Lucky

Yesterday the kids and I joined our book group in helping the Friends of the Library set up for their yearly book sale.  The entire meeting room was filled with boxes and bags and carts full of books of all sorts, and we worked for several hours sorting them into categories and setting them up neatly for the sale.  There were quite a lot of volunteers (probably a few more than was strictly necessary), and it was mostly pretty fun!  Of course, there was loads of rubbishy fiction, but there was also lots of better stuff too.  A friend beat me in finding DK's Human, and also Animal (actually, I own Animal, but in a smaller paperback edition, but I really coveted Human for $1!), but I found a few, namely, Roverandom, How to Read Literature Like a Professor, Miss Marple: the Complete Short Stories, and Eats Shoots & Leaves.  We mostly kept the kids busy straightening books on the children's table and carrying books around to where they belonged, but they did do some unpacking of boxes before we discovered that there were a surprising number of photographically illustrated naughty books in among the donations.  Who'd have thought?  I'm afraid that Travis was still marvelling at how very naked the people in one of the books he had discovered had been several hours later.  I guess I can check off "human sexuality" from our studies this year.

Some petty dictator had made the rule that no books could be sold to volunteers or anyone else until the sale Officially began at 8:00 on Saturday morning, so I drove back to the library this morning to buy the books that a friend and I had stashed under a table (and, technically, we weren't allowed to stash books either, but as there were boxes full of books under all the tables, we didn't think it should matter if one happened to contain only the books we had chosen while working!).  I retrieved our books and paid for them, and then one of the librarians (the very nicest one) opened the library proper and retrieved a stack of school books for me which I had forgotten to bring home yesterday.  Driving home I noticed that my watch was gone.  I'd have driven back and looked for it, but it was pouring rain, the library parking lot was packed, and I wasn't sure that I had put it on when I left the house in the morning.  When I got home, though, it was gone and I knew that I had put it on in the morning.  At 10:00 I called the library, got our favorite librarian, and told her what had happened.  And she had found it!  I was So pleased. 

This evening we went to the roller skating rink for the birthday party of one of Katie's friends.  The kids haven't skated since we left Florida, and we didn't skate often there either, so it took them awhile to get the hang of the thing (and I can't skate at all).  The wheels on Katie's skates could be tightened, so that she didn't slip around so much, but Travis's skates couldn't be tinkered with.  He spent a lot of time like this:

and this:

Fortunately the rink wasn't terribly crowded, so he wasn't run over any of the times he was laid out flat on the floor.  Katie did much better, since she was going more slowly.  By her count, she only fell four times.  Eventually they both were going around pretty well (in a very slow, tentative sort of way).Katie looks a bit grim in the picture but told me on the way home that, "This was the best Saturday ever!"  Travis's dazed expression may be due to having walloping his head on the floor, but he seems back to normal now.  I don't know about "the best Saturday ever," but it has been a very fine day.