Not Quitting Just Yet

The book club meeting was the straw that broke the camel's back yesterday.

Due to all the damned snow we've had this winter, it had been rescheduled a couple of times, so I'd mostly forgotten the last book we read by the time last night rolled around.  Of course, the kids had yet another delayed opening yesterday because of the snow we'd gotten the night before, so they went in to school late.  All I had time to do before my dentist appointment (which had also been rescheduled twice due to snow days!) was run the vacuum cleaner and fold a couple of loads of laundry.  Run to the dentist, swing by the bank to get Thing Two's birth certificate out of the safety deposit box (needed to prove his birthdate for travel soccer), quick trip to Staples for some desk organizing stuff, home to grab the rice krispy treats I hurriedly made that morning when I learned that the first grade Valentine's Day party had been rescheduled after Friday's snow day, then off to school for the party.

Direct from party to grocery store to pick up dental floss for the kids and cookies for Thing Two's half birthday celebration in school today (his birthday is in August, so we celebrate half birthdays at school instead.)  Home to get the kids off the bus.  Frantic half an hour of getting the kids a snack, packing up their homework and having them put on their taekwondo gis before running back out to take them to their classes at the dojo (with whomever was not in class doing their homework in the hallway.)  Home again, hurriedly cook dinner for everyone, wait for Himself to get home and then take off like a rocket to get back to town for book club.  NOT, to put it mildly, a relaxing day.  I was in rare form by evening: I have all the organizational skills of a master sergeant in the Army and whatever shit needs to get done gets done, but it takes a toll!

I spent the entire drive back to town thinking about quitting book club.  Not that the reading itself is much of a hassle, since I love to read even though sometimes I have to force myself to read the particular selections: it's more the evening time commitment causing stress since my kids have one or more things going on every night of the week and getting anywhere alone on a weeknight requires juggling in the form of some combination of my husband, babysitters and friends.  (Last night a girlfriend brought Thing One home from basketball practice, for example.)

So, I got to book club about half an hour late, sagged into a chair and took a deep breath.  This isn't even a group of girls I know all that well: a few friends, but a lot of friends-of-friends too.  I was thinking that this should be something that I could cut from my list of to-dos without it being too such of a sacrifice.

But then it turned into a really great evening.  We had fun talking about the book, and I remembered more about it than I'd expected.  And of course, a good chunk of the evening was spent talking about everything in the world OTHER than the book anyway.  By the time I left, I was really glad that I had gone, and my batteries were feeling more charged than they were when I arrived, even with all the stress of the day.  Right now, I'm thinking that I will try to stick it out, since I don't get all that much time with the girls and clearly it's something that I need.  (The whole "if Mama ain't happy, ain't nobody happy" thing.)  Guess the juggling will have to continue!