Back in the Saddle.

I've successfully reached Day Two with my blog. Wait, maybe I should wait until I actually hit "Publish" before I start celebrating.

The unthinkable happened last night:  I went to Pet Supermarket to get some dog food and I came home with a canary.  I'm not sure why anyone even allows me to go to a pet store by myself.  They should totally know better, but I caught Richard at a good time:  He and Aidan were playing Call of Duty, so they were only paying me less than 1% of their combined attention.

So I'm at Pet Supermarket and I've got a cart.  I've got puppy food and dog food in the cart, which is what I'd gone to get, so now I'm in perusing mode.  I peruse the fish tanks, I peruse the cats, I peruse the rabbits, guinea pigs, and ferrets.  I peruse the parakeets, the finches, and...hark, a canary.  I'm thinking it's the coolest shade of pale yellow I've ever seen.

I walk back to re-peruse the fish tanks, knowing myself too well.  I had to get away from that bird.

I peruse the beta fish.  I peruse the fake aquatic plants.  Then, once again, hark.  The song of a male canary.

I'm pretty sure I left rubber on the floor of the fish area while I peeled out toward the front of the store.  The added 80 pounds of combined dog and puppy food really helped out in that regard.  I grabbed a white cage, some colorful canary food with little bits of candy-looking pieces mixed among the boring seed (wow, at $7.99 a half-pound, this stuff better be good), some songbird food (because, hey, why not?), and then went to the front.

"I NEED THAT CANARY," I wanted to say.  I realized that sounded creepy, so I toned it down a bit.

"I'd like to buy that canary," I mumbled in the sort of way that sounded really casual and cool.

I bring the canary home, and I was pretty sure Richard was going to toss me to the curb.  After a few minutes of the silent treatment, during which time I was trying to do homework, I broke down and went inside.

"Richard," I said.  "Are you mad at me?"

He gave me an answer, but he had the tell-tale signs of "I'm just saying I'm not mad at you but I'm still mad at you."  I had to pull out the big guns.  Who can do homework when they're in the middle of being madded at? To be the recipient of someone's silent treatment really sucks.

"Richard," I said.  "What about the time you and Aidan came home with a rabbit and a big screen tv?"

He claimed he remembered none of that, but I knew better.  I know tv's are pretty much his weak spot, so I stuck the knife in and twisted.

"Look, Richard.  I brought home a bird.  A canary bird, mind you.  Its song is going to melt your heart.  This also means that I owe you one, see?  You're on the one-up list now."

He gave me that blank stare, bowl of cereal balanced in his lap, spoon halfway to his mouth.

I cleared my throat.  "What I'm trying to say, babe," (he can't resist when I call him 'babe') "is that, well, you know that 70-inch tv you've had your eye on?"  Ahhh, now he realizes where I'm headed with this.  "Now you can come home with that, and we're even."

(PS:  We would totally not be even, but it did get me out of the dog house.)

I'm naming my bird "Eggman."

I guess the tv will be called "Large Boy."

sigh

Til next time,
Cherstin

Starting Small.

I'm fairly certain that, along with quitting smoking, updating my blog on a nearly-every-day basis was one of my New Year's Resolutions for 2012.

I'll begin by wishing you all a happy March 4th! Okay, so it's not a real holiday, but it will be Day One of my New and Improved New Year's Resolutions 2012, which is when I just happened to realize that I haven't done shit that I resolved to do this year, and the year is already 25% over.

So far in 2012:

Caleb turned a year old, and successfully uttered "mama" the very next day. That was a good day.

I tried to quit smoking a few times. Those were pretty bad days.

I still can't quite decide what grade level I'd like to teach. Those have been fun days, observing and trying to nail it down.

Aidan is being tested for the gifted program. That is great news.

We found out our dog, Lena, has lymphoma. That was shitty news.

Let me take a break right there and tell you what we did.

Being a parent to a seven-year-old and a one-year-old isn't always an easy task, particularly where pets are concerned. Many a dog have we brought home and fallen in love with, only to find children knocked over, toys torn apart, asteroid-sized craters dug into the backyard, so off they go again to find their next perfect home, we, the people, left behind to always remember them fondly, happy that we gave them a second chance at life.

Then came Lena.

