I am completely surrounded by unread books. It is, on the one hand, so utterly delightful, and on the other hand, so very sad. I seldom have time to read them. I generally read at night when I get into bed. Lately, though, I’ve been working such long hours, that when I get into bed, crack the current book, and read one sentence – WHAMMO! I’m down for the count. That’s it. Just like that. I read one sentence, and I am way off in the land of the Almighty ZZZ’s!!
Just here in my bedroom, near my bed, I have eight books, either begun, or not yet even opened. I also have three unfinished magazines. Oh my! I wish I had an Orlando vacation home that I could sneak off to, with my magazines and books in tow. I would buy enough food for a week, so I wouldn’t have to leave at all, and just get cozy and read. It sounds completely blissful. A reading vacation – that’s a new twist, isn’t it? I would be in Heaven, though!

Mark just came home from helping his mom with some stuff. After they got done working, they stopped by one of the local antique stores that is going out of business and has dropped their prices ridiculously low!

He got himself a few neat things and he got me the most beautiful wooden birdhouse, handcrafted in Tennessee. The birdhouse cost $7.00! It was originally $19.00, but, in Dallas, craftsmanship that nice would easily sell for at least $45.00!! I will definitely have to get a picture to post here for you! I think I’ve talked here before about loving birdhouses!

He also bought a little doodad for Shawn. Shawn has become a huge fan of purple over the last couple of years, and Mark saw a purple-haired troll and just had to get it for him. And Mark and I reminisced about how trolls were so popular when we were kids. It’s so neat when stuff like that – that was popular in your own childhood – gets your kids all geeked out, too! Like the chia pets – I think that is so cool they are gaining in popularity again. I remember when they first came out. I know my kids would love to have one. Well, Sammie and Shawn, anyway – Patrick would just mock the thing!

The other day I learned about a frightening new development in the street drug world. The newest thing out there is being called ‘Strawberry Quik’ – like the powder we used to mix in our milk. Well, I suppose it is still on the market – I just haven’t bought it myself in years. Anyway, they are making methamphetamines with candy flavors! And the stuff is even colored pink! It closely resembles Pop Rocks candy, and kids as young as 11 are being targeted with this drug! I just had the drug talk again with my kids after learning about this stuff. I want to do everything that I can to keep them off of drugs and out of drug treatment centers! They are making this junk in more than just strawberry, too! Chocolate, and who knows what else! It is so scary! The thing that really struck me about is that it very strongly lowers the children’s awareness of the severity of the drug, you know? If an 11 year old kid sees a needle with some ugly heroin in it, that is going to look pretty freaky to them. But if they see what looks to be Pop Rocks, it doesn’t look so daunting…and the next thing you know, they’re hooked! When I told my fourteen year old about it, he said he saw on TV that they are making marijuana flavored now, too. We have all got to just keep talking to our kids! Very scary stuff!

You know how I’ve been telling you how much my family completely and totally loves Halloween? And how my daughter and her friends just put up all of our Halloween decorations? Well, guess what! We love Halloween so much that we even changed our outdoor lighting for it! It’s true, really! See, my brother and his wife know how much we love Halloween, and they just happened to see these really cool Halloween light bulbs one year, and thinking immediately of us, they just had to get them for us! The one on our front porch looks really cool! I’ll try to remember to get a picture of it for you tonight! (If my darn camera will stop eating all of the batteries!)

Halloween is sneaking up on us – it’s just around the corner! I can’t believe that! This year is just flying right past us! But, oh how I love Halloween! My daughter and her friends just put up all of our decorations yesterday. And we’ve been discussing costumes, and plans for the magical, spooky, creepy evening! Last year we definitely all had a blast! Our whole family just loves Halloween and I know that we will have so much fun this year, too!

And then it will be over. Just like that. And then we’re in the last inning stretch towards Christmas. Christmas? Already? Wow!

Yep, Christmas will be upon us – I think, in just over a week. You see, once Halloween is over, then it’s all about Christmas. Sure, we’ve got Thanksgiving first, but, that is really just Christmas’ appetizer. (As well as time for Mrs. Lisa to rant on and on about how Columbus did NOT discover America!)

When my brothers and I were kids, I know this will come as a big surprise to you but, one of my very favorite, most-coveted Christmas gifts was my gift certificate to Taylor’s Bookstore. (Which isn’t even around anymore.) It was always in my stocking, and I would search and dig in there until I found that wonderful brown envelope! And then the day would come when Mom would take us all to Taylor’s and OH! how I loved that day! We would all go our separate ways to our favorite sections in the store and I was just in Hog Heaven! I suppose you might want to call it Book Heaven!

