Sunday Post #13

The Sunday Post is a weekly meme hosted by Kimberly @ Caffeinated Book Reviewer.  It's "a chance to share news, a post to recap the past week, showcase books and things we have received and share news about what is coming up for the week on our blog."

Reading This Week: 3 books

I finished Stella By Starlight, Sharon M. Draper's historical fiction based on an amalgam of childhood memories of her father and her grandmother.  I highly recommend it.  Draper writes such a wide range of moving and thoughtful MG novels.  I keep her signed copy of Out Of My Mind on my personal bookshelf in my classroom.  

I flew through Vicious, by V. E. Schwab.  I just started reading her last month, and WOW.  Vicious is really different from the Darker Shade of Magic series, but just as good.  Really, really dark stuff, but she writes characters I can really get invested in.   All of her books that I've read have been under her "adult fiction" author's name, but I felt that Vicious was much more clearly not a YA title.  

I was a bit disappointed in Anne Lamott's  slim book, Help, Thanks, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers.  If I'd never read any of her nonfiction, I would probably have been more impressed, but I didn't feel she was adding much to what she's already said.  Since she's a fucking fantastic writer, it was still worth reading, and there were a few thoughts and phrases that stopped me dead to admire them and ponder them (something I rarely do as I read, because SPEED DEMON).  I'm also noticing here how different the cover is in both design and color from the YA and MG I often read.  

Blogging this week: 3 posts

How symmetrical.

I squeezed in the Olympic Book Tag later on Sunday.  It was a lot of fun, and I included a lot of older titles.  Go check it out, if you're into that sort of thing!  I also participated in the TTT this week, listing ten books that have been on my TBR since before I started blogging.  Like, since 2008-09.  And I was so moved by Stella by Starlight that I actually wrote a review post.  Yep.  Me, the anti-review book blogger.  

Life this week:

Was all about setting up my classroom and attending inservice events.  Luckily, we were given all day Monday and Friday to work independently, which is super rare, as I recall.  Since I was moving into a new class and coping with the influx of books I've been given, I needed every minute of that time for physical work.  Two of the other days were decent, especially the three hour training on Equity, and I'm not just saying that because I'm on the committee.  The remaining day was one of those classic "Why are we hear listening to this overpaid speaker tell us things we already know?" inservice experiences that salty memes are made of.  But hey, it averaged out to a pretty productive and informative week even with that.  I got to see my niece briefly during our lunch break, as she works down the street from where we were being inserviced, so it wasn't a completely worthless day!

My AWESOME sister came out twice to help me set up the classroom, and to take each of my kids in turn out for some belated birthday shopping.  My husband also helped from home, both by being PIC with the kids all week, and making me labels to put into the new books so they don't all disappear within the first semester.  

My kids at the beach last week.

After all of that, I decided that yesterday I would actually participate in family life.  Okay, so I started by reading and falling asleep in the sunshine, but when I woke up, The Winemaker and I did some yard work, filling up the debris can with clippings and weeds.  (We are definitely the kind of people that "have to do some yard work," not the kind who "get to garden.")  I got the kids to do some chores without excessive whining or rebellion (yay me!), then I loaded them up for the pool.  We met a good friend of mine and her kids, so we got to talk while the kids swam and played in the water feature.  Then our group went out for ice cream.  Their family had to leave, but we went back for more swim time, and i joined my daughter in diving and jumping in the deep end.  

The Winemaker made us all hamburgers, the four of us played a long round of The Settlers of Catan, the kids went to bed in a fort they'd built in one of their rooms, and we watched an episode of Nikitia together.  

(Is any of this interesting to anyone?  I didn't mean to make it so "dear diary," this week.

The "Before"

The "After" (Part of it.)

The closeup.  Yes, I'm bragging.  #SoProudOfMyself