Burnout Book Club

one of my favorite books...well it used to be. Now my favorite book is paddington.

Ok, here's MY book club proposal. Only mom's and singles with very little energy can be asked to join. No go-getters, or people with "big plans". The meetings will rotate from each persons house each month, meet at a park, coffee house, or pre-school parking lot. The meetings will last anywhere from 15 minutes to 3 hours depending on nap time. No new books will be read. As a matter of fact no reading will be required at all. 


At the beginning of each meeting someone will start by saying "hey did you ever read ______" and name a book they read in college/high school/ before death and taxes were everything. Then people will either say yes, or no. Everyone can say "I loved that book, it really changed my view of ________" or "oh I always meant to read that, but never got around to it", or "I picked it up 5 times over the last 15 years, but can't get past page 7." 


Then we'd all order a round of drinks, and move on to complaining about the following topics: Kids, schools, husbands, sex, other moms, other kids, in-laws, own mother, fat, vaccines, and most importantly "those people". 

After that people can quietly excuse themselves as their ability to put together any more thoughts or sentences for the day are exhausted. The host will be left feeling edified, and a tiny bit triumphant, and will sleep like a baby...when they get a minute

Book worm

Jack has handled the transition from his crib to his new bed in his new room like a champ. He's also been surprisingly obedient about staying in his room until Boo, his monkey alarm clock "wakes up" at 7, even though we suspect he's in there at 6am playing. Until yesterday that is. I made the mistake of telling another mom that he doesn't seem to know that he can get out of his room or hasn't tried anyway. Why did I do that? I said it all self deprecatingly, like "oh he's too dumb to realize he's free" so it wouldn't come off as braggy. But the universe knows. 

That night, Nipper and I went to dinner at a place downtown called Bottega Louie. It was amazing! We had portobello mushroom fries, and corn with bacon and swiss chard, and a rocket salad, and chicken with lemon and capers, and pasta with rib-eye and swiss chard, and a chocolate souffle, and WHOLE bottle of Magnificat meritage. Whoops. Oh, and they have french style macaroons, and their boxes look very laduree-ish. 

We came home, and I immediately passed out on the couch watching American Idol. I'm really romantic like that.  First time we've been out since the infamous Christmas date, and I'm like Gary Busey on a Tuesday. Jack's nanny Brenda had put him to bed, which has only ever happened one other time in his life. SO around 1:30 in the morning, Jack wakes up, thinks, "Are mommy and daddy still gone?" get's up, walks into the hallway, then, stunned, he says, standing in our bedroom, "Hey! I just opened that door". Sigh... I cursed myself, took two advil, and lay awake the next two hours, as Jack went back to sleep ON Nippers head, and the two of them battled for mattress real estate and who can snore the loudest. Jack won. 

Before he made his big break I was finding stuff like this when I went into his room in the morning:

Yes, the iphone, and the helicopters are in there, but also BOOKS! And a flashlight! Could it be I already have a little reader? Is he too young to be reading under the covers with a flashlight? Do kids even do that anymore? More likely he was using the flashlight to "shoot" something, but a mom can dream.  When I was very small we lived in a small town, right next door to the public library, which was also very small. The librarian had to make a rule that I was not allowed take out books and return them on the same day. I would walk over, get a stack, take them back to my room, where I would curl up in my closet and read them. She also had to make a rule that I wasn't allowed to eat red pistachios and read her books. Somewhere out there, are a whole slew of public library books with tiny pink fingerprints all over them.