New Years Resolution #4

OK, so my fourth new years resolution was to read a certain number of book off of the BBC's Big Read list. Many of these books I read way back in middle and high school. If I don't really remember much about them, then I am not counting them as having been read and will endeavor to re-read them. That being said, this is my list for 2010. There are many books that I feel BBC should have included that they didn't, but that is why I made my BBC list goal small (20 books) so that I could include these others (and fun books) as well without making it so daunting a task that I would not be able to complete it. Here are some of the BBC books I want to read/re-read/finish:

1. Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (currently in the process of reading)
2. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (currently in the process of reading)
3. Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell (want to re-read)
4. To Kill a Mockinbird (hardly remember reading)
5. Winnie-The-Pooh by A.A. Milne (have, but actually have never read!)
6. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (have actually never read this one...started, but that doesn't count) :)
7. Catch-22 by Joseph Heller
8. Wuthering Heights (have only about fifty pages or so left, but never finished)
9. The Catcher in the Rye (have read all, but about 60 pages or so...need to finish!)
10. Tess of the d'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (somehow missed this one)
11. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (haven't read this one)
12. David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (never finished years ago)
13. The Pickwick Papers by Charles Dickens (been awhile)
14. Les Miserables by Victor Hugo (never finished...have you seen how long it is??!!)
15. The Picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (I love Oscar Wilde! My fave story as a child is actually an Oscar Wilde short story, "The Selfish Giant")
16. Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackery (never finshed...it's another long one)
17. The Poisonwood Bible by Barbara Kingslover
18. Animal Farm by George Orwell (just want to re-read)
19. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (it's sooo long! Never got through it)
20. Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky (been a long time and it's a goodie)
21. Ulysses by James Joyce
22. Bleak House by Charles Dickens
23. Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
24. The Little Prince by Antoine de Staint-Exupery
25. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
26. On the Road by Jack Kerouac
27. Flowers in the Attic by V.C. Andrews

Ok, so I have included more than 20 here but at least I have options for my 20 if I just can't get through one of them. That way I can still stick to my list of 20, but also have some options. :)

Now to try and get through some more of A Tale of Two Cities. It has 15 chapters and I am going for at least one chapter a night. I am reading Brave New World concurrently.

Please just shoot me now...

I don't know if it's just a fluke or I am just noticing it more now (like when I got my Mustang...I never noticed them before, but now I notice them EVERYWHERE...it just made me more aware), but characters with heart problems like mine keep popping up whether it's on TV or in a book. Week before last, the entire episode of ER was about people with heart problems. They had a camp at the hospital for kids that have heart problems and the one girl had an ICD...and yes...even in fiction you could see the bloody thing clearly...I don't care how big my chest is...these babies ain't gonna cover that shit! Screw that. Oh yeah...and it shocked her (turns out it was a false alarm) and it sent her to the ground. Then I was reading this book that I figured was going to be fun light reading. Oh noooo...midway through the book the main character's sister got a heart condition and then she died in the end waiting on a transplant that she didn't want. Can't we put warnings on things?! Seriously! I won't say which book it is so as not to ruin it for people who want to read it. I'm glad I didn't suggest this one for book club...I almost did! It wasn't very well written either.

Change of subject...

So my mother wants the ENTIRE house painted and no one else wants to paint and since I am painting what is going to be my room then I am stuck doing the rest too. I painted my ceiling and T taped off my room and helped me take the trillion nails out of the walls and start readying the rest of the house for painting. I have a five gallon bucket of primer, but I have to find someone to take it out of the car for me. I'm not finished taping off or cleaning the windows and walls and I am already so flipping sore and exhausted!! I bought five or six rollers hoping for help, but none has come. My neighbor here is going to help me tomorrow. She's good at painting! But there are a lot of walls!!!! And they ALL have to be primed first!!

So...yesterday I was trying to take the verticals down in the office. I have the screw driver and I'm up in the window and I just glance at the actual window and there is something at the top staring in at me...at first I think it's a lizard, but then I freak out...it's a flipping snake staring in the window at me!!!! I scream like a girl and then go get my mother and T...it's still there when we get back. We knock on the window at it, tap the screw driver on the window at it, but nooooo it doesn't care...it just watches us and stays there watching and lurking for about another half an hour. I guess it finally got tired or hungry and left. Then I saw this ginormous lizard outside. It's HUGE!!!! It's reddish, and is as round as a half dollar, has a creepy head like a snake, but has feet. I have been told it is a skink, but dang...what the hell is up with all of these reptilian critters???!!! I am never going outside again!!!! The only reptilian critters that don't bother me much are Alligators...they aren't slithery and you can actually see them. Ewww.

So I am completely exhausted, sore as hell, still not looking forward to moving into this dump (I am working on my Jiffy Store feet for that full on redneck experience...still have to put the christmas lights on the front porch and pick up a pink flamingo for the front yard...and I even have the Ford now and rednecks love Mustangs, so I guess that's the next best thing to a big ole truck).

So...please just shoot me now and put me out of my misery!