Good morning, my darlings! Is everyone recovering nicely from their readathon activities yesterday? I ended up finishing one audiobook and one review book. I started another book but didn’t push myself to stay up to finish it. In all, I probably spent no more than eight hours reading yesterday. Did anyone read anything particularly thrilling or fascinating that I need to add to my shelves immediately? How did you fare versus your goals? Given my minimal participation yesterday, I want to know how everyone did!
It may seem like I’ve been mentioning Jim’s crazy travel schedule a lot lately. His new job did come with about 50 percent travel, something we knew about when he decided to take the job. He has to physically go to various manufacturing sites to understand their processes and get to know the people in order to be able to make improvements to the functional area under his control. It makes sense, right? He had to frontload all of his travel since he was new to the job, so hopefully it will slow down soon. Otherwise, if I have a breakdown, you will know why. 😉
The kids are handling his absences as expected. Jim being gone so often is beginning to tell on all of us, as I see their behaviors and willingness to help out decrease exponentially as the week progresses. In addition, Connor seems to be at the onset of crazy teenage attitude – acting as if he knows everything and the rest of us are completely idiotic and incapable of ever understanding what it is like to be him. (If this is a sign of things to come, is there a pill I can take that will make me forget the whole thing, allow me to sleep through it, or make sure I don’t care?) Still, I have to give them props because I never have to worry about them getting out of bed in the morning and getting ready for school on time. Neither one has any problems setting their alarms early if they need to take a shower or finish up homework, and they are always ready to go at the right time – without me having to check on them or nag them. As much as they may make me want to pull my hair out and scream, I know that it could be so much worse if I had to worry about that part of the daily routine. And yes, I do know how lucky I am. On this at least.
Yesterday, I finally visited Jen from Devourer of Books. She and I have been trying to get together since before I moved back to the area. It had been ages since we’ve seen each other, and I absolutely detest that. It was a glorious day of catching up and playing with her gorgeous twin baby girls and absolutely adorable toddler son. We even got to go out and have a wonderful lunch together. The weather sucked, but the company was fantastic!
Reviewed this week:
- The Lost Prince by Julie Kagawa
- Bury Your Dead by Louise Penny
- Red Dragon by Thomas Harris
Today’s agenda is to just relax. Jim is home for another 18 hours, and neither one of us is all that motivated to do anything other than enjoy each other’s company and mentally prepare ourselves for the coming week. It is a sad state of affairs when you are mentally living week to week.
True. I do enjoy the good things about the kids.
I always miss the readathon lately too. I guess they need to schedule around both of our lives?
Thanks, Jenny! Travel is still essential to Jim's job but it still sucks.
Readers are to help keep my sanity; I like that!
Yes, well. There are some new developments on the travel front, so I'm afraid that this is our new normal. Ugh.
Oh, don't tell me my beautiful daughter is going to hate me. I'm rather enjoying being friends, even if she is 8 years old.
I remember the one time I did participate full out in the readathon. It took me three days to recover, so it is exactly like being hungover!
I need to visit more blogger friends IRL. It really is fun.
There probably is a pill to forget…but you'd forget all the good things too. The Catch 22.
I missed the readathon, because I was working. 🙁 It seems like the timing is always wrong for me whenever the readathon is…can you ask the organizers next time to arrange it around my life? 😉
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Sorry about all of Jim's travel, but there is some sort of end in sight,right? Unfortunately it sound like the travel is necessary to do his job right. How can you comment or improve a process when you have no idea how it's really done. Just saying , it make s sense.
I would definitely spend all of the quality time I could with my man too!
Hang in there and do the best you can. Feel free to complain or go off about things as much as you want . That's what readers are for. To help you keep your sanity.
Hope you all have a good week 🙂
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I'm sure the whole teenage thing is going to be painful. I dread it myself. And all the traveling can't be helpful … you guys have had a ton of changes so I'm sure it will be awhile until life feels normal.
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The read-a-thon was so super fun and I'm glad I did it! I ended up falling asleep at the beginning of hour 23. Not too shabby, even if I did take a 2 hour nap earlier in the day. 😀 Today i feel hungover though, blargh.
Ah, teenager attitudes. Aren't they a hoot? I seem to recall my oldest daughter not liking me from about age 11 until yesterday 😉 She's 20 now. There's no pill that I know of, but it's a little like giving birth. You remember that it was awful but not exactly HOW awful, lol.
So glad you got to visit with Jen and snuggle up on those kidlets!
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How fun to get to spend some time with Jen in real life!
Teenagers….can't live with 'em, can't kill 'em. 🙂 I do find that my kids' emotional issues come in waves, so it's not all bad, all the time.
I didn't officially participate in the readathon, but I did spend a lot of time reading The Lost Art of Mixing yesterday – it's awesome so far.
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