This last week has been nuts!  I am still tired and sore from the effects.  To start with, we had a bunch of crazies at the houses.  Up until this point we have had great experiences at the houses.  With 50 groups I suppose it was a given that it couldn’t last forever.  This was a group of art salesman that go from city to city putting on art sales.  They had stayed in our homes in July without any problems, but not this time. They were nuts, getting drunk, partying and more.  They even set fireworks off and the police came.  Two of the idiots tried to climb a neighbors fence when they were all drunk.  I told them it was a good thing they didn’t get shot at.  I said “This is republican country.  People have guns.  You can’t go jumping fences!”.  I felt like telling them “This is not the real world house. You can’t do whatever you want at any time.”.  Instead, I just told them that “this is not spring break Miami.  This is small town Utah.”.  What a nightmare.  It took me almost 2 days to fully clean up after this group.  Plus, we had to go door-to-door to all the neighbors apologizing for the bad behavior of the group. Needless to say we are going to be changing our policiies to prevent such problems again. I certainly don’t want to go through such an experience again.

You would think after such a week I would get a break during the weekend but no. For starters on Saturday I worked at the Fat Flake Festival in Salt Lake.  We have a warm team booth where we give away free warmers.  It was a very successful festival where we gave away thousands of warmers.  Plus, we got to hear some interesting bands and meet interesting people (never in my life have I seen so many granola types.  It was like 5,000 versions of my brother and sister in-law walking around!).  It was a fun evening but very exhausting.  Just being on my feet all evening in the cold takes energy away.  I don’t want to sound complaining because I am certainly thankful for the work but working on Saturday is difficult.  There is something about Saturday that refreshes the spirit and gets me ready for worship on Sunday.  Whenever I have to work on Saturday sitting through church is somewhat brutal.

Then Sunday ended up being nuts because I had my grandpa Wagner and grandma Richards over to my house for dinner.  It’s kind of a long story but my grandma got lost getting here and my grandpa got sick and had to leave early.  Thank goodness for my Uncle Jim for helping me take my grandpa home and guide my grandma over to my apartment.  Eventually we were able to have a nice dinner.  I tell you it is the last time I have 2 old people over to dinner!

Needless to say, I left the week exhausted and rested most of yesterday but am still tired today.  What’s hard is I am determined to exercise today even if I am tired.  It’s just hard to be motivated when I am so tired.  Excuses, excuses.

Anyway, to help me relax I have been catching up on my reading. I am almost finished with the Book Thief by Markus Zusak.  It is a good book- perhaps a great book.  I don’t know if any of you have read it but it has entirely surprised me.  It is one of the only books I have read where I literally have no idea what the plot will do, where it will go.  Even now I don’t know how it will end.  I hope to finish it by the end of today. Then I need to get reading several other books for my book clubs.  Next Tuesday I have book club for Rebecca and I have to start it today or tomorrow to get it done!

Back to the Book Thief- it is a great book for plot, characters and descriptive language; However, I have one major reservation.  It is being marketed as a young adult book and I feel this is totally inappropriate for teenagers or children.  It has a lot of swearing in it- some in German, some in English.  I am actually kind of disturbed that it is being marketed to children.  In addition to the language the tone of the book is very dark (after all, it is narrated by Death and set in Nazi Germany) and there are a lot of vivid descriptions of death, war and evil.  I know there are limits to how much we can shelter children, but I don’t feel that a child needs to deal with these things in a book.  At the very least, I do not see any benefit to the story that is gained by the swearing.  Maybe some of you that are parents feel differently but don’t you think we can shelter our children from such things for a little while? Is that wrong? How do you know what will teach and inform children and what will scar them? After all, you don’t want your children to be naive and overly-simple. Still, a book like this I would not read to my children or teenagers.  It is an adults book. The thing that is most annoying is that I don’t think I would have any problems with the book if I didn’t have it in my head that it is advertised for young adults and children.  It just bothers me.

I will let you know if I like the ending…