Making up for lost time

Today, after work, I will be blogging. A lot. I have stories and photos and videos piling up in my brain, and I'm afraid I'll lose the stories if I don't get them in here soon!
And the reason for my blog absence? The plague upon humanity that is the Twilight series. I don't read novels often, mostly because I get sucked in and want to do nothing but read until I'm finished. And I especially wasn't going to read Twilight, since Travis has a beef against those books going back more than a year. I wasn't going to cave.
I blame Hannah Snelling. Hannah is a good friend of ours who was Travis' boss during his internship at Marine View Presbyterian Church in Tacoma, WA. She and Travis go back a long way; she interned at Covenant here in Austin while Travis was in high school (that's right- the same job Travis has now!). She is also a Whitworth theatre alum, so she and I have always had a lot to bond over. And she runs an awesome, thriving, youth program full of committed volunteers and amazing kids. But there is also a dark side to Hannah- she loves Twilight. And for an entire summer, she and half the youth at Marine View tried to get me to read it. The other half, led by Travis, took a moral stance against the books, encouraging me and anyone else who hadn't yet been assimilated to stand firm in our convictions. Hilarity often ensued.
The whole battle piqued my curiosity. I didn't really care about vampire romance, but I was curious to read the source of all the conflict. Little did I know, it is impossible to read the Twilight books as an impartial observer. Even as I was criticizing the lame dialogue and obsessive characters, I myself was becoming a little obsessed.
So here I am, a week later, 100 pages or so into the third book. Every minute of free time goes to the books, as long as I'm not in the same room with Travis. This is his rule, which seems harsh, but is really pretty relaxed considering the fact that he told me last summer (with a big smile on his face) that the wedding would be off if I read the books.
I started reading the first book last weekend when Travis was in Montana for Paul and Katelyn's wedding. Caitlyn from Borealis loaned me the second book a few days later. On Tuesday night, I got a text from my sister Lisa back home in Indianola asking if I had fallen off the face of the planet, since she and mom hadn't heard from me in a long time. I called her back, sheepish. When she asked if I had been busy, I admitted "well, I was busy with the ballerina cookies, but now I'm reading a book."
"What book?" she asked.
"I'm too ashamed to tell you," I replied.
Then Lisa, my kindred spirit in almost every way, said "Twilight?! I'm reading that too!"
Lisa has several graduate degrees in English literature, so her reading the Twilight books makes me feel a little better about it. We decided that we both needed to read the books so we could understand our students. Lisa teaches college Writing I courses, and is studying to be a high school English teacher. And, well, I teach dance, but my students are mad about Twilight. Once student, Caroline (age 11), wanted to read the books, but her mom had to read them first to see if they were okay. After a few weeks Caroline received the last book in the series, Breaking Dawn. She was eager to share the news in dance class the next day, especially the part about how her mom had stapled some of the pages together so she couldn't read them. I'm going to have to remember that trick . . .