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latchkeymom

Book Reviews

Chick Lit Plus Book Review

My lasts review for Chick Lit Plus posted today.

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Looking for La La by Ellie Campbell

This British Chick Lit story is about Cathy, a stay-at-home mother at a crossroads in her life.  What does a woman, who’s given up her career for home and family, do when the last child goes to school?  Does she join the ranks of school volunteers or get a job that actually pays?  Cathy is feeling the pressure from her husband Declan and her fellow working mom friends to get a job. But Cathy has no desire to work, nor in her opinion, any marketable.  She also has a terrible fear of interviews.  She’s not feeling any appreciation for what she does as a wife and mother, either.  To Cathy it seems that since giving birth, she’s entered a period of indentured servitude.  This is an issue that will resonate with many mothers who’ve come to feel this way, believe me!  Continue reading…

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Reading

CLP: October Books

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Upcoming Releases: October

October is my favorite month.  The back-to-school routine has worked itself out and the holiday madness still seems like it’s months away.  Don’t be fooled though – if new Christmas themed books are any indication, it’ll be here before we know it!   I hope you have a backlog in your to-read book pile, because the pickings for new chick lit releases in October are slim.  Methinks some publishers are a wee bit afraid of competing with a certain Miss Bridget Jones.

Read the rest of the article at Chick Lit Plus.

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Parenting

Sending My Baby Off to Kindergarten

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IMG_20130808_064721_078My baby, child number four, started kindergarten this year and it truly, physically hurt.  I’m not exactly sure why I’ve had such a strong visceral reaction.  I don’t know if it’s because he’s the last one or if it’s because of the grief I’ve been feeling all summer.  Either way, the event has left me with a thin veil of melancholy, which is affecting my overall outlook on life lately.  Six weeks later and I’m still not passed it.  I now have two children in middle school and two in elementary school.  No more toddlers.  No more preschool.  Oh the cruelty of time…”The days are long, but the years are short.”

I’ve been dreading this all summer, but there was no more putting it off.  Cammy is six years-old, and he’s already been held back a year due to a number of factors: his July birthday, his physical size, his speech articulation and his mommy’s inability to let go.  When we attended kindergarten round-up before school started, I swear it felt like I was walking on death row, as I made my way down the hallway to what would be his first elementary school classroom.  I didn’t feel any of the excitement I’d felt when I did that with Hunter, nor any of the anxiety I’d had when I escorted Bear.  I didn’t struggle with bittersweet ambivalence as I’d had when it was Audrey’s turn.  This time, I felt sadness.  I felt old. Continue reading Sending My Baby Off to Kindergarten →

Travel

Summer Road Trip Wrap-up – Finally

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RTLogo2013-1It’s hard to believe it’s almost the end of September and I haven’t even started on my Summer Road Trip scrapbook.  Usually it’s completed within weeks of our return home.  At the beginning of August a friend contacted me to ask why I hadn’t posted a “wrap-up” of the road trip, like I usually did.  Sadly, it hadn’t even occurred to me to do one.  It was a very tough summer and I was in no hurry to revisit it.  I can say with the benefit of hindsight that my broken heart wasn’t up to travel this summer, especially travel that requires a great deal of physical energy, mental acuity and the excitement to experience and do new things.  I was lacking all three, as my son would say – “Epic Fail.”

If it hadn’t been for the fact we were scheduled to meet my cousins in the Grand Canyon (a trip that had been a year in the making), I would have scrapped the whole thing.  At the end of each day, writing the daily Road Warrior Momma blog was a chore.  I can see that now, after reading each and every post again, in preparing to write this.  The entries are badly written, with so many mistakes!  I’m embarrassed that I posted those entries.  I apologize.  I’ve tried to clean them up as best I could, but I’m warning you in advance in case you click on any of them.  I also neglected to even write about our last stop in Indianapolis!  I threw up a post on RWM today with photos, for those of you who are interested.   The other thing I noticed was that I didn’t take many pictures, probably only half of what I usually do.  You won’t see many of me either, because the sadness in my eyes was palpable, even in pictures. Continue reading Summer Road Trip Wrap-up – Finally →