The Thirteenth Tale

For March/April book club (we are behind a month due to Spring Break) we read The Thirteenth Tale by Diane Setterfield. It is categorized as a gothic suspense novel.
And I LOVED it!

A quick summary (courtesty of Wikipedia.com):

"Vida Winter, allegedly the most famous novelist in England, and quite possibly the world, has never been forthcoming when it comes to her past. Her entire life is a secret, and for fifty years reporters and biographers have attempted to discover the truth. With her health quickly fading, Ms. Winter hires an unknown, bookish biographer, Margaret Lea, to bear witness to the tragic story of the Angelfield family, their eccentric beginnings as well as their demise. Margaret, who has family secrets of her own, must unravel the mysteries of the past in order to reconcile not only Ms. Winter with her ghosts, but also Margaret with hers."

I have never read a book like it. It was such a page turner for me that I couldn't even put it down to go to sleep - believe me, I tried! It is a story in a story in a story.... It had so many twists and turns that I couldn't quit thinking about it, and so I had to read the next chapter and then the next and then the next...

Everyone in my book club also stated that they loved the book and it was also a page-turner for them. A few of the ladies in my book club figured out the ending, but most of us didn't. And, we still had a lot of things that we were figuring out at out meeting. It was so fun to see what the other women thought was going on in the book... We all decided that we wanted to read the book again, (now that we had figured a few things out) and see if we could pick up on anything that we had missed the first time through.

I will warn you that there is an icky part that has to do with incest, but it doesn't go into too much detail (thank goodness!). It's at the beginning of the book, but just keep reading - You'll love it!

Getting Back on Track

It seems that I am having a hard time cramming everything into my days! Which basically means that my blogs have been neglected. Hopefully, now that I've got another task marked off my list, I can be better about that!

We decided to move the office downstairs, so that we could actually use it while Braxton was sleeping. And, of course, I have the great idea that I need to wash the walls, paint and get everything all situated before we can move it down there.
I was thinking this would be an easy task and wouldn't take very long... however, I did not take into account that I have a little 15-month old helper.... or the fact that I tend to sign up for more than I realize. I decided it would be really fun to have it be more of an old world style, so I did Venetian Plaster. It looks really cool, but it took forever! So needless to say, three weeks after I started, the new office is finally painted. It also didn't help that we went on vacation for a few days. It always seems to take me a little bit to get back on track with my chores..

This last weekend I did manage to get the desk and computer moved down, but now comes the great task of organizing everything.... hopefully I can accomplish that a lot quicker.

I wanted to post a picture of our nice new office, but I really don't want everyone to see the big mess that it is right now. So, when I get it all organized, I will post a picture for ya all to see!

Sunday Blood

I have a pretty good life - I probably don't have my fair share of really bad days. I am hoping that yesterday is not the beginning of a new trend.
Yesterday was probably one of the worst days ever for me! I am currently a Primary teacher for the CTR 5 class. They are 4 and 5 years old. There were 14 kids in the class, and they finally split the class last week so I only have 7. I absolutely love teaching this age (and I love it even more now that the class size is manageable) - they always say the most hilarious things...
Anyway, I only had 4 kids yesterday - you would think it would have been an easy day for me! As it turns out, it wasn't. I think the time change put the kids off their regular schedules so they were a little crazy!
My class consisted of 1 girl and 3 boys. The little girl, Kennedy, needed a "handkerchief" so I took her to the bathroom (which is right next to our classroom) to get a tissue for her nose. In the 15 seconds I was gone, disaster struck! I come out of the bathroom with Kennedy and all 3 boys are standing outside with panic stricken faces, and one of the boys - Thomas - has blood on his fingers from the back of his head - I know I was gone for less than 1 minute! I could hardly believe this was happening!
Anyway, so I make them all go back into the classroom while I take Thomas to find the primary secretary. While she went to find his mom, I got a wet paper towel and started to wipe the blood off of his fingers and neck. I asked him how this happened -

Thomas (in his adorable 4 year old voice): "Well, I was trying to pick up Eliot."
Me (in my trying not to cry voice): "Do you think that was a good choice?"
Thomas: "No."

Then Thomas' mom came and asked him what happened. Luckily, Thomas is her 3rd boy and she is a pretty relaxed mom. She asked him the same questions I did (which made me feel good considering my state of emotions!). I told her I was sorry that this had happened and explained that I was gone for less than a minute. She was very good about it and took Thomas to finish cleaning him up.

After church I had a little cry session with John about it. He is such a wonderful husband and always manages to put things into perspective - "They are boys!" I guess I was thinking that they would be fine for a few seconds... but I forgot about the "boy" factor! I still felt bad, but have made sure to put a pack of tissues in my primary bag so I don't have to leave the room.

I called Thomas later to make sure that he was still okay - which he was, thankfully! It was just a little scratch. Can I just say how lucky I am that it was this child it happened to? His parents are very easy-going and laughed about the incident. They told me that Thomas is their "head-injury child." Apparently, he is constantly getting bumps and bruises on his head and this was no surprise to them. And his mom said they had a long talk about being reverent and not picking other people up at church! Perhaps this incident will turn out to be a little blessing in helping him be more reverent - and then again, maybe not!