Ladybugs & Stinkbugs

Get 9 free audiobook MP3s from Barnes & Noble (ends May 16th) | Gizmo's Freeware

Follow this link to download 9 free audiobooks. I tried it, and it really is free. Downsides: you do have to enter a credit card number (even though they don't actually charge you anything), and you have to set up a Barnes & Noble account. Still, they don't charge you anything, and there are nine actual books:

"The Babysitter's Code" (short stories)
by Laura Lippman
Well known for her popular series of mysteries starring the fearless Tess Monoghan, Laura Lippman has won every major mystery award, from the Anthony to the Agatha.


"Super Goat Man" (short stories)
by Jonathon Lethem
Jonathan Lethem has a talent for bending literary genres. He has been entertaining readers since 1994's Gun, with Occasional Music, a debut novel that contained all the ingredients of his future career as a writer: science fiction, pulp detective noir, westerns, and award-winning coming-of-age stories.


"Best New Horror" (short stories)
by Joe Hill
Joe Hill is the author of the New York Times bestselling novel Heart-Shaped Box, the award-winning collection, 20th Century Ghosts, and a critically acclaimed comic book series, Locke & Key.


"Great Day: An Unabridged Short Story from Armageddon in Retrospect"
by Kurt Vonnegut
The first and only collection of unpublished works by Kurt Vonnegut since his death-a fitting tribute to the author, and an essential contribution to the discussion of war, peace, and humanity's tendency toward violence.


"Fathers: An Unabridged Story from The View from Castle Rock"
author?
Alice Munro is hardly the typical writer of love stories. Throughout her more than fifty-year career, she has never pandered to an audience used to happy endings and perfect relationships. Instead, she writes with a maturity and honesty that reveals the true nature of love in all its heartbreaking complexity.


"Truth or Dare"
by Elizabeth Berg
Elizabeth Berg is the New York Times bestselling author of many novels, including Dream When You're Feeling Blue, We Are All Welcome Here, The Year of Pleasures, The Art of Mending, Say When, True to Form, Never Change, and Open House, which was an Oprah’s Book Club selection in 2000. Durable Goods and Joy School were selected as ALA Best Books of the Year, and Talk Before Sleep was short-listed for the ABBY Award in 1996. The winner of the 1997 New England Booksellers Award for her body of work, Berg is also the author of a nonfiction work, Escaping into the Open: The Art of Writing True. She lives in Chicago.


"Ysrael"
by Junot Diaz
Dominican-American writer Junot D�az has spun the heartbreak and loneliness of the immigrant experience into literary gold with memorable stories of marginalized outsiders caught between two cultures.

"Merrano of the Dry Country"
by Louis L'Amour
When Miguel Merrano first came to Mirror Valley, the land was green and lush . . . and off limits to Mexicans. Ranchers such as Tom Drake and Joe Stangle tried to drive Merrano out, to fence him out; and when we warned them that greed and overgrazing would ruin their land, they refused to listen.

Now Merrano's predictions have come true. Mirror Valley is so dry it's about to blow away. The cattle are hollow-ribbed and dying. And the ranchers are broke . . . flat broke. Only Merrano's ranch is still thriving. As the ranchers watch him pay for goods in gold and sell his cattle at a mighty profit, their hatred grows and festers . . . until they draw their guns in a desperate act that will pit daughter against father, friend against friend – an act that could tear the valley apart forever.


"The Adventures of Tom Sawyer"
by Mark Twain

Tom Sawyer is the classic adventure story of a boy growing up in a fictional Missouri river town.

Drawing from his own experience, Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clements) violates the rules of the times and creates a novel of boyhood without the preaching common in other boy's novels of this time.

First published in 1876, Tom Sawyer introduced to everyone those memorable characters: Tom Sawyer, Huckleberry Finn, Injun Joe, and Becky Thacher. Tom Sawyer, as a character, went on to appear in two more books and in Huckleberry Finn.

