Amy J. Bennett

******************NEW MOON SPOILERS******************

I finished New Moon last night.  And honestly?  Not nearly as good.  In fact, I could have skipped the whole thing.  I’m such an Edward fan that I couldn’t handle him not being in the book.  As mentioned in my previous post, I just couldn’t handle him leaving. I felt empty and it just wasn’t as good of a story without the two of them.  The romance part of romance novel went out the door.  Yes, she tried to take you to that place with Jac0b but they never got her there. I would have rather her jumped into it with Jac0b rather than danced around it for hundreds of pages.  And then, when Edward finally did come back, it was crazy action and hardly any interaction. I can tell it wasn’t nearly as good just because I had only ONE post-it note marking a good passage and it wasn’t even a quote from Edward or Bella.  That’s my new measuring stick…how many post-it notes are in the book at the end!

But, I do realize this book had a purpose to the story.  I’m just not so sure she couldn’t have done the whole thing in 100 pages instead of 600.  Here are a few things I’m happy we came out of from the book:

• We got to know  Jac0b.  I liked that Bella had him as a friend.
• We moved ahead with the werewolf storyline.  I did enjoy having a whole new monster to learn about.
• Edward left Bella and realized he couldn’t live without her.
• Edward asked her to marry him.
• The Voulturi forced Edward’s hand on turning Bella into a vampire.
• I enjoyed Alice and Bella together.

I guess that is a lot to expect in a few chapters. I don’t know, instead of enjoying every page, I felt like I was always reading to get to the good part and unfortunately there was never a heart-stopping moment like that for me.

I don’t have them much anymore but today was one of those days.  Where work was as busy as it possibly could be and Scott worked late.  In fact, it’s 10:52PM as I write this and I just STARTED jobs at work that are supposed to run an hour or two.  I’ll have to stay up and run a few other things after that.  It’s been that way all day.  So busy that at about 5 when the kids decided they were hungry RIGHT when I had an implementation at work, I was balancing chatting with about 5 people, making creamed peas mashed potatoes and fielding questions from two hungry kids.  It was just one of those days.

So I don’t have much to report from today except that I worked and snuck in some reading in between it all.  We did manage to get out to Wal-Mart for a quick trip and some ice cream on the way home.  I got mine extra big as a treat for myself.  I’m sure my scale will beg to differ in the morning.

And speaking of tomorrow morning, I had planned to sleep in a bit since I’m going to be up so late but Emma’s teacher caught me on Google Talk just a few minutes ago (yes, chatting with her teacher at 10:30pm is a little weird) to say she needed to reschedule for earlier.  So now I have to be at the school at 9:20.  I will still be able to sleep in more than normal since neither of the girls have school tomorrow but not nearly as much as I wanted.  Of course, with work so busy I probably didn’t have that luxury anyway.

New Moon and I are getting along better now.  It’s still not the same as the first yet everyone tells me to keep on pressing through…so I’m going to take advantage of the quiet here while I wait for these jobs to finish.  But I’m not complaining for an excuse to stay up and read…

******************TWILIGHT AND NEW MOON  SPOILERS******************

BEWARE OF FANTASTICAL RANTS ABOUT A BOOK

Ok, so last night I finally finished the partial Midnight Sun script.  I loved that.  I loved knowing what Edward was feeling and loved how so many things had happened that Bella had no idea of.  Which makes me dislike the first person in the rest of the books because hello?  Are we going to get a whole other set of books from Edward’s perspective?

Anyway, I moved on to New Moon last night.  I got about 120 pages into it up to where Mike lets her leave work early and she drives around town.  I read more this morning..to the part where Bella gets the bikes and takes them to Jac0b.

And ya’ll, I’m having trouble.  Edward’s gone and Bella is broken and that means I’m broken.  How could he leave like that?  Yes, he’s putting her needs before his but come on!  And what was with the “hallucinations” in Port Angeles?  Is he really being her vampire angel?  I feel a weird sense of loss along with Bella.  Stephenie would be happy I guess.

Because of a few small spoilers I’ve seen, I know this book is about Jac0b.  And as far as I’ve read, you can see it coming from a mile away..they’re going to get into a relationship.  Jac0b has been ready since we first saw him in Twilight.  And I just don’t know if I can go there.  Do I want to read a book where Bella is with another guy?  I know at some point Edward comes back.  And maybe Stephenie makes it easy and he saves her from some bike accident and they’re suddenly back together or maybe something happens to Jac0b and her and he slowly comes back or maybe the werewolves and the vampires fight it out in some final scene and Edward wins the fight and the girl. I don’t know.  I just don’t know if I want to go there.  I will because I know Edward and Bella find each other in the end.  But right now, my heart hurts and it’s hard to turn the pages.

Today I’m not feeling quite so overwhelmed.  I went into the office this morning last minute for a one on one meeting with my manager.  I thought maybe it was bad news but she just wanted to catch up and it was a nice lunch out.

