Today was exciting.
Sort of.
I spent all day at school making copies, cutting, laminating, etc., while trying to convince a 3-yr-old not to be hungry and tired and to stop changing the default language on AG’s Nintendo DS to Chinese. Have you ever tried to choose an electronic activity in Chinese? Good luck to you, if you have. I couldn’t get it done. I ended up handing the thing back to Snugglemonkey and saying, “Just change it back to English, please” in a snarky tone. Part of me said that dismissively and the other part of me half expected she could do it. She did. Blows my mind.
After school, we had exactly 45 minutes before we needed to be at the public library to meet up with Mama’s Boy’s class and teacher for a Reading Pow Wow. As anyone who knows him knows, he hates to read. So of course I accepted the invitation to drag him to the library and preach the reading gospel to him. I honestly think he may be coming around a little bit. His teacher is young, single, from Long Island, NY (really fun accent!), and VERY educated. She knows what she’s doing and she is starting to light a fire under the lazy ones.
On our drive to the library, angry clouds were beginning to crowd the sky. In just ten minutes, the day looked entirely different. I was pretty sure we wouldn’t get out of the library without some rain. I didn’t expect it to be so crazy, though. A furious storm unleashed while we were in there. It cut power for a few seconds. Snugglemonkey began to wail, which is typically discouraged in the library. I enjoyed chatting with the teacher about literacy and literature and books in general. Then I started wracking my brain on how to get more books for their classroom and school.
In thinking on all of this, I launched a weird little IM with Todd who is not upstairs as he often is when I chat with him on IM.
(9:41:50 PM) missysnapp: I’m trying to drum up ideas to find mass quantities of books. Or find out how to write grants or something.
(9:44:03 PM) rocketreadytes: what do you mean?
(9:44:57 PM) missysnapp: They don’t have books. There are places that donate money for such things. Just doing a little research to see if we could get some money for woodmont.
(9:45:03 PM) rocketreadytes: oh ok
(9:45:06 PM) rocketreadytes: sounds good
(9:45:12 PM) rocketreadytes: Like Andy Dufrane
(9:45:20 PM) missysnapp: Exactly
(9:45:28 PM) missysnapp: I hear Laura Bush is a person to write.
(9:45:30 PM) rocketreadytes: we just had a moment
(9:45:33 PM) missysnapp: ha
Not that many people know who Andy Dufrane is. Todd doesn’t like to read and doesn’t read ever (I blame the 2nd grader on him…), but he does know about the dude in Shawshank Redemption who wrote letters and got books…for the prison.
Hmm.
Snappshots.com 
keep preaching the reading gospel to mama’s boy. he may find he likes it! don’t know what i would do without books!
Insert snarky homeschooling comment about the similarities between schools and prisons.
Sometimes… some days… I consider imprisoning them. 😛
Sometimes just asking regular folks works, too. It may not be a massss quantity, but I’d imagine it’s easier than the grants and you can be pretty specific about what you want. Amazon has a tool that lets you put up a wishlist with items from anywhere now, so they could pull the books from used book sites and other places and as people buy them they won’t be on the list anymore so people don’t buy doubles.
I’m so glad I’m not the only one who has a technology literate husband who doesn’t read. Mine complains when menus don’t have enough pictures.