Feels Like Fall

 I woke up the first two days of this week early in the morning FREEZING. I haven't really figured out what blanket/jammies combo works best for this weather so I'm not either hot or cold. Working on it.

I'm not, as it turns out, good at blogging on Thursdays so last week I missed entirely and this week I'm a day early. I'm a work in progress.

Fall is in the air for sure. The peaches and pears are both gone. We checked today. It's been bordering on sweatshirt weather although I still get plenty sweaty on the walk to and from school. It's middling season and I'm not sure my body is handling it super well.

School has been a smash success so far. He loves it and it is already helping him in more ways than I can describe, both academically and otherwise. We've been doing a pretty good job of coming home and having a nice afternoon routine...coloring, snacking, reading Harry Potter, trying not to do all screens all the time. Max is...demanding when his brother is gone, less of an independent soul than usual, but he likes helping with housework. We are finally caught up on the laundry and yesterday we even baked chocolate chip cookies.

Next week the school starts batch testing. As I understand this, they collect samples from every kid in a group (class?) and if the batch ends up positive every kid in it has to get a test. This is probably efficient but is also probably going to up the cases caught and result in some quarantining. Everyone in the world seems to think a return to remote school is imminent. I am choosing to stay in denial about this. One day at a time. We will roll with it.

I apparently set my reading goals for September WAY too high and am now having trouble letting go of them which I feel like means some neglect of my family...they are used to my mild neglect as I bury my nose in a book but there are limits. I am having trouble letting the goals go, though. 

The library has returned to interlibrary loan service. I'm a GIANT nerd because of how much this excites me. Just getting to order and have all these random weird and out of print books from libraries all over the place. I have to document here what I've gotten because where else am I going to put it?

Langston's Train Ride by Robert Burleigh, a picture book story of Langston Hughes writing "The Negro Speaks of Rivers," borrowed from the Bellingham Public Library

Wonders: the best children's poems of Effie Lee Newsome, borrowed from the Oakland Public Library

A Long, Hard Journey: the story of the Pullman Porter by Patricia C. McKissack and Frederick L. McKissack, borrowed from Clark College Libraries in Vancouver, WA

Elizabeth Whitney Williams & the Little Traverse Light by Mary Hramiec Hoffman, borrowed from the Emmaus Bible College Library in Dubuque, IA

On its way to me now is A Girl of Nineteen Hundred which is an autobiography of Lois Lenski. I wonder what library that one will come from. 

So media consumption in all this library-ness...I read A Long, Hard Journey, it was FASCINATING, I didn't know the story of the Pullman porters and I'm so sorry this one is out of print. I also just finished Klara and the Sun by Kazuo Ishigiro and I have no idea what to say about that book because I have no idea what I think of it. It's for book group which is a week from Saturday, maybe I will have figured it out by then. I'm still reading the Journal of Beatrix Potter which I mostly enjoy until it becomes a lot...speaking of a lot I am also listening on audio to I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou which I haven't read since high school. It is a delight to hear her voice. I'm also reading Writing Down the Bones by Natalie Goldberg which is so far kinda disappointing and honestly I wish I was doing more writing. I was supposed to do more of that this fall and I know you can't be a writer without being a reader but I feel like I'm off balance. I did start a toddler journal for Max...he didn't get the baby journal James got so he gets a toddler journal, I guess. Mama loves you equally but not the same. Or something.

I'm trying to connect baby and toddler James that I see in pictures and on video with giant and at times exasperating James who lives here now. It's a struggle. It helps me when I slow down and really make myself remember that that's the same kid and we have all that history and we are going to be okay. It's hard.

More media consumption: when I was on my housework binge this week I watched some Bewitched on DVD from the library. Watching those old school TV black and white housewives helps me with all that sometimes. I've also been kinda rewatching the original Arrested Development seasons. I was watching Golden Girls but that gets to be a bit too much at times.

You can see I'm more overloaded on media content than on the actual real world right now, can't you? I need to get back in balance. This time of year is throwing me off balance.

Today I'm grateful for a new afghan, poetry picture books, baking, sleep, coffee, down time, snuggles, sweatshirts, comfy shoes, the Friends of Camp St. Albans, and family.