We brought Lena into our home almost 5 years ago and we've never looked back. Did this "free dog" come with some bad habits? Sure. I can't tell you how many bags of trash she managed to find her way into. I can't recall the weight of the cinder blocks I crushed with a sledge hammer in order to line the perimeter of the fence so she would no longer squeeze under it to run the neighborhood. I can't even count the dollar amount spent on our "free dog," from her initial spay and shots and microchip and having two baby teeth removed that never fell out, her dental a few years later, two trips to the emergency vet. If I could pay one hundred times that amount to keep her here with us for another 10 years, I'd do it in a heartbeat.

Lena started acting "off" two weeks ago. Nothing major that would stop another pet owner in their tracks, but just things that seemed peculiar. There were two nights in a row that my son thought Lena had a fever when she was up in bed with him, and each of the following mornings, we woke up to find Lena asleep on a blanket on Aidan's floor rather than tucked in his bed, which is where she'd slept for the past year. I gave her a good pat-down and noticed she had a swollen gland, which is where it all began.

Anyway, long story short, we decided to throw Lena a "going-away" party, of sorts. Yesterday, we had friends, family, and neighbors come over for a cookout, and their fee to join the festivities was to bring a drawing or a letter about a special memory they had of Lena. At the end of the day, we had notes, drawings, photos, dog picture frames, dog biscuits, cards, even a "Seeds of Life" tree, all from Lena's special friends. When Lena's time here is up, we'll always have this special scrapbook to remember her and her special day.

I'm hoping that day never comes. Sorry to be selfish, but that's my dog. That's all I can say.

Anyway, it's been a good year, it's been a shitty year. We take the good with the bad and we roll on. I hope to see you more often, sooner rather than later. Life is just too short.

Hasta,
Cherstin

Around the Bend.

So here we come, full speed ahead, barreling toward the end of the year. I'm sitting out on the lanai, coffee to my left, lit cigarette to my right. Nope, not a whole lot has changed over the course of this year. Well, actually that's a lie. I should rephrase: "I haven't dropped many of the bad habits I thought I would this year." Better. More accurate.

2011 brought with it a new bundle of joy. Ahhh, looking back now on those first few months, life sure was peaceful. There isn't much in this life more relaxing than a baby in a swaddle, is there? You put them down, they stay there, they sleep. They eat, poop, hardly even cry if you can read their signs just so.

I finished out the spring semester of school, and went full steam ahead into the summer. Aidan graduated the first grade, life was grand. Richard started back at his old job, and I started making the inevitable plan to write my novel in November. It seemed like it was my destiny ... all the cards were in place.

We tied the knot at the end of September in a beautiful little ceremony at the courthouse, and started work on renovating the garage into a fourth bedroom. Aidan started 2nd grade, Caleb started motoring around the house: first on all fours, then on all twos while holding on. I made it 30,000 words into my novel before collapsing out of sheer boredom.

We lost some weight, then we gained it back. We had a terrific Thanksgiving here at our place, despite the turkey being a little dry. We got some chickens, I fell in love with an English Bulldog, and we kept working on the garage.

I quit smoking, then started again. We planned for a Christmas vacation, then we all got sick. That leads us to today, the present, time and date listed somewhere above for your convenience.

Life is truly good. I'm not going to chastise myself for my failed accomplishments, because I've learned from each of them. I made the mistake of saying, the other day, in the heat of one of Caleb's tantrums, that "I hate my life." I didn't mean it. It was a horrible, selfish thing to say. My youngest uncle suffered a debilitating stroke at the end of August. He's been a musician forever, and he doesn't have that now. Will he, in the future? No one is certain. I had the opportunity to attend one of his benefits to help raise money for his physical therapy, and it was amazing to see the support of the people he's impacted over the years. To say "I hate my life" is asinine. You don't know what you've got until it's gone.

For now, I will love my husband, hug my boys, and see what happens in 2012. Here's wishing you peace on Earth, goodwill toward men, and all of the above.

Quitting smoking with Chantix, days 1-3

I picked up a pack of cigarettes again when my son was six weeks old. I quit breastfeeding so I could start smoking again. It's disgusting, I know. It's an addiction that rivals no other, because people don't DO heroin for over 20 years and live to tell about it. Living more than half your life with a cigarette dangling between your lips makes it really hard to stop, because you don't know what else to do with yourself.

