What's Alicia been up to?

• I've been stuck at home for a month since Brian's car suddenly had engine failure (at ten o'clock at night while I was driving it, no less). We thought to replace it, but it seems used car prices have doubled in the past couple of years, so it's been in the shop since Wednesday with no word yet on its prognosis. But it's bad...very bad. Edited to add: for just a little over the amount we originally paid for the car, we will now have a repaired car. Uggh.
• Ethan has had a mild, but lingering stomach bug for nearly two weeks. Brian had it for about five days.
• My family was supposed to arrive on Sunday, but my Grandma's cardiologists are continually trying to kill her by putting her on new drugs to control high blood pressure brought on by ...new drugs and their accompanying side effects. She passed out again and is in the hospital. As soon as she fires the cardiologists and drops the new drugs (which, btw, is not just my opinion, but the internists' at the hospital as well), she should be fine. Hopefully she'll be released this morning. I really hate doctors!
• Oh, and my parents van had the newly replaced compressor go bad the day before they were supposed to leave, so that's been rereplaced too now. When it rains...
• Despite all of this, I'm not the least bit depressed.
• Partly because I'm in the middle of a very long, very torrid love affair - with my husband. Keeps life fun and interesting.
• I also read the Twilight series about the same time the car engine died. Stayed up three nights in a row to read the three books, getting my sister hooked on them too, in the process, then was totally obsessed with them for at least two weeks, reading all 1625 pages of them about five more times. This is the real reason I quit blogging - I was busy reading! Don't think I'd recommend them to the young adults they're marketed for, but if you're older a love a good romance that get an emotional grip on you, is well-written, and has great lines, this might be an unexpected pleasure for you too. I'm ranking it right up there with Romeo and Juliet and The Notebook. The last book in the series is due out August 2, and the first movie is coming in December.
• This Twilight hang-up resulted in my listening to Stephanie Meyer's playlists that go with her books, and becoming readdicted to music as well. I've found lots of new music to love as a result, and these days find me exploring new artist on youtube and organizing my favorites into playlists. I'm enjoying Secondhand Serenade, in particular, these days.
• I also ended up in a scramble to find some fiction half as good, so that I could quit reading the same books over and over. I reread some Francine Rivers and Lori Wick and a bunch of new books. Some were pretty good. After skimming through mostly non-fiction for the past few years and reading mostly just blogs for the past year or so, I've really enjoyed reading fiction and have read more books in the past month than I have in years (if you count the massive number of rereading I've been doing).
• Oh, and another Twilight side effect is the huge quantity of Twilight flair on facebook got me readdicted to facebook as well. Good grief. :^)
• We also celebrated Rosie's third birthday and our eleventh wedding anniversary this month. I'll get her birthday letter up soon. I've got to get her official pics too. And I know that I'm miserably behind on pics for the blog, so watch out - if I start I might not stop!
• We've had some other stuff going on as well that I'm not quite ready to share here yet. It was stressful for a time, but right now, at least, I feel peaceful about this unknown in my life.
• And, who knows if this will begin continuous blogging again or not. My fam is (probably) coming in tonight or tomorrow for the next couple of weeks, and then it's going to be a mad scramble to get my school year going (no, I'm not ready, I've been reading!)