paper, please

I love paperback books.

And I like to get them used.

I like used paperbacks that are just used enough to be floppy and easy to hold/fold back/read, but not so floppy that their pages are falling out of their binding (yet). I like to see and read books that have been read and enjoyed by others. Scuff marks, bent bindings and dogeared pages are signs of affection, I think, and it makes me happy to see such affection.

An unread book - especially a good unread book - makes me sad. An paperback whose cover is uncreased at the binding, a book whose pages are crisp and unbent ... it's a waste of paper and ink. Books were meant to be read, and an unread book is a conversation that was never listened to; a fantastic adventure that was never experienced. It's the (non)reader's loss, but a loss all the same.

Hardback books (or clothbound books, for those who worked in bookstores and are binding lingo-savvy ... ahem) are fine, and they look nice on shelves and make their readers look distinguished ... but they come with annoying dustjackets that have to either be left on the book and carefully handled so as to not be wrinkled or ripped, or they have to be removed and kept in a safe place so they can later be returned to their books.

I have a bad habit of forgetting to put the dustjacket back on the book, and so it happens that bookless jackets are found under my bed; beneath my sofa; tucked between other books on shelves; squished, folded and stuffed into other books or notebooks ... or they're just never found again, and I have jacketless, dust-collecting hardback books sitting with naked, mute-colored spines staring at me from my shelf.

Also, hardback books - while difficult to break in - are too quick to let go of their pages. My copy of "Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows" can't have been read more than three times, yet its pages are coming loose, and I was much kinder to it than I am to many of my paperback books. And I managed to keep (and return) its dustjacket. It seems ungrateful of the book, then, for it to be spitting pages out at me as I attempt to read it.

Which is why I like paperback books.

smile: you're in the sky

The moon tonight was a Cheshire Cat, grinning at me from the heavens with Venus as a bright dimple or a beauty mark on his far left cheek (I think it was Venus. I'll feel like an idiot if it's something else. Jack Horkheimer would know ... I really like Jack Horkheimer - he's super-enthusiastic about stars and planets ... how's this for a meandering thought?).

I didn't know it at the time, but he (the Cheshire Cat Moon, not Jack Horkheimer) was grinning because he knew that Fat Burrito was closed, and that's what I dearly wanted for dinner. I settled for Qdoba, which wasn't really settling, except that I had my heart set on Fat Burrito.

During that tour of Burrito Makers of Laramie, I noticed that there's a Subway across the street from each one. Conspiracy? I think so. That said, there's a Subway every ten feet in Laramie, so maybe it's not so much a conspiracy against burritos as it is a conspiracy to get us all to eat fresh for five bucks per foot of sandwhichy goodness. I also noticed today that we're getting a Quiznos (cue angelic host).

In other news, I need a new brain. If you hear of creative, cheap ways to bribe one's way onto a brain transplant list, let me know. Mine. Is. Failing. Just ask my boss.

In other-other news, I feel this week that I need new furniture.

Let me rephrase that: I WANT new furniture. Pure vanity. Pure financial stupidity. But I want it. Matt assures me that my apartment looks fine, but that if I feel the need to indulge some vanity, why not ... I like my brother's way of thinking. Like we're related or something.

I also felt this week that I might - just maybe - be able to get through The Lord of the Rings this time, and I am currently indulging that whim.

Fourth time's a charm, and I'm in Moria now. I got stuck in Lothlorien last time, so we're approaching a critical point. But it seems to be going well (and faster than I remember). This is good. I feel socially awkward when I admit that I've never read them (or all of them, at least). It's one of the lesser things that make me feel socially awkward, but still ... I'll be one of the cool kids soon.

Selfish

It was, perhaps, a bit selfish, but I spent Valentine's Day appreciating ... myself.

The bitter joke is that February 14 is really Singles Awareness Day.

I, however, am already quite aware that I am single. And for the first time in a long time - perhaps ever - I was appreciative of my unattached status on the Day of Love. I decided to celebrate it.

I changed the meaning of the acronym - SAD became Sarah Appreciation Day. I dressed up. I wore the pearls that Matt and Molly gave me. I went shopping. I bought myself chocolates and two Agatha Christie mysteries. I rented a movie. I fixed a fabulous (and pretty) dinner and had my first-ever steamed artichoke (I liked it, but that's a lot of work for not very much artichoke). I felt vindicated, though, in steaming and then ripping apart the artichoke, as it was the same one that attacked me at Safeway a few days ago. Vengence was dipped in melted butter and tasted pretty good.

I wished almost every person I ran into a Happy Valentine's Day. It felt like Christmas. I was brimming with good cheer and determined to share it. I was contemplating the different kinds of love that we experience in life, and I was thankful for the love I was reminded of yesterday.

