Sunday, April 20, 2008

Back aches, shopping and a dirty house..not in that order

The weekend was such a relief when it finally arrived. But, sitting here Sunday afternoon I am wiped out from the weekend's activity. Friday evening my husband met me in Lakeland for dinner and a movie. I walked through the shops at the Lakeland Town Center -an outdoor mall with restaurants and the theater- until Kyle arrived. We headed to our favorite dinner spot, Macaroni Grill and afterwards enjoyed a funny but surprising movie, Forgetting Sarah Marshall (see it and you will know what I mean, but, FYI - I cannot recommend it).
Saturday started early, I met my girlfriends in Brandon for breakfast at Mimi's Cafe to discuss the book that we recently read together. We had a great time, chatting about the book and going through questions we had found about it on a book club website. I have found that reading a book with other women is really a great way to get to know each other.
Here is my take on it-
When you watch a movie everything is laid out for you -what the characters look like, what the setting is, what feelings and emotions are expressed are so evident that everyone for the most part gets the same story and experience, this is why the director of a movie is so important-everything hinges on the director b/c they are who decides how you (the viewer) is going to perceive and feel about the character and about each scene of the movie. In a book, you are the director. You are visualizing things based on the descriptions in the book but they may mean different things and present different images to each individual person/ reader. So, when I read a book with other people and then meet to discuss it, I am basically sitting down with a bunch of directors of the same story. And directors are very protective of their interpretations of a script. We aren't the authors but we are the perceivers of the story.
This is why I love reading books with other women. Because there is so much to talk about. We had a really good discussion of the book over breakfast and then afterwards headed to the bookstore to pick out our next book. Since the whole group wasn't there it was up to the three of us to pick out the next book that will hopefully spark some great discussion.

After the bookstore we ended up hitting Starbucks where we spent more time in conversation ranging from our husbands, gun control, and having children in our society today, etc. and then we wandered through the mall drooling over Coach purses and trying on a million perfumes in Sephora.
We barely bought anything and could be heard on the phone randomly with our husbands convincing them of how good we were being to not spend a ton of money. The mall was filled with a million things we wanted to buy, but good conversation and laughter were our treasures at the end of the day.
We rounded up the evening with dinner with the men and another couple in our lifegroup that had been busy with family and had not made it to the morning activities. I had the wrong shoes and too much walking had left me with very significant backpain by Saturday night.
On Sunday we went to church and hurried home afterwards for some R&R.
After cleaning the house I am now happily resting my back and reflecting on my lovely day both today and yesterdays busyness. Well, that was how I spent the week's end and brought in the beginning of another week.

Have a lovely Sunday...