Does it have to be Monday?  I mean, does it absolutely have to?  I’m not ready.  Last week was a doozy – I worked until midnight on Monday (in the office, so I got home at about 12:30 a.m.) and what I learned is: when I work until midnight one night, I’m basically good for nothing for the next two days.  I know I did work on Tuesday and Wednesday, I just can’t remember what I did.  I started to get some energy back toward the end of the week, but I have another busy week ahead – although hopefully not with a late night like last week – and I really needed to get ahead on some things this weekend, but I didn’t.  It was a more productive weekend than last weekend, at least, when I didn’t do anything.  At least this weekend I got some organizing done.  I woke up on Saturday and immediately started working on a clean-out of our games and crafts cupboard – much needed.  I threw out a bunch of stuff and put a bunch more in our neighborhood craft supplies round robin bag, then sent the round robin off to its next stop at my friend Julie’s house.  Everyone was pleased with the newly organized cupboard; the kids spent the rest of the morning painting with their newly unearthed supplies.  Saturday afternoon was jam-packed with social engagements.  The kids and I hit up a(nother) birthday party, this one at a local indoor playground, then headed straight to the library.  We usually go on Sundays, but we’ve been trying to make a point of stopping by on the Saturdays when the children’s librarian, Vanessa – who moonlights as one of our favorite babysitters – is scheduled to work.  The kids were excited to see her.  Then from the library we drove into D.C. to attend a fondue party at our friends Stephen and Nancy’s house.  Stephen was one of Steve’s coworkers back in the day, and the gang has kept up through regular fondue nights at his house.  On Sunday, I woke up with a headache and both of the kids were running slight temperatures, so we spent the day chilling inside.  I ordered supplies for the Valentine’s Day party in Peanut’s classroom and packed up some gifts for my Buy Nothing community, but didn’t get anything else done – including the work I kind of really needed to do.  Instead I spent the day cuddling the kiddos, reading, and baking bread.  A good way to spend a Sunday; I hope it sets me up for the week.

Reading.  It was a busy reading week.  I spent the weekdays over two books: Wild Things: The Joy of Reading Children’s Literature as an Adult, and The Lost Vintage.  Both were fine, but left me feeling a bit lukewarm.  I enjoyed most of the literary criticism in Wild Things, but there were a few things that bugged me and ended up kind of ruining the book – more on that when I do my monthly reading roundup.  As for The Lost Vintage, I enjoyed the story – and I recommended it to my mom – but the writing style didn’t really resonate with me and I had a hard time buying into the central relationship.  I liked the wine parts, though, and it made me want to go back to France, so – a win overall, I think.  I finished The Lost Vintage on Friday evening and didn’t want to start anything new, because I knew I’d be picking up a pile of holds from the library on Saturday, and some of them would be time-sensitive, so I pulled out two books that I’m going to be reading slowly over the course of the year to tide me over until we made our library run.  First, The Almanac 2019 – I read the February chapter and it was a delight, as expected – and A Nature Poem for Every Day of the Year.  I’m getting started a bit late, so I spent an hour or so getting up-to-date, and a very nice hour it was.  On Saturday evening I thumbed through my holds pile and decided to begin with The World As It Is: A Memoir of the Obama White House.  I’m about 150-ish pages in as of press time, and it’s fascinating.  (I also have Thanks, Obama: My Hopey Changey White House Years in my library stack, and I might read them back-to-back to compare; we’ll see.)

Watching.  I know you’re thinking I’m going to say “nothing” but not this week!  (I know, I know, I’m full of surprises.)  I talked Steve into watching the adaptation of Doctor Thorne on Amazon Prime.  He’s enjoying it, but not as much as he enjoyed Victoria (true story).  I, on the other hand, am giddy.  The cast is perfect and it is just SO! MUCH! FUN!  We watched one episode on Sunday night and I look forward to making Steve watch the rest this coming week, if I get home at a reasonable hour.

Listening.  The same as usual: lots of podcasts.  I did an unprecedented thing and emailed the hosts of The Book Riot Podcast last week, because they were discussing a defamation lawsuit that’s been in the news and were wondering about some of the details of a defamation case.  Since defamation defense is part of my practice and has been, on and off, for about ten years now, I sent them an email with a 30,000 foot overview of the tort.  I felt a little silly writing it, but they sent me back a very gracious email thanking me for the “excellent nonlawyersplaining explanation,” so that was quite fun.

Making.  Not what I should have made: progress on a couple of work projects.  It will be a busy week; Sunday Scaries hit hard last night.  But I did make some good things this weekend, including a clean and organized games and crafts cupboard and a golden loaf of sourdough sandwich bread.  Yum.

Blogging.  I have more Lit Bits for you on Wednesday, and on Friday, some disorganized musings about not making resolutions for 2019.  Check in with me then!

Loving.  I don’t know if this is really “loving” or just “recalibrating” – but I’ve taken a couple of steps to cut down on my consumption of news.  Our statewide woes in Virginia are national news at the moment; the phrase “dumpster fire” doesn’t even begin to describe it.  (What’s the phrase for when the dumpster fire is on fire?)  It’s been painful to watch, because I voted for and supported the politicians involved, and I’m just so disappointed and disheartened in so many ways.  Twitter is continuing to drive me a bit bonkers, and it doesn’t help that staring at my phone gives me debilitating headaches.  So I’ve done two things: first, I’ve moved Twitter off my home screen and onto the third screen of my phone, where I keep absolutely nothing of importance: so if I really want to scroll my Twitter feed, I now have to go out of my way to access it.  And second, I’ve started keeping my phone in my bag during the workday and avoiding most of the news coverage I was reading on the computer.  (I can’t go completely cold turkey – I’m still reading FiveThirtyEight and skimming the CNN Politics page every morning.  But it’s a lot less than what I was reading.)  I feel less informed, which is probably not a good thing in the long run, but I feel a lot more peaceful right now, and it’s nice.  If I’m tempted to check the news I consciously steer myself to a book blog or gardening website instead.  I’ve just started doing this in the last two or so weeks, so I’ll let you know how my news diet holds up.  But for now, I am really enjoying being less plugged in.