Saturday Night Free Verse

I feel like a giddy kid with a new toy.

I just spent the highlight of my week talking about books and drinking tea and eating pad thai with three other women, some of whom I had only met this evening, and LOVING every single minute of it.

Just how infatuated am I with book club? Glad you asked...


At our first book club meeting in February, I showed up with a list of potential names for our book club that I had been brainstorming and recording on my library book receipt during the time between when I got in bed and when I fell asleep each night. Book club was all I could think about every night before bed for at least a month straight. From those hours of book club anticipation, Saturday Night Free Verse was birthed.

I also brought along three potential reads for March so we could pick out the next book at our meeting, just in case there wasn't a book picked out yet. (There wasn't). My suggestion: The Time Traveler's Wife. (One of my favorites!).

This month was my turn, along with choosing the read, to host the meeting for Saturday Night Free Verse. I got to pick the meal and prepare the discussion questions. Fantastic! It's like getting to plan a lesson, but for a small group instead of an entire class, and for people who have not only read the book, but who enjoy talking about the book too! It's an English teacher's dream come true.


In addition to the meal of spring rolls, pad thai, sticky rice, hot tea, and bananas in coconut milk (in honor of Henry and Clare's first date at Beau Thai, for those of you who have read TTW), I pulled out the china that Adelaide gave me as a wedding shower gift. It was like playing tea party, only with real food and real china (oh, and not to mention the place mats and cloth napkins that were Christmas gifts from my sisters this year). Plus, we were all so excited to talk about the book that we started the discussion during dinner.

When I was in college, I had this vision of sitting around for the rest of my life discussing literature with high school kids.


If only school looked like book club, my dream would be realized....

These Days

Haven't had much desire to blog these past few months. Sometimes the work seems more effort than it's worth. I used to like to write. I still do, I think. Blogging is just such a different kind of writing. I have to continuously edit my thoughts, unlike journaling, where I can just spew and feel comforted that no one else has to see the vomit.

Everywhere I turn, I hear another story about someone who put something on the internet without using descretion, and the next you know, life is in shambles.

Then I vacillate between the optimism of "that won't happen to me" to the paranoia of "Big brother is looking over my shoulder. What picture could be painted of my words?"

Here is a brief recap:

• Basketball season is over. I put in my resignation.  No more coaching for me. Which is a good thing.
• Looking forward to spring and warmer weather. Seems life always stays busy, even when I am not coaching and don't have grading due to a student teacher.
• Joined a book club recently that my friend Ami started (Saturday Night Free Verse). It's fantastic to have a new group of friends who like to read. Current read is The Time Traveler's Wife. My pick. I'm reading it for the second time and enjoying it more than the first.
• Spring break is here. Casey and I spent the wekend in Springfield visiting my family. We were going to see the Lincoln sights, but came back early due to next bullet point.
• Adelaide is dying. This is a much bigger deal than one bullet point's worth, but I don't have the energy to delve more deeply into the emotion and response that it deserves.

Having typed and backspaced this sentence too many times to count, I will leave it at that.

Peace.