I find myself now, 7 months later, smoking almost 2 packs a day, for lack of anything better to do. I took off school this semester, why? Apparently to sit home and smoke myself into oblivion, one would think. I see all of this. I'm knowledgable enough about my own welfare to realize what I'm doing to myself. My grandfather died of throat cancer, my other grandfather died of colon cancer, and my dad survived throat cancer with a tracheotomy. Despite having a wonderful opportunity to be a stay-at-home mom, I find myself spending the majority of my day sitting here on the porch, smoking. I've had enough.

I'd been waiting and waiting for our insurance to kick in so I could take a trip to my doctor and get back on Chantix, which I'd always fondly remembered to be a miracle drug after successfully quitting a few years ago with it, but now I find myself wondering if my memory hasn't been a little skewed. Here are my experiences this time around.

Day One: Friday. (One .5 mg pill) I went to my doctor's appointment at 9:30am, went to the pharmacy and filled my prescription, and took my first pill in the van on the way home, around 11am. I got home, relieved my mom who'd been here babysitting, put the groceries away, gave the baby a bottle, and put him down for his nap. I felt fine, no nausea, but I felt "mediciney." I could tell I'd taken something, and I'd describe it as more of a "fidgety" feeling.

I had a bagel for lunch and then decided to lay down since the baby was asleep.

Big mistake.

I laid down but couldn't fall asleep. It seemed like every time I'd begin to doze off, I'd hear something strange. The best I can come up with would be to describe them as "auditory hallunicinations." At one point, I thought I heard the screen door open on my porch, but when I concentrated on remembering the sound, it was different somehow. I'd thought I heard it "louder" than I would've if it had really opened. I chalked it up to my window air-conditioner and tried again to fall asleep. The next time it happened, I thought I heard myself inhale sharply, like a really loud GASP, but when I thought about it, I realized that the sound had come from somewhere over my shoulder. I'd also been awake the whole time, and I knew I hadn't gasped for any reason. It was at that point that I remembered the Chantix, and I put two and two together. The Chantix must somehow be contributing to my hearing things, because ordinarily, with an 8-month-old baby, I'm a terrific napper. I never have a hard time falling asleep, but sleep that day was no where in sight. I decided to just get up instead.

That night, I went to bed around 11pm, and STILL could not sleep. It was as if my ears were on steroids. I looked at the clock when my husband left the room after tucking me in, and it was 11:12pm. He said he was going to go smoke one more cigarette and then come to bed. I laid there with my eyes closed for what seemed like HOURS. I remember thinking that he must've found a movie to watch or something, because it seemed in my head that it was getting extremely late. I eventually fell asleep, and woke to the sound of said husband tiptoeing into the room to crawl in bed. I looked at the clock, expecting it to be well-past 1am, but it was 11:20pm. Only EIGHT MINUTES had passed. It was the most surreal feeling.

I woke off and on all night, the smallest sounds seeming to keep me up. I could hear my husband's breathing like it was being amplified inside my head. The last time I remember looking at the clock, it was 3am. When I woke at 7:30am to the sounds of the baby's chatter over the monitor, however, I felt completely rested.

Day Two: Saturday. (One .5 mg pill) After taking my morning dose of Chantix, I began to get very anxious. Both boys were home and were having just a regular Saturday, goofing around with Dad, but I didn't want them to be here. It was reminscent of the feeling in high school when you'd come home drunk or stoned and have to sneak it past your parents. I started getting really anxious about taking care of them. I felt like I didn't want the responsibility. Thankfully, I was able to call my mom and she said they could both go over there and spend the night. My husband was playing PS3 with our oldest, and I began packing the baby's diaper bag to get them ready to go, but no one else was really helping. I started getting agitated at everyone because I really just wanted the kids out of the house. I started feeling paranoia then, on top of the anxiety. This was not a good mix. Once my husband got it together and left to take the boys to Gramma's, I started feeling much more relaxed.

I took a two-hour nap and woke up feeling very refreshed at 3:15pm. I goofed around on the computer for a bit. I did realize that, even already, I wasn't smoking as much as I ordinarily do. The menthols were beginning to taste rather gross and plain. I zoned out a bit in the evening watching football, and I still felt heavily medicated. I ended up going to sleep at 9:12pm and slept all night. I did wake up around 4am very thirsty, and with a headache from being sort of dehydrated. At 6am, when the same thing happened, I did get up and have a few sips of water from the tap. I went back to bed for a while.

