Humanity, I love you

Humanity, I love you,
Because you invent things like blu-ray
and nix the old
V
H
S
players that we loved.

Humanity, I love you,
Because the huge
T
V
at courtney's sister's house
is awesome

Humanity, I love you,
Because the big
T
V
wont play my
V
H
S
anywhere in the house.

Humanity, I love you
Because it cost me
$
1
3
freaking
dollars
to rent
7
freaking
movies.

What the hell?

Humanity,
I
Hate
You

Thanks, e.e. cummings, you're amazing. Read the real poem here.
The Mary-Kate and Ashley Marathon will have to wait until tomorrow,
because at my house,
we have no fancy blu-ray players.
So THERE!

Sarah Dessen " Lock and Key "

So I'm reading yet another SD book and eating it up like candy! Love that author!

What is Family? They were the people who claimed you. In good, in bad, in parts or in whole, they were the ones who showed up, who stayed in there, regardless. It wasn't just about blood relations or shared chromosomes, but something wider, bigger...We had many families over time. Our family of origin, the family we created, as well as the groups you moved through while all of this was happening: friends, lovers, sometimes even strangers. None of them were perfect, and we couldn't expect them to be. You couldn't make any one person your world. The trick was to take what each could give you and build a world from it.

As I wrote about in my last post, I have a huge extended family. But then I also have my other family, my little family of friends who I love.

My wild Ashley.
My sweet Michelle.
My little Bryn-o.
My Hanny.
My lovely and whitty Court
My Benn-the-strong-man-Garrett
And
My Cody the jokster.

Where would I be with out these people. These memories. These friends. This family?

**pics to come.

“All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhood completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.” -Mitch Albom, The Five People You Meet in Heaven"

I love this quote. So much. Because I think its t.r.u.e.
But glass that bubbles or is imperfect in some way is much more interesting than "perfect" glass, right?
Because, really, who's not just a little screwed up?

I love my parents.

Family

Family Definition Definition of Family at Dictionary.com: "any group of persons closely related by blood, as parents, children, uncles, aunts, and cousins."

I come from a beautifully loving and HUGE family.

There were around 45 of us:

3 Siblings

Aunt Joyce, Grandma Cora, Uncle Frank

Then they got married:

Aunt Joyce (Uncle Abe RIP), (Grandpa Earl) Grandma Cora, (Aunt Ruth) Uncle Glenn RIP, Uncle Frank (Aunt Nancy)

Then they had kids, who were cousins, and then they got married! (To not-cousins.)

(Faith)+Tommy, (Laurie)+Paul, Ruth+(Chris), Sue+(Greg), Liz+(Dennis), Becky+Jeff, Peter-(Arlene). Missing-David+(Melelani) and George+(Tracy)

Those kids had kids too, who are second cousins!

Clarisse, Hayden, Grace, Ricky, Sydney, Pierre, Paul, Andre, Gabby, Sami, Hannah, Katie, Kenny, Clarisse, James, Glenn Arthur, Zachary, Seth, Molly Charlotte, Sarah, Isabelle, and Michael. We miss Jason, Daniel, Bethany (Jake+Joshua), Jimmy, Roy, Georgie, and Paige.




My family is all about having fun. We played games, went rock climbing, night swimming in heated lakes, pool volleyball, regular volleyball, ladders. badmitten, tubing on the lake, pool basketball, regular basketball, lots of talking, eating, laughing, remembering, picture looking, loving. We prayed together and shared our stories. We embraced life and it was wonderful.

The Green Fig Tree Story

From Sylvia Plath's The Bell Jar:

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story.
From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was a famous poet and another fig was a brilliant professor and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out.
I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet.

I'm not sure what the rest of this year will hold for me, but I think it may be time to pluck a fig from the tree and grow up a little bit.

