Book Whore

I am a book whore. I do several books at a go, picking them up and putting them down on whim.

Well, not so much a whim, more of convenience. There are books on my nightstand, books on the table beside my favorite chair, books on the kitchen table. I have books in about as many places as I have reading glasses.

And like my glasses, they migrate from room to room, many often ending up in the same place, waiting to be evenly redistributed again.

My husband thinks this odd. He reads one book at a time, cover to cover. Unless it’s immediately apparent it’s going to be a complete waste of his time. Then, of course, it’s immediate divorce.

I, on the other hand, rarely read a book straight through. I pick ‘em up and put ‘em down. A lot. Not usually because I’m bored: If I’m bored with a book, it goes in a box to take to the used book store. I don’t have patience for boring. I’ll pick up a book, read what I can in the time I have, stick the book marker in, and come back later. Sometimes I’ll put the marker in just because my brain can’t take in any more. I want to digest what I read, mull it over, think it through. Sometimes the marker gets used a lot because it’s slow going, new territory, brain-cell burning, old-dog-new-trick-teaching.

I read one book before I fall asleep (sometimes in mid-sentence, the book held in front of my face, light on, until my husband pulls it free, marks the page and turns out the light). I read another at the breakfast table, a third and fourth when I have time in the afternoon or evening. Still others are for study or relevant to the times. One leads to another and often they overlap. Don Miller recommends Rick McKinley. McKinley recommends Miller. (Once both had new releases right around the same time; So I started and finished them both at the same time.)

I have my hands all over some books: Dog ears and penciled margins. Those I read again. And again. Others have nary a mark. Those may go back on the shelf for sharing with others. (The dog eared books get shared with others, too, I just buy new copies and keep the old friends for myself.)

I’m a book whore, but I don’t think the books mind. I think they rather like it. I think they edge themselves to the corner of the table, begging to be picked up again. I’m not complaining — I can’t wait to pick them up.

Got a good one to recommend?

In Praise of the Grape

I’d really must say right here that the perfect amount of wine, sipped from a crystal goblet of perfectly aged (in oak, organic) old vine fruit, gives me the most sensational “God is in His heaven and all is right with the world” feeling. It’s almost spiritual.

Thanks be to God for inventing the grape and then teaching people what to do with it.

Omaine and amen.

 

Spiritual Assessment

I asked my sister and her friends to take an online spiritual assessment with me. I felt this was an important thing to do since these women are charged with the spiritual nourishment and growth of dozens of women attending our annual women’s retreat. I believe women like this should score very highly on these types of assessments.

The good news is, they all passed. The bad news is that they all scored way higher than me.

I have taken it three times now. Last night I was backslidden, but I didn’t answer the question about heaven. This morning I was still backslidden but I moved my kid to private school to get a better score. This afternoon I rethought my response about the shot glasses versus the sculpture and scored 75, which means I just barely qualify as slightly evangelical. 

I really put a lot of stock in these things and believe they accurately assess my spiritual state so I am going to go fast for a year now and also look up the benefits of flagellation. 

In Praise of the Coffee Bean

I’d really must say right here that the perfect amount of caffeine, sipped from an over-sized mug of perfect brewed (strong, organic) coffee, give me the most sensational “God is in His heaven and all is right with the world” feeling. It’s almost spiritual.

Thanks be to God for inventing the coffee bean and then teaching people what to do with it.

Omaine and amen.

Ahhhhh........

Angry People on Airplanes

Human behavior is magnified on airplanes. The reason, of course, is obvious. They are mere feet from you, sometimes only inches, and you-can’t-get-AWAY.

 

I fly a lot. I’ve gotten used to talkative children, crying babies, balding guys reclining violently into my lap (why don’t people just gently recline their seat backs, giving the person behind them time to get their knees—or face—out of the way?) and the coughers. (OK, I haven’t gotten used to the coughers yet. They make me want to keep a clean tissue plastered over my nose and mouth, like Asian women who ride public transportation. They make me want to emphatically sit up, turn around and loudly admonish, “COVER-YOUR-MOUTH!” as if they were my two year old.)

 

But this post is about angry people, not slightly annoyed people. Lately there seem to be more of them. On my last trip I sat next to one on each of my two flight segments home. From San Antonio to Dallas a woman next to me began her drama with sighs. Really heavy ones. The kind you hear from 14 year olds who don’t get their way. The sighs graduated to under-the-breath comments like, “For crying out loud!” and “OH! This is ridiculous!” which graduated to not-so-under-the-breath questions like, “What is wrong with you people?!” and “Are you kidding me?!”

