As always, there is good and bad in every day.  Yesterday just as we pulled in to the driveway, Rylee threw up all over the car as she was getting out of her seat  (the bad).  I had a mini-meltdown, including tears, at our OT’s office due to a scheduling error on their part (bad).  I almost broke my mom’s finger trying to get my new stroller open, we both nearly cried (very bad).

But in the midst, with a new organization plan in place for our daily life and some better boundaries for me on my time, I still decided to finish a book and watch a movie last night (both very good).  Those two helped off-set the rest of my day in just the right way.

Yesterday afternoon while everyone here rested and I completely gave up attempting to clean the van, I finished The Book Thief by Markus Zusak. Tears blurred my ability to read the words yesterday as I read the last 50 pages.  It was a long, 500+ page book.  I’ve been reading it for over a week.  It was beautifully, uniquely written.  If you want to dive into something deep and lovely, it would be a great choice.  ‘Death’ wrote the book and as such paints a remarkable picture of humanity.  As he ushers souls into eternity, a story catches his attention in the middle of Nazi Germany.  It is a story of courage, of love, of hope and of the incredible strength of a little girl.  He writes one particularly miserable afternoon in June of 1943, when I believe the first gas chambers were used at Auschwitz.

Please believe me when I tell you that I picked up each soul that day as if it were newly born.  I even kissed a few weary, poisoned cheeks.  I listened to their last, gasping cries.  Their vanishing words.  I watched their love visions and freed them from fear.

I took them all away, and if ever there was a time I needed distraction, this was it.  In complete desolation, I looked at the world above.  I watched the sky as it turned from silver to gray to the color of rain.  Even the clouds were trying to get away.

Sometimes I imagined how everything looked above those clouds, knowing without question that the sun was blond and the endless atmosphere was a giant, blue eye.

They were French, they were Jews, and they were you.   (from page 350)

I also watched the movie The Soloist after bedtime.  It was particularly interesting to me that it’s the guy from the church messes everything up in his pious, well-intentioned acts.  And it is the regular, everday man whose life is profoundly impacted by the life of a mentally ill, homeless man who posseses surreal musical talent.  Again, it was a story of beauty and depravity and the coming together of the two.