Sunday Salon: Overscheduled

Do you ever look at your calendar and think: Was I on crack when I scheduled so much? I've been getting that feeling lately. The advent of spring has always increased my feeling of being a hamster on a wheel, running like mad but getting no where. Between spring kid sports (soccer, tennis, golf, and dance competitions for sure but possibly track too depending on the outcome of tryouts this coming week), my volunteer commitments (school library, PTA, and two school book fairs--one as a worker bee and one as the co-chair), and the promises I've made to myself about getting active again (tennis, running, walking, and perhaps the oh so British netball if it ever resumes), I feel like I barely have time to breathe let alone read. Yes, I am well aware I have done this to myself (well, with help from my charming children). And yes, I do this to myself every year. But this year I think I'm just going to accept that I will be frantic from now until June 10 when school lets out. I am going to embrace my overscheduled self. After all, driving to and from all these things means I am most definitely going to have lots of sitting in carpool line time to read. And that's for the good since I have shamelessly managed to accept more books for review than any one sane person should have, at least over the next two months. Since reading is my escape from the daily humdrum, it will be interesting to see how "required" reading will feel amongst a time that starts out anything but humdrum (more a logistical nightmare) and quickly becomes dreadfully dull once I've figured out the mechanics of getting three different children to three separate places all at the same time for their respective activities. Oh for a time-turner to make life easier!

It is funny to watch the van fill up with the detritus of spring. As I squeal around corners on two wheels, at least one soccer ball rolls between the seats, three sets of dance shoes spill out of their bag (and shoo-ee they should stay contained at all times if you don't want a noxious cloud threatening the atmosphere), two (or three) tennis racquets tumble head over handle in the back, and the ever growing stack of unfinished books slides off the center console of the van, knocking into a half drunk can of diet Coke (breakfast of champions) and ending up all over the floor of the front passenger seat. Perhaps I should restrict myself to short stories so I have a clue where I am in a book when the bookmark shimmies loose on one of my mad dash drives. Yes, it's a crazy time of year but I don't think I'd change it for anything. We're busy, we're happy, and through it all, somehow, some way, I am reading, even if it's just on the fly. (That person with her nose in a book at a red light? That's me. The one unconcerned by the extra long train because she's engrossed in fiction or someone else's life? Also me. The mom who barely notices her child has gotten in the car after practice and is still blocking the carpool lane until someone honks because she's trying to finish this page/paragraph/chapter? Sadly, still me.)

I have had bookmarks steadily making their way though several books (although they haven't moved at all through the British Raj or the underbelly of Dicken's London in quite a while but I intend to remedy that one of these days in the car) this week. And I went on wonderful adventures, spending time learning about the flora and fauna around the Great Lakes; going to Hollywood with a mother and daughter only to learn the cost involved with pushing your child to be a star; watching a young man and young woman in Saudi Arabia fall in love despite the restrictive and the dangerous society around them; hopping around England with the bawdy and irreverent Black Fool much beloved by King Lear as machinations and scheming reached full boil; revisiting a childhood favorite with a witch, some enchanted buttons, and a rotten wizard brother; and delighting in a Regency caper wherein the heroine made matches eminently more suitable than they had chosen for themselves for the family around her. And my daffodils are on the verge of blooming too. It's been a great start to almost spring.