Day Three: Sunday. (One .5 mg pill) I woke up and the clock read 7:30am. Of this, I was absolutely certain. I figured that was as good a time as any to wake up, so I got out of bed, took my Chantix, and came out on the porch. I immediatly got nauseous. I guess I must've taken the Chantix on "too empty" of a stomach, so I wandered inside to grab a granola bar. This helped a bit, but the headache was horrible. I went back inside to get some water, took about ten sips, and staggered to the bathroom to throw up. I dry-heaved a bunch of times, and spit a lot, but I never did throw up. When I felt like I could move, I came back outside and sat down, only to start feeling really medicated and down. I didn't really know what I wanted to do. The computer wasn't cutting it. I didn't want to watch tv. I did, however, decide I wanted to take a bath. When I looked at the clock, I was freaked out to see it was 7:20am. My first thought was that the computer clock must be wrong, because I remembered the clock in the bedroom reading 7:30am when I got up, but when I double-checked it against my phone, it was right. It was really only 7:20am. Then I decided the clock in the bedroom must be the one that was wrong, but found out later that wasn't the case, either. I'm not sure what happened even now. Either the clock had said 7:03am when I got up, or I just totally imagined the 7:30am part, or maybe I was remembering the day before. I'm not sure.

I went in the bathroom and started filling the tub, and was immediately overwhelmed again by the urge to throw up. So there I was, naked as a jaybird, head over the toilet dry-heaving again, head pounding. I had my hands over my ears in a makeshift vice grip. I was a mess. The bath didn't help my headache, so I decided to go back to bed.

I laid in bed wide-awake, with my eyes closed. I thought to myself, "You know, a normal person would realize they aren't going to fall back to sleep and they'd just get up." But I thought back to myself, "Well, what does it matter? There's nothing to do anyway, and I'm not bothering anyone by laying here." So I laid there. Until 11am.

I got up at 11am (mind you, this is after going to bed at 9:12pm the night before), and took two Advil. My stomach had settled but my headache was still wide-open. At that point or shortly after, I swore off the Chantix. I'd decided that was it, I'd start the patch tomorrow and be done with this damn prescription.

But then I began feeling better, and once the headache wore off, I started thinking that maybe it was "my fault" for taking the Chantix on an empty stomach this morning, when I already HAD a headache to begin with from being dehydrated from sleeping so long. I started reconsidering my decision, and figured maybe I will give the Chantix one more try tomorrow. Maybe the bad experience I'm having so far comes from the fact that I'm just taking the one pill a day, so it's like a "drop in the bucket" each time I take it? Maybe when I'm taking two a day, I won't have the "peaks and valleys" effect that I'm having now? I don't know. I tried doing some research online, but I can't find much about this particular aspect of it. I know I'm not the only one having weird side-effects, but I don't know if it might be better when I start taking two, and I don't know if this medication is something it might take my body a few days to get used to. I just remember it working so well when I used it a few years ago. I don't understand why I'm having such a weird reaction this time?

Anyway, day four is tomorrow. I'll keep you posted.

Just because they sound alike,

"Monday" actually has nothing at all to do with "Funday."

Aidan woke up at 1:30am, throwing up the remaining portion of his corndog-and-a-half-with-a-side-of-Gatorade.

He came in to give me a play-by-play, including how he diligently told the dog to move, because she, quote, "wasn't going to like what she had to see."  I'm very thankful for this:  not the throwing up, but the fact that he didn't throw up on the dog.  I'm not sure I would've taken the time to consider this, given the circumstance.

I told Bub he'd have to stay away from the baby today, and in doing so he also needed to make sure he got plenty of rest, which would include an afternoon nap when the baby and I went down.  Check, check, and check.  (The kid is definitely sick.  Ordinarily, if I even hinted at a nap, it would be considered the ultimate act of treason toward his seven-year-old self.)

He ate a piece of toast for breakfast, but his fever killed his appetite.  Around lunchtime, I went in to check on him and the poor guy was definitely two shades of toasty.  Having no Children's Medicine in the house, I had two options:  he could down approximately a bottle of infant medicine, or take half a dose of adult Advil to get the fever down.  Knowing how syrupy-sweet the infant medicine is, I decided the best thing for his belly would be one little brown Advil.

Of course, this is the time when I realize that the only Advil we have in the house are the large, green liquid caps, which even Richard has a hard time taking.

We tried it head-on:  put the pill in your mouth and swallow.  This was not happening and resulted in one gooey green thing being spit into my hand, sort of like the inside of a Mike n' Ike after you carefully remove the icing portion with your front teeth.  That was no good.  The second attempt also failed, which was to put it in a spoonful of applesauce.  I'm still stumped at how this didn't work, because I thought it was a helluva good idea.  The third attempt, which was actually the exact same thing as the first attempt, finally worked.

