Breathing Through Insanity

My life as of late has been INSANE!!!! My hubby and I are having some real financial issues (the local food bank is our saving grace) and as such are selling our house in order to get our feet back on the ground. It sucks but it's necessary. We're keeping our positivity hats on and it seems to be working out well. We decided to get the house ready to sell and in a complete whirlwind of garbage bags and trips to the local dump, we finished all our work in about a week! Insane...I know! It gets better though...Our house sold in 5 days!!!!! Can you believe it! With all the doomsayers out there who were telling us to prepare for the house to be on the market for about 6 months to a year because of these "tough economic times"!!!! Well, we must have a guardian angel on our side because everything's going well. Now we're madly grabbing boxes from every grocery store in a 10 mile radius and packing all our stuff like crazy people! Where are we moving you ask? Well, Huntsville is calling our name and we're listening! We're so excited to be moving to the country to start over our life! We've always wanted to move up there and we both feel like if we didn't have our back up against the wall that we never would have made the move. Some times things don't occur the way you want them to but your dreams still come true!

Well, that's my life right now but I've still had plenty of time to stitch! I put my Elegance of the Orient on hold for a bit because my husband bought me Ballerina Beauty!!!! He saw it on sale and thought I needed a little pick me up!!! I know...my husband is truly the best guy out there! My digital camera is having some issues right now and so I'm unable to post any pictures but they will hopefully follow shortly. Also, it was my birthday a little while back and my amazing Mom bought me The Mighty Samurai and another one that I can't remember the name of but I'll post that soon too!

I'm all a jumble and thrilled to bits to be posting again! I'm at the library right now (apparently the internet people cut off your service wen you can't pay the bill! LOL!) and I'm trying to remember everything I wanted to share. I'll post again soon and keep you all updated with my crazy life, stitching, and I've also read some AMAZING books recently that I'm dying to share!

My Babies When They Were Babies

I found some old pictures on my computer of my tigers when they were little. I'm such a proud Mama and I can't resist sharing them with you all!!!

Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend…unfortunately so is Benzedrine

Joyce Carol Oates’s fictional biography of Marilyn Monroe entitled “Blonde” was a bit of a trial for me to get through. I generally read about 100 pages per day but with this one I was more around about 50 pages per day. I’m not sure if it was the type set of the novel or the subject matter but my pace definitely slackened here. This Chunkster took a while to read.

I didn’t know much about Marilyn Monroe before this book. I’ve never seen any of her movies and my only exposure to her is through the remake avenue of things like Madonna’s video where she reenacts “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” or through Anna Nicole Smith’s entire life! I came away from this book with an overwhelming sense of pity for this poor woman. Perhaps that’s why I found the book difficult…her life is so depressing that it’s draining on the voyeur.

“Blonde” gives detailed snippets of her life. Basically her mother was nuts and before she was certifiable and committed, she was still nuts enough to screw up a little girl quite irrevocably. Her father was nowhere to be found and her entire life is spent searching for this man and trying to fill that masculine paternal void through a plethora of lovers. After her mother goes into the loony bin she is put in an orphanage and bounces around through the system of foster care. It seems like all she ever wanted was love and attention. She knew from a young age that she was different because men and women alike would stare at her beauty but she was nonetheless uncomfortable in her own skin.

She was made into Marilyn Monroe (because her agent liked the “mmmmm” sound the name made!) but she was always just Norma Jean Baker and terrified in the limelight. She abused alcohol and drugs in order to deal with her anxiety. She was Norma Jean playing the role of Marilyn and people never wanted her to be herself.

Some men truly loved her but for most she was a doll. Joe DiMaggio wanted her to be a stereotypical Italian housewife; he wanted her to be more like his mother than herself. It was a constant dominance struggle. She left him after he beat her up because of the infamous subway grate scene; he didn’t like his little wife to show the world her knickers!

Her infamous relationship with the President is put under such a negative light that it’s hard to look at him the same way after. He would drug her and pass her around to his friends for their own pleasure; he had her abducted in the middle of the night to perform an abortion; he treated her like meat and yet she was so desperate for a man to love her that she believed he respected and adored her.

Marilyn Monroe’s life was truly tragic. This novel shows the little girl who grew up but was always lost, always a perfectionist because through her acting she felt people would love her. She worked hard because she was terrified of being laughed at.

If you want to read a rawer version of her biography pick up this book but if you just want the glossy highlights where she is a glowing starlet then pick up a different biography because this one is not for you!

Attempts at Sophistication...

Check out the new look of my blog!!!! I LOVE IT!!! It looks so sophisticated! LOL! Better late then never!

I have so many posts to catch up on with you all but that will unfortunately have to wait until tomorrow because it's snowing today and I want to go PLAY!!!

Have a happy day and remember to giggle at least once today!!!

