Blah. Pffft. Ugh. Bleh.

That's about how I feel right now. A general malaise. Everything irritates me or annoys me or makes me mad, and then I feel bad about being grumpy. I have no energy, am sleepy all day long, but am not sleeping well at night. I want to drink coffee, but that just makes me grumpier. I've quit eating chocolate after 5 pm - doesn't matter. Still sleepless and bitchy.

I'm going to blame this all on the weather. Or at least the light. Yes, it is painfully beautiful and the grass has never looked greener (a feat at Chez Smith) and the sky is achingly blue on the days when there are no clouds. But that light that is so poetic and fancy looking in pictures does something to my psyche. I know it means winter is coming, and the leaves are falling and while brisk weather is great, cold damp weather just sucks. And this light means cold and damp are straight ahead. Ugh. I need to go back to Florida.

Instead, a much cheaper option, is borrowing The Long Winter by Laura Ingalls Wilder from the library. I checked it out intending to read it to the girls but have devoured it myself over three sleepless nights instead. I'm trying to take from it that at least we don't have 7 months of hard winter and nothing to eat but potatoes and home-ground hard wheat bread. Man, what a depressing book. I guess that's why it stuck with me though I only read it once. BLEAK. If I had been Ma Ingalls, I would have left that jerk years ago and headed back East to stay with family. Pa was a jerk, I don't care how nice Michael Landon made him seem.

Now I'm going to try to boost my mood by doing something fun with the kids. And then we'll take poor old Dr. Frank the Cat to the vet to find out why his fur is falling out. Poor old kitty.

Anticipation.......

Saturday I printed almost 300 pictures and am awaiting their arrival in the mail from Snapfish. I am soooo ready to do some scrapbooking with new pictures! Tell some stories. Remember some memories. Laugh a little. Play with my goodies (and by that I mean my scrapbooking goodies). The weather today is dreary and gray and perfect for some good music, a cup of tea, and playing with pens and paper.

But I am being good and educating my beasties instead. We've done 3 solid hours of work - whoo hoo! - and the kids are now at recess. I'm going to make lunch in a bit, then back at the work for a few more hours; we're doing the Assyrians and the Hebrews in history, and they're both fun. Lots to work with. But no taekwondo this afternoon, so maybe, just maybe, I can scrap a bit while the kids watch a movie. Please?

I'm not sure Jesus or Julie Johnson would approve

Melissa Hunter has passed along a hilarious book: Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ's Childhood Pal by Christopher Moore. Irreverent, hilarious, clever and lots of fun. After I get the kids off to bed tonight and Chris goes downstairs to write, I'm turning off my electronic heroin (re: the computer) and am going to read read read. This is total fluff and I'm loving in.

Halloween decorations

Last weekend we spent time putting out our Halloween decorations. I've collected a few pieces over the years, but this year I wanted things to be a little spookier and more subtle than in years past. After placing candles, plastic spiders, Edgar the Stuffed Owl and silly pumpkin lights, I was a little stumped as to how to fill out the rest of the spaces. Then it came to me: Books. I knew we had several Anne Rice tomes on the shelves and figured there were other spooky titles around that we could "flesh" out our decor with. So Creepy Book Titles became our theme.

Here are the stacks we have around:
Kiss of the Spider Woman
Frankenstein
The Stranger
Einstein's Monsters
The Witching Hour

All Hallow's Eve
The Hunger
Interview with the Vampire
Memnoch the Devil

To Kill a Mockingbird (with a bird on top of the book - ha!)
Midnight Boy
Misery
The Picture of Dorian Gray
Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde
The Castle of Otranto
The Haunting of Hill House
Thirteen Stories

The Dead Zone
Dead-Eye Dick
Dead Babies
The Tale of the Body Thief
Neil's Book of the Dead
Remains of the Day
Nightwork
The Shining

Death Be Not Proud
Le Morte d'Arthur
For Whom the Bell Tolls
The Body Farm
and Finnegan's Wake

At first glance, nothing seems unusual. But I hope people will take a second to stop and look and get the joke.

Oh, new books. I forgot.

My mom lent me Left to Tell by Imaculee Ilibagiza and I finished it the other day. Compelling and horrific story. Imaculee was a young college student in Rwanda when the genocide of the Tutsi people by the Hutus began. I remember the horror I felt when I would hear on the radio the number of people being killed each day in Rwanda, yet our government did nothing to intervene. Left to Tell fills in the blanks of the background of the genocide for me, so I understand how the situation came about, but that only makes the U.S. refusal to get involved more pitiful, and points to our neglect of today's situation in Darfur.

While Left to Tell shares an important history, Ilibagiza's main point is that we must all find God's forgiveness and allow it to transform us. I always find it difficult to read people's individual testaments of faith because our language dulls incredibly emotional experiences and turns them into cliches. Ilibagiza suffers from this as well (C.S. Lewis is the sole exception I've found), but her conviction is still inspiring.

Now I'm reading The Book of Flying by Keith Miller. Chris' sister gave it to me, raving that it is the best book she has ever read. Out of respect to her, I'm going to stick through it to the end, but so far, I'm having trouble with it. The premise of a young librarian in love with a girl with wings, and who embarks on a journey to earn wings of his own, isn't my usual genre, and the writing is quirky, to say the least. Lots of lengthy and laborious alliteration, not limited to lists and their ilk. A little bit of that goes a long way.....and Miller stretches and stretches. Pico, the librarian, isn't a compelling character yet, and the next main character we meet, the Robber Queen, is fun to read but discarded quickly. Like I said, I'll keep going, but reluctantly.

Next up: The Road by Cormac McCarthy. Christina, it had better be good! And after that, I'm going to find some really juicy, good historical fiction and wallow in it.

No! You did not! Get out of here!

I did! I scrapbooked! Who would have thought? But I did, yes ma'am, three pages in one sitting.

Now, I'm not saying they are good pages, but I did them, and that's the important point. I sit at this desk, surrounded by all the goodies I've bought over the years, with tons of old pictures in boxes waiting to be preserved, and empty albums to boot, but there is always something else to do. A book to read. A New York Times to finish. A load of laundry to be washed. A friend to talk to. All of which are good, valuable, necessary and wholesome things. But scrapbooking is my art medium (stop laughing at me!) and I have been DRY. Dry as Clarksville in September. I've taken pictures, I've read blogs, I've thumbed through old albums - nothing is inspiring me. I can admire what other people have been doing, but me: Bleh. Nada. And it's sooo frustrating, so I haven't even tried.

But I did the other night. And finished three pages. And that has to count for something. Right?