Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

Because it didn’t feel like it. My oldest made a normal teenage mistake and then reacted in a way that made it clear her mental health has taken a nosedive, which isn’t really surprising when you consider her personality and the level of responsibility–both physical and emotional–she carries at the new job she started on the first day of school.

Which new job is turning out to see her coming home between 9:45 and 10:15–on at least one school night a week.

Did I mention that this is the child who struggles to sleep but desperately needs a certain amount of it to function well?

Anyway. We’ve been trying to help and take care of her (as well as, of course, her siblings, because they’re ALL our job), and that plus a range of other commitments has made for a busier week than I’d originally anticipated. We adjust, right? It’s just that my midweek blog post was one of the things that got adjusted out, so to speak.

The kicker is that I still need to get to Costco and back before the kiddos get home from school (and Friday is still early day for two of them), and so today’s book review is going to be short (although I will try not to phone it in, so to speak). A short review for a short book, right? I read The Friendship Matchmaker aloud with my youngest, and she was surprisingly into it; I, on the other hand, wasn’t expecting something quite so–tongue-in-cheek? Satirical? Yes, the concept of a school ‘friendship matchmaker’–one with a manual and specific rules to follow for the matchees–isn’t exactly straight realistic fiction, but still. Lara’s commitment to taking herself seriously is completely enjoyable for adults as well as kids, and if the ending is surprisingly low on drama–improbably so–it makes for a more fun reading experience. (Honestly, it felt a little like a re-write of a pivotal scene from Harriet the Spy with positive, likable kids.) The showdown between two ways of being (as represented by Lara and new student Emily) is actually seriously insightful, and yet it’s couched in the sort of humor that completely obscures the fact that solid life skills are being presented and analyzed. If you have elementary school kids, they may well get a kick out of this–and if you’ve ever had to deal with your elementary schoolers’ friend dramas, you probably will, too.