I don’t know how some people do it. They post every day and they include photos. How do you do it? I love how the photos look, but boy do I find prepping them tedious!

I’ve been sitting on a number of updates just because I couldn’t face the photo tweaking that accompanied them.

But laziness aside, I need to get this post out of draft format and move along. So here you go….

Two weekends ago, we had the National Book Festival. I’d meant to get up early. I’d worked on a schedule two nights before and I knew where I intended to be every moment of the day. I was supposed to be up by 8:30. But it was cool and the bed was so comfy. I hit snooze several times and even the thought of Doris Kearns Goodwin was not enough to make me move quickly, even once I did get out of bed.

But after realizing I wasn’t going to make her 10 a.m. talk, I decided it was not unreasonable to hit her booksigning, which was scheduled for 30 minutes later. I checked the weather. Rain was predicted for the evening, but nothing for the morning. The radar showed rain in the Virginia mountains, but nothing here in the District. I opted to leave my umbrella at home.

Can you see where this is headed?

As I’m lugging my bike up the steps from the Burrow, I hear the plunk, plunk, plunk of giant raindrops hitting the bricks. (I don’t think the tv had even had time to cool off at this point.)

I rode down to the Mall in a light rain, glad that I had worn a sweater and a Polarfleece vest.

I pulled on my baseball cap as the rain dripped into the library book I was reading while standing at the end of line #3 waiting for Doris to sign. By the time I made it to the front of the line, the rain had pretty much stopped for the day.

I have no photos of Doris. I adore her. I love her insightful comments about presidential politics and elections, placing them in a historical context. I miss her appearances on tv. I wish someone were smart enough to bring her back as a regular commentator for big events. So I would have loved a photo of her, but I wasn’t thinking clearly and she was staying late to get through the last stragglers in the line before running off to catch a plane. Let’s blame that, shall we?

Because, you see, authors tend to leave me tongue-tied and all the kind, gushing things I think of to say to them while I’m waiting in line leave me as soon as I get up to the table.

What went through my brain in this instance was, “I really loved this book [Wait ‘Till Next Year]. It was on an endcap at the library in my old town and it demanded to come home with me one evening even though it wasn’t remotely what I was looking for. And then as I was reading, I was magically transported back 50 years to the ballgames of yore, and I immediately knew that my dad needed to read it. And that I needed to buy copies for my baseball-loving friends. It was the gift-book of the year. And then I eventually had to buy my own copy because I knew it was a story I’d want to re-read. You really do have a gift for making history come alive.”

What came out of my mouth was, “Sorry about your Red Sox.” She smiled patiently at me and said, “Thanks. There’s always next year.” I might as well have been a nerdy middle schooler telling the boy I like “I like your hair.”

Consulting the schedule, I left the booksigning area and tromped up the Mall several blocks to the Poetry Tent, where Poet Laureate Donald Hall was due to give a reading.

After he was done reading, I moseyed next door to the Fantasy and Fiction Tent to hear Julia Glass talk. I’ve never read any of her work, even though it appears on my ever-growing To-Be-Read List, but Erik and Eri have and I respected their opinions enough to want to stop by. I listened to her talk about the craft of writing for a while and about how 9/11 affected the novel she was writing at that time that was placed in Manhatten. She was interesting and I liked that she spoke more about craft than just about her book.

The last author in my early session was John Grogan, who recently published Marley and Me about his dog. He told sweet stories about Marley’s hyper puppy days, about Marley’s insatiable appetite for inappropriate things (like a stool leg and a pregnancy test result strip and a gold necklace), and about touching moments that made me weepy. And when he reached the point where Marley started to be a senior dog, I decided it was time for lunch. When you know how the story ends (and any pet lover knows how this story ends eventually), there’s no need to hear it again, particularly when you know that it moved Imus (or was it Howard Stern?) to tears.

By this point, I was running a bit low on energy anyway, so it was time to refuel. Luckily, the festival had given some more thought to the food issue since the last time I’d attended and were equipped with veggie-friendly options. I lunched in the Hirschhorn’s Sculpture Garden, where I munched on a cheese sandwich, finished the library book I’d been reading, and generally soaked in the sun while listening to a gentle fountain.

Then I was off again to hear folk singer John McCutcheon. He sang songs and told stories and wholly entertained the crowd. He talked a lot about his mom and about his large Irish Catholic family. He spoke about watching the March on Washington and Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech unexpectedly one day on tv with his mother instead of heading to baseball practice as he’d originally planned. He revealed his love of baseball (he’s a catcher) and of reading. He concluded with a rendition of “Christmas in the Trenches,” which is a favorite of our family and the subject of which is the source material for his new kids’ book. He is very entertaining and has a beautiful voice. If you ever get the chance to see him in person, I really recommend you do.

I toured a couple of other tents after he finished, passing by Mo Willems’ reading and trying to scoot into Alexander McCall Smith‘s, only to find that it was 10-people deep outside the tent and very hard to hear. But I did sneak a peek at him in his dark blazer and bright kilt and heard enough to know his latest book is another in the Sunday Philosopher’s Club series that I enjoyed earlier this year. (That’s the sign language interpreter standing next to him. This was not the best shot of her, and for that I do apologize to her.)

I hiked back down to the booksigners’ tables where I blew through the McCutcheon line. (Again I forgot the intelligent things I intended to say in favor of a mumbled, “It’s for my dad.” ::sigh::) So apparently the time constraints really aren’t what affect my brain. I must just become star-struck.

I then got at the end of the fourth line waiting for Mo Willems to get a couple of books signed. This was really the only unpleasant time of the whole day. People get grumpy when they wait in line with children. It didn’t help that this was the final signing of the day, scheduled right before dinner time, or that children who might ordinarily go down for a nap probably hadn’t had one. But their mothers became unpleasant. They harassed the young, college-aged volunteers helping keep order in the lines. They abused the festival organizers in absentia. From afar, they abused the author who had originally allowed photos but who had stopped the process once he realized he’d never get through the line that way. Never mind that his own wife and daughter were waiting for him to finish up so they could go to dinner. Never mind that he eventually agreed to stay and sign until everyone had made it through the line without restricting the number of books that could be signed.

All in all, though, it was a terrific festival. It’s free. They work very hard to bring in a variety of authors — both current and past. It’s in the heart of D.C. Seriously, if you can make it, you will not regret it (unless you bring your small children into a very long line). Mark your calendar now for next year’s festival.

Tomorrow we might have more photos — Crafty Bastards, a pair of finished socks, a trip to Connecticut, new yarn, a flash of the sock stash… Or we might have something totally different.