Liner notes

* We're back from our whirlwind trip to the Midwest. My mother was pretty chipper and happy to see us, despite the chaos of five more people in her two-bedroom condo. I suspect she felt having James smile at her made it worthwhile. I can't blame her - he DOES have a very fetching smile.

Anyway, despite the hassle and fatigue of travelling cross-country with three small children and currently suffering from the world's fastest onset cold (slight sore throat Friday at dinner, then wham! Full on cold misery by bed), I feel better for having made the trip.

[Edited to add: well, a week ago when I started this, I was feeling chipper; now, I have a stomach bug, a sinus infection and James has decided to embark on an epic growth spurt. So I'm not so much with the chipper now, unless you mean the wood chipper it feels like my sinuses have gone through.]

* I've been back at work for a couple months now, although only working Saturdays to avoid the weeks on end of never having a day off together that's our normal life. I've started Sundays again this month though, so life is slowly grinding its way back to normal. Ah well, it was nice while it lasted.

Hey, remember our insane treasurer of the friends group at work? The one who wouldn't pay for anything, even when the group had approved the expense? We engineered a coup and got her voted out (really. We signed up every person we possibly could, got them to show up for the meeting and had them vote for our candidate). Life is so pleasant now. The new treasurer is positively giddy to hand out money. And he doesn't even accuse our manager of theft like the last treasurer, which is quite a bonus. I mentioned to him that it would be nice to have some money to refurbish the children's non-fiction section, thinking I might eventually get some pittance, and the next week I was told there was $300 for me to spend and more in the future. Oh my. I was feeling a bit overwhelmed by all of the possibilities, but I narrowed it down to the worse areas - science, recent history and geography and minority groups. I went on a shopping spree at the bookstore and got us a lovely number of books that recognize that Pluto isn't a planet, that dinosaurs are no longer thought to have been cold-blooded and even a book on that new-fangled concept global warming.

Next up with my last $100: a book on the civil rights movement that dates after 1968, a book on world religions that doesn't refer to Muslims as Mohamedans, and some books on Native Americans that don't make me cringe, just as soon as I get over the stabbing headache caused by reading reviews of books on Native Americans.