10 Books That Have Stayed With You Even If They Aren’t Favorites But You Have Somehow Disabled Yourself From Suppressing Them Or Whatever.

1. The Fionavar Tapestry: I probably read this a little too young, but I can't care. It is still one of my favorites.

2. Little Women: I read and reread this obsessively at the age of 10.

3. The Secret Garden: Another childhood favorite. Rereading this and the previous book as an adult, I was stunned by how modern their sensibilities about child-rearing are.

4. The Master and Margarita: Probably the most important book I read during my undergraduate degree.

5. It: this book messed with my head. I'm not really okay with the eleven-year-old orgy. I'm really not okay with it. Just not.

6. The Weirdstone of Brisingamen: I can't describe how much this book got in my head as a child. I'm still not convinced that it's not all real.

7. What's Happening to My Body: A Book for Girls: Mom made me read it when I was about ten, and I hated it, hated it, hated it. I hated puberty, and I hated reading about it.

8. The Mists of Avalon: I put off reading it for a long time, while I was going through the works of MZB, but once I read it, it hung with me. and it made me really mad at the mini-series for failing to understand the importance of the ending.

9. The Lord of the Rings: This goes without saying.

10. The Jungle Book: Loved this as a very small child, and I was aboslutely in love with Rikki Tikki Tavi.

Not tagging anyone. No time.

Chaos does not wear gray to a ball
Nor refuse to dance through the night
It awakens at the first light
Though you'd swear it has not slept at all
Like the hidden passage through the wall
Or the fox that lives through the fight
Its cleverest work is not in your sight
And you don't know what will be till you fall
It fears neither winter nor poison
And it laughs while it plays in the rain
You will find it whatever the season
Whether it brings you gladness or pain
Knowing its name but not its reason
This poem is all to his gain

For those of you who don't read Facebook, here's the link to an awesome project I was recently involved in:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qh-x7_-WPyU&feature=youtube_gdata_player

For those who are curious, I had my exam, and everything's normal.

Well, healthy anyway . . . I'm not sure normal ever applies to me.

The most important experience I had with the AOA last year wasn't anything that looked big to others from the outside. For me personally, it was a revelation and the completion of something I've been fighting to attain for nearly ten years.

One weekend this spring, we didn't have the church and so we had rehearsal at the UU. When we arrived my ex-step-mother was there cleaning.

And to go any further, I have to explain about my relationship with her. When she and my Dad were together, she was mostly pretty nice to me, sometimes manipulating me against him. After the divorce, she said the worst possible things imaginable about me, rarely to my face, often in court against my father, and she said worse things about him. When my brother was a baby, she smoked cigarettes with him in her arms. She would hold him while yelling at and hitting my father in their many fights. She lied to him constantly and did everything she could to keep him away from my father. I lost track of the spiteful, malicious things she did to my father.

For a number of years, I managed to be hurt by the various things she did without letting myself hate her. It was so, so, so hard, but I knew that hating her would be more damaging to myself than to her, and so I persisted and mostly succeeded.

Then it got worse, and for a full year she kept my brother and my father apart. I broke and I lost the strength. I hated her outright. And I was mad at myself for hating her. I tried not to, but she kept giving my new reasons, like saying to a cancer survivor that she hoped my father died of his cancer. I started to wish that she would die and thought very poorly of myself, because of it. I felt like a far worse person because of the feelings I had where she was concerned. I cut any interaction with her out of my life as much as possible and tried not to think about her. I might not be able to control my feelings about her, but I could at least try to manage the occasions that made me feel that way.

When I realized she was there in the same building with me, it was . . . alarming. I was having my AOA time. I was supposed to be around the people who made me better, and suddenly the person I reacted to in such a negative way was there. I hadn't seen her face-to-face yet, but I knew it was coming. We would have to interact.

I thought about one of the first readings that Liz had given me during the summer--Christine de Pisan and her writings about appropriate social behavior--and about the tenets, and I determined that however difficult it was I would be courteous to her. It would be hard, I thought, but I would do it. Cool, maybe, but courteous. Surely, I could do that.

The moment came, she entered the room we were in. I greeted her, she greeted me in return. We talked about my little brother briefly, and then she was gone.

It was easy. And I felt nothing.

I don't mean that I was bottling everything so deep down that I was numb inside. I wasn't.

I just felt nothing about her. All the hatred and anger was gone. I still didn't think much about her as a human being, but it no longer affected me emotionally. I could be courteous to her and it cost me nothing, not even effort.

It felt so good. Especially the realization that if I could let go of the hatred I had felt towards her, that it was easy to let go of lesser offenses, the teacher who had hurt me so deeply in fifth grade, and a hundred little things that meant nothing. I could let it all go. It was nothing.

For the first time in years, I was without hate. It was no longer something within me, damaging me far more than it could ever damage the people it was aimed at. My disappointment at myself for hating them, I could let go of that as well.

For me as a person, it may be the most important thing that has happened to me all year.

MamMa, thank you for teaching me how to be be strong. There was never anyone who showed me more that a woman can do anything she wants in this world.

Joe, thank you for teaching me how to be persistent. Before you came into our lives, I had no focus; your example taught me a lot.

Mom, thank you for teaching me to love books and learning. So much of who I became later followed from that love and the books we shared and the curiosity that you encouraged.

Dad, thank you for teaching me to be passionate. Watching you burn with your passions for theater and human rights taught me to do the same with my own passions.

Robin, thank you for teaching me how to nurture. In truth, I was the one who was a brat until I had a reason to try to become someone better.

Brendan, thank you for teaching me how to love. I'd spent so much of my life terrified of love and romance, and loving you made it easy.

Julie, thank you for teaching me how to listen. I may not be as good at it as I should be, but if not for you, I would not know as much as I do.

Angela, thank you for teaching me to be brave. Your willingness to do the things that were difficult for you helped me to be willing to conquer my own fears.

Jackie, thank you for teaching me to be brazen. I have never been shy, but there were things I was still hesitant to speak aloud or acknowledge; you taught me that there is no need for shame.

Mary Hannah, thank you for teaching me to argue. I still can't always make the point I want to make, but I can state my opinion and support it with the appropriate facts because of the things you taught me.

Jessie, thank you for teaching me to back down. It's one of the hardest lessons I've ever had to learn, and I still don't always know when I should, but I understand that sometimes it's better to stop trying to be right.

Gracie, thank you for teaching me, of all things, grace. Whatever measure of it I have is a gift from you.

Liz, thank you for teaching me how to shut up, which is not the same thing as listening. It may be the most difficult of the lessons here for me.

"The world grows and changes, but a gift such as yours should not be allowed to pass from it. The world needs it's ambitious dreamers, men who would shape it to their own ends. But it needs those who would keep them in check, too. The world needs it's courtesans . . . And the world needs it bear-witches, my lovely savage. You won't withdraw from it like the rest of your folk, will you?"--Naamah's Blessing, Jacqueline Carey

So yeah, the Friday 13 Norman tornado passed about 50-60 feet away from Brendan and me.

No damage to the house on University--that's where we were at the time--but the fence and trees got pretty torn up.

Epic.