I got a phone call this morning at 4:35am from my 23 year old daughter. No - it wasn't an emergency, or sickness, or sorrow. She had just finished the fourth book in the Twilight series and wanted to say hello to me. "The birds are singing. I figured you must be getting up pretty soon."
If you don't know, this is the series of vampire stories that took the country by storm a year or two ago. Now they have been made into movies and are wildly popular. I read the first one. It was a page-turner for sure. It tapped into that ecstatic, overpowering passion of an adolescent crush exceedingly well. At the same time...well, A. said it best: "I am so embarrassed!" Some books are so engrossing that you just can't put them down, even when you know they're not that great - no elevating literary qualities. And yet - you can't help it. My sister calls those the sour cream and onion potato chip variety of books.
I've had one 20-something child call at 6am, knowing I'd be up, but 4:35 was pushing it. I was in between my two cell phone alarms, not out of bed yet, and next to her sleeping Dad. Anyway, it was still nice to hear her wide awake, animated voice.
Our whole family are readers to some degree. One of my favorite events of childhood (my kids' childhood) was a library day. We came home with 5 books apiece, 20 books, and the rest of the day would be devoted to a "book fest."
When the Harry Potter books first came out, all of us quickly became addicted. As each new book came on the market, we would get one of the first copies (at Sam's Club, or BJ's, or Spag's in Worcester) and flip a coin to see who got to read it first. J read them out loud to T before she was old enough to read them herself. It was a great family event. We started buying two copies later on, leaving the spare copy out at our summer house - where there is no TV and no computer, at least until very recently (computers kind of work there now, for better and for worse). Books ruled.
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Blackflies have come out in force!!! Yesterday evening the dogs were surrounded by clouds. After they came in we found sated flies all over the kitchen table, walked crookedly across magazines. Gross. They find any hint of exposed skin and come in for the attack. It's a great reason to walk in the morning, because they were not out at 5am.
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Here are dogs illustrating grass: seeds shedding,
and the deepening green jungle
Here is my shadow over a misty pond...
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