My friend invited me to see a 20th anniversary showing of The Fifth Element last night.
It was just tremendously fun!
My family had the DVD, and I know I’ve seen most of it. But I don’t think I ever sat down and watched the whole thing from start to finish – and you really need to in order to know what’s going on!
Anyway, it was just a fun evening, on a Sunday when we didn’t have our usual gaming. And I’d already gotten a call from my son.
I had a week off, and thought I’d finish up with one of my favorite things to do – a 48-Hour Reading Challenge.
I got the idea from Mother Reader, years ago. I admit, it’s more fun when you join people from all over the internet doing it at the same time, but I didn’t plan enough in advance.
In the 48 hours from Friday morning at 8:00 am to Sunday morning at 8:00 am, I managed to read and review for 29 hours and 5 minutes.
I finished 7 books in that time, 4 of them started from the beginning.
I wrote reviews of 10 books, writing 5,466 words.
I posted 3 reviews.
I figure next year, when I’m on the Newbery committee, I’ll need to do this much more often! (Without taking time to post reviews!)
But in the meantime, it was a lot of fun.
Back in February, a friend pointed me to an exercise where you visualize what you’d like your life to be like 10 years in the future. You try to describe a typical day in great detail.
Somewhat to my surprise, Future Sondy was booking her Annual Personal Spiritual Retreat on the Isle of Iona for that springtime! In other years, she’d gone to places like Prince Edward Island and Mont St. Michel.
I got to thinking that Present Sondy should start this habit! But I don’t have any money for a fabulous place like that. But I realized that my own home is a nice place for a retreat. After all, I’ve got a lake view. So I looked on the library schedule for a time when I could take a week off, and chose the first week of May.
It’s been lovely, if not as peaceful as the Isle of Iona would be!
I did take some time for cleaning – hard to avoid if you’re staying home. But these last two days, I’m taking a 48-Hour Book Challenge and getting lots of books read and reviews written.
I also worked on Project 52, and got this week’s post done in one day, instead of stretching it out over three or four posts. And the week I finished was about the year when my divorce was finally final. And that felt good.
Then I found this verse. With that timing – finishing thinking through the hard years – I’d like to take this as my theme for the year – until my next personal spiritual retreat.
Song of Solomon 2:10-12
My beloved spoke and said to me,
“Arise, my darling,
my beautiful one, come with me.
See! The winter is past;
the rains are over and gone.
Flowers appear on the earth;
the season of singing has come.”
Here’s to a season of singing!
I live on the edge of the DC suburbs. One of my friends from church lives almost an hour further out – totally in the countryside.
Yesterday, I went out and spent a few hours at her place. And my soul was fed. (Deer and birds were fed, too!)
I love having a home in the treetops!
Today I opened my door to my balcony and got to listen to birdsong all morning (until it got too hot).
Today at Crazy 8s Math Club, a little sister, whom I’ve let participate, had made a card for me. Boy, is that ever heart-warming!
I GOT ON THE 2019 NEWBERY COMMITTEE!!!!!
I’m working through the hard years of my life on my Project 52 project. And it’s been great to get perspective, but it’s been hard, too. Last night I read lots of old emails from my ex-husband, and those emails are packed full of words telling me all the ways I was a terrible person.
Those lines should be stale by now — but today I’m feeling down on myself.
Then I happened to post this quote that says that sometimes we need other people to show us we’re lovable. And that’s where my gracious friends have come in – reminding me that I waited so long for my husband because I loved him and I wanted to give him every possible chance to change his mind.
I see all the things I did wrong with that entire episode. (And this isn’t a surprise — those are the things Steve pointed out.) But, my gracious friends are reminding me that they see it differently.
And that helps.
Today, at the Neighborhood School Readiness Team meeting, the organizer passed on a compliment. She’d been working with a youth services manager at another Fairfax County Public Library and mentioned the Fairfax City group. This other librarian said about me that I’m a rock star! And that I do great things as a librarian!
This completely blew me away. I honestly had no idea anyone would ever talk about me that way! (Yes, it also made me think some people don’t know me very well.) But most of all — It was good to feel like my colleagues respect the work I do. (Very good!) And it was sweet of the facilitator to pass it on.
At the Crazy 8s Math Club at the library today, we had ten kids. One kid was white. I didn’t ask to be sure, but I’m pretty sure we had kids of Asian, Arabic, Hispanic, and Indian descent as well. I heard one girl explaining that her parents were from two different countries, but I didn’t catch which one her father was from — the mother was from India. (The girl said this with a completely American accent.)
All the kids were happily playing together. I think a couple of the boys didn’t speak English real well yet, but they did know how to play with other kids.
It was just lovely to see.