BRAT Diet

BRAT diet. Am I the only woman who has been a mother for a decade and does not know what this is? BamBam has some tummy trouble, and I called the pediatricians office. "Is he eating the brat diet?" Huh?

Bananas
Rice
Applesauce
Toast

Okay, BamBam will eat bananas and applesauce and toast (with butter, which is a no-no). There is no way he will eat rice. Special jaunt to the grocery store to buy bananas, applesauce, rice cakes, rice milk, french fries (she said potatoes were okay, and those are all the potatoes he will eat).

Strawberries are on sale, and I bought some. "Can I have strawberries?" No. "Can I have strawberries?" No. "Can I have strawberries?" No. "Can I have strawberries?" Okay, two. "Can I have more strawberries?"

LibraryThing Meme

If you know me, you know I love LibraryThing. Well, there is a new meme. You take the top 106 books tagged "unread" and comment on if you've ever read them, never read them, etc. So, here goes:

1. The ultimate hitchhiker's guide by Douglas Adams (43) never read, no interest
   
2. Jonathan Strange & Mr Norrell by Susanna Clarke (236) never read, no interest
3. The kite runner by Khaled Hosseini (19) never read, no interest
4. Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy (211) maybe someday
   
5. Life of Pi : a novel by Yann Martel (17) never read, no interest
6. Don Quixote by Miguel De Cervantes Saavedra (152) TBR pile
   
7. Crime and punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (176) maybe someday
8. One hundred years of solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (183) maybe someday
9. Vanity fair by William Makepeace Thackeray (115) maybe someday
10. The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien (155) maybe someday
11. Ulysses by James Joyce (135) maybe someday
12. War and peace by Leo Tolstoy (132) maybe someday
13. Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert (132) maybe someday
14. The brothers Karamazov by Fyodor Dostoyevsky (136) maybe someday
15. Catch-22 a novel by Joseph Heller (158) never read, no interest
16. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte (162) read
    
17. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood (110) never read, no interest
18. Quicksilver (The Baroque Cycle I) by Neal Stephenson (92) never read, no interest
19. A tale of two cities by Charles Dickens (124) maybe someday
20. The satanic verses by Salman Rushdie (88) never read, no interest
21. Middlemarch by George Eliot (96) TBR pile
    
22. Reading Lolita in Tehran : a memoir in books by Azar Nafisi (96) never read, no interest
23. The name of the rose by Umberto Eco (120) never read, no interest
24. The Kor'an by Anonymous (11) never read, no interest
25. Moby Dick by Herman Melville (119) maybe someday
26. The Odyssey by Homer (136) maybe someday
27. The Canterbury tales by Geoffrey Chaucer (108) TBR pile
    
28. Love in the Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez (114) maybe someday
29. The hunchback of Notre Dame by Victor Hugo (75) maybe someday
30. The historian : a novel by Elizabeth Kostova (108) never read, no interest
31. Foucault's pendulum by Umberto Eco (101) never read, no interest
32. Atlas shrugged by Ayn Rand (102) never read, no interest
33. The history of Tom Jones, a foundling by Henry Fielding (67) never read, no interest
34. The three musketeers by Alexandre Dumas (87) TBR pile
    
35. The Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas (95) maybe someday
36. The sound and the fury by William Faulkner (94) never read, no interest
37. The Iliad by Homer (117) maybe someday
38. Mrs. Dalloway by Virginia Woolf (97) never read, no interest
39. Emma by Jane Austen (117) read it, loved it! My favorite Austen book
    
40. Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak (64) maybe someday
41. Sons and lovers by D.H. Lawrence (69) never read, no interest
42. Gulliver's travels by Jonathan Swift (88) maybe someday
43. The house of the seven gables by Nathaniel Hawthorne (62) maybe someday
44. Guns, Germs, and Steel: the fates of human societies by Jared Diamond (104) never read, no interest
45. Dracula by Bram Stoker (100) read
    
46. Lady Chatterley's lover by D.H. Lawrence (73) never read, no interest
47. A heartbreaking work of staggering genius by Dave Eggers (97) never read, no interest
48. Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens (83) maybe someday
49. The once and future king by T. H. White (81) never read, no interest
50. Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe (82) maybe someday
51. To the lighthouse by Virginia Woolf (83) never read, no interest
52. Mansfield Park by Jane Austen (88) read
    
53. Oryx and Crake : a novel by Margaret Atwood (78) never read, no interest
54. Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (106) maybe someday
55. Labyrinth by Kate Mosse (56) never read, no interest
56. Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy (83) maybe someday
57. Collapse : how societies choose to fail or succeed by Jared Diamond (76) never read, no interest
58. The corrections by Jonathan Franzen (84) never read, no interest
59. Moll Flanders by Daniel Defoe (58) maybe someday
60. Underworld by Don DeLillo (64) never read, no interest
61. Ivanhoe by Sir Walter Scott (63) maybe someday
62. The grapes of wrath by John Steinbeck (99) read
    
63. Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte (124) read
    
64. The Gormenghast trilogy by Mervyn Peake (47) never read, no interest
65. The War of the Worlds by H. G. Wells (66) maybe someday
66. Jude the obscure by Thomas Hardy (65) never read, no interest
67. The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin (62) never read, no interest
68. Tender is the night by F. Scott Fitzgerald (66) never read, no interest
69. A portrait of the artist as a young man by James Joyce (89) read
    
70. A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court by Mark Twain (59) maybe someday
71. The divine comedy by Dante Alighieri (63) TBR pile
    
72. The inferno by Dante Alighieri (84) same as above
    
73. Gravity's rainbow by Thomas Pynchon (66) never read, no interest
74. The Fountainhead by Ayn Rand (83) never read, no interest
75. Swann's way by Marcel Proust (59) never read, no interest
76. The poisonwood Bible : a novel by Barbara Kingsolver (91) never read, no interest
77. The amazing adventures of Kavalier and Clay : a novel by Michael Chabon (83) never read, no interest
78. Sense and sensibility by Jane Austen (96) read
    
79. The portrait of a lady by Henry James (62) never read, no interest
80. Silas Marner by George Eliot (57) read
    
81. The picture of Dorian Gray by Oscar Wilde (89) read
    
82. The man in the iron mask by Alexandre Dumas (43) never read, no interest
83. The god of small things by Arundhati Roy (80)never read, no interest
84. The book thief by Markus Zusak (67) never read, no interest
85. The confusion by Neal Stephenson (61) never read, no interest
86. One flew over the cuckoo's nest by Ken Kesey (82) never read, no interest
87. Frankenstein by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (97) read
    
88. Bleak House by Charles Dickens (63) TBR pile
    
89. The system of the world by Neal Stephenson (55) never read, no interest
90. The elegant universe : superstrings, hidden dimensions, and… by Brian Greene (60) never read, no interest
91. Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson (78) never read, no interest
92. The known world by Edward P. Jones (53) never read, no interest
93. The time traveler's wife by Audrey Niffenegger (105) never read, no interest
94. The mill on the Floss by George Eliot (54) maybe someday
95. The English patient by Michael Ondaatje (64) never read, no interest
96. Mason & Dixon by Thomas Pynchon (47) never read, no interest
97. Dubliners by James Joyce (78) never read, no interest
98. Les misérables by Victor Hugo (73) never read, no interest
99. The bonesetter's daughter by Amy Tan (56) never read, no interest
100. Infinite jest : a novel by David Foster Wallace (54) never read, no interest
101. Lord Jim by Joseph Conrad (53) never read, no interest
102. Beloved : a novel by Toni Morrison (77) never read, no interest
103. Persuasion by Jane Austen (82) read
     
104. A clockwork orange by Anthony Burgess (83) never read, no interest
105. The personal history of David Copperfield by Charles Dickens (69) maybe someday
106. Tropic of cancer by Henry Miller (54) never read, no interest

Home Education and Books

It is the time of year when my thoughts turn toward next school year, and all of the books we will need or want. I usually try to time my book purchases just after the arrival of our income tax refunds. I like to have everything in place before summer, so I can relax!

But things are different now than they were when my oldest began kindergarten five years ago. I have discovered "living books." And the library. And their book sales. And the swap sites. And LibraryThing. We are in a different home, and possibly moving again this year. We have a different income stream, which is sometimes a trickle. I now plan, acquire and manage my resources in a vastly different way than I did back then.

So I thought I would write up some posts on my whole Book Thing. I should come clean first and foremost and admit that I am a book junkie. I love to read. I love to buy books. I even love to sell them! I've made a nice, if small, bundle over the past nine years selling used books online. I even want to write one. I even have one started!

My boys love books. They both love to read. Hardly a day goes by that they don't read or are read to. Except maybe summer, when they play hard outdoors all day. That is just fine with me, too. My oldest wrote and illustrated an alphabet book for his brother, which I had published on LuLu.

My ever-patient husband says that our duplex is bursting at the seams with all of the books we own. They are starting to make him nervous. They are everywhere. We actually do have bookshelves in every single room in the house, including the hallways, and excepting only the foyer and the two bathrooms. And we are out of shelf space.

Pope John Paul II

We read this book in memory of our beloved JPII. I can't wait until this is a day on the church calendar with a Mass and everything!