5 Things I Loved About Last Week #celebratelu 8/30/14

Ruth Ayres hosts a weekly celebration at her blog. I appreciate this invitation to find the positives in my week. This week I’m celebrating:

1. The first day of school for my kids! I loved summer vacation as a child, but my kids would be so much happier with year-round school. They love the predictable daily routine of school, the opportunity to see friends, the energy drain of PE class and after-school sports practice, the break from the emotional intensity of interaction with parents, the invitation to learn. We were all happy for them to be back in school this week!

This is his “will you please stop taking photos of me in my back-to-school outfit so that I can actually get to school and show off my back-to-school outfit?” face.

2. Writing time. I sprained my thumb a couple of weeks ago and have been avoiding writing because it’s painful. But I figured out a new way to hold my pen so that I can write for longer periods of time without as much pain. I prioritized my own writing this week. And was reminded all over again of this truth: If I’m not writing, I don’t feel like I’m living. (By the way, how long do sprained thumbs take to heal? It’s driving me crazy!)

3. An unexpected photo shoot. My older son is shy about having his picture taken. Or so I thought. It turns out that if you give him a football uniform, he will beg you to take photos of him. My husband took perhaps 100 photos with my iPad before I got home from work, and then when I got home, my cell phone was put to work taking 100 more.

He dressed up as a Patriot, a Packer, and a 49er and struck various poses appropriate to the position he was “playing.” This is the first year he can play football, and much as I don’t want him to play, my husband and I agreed that he could. And he is over the moon. He has scrubbed the bottom of his cleats with a toothbrush to get the grass stains off. He has slept with his helmet. He has worn his football pants to do his chores. And he has boasted and boasted and boasted about his physical prowess. At this point, he has had only one practice, but he is already certain that no one can tackle him, no one can catch him, and no one can stop him. If only. I would feel so much better about him playing football if I knew he’d never be tackled!

Also, we discovered that football gear is very appealing to certain cats:

4. A local independent bookstore!  I discovered the most incredible thing in Rapid City yesterday: an independent bookstore! I feel vaguely outraged that this place existed and I didn’t know about it before yesterday. Like I should have received a text message from the universe alerting me to the opening of a local bookstore. (I live 60 miles from Rapid. But believe me, in the context of South Dakota, that’s local.) And even more amazing than its mere existence is the quality of its children’s section. I have no doubt that the clerks thought I was touched in the head because of the many involuntary squeaks, squeals, and gasps I let out as I grabbed Bob Staake’s My Pet Book and Mini Grey’s Hermelin and Aaron Becker’s Quest and Kate DiCamillo’s Leroy Ninker and Dorothy Patent’s Dogs on Duty (and many more). It was like the Monday What Are You Reading posts I drool over every week came to glorious life before my eyes. Plus, it was pretty:

And look at this shelf of middle grade! One of SEVERAL:

I am now proud to say that I have a local indie to support! (And support it I did. Which brings us to #5.)

5. NEW BOOKS! It was already a banner week for new books around here before I discovered the local indie. When I saw that my son’s reading teacher has a classroom library, I decided I should stock it with some new titles (and also some nonfiction. There was no nonfiction!). This is the kind of book purchase I find very easy to justify. It’s for school! It’s for kids! It’s tax-deductible! So I ordered rather freely. I am trying to read some of the titles very quickly before I send them to school, so I’ve had a delightful reading week myself.

The cats have been pleased with the addition of many new Amazon boxes, and we are all tripping more literally than usual over stacks of books in every room. Happy SIGH.