Sunday Salon: Book Fair go bye-bye

Good morning friends! Even though I have been posting every day, I feel I have been away on a long journey, the journey being the Book Fair. Running this event requires most of my time the week leading up to it, and the week of. I absolutely love the look on the little ones' faces when they come into the fair for the first time. I remember all of the excitement I felt when I was their age, pouring over the catalog and prioritizing my reading "needs". Being a Catholic school, we also have a table of religious books, and I can't even tell you how my heart melted when I saw a little boy rejecting a Transformers book and begging for a children's Bible. That all being said, this is the fourth fair I have run and I'm ready to move on to a different challenge. It was with relief that I bid this whole business goodbye on Friday afternoon!

We are also ramping up for our Adult Literacy League "Reading Between the Wines" event on April 9. We had our last official meeting this week, and are solidifying all of the details. Believe it or not, but we have 60 author-signed books on the auction, thanks to all of you and your generosity!

My son also had a field trip to St. Augustine on Friday, and because I went on this trip with my daughter and life has to be fair, I took time off from the Book Fair to visit one of my favorite Florida cities, the oldest European-established city in the US in fact. I never tire of seeing the old coquina walls, the Castillo de San Marco, the ancient churches, shopping on St. George Street, the cobbled roads, and the Fountain of Youth. I had to leave the field trip early to finish up the Book Fair, but was totally worth it.

Unfortunately, while I was on the field trip, I received a text from my friend Julie (one of my high school friends that I cruised with last October) that a mutual friend from high school died of unknown causes on Thursday night. We had all gotten reacquainted through Facebook, and had been planning on getting together when I come up to Indiana this July. It is hard to even get my head around the death of a 43 year-old woman who should have had a lifetime ahead of her; someone who I had just been messaging on Facebook three days prior. May God bless her soul.

I fear my reading has been on the back burner for all of the above reasons. I am still reading "We Need to Talk About Kevin" by Lionel Shriver. It is dark, guys. It is genius, but at the same time like slogging through an underground sewer tunnel, and I just can't read it for long. With the reclaiming of my life next week, I hope to finish it and move on to a number of shorter books that my daughter has read and wants me to read so we can discuss. I am listening to "Their Eyes Were Watching God" by Zora Neale Hurston on audio, and am nearly finished. Ms. Hurston is one amazing author with a breathtaking gift, and am proud to call her a local author. I know they made this book into a TV movie, so I may do a Read the Book/See the Movie review. The kids and I have about a half a disc left on the 5th Harry Potter book, and am officially overdue to return the audio. I have renewed the maximum number of times, and just have to ride it out and pay my penance.

This morning I had to bid my parents goodbye, as they leave their winter home down here next door to us, and go back to Indiana. Life gets a whole lot harder when they are not around, that is for sure. It leaves me feeling a little melancholy.

I prepare myself for a tiny bit of normalcy next week...cleaning my disgustingly filthy house, preparing a proper meal of an evening, and regular exercise. It is also Holy Week, which is a very special time. On Thursday, the kids' begin their Spring Break as well. I'm really looking forward to all of it! Happy Palm Sunday!