My dad sent flowers (tulips!) to my office Friday. I ran into a former professor and mentor (and current friend) in Wal-Mart last night who had been snagged by a desperate-looking man in need of Rose Advice. Among the three of us, I think he walked away secure in a doghouse-free Valentine's Day, and then the professor and I caught up in a whirlwind of chatter next to the gourmet cheese case. I talked to Brooke. I talked to my mom.

I drank too much wine (the story of my Valentine's Day-affiliated life), but it was good wine, so that's (almost) OK. It'll be a lot more OK later today, after I've eaten something ...

I'm OK with selfish on a day like Valentine's Day. I've spent too many of them moping and feeling sorry for myself, wishing that this or that had turned out differently so I could spend that day with Someone Special, neglecting to look in the mirror and realize that I already was, and that in the continued absence of the Best Company (aka Mr. Right), my own company is pretty good to keep.

And, as Holly would remind me, a bigger Someone reminds us every day of His love, and that's worth celebrating, whether it comes cleverly wrapped with heart-spangled ribbon or whispered to a lonely heart on a bitter Valentine's night ...

The Books of 2008

Jane Eyre, by Charlotte Bronte
Persuasion, by Jane Austen
Northanger Abbey, by Jane Austen
Black Coffee, adapted from a play written by Agatha Christie
Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone (x3), by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets (x3), by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban (x3), by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (x3), by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (x3), by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and Half-Blood Prince (x2), by J.K. Rowling
Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (x2), by J.K. Rowling
And Then There Were None, by Agatha Christie
Thirteen Clues for Miss Marple, by Agatha Christie
Mansfield Park, by Jane Austen
How the Irish Saved Civilization, by Thomas Cahill
Me Talk Pretty One Day, by David Sedaris
I Feel Bad About My Neck, by Nora Ephron
A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens

tissue, please

We decided that it was time for a family outing to the movie theater over Christmas, and as Matt and Molly had been listing to "Marley and Me" on CD on the way out here, that's what we opted for.

I should have known I was ill prepared when a woman at the counter said she'd seen it the night before and that we should take tissues.

Well, I had tissues. Two of them, one of which I gave to my mom.

Which wound up being horribly inadequate for an hour and a half of tears dripping off my face.

I cried like a little kid. I cried almost as much as I cried the day Matt and I had to put down our dog, Frisky.

Mom was sobbing next to me. Molly (tissueless) was sniffling into her scarf on the other side of Matt. The theater was full of sniffling, sobbing, sappy people. I never was so glad to be surrounded by crybabies in my life -- I didn't want to be the only softie crying my eyes out over a loyal, trouble-making, adorable yellow lab and his fourteen years with his family.

The movie ended, and we went home, where Molly immediately went downstairs to pet Tacori. I went to the back room to tell Charlie that he's a wonderful dog and to scratch his ears for a while.
It was a great movie, whatever the bitter AP film critic said. "It should be called 'New Yeller,'" someone else opined.

Not quite. Not nearly. Yeller was in his own well-deserved category of tear-jerker, and Marley was not Yeller. At least, I didn't think so ...

I had to laugh (a very little bit -- it sounded like a sob-choked hiccup) when John has to take Marley to the vet when he first starts to show signs of not being well. He very passionately explains to the vet - who has just told him that most dogs don't survive this type of illness - that this is not an ordinary dog; that the this dog once sat up all night with to his sick son, just watching over him; that he once ate an entire answering machine -- he didn't just chew on it, he ATE it. She nods and admits that he may pull through it after all.

I haven't read the book, and I'm told that the movie (as expected) left out some critical portions of the story ... so I think I'm going to have to read it now.

All of that to say this:

If you need a warm fuzzy of a movie, I think I found it for you. Just make sure you take more than two tissues. And cuddle with your dog afterward.

No literary redemption?

You know who I feel bad for?

The Grinch and Ebeneezer Scrooge.

I mean, yeah - both guys were pretty bad. But they redeemed themselves in the end.

Yet we still call someone a Grinch or a Scrooge when we want to emphasize how much of a grouch or a miser they are. Bah ...

Pain in the ... ribs

So I have this pain.

In my ribs.

And as far as I know, it just appeared last night, feeling like someone had decked me real hard in the middle section of my ribs. I hadn't done anything to warrant such a pain, and I spent the majority of the night clutching a heating pad to my side like a talisman and reading the only medical source I own -- a 1970s-era American Heritage Dictionary. I now know where my liver is located and what a Douay Bible is ... and that's about it.

Still hurts, though. A bit less, but it still hurts. I'd like to think that coffee helps. I like to imagine that coffee helps everything.

Enter WebMD.

