Y’all, I have been living in survival mode in a big way. Last Sunday, Steve was out at a concert, and then he was down and out with tummy troubles (not COVID, and he’s fine now) and then by the time he started to feel better he had to shove off for his twentieth law school reunion while I stayed home to wrangle the kids. The workweek was a gauntlet of mediations almost every day, which meant I had to work late most nights to stay on top of my regular and project work. Through all of this, the anklebiters were limping to the finish line of the school year, with everything that goes along with that – school events, class parties (that I had to procure and send candy for), and a year’s worth of artwork, math worksheets, and random detritus coming home every day. We were all tired and more than a little emo, and staring down a weekend of solo parenting. I did my best to make it fun and exciting for the kids – I called it The Great Summer Kickoff and kept a weekend of fun rolling – but guys, I am exhausted. And as you can imagine, there wasn’t much reading.

Most nights of the week, my eyes were so tired from staring at zoom.gov all day – and I was handling dinner, cleanup, evening and bedtime alone, with no help – and Mariana stayed unopened on my nightstand. I might manage to limp through twenty pages on a good day, but that was the best I had in me all last week, until I finally got to sit down and read the last eighty or so pages on Sunday afternoon. It was not at all the fault of Mariana, which was delightful (with the exception of one or two offhand comments that ring jarring to the modern reader, sadly all too common in books of that time period). I loved the main character, Mary, and rooted for her as she found her calling and stumbled through bad romances until she met her match.

On Sunday evening, after finishing Mariana, I was planning to pick up something off my Classics Club list, but couldn’t face a long book. I tried a few pages of The Silmarillion, put it down, tried a few pages of Sylvia’s Lovers, put it down. Finally went for a non-Classics Club Challenge book, largely because it was short – A Room of One’s Own, which I’ve been meaning to pick up for ages now. Hoping for a more book-friendly week ahead: I don’t have any mediations, Steve is back from his trip to Cornell, and the kids are off to their respective day camps (theatre for Peanut, baseball for Nugget). So the dream is: settling into a summer groove and putting up some page totals.

Duck Donuts for breakfast on the first day of summer vacation. It’s a thing.