:-D

Or so we thought, until we looked at the bottom of the water bottle to see the green gel tab down at the bottom.  Aidan looked shocked, considering I'd already congratulated him for swallowing the pill.

:-(

"What in the world?  How did THAT get there?" he asked, with a generous and sincere helping of confusion.

"I don't know, buddy," I replied.  "I don't know."  My only guess is that it jumped ship somewhere after the lips but before the esophagus.

The boy was scorching, and I was worried.  Plan B was out the window, considering that's for birth control, so we went to Plan C:  let's try a different pill.  The only other suitable thing was a cold tablet, which thankfully went down with no issues.  This time, both of us were ecstatic.  To nap he went.

Meanwhile, back in Gotham City, the wee one decided he'd take a nice, light poop in his britches while he was supposed to be napping.  That's fine:  there's an app for that.  It's called the "quick change," and it happens right there in the pack n' play and he's none the wiser.  All was well ... until I walked away.

Don't get me wrong:  I remember a little thing called "separation anxiety" when Aidan was just a lad.  I can remember taking him to Grammie's house, and having to sneak out the door, him being none the wiser.  What I do NOT remember, however, is the wailing I heard today when I walked away from the playpen.  Ripped my heart right out of my chest, it did!  I felt like the biggest asshole of a parent in the whole world.  Remember back to the rattlesnake, how I had to tell my legs to move?  It was just like that, only this was happening in the comfort of my own home.

Now, listen.  I'm all for natural selection, or instinct, or whatever it is you want to call it that helps us function as human beings and gets us from point A to point B, but what the hell kind of feature is this?  Are you kidding me?  Apparently in the wild, moms never got a chance to eat, bathe, or use the toilet without a 7-month-old Cling-On dictating their every move.  Again, ancestors:  I'm not really sure how I got here, but thanks, Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Grandmother, for not killing and eating and using for shoes my Great Great Great Great Great Great Great Whatever.  Separation anxiety?  What purpose does this serve?  The "don't forget me in the woods, Ma, lest a bear eat me" survival instinct?

After continuing to walk to the door and, further, to the back porch, I continued to smoke cigarette after cigarette, all-the-while belittling my ability as a mother.  What kind of (expletive) mother leaves their helpless little (expletive) baby inside the (expletive) playpen while they're sobbing for them to get the (expletive) back here right now, you rotten (expletive) of a mom?

This one, that's who.

Needless to say, three minutes later, the wailing stopped.

Okay, I'm tooting my own horn.  It was more like 45 seconds.  Whatever.

He forgot all about me.

Why, you ungrateful little (expletive).

;-)

I need a personal assistant.

Not the pretentious, "go pick up my dry-cleaning" personal assistant, but rather the personal assistant who acts as a conscience when no one else is watching.

Today, for example, I'm supposed to be snapping photos of random piles of stuff around the house in order to potentially avoid the previously-mentioned garage sale.  I said to myself, "Gee, self---"  Wait.  That came out sounding like Wally Cleaver.

I said to myself, "Listen, self.  If you can list the big-ticket items on Craigslist and get them gone by Sunday evening, then there is really no point to having a garage sale, right?"

On paper, this sounded great.  In reality, however, I did pull up Craigslist in order to remind myself to snap those photos, but instead perused Sarasota County's Farm and Garden section, sending an email to a lady about some Ameraucana chickens.

Kind of the same, but different.

If I had a personal assistant, he or she (or perhaps androgyny would work best here) would tap me on the shoulder and give me that same look my mom used to give me when I'd get antsy in church.

(You all know THAT LOOK.  Don't kid yourselves.)

I wouldn't take advantage of my personal assistant.  Oh, no.  I'd never trick my personal assistant into folding my laundry, or unloading my dishwasher.  No, I'd just ask that when she/he saw me heading toward the couch with a red bowl of cheese puffs in one hand and my Nook under my other arm, he/she would give me that same, know-it-all look.  I'd slink back to folding the laundry, muttering under my breath at how stupid my personal assistant looks in that stupid hat.

