Sunday Salon: Speeding towards the holidays

I haven't read much at all this week. Pick your jaws up off the floor; it's still me. I've just been busy and tired and tired and busy. The middle school musical, my baby's last musical performance was this week, with shows from Wednesday until Saturday. He was Ed the Dumb Hyena and he was outstanding in the role, if I do say so as a completely unbiased observer. We haven't stopped teasing him that none of his lines contained words and that it was the easiest casting choice ever. Good thing he can take a joke! In addition to helping with the make-up for several of the shows, I also had two interesting book related events this past week. The first was a panel on the topic of "I'm Published. Now What? Making Money With Your Writing." It was quite different than I expected it to be and much broader in scope than I imaged but it was both interesting and informative. Then I had dinner and went to an author event with B.A. Shapiro, who is touring for her newest novel, The Muralist. Barbara was a delight and if you have a chance to see her on her book tour, you absolutely should.  Once I was through all of that, I had a moment to breathe and realize that the holidays are coming at an alarming clip. I have most of the fixings for our Thanksgiving meal but we also host an After Thanksgiving Party where people in town for the holiday and their house guests come over and get a break from each other. Sometimes 3 or 4 days is just too long to look at the same people over the dinner table, you know? I've finalized the all-appetizer menu and pushed send on the invitations so there's no backing out of it now! Even R. has asked if she can invite a friend to the party. I pick W. up from college on Tuesday and bring him home. I was reduced to sending him a text threatening to leave him at school to have turkey and mashed potatoes there if he didn't text or call me. It'll be so nice to have him home, ignoring us in the same zip code instead of from a distance! I've already started looking for Christmas presents, especially for the particularly hard to buy for (all males in the family, I'm looking at you!). If I make it through this next week of constant cooking and cleaning and entertaining, I will likely hole up with my books for the foreseeable future to try and recover. Either that or you'll find me in the fetal position sucking my thumb. ;-)

For this week's reading travels, I will cut and paste this from last week: "I am still at the medical clinic with a father hoping to have his son "resurrected." I am also still entrenched in upper class Britain between the wars with a family modeled after the Mitfords."  I also added a couple: I am in Christie's looking through a box of paintings that are possibly from the WPA era and potentially early works of very famous artists and I just dropped the f-bomb at a PTA meeting, which is completely unlike me and appears to herald a new me. Where have your reading travels taken you this week?