Call It What You Want...

And I am not asleep.

I have long had sleep troubles, especially in a new or different bed. But usually when I arrive in Europe, I fall right to sleep due to exhaustion. Aaaah, not tonight.

I got here with no problems, with my luggage. Took the Tube to David's stop, where he met me at the station. Came here, had a short nap, then we went off and met Amanda at the Angel tube stop and then some of their friends at a pub for drinks and visiting. It was a lovely evening -- we sat/stood outside the pub for the visit -- and nice and cool.

We talked about things that I might do tomorrow, but I suspect I might get a late start. (I hope, since the walking tour I thought about doing is just 7 hours away and I haven't been to sleep yet.)

Wish me luck on getting my sleep in gear, and I'll keep you posted on what's up!

This afternoon, we saw what is probably the last phase of the road construction -- the "dirt paver" as Mark calls it.

Fortunately, I had been out minutes before to retrieve my newspaper, which my brilliant and efficient carrier had (once again, despite a thousand requests otherwise) dumped into the ditch between my yard and the new curb. Had I not gotten the paper when I had, it would have been unceremoniously buried beneath a foot of dirt.

Please note the nice asphalt on the street. Mission accomplished for the road people, I reckon. Now Mr. Smith across the street went and bought sod to fix his part... We'll see this weekend what we decide to do.

No Parking for Paving, read the sign on our street when we got back from visiting Grandpa and Grandma, On or after July 15.

This morning we almost missed it.

Mark, who was banished to his room for another temper tantrum, got to see it, but Adam and I missed them putting down the asphalt and rolling in front of our house. We did walk two doors down and got to see it.

They'll finish the other side of the street later; here's hoping we get to see that.

Someone in my family is laughing maniacally, and he knows who he is.

On the way down the highway, we passed what would be my childhood's favorite animal, which I pointed out to the boys (who like all animals).

"Yucky horses," Mark said.

"Horses aren't yucky!" I objected.

(Pause.)

"Mommy, can you eat horses?" Mark asked.

"No," I said.

"See? They're yucky."

Yeah. I see.

Mark informed Daddy this morning -- and then me, later -- that today is Doggy's birthday!

It was quite a day of celebration for our furry friend -- cake and ice cream (so Mark says) and "baby presents like rattles" because, despite having a birthday, Doggy is still a little baby. Doggy's Mommy (Clifford) gave him a baby excavator (construction equipment, not some way of digging up small children) to play with. Doggy was good to his Mommy, giving her a present for his birthday, too -- a bulldozer. And, of course, there was all the fun of celebrating. Doggy played with his baby excavator for a while while his mommy played with her bulldozer, and then Doggy got a turn to play with the bulldozer. "It was nice because everyone got a turn!" Mark announced.

Just in case you wondered, none of this really happened.

Or did it?

Mark feeds Doggy his first solid food, in the high chair, March 2007

Doggy plays in the baby seat, because, after all, he is a baby, March 2007. A year and a half later, he's still a baby.

We all know how Mark feels about his "precious Doggy."

Incidentally, we're pretty sure that Mark has no idea that he was given Doggy in July of 2005. Here is our first photographic moment of Mark playing with Doggy:

September, 2005.

Happy Birthday, little friend!

Oh when the six
Go Marching Eight
Oh when the six go marching eight
Oh I don't know the number
When the six go marching eight

Is it a surprise to say that Mark has become an expert at manipulating his brother?

Adam has a toy that Mark would really like to play with. Adam isn't interested in parting with it -- until...

Mark offers another toy, often something that is special to him in some way (example: Doggy). "Here you go," he tells Adam in a super-sugary voice.

Adam accepts the offered toy, sometimes (but not always) setting down the original item. Sometimes Adam even offers the wanted item to Mark.

Mark accepts the toy graciously and goes off to play with his new acquisition.

Adam thinks he really scored a deal with whatever he now has.

How long until Mark learns to say, "Trade-able?"

This is borrowed from Heather in law's blog... enjoy...

The Big Read is an NEA program designed to encourage community reading initiatives. They've come up with this list of the top 100 books, using criteria they don't explain, and they estimate that the average adult has only read 6 of these. (See below) So, we are encouraged to:

1) Look at the list and bold those we have read.
2) Italicize those we intend to read.
3) Underline the books we LOVE
4) Reprint this list in our own blogs

I fear that my family -- and that reaches to include Heather-in-law, and just about everyone else who reads this blog -- has read many more than the "average" six. (I've read 37, I think, if I counted correctly.) How about you? You can comment here how many you've read, and which ones I should plan to read next...

Updated: A comment on friend Mary Beth's blog filled us in on the actual origin of this list:

"This list appears to have come from England, in 2007, as part of a survey they do for 'World Book Day' (I didn't know there was such a thing. I want the day off for it next year. It's March 5th in England next year, 4/23 everywhere else?) It was from a British survey of 'Top 100 Books You Can't Live Without.'

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6 The Bible
7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12 Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14 Complete Works of Shakespeare -- well, not complete ...
15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19 The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20 Middlemarch - George Eliot
21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25 The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34 Emma - Jane Austen
35 Persuasion - Jane Austen
36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38 Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41 Animal Farm - George Orwell
42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48 The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding
50 Atonement - Ian McEwan
51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52 Dune - Frank Herbert
53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac
67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68 Bridget Jones's Diary - Helen Fielding
69 Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72 Dracula - Bram Stoker
73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75 Ulysses - James Joyce
76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78 Germinal - Emile Zola
79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80 Possession - AS Byatt
81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87 Charlotte's Web - EB White
88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94 Watership Down - Richard Adams
95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare
99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

(Sung to the tune of "I Have Decided to Follow Jesus")

Simple Simon, Don't you worry
Simple Simon, Don't you worry
Simple Simon, Don't you worry.
No Turning back, no turning back