Eat, Read, and Be Mommy

It hit 90 today, folks. UGH. And tomorrow’s supposed to be even hotter. Anybody want to move to Alaska with me?

In other news, happy yesterday-was-Mother’s-Day to all the mothers out there, both those with children and all those who mother children. I love my kiddos, and my oldest especially outdid herself yesterday. (Crepes in bed for breakfast, and she made the orange rolls for dinner as well!) My hubby wasn’t feeling his best, but the youngest gave a talk in Primary (as in, in front of other kids), and we played both of my new games. A good day overall.

I also finished reading Mary Amato’s The Naked Mole-Rat Letters aloud to my youngest, and I have somewhat mixed feelings about it. On the one hand, there was a lot of funny going on, as well as a couple of nice messages for the target audience to take away. On the other hand? Books with characters who just keep telling lies that will inevitably get found out drive me crazy.

The premise is a fun one–twelve-year-old Frankie’s widowed father comes home from a business trip in an unusually positive frame of mind, which she learns is due to his meeting and going on a date with a woman who works at the National Zoo. (I’ll give you one guess which animals she works with.) Frankie is appalled and takes it upon herself to email ‘Ratlady,’ only her initially (highly) hostile emails eventually take on more of a confiding quality. In the meantime, a disappointment at school coupled with the threat of change that the ratlady represents somehow turns her into a lying machine. Unfortunately for Frankie’s image, however, she is completely terrible at telling lies that make enough sense to work past the moment, and the whole situation snowballs impressively. The ending is satisfying, yes, but it was a little long in coming for my taste. If lying in books isn’t one of your pet peeves, you’ll probably enjoy this one; if it is, you’ll want to think twice before diving in.