It was a dark and stormy night...

and I am a contented girl. Because this rain means a drop in temperature of at least 10 degrees. I've been imposing house arrest upon myself and Ella while the sun is hanging high - it's just been that dang hot. But upper 80s? I can deal with that. We might even go outside.

But tonight I am cozily inside. The baby's sleeping - that is, the one with a crib. I just had the most perfect Baja salad, and my tiny resident is quite excited about it. My husband just left to go see "Talladega Nights..." for the second time (I was happily with him the first time) and I'm going to spend the evening with my dear ole friend Goudge.

Ella and I (and Andy the last couple of times) have been going to the downtown library every week for story hour. It's a great program (although I bet only a fifth of the kids there actually get what's going on), and afterwards we roam the library. Actually, you kind of have to pick an area to roam, it's that big. A couple of days ago we visited an exhibit of original illustrations by several African-American author/illustrators. One book was actually featured in story hour recently - "Tar Beach" by Faith Ringgold. It's about a little girl growing up in Harlem, and the pictures are really amazing (especially seeing the originals in person).



Last week we hit the fiction room, and after walking around for a couple minutes, I headed over to find the Goudge books. There are a lot of them at the main library - and I was excited not to have to request one and wait for it to be sent to a closer location. Anyway, I was looking through, trying to find one that I had not read (thankfully there are still some) and I picked two that didn't look familiar. The one I started with is called "White Witch," and come to find out, it's historical fiction. The problem, dear reader, is that I don't really know a lot about 17th century British history.

I'm about halfway through, and really enjoying it, but keep seeing names that I know I should know, but am too tired to get out of bed and look them up. So tonight I looked up Oliver Cromwell, and I feel a bit better about things. Of course, reading the bio gave some parts of the book away (i.e. I know which side is going to win the battle of which I'm currently in the midst) but I bet a lot of people smarter than I - and certainly Goudge's original intended audience - knew.

I was a little sad that we didn't have a set of encyclopedias so that I could look up ole Cromwell, and then I got a little more sad that our kids might not have a set when they're older. I fully understand that the internet has gobs more information than any one set of encyclopedias, but there's just something about looking something up in a book. And I loved to pull out our World Books when I was little, and look through all the pictures, and happen upon information on something that I wouldn't have thought about researching. Then again, if there wasn't such handy technology, it would have been harder to show you all the man of the hour...