Sunday Salon: Chatty

 Good morning friends!  I'm feeling chatty today.  Maybe it is because of Mother's Day, the one day (except maybe for my birthday) when I can pull rank and do what I want, versus catering to my kids' whims.  My itinerary for today is church, brunch and The Great Gatsby.  And dinner cooked for me, and drinks served to me.  It is ridiculous how excited I am about it all.  There was a period of years when I wondered if I would ever be able to have kids, so in all seriousness, this is a blessed day for me.

It also makes me feel thankful for my mom.  I rarely get to spend Mother's Day with her since my parents live in Indiana, but it doesn't stop me from sending her shopping (her favorite sport next to Facebook).  My mom was the one to give me my love of reading.  As a kid, she always took me to the library, and when I was an adolescent, I basically got free reign of her bookshelves.  She even was the school librarian when I was growing up!  All Hail, bookish moms!

My son and I have started a project.  For Christmas, my sister bought my family a gigantic book called "1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die".  The other night we finally went through it and marked everything we've already seen (roughly about a third).  Now we are going to plow our way through the rest.  Such fun!  It will probably take us 20 years, but whatever.  You gotta love Netflix in these situations.  

I have to share this with you, because it was just a special moment.  Yesterday morning, my husband, my son and I were watching the morning news, and these were the top stories here in Central Florida (aka Bizarro-land).  So who wants to come down and be my neighbor???

*  Somebody wearing a Planet of the Apes mask has been robbing banks.
*  A brother and sister (both adults) were apprehended after robbing a Lay's delivery truck.  They made off with various snacks like pork rinds, Cheetos, Doritos and the like.  I will leave it to your imagination what these two looked like, but I'm pretty sure you wouldn't be too far off the mark.
*  Another teacher has been caught sleeping with various students.  This seems to be the THING down here, right behind serial killers, kidnappers and terrorist training camps.
* Two men, bearing machetes and a bottle of bleach (to erase DNA), tied up a father and son and brutally raped the mother.  They were caught, thank God.  They didn't give details, but the police said they'd never seen anything quite so horrible.  I swear, they breed down here, the freaks.

I am in deep trouble with my audios.  I am officially OVERWHELMED with the number of them that I have added over the last two weeks (probably over a dozen).  It is insane.  It may be years before I get through all the ones I have loaded.  Good thing my iPod has 180 gig.  

Speaking of which, I did get through The Great Gatsby on audio this week.  I THOUGHT it was the new version, which was narrated by Jake Gyllenhaal, which was an exciting thought.  But no it was narrated by some other dude named Alexander Scourby, who is supposed to be one of the best voices of all time.  And it was the most awful thing I've ever heard.  It kept skipping around (I still was able to navigate through it, barely) and this Alexander guy was SMOKING through the whole thing!  OMG!  Did he think it added some sort of panache because it was Gatsby???  I am now about halfway through "The Dinner" by Herman Koch and I am riveted.  This is an excellent book.

Do I need to even mention print?  Pathetic.  I am still reading "A Place Called Wiregrass" by Michael Morris and it is positively delightful.  But there is no time.  I'm going to make it my goal to finish it this next week. 

So I guess I'll shut up now.  What is everyone doing today?