Archive for May, 2008
The braless wonder strikes back!
NS May 14th, 2008
I went outside this morning to move the bins (trash cans) back from the kerb so that they wouldn’t be blocking my neighbour’s car. In my pajamas. I knew this might draw a look or two from anyone who happened to be passing by but, frankly, I didn’t care. It was only going to take a few seconds anyway, I surmised. Well, wouldn’t you know it that two young builders, real ‘lad’ types, walked by right when I opened the door and stepped outside. They took one look at me and smirked. There I was in my braless glory, thin t-shirt not leaving much the imagination, and they gawked.
My first reaction (utter humiliation and shame) was quashed by the realisation that I had a trick up my sleeve. To make them uncomfortable for staring, I turned to the side, giving them a full view of my (covered) pregnant belly and rubbed it contentedly with a sigh. It did the trick, alright. Their eyes quickly unglued themselves from my breasts and returned to the pavement in front of them. Their pace quickened and they were gone faster than a fart in the wind.
Yep, nothing turns some men off more than the sight of a pregnant belly. Maybe because that ‘territory’ has clearly already been marked? Or that (gasp!) a woman is only worthy of respect once it is clear that she is or will be a mother? I dunno. But sometimes, I swear, men really can be like dogs. I wouldn’t be surprised if one peed on me.
Affirmation
NS May 8th, 2008
I’m participating in a bead swap on a mothering forum I belong to, with other women due in the same month as I am. The idea is that we all send one bead to every person so that we can each make a necklace that will be worn while we’re in labor. Knowing that 27 other women will be wearing the bead I’ve chosen and I theirs while going through the miraculous, momentous experience of birth fills me with strength and joy. Women (even ones who have never met ‘in real life’, only on the internet) supporting each other is something we need more of and although I know many would roll their eyes and dismiss this sort of thing as extremely hippy-dippy, I think it’s lovely. When I’m at the end of my rope and wondering how I’ll ever survive another contraction, I will touch these beads and know that my experience, while special, is not unique. Feeling part of something much larger and more complex than I can ever comprehend (the perpetuation of humankind) humbles me and brings me a sense of both awe and peace.
So to all the ladies in my due date club, and any other expectant mothers out there:
Every little thing’s gonna be alright
NS May 8th, 2008
Today I am thankful for:
*the glorious weather we’ve been having for the past week
*sunscreen
*naps in the shade of a tree
*frappuccinos
*understanding friends
*my wonderful, amazing, gorgeous husband
*seeing the world through my daughter’s innocent eyes
*successful ultrasounds that show our baby is doing well
*seeing my baby yawn in utero (i almost burst into tears)
*strawberries with greek yogurt
*cranberry juice
*the gorgeous rhododendron blooming in my garden
*my health and safety, and that of my nearest and dearest
*finding an old Bob Marley cd right when I was in the mood to listen to it
*my own troubles seeming so minuscule in the face of what is happening in Burma so that I keep perspective
*humility and humbleness
*love
The great unread
NS May 6th, 2008
I saw this meme at Zoesmom and thought I’d play along since I haven’t blogged in a week and have another hectic couple days coming up before I will be able to write anything of original substance.
Below is a list of the top 106 books tagged “unread” on LibraryThing. The rules:
bold = what you’ve read,
italics = books you started but couldn’t finish
crossed out = books you hated
* = you’ve read more than once
underline = books you own but haven’t read yourself
1. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke
2. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy
3. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
4. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
5. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
6. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
7. The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien
8. Don Quixote by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra
9. The Odyssey by Homer
10. The Brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
11. Ulysses by James Joyce
12. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
13. War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
14. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
15. A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens
16. The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
17. Moby Dick by Herman Melville
18. The Iliad by Homer
19. Emma by Jane Austen
20. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
21. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
22. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
23. The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer
24. Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
25. The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
26. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens*
27. The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
28. The Time Traveler’s Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
29. Life of Pi by Yann Martel
30. Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond
31. Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand
32. Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco
33. Dracula by Bram Stoker*
34. The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
35. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius by Dave Eggers
36. Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley
37. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf
38. Reading Lolita in Tehran by Azar Nafisi
39. Middlemarch by George Eliot
40. Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
41. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
42. Memoirs of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
43. The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner
44. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley*
45. Quicksilver by Neal Stephenson
46. American Gods by Neil Gaiman
47. Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides
48. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingsolver
49. Wicked by Gregory Maguire
50. A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man by James Joyce
51. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde
52. Dune by Frank Herbert
53. The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie
54. Gulliver’s Travels by Jonathan Swift
55. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen
56. The Three Musketeers by Alexandre Dumas
57. The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen
58. The Inferno by Dante Alighieri
59. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
60. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand
61. To the Lighthouse by Virginia Woolf
62. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
63. Tess of the D’Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
64. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay by Michael Chabon
65. Persuasion by Jane Austen
66. One Flew over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey
67. The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne
68. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
69. Anansi Boys by Neil Gaiman
70. The Once and Future King by T.H. White
71. Atonement by Ian McEwan
72. The God of Small Things by Arundhati Roy
73. A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson
74. Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood
75. Dubliners by James Joyce
76. Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson
77. Angela’s Ashes by Frank McCourt
78. Beloved by Toni Morrison
79. Collapse by Jared Diamond
80. The Hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo
81. In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
82. Lady Chatterley’s Lover by D.H. Lawrence
83. A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
84. Les Misérables by Victor Hugo
85. Watership Down by Richard Adams
86. The Prince by Niccolo Machiavelli
87. The Amber Spyglass by Philip Pullman
88. Beowulf by Anonymous
89. A Farewell to Arms by Ernest Hemingway
90. Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance by Robert M. Pirsig
91. The Aeneid by Virgil
92. Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson
93. Sons and Lovers by D.H. Lawrence
94. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
95. The Road by Cormac McCarthy
96. Possession by A.S. Byatt
97. Tom Jones by Henry Fielding
98. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak
99. Gravity’s Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
100. The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells
101. Tender is the Night by F. Scott Fitzgerald
102. Candide, or Optimism by Voltaire
103. Never Let Me Go by Kazuo Ishiguro
104. The Plague by Albert Camus
105. Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
106. Cold Mountain by Charles Frazier
The things I realised while doing this list are that a) I didn’t hate any of the books I read. Sure, I didn’t like some as much as others or didn’t care for them but I think hate is a strong word and most books can have its moments or teach us something about ourselves, even if it’s that one can have the perseverance to read a book that doesn’t appeal at all. Plus, the only book I have ever hated with a passion doesn’t appear on the list; b) I need to stop buying books when I have such a backlog of ones I haven’t read yet; and c) There are so many classics I need to read still.
I tag whoever wants to do this, because I’m lazy like that.
