And other stuff

Fun link, even if I don't know Dutch: http://producten.hema.nl/ Just sit and watch for a minute as it gets started :)

Another fun link: What I Will Do If I Am the Vampire. Also, related lists and comments on Smart Bitches. Yeah, I think we're burning out on vampire novels...

My mom's next door neighbor is due to have a baby at any minute now - with any luck there won't be a blizzard that day. The other karate mom is officially due in a week, but huge and uncomfortable and expecting the baby at any minute now - I got all excited when her dad showed up with her older daughter at karate yesterday, but she was at home resting.

And I got to show off DD at karate and talk to some other moms and dads - one of whom figures I'll be back in karate class in a month. Maybe, if it looks like DD will allow me to. The head teacher/manager of the school broke his toes while teaching and is hobbling around. So though I like the other teachers, we really miss Mr. G, who transferred to another school. DS2 is promoting to a big kid gold belt this Thursday. He has been in the "Little Samurai" class for nearly a year and has a white belt with a green stripe, so this mostly feels like a setback instead of a step forward, but I keep referring to it as a big kid belt and keep hoping that it helps - especially since there are a bunch of other former samurais in his class who are advancing with him.

Isabelle is still sleeping a lot. Not always when I'd like her to, of course. We had a rough night 2 nights ago and even last night was too interrupted up until about 1, but then she only woke once and briefly before waking up this morning. Then she was wide awake and I had to go to the chiropractor, so left her with Dh for about 45 minutes and it was a sad, sad thing with lots of noise, apparently. So when I got home I took her and fed her and she now has been conked out for a couple of hours.

And I am out of trashy books. I have a few more serious books, but no light, trashy reads. I have a Nora Roberts I bought and left in the car for when I am stuck somewhere, but DH has the car right now, so I don't even have that! It must be time for me to re-read something. I also just requested a huge quantity of romance novels from the library - Kleypas, Hern, and Howard because I've only read a couple of books by each and they weren't bad. Ringing endorsement there, faint praise indeed.

Much better than the historical novel I ended up - on a recommendation no less - within which the second son, who hadn't been trained to care for the huge family estate, inherited the land and the title when his brother died. Except the brother had a son, so I have absolutely NO idea why the author thought the son wouldn't inherit and the brother would, even though he was a minor at the time of his father's death. Probably the worst of it was that there were two novels in one book and the second was the heroine's sister from the first one and I swear that half of the second one was cut-and-pasted from the first (She was unfashionable and well-read, so they bought her some new clothes and taught her to flirt and all the men loved her! Though of course, it was mostly to make the man she was already in love with jealous! But then she (and her sister later) ran away back to her own estate because they thought it wasn't working after only about a week and having spent a fortune on new clothes! Then something traumatic happened and her truuuuue luuuuv saved her!). And yet, I was weirdly compelled to read to the end of both novels. I'm not exactly sprinting out to get more of Evelyn Richardson.

Huh. Going back to the Smart Bitches to find their A and B graded books. I need me some new authors.