After clicking "yes," "no," "maybe," "I don't know," "before this," "after that," twirling three times and shouting "Hail Mary!" ... WebMD told me that I could have any one of about 20 problems, ranging from gas pains to colon cancer to heart attack (female). I really appreciated the distinction of the (female) heart attack.

Yippee.

Seriously.

Confessions of a wannabe Hogwarts student

Can you keep a secret?

I wish I was 11 years old.

Not the 11 years old that I already was, back in 1990. No - I want to be 11 years old and getting a letter - by owl - that says I've been accepted to Hogwarts.

I want to turn a teacup into a mouse. I want to levitate pillows and hurl them across the room. I want to ride the Hogwarts Express from Platform Nine and Three-Quarters, buy a pumpkin pasty from the trolley and perform the Bat-Bogey Hex on Draco Malfoy as I walk down the corridor to my compartment. I want a Marauder's Map, an Invisibility Cloak and a bottle of butterbeer. I want moving pictures, talking portraits, mobile suits of armor and a pet Hippogriff. I want to use the visitor's entrance to the Ministry of Magic, learn how to Apparate and buy a set of Extendable Ears.

I want to go to Hogwarts.

This was a whispered confession to a friend when we finally got to talk about the "Harry Potter" series. I confessed that within weeks of finishing the seventh book, I picked up the first book and started all over again. "I just didn't want to leave Hogwarts," I said, looking around to make sure the walls weren't listening. "The thing is ... I wish I had gone to Hogwarts! I want to be there ... It makes me want to be a kid again."

She silently nodded, wide-eyed, as though I had read her mind.

They're just not normal books.

They're the kind of books that you pick up, thinking that you'll only read a chapter or two ... and 120 pages later, you realize it's the middle of the night and you should probably go to bed, but you just don't want to. The Sorting's about to take place, after all.

So right now, I'm a copy editor, using Muggle technology to put stationary pictures on a page. But tonight ... tonight, I'll get sorted into Gryffindor House; I'll enter the Forbidden Forest with Hagrid and Fang ... and I'll learn, once again, about the Sorcerer's Stone.

I really want to be 11 years old.

Wyoming Weekend

Actually, it was a Gillette weekend. A good weekend.

Mom and I spent Saturday garage-saling. I haven't been to a garage sale in years, and I was proud to have honed my scavenging skills among the racks of Nu2U, Goodwill, the ARC and Savers, because these skills helped me make a haul on Saturday. I came back to Laramie with considerably more than I left with.

That includes three boxes of books that I was ordered to clear out of the storage shed. In the whole scheme of the storage shed, three boxes (four, if you count the box of stuff I didn't want back) don't take up that much room, but ... I was really glad to get my original-edition Nancy Drew and Trixie Belden books back. I'd been wondering about those.

I'm scared for the next trip home, though. I think I'll have to tackle the bags (and bags and bags) of stuffed animals, and I'm not quite sure that I'm up to it.

Sunday was church and a potluck and lots people who I don't know but who apparently know plenty about me. It kind of makes me uncomfortable to have a conversation about my hopes and dreams with a person whose name I can't remember. When they get into boyfriends, I really get worried. How come they know so much about me, and I can't even remember their name?

I spent pretty much all of Monday with the Springers.

I passed along the joy of twirling to a 2-year-old. I got to get in hours and hours of baby talk and baby grins and baby squeals.

I tried to share the joy of Fat Tire with Brooke, but she said she doesn't like it as much as the lime-flavored Bud Light. I think she's crazy.

And I learned that some guy at Brooke's church was just dumped by his girlfriend and that this one fact ought to be persuasion enough for me to move back to Gillette. But she couldn't remember his name. Guess I'm staying in Laramie for now.

I also learned that 2-year-old girls, given a box of raisins at 9 p.m., will be mesmerized by "13 Going on 30."

I just need to get her to learn the phrases "I'm reading Jane Austen," "I need more shoes, Mom" and "Michael Phelps is awesome." And then my portion of Amelie's education will be complete.

But twirling was a good start.

Spent time with the folks, who still think that, despite a perfectly good and usable college degree, I should drive a truck in circles at a coal mine. The money's definitely better, but .... it would be in Gillette. We all know how I feel about that.

I attempted navigating the length of Highway 59. In the rain. On a weekend. I offered a fervent prayer of thanks that I arrived back home alive, physically unscathed, with my sanity intact. I also managed, after almost 30 years of calling Gillette "home," to take a wrong turn on my way home, because the orange cones were set up in a totally confusing way. Can't wait 'til it snows on that one.

