Library Restraint on Thursday

After last weeks little problem with self-control, I really tried to pull my socks up and tighten my library bag today. I made the kids come, but forced them to do homework instead of looking for books. My older son has to learn all of fifth grade math by yesterday, which means he actually has to work at something, which means he is aghast and apoplectic. And not appreciative of the beauty of long division. Especially when he cheats and does the easy ones in his head, which means I write out really hard ones because I want him to learn the technique, and then I hiss at him to stop screeching in the library. Ahem. Meanwhile his younger brother, whose brain is more closely aligned with mine, kept annoyingly nodding AHA during my more bizarre explanations. Well, it charmed me, but not his sibling.

But I, having mastered more math than either child can shake a stick at, felt free to wander the shelves a teeny bit. The hold shelf had a nicely intellectual single offering for me:

• Margaret Atwood's The Year of the Flood, which I was actually hoping would linger on the request list a while longer. Ah well, into the breach...

As a reward for this intimidating book, I treated myself to two more Sammy Keyes books, and got into an interesting discussion with the librarians as to why they were shelved in two different places (well, the obvious answer was that Someone Had Blundered, but I pretended that Mine Was Not To Reason Why and after all, I did find 'em).

• Sammy Keyes and the Psycho Kitty Queen
• Sammy Keyes and the Wild Things, both by Wendelin Van Draanen
• Sammy Keyes and the Hotel Thief is the first in the series, but it doesn't count because I got it for my son, who has misplaced his copy somewhere in his room
• Shadowland, by Chitra Lekha Banerjee Divakaruni, because it is the third in a series, even though I only sorta liked the first two.

And then I randomly picked picture books off the shelves because I want to start reading more out loud with the kids, and we are both getting to bed too late for most chapters and finding it harder to find a chapter book all three of us agree on. And then I looked at the clocked and raced home to force the kids to make dinner.

That last was a new bee in my bonnet that I hope stays around. I've decided that the kids need to learn to cook, and that they are now responsible for one meal a week. And it has to involve a cookbook -- no grabbing boxes of pasta and powder from the pantry. Tonight's offering was Baked French Toast, with a wonderful fruit salad on the side, and BACON. All four kids contributed, with N. proudly using the sharp knives for the first time to cut up the peach. The older kids mixed the batter, added the spices, prepared the oven & moved dishes in and out, and made bacon. I think it is very wise for new chefs to include bacon on the menu, because it makes everyone happy. Breakfast For Dinner was a success -- the adults liked it, and each kid liked at least something (N. concentrated on his salad, which he had to be convinced to share). Poor A. somehow missed the bacon, but I hope she made a batch for dessert. Oh, X made more cookies for dessert.