#4: the last book I read, or, bodice-rippers and the women who love them

I love romance novels.  Or, as my father calls them, "bodice-rippers."

Some people read to enrich their minds.  Not me.  The books I read are the equivalent of candy.  Light, airy, sticky candy floss.  No nutritional or educational value whatsoever.  But highly entertaining.

When buying books, I generally limit myself to a few authors that I have been reading for years. Nora Roberts, Julia Quinn, Amanda Quick, Elizabeth Lowell, Charlaine Harris and Kresley Cole are who I will shell out money for.  Everyone else I will read at the library first.  

The guiltiest pleasure, though, is Harlequin Romance novels.  You can get them at Target for about $5, or if you go to Walmart you can get the previous month  publications for less than $3.  Or you can go whole hog and just have them delivered to your house every month, like me.

Harlequins are akin to eating a box of cotton candy.  Plots you can drive a truck through (wait, they have plots?), little character development, tropes and stock characters galore.  Generally, the plot looks like this:  boy meets girl, boy misunderstands girl (thinks she's a prostitute/golddigger/drug addict/bad mother), boy treats girl like crap yet wants to have mad nookie with her, at the end of  the book girl proves to boy that boy was wrong, boy begs forgiveness, they get married and live happily ever after. Because you know, you need to get married in order to be happy.

The best (and I've read thousands, I should know) are usually the girl-gets-unexpectedly-pregnant or girl-gets-makeover variety.  Do I cringe at the predictable "you need a man to be happy" themes throughout the books?  Yes.  But I devour them anyways.

I love happy endings.  I hate reading books where bad things happen to nice people.   The Mister has been reading the George R.R. Martin series for a while now. I picked it up and started reading it, and about fifty pages in, a young boy gets thrown off a roof.  On purpose. I thought to myself, nothing good is going to happen to these people.  I flipped to the end, and lo and behold, I was right.  I stopped reading that series right there and went back to my romance novels.

In the last week I have read In Too Deep by Jayne Ann Krentz and The Girl Who Played With Fire by Stieg Larssen. In the past month I have re-read the Harry Potter series, and I started watching True Blood on Netflix, so I pulled out the Sookie Stackhouse series by Charlaine Harris. I also have fourteen free romance novels loaded on my Kindle at the moment, waiting to be read.  I have also read 12 Harlequins but cannot remember the titles, authors or plots of any of them.

# 29 the story behind one of my scars

All of my scars are from childbirth, and no one wants to hear about my lady bits, so I'll tell you about one of my injuries instead.

Years ago, I used to run. I loved running. I never got below a ten and a half minute mile, so I suppose you could call me a "jogger", not a runner, but it was a good workout, there was no going to a gym--just put on my shoes and walk out the door.

Then I sprained my neck and upper back.  If you have never sprained your neck and upper back, allow me to tell you that your head is UNBELIEVABLY HEAVY if you are trying to carry it with your sprained neck.  The first time I sprained my neck (yes, the first time--I've done it five times in the past seven years) was two weeks before my wedding.  I was sitting on the sofa, watching tv, and thought, time to go for a run! I stood up, stretched, and heard the most godawful crunching noise in my neck.  And dropped to the floor, writhing in agony.

I guess I wasn't really writhing, as I was actually frozen in pain, as any move at all was excruciating.  The Mister took me a to doctor, who gave me Percocet.  That doctor was an idiot. Percocet barely touched the pain, and did nothing for the underlying problem, which were my spasming back muscles.  If you looked at me from the back, my left shoulder was hunched up to my ear.  You know how if you pick a piece of string that is unraveling from a sweater, and pull on it, it will scrunch up the sweater, almost like little waves?  My back muscles looked like that.  You could actually feel rivers and trenches in my back muscles. 

After two days of excruciating pain, my mother in law got me an appointement with the head of spinal surgery at a hospital in NYC.  That doctor said, well, you sprained your neck and back, you should be better in about six months or so, here are some muscle relaxers.  I was ca-razy high at my wedding. It was three months before I could turn my head far enough so that I could drive on my own, and at six months before I felt reasonably pain-free.

The second time I sprained my neck and back I was laying in bed on a Monday morning, about 6 am, and was thinking to myself, "I really wish I didn't have to go to work today."  I rolled over, heard the crunching noise, and wish granted!  I should have been a little more specific.

Since then I've sprained it about every year to 18 months.  Nothing as bad as the first time, but still enough to take me out for a couple days. 

#5 Meaning behind my blog name

Back in June of last year I was working on my mother in law's kitchen, bathroom and home office, and talking to my sisters on a daily basis about ideas for the spaces. (My sisters are my BFFs.)  I did a lot of internet window shopping, bothering my at-work sisters on gchat with links--look at this! Or how about this! I don't recall how it came about, but someone (maybe me?) said "you should have a blog."   


I toyed with it for a while, thought, ok, yes! I will blog!  However, original ideas are not my forte and I could not think of a good blog name.  I would have gone with the Mexican Casserole, but 1) I wanted a blog name that was meaningful to my family with the Mister and our kids, not a family joke from my childhood, and 2) an alcoholic divorcee in Atlanta had already absconded with the Mexican Casserole.  


At the time Peter was obsessed with the Pigeon series by Mo Willems, and my sister suggested I use Pigeon Starts a Blog...or Pigeon Has a Blog...or something about pigeons. I forget. I set up that blog for about 6 hours, then decided I hated that name and didn't want the copyrighted wrath of Mo Willems raining down on me, so I took it down, but couldn't figure out how to change my author name, so if you wonder why my early posts have "posted by Pigeon" on them, that's why.  


One Sunday the Mister and I were out and about running errands, and I was complaining vociferously about the incredibly high cost of housing located within an hour and a half of the Mister's job, and moving further away means that the Mister spends nearly as much time commuting as he does working...a rant the Mister has heard quite a few times....and he said "well, there you have it.  Trapped In North Jersey. Your new blog name."  


 

#2 The best part of my day

The best part of my day....I have two best parts of my day.  They are polar opposites.  In the morning, at the crack of dawn, my children start wandering into my bed for cuddles.  Princess is usually first, sometime between 4 and 5, she stands up in her crib and starts yelling GET DOWN WAKE UP MAMA PAPA WAKE UP WAKE UP.  In bed she likes to drape herself over my head or my chest and say thank you Mama love you (tek yooo Mama wuv yoo).  


Between 5:30 and 6 the boys come in.  Whoever comes in first likes to snuggle up under my chin and wrap their arms around me and tell me they love me.  Whoever comes in second has a fit that there is no room next to Mama, and crawls up onto the bed and sits on a sibling saying MY TURN MY TURN MOVE NOW.  


Then the Mister gets up, takes all the kiddos out and distributes morning snacks, and I go back to sleep for an hour, if I'm lucky.  


The other favorite part of my day is at night, around 8 pm, when all my children are in bed, and the house is quiet.  I sit on the sofa next to the Mister, have a yummy dessert and read the internets while he watches tv.  I catch up on blogs, do some internet window browsing, and write blog posts, enjoying the peace and quiet.