Confessions of a Book Lover: Vampires

I have a confession. Again. Tomorrow night I'm going to go see the latest Twilight movie Eclipse. Now, before you start Team Edward and Team Jacob-ing and telling me how much you wish someone would love you like Edward loves Bella then, please, don't. No one (especially Mike) wants me to hop up on my soap box about how the Twilight vampires are more like fairies and how the series is like a how-to book on horribly unhealthy relationships. I can go on forever and bore you all to death, if I haven't already done so. However, I can appreciate the entertainment value of the Twilight series and I really think that with a good editor and no fourth book (a baby? seriously? seriously?), they could have been really good. But if you go back to my Good Trash post, I consider Twilight Bad Trash which isn't all bad in limited quantities. Kinda like McDonald's or, say, cheesecake.

So, all that to say, I like Twilight the way some of the guys I train with love horrible martial arts movies. It's like a train wreck--fascinating and terrible and you can't look away. From the movie or the fans.

BUT I've always loved vampire books. Long before the craze and long before all these books that I haven't read like the Vampire Diaries and all the other such books that are raging in popularity. Loving vampire books is why I gave in and read Twilight in the first place even though my literary snobbiness tried to prevent me. Anyway, my all-time favorite vampire book ever? Well:


The cover quote is Neil Gaiman for you Gaiman fans, "pretty much perfect." Seriously, it is. Every time I reread this book, it lands me right into Sunshine's alternative current times and when I get to the end and it's all over, I don't want it to be. People keep asking Robin McKinley to write a sequel (this might be her only adult book, she mostly writes for young adults so current fans be warned that this is not a book for kids/young teens). I don't want her to because I think the ending is just crazy perfect but I get why people want more. They just want to be immersed a little bit longer.

Next up is Carmilla:


Carmilla is interesting because it is a novella that predates Dracula by a quarter century. It's been a while since I read it but I remember it being creepy. Like, thrilling, read-with-the-side-lamp-on-during-a-thunderstorm creepy. If you like HP Lovecraft and Shirley Jackson, try this one out.

There are 2 or 3 other books I could go into but I guess I'll save those for another vampire post. Either next week or before the next movie, ha! Also, people who are going to see it or have seen the others, if you've never noticed it before, check out how much Bella blinks. It's like she has a tic based on how emotional she's supposed to be. Tamara and I like to blink at each other for fun. I'm sure everyone else thinks we're insane. And they are likely right.

In the meantime, have some Autumn helping her P'd fix the floors in the new house. Kali people, check out her island baby squat. haha.


And her book of choice this week is:
Only in Dreams

Phoning it in...

I don't feel good so excuse me while I whine and then follow it up with the laziest blog post ever. :P I have a headache and I think I've knocked one or more of my ribs out of joint practicing for my aikido test which is going to be in two parts on Wednesday and Saturday. My mom was kinda making fun of me until she watched my practice video (filmed so I can see my mistakes, lol). She said, "Oooooh. Yeah. I see why you hurt." Anyway, have some Faces of the Waterslide:





The first run is very cold.










You okay, Papa?


Oh, and here's a little leg for ya:

Yeah I'm weird....

So I think this is hilarious and too true:



And a second one to tie in that I'm posting even though I saw it on Lauren's blog just cause I find it stupidly funny:

Toodles' Silly Photo Shop

I'm sure you're so sad to be missing Confessions of a Book Lover: Vampires for some more picture from Autumn's party. Right? Right! Haha, anyway, one of my big ideas that ended up being smaller but still pretty cool was the photo shop. I wanted to do a full-on photo booth with a computer, printer, and camera setup buuuut laziness won out so I just set up a clothing rack with hula skirts and a bucket full of leis and a coconut bra.


I was pretty happy to see that a lot of people took pictures in the costumes! These are just the ones that were on my camera--if anyone has any photo shop pictures, send them to me! I'm just going to start with the best because, well, it's the best:


I mean, we can all call it a night now, right? Haha. We won't, although not much is going to top that one. Thanks for being good sports, Tamara and Landon. :D I was sad that P'd didn't wear a grass skirt, but this will do!


The best part about all of the photos I'm going to post here are the smiles on everyone's faces.


Even Roxie. She's all, "what. the. heck. I am two months old and what kind of mess does my lula have me in??"


I am soooo sad that I missed Cathy and Eric in grass skirts and I am soooo thankful that Tamara took my camera so she could get pictures of things I missed while hostessing.


Here's Stephan with his filipina ladies. Hehe. Small world story that I may have already told here: Elena is the mother of Autumn's best friend at school Angelee. Angelee is Stephan's goddaughter. I didn't even know Angelee went to Mullins until I ran into Elena there a couple months after Autumn started attending so it is completely unorchestrated that Stephan's honorary granddaughter and his goddaughter would become friends.


Mike must have been in a really good mood Saturday. You guys would have been amazed. He did the host rounds, played in the water, shuttled gifts, and even posed in a grass skirt with no protest. O.O


Oh, here's Angelee and Autumn (I'm just posting these in the order I uploaded them, haha). They are so darn cute together. Angelee just moved into the next classroom because Mrs. Lauren's class is packed out right now. Autumn will join her in the fall. I kind of miss hearing "Autumn and Angelee" stories from their teacher. :) The most common one was, "we had to make sure Autumn and Angelee didn't nap together because they just giggle and whisper at each other the whole time."


And, of course, the little girly girls had to have multiple costume changes. If you look in the corner of this picture, you'll see a blue skirt. That's Angelee's third hula skirt change. :D


More to come, probably!

