The Salt Lake City Public Library. Marlborough's library isn't as spectacular, but it's enough. (Image via Wikipedia)

Nothing of substance has changed in our situation.

There are still no rentals available, we’re still in the tiny hotel room, the roads around here are still confusing and lacking sidewalks.

The difference today: we went to the library.

The Marlborough Public Library isn’t beautiful and award-winning like the Salt Lake City Public Library. It’s small and the building’s old and it’s oddly provincial for an area that I think of as very scholarly and technologically advanced.

But it is, after all, a library. And libraries for me have always been places to recharge. I know libraries, and I feel at home in them.

My children apparently feel the same way. My son chanted “libaby!” and “liraby!” all morning and threw fits when I tried to explain that we needed to complete certain tasks before going to the library, like eating breakfast and putting on pants.

My daughter is now enrolled in the summer reading program and has Anne of Green Gables she’s going to be working on, along with some Angelina Ballerina books and an Arthur video. My son requested all animal books. He’s got A Giraffe and a Half and If You Give a Mouse a Cookie (both of which I find to have diminishing rates of return as they lose their brilliance by about the tenth reading), as well as a nonfiction book about baby elephants.

At this moment, my daughter is reading and my son is napping and the hotel room is quiet. Right now it doesn’t bother me (much) that my room key stops working at least once a day, and the cleaning people haven’t shown up yet and we need clean towels, and we don’t have a place to live, and I don’t know who to send my “intent to homeschool” letter to.

I would venture to say that I could just about shine brightly about the quiet and the sunny weather and the library and the fact that I found my way to the car wash so our little car isn’t covered in 2400 miles of road grime anymore. I’m going to sit here and soak in all of this and maybe have a cup of coffee, and then I’ll jump back into the housing issue again. Blacker than black, we have to pay for the hotel room because our Utah house has sold, and then we have to move into the house with the 7-foot ceilings.

Really, that’s not so bad. At least the house with the 7-foot ceilings is easy walking distance from the library.