deep into the nog blog

One of my favorite columnists, Al Martinez of the LA Times has coined a phrase in describing what happens to people caught during times of shared difficulties; We huddle together in bad times, he writes. The spirits snuggle.

I love the descriptive aptness of that phrase, the spirits snuggle. It conjures up images of sleeping puppies, all cuddly and tossed together in soft furry heaps of companionship and warmth. Sometimes, we all just need to feel one another's heart beat. A reminder of our shared humanity, that we reach out to each other with hope, comfort and kindness because without it, there is nothing.

I wish you all the joys of the season. I wish you love and laughter and a cherished memory or two to hold close in the flickering of the candlelight. Most of all I wish you peace, from the bottom of my heart. Happy holidays to you all. May your spirits snuggle.

jager angels

Black leather boots and bustiers. Fishnet stockings, DayGlo orange wigs and more tattoos and eyeliner than Amy Winehouse at a biker rally, it was an unlikely getup for a couple of angels. Yet for all its sexy outrageousness, the Jagermeister shooter girls managed to look innocently adorable.

We were sitting at the bar waiting for our table to open up in the dining room. Turk had talked me into going out to dinner in spite of my reluctance ~ frankly, I am not at all happy with the creeping frumpiness of my appearance. I just want to stay home and hide.

I know. I should be bigger than this. I'm not. I shouldn't care, but I do. I'm supposed to love myself and embrace the older, wiser, more beautiful goddess within. I really can't.

I am, if anything, annoyed with her. It was never my intention to live long enough to look this old in the first place. While all my friends were busy becoming doctors, lawyers and engineers I was working on my 10 year plan to live hard, die young and leave a beautiful corpse. Typically, in this, as in so many things, I failed to apply myself and wound up here, in a nondescript middle age, dealing with this frumpiness, this encroaching Elmer Fuddliness. Fat, furrowed and befuddled am I.

The girls came up to give their pitch regarding the exemplary qualities of Jagermeister. They laughed good-naturedly when Turk, clearly dazzled by such bodacious attention, claimed to be a German prince in exile, pining away for Jager, the milk of his youth. They were really very sweet. Then, leaving us with a smile and the gift of an orange paper-flower lei, they were moving on toward the next customer when suddenly they turned back and one girl exclaimed, "We just have to tell you how pretty you are!" Her friend nodded, beaming.

And so help me Aphrodite, just for a while I felt lighter.

See what I mean? Angels.

My angels carry shot glasses. Like I always knew they would.

is our children learning?

I found this one at Girlyshoes and had to do it because I feel the need to prove that I'm not as dumb as my cartoon looks. I have too read stuff! Just, you know, not a lot of stuff on the list. Also, I don't actually remember all the stuff that I did read, not to mention...

Wait, what was this about again? Oh, yeah ~ me is sure smart! For a toon.

Instructions:

Look at the list and bold those you have read.

Underline those you intend to read. I didn't do this. I don't know how to underline things. Or even un-underline from a quick cut and paste job (see above re: toony smartness.) Let's just assume I plan to read all of them, and will get to Ulysses and Jude the Obscure as soon as I finish the English cozy currently on my nightstand.

Italicise the books you LOVE.

Reprint this list so we can try and track down these people who’ve read number 6 and force real books upon them. (Miz Shoes added that last bit but it made me laugh so it stays in. I'll do a whole 'nother meme on stealing other people's blog stuff later.)

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. That's right; I'm the one.
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
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - J D Salinger
19. The Time Traveller’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 (See 33.)
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’ 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. Enjoyed it, but loved what Mr. Magoo did with the role of Scrooge in the film version.
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 Seriously. Never.
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