The Period Diaries

Let me start by saying that any men that happen to read me, may want to skip ahead to the next paragraph.  You've been warned.  Apparently the title of this entry should be the sole basis of this blog, seeing as how I am again on Day 1 and the last time I wrote anything here was Day 1 of my last cycle.  Also, I should have checked here to see when I last had my period because then I wouldn't have been freaking out for the last 4 days thinking I was late when I wasn't.  Oops.   Maybe my period makes me more introspective? 

Ok, now that that is out of the way.

Things haven't really gotten any better since I last wrote.  I'm still unemployed (stupid, sucky job market), and now in addition to losing my house, my car was also the victim of my lack of money.

My daughter and I officially moved into my parents' house on Tuesday.  While I'm sooo grateful that they had 2 extra bedrooms and the willingness to deal with us living with them, UGH - I'm 34 and LIVING WITH MY PARENTS.  Additionally, they have THREE dogs, all of which I'm allergic to so - you know - fun times.

Hmmm....what else is new?  My (now old) landlords have turned into complete psychos through all of this.  Granted, we had to break the lease, however we could have been douchebags and let them evict us, or at least stayed for the month's worth of security deposit that we put down initially but we didn't.  Additionally, we left the house in excellent condition.  It took a few more days than we'd planned on, seeing as how I had to move from a house to 2 bedrooms (lots of stuff got thrown away) but overall, we were very good tenants to them.  We were NEVER late on rent, took care of the house, made sure it was pretty much ready to rent again upon our moving out, etc..,

Well, we were these particular landlords' first tenants ever and, so, I don't think they realize just how good they had/have it with us because they're doing the following:

1)  Keeping our $1000 security deposit.  Which, fine, whatever, we broke the lease.

2)  Charging us an additional $33 per day over Aug. 1st that we needed to get everything out of the house and completely clean from top to bottom.  Another fine, whatever, technically they're keeping our security deposit which should cover all of August but, be assholes if you want.

3)  Charging us $60 to have the dumpster emptied 2x due to all the things we had to throw away.

4)  Charging us extra to have the bathroom floor recaulked.  Isn't this supposed to come out of the SECURITY DEPOSIT?

5)  Charging us to have the front doorknob replaced, due to the door swelling due to the summer heat.  Um, what?  If you're going to do this - again - isn't this what a SECURITY DEPOSIT is for?

I could probably go on and on but it's really boring and infuriating and just one more thing to worry about.

So, yeah, I guess you could say that I've officially hit rock bottom..... lost job (check), lost house (check), lost car (check).   Right now, the only reason I know which way is up is that it is exactly opposite from which point I'm looking.

And on that note, a book list:

Key
1) Bold the books you have already read
2) Italicize the books you intend to read
3) Personally added: Notes in parentheses next to note-worthy titles.
4) THE FIVE PEOPLE YOU MEET IN HEAVEN SHOULD NOT BE ON THIS LIST.

***********************

1) Pride and Prejudice by Jane Austen
2) The Lord of the Rings by J. R. R. Tolkien
3) Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
4) Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling (I've only read 2 of the series but I'm bolding this anyways, so there.) 
5) To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee 
6) The Bible
7) Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
8) Nineteen Eighty Four by George Orwell
9) His Dark Materials by Philip Pullman
10) Great Expectations by Charles Dickens (I can't stand Charles Dickens.)
11) Little Women by Louisa May Alcott
12) Tess of the D'Urbervilles by Thomas Hardy
13) Catch 22 by Joseph Heller 
14) Complete Works of Shakespeare (Not his complete works, but enough to make bolding this only a partial lie)
15) Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
16) The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien
17) Birdsong by Sebastian Faulks
18) Catcher in the Rye by JD Salinger
19) The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger (this is my favorite book of all time!)
20) Middlemarch by George Eliot
21) Gone With The Wind by Margaret Mitchell
22) The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald 
23) Bleak House by Charles Dickens
24) War and Peace by Leo Tolstoy
25) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams (I'm guessing the movie doesn't count?)
26) Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh
27) Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28) Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck
29) Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll
30) The Wind in the Willows by Kenneth Grahame
31) Anna Karenina by Leo Tolstoy 
32) David Copperfield by Charles Dickens
33) Chronicles of Narnia by CS Lewis
34) Emma by Jane Austen
35) Persuasion by Jane Austen
36) The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe by CS Lewis
37) The Kite Runner by Khaled Hosseini
38) Captain Corelli's Mandolin by Louis De Bernieres
39) Memories of a Geisha by Arthur Golden
40) Winnie the Pooh by AA Milne
41) Animal Farm by George Orwell
42) The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
43) One Hundred Years of Solitude, Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Beautiful. Perfect.)
44) A Prayer for Owen Meaney by John Irving
45) The Woman in White by Wilkie Collins
46) Anne of Green Gables by LM Montgomery
47) Far From The Madding Crowd by Thomas Hardy
48) The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood (2nd favorite book of all time!)
49) Lord of the Flies by William Golding
50) Atonement by Ian McEwan 
51) Life of Pi by Yann Martel (Own it; I hear it's just brilliant.)
52) Dune by Frank Herbert
53) Cold Comfort Farm by Stella Gibbons
54) Sense and Sensibility by Jane Austen
55) A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth
56) The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57) A Tale Of Two Cities by Charles Dickens (this is the only Dickens book I like)
58) Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
59) The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time by Mark Haddon
60) Love In The Time Of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61) Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
62) Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov
63) The Secret History by Donna Tartt
64) The Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold
65) Count of Monte Cristo by Alexandre Dumas
66) On The Road by Jack Kerouac
67) Jude the Obscure by Thomas Hardy
68) Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding 
69) Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie
70) Moby Dick by Herman Melville (Does it count if I have TRIED to read this book several times but make it like 2 pages in and die of boredom?)
71) Oliver Twist by Charles Dickens
72) Dracula by Bram Stoker
73) The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
74) Notes From A Small Island by Bill Bryson
75) Ulysses by James Joyce
76) The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
77) Swallows and Amazons by Arthur Ransome
78) Germinal by Emile Zola
79) Vanity Fair by William Makepeace Thackeray
80) Possession by AS Byatt
81) A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens
82) Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell
83) The Color Purple by Alice Walker
84) The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro
85) Madame Bovary by Gustave Flaubert
86) A Fine Balance by Rohinton Mistry
87) Charlotte's Web by EB White
88) The Five People You Meet In Heaven by Mitch Albom
89) Adventures of Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
90) The Faraway Tree Collection by Enid Blyton
91) Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
92) The Little Prince by Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93) The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks
94) Watership Down by Richard Adams
95) A Confederacy of Dunces by John Kennedy Toole
96) A Town Like Alice by Nevil Shute
97) The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98) Hamlet by William Shakespeare
99) Charlie and the Chocolate Factory by Roald Dahl
100) Les Miserables by Victor Hugo

Not bad - 35 out of 100 - apparently the average person has only read 6 on this list so - yay for me!