November Updates and Miscellany

I wrote that last post while C was watching TV last night, and I must have been paying more attention to Doc Martin than to what I was writing, 'cause I managed to get an awful lot of wrong words in there, forgot my links and forgot to tell you so many things! Plus, I didn't mean to sound so depressing...I'm not really depressed, just Novemberish. Anyway what I wanted to tell you about was:

*Last week, having a day off in the middle of the week (thanks Vetrans!), I played "this is what it will be like when I'm unemployed." It was kind of nice...I lounged around and read most of the day. Made breakfast all three meals (cereal--pancakes--hash browns and eggs with solar-oven-baked applesauce. Yes, it has not been completely gray and gloomy all November, and it's actually still possible to solar cook this time of year!). Let the kids watch Superfriends (after I dragged them outside for some fresh air and exercise--to walk to the mailbox, which would remain empty because of the holiday and all).

*Over the weekend I had warm fuzzy homeschool feelings, sitting on the couch embroidering and watching the kids build cities with blocks, and make chain reactions with blocks and balls and marbles and matchbox cars and dominoes, and write their own chapter books. Even their bickering didn't bother me. I know I would be the worst homeschool mom ever (except for those crazy Christians who homeschool just to prevent their children from actually learning anything) because I'm totally self-absorbed and would be like "go out and play so I can work on my blog." But it was fun to imagine for a moment.

*Over the last couple of weeks, I gave the camera a rest and just experienced life, rather than trying to document it (driven in part, perhaps, by the insanely overwhelming number of pictures I had just gone through on our computers, and, I think, driven also by my little unplanned bloggy break which resulted in the little narrator in my head quieting down for a while).

*I finished reading the Little House series (I had been reading them to the boys, but they got tired of it in the middle of By the Shores of Silver Lake--we're saving Farmer Boy for this winter) and it left me feeling all empty inside...like my life is filled with too much of nothing, and not enough simple joy and pleasure (and hardship, deprivation, blizzards, near-death experiences). It started an obsession with Laura Ingalls Wilder. I'm finally reading Little House in the Ozarks, which has been sitting on my night stand for about two years, and I checked out a pile of biographies of her from the library (apparently I'm not the first one to be obsessed; our tiny library had no fewer than seven biographies in the children's section alone). It's an interesting lesson in the difference between "truth" and "fact" in memoir. I know her books were written as novels, not memoir, but I do think they are Laura's--we're on a first-name basis now--Laura's "truth," even if the events in the story don't exactly conform to the "facts" of her life.

*Sunday is my three-year blog anniversary. I know. Crazy. We'll talk more about that next week.

*Sunday-Monday I'm going on a little mini-break to western Massachusetts, where I'll spend some time with three of my dearest friends and some time with just me. Looking forward to lots of restaurant eating and wandering into little shops. Maybe I'll take my laptop and/or notebook and actually write a few words. We'll see.

Have a great weekend!