#3

I've always enjoyed reading.  I remember many, many nights where my parents would walk past my room, open the door, and tell me to "put away the book."  Most nights I would feign sleep, and then pull out again to read until all hours of the night.  Family beach trips each summer were a perfect combination of swimming and reading with very little responsibility in between.  Even now, my perfect vacation centers on a beach and a book.

Obviously being a mother of three has cut down on my reading time.  My days are usually busy, and the book supply isn't very steady.  I have a secret and deeply abiding love for fantasy, young adult and regular kind.  As our earthly possessions are judged by weight, however, I can't usually justify purchasing pounds and pounds of books that I'll only ever read once.  And I don't have the time anyway.

But now that we're on evacuation, circumstances have changed.  I left Kathleen's school materials in Cairo and the easel didn't fit into my suitcase very well, so my days are much more open than usual.  So I marched everyone down to the library within the first week of our arrival, and I've been in heaven ever since.

I just finished the latest thousand-page behemoth, and my life is returning to order again.  I folded two day-old laundry this afternoon, and have returned to reading (and writing) blogs again.  My children had craft time (a first!) and stories today.  And I even vacuumed the carpet underneath our table.

But it's only a breath of air until I plunge into another book.  A lot of things about this evacuation aren't my favorite.  But I'm not complaining about the books.