A Book Hiatus

Finally! I finished reading Harry Potter 7!!! I held out for so long hoping that M would be able to find the time to read it with me (like we did for #6), but he's just so busy at work. I even stalled myself by reading books 1-6 again, but I just couldn't wait any longer. The disaster that is my life shows the results.

Why can't I just read a little every now and then? I can sometimes tear myself away from magazines, but not books. (M points out that I am still a total freak because I read magazines from cover to cover like they're a book.) I just can't get ANYTHING done once I start a book. Fortunately I usually manage to feed and clothe my family between paragraphs, but that's about it! Well, I suppose I usually stop reading a book every now and then since I haven't figured out a way to read in the shower. Once I start a book, it's like the blinders go on and I have to just plow ahead, hardly getting a chance to enjoy the process of reading because I am so consumed with finishing the book. It doesn't help that I'm such a PAINFULLY slow reader that it takes me forever to finish a book. It's so pitiful and it creates a vicious cycle. The house is such a disaster that I feel like the only hope is to just finish the book so I can move on, which leads to more domestic negligence, and so on and so forth... My poor kids.

There seems to be only one solution for me. The obvious solution is to just not read, but that just isn't an option for me. So instead I have to read in "shifts." A normal person would devote say, some portion of the day to reading, but since that doesn't work for me, I devote say, a few weeks, and then I take a book hiatus. It's my last desperate bid for balance in my life. So now I begin a reading break so that I can organize my house and sew Halloween costumes. Every time I sit down at the table to eat, there's this aching emptiness. What am I supposed to look at, my food?!?!? Every time I get Scott down for his nap, I automatically feel the urge to run downstairs and take a load off in front of a book. But no, I must deny myself. The book break must continue, at least until I'm out of magazines...