Book Report: The Midnight Library

Me: "I'm reading this cool book about a magical library."

Crosby: "Magical libraries appear in most books. It's nothing special."

#tweenmom

But really, this novel was my jam.

If I was bringing my blog A game, I would have a screen shot of my favorite moment in Chapter 13.

This book scratched a lot of itches for this "Nouveau Goth" as Paul likes to call me. Speaking of my groom, this happened 14 years ago today.

In the theme of the book...no regrets on this life choice.

I won't go full Philomena and explain the whole book. Side note: Philomena was on my movie list since reading this Sojo article. I just needed a 10 hour flight from London to Phoenix with a feverish Carmen sleeping in my lap to make it happen. It's a plane movie if crying in public is also your thing.

I power read The Midnight Library during the many lives I inhabited on this last hurrah, fall break trip through Arizona and California. At the end of the school year in Berlin we are moving to San Diego, California. There are a lot of different reasons for the move that were mostly validated when I rolled-up on this sweet ride to meet with a real-estate agent for a showing of a two-bedroom house costing over a million dollars.

And yes, I was running late so there was a Jack in the Box plastic bag hanging from the bmx handlebars. It contained a half-eaten salad because #adulting

Our last epic visit, Crosby proclaimed, "I don't want to move to the US. But if we have to, I'd like it to be San Diego." I'd like to think I said something that validated his desire but in my head I thought, "There's no world where we could afford to live there." And, we can't. But, thankfully we have some generous grandparents who would like to see us more than once a year. Thus, we will enjoy our "extravagant" Berlin life until the end June when we trade it in for a shoebox in the sunshine.

Germany has been an amazing place to live for the baby/preschooler/primary school years. I will spare you my usual diatribe on secondary education in Germany and just show you this. 

With the help of dedicated teachers at Crosby's elementary school, we found the best next step for school for him. However, at the risk of eating my words later, I think US secondary school is a better fit for motivated, creative kids. Additionally, we've been running into all the problems with US/German tax law figuring out how to save for the future. 

But this Southwest trip was on the books before we planned to move. We did our usual get-over-jet-lag/halloween prep at Papa's:

Then I flew solo with Kiki, Laurel, and Mimi...

meanwhile the kids and Paul missed me terribly:

Our next autumn break will be a six-hour drive to the grandparents in Arizona for the week of Thanksgiving. This prospect does instill a bit of fear as my near-and-dear know that I've enjoyed a much more chill holiday season across the Atlantic. Also...driving. I'm still holding on to a, perhaps irrational, hope that we will not buy a car. We will bring Berlin's "Arm, aber sexy (Poor, but sexy)" to San Diego. We're not ready and likely San Diego isn't either.