Confessions

Now that I have untangled my brain from Scarlett O’Hara and Rhett Butler, I can live my own life until the next book falls into my lap. I have a confession….I am NOT a sensible reader. I go to bed drunk and awake with a major hangover. I really need a book group to help my destructive reading habits – a book group that dampens, not promotes reading. Oh, I do love reading! I love stepping out of my world to venture into another. I just don’t know how to put a book down until the last page is turned. I will read until 3 sometimes 5 o’clock in the morning. I get up chipper, yet weary. I know that if I display any emotional outbursts to my children, Cameron will give me grief about reading into the wee hours of the morning. So I stick it out until my body catches up to my brain and I feel whole again. In spite of all this, I am again ready to pick up a new book and start the vicious cycle all over.
Here is the cycle…. . Get up and do my daily doings really fast. Read, pay attention to the girls, read, send the girls to play with the neighbors and read some more. The kids come home from school and they smile knowing full well that they will be able to play Wii (with no time limits), play with friends without doing their chores and eat cereal for dinner. The house goes to pot, I forget to shower, the dog doesn’t get walked, and I go to bed feeling like a lousy parent/person – but hey, the book had a good ending.

I am ashamed to say that this cycle repeats itself a least twice a month. I said ‘at least’. So I now vow to go cold turkey and not read a book until summer. I was thinking to wait until October, given that I am hosting book club and reading Dracula – can’t wait to reread that one, but I know I won’t be able to refrain that long. What’s more, with summer and longer days – I may be able to control myself a little more. We shall see.

I won’t think of it today. I will think of it tomorrow.

---Gone with the Wind