Book Challenge #3

Book Challenge #3

Every year I issue myself a challenge to find some excellent novels and then put them in one massive list on this blog that no one reads!  As always a huge nod to my best friend and her Kindle account.  Thanks Liv!!! :)

Another huge nod to another friend who gave me two new book recommendations today (in addition to Game of Thrones).  Before I read one of them I need to re-read The Alienist by Caleb Carr (phenomenal story, I highly recommend it).

Here's the first bit.

Currently Reading:
Game of Thrones by George Martin ( This came highly recommended, I hope it lives up to its potential!)

Finished:

1. The Fault in Our Stars- John Green (Holy baby Jesus, what a fantastic novel. I definitely need to read more John Green.)
2. Sad Desk Salad- Jessica Grose (decent chick lit.)
3. The Runaway Princess- Hester Browne (Princess Diaries for the generation that grew up with the original Princess Diaries, decent chick lit.)
4. Messy- Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan  (bad chick lit.)
5. Spoiled- Heather Cocks and Jessica Morgan  (bad chick lit.)
6. Hopeless- Colleen Hoover (Features the best non-first kiss scene ever written.)
7. The Secret Life of Bees- Sue Monk Kidd (Most excellent.)
8. Annabel- Lauren Oliver- (Novella in the Delirium series)
9. Free Four- Veronica Roth (Novella in the Divergent series)
10. Struck by Lightning- Chris Colfer (The ending sucked.  I understand that this is a screenplay turned novella, but my god, what is with writers these days taking the easy way out of ending a novel?)
11. Thirteen Reasons Why- Jay Asher (Way creepy. Kinda freaked me out.)
12. School of Fortune- Amanda Brown and Janice Weber (A long piece of semi-decent chick lit)
13. I've Got Your Number- Sophie Kinsella (I love Sophie Kinsella. So much fun to read)
14. From Notting Hill with Love Actually- Ali McNamara (Cute chick lit)
15. Reached- Alli Condi  (I had high hopes for this conclusion novel of the Matched trilogy... but it fell short.  Way, way, WAY short.)
16. Southern Charm- Tinsley Mortimer (Cute chick lit)
17. What's Your Number- Karyn Bosnak (bad chick lit)
18. Hana- Lauren Oliver
19. Pandemonium- Lauren Oliver
20. Delirium- Lauren Oliver
21. Requiem- Lauren Oliver (The end of this trilogy was a COPOUT and I DEMAND a better ending.  That is all.)
22. The Host- Stephanie Meyer (Definitely more interesting than Twilight.  Not sure if I really loved it, but it made me think a little and that's always a good thing.)
23. Star Island- Carl Hiaasen- (mindless chick lit.)
24. Cum Laude- Cecily von Ziegesar (I have no idea what this book was supposed to be about.  Too many characters, not enough character development, so cliche, and the plot sucked.)
25. Warm Bodies- Isaac Marion (Um, I didn't know this was about zombies. I read it anyway, but seriously, who thinks up this stuff???)
26. Here I Go Again- Jen Lancaster (chick lit.)

Wannabe farmer!

I am rapidly approaching my quarter life crisis... and in order to fully avoid any of the introspection that will happen with said crisis, here I am.

I'm growing things.

I've never successfully kept a plant alive (not even a cactus), so we will see how well this goes.  I eat so much produce during the summer that I figured I might as well try to grow some of my own stuff.  The tricky part is that everything will be growing in containers in the backyard- I can't plant in the front because of all the hundreds of tulip and daffodil and iris bulbs.  

A quick trip to Home Depot sent me home with 6 huge bags of potting soil, 50 seed starters, 4 packs of seeds and some plastic containers.  I have a few more plants in the works, but I'm waiting on seeds.  Sunday (4/14) was such a nice day Mom and I took our projects outside to work on them.  She's restoring an antique table, and I'm being hungry.

In go the bush beans!

The round containers have marigolds, I am thinking about growing cherry tomatoes (not that I eat them), so I figured I'd start the marigolds since I won't be growing the tomatoes from seeds.  Ain't nobody (read: me) got the patience for that.

As of Wednesday (4/17).... We have a sprout! Bush beans are loving their little squares and are coming along quite nicely.  Still no sign of the cucumbers or zucchini...

