it was a cold and stormy night...

A few days ago I took a ride to the library, the same one where all those people couldn't wait to talk to me last time I was there, but this time I brought Sunny along...she's my 11 year old grand daughter who's been living with us for a year or so...I took her there a few weeks before when I returned a few books I'd borrowed... she was anxious to check the place out after reading my last blog...we had fun looking at all the people, most of them there to borrow books like we were....she and I had borrowed a few books each and yesterday we returned them and started looking for more...I made it over to the large print fiction section and I left her by the young adults shelves...
we met a few times at the table and chairs in between to check out what we had selected...I spent an hour or so beforehand researching books for young girls between the ages of 10 and 14 or so and came up with a list of a few dozen of the most recommended ones...Thanks to Google I was able to print the titles, authors and short descriptions of the stories of most of them...
Since she's been living with us I've noticed not only that she's an A student but she reads almost every day...not much of a TV watcher except for a few shows like Glee, The Mentalist and Modern Family...she's a kind of kid who does her homework the minute she gets home from school...
When I'm reading she usually comes over to see what page I'm on and a little while later checks back to see my progress...she loves to keep track of the number of pages I read in a day...
I was happy to pick up Joe Torre's The Yankee Years along with a James Patterson book called London Bridges...she found a Judy Blume book and another the title which I can't remember..she is a little different than I am in that she says she often picks out books by their covers...I told her the one about not judging by the cover, and all that, but she stood fast with the book she selected, about a young girl who's father is running for governor...
After we checked the books out she was reading the governor book as we walked to my car in the parking lot and kept reading it all the way home...what a great kid...she's a lot like her cousin Allison who also reads avidly and with whom I exchange books...

Fun on Friday...

Today I signed up, again, at the O.C. Library in Lake Forest, after not having walked in there for several decades…I remember taking our kids there when they were young, sitting around reading a while and then taking books home…No… I mis-remembered…it was their mother who did it most of the time while I worked…I took them occasionally on weekends...

As I walked to the check-out desk the lady there told me I had to go stand on the red carpet and wait my turn…there were six or seven people in front of me…most of them were around my age; a few started talking to me…I hate talking to people but I was nice and answered them in as few words as possible like, yes, no, OK, sometimes, never, fiction, best sellers, I hate audio books, I can’t stand people reading to me… I wanted to tell them there’s no talking in the library…

Finally it was my turn… I have to remind myself this isn’t a Barnes and Nobel and the employees work for the County and are not always in a hurry to go anywhere…I told the nice lady we once had a card but it was years ago and we didn’t have it anymore…she looked up my name but didn’t find it in the computer… I showed her my picture I.D. and she reminded me that I had a big birthday coming up soon…I filled out a form with my name and address and when I wrote my e-mail address she said she was happy for me because few people my age had a computer and the library could email me with important messages, like, ‘your books are overdue dummy’… I wanted to tell her to shut the hell up and to just give me the freaken card…she said the card normally cost $2.00 but she was waiving the fee…thanks a lot lady…then she said being old has it’s advantages…I didn’t say a word but she was getting on my nerves…I signed the card and when I asked her where the fiction department was she was quick to point out that it was right next to the LARGE PRINT section…the bitch…

I found a couple of books, checked them out finding out that non-best-sellers can be borrowed for three weeks…I left the building, got in the car, turned off the radio and silently drove home.

I couldn't have said it better myself...