Sunday Serenity #62

Today was all about recovery from yesterday's Read-a-thon. I didn't quite make it to the finish line--9 AM. I made to a few minutes after 8 if you count the time I clicked publish on my last update to yesterday's Read-a-thon post. Last October I came across the finish line still flying high. But this time I went into it too sleep deprived already. Part of which was due to the excitement and anticipation. Part due to visiting too long with my niece the night before.

I couldn't believe that I could not make it that last fifty minutes. I am famous for my 24-48 hour days. I have many 'revive me' tricks. But I had to start using them at 9PM Saturday and was just plain done for by 8 this morning. My eyes would not focus. I was getting a headache and was nauseated. I think was even hallucinating over the last ten pages. I'm going to have to reread at least that much as I can't really remember how everything worked for all the characters. It didn't help that the novel itself was writen in a surrealistic style.

It was't the Read-a-thon I planned on having but I still had a blast and no way am I sorry I did it. It was much different for me this time because in October I was pretty much holed up alone in my room the whole 24 hrs. Ed joined in between getting home from work about 5PM and then crashing around midnight. I participated in a lot more mini-challenges that time and did more visiting of participants.

This time I was doing it with my 14 year old niece and the whole day was more social. We changed our reading station about every two hours or so which took time away from reading. We kept interrupting each other's reading to read paragraphs we had just read aloud. (I may have to pick up Lovely Bones, the book she was reading, next!) We were distracted for an hour by a lightning storm.

I lost an hour of reading in the afternoon to a visit with my MIL when she got home from her 50th high-school reunion. But I don't regret that one bit. Listening to her reminiscing about high-school here in Phoenix OR fifty years ago was fascinating. Not to mention seeing another side of my MIL was enlightening.

The heat was enervating both indoors and out. The heat coming off the laptop keyboard was so obnoxious I just couldn't face it which meant I posted updates less often and gave up on the mini-challenges around noon.

My niece finished her book--the first one--at 4:30AM and gave up. I was so tempted to give up then too. But I did dishes first and then spent another couple hours plugging away. I finished my book just before 8AM, wrote a couple sentence update announcing that I was finished. I was already asleep before I was laying down.

I woke up at noon to a nasty hot room and a headache and sore throat. I thought for a few minutes that I had done myself in, bringing on another virus. But it turns out the sore throat is from the smoke filling our valley from the California fires just across the border. It is bad. Bad enough to make it hard to see a block away.

The heat isn't quite as bad today but the humidity plus the smoke makes the high nineties pretty uncomfortable.

My niece woke soon after I did and we spent the afternoon until her dad picked her up rehashing the day and the books and talking about anything else we could think of. I can't think of a more serene way to spend a Sunday.

I knew she was disappointed that she hadn't gotten to any of the other books in the stack she selected off my shelf yesterday. So I told her to choose three to take home. She took three Alice Hoffman. Two of her YA and Practical Magic. She is going to be back for a July 4 bbq here and then spending another weekend here the following weekend so she can bring them back then. She said she felt bad taking them away from me in case they won't renew at the library for me next week but I said I had plenty to choose from. Besides, speaking of what's fair and what's not, I feel like I'm hogging Hoffman's books having checked out 10 of them to choose from for this event and then not even getting to any of them because I hadn't finished the book I started last weekend before the Read-a-thon started.

What I need now is sleep and lots of it. That would be pure serenity.