Reading Slump

I'm tired. This is NOT going to be a rant about Daylight Savings Time...there are plenty of those out there wihout me adding to the din. I'm just tired. There's no good reason for me to be tired. I think it is more of an emotionally tired than physically tired (although it's both.) Emotions ran very high this weekend all the way around. 

James got his first Covid shot yesterday, which I'm happy about but don't really want to talk about. The high school ran a clinic. He did well, feels great, had no lingering side effects, got a sticker and a prize and piece of candy, and will return for his second shot in three weeks. Max's age group remains not yet eligible.

I'm working on being a kinder person. I try really hard to keep in check my rather famous temper with my kids and unfortunately sometimes that means my long suffering husband gets the brunt. I am trying not to let that happen and trying to get more rest, physically and emotionally, so that doesn't happen.

A mom friend and I did get away for a night on Friday. Much needed and much enjoyed. We have been talking about it since the pandemic began that we just needed a night away to not be moms for awhile. Had a nice dinner, long chat, woke to a kid free morning. It was really nice. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get the sleep I wanted so while I came back emotionally rested it didn't stretch to the physically rested so the weekend after it wasn't as relaxing as I would have liked it to be. That isn't anyone's fault it just is.

NaNoWriMo isn't the success it was for me last year. Last year I didn't get the word count...I wasn't expecting to...but I did get the writing habit. This year I'm pleased with what I've written but there simply hasn't been enough of it. Not necessarily talking word count...the way I've been structuring my pandemic NaNoWriMos I don't aim for 50,000 words...but I just haven't done the writing. Yesterday I didn't write at all and when I'm doing NaNoWriMo the big thing I strive for is to write every day.

I think one of my big emotional hurdles since November started, though, is that I really can't get into the head space to read anything.

I've ALWAYS been a big reader. I learned to read at four and have been reading ever since. I've always had a lot of books just kind of...around...I had a big library as a kid and have built one for myself as an adult...I definitely have culled but as anyone who helped me move many times in my 20s can tell you I have plenty of books. I definitely have read more in some seasons of life than others. Since being a stay at home mom and especially in the last year and a half since not being a working librarian anymore even part time, I've been a lot more organized about my reading, trying to keep up with new releases I'm interested in, that kind of thing. So I know I'm reading more at this stage of life than I was half a dozen years ago, but I've always been a reader. And it's happened before that I've had moments where it's hard to read, hard to focus on reading, but it isn't fun. It's the kind of thing where I can't tell you what reading means to me, can't describe it as a hobby, but when it ebbs like this I know what it means to me.

The good news about my night away is I did read a book I LOVED. I basically read it in 24 hours, starting it at around midnight on Friday, waking up Saturday morning to read a bunch, and finishing it on Saturday night. The book is called Recipe for Disaster and it's by Aimee Lucido. It's a middle grade book, mostly written in prose but with some verse in there and also some recipes. I've actually never seen a format like it, it's very cool. It's the story of Hannah, who figures since her mother's mother is Jewish she must be as well although no one else seems to think that. When Hannah announces she wants to have a bat mitzvah like her best friend, everyone is upset. But she goes forward with her plan anyway, hurts her best friend, and in a delightful take on the middle grade trope of fighting-with-my-best-friend-so-made-a-new-one she immediately puts her foot in her mouth with her new best friend when she assumes for several reasons her new friend can't be Jewish.

I love the very real people who inhabit this book...people who are religious, people who hate religion, people who have ties to their faith and culture but may not be overtly religious, and everyone in the middle. It felt very true to life to me, this family and community that Hannah has.

I'm not Jewish, but I have been on a bit of a faith journey in my life, mostly when I was in my 20s. I tried megachurches and small groups, I went to Catholic mass for awhile, I tried Presbyterianism and Methodism, I went to interfaith services, read about Judaism and Islam, tried to understand the Christianity I saw in my friends that was so...completely foreign to me and wondered what I had missed. I was in college when the Left Behind books were popular among evangelicals and I remember thinking how have I been a Christian my entire life and never heard of the Rapture? 

In the end, I found my way back to the Lutheranism that I was raised in. I remember my mom telling me when I was a kid that the Lutheran was less important than the Christian, and that if I had been raised close to a Methodist church I probably would have been Methodist, but I don't know if that's true. My mom was raised without religion and converted to Christianity in her 20s, but I don't think she knew how far back in her family Lutheranism went. I think there's a reason I gravitate to it and when I'm asked about my religion today I say Lutheran. I feel like the word Christian has become so charged and it's not fair and it's not right but saying I'm a Christian conjures up to a lot of people images and beliefs I don't want to be a part of. So while I identify as a Christian and my faith in Christ is important to me, I am specific and I identify as a Lutheran. I'm going to get us an Advent wreath for the house this year I think. The traditions and beliefs of Lutheranism are much more important and core to me than I used to think. I hear white people in America sometimes complain that they have no "culture." It's a weird thing to say, really and is just a way of fetishizing people who celebrate cultures outside of the mainstream, but I also do understand that feeling. You see other people having traditions and celebrations that feel special and are rooted in the past and it's hard to think you are left with white American culture of...I dunno...cheeseburgers and Black Friday? I think of my Lutheran faith standing in that place. I will never know what it's like to be Jewish and I can't pretend that my experience with Lutheranism compares with this character's experience with Judaism, but I think of Lutheran as my culture and I identified with her being pulled to something that she was connected to in ways she didn't fully understand.

Anyway, it's a marvelous book and it hit me at just the right time as it has been really hard for me to read in the past week. I'm reading a history of World War I and re-reading Rilla of Ingleside and I'm also slowly working my way through the short story collection Ancestor Approved but it was nice to find something that really grabbed me.

Other media consumption...so grateful for The Great British Baking Show, it brings us together in ways that we need right now. Did I bake bread today entirely because I needed my house to smell like baking bread for awhile? Indeed I did. I am also binge watching The Golden Girls which has to be ultimate comfort food TV.

Today I'm grateful for fresh bread, the flavoring you add to water to stay hydrated, every second of afterschool sunshine we had, the few leaves still on the trees, bookstagram, Josh playing backup with the toddler parenting, wool socks, and my own bed.