books

I just went to an Usborne book party that one of my MOMS Club friends had. I do love their books. Spent $40. Our Club is sponsoring the library of a local elementary school that is in an impoverished area of town. I got two books for the school library. I love books. We have tons of children’s books. We had a “book shower” as our second baby shower when we were about to have K. One of my college roommates is a media specialist who sends us books all the time. My mother, the former kindergarten/first grade teacher, is also a big giver of books. And I buy plenty on my own. But I figure you can’t ever have enough books in your home.

a Saturday morning

I slept last night, praise to God and Allah and all that is holy! I slept from 11 until 1, then from 2 until 6 and then from 6:30 until 8:30. whoo hoo! That’s a total of 8 hours! and the night before was pretty good, too. In fact, I’ve had more total sleep in the past two nights than in the past week combined.

I’ve been doing some much-needed cleaning around the house this morning. Dusting — something I haven’t had time to do since we moved in (ack!). Someone in church gave me four little tomatos, and I’d been letting them ripen on the kitchen window sill. This morning I made bruschetta with them. yum!

It is amazing what one finds time to do when one gets good sleep. Really, I have had two nights of fairly decent sleep in a row; and I feel soooo much less desperate today.

We had some time to kill yesterday while waiting on my car to get a check up so we went to the new REI store near the mall. Very cool. I have recently started having dreams about Singapore (Changi Airport, specifically) and Bangkok and Thailand and so on. I would love to go see the new airport in BKK and their new transit system over there. I used to love staying at the Amari that was attached to the Don Muong Airport. Between reading about Thailand’s new airport and my dreams, it’s made me really want to go back there. So I’m in REI looking at camping stuff and it just reminds me all the more of traveling. I use a lot of camping stuff when I travel (potable Aqua, plasticware, fold-up blankets, etc.). It hits me that what I like so much about going to these out of the way places is the “survivalist” part of them. I like to camp (my family grew up doing that at least twice a year; it was free and fun; along the Blue Ridge Parkway mostly). But I would rather “rough it” in some far away place. a run-down hotel (or better yet, a guest house) in some dinky place is my kind of travel.

I mentioned to T. that I might be interested in going back to Asia by asking him if I took a long trip, which of the kids would he rather me take with me. He said as soon as E was weaned, he’d be fine if I took K. In many ways, a potty-trained, very mobile child would be easier to take that’s for sure. In other ways, it would be easier to take E. Anyway, it made me start thinking that I really may be able to do some significant traveling within the next year. a 2-3 week trip at least. Which does my heart and soul some good. I need something big to dream about, to hope for, to work toward. And returning to Asia would certainly be a nice dream come true.