Oh, and I took photos of the new house today. If anyone's interested in the "partway done" shots, here's a slideshow:

Autumn's Birthday!

Over the weekend, we had Autumn's long delayed birthday party: a Mickey Mouse luau!


I have 632 photos to sort through (thank you, Tamara, for taking some awesome ones!), so here are a few highlights. The party was a blast. We had silly costumes,


Fun food,


A stubborn piñata,


Little friends,


The coolest cake ever,


Big crashes,


And, best of all, little giggles.

Confessions of a Book Lover: Good Trash

Life's pretty stressful right now so I have to confess (this is confessions, right?) that my book list (I'm on book 35) is full of books that are sheer escapism. I got turned on to Georgette Heyer by Robin McKinley who is my favorite author (she'll get her own post one of these days) and whose blog I read. Here's what she wrote about the difference between good trash and bad trash:

First I want to differentiate between good trash and bad trash. Good trash is fun enjoyable stuff that doesn’t shake you out of your comfort zone, or maybe only a little, in a tingly, giddy sort of way. Am I being insulting? I hope not. I love good trash. Georgette Heyer wrote the epitome of superb trash. She’s not the only one, but she’s safely dead so I don’t have to worry about insulting her.

Bad trash . . . bad trash is junk food for the mind and the heart. You may think it tastes good on the way down—and if you’re on a steady diet of it you won’t notice the icky chemical aftertaste—but it’ll fur up your arteries and make you stupid.

I never read anything by Georgette Heyer because I had lumped her somehow into the land of Harlequin romance and Danielle Steele. (and please don't think I look down on anyone who likes the Harlequin brand of romance, it just isn't my cup of tea. I love vampire books--yes, there will be a post--and I've gotten some funny looks over that, lol.) Part of me sincerely regrets having missed, like, 10 years of reading her extensive collection but the rest of me is so happy to have found a fun, enjoyable author who obviously put time and research in her settings.

To the books! The first one I read was The Grand Sophy. Dude. I laughed out loud more than a few times. This book was just so totally not what I expected. I'm going on memory for this one because I read it a couple months ago but I do remember that the characters were really the strong point of this Sophy was larger than life as she went about arranging everyone's life (which is pretty much what the book is about). Her cousin's fiancee was the best as a moralist who liked to make veiled snide comments about everyone and everything. Seriously, if you need a fun, relaxing, say, beach read, go get this book right now.



The second one is These Old Shades. I read this one more recently so I have pretty clear memories and even noted some of the opening passage. I mean, how awesome is this description of the lead gentleman:
“He walked mincingly, for the red heels of his shoes were very high. A long purple cloak, rose-lined, hung from his shoulders and was allowed to fall carelessly back from his dress, revealing a full-skirted coat of purple satin, heavily laved with gold; a waistcoat of flowered silk; faultless small clothes; and a lavish sprinkling of jewels on his cravat and breast”

I was also unreasonably tickled by the bowing:
“He made a magnificent leg”

Anyway, even though I've gone on about the writing, the actual book is about a man who exacts revenge in a very roundabout manner. I don't want to tell any more. :P


One caution: if you hate Jane Austen, you'll probably hate Georgette Heyer. :P

Also, this is getting long BUT here's Autumn's book of the week:


I have read this book to her approximately 80,000,000,000 times. The only relief I have gotten is today because the book is in her hello kitty suitcase in the trunk of my car. She packed it to take to Nanny and Boppa's yesterday where she probably had them read it to her approximately 80,000,000,000 times.

Drama and the things that make it worth it.

You guys will totally laugh at me but last night, I went to bed at 8:45 and woke up this morning at 8:56. Seriously. And the worst of it? I'm still tired. Like, I could totally take a nap right now. I'm not really sure why I'm so tired. I guess it could be just the combination of stresses. I'm about to start week 3 of my kids' aikido class which, with the exception of Thursday when the kids were inexplicably strung out, is going well. I'm going to the new house pretty much every day for at least a couple hours to paint ceilings. I'm preparing for an aikido test. It's first kyu which is one rank before black belt--I think this is my 6th year of training so it's been a long journey. That's been more work than I expected because there are some things on the test that we haven't really worked on until now. Always nice to find out. And then there's the everyday stuff of dinner, cleaning, Autumn-herding, and house showings (lots of showings but no offers yet). I'm trying to hold onto the few threads of sanity I had to begin with, haha.

Anyway, my drama and slow decline into who-knows-what aside, life isn't going too badly considering. The great news is that there's a lot of interest in our Lakeland house. And the end is in sight for the new house in Germantown. One funny thing did happen and some of you may have seen me post this on Facebook. I was supposed to put a little soap in the fountain to break up the surface tension or something. I put way, way too much soap in the fountain and this happened.


A week later, there is still foam in the fountain. :P

Another big event is that Biscuit the Tiger had to have major surgery again. Mike found Biscuit innards in Autumn's bed so I did an exam and got out my surgery kit.


Note the Mickey the Giant book beside me. This time around, Autumn wanted to help and I made Mike take pictures. The reason I'm never in pictures is Mike hates taking them. I told him that someday he'll be sad not to have more photos of me when I was young and cute. :D


It was a little scary letting her do this, but I let Autumn hold the needle with me when it was time to pull the thread through. She did a great job and has pretty steady hands for a toddler. After it was all over, Autumn got a Sesame Street bandaid for Biscuit.


It's really moments like this that make everything, if not okay, then definitely bearable. :)