Sunday Salon: Mom's Day Off

Good morning and Happy Mother's Day!!! I am waking up just a tad fuzzy this morning after last night's celebration of Polish food with friends. Hunter's stew made with venison, elk and pheasant, pierogies covered in butter and bacon, apple/carrot salad, kielbasa, Polish beer...total gluttony. I would have taken a picture, but we consumed it before I even thought about it. Anyway, besides my birthday, this is the one day a year I get a pass to sit and do nothing. Later this morning, my husband, my kids and I will go to a Mother's Day brunch at the club, then I will maybe read and nap by the pool, then (drumroll please) a girlfriend and I will go see The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo. I haven't been this excited about a movie in a long time. It's going to be a great day, I can just feel it!

The week was exhausting and everyone has been cranky. There was something going on every night. My daughter has a serious attitude problem. My kids are routinely trying to kill each other. Headaches are involved. But as the school year comes to a close, things will slowly wrap up and in a couple of weeks, the only thing we should have to worry about are finals and preparing for our summer vacation. In the meantime though, tensions are high. Do any of you go through this? It kind of feels like the last couple weeks of pregnancy. You just want. it. over.

On Thursday evening, our school had an event at the local Barnes & Noble, which occurs twice a year, and I help to organize it. We have kids from the school singing, playing instruments, we had a balloon artist, teachers do storytelling, and we provide the summer reading books. A percentage of the sales is then given back to us to support our library. It is a wonderful community-builder and is alot of fun. We also were lucky enough to have a local author and a friend of mine, Danette Haworth, there to sign books. Sorry, no pictures. I really pooped out on the picture taking this week, didn't I? I only ended up buying a couple of books for my kids. There were SO MANY I wanted for myself, but the cold hard truth is that I probably wouldn't read them for another year. My stacks are just that out of control.

Speaking of the stacks, I whittled them down a fraction this week. I finished the new John Sandford book, "Storm Prey", which goes on sale in another week or so. I enjoyed it, as I do all of the books in this series. I also read "Stitches", a graphic novel that has been around the block on the blogs, and it pretty much blew my mind in a disturbing kind of way. I then started Beth Kephart's new book "The Heart is not a Size". This is my first Beth book, but it was clear to me pretty quickly why everyone loves this author so. Her writing is just precious, and reminds me alot of Jacqueline Woodson. I'm hoping to wrap up this book today by the pool.

The kids and I finished the 6th Harry Potter, and started on the 7th. Oh the excitement! I guess we need to start thinking about what the heck we will listen to after this is all over. We have been at this series now for a long time. I also finished off Stephen King's 30-disc monster "Under the Dome", and started "Love Walked In" by Marisa de los Santos. I am in a quandary over the "Garden Spells" audio by Sarah Addison Allen. I went into convulsions when I discovered that it has 100 tracks per disc, and the online database does not recognize it. Which means to load it onto my iPod, I have to type. in. every. line. Which just isn't going to happen. So I thought I might try just popping it into the CD player in the car and listening to it only there when I am buzzing around during the week. We'll see how that goes. I really didn't want to miss out on this book though.

I suppose I should shut up now. I hope you all have a wonderful, relaxing day!