Sunday Salon: School's out, less time to read?!

School finished up on Thursday. I give my kids a week before they are bickering so badly I want to sell them to the gypsies. But this first week out of school always has some pluses to it. I don't have to get up at sparrow fart to shoehorn the ratty little morning whiners out of bed (and then I still have to get the kids up). (Don't you love "sparrow fart?" My lovely friend who happens to be British uses it and I'm appropriating it.) I don't have to nag a soul about homework. I don't have to fight over bed time. Now it also has some minuses as well. The big one, of course, is that the kids are home 24/7. This cuts into my happy reading time like you wouldn't believe. I am well aware that my family thinks all I do all day is read and eat creme brulee (the eight year old actually wrote that in his Mother's Day card to me, god bless his pea-pickin' little heart). But what they don't seem to understand is that I am a far happier mom if I have some peaceful, uninterruted reading time. They'll learn though. Because when the bickering starts next week and I haven't been able to finish a book in over a week, they will get to test out the neighborhood kids' theory that my head does indeed spin 360 degrees. It's already been a long book-free weekend (1 tennis tournament, 2 dance recital shows, and a birthday party yesterday and another recital show today) so my patience is already terribly frayed. When do they go back to school?

As you might guess, my trips through books this week have been very limited and choppy. I went along with a vet as her marriage collapsed around her feet and she found solace in her creatures and in the truths of other people's relationships. I also learned some fun stuff about foreign phrases in our language. And I opened about 4 books to insert bookmarks but I haven't made much progress in them beyond sliding in the bookmark. Welcome summer. Now I'd like to get back to my regulalry scheduled reading!