When I was a kid (around the time that I was reading The Mixed of Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frankweiler), it was my dream to someday hide out in a library after hours, perhaps snoozing among the stacks and reading reading reading to my heart’s content.
I happen to be, at this very moment, nearly alone in a closed library. And musing about all of the possibilities…(so if you don’t hear from me for awhile, you’ll know why)
I have an IRL fetish. I have a few of them, actually, but the one that’s on my mind right now is my IRL fetish for paper.
We have boxes full of creamy think white paper leftover from wrapping dishes in our recent move, and I love the texture of it, the color, and its soft wrinkles. This weekend Catgirl and I used the paper to create a skirt pattern for sewing, and it was an utter delight to use a thick artist pencil on that paper, too. So much so that I was dreaming about all kinds of ways I might use paper again (digital schmigital).
That, and I’m also thinking about the book that sits on the edge of my bathtub to entertain me during my evening soaks. Wet fingers on paper (and the wrinkles that those wet fingers leave on book pages after they dry) are a texture that feels so much more bone-deep satisfying than a swipe of a finger across a screen.
Previous short shameful confessions
Note: featured image is of the old-timey letterbox (and nearby elevator) in the lobby of the Hotel Allegro in Chicago. It made me want to mail a few snail-mail letters to friends…
As part of my “reading lots of books” project, I started reading Cloud Atlas (kindle edition) over the holidays. Quite frankly, I’d been completely underwhelmed by it but kept plugging away because of the hype assuming that it would eventually get better. Eveon so, yesterday, as I was sort of slogging through a low point in the narrative I clicked through to the “home” screen on my kindle and realized, with a sigh of relief, that I was nearly finished with the book. And it wasn’t until that point that I logged into goodreads to consult all of the ah-mazing reviews of this book and finally figured out that…all this time I’d been reading the wrong book.
Because, apparently, The Cloud Atlas
We’re not 20 anymore…
He said, as we jumped into the car before 7am to take Catgirl to school. We’d had a long evening in Los Angeles with new-to-me Belgian friends Hans and Lien. Dinner was at a popup restaurant, The Hart + the Hunter (by our favorite chefs from Wolf in Sheep’s Clothing) with drinks afterwards at The Dresden Room.
There’s something to be said for an evening filled with vigorous conversation, simple southern-style foods, and the hours flying by.
The next morning, however, one does have to get up and get the girl to school and get to work and…one does realize that it just isn’t as easy to roll into bed in the middle of the night and out of bed in the early morning as it used to be…
As I searched the procession of hundreds of graduating seniors filing into the arena at my son’s high school commencement yesterday, I found him by recognizing the guy who looked the most like Harry Potter. I then zoomed in on his face with my camera to confirm that that was, indeed, my son and not another Radcliffe look-alike. 🙂
And, I must add that I don’t think I’ve ever seen him happier or more confident than he was yesterday as he crossed that stage (which was, incidentally, the same one where I’d been hooded for my PhD just two weeks prior). I’m so proud of the man that he’s becoming, and so happy to be his mother.
Previous short shameful confessions
Back when I was in high school and had limited mobility due to having recently lost my leg (to cancer), my boyfriends often carried me wherever we were going. It got me there faster than if I were to ambulate myself, and also fed my uber-romantic teen desires to be swept off of my feet by a beau (I will confess that such moments fueled many a Twilight-like fantasy).
But now it’s been years–if not decades–since I’ve gotten a ‘lift’ from anyone (the one exception might be that time a few months ago that a wave was pulling me away from my canoe and a teammate picked me up and carried me to safer waters). I’m rather proud of my ability to get places on my own two feet, so I tend to look back on my years of being ‘carried’ by men as a bit shameful now…
However, a few days ago I got a piggyback ride up the stairs to the second story of my house…and I enjoyed it far more than I imagined that I would. What a sweet feeling it was to trust myself to someone else’s strength for a few moments…
What’s your most embarrassing moment? I like to tell John’s, but today I’ll offer a few of my own…
–discovering a hole in the crotch of my pants just after I got home from meeting and spending the day with my boyfriend-at-the-time’s parents.
–realizing that the yellow stripe across the chest of my favorite swimsuit was completely see-through when wet (this, after having worn the suit for a couple of years).
–putting in a swimsuit off of the clothesline at summer camp and realizing a few moments later (in front of fellow campers) that there is a large moth in the crotch of said swimuit. [Note: not the swimsuit with the yellow stripe, in case you were wondering]
–the day I walked out of the house with an American cheese slice stuck to the seat of pants (placed there by my ever-so-loving toddler daughter). Also, a similar incident with a large (like 5″ square) Pokemon sticker on my back.