Monday Monday

Here's hoping today is better than last Monday.

It started off better, at least. Penny forgot her med-alert bracelet at home, and we wound up running a bit late and stuck behind a school bus for a couple of miles, but those are both relatively minor hiccups.

And on the plus side of the sheet, the weather is lovely and fall-ish, and Penny objected not at all when I said goodbye at the lobby end of the hallway instead of walking her all the way down to her classroom. And I had quite a lovely weekend.

Saturday I met up with KT and we went to the Newport News Park Fall Festival, which is a big collection of mostly kitsch crafts and fair food, and we wandered around and looked at things and admired some and mocked others and even bought a few, and we had cinnamon-roasted almonds and limeade and fresh-made kettle corn. I got some new earrings that I won't be able to wear until next year (I'm eschewing necklaces and dangly earrings until Alex stops grabbing at them) and some scrapbooking stuff.

After that, we went back to my parents' house (where we'd met up to leave her car) and Matt and the kids were there (my parents having hinted that they'd like a visit from the grandkids) so we hung out and chatted and played with the baby for a while.

My dad managed to scare Penny to tears just by stomping and using a deep voice, so KT re-thought the plan of taking the girls on a Hallowe'en hay ride -- though she's still pretty keen on the notion of having Penny over for a sleepover with Jess, and I'm okay with the idea, myself. We don't even have the big diabetes-care hurdle to jump over, since she did most of it herself back when she was pregnant with Jess. We just need to give her a worksheet with the ranges and computations to fill in. (We'll probably comp the one we use for the school, though one of these days I want to get around to making an index-card-sized version that I can print out and stick in her kit.)

Anyway, we headed home around 5, had Subway for dinner (I need to remember to take a Pepcid AC before having a Spicy Italian from now on) and generally kicked back and enjoyed the evening.

Sunday was pretty much the usual -- groceries and laundry and playing with the kids. I spent most of the day sitting on the floor, it seemed (my back is killing me today) but I did manage to squeeze in about an hour and a half of uninterrupted reading while Alex took his afternoon nap, and that was very refreshing. (I got about halfway through the book club book for this month -- Twilight, by Stephanie Meyer -- and then I finished it instead of playing WoW after the kids went to bed. I can see why the series has such a strong following; it's very... charming, for lack of a better word. It wasn't deep or intellectual -- I did read the whole fairly thick book in about three hours -- but I'm already looking forward to reading the rest. I can't imagine the movie will adequately capture the charm, though, so I'm not sold on that.)

Anyway, it's been a long time since I really let myself sink into a book and lose time like that, and it was wonderful.