babbling idiot

I suspect that would be a fair description of me today. Of course, some might say it's a pretty fair description of me on any day. Sorry, I truly am feeling a bit loopy today. Lack of sleep, nothing more. Thanks to a kiddo with a chronic case of insomnia and a dog, who frankly should be thanking his lucky stars that I'm not serving doggie kabobs for supper tonight, I barely got two hours of sleep last night. I'm not complaining (I get a lot more sleep in general these days than I have in many years), just trying to make excuses for my rambling.

I'll be the first to admit that Rich, my darling husband, is very good to me. Very supportive. Thoughtful, loving, generous. Etc., etc., etc. Still, as none of us are perfect, he makes the occasional blunder. He made one such blunder this morning when he called me from work with "some news". Now at this point I had been up since 12:30am, had single-handedly cooked all children breakfast, got children ready for school, packed lunches, fed and medicated the currently in-the-doghouse dog, and begun the school day with our daughter. The news? It was official...he is again going to co-teach a marine biology class in the Bahamas for two weeks in January. Now, it's not like I didn't know this was likely going to happen. We've talked about it, and I gave my blessing (the no-way-am-I-ever-going-to-keep-you-from-such-an-awesome-opportunity, despite-the-fact-that-it-is-going-to-totally-suck-for-me variety of blessing) to the whole idea. But still...this morning was NOT the ideal time to call me with this news.

Or was it? See, I just read Dewey's announcement about this fall's READ-A-THON! Now, I can say with absolute certainty that regardless of anything else, Rich would have been perfectly willing to haul the boys (Annie, of course, wants to read again) off for the weekend so I can participate. But coming on the heels of his big announcement, I can most assuredly say that I don't feel one iota of guilt about asking him to do so!

Hey, and while I here dumping on my poor, sweet husband, let me just throw a little blame his way, too. You know how I was sort of unofficially participating in J.Kaye's book buying ban challenge. I said, and I really meant it, that I wasn't spending another penny on books for myself until I'd knocked 20 off my TBR piles. Well, I seem to have a bit of a setback. Since books I already had started at the time didn't count towards my 20, I'm now sitting at 0% of the way there. Well, Rich found out about a library book sale a few towns over. I told him I couldn't go because of my book buying ban, but he dragged me there kicking and screaming! (You're buying this, right?) Oh heck, to make a long story short, here's the pile I came away with:



And there are some points to be awarded here, by the way...point for Carl thanks to his wonderful review of Out by Natsuo Kirino, point for Stacy thanks to her wonderful review of The Memory Keeper's Daughter by Kim Edwards, and point for Dewey thanks to her wonderful review of The Buffalo Soldier by Chris Bohjalian.

So, you see, when you combine the incredible reviews you all write with Rich's abominable behavior, you understand why I just didn't stand a chance, don't you? That said, I'm going to try again...

Oh, and one more thing before I finally shut up. Many of you have been so sweet, asking about Annie. So here's a quick update on how her class is going. First of all, she absolutely loves it! She comes home chattering away about the things they discuss in class. Words like "rhetoric" and "pathos" and "ethos" and "logos" and "persuasion" come tumbling out of her mouth. Secondly, she hasn't felt as if any of the other students have looked down on her or anything because of her age. And finally, she seems to be holding her own as far as her work is concerned. They didn't receive the initial writing assignment they did in class back. Turns out it was just for diagnostic purposes, not for a grade. But the professor told her in person that he was impressed with both her reasoning and her writing. And she did get back her first essay assignment yesterday, and she received an A-. Overall, so far so good. Hopefully things will continue to go well...it is just the start of the semester after all, but at least it's been a good start.

And now, I really will shut up.