A Burgeoning Interest in Boobs, My New Motto, and a Book List for When Life Pushes You Hard.

Ugh...what a week.  Up and down, across and sideways, back and forth.  And a nasty cough to boot. There are just times when life pushes you along and you have to let it.  Don't waste physical or emotional energy trying to push back...just go with the flow, so to speak.

I say this knowing that while there are a few times a year I let this happen, I'm not good at feeling okay about it.  I usually get to the end of the week and feel a lot of guilt---how I should have tried harder.  How I could have changed things. blah, blah, blah.  Guilt...jeesh...I'm a Catholic married to a Jew...the guilt is built in at this point.

So, it is at these times that I look to two things that get me out of my head--my kids and a certain group of books.

So here is the first thing I realized this week about my kids, or one of them, that knocked me for a loop and out of my head.  My 10-year old son is really starting to notice, well, I'll use a less than "PC" term, "stacked women".  I guess there is a mom at school who has been favored with large and perky ones, and who only dresses in little tank-tops (don't know her, but hate her).  Our son, according to my husband, is constantly scoping her out with these little side looks, while trying not to walk into the flag pole and such.  So once forewarned, I too started noticing and boy howdy!  After seeing him do this to a young runner in the neighborhood, I mention it as subtly as I'm able--while laughing--and while he does get appropriately embarassed, I also see that the embarrasment of being caught ogling doesn't completely wipe away the curiosity that compels him.  OMG...the boy is growing up.  We did however, have a talk about respect and women and bodies that mostly was about making me feel better, but hopefully the right bits will get through to his little pre-adolescent brain.

I have a new motto for life, courtesy of my 7-year old daughter.  We were walking, holding hands, into dinner and she looks up at me and says, as serious as she can be, "I wish it was the future."  I, of course, ask why, and she replies, "Because in the future, I'm awesome."    Yes you will be, mon sweet petite.  But now I have this new motto, perfect for those weeks when absolutely nothing goes according to plan...."In the future, I'm awesome."  No doubt less awesome than her, but still...it's a worthy goal.

Tonight though, I will go home to a house full of kids--both are having sleepovers--and when they are fully ensconced in a movie, I will have a glass of wine and pick from this group of books. Because they make me laugh, cry, think and sometimes all three.  Whatever, they take me out of my own head...and that's a good thing.

The Hotel New Hampshire, John Irving

Cod, Fish That Changed the World, Mark Kurlansky

Anything by Lisa Kleypass because I love a good lusty, funny romance

Water for Elephants, Sara Gruen

Push Not the River, James Conroyd Martin

Rivethead, Ben Hamper

Geek Love, Katherine Dunn

A Confederacy of Dunces, John Kennedy Toole

And, if it's a really, really, really bad day.

The Truth About Chuck Norris:  400 Facts about the Worlds Greatest Human, Ian Spector

What a Way to Go: The Guillotine, the Pendulum, the Thousand Cuts, the Spanish Donkey, and 66 Other Ways of Putting Someone to Death, Geoffrey Abbott

And, if it's a really, really, really, really, really bad day...Movies:

In Search of the Holy Grail, Anchorman, the dinner scene in Talladega Nights, Airplane, Reno 911 The Movie, Office Space, Support Your Local Sheriff, any of the Bourne movies, the first and second Mummy movies and finally, Oh Brother, Where Art Thou