Subtle Glow

Mel tagged me for this (sort of) because she sneaked the tag in right between where she talks about the meme and where she actually does it. There I was, quietly reading along when I see this:

If you are reading this, tag you’re it!

Which I was totally going to ignore - she couldn’t mean me, right? Right. No one will ever know. Because I share her reason for the dislike of memes - they require actual thinking, and sometimes to answer them takes work. Work is hard sometimes! Then I read it and it looked easy and I thought - I can do THAT.

So here it is (but first TAG you’re it! HAHAHHAHA):

* Bold the ones you’ve read*
*Italicize the ones you want to read*
*Leave blank the ones that you aren’t interested in.*

**hmmm, working out technical difficulties with the list… stand by. Ok, there we go.**

1. The Da Vinci Code (Dan Brown)
2. Pride and Prejudice (Jane Austen)
3. To Kill A Mockingbird (Harper Lee)
4. Gone With The Wind (Margaret Mitchell)
5. The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King (Tolkien)
6. The Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring (Tolkien)
7. The Lord of the Rings: Two Towers (Tolkien)
8. Anne of Green Gables (L.M. Montgomery)
9. Outlander (Diana Gabaldon)
10. A Fine Balance (Rohinton Mistry)
11. Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (Rowling)
12. Angels and Demons (Dan Brown)
13. Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (Rowling)
14. A Prayer for Owen Meany (John Irving)
15. Memoirs of a Geisha (Arthur Golden)
16. Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (Rowling) –actually I read Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, but close enough.
17. Fall on Your Knees (Ann-Marie MacDonald)
18. The Stand (Stephen King)
19. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (Rowling)
20. Jane Eyre (Charlotte Bronte)
21. The Hobbit (Tolkien)
22. The Catcher in the Rye (J.D. Salinger)
23. Little Women (Louisa May Alcott)
24. The Lovely Bones (Alice Sebold)
25. Life of Pi (Yann Martel)
26. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Douglas Adams)
27. Wuthering Heights (Emily Bronte)
28. The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe (C. S. Lewis)
29. East of Eden (John Steinbeck)
30. Tuesdays with Morrie (Mitch Albom)
31. Dune (Frank Herbert)
32. The Notebook (Nicholas Sparks)
33. Atlas Shrugged (Ayn Rand) –I would have italicized at one point in time, but I’ve actually tried to read this. I couldn’t get into it.
34. 1984 (Orwell)
35. The Mists of Avalon (Marion Zimmer Bradley)
36. The Pillars of the Earth (Ken Follett)
37. The Power of One (Bryce Courtenay)
38. I Know This Much is True (Wally Lamb)
39. The Red Tent (Anita Diamant)
40. The Alchemist (Paulo Coelho)
41. The Clan of the Cave Bear (Jean M. Auel)
42. The Kite Runner (Khaled Hosseini)
43. Confessions of a Shopaholic (Sophie Kinsella)
44. The Five People You Meet In Heaven (Mitch Albom)
45. Bible
46. Anna Karenina (Tolstoy)
47. The Count of Monte Cristo (Alexandre Dumas)
48. Angela’s Ashes (Frank McCourt)
49. The Grapes of Wrath (John Steinbeck)
50. She’s Come Undone (Wally Lamb)
51. The Poisonwood Bible (Barbara Kingsolver)
52. A Tale of Two Cities (Dickens)
53. Ender’s Game (Orson Scott Card)
54. Great Expectations (Dickens)
55. The Great Gatsby (Fitzgerald)
56. The Stone Angel (Margaret Laurence)
57. Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (Rowling)
58. The Thorn Birds (Colleen McCullough)
59. The Handmaid’s Tale (Margaret Atwood)
60. The Time Traveller’s Wife (Audrew Niffenegger)
61. Crime and Punishment (Fyodor Dostoyevsky)
62. The Fountainhead (Ayn Rand)
63. War and Peace (Tolsoy)
64. Interview With The Vampire (Anne Rice)
65. Fifth Business (Robertson Davies)
66. One Hundred Years Of Solitude (Gabriel Garcia Marquez)
67. The Sisterhood of the Travelling Pants (Ann Brashares)
68. Catch-22 (Joseph Heller)
69. Les Miserables (Hugo)
70. The Little Prince (Antoine de Saint-Exupery)
71. Bridget Jones’ Diary (Fielding)
72. Love in the Time of Cholera (Marquez)
73. Shogun (James Clavell)
74. The English Patient (Michael Ondaatje)
75. The Secret Garden (Frances Hodgson Burnett)
76. The Summer Tree (Guy Gavriel Kay)
77. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn (Betty Smith)
78. The World According To Garp (John Irving)
79. The Diviners (Margaret Laurence)
80. Charlotte’s Web (E.B. White)
81. Not Wanted On The Voyage (Timothy Findley)
82. Of Mice And Men (Steinbeck)
83. Rebecca (Daphne DuMaurier)
84. Wizard’s First Rule (Terry Goodkind)
85. Emma (Jane Austen)
86. Watership Down(Richard Adams)
87. Brave New World (Aldous Huxley)
88. The Stone Diaries (Carol Shields)
89. Blindness (Jose Saramago)
90. Kane and Abel (Jeffrey Archer)
91. In The Skin Of A Lion (Ondaatje)
92. Lord of the Flies (Golding)
93. The Good Earth (Pearl S. Buck)
94. The Secret Life of Bees (Sue Monk Kidd)
95. The Bourne Identity (Robert Ludlum)
96. The Outsiders (S.E. Hinton)
97. White Oleander (Janet Fitch)
98. A Woman of Substance (Barbara Taylor Bradford)
99. The Celestine Prophecy (James Redfield)
100. Ulysses (James Joyce)
Although, the ones I left alone fall into two categories - ones I’m not interested in or ones I don’t know enough about to know if I’d even be interested in them. Plus I don’t have time to go look them up on amazon to see if I might be interested in them.