There was another favorite gift that we would often receive, though. And that is RC cars. Each year, they were newer, faster, stronger, bigger, etc and we were always so excited to try them out! We would go across the street to the elementary school and try out our new cars in the driveway or on those long sidewalks or even in the parking lot. And there were always neighbors there with their new RC cars, as well! It was so much fun!

I come from a long line of bookworms. It’s not just me, oh no. My grandmother was the Queen Bookworm! She would tell us about a book she had been reading, and the story would just come alive right in front of our eyes! And she had a steady stream of books coming into her house at all times. It was kind of like Netflix nowadays, except that instead of movies, she was receiving talking books. She received audio books in the mail from a national audio book library, because, she had lost most of her site from macular degeneration. The books (tapes) came in these big, green boxes and quite often she had a backup. And things were just a mess. I remember trying to get them bagged up with her, so the mailman could return the ones she’d listened to. Oh, that mailman just loved us! She usually kept them on a shelf of an end table, but, sometimes there just wasn’t enough room for all of them. I bet if she had had some audio racks, she could have kept them more organized. Either way, she was definitely a bookworm mentor of mine!

My older son just finally got into the gifted program out here. I have been asking about it since signing him up for the school last year, but, through one communication gap after another, it was slow going. Anyway, he is just loving it. And the way that they do it, is to replace one of their academic classes with it, weaving that subject into the gifted curriculum. Last year, if you were in the gifted program, that meant you were in gifted social studies. This year, however, that means that you are in gifted English. My other son loves his regular English teacher so much that he didn’t want to switch. He might do it next year, though. He had the gifted teacher for another six-week long class, and he really liked her, too. And she was very happy having him in her class, as well. We went ahead and did the paperwork for him, so he can easily go in next year, if he chooses.

Anyway, Patrick has some cool projects and things coming up in his gifted class. And one of the things that he needed right away was a thumb drive, for taking material back and forth between home and school. Isn’t technology amazing? I just love it. It would be so neat to be in school during this exciting time! I think thumb drives are external hard drives, right? Anyway, it is just neat.

I’ll have to post some more about the gifted class and all they have planned this year – it’s definitely going to be cool!

I love having my own business. My Very Own Mail is just my baby and I really enjoy it. And being self-employed is great, because, I don’t even have to worry about stuff like corporate performance management. My work life is a lot simpler than that. It can definitely be a lot of work, but, it is basically pretty simple. Another thing I happily miss out on – office politics. Ick! And you know, they are just everywhere. No place, or even organization, is immune to the vileness of ‘office politics’. Case in point – the year I was PTA president – oh my goodness. You are at the school, volunteering your time, putting in major hours, and people actually get upset with you. It totally blew me away. So now I am just at home, with my personalized letters business and my blogs, and no office and no PTA. It’s pure bliss.

One thing you need to have when you’re reading is good lighting. I am always getting onto my kids about reading in lights that are too dim – they drive me crazy doing that! And it’s not just because I’m a bookworm. It is also because messing with your eyesight scares me, as macular degeneration runs in my family. I want my children to do all that they can to protect their eyes for as long as they can. I will catch them trying to read by the light of their gameboys, by the closet light, by any little bitty light that they can find! I wonder if I got them some really cool seagull lighting, if that would inspire them to turn on better lights to read! I suppose it’s worth a try!

That’s who I’m going to meet tomorrow – well, me and a couple busloads full of fifth graders. I’m so excited. I’m scared already, just from looking at the pictures. I mean, really – do you think these three boys ever have nightmares?

See, because, what I am seeing tomorrow is a cast replica – but, those sweet boys are looking at the real, for real, actual ….head of a T-Rex!

Maybe it didn’t help that I watched Godzilla with my son yesterday! The images of Godzilla are helping Sue ‘come alive’ for me, you know? I mean, good gosh! Sue’s hips are 12 feet high! Just her hips!

I have been doing some reading up on her and I am getting more excited with every page that I read. The Field Museum, in Chicago, Illinois, with the help of many sponsors – purchased Sue for $8.4 million!

Her debut was in May 2000, and she even had a special piece of music written just for her big debut, by The Chicago Chamber Musicians. The piece is called, “Tyrannosaurus Sue: A Cretaceous Concerto”. I just love the sound of that! I mean, the name, that is. I haven’t actually heard the piece. That would be really cool if I could find it on YouTube and then I could post it here for all of us to enjoy together!

Ok, I’m sure I’ll have lots of good stuff to report after ‘meeting’ her – so for now…