I Need You To Tell Me I'm Not Losing My Mind

Book lover. Always have been. Read voraciously as a child, voraciously as a younger adult, less voraciously after the kids were born, more voraciously as more of my time frees up.

Although, these days, there's a lot more audiobook listening than there is visual, book-or-Nook-in-hand reading. That's irrelevant, mostly, to this plea for reassurance.

Which is about the following:

The last two books I've listened to were books I would have told you--SWORN to you--I'd read before. They're books on my bookshelf. One of them is on my list of my all-time-favorite books. But here's the thing: They aren't even the vaguest, slightest bit familiar to me.

The first book, my supposed all-time favorite? Great Expectations. Twenty-some enthralling hours of audiobook goodness. And while I remembered Miss Havisham, that could have been from popular culture. None of the rest of the story was even slightly familiar.

The second? The Spectator Bird. Stegner is just incredible. I've been in love with his work since my friend Roseann introduced me to him, literally decades (gulp) ago now. Again, it's on my bookshelf. But this time, it's even worse: Not a single thing about this plot is familiar, except for the protagonist's name. I thought it was a different Stegner book, it seems, though I'm not sure which different book I thought it was.

This isn't good. This is scary. I think maybe I'm losing my mind. Or my memory. Because...how? I mean, I know I've read too many books in my life to remember their specifics. I often can't even describe the main plot line of even my all-time favorites without picking them up and flipping through them to refresh my memory. But I can always remember how they made me feel, and rereading them reinforces that feeling, brings it all flooding back as I go along. So NOTHING? At ALL? That's not good. It's bad, in fact. It's scaring me. I'm very, very scared.

Please tell me I'm not losing my mind (or, more to the point, my memory). I won't believe you, but I need to hear it anyway.

Scenes from the soccer sleepover

[I'm just going to pretend it hasn't been a month and a half almost. OK? OK. Thanks for playing along!]


Early in this AYSO soccer season, Em asked about getting the everyone together at a team sleepover and, in a moment of obvious not-so-early senility, Baroy and I suggested they do it at our house. And thus it came to pass that, on Saturday evening, seven 12-to-14-year-old-soccer players descended upon us, and I put together a taco bar, and Baroy ordered in pizzas, and Em organized a sundae bar for dessert, and there was screeching and squealing and chaos and more laughter than I thought was possible for a single house to contain.


It was crazy, but it was good. Crazy is good, right?


Anyway, so that you can get just a teensy taste of the Good Crazy, what follows is my Facebook status update stream over this weekend, with the occasional meander:


Saturday, 10:51 a.m.: Having Em's soccer team over for a sleepover tonight. WHAT WERE WE THINKING???

My favorite response: That your daughter is awesome and these will be some of her best memories of this age? Oh and you're nuts. ;)  

That was later followed by our friend D: I currently have 7 Cub Scouts spending the night that are jacked up on cake, ice cream and Transformers. Even the dogs are hiding. 

To which Baroy responded: I see your 7 cub scouts and raise you 8 teenage girls. 

Saturday, 6:11 p.m.: Overheard at the soccer sleepover, part I: I like shingles. (Pause.) Not the illness, the house part. Really...I got nothin' else to say on that one.


Saturday, 9:37 p.m.: Wish I could give you more "overheard at the soccer sleepover" reports, but all I'm overhearing now is variations on SQUEEEEEEEEEEEE and AHHHHHHHHHHHHH and HEEEHEEEHEEEEEEEE and OMIGODYOUGUYS!


Saturday, 10:32 p.m.: Things you don't WANT to overhear at the soccer sleepover: Does anybody have a lighter?

Realizing people might not understand, I added the following: To clarify: They're taking photos of themselves being "irresponsible parents" to one of Emily's American Girl dolls, and they were joking about setting it on fire. Which...now that I think about it...doesn't really make me feel much better.

Finally, the next day--after falling asleep myself at around 2 a.m. and later finding out the last of the soccer gals had hit the hay at around 5:30 a.m.(!), I posted this:


Sunday, 1:47 p.m.: I wonder if any of us is going to be able to stay up past 8 tonight...

(We did. But not by much...)

All I can say is, if there really is a Parenting Points system? We probably earned enough Saturday night  to make up for that time we accidentally forgot to pick her up from gymastics. What? Oh, don't pretend you never did that, too...


[If and when I get postable photos? I'll post 'em...]