I seriously hope that this works.  I am so discouraged by all this Monsanto and GMO nonsense that I want to eat my own vegetables that aren't covered in pesticides or wax.  I've been doing plenty of googling to make sure I'm giving these seeds what they need.  I am even talking to them... Next up to be planted are the edemamme seeds.  The next warm day that we have I will be scrubbing and bleaching this potted bench thing that my mom brought home for me.  It was in my uncle's backyard and needs a serious wash.

Keep your fingers crossed for me!

"The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, But in ourselves, that we are underlings."

So of the whopping 5 people who read this blog, 3 of them know how addicted I am to reading.  I'm just as passionate about writing, but lately- nothing. The Muses have not thrown me even one small nugget of linguistical (Yes, I made that adjective up) nourishment.  I'm so frustrated because I really wanted to be working on something publishable this year and I have NADA.

Back to the reading.  One of my best friends is addicted to reading as I am.  She is an enabler of my addiction to books and I devour just about everything she puts on her Kindle.  I finished one book (Sad Desk Salad) and started another (The Fault in Our Stars) yesterday.

Well holy genius batman.  I am in love with this book*.  John Green is exactly the kind of writer I always wanted to be, with all his lyrical bantering between characters and perfectly placed pieces of pop culture and literary references.  Just. So. Good.

This book is the kind of book that makes you want to fall in love despite the unbearable sadness of the plot (teenagers with cancer).  It's the kind of story that makes you question everything you think you know and for someone who lives with an incurable, chronic illness this hits especially close to home.

Case in point- My own body attacked itself.  So the WG is my own body's fault, it is a part of me, I'm a part of it.  So does that mean the I am WG?  Or that WG is me? This is something I continue to struggle with 4 years post diagnosis.  I don't want to be defined by something I don't have any control over, but the fact of the matter is that WG changed my life and rocked me to the core.  I've clearly had to adapt and change over the past few years to deal with everything living with vasculitis has brought to me.  Some days I want to hide the fact that I'm "sick".  I don't want to talk about it, deal with it, think about it.  Other days I am proud of the fact that I've dealt with this for so long, mostly on my own, and I want to raise awareness and educate as many people as possible about this dastardly disease.

Lately I've been torn about hiding it, permanently.  This Rituxan has been a game changer, I haven't felt this good in a long, long time.  There are stretches of hours where I don't even remember that I'm "sick".  I especially want to hide it when it comes to the (lack of a) relationship front.  I feel compelled to share this part of my life because it really has made me who I am today.  But everyone runs.  No guy wants to deal with this- the fact that this could be a forever problem, the fact that I might not be able to have babies, the fact that if I flare I go back on prednisone and it wreaks havoc with my mind and my heart and my weight.  Part of me says "Well, why should they deal with this nonsense?"

And then the other part of me says "Well if no one should have to deal with it, it is a good thing you are a teacher because you won't ever have babies of your own or a boyfriend or a husband".

So there's that.  I haven't finished The Fault in our Stars yet, so I don't know how the story will turn out.  I did get to a big plot twist this morning and I'm not emotionally ready to finish the book.

I'll leave you with a quote that hit particularly hard this morning.

"I'm in love with you," he said quietly.
"Augustus," I said.
"I am," he said. He was staring at me, and I could see the corners of his eyes crinkling. "I'm in love with you, and I'm not in the business of denying myself the simple pleasure of saying true things. I'm in love with you, and I know that love is just a shout into the void, and that oblivion is inevitable, and that we're all doomed that there will come a day when all our labor has been returned to dust, and I know the sun will swallow the only earth we'll ever have and I am in love with you."

        ~ The Fault in Our Stars by John Green ~








*NB: Books are so much better to fall in love with than humans.  They don't get vasculitis, or cancer, or end up in relationships with people who don't deserve them.

What does it mean to have strength?

A friend of mine said to me last night “Wish I had your strength”.  I’m sitting here, on a Sunday night of a long weekend with nothing to do except watch old episodes of Parenthood and I find myself thinking, how strong am I?  Does battling a chronic, rare, incurable disease make me some kind of superwoman? 

I never thought it did.  After I got sick I did what I had to do.  There was never really another option.  Fight through it, get better, go back to normal.  Don’t get me wrong.  There were days when I wanted nothing more to give up.  I distinctly remember the first few days I had to take the Cytoxan, and heaving up everything in my stomach.  After that, it was just bile and sadness.  It always happened when I was home alone, so there was never someone to hold back my hair or wipe my head or pass me a washcloth.  I watched my hair fall out, I watched my face change because of the prednisone... but I did it on my own because I didn’t know any other way. 