Summer Reading 2009

As an avid reader, I always look forward to the summer when I can sit back by the pool and eat up some great novels. Last summer I read several books that have become a part of who I am. To me, thats the mark of a great book, if it changes you and makes you think about who you are and what you represent to yourself and society.

Last Year's List:

• Anna Karenina --> Loved it loved it loved it!
• The Kite Runner/1000 Splendid Suns --> Made me think about the plight in the middle east that is often ignored by the american public. People are people, regardless of religion.
• Madame Bovary --> Total complete selfishness. But I still enjoyed it because it made me mad
• The Bean Trees --> Book club book. I liked it a lot, but still prefer The Poision Wood Bible over it. Also read Animal, Vegetable, Miracle which reminded me of one of my professors, Patty Kirk, writer in residence at JBU.
• The Twilight Series --> Brain candy!
• We The Living --> First taste of Ayn Rand, it was a delicious and sad journey into human nature. Go read it!
• East of Eden --> Favorite book ever, I think. I couldn't tell you why, but Steinbeck's style is so interesting and different from a lot of other american author's
• Night --> Read it in Germany and wanted to die after. Its kinda sick, but I have a morbid fascination with Hollocaust lit.
• A Moveable Feast --> Read it in Paris. Yummy.
• Queen of the Turtle Derby/The House on First Street -->Julia Reed made me love living in the south even more than I already do and she also made me want to go live in New Orelans for part of my life. Love her!!

Ahh books, where would I be without you? This summer so far (Since May 7th-ish) I've completed 5 books and am working on the 6th. At this rate, I'm hoping to get through 15+ more. I'm going to the beach in a few weeks for a week with a great friend and hopefully that will be a place for lots and lots of reading!!

Summer 2009 Reading List

May

• The Heart is a Lonely Hunter --> I love southern gothic style and this book broke my heart, in a good way, though.
• My Friend Leonard --> Companion book to James Frey's A Million Little Pieces. An interesting memoir about the struggle against addiction of all sorts.
• The Queen of Everything --> Self-discovery adolescent lit. I like it.
• Three Cups of Tea --> non-fiction, set in Pakistan. Love love love it.
• The Fountainhead --> Currently reading it and i love it so far. Ayn Rand sure does make me think.
• Babbitt --> Currently reading, I've laughed out loud several times.

June, July, August

• Catch-22, by Joseph Heller
• A Clockwork Orange, by Anthony Burgess
• The Grapes of Wrath, by John Steinbeck
• As I Lay Dying, by William Faulkner
• Slaughterhouse 5, by Kurt Vonnegut
• A Passage to India, by E.M. Forrester
• On the Road, by Jack Kerouac
• Naked Lunch, by William S. Burroughs
• Go Ask Alice, by Unknown
• Atlas Shrugged, by Ayn Rand
• Everything is Illuminated, by Jonathan Safran Foer
• Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, by James Joyce
• Moby Dick, by Herman Melville
• An American Tradgey, by Theodore Dreiser
• Lolita, by Vladimir Nabokov

This is my list, but there are a few I could/would drop: Moby Dick, As I lay Dying, and Portrait of the Artist would be the first to go, not because they aren't wonderful pieces of classic literature, but because I have started them all and never finished due to being just a tad bit uninterested.

So now the question: What books have I left off that changed you or that you just really really loved and think everyone needs to read?? I'm open to all genres and all subjects, just give me some suggestions!!

La Vie en Rose...?

I had rose colored glasses once; I traded them in for a pack of ciggarettes.

I read a lot of blogs and find a lot of great one liners that i think either do apply to my life or might possibly apply to my life in the future. I love reading all the mom's blogs in particularily...they crack me up and make me cry usually in the same post. Oh children...the wild nasty crazy beautiful soft little creatures that make people so lovely and nuts all at the same time. I'm sure that some times I will want to pull my hair out and scream and I will remember thinking that I said I would never do that...but I probablly will...but to quote Augusten Burroughs, "Where would we be withour out painful childhoods?"