Chris's football update

So far, 0-2 on the season. We lost to the Athens 2 (they have several teams, so many kids in this age range signed up for an Athens team). But my baby made a tackle, and his mom said you could hear me cheering halfway down the field, above everyone else's cheers.

I had to work Saturday, but I am told they lost that game, too.

But I have confidence in our kids on the team. And even if they lose every game this season, as long as they had a good time, that's all that matters.

Some parents irk my last tater. They act like it isn't good enough for their kid to try to do their best on the field, be it baseball, basketball, whatever they do. As long as Chris does his best, I don't care if he never wins a single game, as long as he had fun doing it. He's 10 years old. It's not like full scholarships to college are riding on how he does this week on the football or baseball field. And he's still so young, he's only just now learning how to play these sports. He will improve with time, and if he doesn't, at the end of the day all that matters is that he tried his best and he was happy doing it.

100 Books and a quiz

The Big Read is a National Endowment for the Arts program designed to encourage community reading initiatives and of their top 100 books, they estimate the average adult has read only six.Here’s what you are supposed to do:*Look at the list and bold those we have read.*Italicize those we intend to read.*Underline the books we LOVE .Share this list in your blog, too, if you like.

I intend to read all of them, even the one's I've already read. It's on my 100/1001 list, to be posted here when I am finished writing it. Since I am going to read all of them, I am not italicizing any of them, but I am bolding and underlining as appropriate.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
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
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare (A good portion, anyway!)
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
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
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
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
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
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
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
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
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
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
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

To be fair, I have read portions of a lot of these, thanks to Literature class in middle/high school, or beginning the book and not liking it, and so not finishing it. I did not take credit for that here, because I feel that would be cheating.

In other news, a blog I read had this on it's website. I took the quiz, here are the results. Forgive me, whomever had this first, i can't remember who's blog I found it on. Let me know if you think it was you, and I'll give credit if it was.

Take the Quiz here!

Messed up schedule...

So, work messed with my schedule. Due to some people going into license training, and others going to a dayshift-only tagging team, I am being moved from Group 1 to Group 3. I worked Friday night, took off Saturday night to go to Chris's two (jamboree) football games Saturday, and worked Sunday night. I will be off Moday. I have to work Tuesday through Thursday, dayshift.

I still have to redo my work schedule calendar that I gave everyone. Momma, do you know if I can share a Google calendar or something like it with people? It would be easier for you, Becki, Granddaddy, and Grandmother to know my schedule if I could. At least, it would be easier for you and Becki. I don't think anyone ever looks at the paper schedules I printed everybody. If I can't share it, I'll just make and print new ones I guess.

Now on to the important topic of football. Bama won big time (ROLL TIDE). Auburn beat Mississippi State 3-2 (better luck next time to the Dawgs).
As for Chris and his team:
1st game, vs. Elkmont - won 12-7
2nd game, vs. East 2 - lost 16-0

Found a new website, www.orgjunkie.com. She does Menu Plan Monday, where a bunch of bloggers post the coming week's menu on her site each Monday, sometimes including recipes and grocery lists. Last week, 351 people posted their menu. Today, 162 people have already posted, since around 3:00 yesterday afternoon. Maybe it will give me ideas. I have run out of new foods that I can actually get Michael and Bobby to both eat, and I'm tired of eating the same stuff over and over. At least they both LOVE Hobo dinner. They request that almost every week.

I'm tired, and I'm glad it's almost time to go home and sleep a few hours.

My first post....

So, this is my first post. I joined some time back, to read a few specific blogs. Now I'm back, to read my mom's blogs (HI MOMMY!). She has gotten back into her writing, which I am proud of. She used to write such fantastic stories and poems and songs.... That was before a very dark period in our family history. She seems to have gotten herself back on track finally, and I couldn't be more proud. After what she has been through, I had begun to wonder if maybe the past had damaged her too much. I should have realized that she is stronger than that. She just had to do this in her own time, not mine or anyone else's.

Momma, if you're reading this, I am SOOOOO proud of what you have done the past 120+ days. I am proud that you have been through the fire more than once and came out on the other side each time, a little singed, but maybe not completely burnt. I am proud that you have finally, in your own time, come far enough to begin writing again. It may not pay much right now, but one day it will. I expect full updates on the NaNoWriMo you're doing, as well as your other work.

Momma, remember, God made women the stronger gender, emotionally and mentally, because He knew we would need it to survive all life throws our way. Hopefully, our emotional and mental workout is over for a while and we can relax.

For those who don't know her yet, my mother is a three-time widow (none of which was her doing, thank you very much) who is also a recovering addict, a writer, and a mother of three, including myself. Se already has been through more than some people twice her age. She is an amazing example of strength and courage. She is also an amazing example of losing it all time and time again. For what she has been through, and her ability to come out on the other side, I applaud her.