I had to work late again this evening and actually still keeping an eye on one job.  Heather took the girls out for dinner and some shopping so I actually had time to spend on some of my “need to do list”.  Felt really good making some headway on that.

Scott and I are currently watching House and then Privileged is up next.  THEN I plan on reading more of Midnight Sun partial script.  I should be getting Eclipse tomorrow so I want to be ready 🙂

And so this isn’t a completely boring post…

Listening to Enya while coding for fun made me happy today.
Lexi crying for me when I left for work made me sad today.
Scott leaving towels in the girls dirty clothes AGAIN made me mad today.
My meeting with my boss made me nervous today.
Reading Midnight Sun made me feel excited today.

You may have noticed along with my mom that posts have been slimmer since I’ve been back from New York. I’m telling you, my world has been spinning since then! I have a list on a white board (ok, it’s green) that I should be doing but I can’t seem to scratch even one off the list. So what could I possibly be doing with my time?

1. Family/House/Work. These are obvious and a must. But I’ve been trying to do more cooking at home (that’s hit or miss. i haven’t eaten out since Friday though), trying to keep up with laundry (and doing pretty well, thanks. i’ve even taken up ironing lol), keep up with Emma’s school work and reading. Work has been INSANE the past two weeks with some testing going on. Wednesday night I worked until 7:30 and didn’t even make it to church. Every day it seems I’m working late. I finally gave up at 5 or 5:30 today and normally I quit around 4. That hour before dinner is when I catch up with the house from the day. I’m just glad Scott is off and on days right now so he’s up and around to help me out around that time. He really is so great to help me out around the house so much. We’d be lost without him!
2. Bible Study. 1.5 hr on Saturday and then daily keeping up with my assignments and video. This really shouldn’t be a chore but it has to fit in.
3. Twitter.com. I won’t lie. I spend some time keeping up with everyone.
4. One Tree Hill Blog. Yes, things have gotten easier but it still takes up time looking for information and posting. Mainly keeping an eye on the comments seem to be the thing that holds me back. It’s been getting nasty there lately. I joked that I had to put on my Mommy voice a time or two to get people to calm down.
5. PrivilegedNews.com. This site does not take me more than a few minutes a day but sometimes all I have is a few minutes and it gets my time to make a post.
6. Reading everyone else’s blogs.
7. Facebook. Again, only a few minutes here and there.
8. Here. But as noted, it’s been a little slack lately.
9. Emails. My goodness the emails seem to have grown. I adore emails and all the great comments I’ve been getting since getting back. I would take this over almost anything else but it does take time to read and reply. Don’t anyone dare quit commenting or emailing trying to help me.
10. TV. I’ve REALLY cut back on what I watch. Only one or MAYBE two shows a night. MUCH less than I had planned at the beginning of the season. But an hour or two a night is significant when I’m trying to get so much done. Thankfully you can do things WHILE watching TV.
11. Reading and obsessing over Twilight but that just started Saturday. It’s a good thing there are fifty-bagillion web sites already because I’d be all over that.
12. Couponing. This past week was busy with the KMart deals and all that jazz. And I haven’t blogged about it much, but I’m still going to CVS weekly.

Now the other stuff that I NEED to fit in are:

• My church’s web site NEEDS a new site soon because their current host is expiring soon and they’re not renewing. I’ve gone so far as downloading a template to use.
• Our church’s youth web site needs rehauled. I’ve done a few things on this but haven’t gotten far.
• My mom’s web site is in need of a few changes.
• Our friends are starting a church and just want a domain purchased right now but are “in the queue” to have a web site done.

Things I would WISH I could do:

• Buy that other web site that was offered to me.
• Volunteer at Emma’s school.
• Increase my volunteer time at the church. There are many things I’d like to get into.
• Read more.
• Shop more.
• Watch TV more.
• Go out with friends more.
• Travel more. *cough* Wilmington *cough*
• Catch up on movies

Obviously I can’t do all the things even on my “need to do” list. It’s impossible. And I know my mom wants to give me a speech about quitting stuff and making time and all that jazz. But I just want to be supermom and supergeek and superfriend and super-duper everything else and get everything even on my wish list done but it’s just not possible. I feel like I need 3 more of me to get it all done. And really? When I start to think about it, I just get overwhelmed and go see what everyone is doing on Twitter. Not helpful.

Seriously though, I’ve wanted to quit work so badly lately and just do all this stuff I love. Sometimes I think life is short! Bag it and do what you love! Then I think well..it does have 401K and benefits and this little thing called a paycheck and while we COULD live off Scott’s income and the supplemental I’m (temporarily) getting off of my sites, there’s a lot of that wish list stuff that might not happen while trying to adjust.

I don’t know. Even while writing this post I’ve been thinking I could have been working on something else. There’s always something else. I don’t know what the answer is or if I need an answer. Right now, I’m just in that drowning phase and just coming up to breathe for a moment.