The Jane Austen Project

Despite my claim that I am an avid reader and lover of Jane Austen, I have read surprisingly few of her books. It's quite sad, and I am embarrased to admit that I have seen more movies based on Austen's books than actually read the books themselves. Thus begins the Jane Austen Project.

My inspiration came from the "Julie/Julia Project" written by Julie Powell. It is a memoir of her journey through Mastering the Art of French Cooking Parts I and II. She chronicles her decision to begin the project, the struggles and triumphs she encountered a long the way, and the ultimate fame she reached with her blog, book, news stories and now major motion picture.

I am not trying to achieve fame (obviousely), but the idea of having a project for life and for blogging sounded fun to me. Especially one that involves my biggest hobby, reading. I have shelves of books both read and unread. On those shelves are the following Jane Austen novels: Emma, Sense & Sensibility, Mansfield Park, Persuasion, and of course Pride & Prejudice. P&P is an all time favorite, and I read all but the last 1/4 of Emma before loosing the book and just now getting around to buying a new copy.

As I was reading a cute novel this summer about an Austen loving English Professor called, Jane Austen Ruined My Life, I decided its high time to stop being an Austen fan without having read all of her novels!

So on September 1, my journey begins. I will read each Austen novel in the order published and blog about my literary journey. I am no English major so I can't promise that my thoughts will be anything worth reading or original, but I think this hobby/project of sorts will be a fun journey for me.

Now, I believe this is the order of the books, if I am wrong and you are reading this AK, please correct me:
Sense & Sensibility, Pride & Prejudice, Mansfield Park, Emma, Northanger Abbey (need to buy that one!), and Persuasion.

I plan to skip over P&P for now and possibly reread it again at the end.

Wish me luck!

No Nap Noah

Noah won't nap. Again. As a new parent this has been the bane of my parental existence thus far. The source of most of my parenting stress. Yes, I understand how this must sound to parents of tweens or teens, but those people are not reading my blog, and I am a firm believer in "it's all relative". As you may notice from my profile, I am not Babywise and I hate CIO. Even though I do agree that letting your baby cry is sometimes the only way, it has rarely worked for Noah. I won't go into all the details, but at this point we have decided it is not what works for our family.
That said, I have stressed about sleep, if I am doing it right, teaching him how to self soothe, if he is getting enough and on and on and on. I own 6 sleep books, read articles online and stress myself into a mess about this one thing. But why? I have an extremely happy and healthy baby. He may not take 2, 2-3 hour naps a day or sleep through the night, but once again he is happy and healthy. Rarely cranky or fussy and developing well. Babies aren't robots, and in my opinion, no matter what Babywise says, the same formula does not work for all of them. Noah may be a short napper and a bad sleeper but there are far more horrible things that he could be. This is what I try to convince myself of on mornings like this where I have spent an hour and a half trying to get him to nap and finally give up, letting him crawl all over the house and essentially ignoring him because I am at my parenting wits end at the moment. Praise God for Baby Einstein and strong coffee.
Ok, Noah is now trying to scale the fireplace so its time for me to sign off.

Purple Walls

Because I tend to be a conventional play by the rules person in most aspects of life, I often feel like I have to be that way all the time. Even when I don't want to be. There are small things I want to do. Ways I want to rebel against who I am, or who people think I am. I hate having to make decisions based on what is practical all the time. I want to paint my house bright colors even if it makes the resale value less and I may hate the colors 2 years, or 2 months, down the road. I want to go out and buy a puppy because my baby loves them, and not think through all the financial and daily responsibilities. I want to name my daughter Ava, even if everyone else is doing it. I want to drink alcohol at lunchtime if I feel like it and cookies at breakfast (which by the way I am doing right now). I am dyyying to get a tattoo and another piercing, even though I paid $40 to get my nose pierced and took it out the next day. I want to paint even though I suck at it and have no idea what I'm doing. I want to be open about the fact that I have only voted democrat among my conservative Christian family and friends.
I hate that people are always assuming or telling me that I have to be a certain way. Maybe I'm not that way. Maybe I am. But either way I just want to be free to be who I am and do what I want to do even if that's paint the walls purple when I hate purple.

Writing for Writing's Sake

This blog is an experiment in writing for writing's sake. An outlet for the creativity that I keep inside. As of yet that is the only purpose. I have no hopes for a readership (even though I am reading the Julie/Julia project right now and it is tempting to want some blogging fame). This is simply a place to write. But I do hope that the possibility of even one reader will be my inspiration to finish what I start instead of having all these thoughts jumbled up in my head, a bunch of empty notebooks laying around my house, and a of lists and barely started stories on my computer. I also think that hitting that little orange button that says "Publish" will give me some sort of feeling that my thoughts are out there in the world and not locked away in my brain and on my bookshelves.
So cyberspace, enjoy!