Starting a New Blog for Single Mothers attending college or graduate school!

Please visit my new blog over at www.singlemomuniversity.blogspot.com

I have not been blogging on here at all since going back to school. I am trying to get back to blogging though and plan to use this site for blogs on assorted topics. If you are a single mom in college or if you were at one time, please contact me. I would love to hear about your experience.

Thanks for reading!

Austen Addicted

I took a required English course last semester in which we read Sense and Sensibility, a book I intensely enjoyed. I decided to read the rest of Austen’s books and ordered them off of half.com. I began with Pride and Prejudice and have fallen absolutely head over heels in love with Mr. Darcy and the entire story. This is now my new favorite book and I would argue one of the best stories ever written. It has inspired a plethora of sequels written by other authors in addition to several miniseries and movies.

In the future I intend to review all of them in addition to the sequels that have been written by other authors. Austen died very young and only got to write six books in her lifetime, two of which were published after her death, posthumously. To the disappointment of P&P fans everywhere who would have loved a sequel written by Austen herself.

Get ready for Lost

Lost premieres next Wednesday (Jan. 21st 2009) on ABC starting with a recap of all four seasons at 8pm followed by the two hour season premiere. I just finished watching last seasons “enhanced” finale and am just as excited as ever.

This weeks TV Guide has an interview with the shows executive producers, Damon Lindelof and Carleton Cuse. The boys give us ten essential episodes to re-watch to get ready for the big event.

I am about to cuddle up with Season 4, a Christmas gift I gave myself, and relive last years greatest hits. I have been so busy this year that I have hardly had time to keep up with the blogs and do any of the re-watching I intended to do. At least there is one thing to look forward to after Christmas and New Years are over and the bleak of winter is staring us in the eye… the return of Lost!!

Count down to the Shield Series Finale….

The Shield is one of my all time favorite television series, and I am counting down the days until the finale! After Tuesday night’s episode I scoured the internet for a spoiler leaked by one of the many critics who has screened the last two episodes with Shawn Ryan recently, but found nothing. I guess I should be able to wait until Tuesday but after watching this week’s episode I did not want to wait.

I can’t believe that Vic ratted out Ronnie like that! The entire episode I was screaming at my television sign it, just sign it. Then we he did it, I really felt bad for Ronnie. CCH Pounder said that Vic gets what he deserves in the end. When I heard her say that I assumed that meant he went to jail. Now I am thinking maybe he gets killed during this drug bust. Maybe the ICE chick kills him? Did Vic confess to the crimes that he did for her, did he mention how he helped hide her file? Wasn’t that a crime? Maybe she will have to give herself up in order to bust him, and that will be how he ends up “getting what he deserves.”

I guess I will just have to wait until Tuesday to find out. If anybody does hear how it ends, let me know though.

Series Finale airs Tuesday Novemeber 24, 2008

Anti-war Rally draws a crowd at Umass Boston

Student War Vets speak out against the war in Iraq

 

Students hovered nearby as an anti-war group that included many students who have served the US in Iraq. The chant was “Money for jobs in education. NOT for war and occupation!”

This came as the union that organizes the majority of the faculty and staff of UMass Boston has been without a contract for more than six months. In this weeks Mass Media, UMB’s student newspaper, union officials alleged that employees told them they were forced to take personal days before a pay day because they could not afford the gas and/or parking. The article further stated that a mail clerk paid at the starting rate will pay over four percent of his salary to park on campus while working.

This Saturday is the six year anniversary of the date congress passed the legislation that allowed Bush to declare war in Iraq a few months later. They are having a huge benefit concert and rally on Boston Common starting at Noon on Saturday. All are welcome to attend. If I didn’t have children I would most definitely be there.

As a single mother, seeing the money we are willing to spend on a useless war, while a mom like me has to struggle everyday just to provide for my children while I am working my ass off to ensure a better life for my family than the one we are currently living, enrages me. Education is so vital to self sufficiency.  If we made it the priority it deserves to be. This country would be a much better, stronger nation.

Sit-ups

Every time I get down on life, my kids sit me up again. Yesterday Tabitha literally sat up for the first time. There is nothing like the feeling you get when your little one accomplishes something for the first time. You find the joy in the little things.

Although 8 months old may not set any records for baby sit-ups, but she does excel in other areas, like food. She has been holding the bottle herself since five months, and wanting to feed herself table food for the last month. My son sat up at six months, but he couldn’t eat anything chewable without gagging while simultaneously turning blue until about 15 months. He still won’t eat anything besides chicken nuggets and pizza at four and a half.

As a single mother, its hard when my kids do something for the first time and I have no one to share it with. Or rather no one who is going to be as excited as I am. Now that I have two of them though its easier. Patrick and I take delight in Tabitha’s every first. He was with me for most of my prenatal visits and he was downstairs in the hospital’s daycare when I was upstairs having my cesearean. He met her when she was an hour old.

Patrick, 4, Tabitha 6 months, and Me

Darleton on Jimmy Kimmel

You can check out the interview on www.youtube.com, I have been trying to embed it here but for some reason its not working. I will try again in the morning.