I haven't reviewed any of these books, so I can't vouch for them. I've included as much info as was on B&N's site, so listen carefully! :)

Story #1
Story #2

Told you I have a lot of stories.

The next treasure that came out of our Big Box of Junk was a Rescue Heroes remote-controlled car. Again, Andrew fell in love with this car. I did manage to actually tag this one and put it out to be sold. However, during the entire garage sale, every time someone could come up to our tables and peruse our items, he would be sitting on my lap whispering, “Please don’t buy it. Please don’t buy it. Please don’t buy it.”

See, I had made the mistake of telling him that, if no one had bought it by noon, then we would keep it. He spent the next two hours coming up to me, putting his hands on my cheeks, and hollering, “Is it the noon yet?!” “No,” I patiently responded. Each. And. Every. Time.

(He got the toy.)

So, you’re probably wondering what the result of all this hard work was. Well, they kids made $10.00. That’s not too bad, considering their weekly pay is about $2/week. Matthew, however, was disappointed. He said he was expecting about $80. Matthew is always my optimistic one.

Just to make sure you don't get entirely bored with all these stories, I'll break them up a little bit. It may take a couple of posts to get through. If you missed #1, here it is.

In pulling out stuff to sell, I came across a huge box that we haven't unpacked since we moved in over a year and a half ago. Evidently we didn't need any of the stuff, so I told the kids that, NO MATTER WHAT, we weren't keeping anything that we found in this box.

(Tip: Parents, NEVER use the phrase "no matter what." It just gets you into trouble.)

One of the firsts 'treasures' that we found in this box was a set of bowling pins for kids. This is exactly what has been missing from our house, incidentally. The volume level hasn't been high enough for me since 2003, when we had a screaming baby crying 24/7. Oh, how I've missed that. Now, though, the volume level has doubled, so I think we can be content.

Back to the story.

Andrew desperately wanted these bowling pins. I (patiently) explained to him that we had decided not to keep anything out of this box. We were selling it. He was getting money. What was he saving for? He thought for several seconds. Literally. Several. In a row. :) He finally said, "I'm saving for bowling pins."

Great.

Since it would be incredibly heartless (and stupid) of me to sell the bowling pins and give Andrew money to BUY bowling pins, I gave in. I know; I'm a sucker. So, he got the bowling pins out, and the three of them spent the next hour working hard setting up the garage sale bowling. As loudly as possible.

Does anybody out there have some ear plugs I could borrow?

I hate garage sales. No, to quote my sister, Leanne, "I don't just hate garage sales. I loathe them." Me, too, Leanne.

My son, however, does not share my disdain for this American ritual. He is saving for Nintendo DS, and wanted to supplement his "income" by selling some of his toys. So, he wrote 13 flyers (I counted) and duct-taped them up around the neighborhood. They said, "Downs Toy Shop. Opening Saturday, 8-12, All Toys $1." THEN, he decided to tell me what he had done.

What the heck, I thought. They're already up. So I put an ad up on www.southeasttexas.com, and we pulled out a bunch of stuff I've been meaning to take to Goodwill anyway. I told the kids if they would 'work' then they could split the profits.

It's hilarious to me how kids view the world. The things that they cherish are the things the world calls "worthless", but, since they don't know this, they assume that everyone puts as much value on their treasures as they do. They also don't mind sharing this information. The combination is great fun to watch.

As they are pulling out things for the garage sale, there is an interesting mix of junk (trash that they don't want anymore, but, hey, maybe we can make some money off of it!) and things that they think are valuable and are SURE will sell for hundreds of dollars (a baseball bat, all the pictures they have drawn in the last 400 years, etc.). They think these things are valuable because Mom and Dad have told them they are valuable for the last 6-8 years. Who knew they took us seriously? :)

Annie even made a card for Granny, and put it in the pile. She said, "Granny won't even have to pay for it," but it was still going in the garage sale pile. She wanted Granny to find something for free!

I have TONS more stories, and I'll be sharing them over the next few posts. Stay tuned!