I’m nearing the end of five whole days off in a row, and I feel fabulous.\u00c2\u00a0 Rested, refreshed, intellectually reinvigorated.\u00c2\u00a0 And we’ve even had TWO social engagements in the last five days – huge for us homebodies.\u00c2\u00a0 (I don’t count Jim’s band rehearsals as social engagements, since I’m not part of that, but he did have about three band meetings\/rehearsals.)<\/p>\n
The best part of the last five days is that I had time and space and energy to read.\u00c2\u00a0 A lot.\u00c2\u00a0 I read Blue Balliett’s Chasing Vermeer <\/em>and The Calder Game <\/em>(I’ll get to The Wright Three<\/em> when I find it at the used book store like the others), Joan Bauer’s Peeled<\/em>, various magazine articles, and am starting The Prophet of Yonwood <\/em>by Jeanne DuPrau.\u00c2\u00a0 [I’m a slow reader, folks, as I’ve stated before, so this is a lot of books for me to have gotten through while housecleaning and doing laundry and shoveling 10 inches of snow and partying with friends…]\u00c2\u00a0 Only one of these books is for a book group (Peeled<\/em>), and I’ve actually been wanting to read it, anyway, so it didn’t feel like an assignment.<\/p>\n One of the oddities of my job as a children’s librarian is that I need to have read a lot of books, yet that reading can’t really happen in my work hours.\u00c2\u00a0 And let’s face it, often our off-work hours are filled with mundanities like laundry and scooping litter boxes, and don’t leave much time for wonderful things like reading.\u00c2\u00a0 So, in an odd way, though I read these books for pleasure, I also feel like all of this reading was for work, too.\u00c2\u00a0 Now when a child or parent asks me about Chasing Vermeer<\/em>, I can actually speak with some authority on the topic, not the usual “It’s gotten great reviews.”\u00c2\u00a0 I’ll never be able to read all of the books that I order for the library, but I’d like to aim for a higher percentage than I’ve had time for recently.<\/p>\n So it’s been a truly lovely five days.\u00c2\u00a0 And tomorrow I’m back to my usual crazy schedule, working full time and tutoring two nights a week, though the Italian class is over now, which gains me a bit more reading time.\u00c2\u00a0 But I’ll be going back to that schedule with renewed energy and vitality, and I’m psyched.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m nearing the end of five whole days off in a row, and I feel fabulous.\u00c2\u00a0 Rested, refreshed, intellectually reinvigorated.\u00c2\u00a0 And we’ve even had TWO social engagements in the last five days – huge for us homebodies.\u00c2\u00a0 (I don’t count Jim’s band rehearsals as social engagements, since I’m not part of that, but he did … Continue reading Vacation! And reading!<\/span>