One Good Thing About Winter

I was telling this story to Tim the other night and he got a kick out of it, especially the fact it gave him something to laugh at me about...because that's what marriage is all about, right? Laughing at each other's oddities.

When I was young, my sister and I often played with the neighbor girl, Sarah. Often means every day in the summer and as much as possible on the weekends during the school year. I grew up on ten acres of land and Sarah's family had probably about the same amount so we spent our days exploring and playing in forts.

There was one game in particular that I remember well. We would go up to a small tree and pretend it had buttons on it. These buttons would take us to whatever land the chooser decided. We would then explore the land and head back to the tree to find a new land.

Stephanie and Sarah would groan when it was my turn to pick the land because they knew one place that we would inevitably have to travel to.

Book land.

That's right. Book land.

With overwhelming excitement (on my part) I would press the buttons and say "Book land!" and we would twirl around, our eyes closed, only to open them again and find ourselves in a land full of books wherever you turned.

Book land was always cut short as Stephanie or Sarah would run back over to the tree to push the buttons to travel somewhere else.

"So you're fantasy land was a library?" Tim laughed.

This is what a nerd I am. This is how much I love to read. My childhood was spent either playing outside or reading books indoors. My dad would become so frustrated as our family vacations in Florida were spent with me on the sand, my nose buried in a book. What can I say? I hate salt water. If we were at Lake Michigan I was in the water the whole time. Gulf of Mexico? No, thank you.

Tim has learned to live with and accept my book fetish. He even encourages it at times, helping me to look for old books at antique stores that might interest me. He can't understand why I would want to own old Nancy Drew books because "they don't look very old or interesting" to him but to me...oh, to me Nancy Drew symbolizes summers in the library looking for new ones to be returned. It was a young girl's way of being a detective and catching the bad guys. He won't let me buy the Nancy Drew books yet. I'm still working on him.

When he comes home and finds me reading a Karen Kingsbury book, he knows that most likely dinner is not on the table, Ellie's diaper has not been changed and Noah's movie may or may not be on repeat. There is almost always a clump of tissues next to me on the couch that have been soaked in my tears. I'm trying to change, people, I really am. I'm trying to limit to naptime and bedtime but sometimes when you start reading during naptime and get all caught up in it....

Anyways, one of the things I love about January through March is that our local libraries run a winter reading program for adults. For every five books you read, you get a small prize and a chance to be entered for the Grand Prize. The small prizes are things like a box of chocolate, a containter of nuts, a certificate for a free car wash or video rental, etc.

Today I went to get my first books for the reading program. I chose:

*Dawn's Light by Terri Blackstock - It is the fourth in her RESTORATIONovel series. I read the first three and then forgot about this one until I saw it today. Unfortunately, they didn't have it on the regular shelf but they had it in large print. Again, how desperate am I? I'm reading a large print novel because the regular one is checked out.

*Thursdays at Eight by Debbie Macomber - I really liked her Shop on Blossom Street books. They included a lot on knitting within the story lines. I thought I would give this one a try. It's about a small group of diverse women who meet together for breakfast on, you guessed it, Thursdays.

*Home to Holly Springs by Jan Karon - I enjoyed her Mitford series books. They are so funny and yet always have the life lessons woven in. This is the first in her spinoff series about Father Tim.

*Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith by Anne Lamott - This one I'm actually least excited about. I was not crazy about her book Traveling Mercies. She is very funny, yes, and very honest and raw. However, I found her spiritual beliefs to be kind of pick-and-choose-what-you-like-about-the-Bible and focus on those. I figured I would give her another try to see if her thoughts on faith have changed or if they remain the same.

Now I am off to read! It's naptime and I have a little over an hour before I have to wake them up to head to an appointment. Now I have to figure out which one to start with...