Here it is Thursday already. I can’t believe the week can go by so slowly and yet so quickly at the same time. I just want the academic year to be over - I’m ready for the students to just go away.
I finally got my mailbox key yesterday. After all that todo about not being able to leave my key with anyone else because they needed to see my ID, they just asked for my name, had me sign something and gave me the key. I’m going to file a complaint with the BBB because apparently they’re gouging the landlords in HOA fees, and while they’re getting cosmetic things done to the outside of the building, they’re not responding to the tenants/owners regarding other concerns. My thinking is the building got cited and they have to repair certain things before they get fined.
Anyway, I spent the last two evenings reading a book - The Store on Blossom Street by Debbie Macomber. I picked it up because it’s about knitting and I thought that would be fun to read. There are four main characters, one who opens a yarn shop and the first three women who sign up for her beginning knitting class. Of course their lives are all jacked up but by opening up to each other and seeing one another through crisis (schmaltzy violin music goes here) they persevere and come out stronger in the end. Yeah.
I’m not sure what I did or didn’t like about it - I guess it was very predictable and a couple of the characters were just out and out stereotypes: the angry girl, the socialite…. But it did keep me entertained and make me cry. Is that the mark of a good book? Or a good writer?
Which brings me to this….I wonder about people who say they don’t read. I don’t understand that at all. I mean there is all this knowledge out there, right at your fingertips - how can you not itch to get at it?
I read blogs, magazines, cookbooks, novels, textbooks websites - you name it. In fact, the other day I decided to try to break into my mailbox, so I google’d “how to pick a lock” and within minutes I found some good resources. I learned how to make a pick and a wedge and in an hour I had managed to pick one pin of my pin tumbler lock. (Nothing like terminology to make you feel like an expert, eh?)
Okay, so maybe that’s not a good example of material that’s out there to be accessed by just anyone. Use your power for good, right? But still, just about anything you want to learn to do you can by reading. I think that’s fascinating.
Of course a love of reading should come from the parents and we’re so busy today going in 90 different directions we feel guilty when we take that time to do just one little thing for ourselves.
One of the things I remember most when I was a kid of about 10 or 11 were Sundays spent in bed reading. I would come home after church and curl up in bed and read until dinner. My mom would be in her room in bed reading. Every once in a while we would go into the other room and say hello. I would take a little break and climb into her bed to read the funnies and we would talk about things like how she also read Dick Tracy and Dondi and Nancy and Sluggo when she was a kid.
Quality time doesn’t have to be organized up the wazoo to the last second.