Mini-Break

I try not to let "real" life affect this blog, but sometimes real life is very insistent that it have all of my attention.

A couple of weeks ago the girlfriend had emergency surgery. She's fine now and the procedure was so non-invasive that she was even sent home the next day, but it was still out of nowhere and there were some pretty scary days leading up to it. The whole thing was very emotionally draining for me, not to mention that she never needs to go to the ER in the daytime. She always manages to have her ER visits in the evening, making them last into the wee hours of the morning. Since I work at a Catholic college and she is my girlfriend, not my boyfriend, I can't miss work after these visits because according to HR, she's not my family. That is a whole other issue for a whole other post, but here's the short version:

Books with positive LGTBQ portrayals are vitally important to queer kids who read them and are surrounded by less than accepting peers and adults; we all know this. BUT they are also very important for the straight kids who read them because they normalize the queer experience, take away the ick factor, and make queer people more like you and me (the collective you and me, clearly). We want this because these kids may later be in positions to make decisions affecting queer folks on the large scale or even for the 3 whole people they supervise, one of whom might be queer. Love the sinner, hate the sin doesn't go all that far when you need the day off to take care of your post-surgery partner.

Well, that didn't end up all that short, but that's okay because it brought me to my next point. Out-patient surgery really is great for the patient. Convalescing at home is more comfortable and relaxing. You can sleep in your own bed, watch your favorite movies on repeat, pet the cat, etc. But it's a lot of work for those taking care of the patient. Even with the help of friends, who came over to "babysit" the girlfriend while I was at work and did secret nice things like clean the kitty litter, do all the dishes, or cook enough food for the rest of the week, it's been a rough couple of weeks. Now that the girlfriend is pretty much back to normal, I can catch up on things, like my reviews! Except that I don't want to. I want to sleep, watch movies, pet the cat, etc.

I've been trying to avoid this, but now that I've run out of my reserve of finished reviews, I guess it's time. I'm taking a little break so that I can catch up on things, blog and not, without the added time-pressure. But I'll be back and raring to go for the 48 Hour Book Challenge next weekend! I'm probably going to be using my allotted networking time to catch up on reading blogs more than writing reviews, so get ready for comments on some older posts. See you all in a week.

 - Lawral