Anyway, I thought this was a great interview. Although Terrence Howard might have interrupted a few times, when it seemed like the guys were about to throw us a bone. I doubt answers will be given up anywhere else but “the mother ship” as they have previously stated.
For those of you who are interested, Jimmy Kimmel got a lot more questions answered in the written interview that appeared in last week’s TV Guide and can be found at www.tvguide.com.

Initial Thoughts on Tonight’s Lost Episode “Something Nice Back Home”

Tonight’s episode of Lost was pretty cool, maybe not the best episode of the season but still definitely a good one. What I most liked about the episode were the revealing flash forwards, it’s like more pieces of the puzzle are now being filled in. In a show that answers questions with more questions, this has been a long time coming. Although we still don’t have any definitive answers, it’s definitely a step in the right direction. Much like last week’s episode where we were given a couple of solid pieces of the cake– well as solid as it gets for Lost anyway–this episode continued with the same trend. 
This week’s flash forwards depicted a much happier peaceful time, set sometime after Kate’s court acquittal and sometime before Jack’s meltdown on the tarmac in the season three finale “Through the looking glass.” Back on the island we began to understand how Jack and Kate might end up together back home, while Juliet performs an emergency appendectomy on Jack. Jack insists upon Kate’s presence in the operating tent even though she has no medical training, as Juliet points out. It’s clear Jack wants her there for other reasons.

One of the most unexpected moments in tonight’s episode came post surgery in a scene where Kate comes into the operating tent to see how an apparently anesthetized Jack is doing. After assuring her he will make a full recovery Juliet decides to tell Kate about her and Jack’s recent kiss. In a show where things like that are never acknowledged. Jack is professing his love to Kate after he watched her do the nasty with Sawyer, and has sucked face with Juliet moments before. It was refreshing to shed some reality on the situation. After telling Kate that the kiss wasn’t for her that it was just a test for Jack to see if he was still in love with “someone else.” Kate responds by thanking her, dramatic pause, and then “thank you for fixing him.” Then the real twist came after an obviously chipper Kate bounces out of the tent, and Juliet looks over at Jack and says: “I know you are awake.” A very groggy Jack tells her thanks.

 There is a lot of thanking going on, it gets a little muddled and who really knows what anyone is really thankful for. If I had to hazard a guess it would be that Jack is thankful that Kate seems to be welcoming his advances instead of shacking up back at the barracks or in the tent with Sawyer. Kate is happy that she has two of the hottest guys on the island in her back pocket and that Juliet can now eat her dust.  In reality Sawyer is on to her shit, and she will never get the most useful and sexy man on the island future predicting Desmond. And Juliet can avoid this crazy love triangle all together, and free herself up for when Desmond gets back or maybe once she throws Kate in the copter she can make her move on Sawyer. Whatever the case maybe she knows that before long Jack will be riding across the world on a regular basis trying to get back to her island, growing beards and popping Percocet whenever he thinks about her. And hey maybe all this Jater/Skater shit is just enough to make her want to puke on her shoes and she wants those two to ride off in the sunset and leave her alone.

As much as I hope that Juliet can be a guy and just not care about the whole thing. She is a girl and her comment to Jack about I know your awake, would indicate that she wanted him to know that she knew he used her. One talent all of us women have is the ability to lay a major guilt trip on a man. The more I think about it, I think that Juliet saw the light tonight when Jack insisted on having Kate there for the operation. She then wanted to make it clear to both of them that she wasn’t going to play second fiddle or be Jack’s rebound girl.

Anyway that’s my take on that drama, I am sure there is much more to delve into in this episode and I am looking forward to rewatching tomorrow on abc.com. Team Locke tonight’s b-story definitely was a lot weaker than it could have been. In a lot of ways I feel like what they were doing was more interesting than watching Jack get a minor surgery that we knew he was going to recover from and end up with Kate anyway.

Probably the most intriguing part of the flash forward was the mysterious errand she was doing for Sawyer and the fact that Jack made such a big deal about Sawyer choosing to stay on the island and him being the one who saved her and brought her here. I guess Jack has a habit of saving his women. First Sarah and now Kate, and I guess he sort of saved Juliet from the others too.

Well I am sure this is riddled with inconsistencies and typos as it is one am and I have to be up in four hours. I am off to bed. Just wanted to get this posted in a timely manner, I will post something more coherent tomorrow for sure. Good night all!

 

Hello world!

So I have started a new blog, one that I actually will want the world to see. I already have a livejournal account, that I honestly wouldn’t want anyone who actually knew me to read, most of the time.

I love writing! Like most writers, I never want anyone else to see anything I have written, which makes it difficult to achieve my goal of writing for a living. This blog will hopefully be a way to get me over that.

The title of my blog is a shout out to my favorite television show Lost. True fans need no explanation. For those of you not familiar with the show I feel like the title works anyway. I will definitely be blogging about Lost, but also hope to cover a variety of other topics pertinent to my life.

I am a twenty-nine-year old single mother. I have a son, Patrick who is four and a daughter, Tabitha who was born in September 2007. I love writing, reading, and being a mother. I also have a great appreciation for comedy, movies, and television.

I am looking forward to this blogging opportunity and encourage comments and feedback.