So here I am watching the middle of season 4 of Parenthood, and (spoiler alert, sorry) Kristina is pale, profusely sweating, vomiting and lying on the bathroom floor because the chemotherapy she takes to get rid of her breast cancer is dissolving her from the inside out.  That only lasted two days for me, and it was nowhere near what was depicted on this television show that makes me cry every time I watch it.  Towards the end of the episode she and her husband are in bed, and they are so clearly supportive of each other and so devoted to each other that my heart aches… because I wish I had that when I first got sick.  I wish there had been someone to help me through it. I wish there was someone now who was willing to take the time to understand my journey and to stick with me for the rest of it.

My four year diagnosis anniversary is coming up.  I’ve passed the four year “remembrances” of the first ear ache and the fever that sort of set me spiraling downward.  Two weeks ago, after my third round of Rituxan I came to a rather sudden realization.  I felt so good after that infusion that I felt normal.  That elusive normal that I never thought I’d get to again.  That realization came in stark contrast to the previous week’s infusion when I cried and felt my heart break a hundred times.  Why?  Because I was alone.  Everyone else at the infusion center had someone with them, except for me.  There was no one to talk to, to sit with… I was, yet again, alone.  Not that it was anyone’s fault, after all, how could I expect someone to sit with me for 8 hours on a Friday?

Would it have been fair for me to ask someone to come with me?  Part of me says no, because it would be intruding on someone else’s life, and their time, and their commitments.  But I suppose it also goes to show that there isn’t anyone in my life who would have felt like it wasn’t an intrusion on their time or their commitments.  

Is that what makes me strong?  Not being selfish?  If that’s the measure of strength, then there are people stronger than I am.  Take my friend for instance- busting his butt to make life easier for someone who is sort of just piling the stress onto his life.  Yet he works through the exhaustion and the stress and what I can only imagine to be anger and sadness because he isn’t selfish.  

Is being afraid to ask for support (or is it that I’m incapable? I’m not sure) what makes me strong?

Is being single what makes me strong?

I’ve spent four years being strong and not once has anyone really let me break down over everything I’ve gone through.  Part of that is my own fault, I don’t know how to open up because past experiences have shown me that opening up made me someone who complained all the time.  But shouldn’t my friends know enough to sit me down and make me talk about it?  Shouldn’t my family know that I need a shoulder to cry on?  I don’t know.  The social stigma of crying is that it is a weakness.  So I cry alone, usually at night.  Sometimes at lunch, when I am alone in my classroom. 

But my god, I am tired.  I am tired of being strong and I’m tired of crying alone.  

Sleep? Ha.

I. AM. SO. TIRED.

Coffee is not even helping anymore. I am just too stressed for my own good!


The end.

EMPLOYMENT!

I HAVE A JOB AGAIN!!!!!!!!!!

Unfortunately for someone else their mistake is my boon.  I'm teaching 5th grade again, which is a relief because I can use a lot of what I did last year (including my Zoo unit and Titanic unit!!)

However... there is a lot to learn in a very short amount of time.  I have some pretty terrific colleagues and I'm excited to work with them.  My class is very different this year too- all on level, compared to only having 10 on level last year.

I'm working on an owl theme (duh, I only have an entire pinterest board dedicated to education and owls), and I spent a ridiculous amount of money today between amazon, ebay, oriental trading and carson and dellosa.  I still need a few more things... namely brown butcher paper, a color ink cartridge, and more laminating pockets. Oh, and painter's tape, white posterboard, markers, snacks/bribes, silver paint, to fix my classroom printer, make a lot of photo copies, set up my routines and binders and everything and oh my god I'm so excited I'm rambling and have lost all command of English grammar with this incredibly long run on sentence that is still going!

I started doing my Literacy curriculum map last night and wow. So much work. I understand now why I struggled so much last year- I wasn't planning long term. I was planning week to week instead of unit to unit.  I'll get there eventually.

BACK TO PLANNING! AND PINTERESTING! AND SPENDING MONEY! AND BEING HAPPY AND EXCITED!

(Good thing I have the next two days off... L'Shana Tova... definitely going to be a sweet new year for me!)

Adventures in Pinning!

I have exciting news! After many attempts for success in my Pinterest life, I am finally victorious! This happens rarely (aka, NEVER), so I am over the proverbial moon (even though it is only 6:24 pm).

