Bittersweet Kindling

I am a book lover.

I love not only reading books, but holding their sturdy spines in the palm of my hand, turning the paper edges with anticipation for what waits on the next page. I love the smell of wood pulp and ink.

I love books.

Reading them, underlining their best passages, dog-earring the pages so I can go back to my favorites again and again. And lining them up neatly on my shelves, like old friends and destinations just waiting for me to come and visit again on a lazy, rainy afternoon, a sunny morning or sleepless night.

Books are a wonderful escape; fuel for my imagination and understanding of this world.

Someone said that, "A room without books is like a body without a soul."

It feels true to me.

Whether the tattered and stained cookbooks that tell the tale of favorite meals shared with love, as well as failed attempts at culinary delights, that sit on my kitchen shelves; or the worn and dusty collection of classics that go mostly untouched in the family room; the pile of reading material waiting on the bathroom counter for a stolen moment behind a locked door; the loads of books on my bedroom shelves where my favorites are displayed and cared for; or the rainbow of childrens books standing at attention in my kids' rooms; books bring comfort and imagination to all the rooms of my home.

So when my husband got a Kindle for use in grad school, I was excited for him, but hesitant for myself. It sounded so exciting to have books right there at my fingertips, whether traveling or home or at Panera. No broken back as a result of lugging all those pages, just the touch of a button on one neat and tidy device. But no books?

This week I bought my first book on Kindle. It is called Bittersweet and is by Shauna Niequist, the author of Cold Tangerines, which I blogged about before. And the title seems fitting for my first foray into technical reading.

The Kindle is cool. Even though it looks like a computer screen when turned off, when I turn it on, it is as though a page appears with no glare and no screen strain on my eyes. It saves my place when I turn it off, lets me underline or take notes right there in the text, no need to find a pen, and I can make the letters larger for my eyes which sometimes require reading glasses (yes, I am that old).

When I turn it off, a random picture appears of sketches of fish straight off an encyclopedia page, Mark Twain, Mount Olympus or, my personal favorite, Charlotte Bronte (I almost kissed that picture when it appeared, but refrained due to the fact that I had on lip gloss and did not want to clean the screen, but I do love her that much). I need to have proper lighting to read off of it just like a normal book and Joel bought a nice protective case for it that feels like a book spine or nice journal in my hands.

I know that this is the future of books, if only to save the trees and publishing costs. I must say it was pretty amazing to see the book on amazon, buy it new for a paperback price and then watch as it downloaded to the Kindle, via some sort of magic that I do not care to understand, in mere seconds. But I will miss not having this book's purple spine watching over me as I go to sleep at night or being able to grab it off the shelf, shove it into a friend's hand and tell her she must read it.

The book, Bittersweet, is pretty fantastic. The Kindle certainly doesn't affect my enjoyment of the content and kindly shows me my progress (28%) at the bottom of the "page" as there are no page numbers or book marks to show how far I have gotten.

So, while I am enjoying the convenience of our Kindle, I hope that books will forever be printed on paper, at least a few copies, for those of us who need these old friends sitting on our bedroom shelves keeping us company, not just on our hard drives.

Waking Up Hope

No, this is not a commentary on how to wake up hope in our lives, but a plea for help in waking up my 5-year-old daughter for school every day.

Each morning I start with the tried and true alarm clock, situated next to her sleepy head, move on to flipping on the lights and telling her to wake up because it's time for school. These tactics, which have been effective on my three boys, are completely ineffective on my late night owl daughter.

Here are some more creative approaches I've tried:

1) Putting her to bed super early so she won't be so tired in the morning.
Result=It's 10pm and I think my daughter has been sleeping soundly for the last few hours, only to hear her door open and tiny footsteps make their way out to the family room where a very awake little girl tells me she just organized her kitchen.

2) Thinking of something she will look forward to that day which would make it worth getting out of her soft, warm bed (i.e. you have art today! It's Friday! You get to wear your days-of-the-week socks! I'll make you a special lunch!).
Result=I'm beginning to feel more desperate. My attempts at manipulation seem to be moving into the realm of bribery and I'm afraid she's onto me. Next thing you know she'll be staying in bed longer, holding out until I offer to buy her a pony for getting her tushy out of bed (not gonna happen).

3) Singing her ridiculous songs to make her laugh and wake up happy and/or annoy her until she gets up and asks me to please stop singing.
Result=That annoying song, Alejandro, seems to be on our local radio station every morning about that time and is most effective at making my boys laugh and then beg me to stop singing while Hope just giggles a little and then hides deeper under the covers.

4) Faking a natural disaster. This morning was my first attempt at this. It started out with me shaking her gently, and after no response, I started shaking her mattress violently and telling her it was an earthquake.
Result=Either she realizes that we don't live on a major fault line, or she just doesn't care, but it didn't work either way. Maybe telling her a tornado is coming would be more effective, but I fear scarring her, as she's actually pretty afraid of those.

5) Having Lukas play his trumpet in her room. He's just learning to play, so not only is it loud, but it is irritatingly off-key.
Result=Everyone else in the house is annoyed by such loud noise first thing in the morning, including Joel who has to stay up late studying, while Hope lays in bed with her pillow over her head.

6) Putting Gabby on her bed. Our sweet puppy is the sure-fire way to get Hope to stop crying, so maybe she could help wake her up.
Result=My dog, who seemed to be on to my plan and is terrified of heights cowered in fear as I picked her up and then foiled my attempts to get her onto Hope's bunk bed buy digging her claws into my shoulder and Hope's railing. Later I also realized that she peed on Hope's carpet while cowering in fear. Nice.

So, this is just a smattering of my attempts since the school year began. If you have any creative suggestions, just leave them in the comments below!

P.S. Hope does like kindergarten, though she says it's not as much fun as preschool. :)