Yesterday was California Bookstore Day so I happily went to my local bookshop, Bookshop Benicia, and made a few purchases.  Bookshop Benicia features a good selection of new titles and a decent collection of used items.

These are the ones I bought:

• Los Angeles Without a Map by Richard Reyner
• Blue Highways by William Least Heat-Moon
• Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk by Ben Fountain

I also bought the refrigerator magnet pictured below for C.J.’s birthday, June 3.  He just started using Facebook last month and is currently spending far too much time on it searching for friends.

Since C.J. was going to the ballet, Romeo and Juliet, with a friend, I had a full day of reading time ahead of me.  I lay down on the sofa, opened a book, began reading and promptly fell asleep.

I drifted in between sleep and reading long enough to read fifty pages of Los Angeles Without a Map which I kind of like and forty more pages of My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgaard which is my reading project for the summer.  Not bad, I guess, but I was hoping to actually finish a book yesterday and didn’t even get close.

Today, I have a list of chores that need doing:

• Pay the bills.
• Clean the house
  • bathroom
  • kitchen
  • dining/living room
• Yardwork
  • pull weeds
  • pick up after dogs
  • dead-head rose bushes
  • spray peach tree for leaf curl
  • mow what’s left of the lawn
• Grading
  • history tests from last month
  • chapter 2 papers for Call of the Wild
• Begin work on false bookcase secret door
• Make a practice book for the bookbinding class I’m taking in June
• Complete homework for teacher training next Saturday
  • readings
  • two page paper
  • autobiographical writing for presentation

Which of these chores would you do?

I have to do the bills, this one is non-negotiable. After that, I’m leaning towards the yard work minus the mowing.  I think the lawn mower is broken, which is really a blessing, let’s be honest.  Our nextdoor neighbor is hiring a house cleaning service this week that looks affordable.  If she says it’s good then that list of chores is off of my plate forever.  There’s no way I’m doing the grading.  At this point in our lives, C.J. openly mocks me every time I bring grading home since I never do it.  I’ll probably look over my homework for the class I’m taking on Saturday, maybe even do some of the reading for it.

Meanwhile, the new cat, Beau, has finally come out from hiding.  He’s walking on the arm of the chair I am sitting in as I try to type this.  He’s a major lap junky who loves long sessions of petting and seems quite fond of looking out the window.

So there is a real chance he and I may spend the bulk of the day together while I try to do all the reading I ended up sleeping through yesterday.  That sounds like a Sunday plan I could support.