I MIGHT have my personal assistant look up some research on the internet.  I MIGHT.  A few days ago, I was at Aidan's bus stop talking to my neighbor.  She had been unable to reach her father-in-law in Venezuela, and was beginning to get worried.  Being East Coast and all, I asked her, "What's the time difference there?  What are they, like, three hours behind us?"

She shook her head.  "No," she replied.  "They are a half an hour behind us."

A HALF AN HOUR??  I thought time zones went by HOURS?

This is the kind of thing I MIGHT have my personal assistant research.

I don't know, though.  Is my personal assistant smarmy?  Would she/he start fucking with me in an attempt to make me look like a fool should I ever go on Jeopardy?

"This planet, rich in molten lava, was first discovered in 1799, when Pope John Lennon the 1st invented the telegraph."

OOOH!  OOOOOH!  PICK ME!

"Cherstin?"

I've got this one in the motherfucking BAG.  "What is Uranium?"

The audience collectively snickers, my personal assistant just KNOWING how much I hate snickers.  Stupid Alex Trebec would be all, "No, I'm sorry," and then he'd probably rush home and tell his wife what an asshole I am.  He'd probably put that video right on YouTube.  Stupid YouTube.

Forget it.  I'm fine where I am.

I've gotta run.  Time to fold the laundry.  Damn you, Craigslist.

Books.

The time has come for another "friends and family" garage sale.  Not the kind where you actually sell your friends and family:  I'm sure, like everything else, that's illegal here in Florida.  No, I mean the good old fashioned "clean out your closets, then your attic" garage sale that seems to rear its ugly head every few years around here.  A day of sunburn, barter, hand-made signs, and foreign currency which signifies one of two things:  either it's the end of summer, or the kids have started outgrowing their clothes.

Like many other American families locked into their current mortgage, most of us hovering in the area of  100K in the hole, we're quickly running out of space.  With the addition of Caleb, the littlest wee one, and the every-other-weekend visits from Richard's daughter, we are in the process (okay, we have the lumber list) of converting the garage into a 4th bedroom, which virtually wipes out my chance of ever having my dream office, lined floor to ceiling with terrific, rainy-day reading material.  So what does a faithful reader do with their well-preserved collections of literature?

I thought about making some money.  I opened lid after lid of hermetically-sealed book totes, reveling in the smell of forgotten paper.  I grabbed a few at random, checking condition (great!) and price tag ($25.00!).  Wow, I must have a fortune here.  I could barely contain myself.  Images of dollar signs danced across my field of vision as I silently wondered which books I'd repurchase on my new Nook.  Alice's Adventures in Wonderland?  Check.  My amazing Stephen King library?  Check, check, and check.

As quick as my fingers could carry me, to Ebay.com I went.  I typed in title and author, sometimes I opted to search by ISBN, but regardless of my method, the outcome was the same.  I was searching completed listings, of which there were plenty.

The only problem is that they hadn't sold.

Some of them hadn't even sold for 99 cents.

Ouch.

Okay, maybe books can't be looked at as an investment, but what is going on here?  When I worked at Books-A-Million back in the late 90's, I remember spending full paychecks on carts of new releases.  Hardcovers, where is your worth?  I can pick up any book from my stacks and remember what I was doing when I finished that book.  The last book in the Dark Tower series?  Easy, I finished that one on a vacation to Costa Rica.  There's my Arabic to English trade paperback I last cracked in August of 2003.  I have two brand-new X-Files Collector's postcard books, riding in the same tote as as unused deck of Alice in Wonderland tarot cards, all purchased in the summer of 1998.  Sentimental, sure, but don't people collect things anymore?

Maybe the problem isn't in the non-collecting.  Maybe I'm looking at it wrong.  Maybe it's just that everyone who loves books already has their own collections, thank you very much.  But 99 cents?  It hurts my heart.

I sat back on my haunches and thought.  Certainly, someone in my family would enjoy some of these great books, right?  Sure!  I'll just gift them out!  But wait.  How do I know Aunt M. won't just use The Neverending Story as a drink coaster?  And Uncle D., surely he doesn't have time to read Ken Kesey these days.  Donating them brings about the same fears:  I'm haunted by the notion of books--MY books--laid face-down, spine-up, drink rings hazing the dust jacket.  Ouch.  Not a good way for my books to end up.  They deserve better.  It's not like I bought Bargain Bin books, for crying out loud.

When all is said and done, I guess they'll go back in the totes, and the totes will have a new home in the master bedroom closet...just in case I ever get that office.

Hey, a girl can dream, right?