 

I was the lucky passenger in the middle of a row of three next to this emotional time bomb, bouncing and huffing around in her window seat, alternately pulling on her straggly hair and rummaging loudly in her oversized carry-on full of crunchy objects. She never did pull anything out but seemed, rather, to hope she would find something important with each search. To my knowledge she never did. It wasn’t the lack of finding that seemed to tick her off. Whatever it was it was up front: Every 30 seconds, between the huffs and sighs, she’d crane her neck looking in the direction of the cockpit. Maybe she was married to the pilot and she was upset at having to fly coach. Maybe she felt the plane wasn’t moving fast enough. Perhaps she had fine-tuned navigational senses and knew a more direct route to DFW. Regardless, I was glad it was just a one hour flight.

 

Until the next segment: Dallas to Oakland. Me in the window seat this time, I sat next to a member of the Aryan Nation. Young, shaved and all mouth. I remembered him from the gate area. He was the pacer with not-so-nice comments about people who try to board before their group is called. He started in as soon as he plopped down next to me. His first comment was directed to the flight attendant: “You should get yourself some guns to use for the people who try to board before their group is called.”  (!)  “Young man,” she replied, “We don’t use that word on airplanes. Are you in the military?” He rolled his eyes but didn’t reply.

 

On this flight the pilot was late for work. OK, that kind of thing ticks everyone off, but it doesn’t do any good to get angry. You can’t DO anything about it. And who knows what caused the man to be tardy – maybe he had to take his kid to the emergency room, maybe someone rear ended him on the freeway, maybe he had to wait an extra 30 minutes before he could legally fly after that last drink. In any case, when the cause of the delay was announced, off goes our Aryan dude. Every third word started with “F” and he wasn’t too quiet about it either. As he was almost young enough to be my son, I gave him the obvious mother-of-an-obnoxious-behaving-son-look. You know the one, where you lean in, lock eyes, and deliberately purse your lips and furrow your brow as if everything in your scrunched up face says, “WHAT IN HEAVEN’S NAME IS WRONG WITH YOU – YOU SHOULD BE ASHAMED OF YOURSELF – WHO IS YOUR MOTHER – AND WHAT-IS-YOUR-PROBLEM??!”

 

That didn’t really work. I got the Vinnie Barbarino response, deadpan, ignorant: “WUT?”  [Hint: Welcome Back, Kotter. The Sweathogs. John Travolta. Look it up.]  Then off he went some more. Thankfully, the guy fell asleep shortly after we finally took off and stayed that way until just before landing, where he picked up where he left off (and also found a lot of pleasure in pressing the flight attendant call button every five minutes).

 

I notice people who are stuck in the vicinity of the angry people don’t often get angry themselves. Most appear mildly interested or pretend to ignore them. Others of us find them entertaining, almost humorous. It truly is amazing that adult people so overtly express their anger in front of so many others. The amazing thing is not so much that they are angry (I mean, everyone is annoyed at being delayed and inconvenienced) but that they are completely oblivious to the fact that the rest of us have judged them as morons while they think they are obviously the most important thing on the planet.

 

Gives me pause and helps me to remember, when I am annoyed by life’s little inconveniences, to stop, look around, assess the situation, and decide whether I want to entertain others with my moron-ness, or just take it all in and go for the ride. I hope I opt for going for the ride.

Some Children Annoy Me

WHO DO YOU BELONG TO?! – a phrase I long to say sitting in the salon waiting room this morning.

The cause: Two pre-adolescent boys, typically oblivious to the facial expressions of the adults around them. One boy, with freshly washed hair, repeatedly shakes it like a big dog just in from the rain. Dots of water and overly-priced hair product splatter the pages of my book.

His companion, when not punching and pinching, vigorously rubs an inflated yellow balloon on his dry hair, the static crackling as he slowly pulls it away from the upended strands.

I should be entertained and amused, but I came here to be pampered and reflective, so I am annoyed.

Then in the back of my mind, the words, Whoever accepts one of these little children, accepts Me…   So, now I am annoyed with being annoyed.

Later…

While curing my freshly browned roots under the dryer and reading my book, I catch out of the corner of my eye a woman in her early 30’s, appropriately aproned and freshly cut, twirling around and around in her salon chair as she awaits her stylist for the blow dry.

I think she gets it.

I wish I had that balloon.