It is only Wednesday, but already the week has taken its toll on me. Monday was an especially difficult day. The kind of day I can't write about here. The kind of day where I rush home to be with my daughter and hold her close, never wanting to let go. Yesterday was better.
The weekend was nice though. We had Mouse's soccer class on Saturday. It was the second to last class, and I am kind of glad for that. Still, it has been fun. It is a parent/child class, and my husband and I take turns going through the exercises with Mouse. Mouse's attention wasn't quite on the game this past Saturday. She was more interested in following around her friend, another girl in the class. They are quite a pair! During all the goofing off and not paying attention, I was quite surprised then when Mouse stepped forward when the coach asked who wanted to go first and dribble the ball to a designated spot where the child would then kick the ball into the goal. My kid can follow directions when she wants to. Being the two year old she is, Mouse was back to wandering off and chasing after her friend again directly after.
Sundays have become our quiet family days. We do not do much, but they can be fun. I taught Mouse how to play hide and seek recently and that's become one of her favorite games. Her idea of hiding is to curl up in a ball in a corner on the floor--and as soon as you start looking for her, she pops up and says, "Here I am!" When it's my turn to hide, she makes a point of telling me where to hide, will make sure I'm there, and then will proceed to look in all the same places I made a show of looking for her. "Not under the table." "Not under the blanket." "I found you!" It's moments like these that I treasure.
Getting back to the subject--or at least where I intended to go when I first started writing this post--I am no longer going home for lunch during the week (bye, bye audio book time) and instead am camping out in an empty office where I can read uninterrupted for an hour each day. I am enjoying having this precious reading time back again, but confess I do miss going home for that short time too. I may start going home at lunch time once a week at least, depending. We'll see. I used to be such a workaholic and would work through my lunches, full speed ahead. Now I not only want the time away, I need it.
I took advantage of my extra reading time to read Laura Lippman's And When She Was Good. I am still processing my thoughts on this one, but I did enjoy it. Laura Lippman is an author I've read before although not much of. I can see why so many people love her books. Earlier this week, I started reading Menna van Praag's The House at the End of Hope Street, a book I have had my eye on for awhile now. I'm quite smitten with it so far.
What are you reading right now?
Every Tuesday Diane from Bibliophile By the Sea hosts
First Chapter First Paragraph Tuesday Intros, where
participants share the first paragraph (or a few) of a
book they are reading or thinking about reading soon.
The house has stood at the end of Hope Street for nearly two hundred years. It's larger than all others, with turrets and chimneys rising into the sky. The front garden grows wild, the long grasses scattered with cowslips, reaching toward the low-hanging leaves of the willow trees. At night the house looks like a Victorian orphanage housing a hundred despairing souls, but when the clouds part and it is lit by moonlight, the house appears to be enchanted. As if Rapunzel lives in the tower and a hundred Sleeping Beauties lie in the beds.
It was the description of this book, The House at the End of Hope Street by Menna van Praag, that first sold me on it: "Past residents have included Virginia Woolf and Dorothy Parker, who, after receiving the assistance they needed, hung around to help newcomers—literally, in talking portraits on the wall . . ." I am about a fourth of the way through this charming book right now. This is one of those books that reminds me to slow down and savor each paragraph--just as I knew it would after reading the first paragraph.
Would you continue reading?
© 2013, Wendy Runyon of Musings of a Bookish Kitty. All Rights Reserved. If you're reading this on a site other than Musings of a Bookish Kitty or Wendy's feed, be aware that this post has been stolen and is used without permission.
