this time last year....

i was filling and taping up moving boxes and getting ready for our big move from our cool, hip, urban loft to our not so hip, but beautiful home. i was doing this with a 16mo toddler and a busy body cat - both insisted on getting in the boxes marked fragile. :)

today, i was packing and taping up all the christmas decorations (they were put away in the basement, just not packed up & taped shut). the toddler is now 2y 3mo old and napping away. the cat is still trying to get in the box and eat the infidel tinsel. and i'm 14 weeks pregnant.

i can finally tell everybody. :) no, we don't know the gender but, we would like a boy - a healthy baby overall. kidzilla seems relatively aware of impending babyhood since she will say things like "i'm the big sister" or she will point to the smallish swell of my belly and say "baby". we went to my midwife visit and when she heard the heartbeat kidzilla looked up to me, puzzled and said "mommy? choo choo?"

so, as you can imagine the residency was difficult because i was having fatigue and morning sickness issues, but they seem to be falling away... slowly but surely... see, leave it to me to come up with some lame *ss excuse... ;)

i realize now that i'm suffering withdrawals from aca. it's been tough. i'm absolutely feening (sp?) i miss everyone, the camraderie, the workshops and even the solitude and the lizards very much. i finally received some emails from other associates and thankfully, it seems we're suffering from the same malady.

i'm slowly getting back into my routine here. the first week was odd. kidzilla had picked up some new habits, which may turn out to be temporary glitches in toddler programming. some things in the house were moved too. so, i was trying to find/re-appropriate them from hiding places, etc... i didn't write at all in the past week, much to my embarassment. i just needed a break. now, i'm ready to start again. i really have to get my studio back in order. i went thru it like a mad woman before i left for florida.

anyway, i wanted to post a reading list that jessica gave to us. also, at the time, she was reading "the royal family" by robert volmann (?) - which i kept stealing glances at, it looks SO good...

so, just in case you were looking for something to read:

Fiction:
selected fictions - jorge luis borges
one hundred years of solitude - gabriel garcia marquez
the autumn of the patriarch - gabriel garcia marquez
disgrace - j.m. coetzee
continental drift - russell banks
rule of the bone - russell banks
the power and the glory - graham greene
bear and his daughter - robert stone
a flag for sunrise - robert stone
dog soldiers - robert stone
interpreter of the maladies - jhumpa lahiri
charlie chan is dead 2 - an anthology of contemporary asian american fiction - jessica hagedorn
the anchor book of new american short stories - ben marcus
yellow - don lee
coming into slaughter - michael ondaatje
the collected works of billy the kid - michael ondaatje
jesus' son - denis johnson
look at me - jenniger egan
drown - junot diaz
kiss of the spiderwoman - manuel puig
folly - sabina murray
aunt julia and the scriptwriter - mario vargas llosa
beloved - toni morrison
yellowback radio broke down - ishmael reed
the mmor's last sigh - salman rushdie
the blind assasin - margaret atwood
three trapped tigers - guillermo cabrera infante
the bridegroom and other stories - ha jin
fake house - linh dinh

Nonfiction:
the gate - francois bizot
we wish to inform you that tomorrow we will be killed with our families - philip gourevitch
running in the family - michael ondaatje
news of a kidnapping - gabriel garcia marquez
seek - denis johnson
the heart that bleeds - anna guillermo prieto

ok, i'm starving. i have to go eat a chair leg or something...

btw - i just looked at david rakowski's website again (because he's one funny dude) and he actually posted a journal entry about the residency. there's pictures at the very end (in the fourth pic from the bottom i was sitting right across from ines (token beautiful argentinian blonde) and felipe (token hunky brazilian). guess i'm not signifigant enough to be pictured, eh, davy? ) click here.