After a rollicking Thanksgiving, where we fed and entertained around 30 people into the wee hours of the morning, our sleep schedule, never what one would call normal, is all kinds of off. My daughter, who is 10, has always been a champion sleeper, hard to convince to go to sleep, but perfectly happy to sleep until afternoon hours. I can sleep pretty much anywhere, anytime, like a kitty. On Friday, we slept until 2, napped again around 4, and then were WIDE AWAKE. After righting the house, eating again, catching up on Pushing Daisies, and, um, eating AGAIN, we went back to the book we had started a few days before. Joan Aiken is a contemporary author, 1924- 2003, who wrote marvelously grim children's novels (along with many other things, not yet explored by me.), known especially for her series, The Wolves Chronicles. This one, Midnight is a Place, takes place in a Dickensonian Victorian England, and centers around 2 children thrown together when their dreadful guardian dies, burning down their house in the process. As we know, all successful children's stories have orphans as the protagonists, and this book is no exception.The children are forced to find their way doing most vile things, like working as a "tosher" in the sewers, looking for discarded treasure, or risking their life in the carpet factory that should be theirs, or finding old cigar butts in the streets and crafting new ones with the tobacco bits. We talk all the time about how lucky we are; despite living in what most Americans might call poverty, we have incredible riches- a comfortable home, good food, books aplenty, wonderful friends to share everything with. But even with all these conversations under our belt, to read a book that does not stint in it's descriptions of hard lives was an eye opener for both of us, and further motivation to not buy things made by 10 year olds. We read, and read, and read, until it was 2 in the morning. I asked E if is she was too tired for me to keep going, but she was not a bit sleepy, so we kept going until the end. So worth it, despite the froggy voice I was left with.
Just as we were finishing, my partner came home with an out-of-town friend, who couldn't quite believe that children, and people with children, led lives like this. "You mean you'll all just sleep in tomorrow? Until how late? I think maybe I should reconsider this whole no-kid thing." Indeed.
After a rollicking Thanksgiving, where we fed and entertained around 30 people into the wee hours of the morning, our sleep schedule, never what one would call normal, is all kinds of off. My daughter, who is 10, has always been a champion sleeper, hard to convince to go to sleep, but perfectly happy to sleep until afternoon hours. I can sleep pretty much anywhere, anytime, like a kitty. On Friday, we slept until 2, napped again around 4, and then were WIDE AWAKE. After righting the house, eating again, catching up on Pushing Daisies, and, um, eating AGAIN, we went back to the book we had started a few days before. Joan Aiken is a contemporary author, 1924- 2003, who wrote marvelously grim children's novels (along with many other things, not yet explored by me.), known especially for her series, The Wolves Chronicles. This one, Midnight is a Place, takes place in a Dickensonian Victorian England, and centers around 2 children thrown together when their dreadful guardian dies, burning down their house in the process. As we know, all successful children's stories have orphans as the protagonists, and this book is no exception.The children are forced to find their way doing most vile things, like working as a "tosher" in the sewers, looking for discarded treasure, or risking their life in the carpet factory that should be theirs, or finding old cigar butts in the streets and crafting new ones with the tobacco bits. We talk all the time about how lucky we are; despite living in what most Americans might call poverty, we have incredible riches- a comfortable home, good food, books aplenty, wonderful friends to share everything with. But even with all these conversations under our belt, to read a book that does not stint in it's descriptions of hard lives was an eye opener for both of us, and further motivation to not buy things made by 10 year olds. We read, and read, and read, until it was 2 in the morning. I asked E if is she was too tired for me to keep going, but she was not a bit sleepy, so we kept going until the end. So worth it, despite the froggy voice I was left with.
