New featured author
Katherine Paterson author of many books including the sublime, tear-jerker Bridge to Terabithia and Jacob Have I Loved, (which I didn’t like until I was a grown-up) will be our featured author for September.
Our basement flooded this weekend for the first time since we’ve lived here. I lost one shelf of books (just a shelf, not the whole bookcase) and all of the carpet in the playroom. And the couch cushions. Well, at least it gives us an excuse to go ahead and buy a new carpet. A friend of mine had a major flood once in which she lost a valuable book collection. She said that this helped her let go of her materialism. Perhaps I didn’t lose enough because it’s just made me grouchy and got me craving a trip to the bookstore.
Noah also got bunk beds on Friday (before we realized that our budget for the upcoming month would also need to include flood damage repair). He was sitting in the top bunk reading a book and he said, “Don’t I look like such a big boy?” Yes, indeed he does. He has carefully arranged the top of his new dresser to include a picture of Peanut (in a heart-shaped frame), his Spiderman bobblehead, a glass dragon from Grandma, and his sunglasses because they look, he says, particularly “like a thing a big boy would have.”
I’m fighting a bad case of disgruntlement and am thinking that I could use a week or month away from it all. This seems unlikely. I will have to be content with barking at my family and gazing morosely out windows. Sometimes this works. More often it doesn’t. Oh well, I’ll just ride it out.
Brett is very patient and has been giving me fond pats and tilting his head sympathetically when I scowl at him. He cleaned the whole basement up himself. An added bonus to being married to him is that he likes everyone to get out of his way when it comes to big jobs such as cleaning up after a flood. So Noah and I went to my mom’s and watched reruns of Electric Company. When we came home, Brett had cut up the entire carpet and hauled it piece by piece to the curb and had mopped up everything. He is a truly lovely man. Now he has reason to be disgruntled and yet he allows me the great privilege of moping. Isn’t he nice?
I’m pretty sure this is still adoption anxiety and once my system accustoms itself to the increased stress level, it’ll all be just fine.
I’m so sorry about the flood - like you need more stress in your life right now. Thinking of you, and praying for you guys and your little someday soon baby!
I love your author of the month feature, and I especially love Katherine Paterson. I never read her as a child, and was introduced to her books by students who insisted that Bridge to T had to be on my syllabus. I still can’t read it without crying. (This is a good thing.) Thanks for putting her up there!
And sorry about the flood. What a major pain.
Your new author looks interesting. I am about to read Lovely Bones by Alice Sebold for my book circlr which I set up 5 years ago with 10 female friends.
Laura
I really liked her book about writing _The Spying Heart_. Talks about censorship and children’s books and other cool stuff.
Sorry to hear about the flood. I remember when I was a kid growing up in Northeast Ohio, many times my parents running frantically to the basement in the middle of the night to put things up to try to avoid water damage.
and I loved the story about Noah’s “big boy dresser”
I hope you’re writing all this down in a big book that you can embarrass him with at his college graduation or something.
oh, and they still show re-runs of the Electric Company?!? I thought that show was long gone! (I will admit that as a kid I liked it less than Sesame Street; even then I was a flinchy and noise-averse person and Electric Company seemed too chaotic to me.)