Prior to today I had two Pinterest wins and several (dozens) of fails. My first win was sugar scrub, which I happened to use this afternoon. (Oh. You know what this means. It isn't just sugar scrub. It is magical Pinterest success sugar scrub!!! Ahem). The second was a creamy garlic pasta recipe. Yumm.

The fails have included more DIY beauty treatments than I care to admit. One was a foot soak to get rid of beachy feet. One was a face mask to clear my pores. Another was a recipe for cheesy zucchini rice (three of my favorite things, how wrong could it be? VERY. But that's another story for another time). I tried to make a healthy shake once. I threw it out after two sips.

Anyway, today I decided to tackle a food recipe.

Okay. I lied. I have a few more wins than I remembered: birthday swirly cupcakes, homemade refrigerator pickles, jello shots. I've only discovered this since I flipped through my pins to find the link for today's adventure in pinning.

Now I don't have a job this year, unfortunately. I didn't have enough seniority to keep my job (two other teachers got excessed too).  So I'm back to volunteering/subbing.  The days when I volunteer I can go into school in jeans and a nice top with my hair pulled back and no makeup on.  I'm basically just tech support the first few days anyway, and that requires crawling under tables that are too heavy to move.  I'm not getting dressed up to do that.

This also means that I don't have to get up at 5:30 am. I can get up at 6:15 instead. I can get up at 6:30 if I don't have to make breakfast. Enter the adventure.  A while ago I pinned this link to my Pinterest Recipe board.  Seemed easy enough. I grabbed my post-its, made my shopping list and went to the store. I didn't buy anything on sale because nothing I needed was on sale, but if you are going to attempt this, definitely get your ingredients at a reasonable price.

I forgot to take a picture of all my ingredients (so shoot me, I'm new at this recipe-progress-blogging thing), so I'll make a list of them instead!

To make 20 breakfast burritos:

• 20 Tortillas (I used Mission brand, soft taco, medium size)
• 8 extra large eggs
• 8 oz. egg whites (to stretch the eggs without the added cholesterol)
• 8 oz. shredded cheese (whatever kind you like. You can also buy a block and shred it yourself)
• 1 frozen package of pork sausage (or you could make ham or bacon, your choice)
• 1 pound shredded potatoes

First I defrosted the sausage and tossed it into the biggest non-stick fry pan I have.

Brown it up. Empty the fry pan over a paper towel to get rid of some of the excess fat.

Now I know I said you needed shredded potatoes. But the store didn't have any, they had these pseudo-Latkes. Found them in the frozen aisle. I popped them into the fry pan still frozen.  I didn't want to cook them all the way through, just enough to chop them up. I used 9 out of the 10 in the pack (I saved one to eat for dinner!!)

Roughly chop.  No need for perfection here.

Chopped. I dumped them back into the container they came in as I was chopping because I ran out of space very quickly on my cutting board.

Transfer the chopped potatoes to your fry pan.  I added a smidge of oil oil and a tablespoon of butter to get things going. Optional, of course.

While the potatoes were browning up and cooking through, I scrambled my eggs.  Make the eggs however you like them. I mixed egg whites with regular eggs, added about 3/4 cup of milk (I don't measure, ever. Just eyeball it), salt and lots of pepper. Mix it up.

I poured HALF of the egg mixture into the frying pan and cooked the eggs. Just as they were about finished I added HALF of the potatoes and HALF of the sausage.

HALF. This part is important because:
    a) It won't all fit in your fry pan unless you have one that is about 36 inches in diameter
    b) It will make assembly easier.

Mmmm. Good enough to eat right out of the pan (which, of course, I did. I had to make sure it wasn't poisonous).

Lay out your tortillas on a nice clean counter space.  I divided the contents of the fry pan in half and did 5 burritos at a time.  Sprinkle your cheese on top. Fold and roll and fold and roll your burrito. This was the hardest part for me, since apparently I can't fold a burrito to save my life.

Wrap well in saran wrap.  Transfer to freezer safe ziplock bags. Write the date on the ziplock bag (and what's in the burritos) so you don't get confuzzled.

TADA!!!!!!! SUCCESS!!!

(To reheat: Unwrap from the plastic [plastic in the microwave is bad], wrap in a damp paper towel, microwave for 30-45 seconds, unwrap, throw out paper towel, microwave another 30-45 seconds until hot).

BON APPETIT!