Kelly Yang Follows Me on Instagram, We Are All Learning Independence, and Other Notes From the Life

 "The autumn is a time that makes one think there is no time like the present, and the present is very pleasant." --from The Journal of Beatrix Potter, October 1894

Guess who is starting her blog post after 10:30 because she wanted to squeeze in just a little more reading time? This girl. I have been using reading as avoidance so much...I may need to scale back just a bit.

I'm not sure if I agree with Beatrix in that quote or not but I like the quote and I like the idea of the quote. I don't know if I'd feel that way in an ordinary fall, which of course this is not.

So Kelly Yang, who is the author of the Front Desk books which I adore, now follows me on Instagram and I feel low key famous. I mean, I have a TINY Instagram following of like 500, it is very much a hobby of mine, but she saw a booktalk I did there on her YA debut from last year which I think I may have written about last week who knows, but it is called Parachutes and it is EXCELLENT.  So she follows me now. So I have that going for me. It's fun to feel like a real...I dunno, writer, reviewer, librarian, pick your word, but I do on Instagram and almost nowhere else.

Speaking of Instagram, that's another great quote from this week. Another Instagrammer I follow is named Antonia and she goes by the handle @blackgirlthatreads. So this week she got to interview poet Nikki Giovanni. That may not mean anything to anyone reading this but Nikki Giovanni is a legend. I watched the whole thing. They talked mostly about Giovanni's children's book Rosa about the life of Rosa Parks, which is getting a much deserved rerelease. But at the end of the interview she says to Giovanni do you have anything else to say or wisdom to impart or whatever. And Nikki Giovanni's response was SPOT ON. She said "living is a good idea" and also that you should wake up in the morning and look in the mirror and tell yourself I love you so you hear that at least once a day. She said seriously, brush your teeth and say I love you. Brush your teeth and say I love you might be my new mantra.

So yeah, book life goes along nicely this week. In the real world...the children are tired. Both had a meltdown yesterday after school. Max's was right in the middle of the library and he crawled under the circulation desk. Good times. Today we finished reading Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone after school because we needed the down time.

We are working on independence with James so every week we leave him a little further away from the school gate when we drop him off. Today it was halfway down the road. And we had to walk away...like I knew if I stood there and watched he would as well and he would never get to school. The only option was to wave, say I love you, and then turn around and walk home.

That was hard. I kept saying to Josh, can you see him, can you turn just a little, is he okay? No one ever told me that when you teach them independence you have to work on your own as well. I love that he is a big kid, I love watching him with the big kids walking home from school, but oh, man, I'm very not used to it yet.

I did a ton of fall baking on Monday. Made chicken stock, baked pumpkins for puree, made an apple pie. Fall makes me want to bake the things. It felt nice. And now I'm out of stuff and need to bake more. Pumpkin pancakes feel called for.

It's late but I'm glad I squeezed in a little bit of a blog post. I do want to make Thursdays my blog day and I look forward to doing it. I need to make more writing time. The one thing I really wanted to do more of this week and didn't was write in Max's little toddler journal. Goals.

Media consumption: other than Parachutes and The Journal of Beatrix Potter, I finished my reread of I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou and now I'm listening to the Maya Angelou episode of The History Chicks podcast and boy is she fascinating. I'm reading Big Apple Diaries which is a graphic novel middle grade memoir about a girl in NYC in the months before and after 9/11. It's a good book but isn't hitting me right...I think I wrote on the anniversary itself how I feel weirdly in the middle about 9/11 and this is such a millennial take on it it isn't really for me. 

For TV, I'm rewatching the old Arrested Development which is really the right mood for me just now. I've also got some library DVDs of the classic show Bewitched and I'm watching those a bit.

Today I'm grateful for friends, virtual and IRL, baking, leftovers, watching my kids play in the bathtub, sunshine, apple cider, and love.