A Look at My Day

Today.. was one of those days. A hungry newborn baby, fatigue, a nagging headache.. and Homeschool.

Thankfully.. it's Friday, and I'm still making post-partum allowances for myself.

Instead of really hitting the books (with my daugher and two oldest sons).. I hit the books for myself.
Besides doing a minimal job of HS (my DD did Math, division drills, creative writing/drawing, Bible search and her Good Manners book.. the boys (ages 5 and 4) played very imaginatively and watched some Andy Griffith with my 2yo...
I myself read two Dorothy Gilman novels, and most of Dorothy Sayers "Murder Must Advertise".

It was a great day for reading. The children were subdued and happy (except Baby who nursed every 15min or so it seemed). All day, it was pleasantly overcast, not too warm, and I had two great excuses for hanging out in bed with a couple good books.

Breakfast.. was milk and pumpkin bread (homemade last night) and was delicious.
Lunch.. frozen Jack's pizza. Ok.. but we supplemented with more pumpkin bread.
Dinner... Perfectly cooked ribeyes, oven roasted garlic potatos, corn and carrot sticks.. with brownies for "bedtime" snack.

Thing is.. besides doing a few upkeep chores (rebooting the DW twice, ditto laundry, working on school stuff, cleaning up several spontaneous messes gratis my 2yo, and baths all around after one particularily spectacular mess)... I hardly did anything except snuggle with baby and read.

I DO enjoy Dorothy Gilman's Mrs. Polifax series.. Except for the part where shes a widow and lives alone... Mrs. Polifax is the kind of woman I'd like to be when I grow up. Kind, tough, compassionate, sentimental, patriotic and brave.

It was a Dorothy kind of day.. because Dorothy Sayer's Lord Wimsey fitted right in. I've adored Sayer's for several decades now.. I think I was around eleven the first time I discovered real mysteries (versus Nancy Drew).. and I've never looked back. Dick Francis came after my discovery of Dorothy Sayers, and I realized that this was a genre with endless possibilities.

My 8yo daughter is desperate to begin reading my Agatha Christie collection (two shelves worth).. although I would have thought the titles enough to worry one so young... mystery must be in her blood though.. it certainly is a family tradition.

Other girls practice cheers, or have pretend boy-friends.. I used to dress up in an overcoat and fedora and pretend to be a private eye (using a dilapidated round scrub brush as a pretend magnifying glass if I remember correctly). In my world back then.. there were spys and criminals lurking beneath the facades of most of the people I came across.. and I'm still not sure how much of my present fondness or dislike of certain people is based on what character's I assigned them.

Homeschool... allowed me to have a down day and not feel really guilty about it. We are already 45 days ahead of the public schools.. so who cares if my postpartum days are filled with snuggling with my children, reading books to them and for myself, and musings about whether to make brownies or cake.

One of my favorite movie quotes.. is when Meg Ryan says "I have a small life.. small, but valuable" in "You've Got Mail". That quote describes how I feel today to a "T".
You won't find my name in lights, or on a tabloid.. but the life I lead is full of very precious and worthwhile happenings. I'm just grateful to have been humbled enough that I can live in the moment and enjoy them. Today is what I have.. it may be small.. but it's valuable!

Speaking of small but valuable.. here's a small but priceless quote from Dorothy Sayers that brought me intense joy to read. In response to Lord Peter asking somebody about what reason we had to buy butter if margarine was so great...
"You don't need a reason to buy butter, it's a natural, human instinct."