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May 31, 2003

Summer Reads, Summer Routine


My Sabbatical has officially started. Well, I guess it will be officially official on Monday - but I suspect that I'll still just feel like I'm taking a "mental health" day - a.k.a. playing hookey. It still hasn't sunk in yet, this eight weeks off I've got ahead of me.

In celebration of my impending vacation, I started off Friday with a doctor's appointment! Really, though, that bit of information is only relevant because it meant that I strolled into work at about 9:30. I immediately noticed that Archibael had left me not only Season Three of the Buffy DVD's with which to entertain myself this summer, but Season One of Angel, too! Yeah, baby.

Then, at 10:30, my boss asked me if I felt like getting out of there early. Yeah, twist my arm. She was planning on taking me to lunch (we went to House of Tricks, which long time readers will recall is my favorite restaurant), and then we would go to a co-worker's cookout at 1:30. She wanted me to go with her to her house beforehand, to pick out some books from her personal library to read over the summer.

She had a damn lot of good reads, and I was hard pressed to limit myself. So I didn't. Here's the list - if any of you have read 'em, let me know what you thought, okay?

In no particular order:
  • "White Oleander" by Janet Fitch (and I didn't see the movie, so this'll be totally new to me)
  • "Cold Mountain" by Charles Frazier
  • "The Fourth Hand" by John Irving
  • "Sea Glass" by Anita Shreve (I read "The Last Time We Met" and really loved her writing)
  • "Unless" by Carol Shields
  • "Fall on your Knees" by Ann-Marie MacDonald
  • "Chicken Soup for the Soul of America" by Jack Canfield, Mark Victor Hansen, and Matthew E. Adams (Marie's reading this one first)
  • "The Dance of Intimacy" and "The Dance of Deception" by Harriet G. Lerner, Ph.D.
  • "The Colony of Unrequited Dreams" by Wayne Johnston
  • "A Game of Thrones" by George R. R. Martin
  • "The Pilots Wife" by Anita Shreve
  • "The World Below" by Sue Miller
  • "Back When We Were Grownups" by Anne Tyler
You bet your bippy that I'll read every one of them, and be looking for more, before the summer is out. Like Robyn recently commented, I can't imagine how a non-reader lives. I'm excited. This extensive reading list smacks of my summertime childhood, when I would bring head-high stacks of books home from the public library. I'd sit on the summer porch or swing on the hammock between the willows in the front yard, three or four Macintosh apples at my side, and read the afternoon away.

In an effort to be productive this summer (because, really, I can't achieve true happiness unless I am productive), I told Calvin that I'm going to make up a calendar of tasks to accomplish, one for each day. Like, Monday I'm going through all of our summer clothes and weed out what we don't need. Tuesday, I'm clearing out and organizing the kitchen pantries. Wednesday, I'm scrubbing out the fridge inside and out. That kind of thing. I'm praying that I'll stay motivated, so that by the end of the summer all of the little tasks and projects we've let slide for the last little while (::cough:: six years ::cough::) will be caught up on.

It's nice to be oblivious to reality, isn't it?

Long ago, I recognized within myself the need to be a part of some sort of routine. The similarities in this to that same need within domesticated livestock is much closer than I care to think about, really. I'm hoping to get up around 7:00 or 8:00, work out, complete whichever self-assigned task I have for the day, lay out for a half-hour or so to work on my tan, shower, have lunch, and then the rest of the day beyond that is my own.

A routine I could get used to, I'm sure, and be reluctant to give up come July 28th.

As I was telling Sarah in an e-mail earlier this evening: "Strangely enough, I'm worried that I won't wring every single little possible drop of enjoyment out of this summer. I'm actually stressing myself over the feeling that I have to take pictures of, and document, absolutely every little detail.

Sometimes being a journaller is close to being the death of me, I swear."

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©Laura Charon 2000 - 2003.