murderer is a clairvoyant and the detective investigating is a necromancer. This one is also a little harder to follow as we end up with 4 distinct characters telling the story and we change pov with each chapter, some of which are only a few pages long. I can see how some people found it a little disjointing but I rather enjoyed trying to keep track of all the different plot lines and who knew what and when, made it more of a challenge than a straight read.

Definitely a lot of fun and I'm continuing to really enjoy this author.

Page count: 372p/3721p ytd

Lazy Days

Yep, I'm basking in the happiness that comes from a much anticipated 4 day weekend followed by 4 days of minimal activity. Today was the first day of the long weekend and I spent the day catching up on the laundry, working on my desk a little bit, doing some general pick-up but a lot of the day was spent reading and relaxing...letting my brain just stop for a bit. It felt good and I'm looking forward to getting some more catching up stuff done but also making sure I get some down time in over the next week or so. Mommy needs a recharge and she's going to make sure she takes advantage of the downtime to get one.

Big Boy Swim Class

Today was Nico's first big boy class at swim. The one with no mommy and just the teacher. They no longer do a transition period so to say I was apprehensive is mild.
He's in a class with two sisters, one is 5 and the other 3½. None of us had any idea how he would react to a new teacher, new classmates, new style of class, and no mommy...
But he did awesome! He is fearless in the water but followed the teacher's instruction at all times, never leaving the step or island until she told him he could.
He listened intently to what she wanted from him and did it with no fuss.

I'm not sure who switched my normal child for the one in swim class and then switched him back as soon as we got into the showers (where he proceeded to shower me all over and have a fit on the way home because I wouldn't buy him a BK snack). I sort of liked the idea of a biddable child, even just for a short time.But really, I'm so very proud of how well he listened and behaved. He even got to go down the slide now because he's 3. Big brother Matthew was on hand to put him half way up. I tried to get a shot of him going down but had my camera on the wrong setting and he was on his way before I could fix it. Next week, I promise.

He loved it tho and I'm so happy he's so happy.