P.S. - Mel, I even checked that it all looks good in IE.  Just for you!

I don’t think I have ever told you the story of how I once almost drowned to death.

I was 23 or so at the time, and wasn’t much of a swimmer, but I jumped off the end of a pier.

There were no lifeguards on duty, of course. I jumped in willingly. I knew others had done it and from what I had heard it was relatively easy. As in, no one ever mentioned that at times during their experience there were times they weren’t sure they would make it. It wasn’t until I was in that space between the solid pilings and the water surface that I realized I had no visibility to what lay beneath the surface, waiting in the water below. I hit the water and resurfaced unscathed, only to find the difficult part was not the jump. It was fighting my way back to shore.

So there I was, drowning. I was being pulled under and fought so hard to resurface, again and again, each time only able to draw the slightest of breaths before being pulled under once more.

Little by little, I found that though I was still struggling pretty hard to keep my head above water, the realization came that I was in fact keeping at least my nose and mouth enough above the water that I could breathe regularly. If I timed my breathing right.

At first it was hard to tell if I was making progress at all. I thought I was working in the right direction for a while, but then it seemed it was only my cruel imagination - that I was no closer to safer waters than when I started. But my head was still above water and I had established a pattern that wasn’t perfect but worked well enough that I could keep most of the water from going up my nose.

After more time passed I realized that, “Hey, you know what? I’m totally treading water here.” Sure, I was still tired and it took most of my thought and energy and concentration to keep myself from sinking below the surface. Oh, but what a relief it was that I was definitely holding my own as I tread water and inched oh-so-slowly toward the shoreline.

I reached the break, and faced yet another series of struggles. The water behind them had been relatively calm, but in order to get through this I would have to manage the depth of the water, the size of the waves and the timing of each of them.

It seemed to take ages, I grazed the bottom of the ocean floor here and there, and even though it was not solid enough for me to stand firmly in it gave me what I needed to keep going.

Still, I was exhausted, and weighing my options. Just how bad would it be to get this far and just let the next set pummel me under water and beat out the last of my strength? I had yet to make it into water shallow enough that I could easily resist the force of each breaking wave.Each time I was forced under I lost track of which direction was up and I tried desperately not to panic as I held my breath and waited for my next opportunity to surface.

In a few more strides I had finally made it, shaking, shivering and gasping for air, into water that barely grazed my knees if I stood still. I was able to catch my breath and calm my nerves. I could relax, I wasn’t going to be overcome by the ocean. Not this time anyway.

Looking back, I don’t know if I was really in danger of truly drowning. Sure it was a struggle, and it took everything I had to keep myself above water for that time. It was frightening, but some of my fear was due in part to doing something I had never done before.

I know I could do it again, if I wanted, because I have done it before and lived to tell about it. I’m a much stronger swimmer now. I just choose not to get in that far over my head anymore. Not again, and not after being shown that there is a place for me in the ocean that doesn’t require constant effort just to keep afloat. I don’t have the determination to fling myself off the edge of a pier anymore.

Because, when you really think about it, no one wades cautiously into the deep end of the Motherhood Ocean.*

(Read on …)

Today Kiddo was honored as a Star Student of the Month. I left work early to go watch him receive an award packet and afterwards we got to treat ourselves to ice cream. It was so awesome.

I had planned to take him out to dinner to celebrate anyway - but I had no idea they gave out so many prizes along with the achievement. I thought it would be a certificate and a bumper sticker. But instead, we got a certificate, a congressional award signed by our local House Rep, and a bunch of gift certificates to local restaurants. So now I can take him out on the town - and not that it mattered but his meal is free, too! We’re totally getting dessert.

All this after attending a parent/teacher conference two months ago where the teacher was a little less than exuberant about his performance in class. Her chief complaint was that he does EXACTLY what is expected of him - no more and no less - regardless of how capable or proficient he is with the work.

I wasn’t exactly sure how I should respond to that.

When I shared the news with his dad about the award, I mentioned the conference and then remarked on what a change it was to hear Kiddo was now being honored for outstanding student achievement for the month of January. Such a total turnaround in only two months - and he was out of school for three weeks during that time.

We agreed it must mean that OBVIOUSLY we totally Rock as parents.