Spent time with the dog, who is still terrified of traffic and practically wrapped himself around my legs for the hour-long duration of our walk in the rain. If not for the paranoid clinging, I think it might have been a considerably shorter (drier, warmer) walk. But who knows. Charlie (the dog) met his first bunny and his first herd of antelope, and he couldn't understand why neither wanted to be best buds with him. He looked a little hurt when they all just ran away from him. And then he went back to wrapping himself around my legs.

So yeah -- good weekend. I was sad to have to come back today. I'm ready for another vacation.

Garden of the Gods Musing

I spent some time meandering among the gods this weekend.

No, really. I did. I went walking in their garden.

I'd always heard about the Garden of the Gods, but I'd never been ... if I'd only known what I was missing out on.

My roommate, Debbie, from the Liberty days, was in Colorado Springs with her husband on vacation, and I had the privilege of spending part of yesterday and today with them.

Have you ever read "Till We Have Faces" by C.S. Lewis? If you haven't ... well. I recommend it. I also recommend that you be at a fairly happy time in your life when you read it, because it doesn't necessarily have a happy ending, nor does it give you many opportunities to feel generally happy about the story or its main character.

The book is a re-telling of the Greek myth of Cupid and Psyche (which is too long to be even briefly retold here).

In the book, though, after Psyche (Istra) has been offered as a sacrifice to the god of the Grey Mountain, her sister, Orual, takes Bardia the soldier with her to gather what may be left of Psyche's remains. Instead, she finds Psyche herself, alive and healthy, living in a beautiful, verdant valley ... and, later on, in the mist, Orual faintly sees the outline of Psyche's dream castle, where she lives with her god lover.

As we rounded a corner of the loop around the main part of the Garden, I looked down ... and if I had ever been asked to describe what Psyche's valley looked like, the Garden of the Gods is what I would have described. I had to look hard to make sure there was no castle hiding on the edges of my vision ... and I guess that if I sat there in the heat long enough, I could imagine anything I wanted.

But seriously -- this place was amazing. We got out and hiked several parts of it, posing as though we alone were holding up ginormous chunks of red rock that seemed magically perched, ready to tumble at the slightest breath of wind ... It was an amazing experience. And a free one. The good things in life don't get much better than that.

******

I have found a new word that I love. Just love.

Squicked.

I discovered this word while reading the "Best of Craigslist" on, of course, craigslist.com. They're hilarious. I almost peed my pants laughing last night reading some of them. Like the guy who peed on his ex-girlfriend's floor when they broke up. Or the guy who doesn't miss his ex-girlfriend, but he misses her cat. This post, however, was an open letter to men, a bitter diatribe, if you will, from one of my disillusioned sisters. The entire entry can be found here. I guess I need the "fair warning" clause here, stating that this girl swears -- quite a bit -- in her post. It's not something that would amuse my mother, I think. But we're all adults.

But back to being squicked. Rather, squicked out.

In its context, here is my new favorite word:

"... (and) while I'm at it...old guys. Stop it. Just stop. I don't know what makes you think that leering at me, sending me dirty pictures, or telling me I'm hot is going to do, but it's certainly NOT going to make me want to date you, do you, or little else besides sitting there all night being squicked out because some creepy, hairy, old man who looks like my Dad just told me I had nice boobs."

I can imagine the sound of being squicked out. It's that not-quite-squeak that someone makes when they, say, see something really, really gross or when they swallow too big of a gulp of water that also goes down with a bubble of air ... I also imagine it's the sound a mouse would make if you squeezed it. It wouldn't sqeak; it would squick. And I'd be squicked out at the sight of said mouse. It's the sound I would make if some hairy (or, in some cases, completely hairless) old fart told me I had a nice chest. I'd get squicked out. Then I'd get pissed off. Then I'd probably get arrested, because I'd probably hit the old geezer after that, and I'd be charged with assaulting an elderly man ...

*******

And now it's after midnight, which, I think, means I'm going home. I'm tired. I'm sunburned. I need a shower. And a bed. I slept on the floor last night (not quite as bad as the are-you-sure-this-isn't-the-driveway yard at Adrienne and Josh's in Sheridan, but it's still a floor ...). I need a massage, something to work the cement out of my neck and shoulders. Ack.

cheerio, all.

In the Book on My Desk Musing

from "Postcards from Ed" by Edward Abbey
(Note: I don't agree with Mr. Abbey's views on many, many things, but the tone of his letters, such as this one, cracks me up ...)

To the High Country News, Lander, Wyoming
Dear Friends:
Please don't print that dumb interview from the "New Mexico Independent." I must've been drunk or hung over. That's not me talking, that's me trying to impersonate a responsible conservationist. I am not a responsible conservationist, I am a wild preservative. If I knew how to blow up Glen Canyon Dam, I'd be out there working on it tonight.
Yrs truly, Ed Abbey -- Wolfe Hole