Divine

Last night I watched a movie of a book I love:  Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood: A Novel by Rebbecca Wells.  The movie is a poor substitute, but the premise is basically the same.  A grown daughter wrestling with the demons of her mother.  A mother who had demons of her own and did a sometimes horrible job raising her children.  But the mother also did a sometimes fabulous job too.

I love this book because I totally see myself in the mother.  Not to the extreme the book portrays, but at times I feel down right wretched about this whole "housewife" thing.  I feel like I could go off my rocker and check out for days.  I feel like it but I don't.

But what I get from this book, what gives me hope, is the fact that it works out in the end. I love the beautiful parts of the book.  Like the mom waking them up on their birthdays in bed with a cake.  How she gets her daughter a ride on an elephant (in the movie it is an airplane) after the exhibit has closed.  How she really loves them with her heart and soul.  Those are the moments that are good. Those are the moments that matter and sustain me and hopefully my kids.

Dinner might be hot dogs 2 nights in a row, or Ramen like it was every Tuesday during school what with piano and Cub/Boy Scouts on the same night.  The laundry is literally scattered all over the upstairs in various states of done-ness.  I have dishes from last night in the sink.  These are the things that get me down.  I beat myself up for not keeping a "clean" house.  I worry about what to bring to our ward's Fish Fry tonight, since all I really want to do is show up and eat what everyone else brought.

I think about all of this as I fill up a pool in the yard for 3 little girls (it did get to 67 today and not a cloud in the sky, so of course we must break out the swimsuits that we bought back in May in hopes of warm days this summer).  And since it is only 67 I brought buckets of hot water to help warm it up.  Seems a little oxymoronic to warm up the water we need in the pool to supposedly cool off, doesn't it?

Buckets later, and the decision to just bring Rhodes Dough cinnamon rolls, the girls are upstairs changing out of swimsuits and borrowing Olivia's clothes to get warm. Puddles are leaving a steady trail from the sliding glass door, through the living room and up the stairs.  Who knows what they will find to put on in the clean basket of semi-folded laundry in her room.  They may all end up in princess dress-ups.

I will look at Olivia tonight when she sleeps (that battle that starts at 9 and ends at 11:30 when the sun goes down).  I will hope that today was a magical day for her.  That these are the kind of things that my kids will remember when they need to get through my moments of ranting, my maniacal cleaning spells, my roars of chore orders and cries of ingratitude when no one likes dinner.

I hope it is the days like today that are enough.

Some books

Most of you know I read. Like a lot. Like if I don't have a book I may as well not be breathing. It is that dramatic. So let me tell you a little about what I have read lately.

The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows

I read this one for the book club at church. At first I was way apprehensive about this book given the title and who chose it. But I was more than pleasantly surprised. In fact it was an amazingly well written book with a great story and fantastic characters. It is written in the form of several people writing letters back and forth to each other. Each letter had such a different voice that I could immediately picture who the letter-writer was and the characters began to form in my mind. All in all I would HIGHLY recommend this book to anyone.

Then there was Angels and Demons, Dan Brown

I have heard how good this book was add was expecting quite a page turner. All I can say is what a let down. I read The DaVinci Code and it was meh. This one was more of the same. More meh. Granted it was written first, but I can't say I will read anymore Dan Brown novels anytime soon. But if you loved loved loved DaVinci Code, you will love this.

I finally had to order Little Shepherd of Kingdom Come. No one had it in any of my travels and we were at a few bookstores looking for the "Warriors" series, by Erin Hunter for Carter. Even though the Ladies and of the Club reviewed it June 11, I will be catching up soon.So I am looking forward to that. I also have Bleak House, Charles Dickens waiting in the wings as my summer classic.

So what have you read?