Variety Is The Spice Of Life

Usually my weeks are pretty much a series of routines, which makes sense since I am basically a very organized type of individual. I take my daughter to school on weekday mornings, I pick up groceries on the way home, I return home to feed the cats, do the dishes, clean the house, and exercise, I wait for the bus to bring said daughter home, I help her with homework, I fix dinner. You get the picture.  But then there is this other whole side of me that sparkles, shimmers, and shimmies with creativity of every kind. The part of me that loves to learn or try something new, the part of me that wants to travel somewhere new, the part of me that yearns to build, bake, create, reshape, dream, and make something new. The part of me that craves variety.

That is why I spent most of last week looking forward to Friday. What did I do on Friday, you ask? Why I traveled to the Polaris Fashion Place outside of Columbus, Ohio to meet with some of the ladies from my Blog Ohio group. I love this group of ladies, and I sit humbly at their feet, or maybe just at the same food court table, reveling in the knowledge they so willingly impart about blogging. Most of it goes over my head, but sometimes a bit sinks in, and I put it to good use.


Blog Ohio Moms

And the really great thing about meeting at Polaris was, that afterwards, I had the opportunity to explore the very lovely Barnes & Noble store. I was a woman with a mission. I was a woman bent on using the extraordinary book offerings to  make a spine poem in honor of April which is National Poetry Month. Now for those of you who have never created spine poetry, I heartily encourage you to do so. You can use books from your own collections, books from the library, or books at your local book store. Spine poetry is very addictive and once you get started, it is difficult to stop!



Spine Poetry

Friday was a lovely day of variety spicing up my routine life. So when it was time to sit down and write this post, something I do routinely every Sunday afternoon, I decided to review a few books that were random books, books without a theme, simple books to add a little variety to your upcoming week.

First I read Someday by Eileen Spinelli. I was sure I would just love this book, after all Eileen is so very close to Aileen. And do you know what? I did enjoy it. It was a beautiful book, a book of great aspirations, a book of dreams. It was a book about a child imagining what she would do "someday" in the middle of all the every day things she was doing right then. It made me stop and ask myself, As an adult, do I still dream of what I will do someday? Yes, yes I do. Someday I will go on a cruise, and someday I will visit Alaska, and someday I will be a traditionally published picture book author with an agent all my own. What will you do someday?

Next I read Perfectly Percy by Paul Schmid. It turns out that it is terrible to be a small porcupine when your favorite thing in the whole wide world is playing with balloons. That is unless you are Perry. Perry puts on his thinking cap and thinks long and hard until he comes up with a solution to his balloon popping problem. Perfectly Perry puts a new spin on the term, Thinking Outside Of The Box.

Well, that about wraps it up for this week. Join me next week for another exciting episode, same crazy time, same crazy channel. And feel free to drop by my personal website, Fun With Aileen, any day of the week for even more on reading, writing, my very own early grade chapter book, Fern Valley, and my soon to be released sequel, Return To Fern Valley, coming summer of 2014! I'm also on twitter @AileenWStewart if you want an extremely brief glimpse into my days.