2.5.2009

Slept soundly last night, perhaps because D gave me milk and a cookie before bed. A little Tryptophan never hurts. When I woke up I could barely catch a fragment of the dream I was having. I was in a house (not mine) with two other people and I can't remember who they were. There were bears outside the windows. I can't remember if they were brown bears or polar bears or what. I do have the impression that it was cold or snowy outside. The three of us went into the garage and there was a green, hard plastic, high-sided sleigh. It was huge, like the size of a mini-van. We opened the garage door and pushed it out into the street. I went around the side of the house (no clue where the bears went) to the front door and there was a Christmas wreath hung on it. That's all I can remember.

I am almost 200 pages into The Brothers Karamazov and I am loving it! Which is a huge shock to me. I thought it would be drudgery and that I would read it just so I could have a classic literature book on my list for this year, instead of all the modern fluff I tend to read. I was so wrong about it. I've just completed 'book 3' and it was non-stop action and drama. I was actually holding my breath for some of the page turns. I thought I came from a dysfunctional family.... the Karamazovs take the cake. Fyodor is an awful father, awful. I can see why someone knocks him off. Where I'm at in the book he's still alive and I'm ready for him to be dead. I know that's terrible of me to say, but the man is horrid! My favorite brother right now is Aleksei, the baby. Although Dimitri, the eldest is interesting too. I have no affection for Ivan. It's funny, when I was speaking about him to D last night, D said 'Is he the middle child?' I couldn't believe D had pegged him right on. Dostoyevsky has made an impression on me. I'm almost ready to say that I like his writing better than Dumas's, quite a statement for me. We'll see if I still feel that way after I finish the rest of the book.