“SSSHHH!!!” says the librarian with a scowl…

Scott Douglas’s memoir Quiet, Please: Dispatches from a Public Librarian was HILARIOUS!!! I was honestly laughing out loud as I was reading before bed and my husband kept on looking at me like I was a nutcase!!!

Scott Douglas is a librarian in his late 20s and this book is his journey through the public library system. The anecdotes that he tells are truly side-splitting and I would love to hear from a librarian whether half of these things actually happen! (Douglas assures the reader that all events are true in his Epilogue.)

It starts with him as a library page whose only duty is to shelve books while he is desperately trying to prove he is not a moron. Unfortunately, he learns that the librarians that he works with don’t even read and think that Pynchon is actually Julia Roberts’s new boyfriend! The book goes on to tell funny stories about computers coming to the library, obnoxious teenagers, story time for the school classes, elderly people that come in drunk on electronic wheelchairs, ESL issues, what he actually thought about library school, and library politics with the archetypal librarian characters.

Here’s an excerpt that I found particularly funny:

[…] Hon, an aging Asian woman. She knew little English, despite having lived in the United States for over thirty years and working in a job where English is the only language spoken.
Despite the language barrier, I like talking to Hon – mainly because of our language barrier; not even a week had passed and we already had a morning greeting. Each morning Hon would come in and ask, “How you do day?” I would reply, “Fine. How are you today?” And Hon would say, “Yes.”
About a month into my stay at the new library, Hon got mad at me. I’m not sure why exactly, but she came to me and said, “I mix peanuts in your shoe.”
I didn’t know what she meant, but I could tell by her tone that she was angry. “What’s wrong?”
“Cements in the paper, plus I need a bag.”
I looked at her, confused. She got angrier. “Cements in the paper!” she said.
“Okay.”
She walked away from me, and we didn’t speak for two days.

This book is HILARIOUS and everyone should pick this one up if they need a giggle!!!

Two Hands are Better than One

Look at this gorgeous lady!!! I am so thrilled with all the work I have done so far! I really feel like I’m in the home stretch but I know it will be a while before it’s all complete. She now has two hands and I am just mesmerized by the movement in the skirt! Can’t you just feel the warm wind and smell the cherry blossoms just by looking at it! I’m so in love! Check out the second flower; I haven’t done the back stitching for it yet. Can you see the difference in the two? The one without the backstitching looks so two dimensional whereas the other one just pops!!! I love it! I love it! I LOVE IT!!!

Books Set in a Well Known City

To Whom it May Concern by Pricila Uppal was an absolute pleasure to read! It is a modern retelling of King Lear and it must be the most dysfunctional functional family I’ve ever read about! The dad is an Indian immigrant who is also a quadriplegic and he has an array of very interesting homecare workers that scatter through his house. Oh and he’s about to go through a foreclosure on his house. His French Canadian wife left him because she couldn’t handle the changes in life after he was injured in the hit and run accident. His eldest daughter is about to get married. His other daughter is deaf and works part time in a piercing/tattoo parlor after school. His son is in the middle of a master’s degree in anthropology where he studies curses and the occult and just realized he is gay. What an assortment of characters!!! This is the story of “a father desperate to protect his modest kingdom, and his children, tormented by their desire to escape.”

The best part of this book is that it’s set in Ottawa! I went to university in Ottawa and I just adore that city and really miss it from time to time. Have you ever read a book that is set in a place that you know like the back of your hand? It makes the story so much closer to you and somehow less fictional. I was side by side the characters while they studied at Morriset Library on the Ottawa University campus, or had a pint at the Royal Oak, skated along the Rideau Canal and then had Beaver Tails and hot apple cider, or wandered through the Rideau Center at Christmas!!! This book brought back so many warm memories that I had completely forgotten about!

Do It Yourself Insanity

I seem to be on a slight Do It Yourself craze lately! I started with making my own cat litter and I have to say it is still working incredibly well! Aside from the lack of clumping, I really think it works better than the regular stuff because it smells so much less! Next, I moved on to making my own bread. I bake rolls and loaves every few days and I’m having so much fun! The bread I bake is so much tastier, cheaper, and more filling then what I used to buy at the grocery store. But, the best part is that the house smells INCREDIBLE!!!! The smell of fresh bread baking must be one of my all time favorite smells! YUM YUM YUM!!!

I’m trying a new experiment now: homemade wine! Has anyone done this before because any tips would be seriously appreciated!? It’s not necessarily wine but more of a fruity alcoholic mishmash but whatever! I had a bunch of canned fruit that I didn’t know what to do with because I never think to eat canned fruit. Well, it’s all in a giant wine jug thingy with some extra sugar and water fermenting away in the basement!!! The kind man at the Do It Yourself wine making place gave me some wine yeast for FREE!!! I just love it when people give me free stuff! Well, as I said it’s bubbling away in its fermenting process and I’ll definitely keep you posted as to how it works out. Wish me luck!!!