another book in less than a week

Apparently, I'm spending A LOT of time reading lately. Yesterday, I finished reading Queen of Broken Hearts by Cassandra King. This story was about a woman, Clare, whose husband died several years earlier in a gun accident. She is a divorce counselor, helping mostly women get over the trauma of getting a divorce and sometimes abuse. Again, I had to wade through the bad language to find a great story, and I also had to be careful to discern between worldly philosophies that I wanted to ignore and some good life lessons. One of the lessons was about maintaining a good relationship with someone who is close to someone else that I might not like. Clare's best friend was married to a real jerk, but Clare had to keep her feelings about him to herself in order to stay on good terms with her best friend. This is quite a difficult task, but necessary, I'm sure. Another good lesson was about letting go of things that are never going to change. Clare's husband was dead, and she had to accept that and move on because it wasn't going to change. She had to let go of the guilt of not helping him one more time with his alcohol problem because the guilt was ruining her life, she couldn't go back and change it anyway, and he was gone. This also is quite a difficult task.

Yesterday was "Makenzie's Day," so she got to pick out my next book to read and the bookmark I use has her picture on it. Makenzie was born on an even-numbered day, so on even-numbered days she gets to make any decision that I might have for one of the children to make (pick my next book, what movie to watch during dinner, what kind of ice cream to buy, etc.). Joel was born on an odd-numbered day, so "Joel's Day" is the odd-numbered days. Luke was born on the 30th, so "Luke's Day" is the multiples of three. The "Whichever Child's Day" thing was easy for two kids, but I had to get creative with the third child. It's almost a relief that Seth will probably never understand the concept of "whose day it is" because I don't know where I'd put him into that schedule. Last night, the kids came up with the solution to when to use the bookmark with Seth's picture on it since there is no "Seth's Day": If I finish a book on Makenzie's Day, for example, two times in a row, she gets to pick the book, but I'll use Seth's bookmark the second time. I know -- WAY too much detail-thinking there, but everyone wants to try to make life fair.

Makenzie had her follow-up appointment with the periodontist yesterday. He said that her mouth is healing VERY nicely and that we COULD do the second surgery TOMORROW if there were an opening in his schedule. Makenzie and I were both a little thankful that there WASN'T an opening that soon, but they did move up the second surgery (originally scheduled for the middle of August) to next Thursday (July 16). Again, this is perfect timing since Jason had already planned on taking that Thursday and Friday off work. The only negative to this new surgery date is that Friday night, Jason's leaving the state for eleven days. I'm hoping the boys cooperate with the "stay away from whichever room Makenzie's in" rule. But at least I'll be able to focus on just Makenzie for the first two days of her recovery!