On December 13th, my Aunt Brenda and I journeyed to Maryville to pick up the little Nativity figurine. And a slice of cookie cake, turns out. You saw the blog. We were sitting at Chili’s when, for whatever reason, my Dad crossed my mind. I wonder about him every few years or so. I haven’t seen him since I was 18. It’s crossed my mind a hundred times if he even remembers I exist, and said so to Aunt Bren.
“Oh, I’m sure he does! He loved you so good. I can still see him holding your little hand as you went across the yard.”
This gave me pause. Dad always was good about taking me to feed the cows, taking me fishing, taking me to White Star. I remember him allowing me to ride in the back of his red S-10 pickup, and later attempting to teach me how to drive a 5 speed in his brand spanking new Shelby Mustang in the desolate Kmart parking lot. He had much better luck with the fishing lessons. He took me to Dollywood regularly on our scheduled Sunday visits, and lots of times to McDonalds. I remember he had a goofy laugh, an easy sense of humor, and skinny legs. I have inherited his mischievous blue eyes, snorting laugh, and curly brown hair. Unfortunately, I did not get his skinny legs.
So I dwelt on this a bit in the coming days. I googled him and found him. He was still living in Knoxville, but had evidently done a little traveling, taking him to New Jersey and Alex City in Alabama. I found that a bit ironic, as that Aunt Bren had also lived there. But I looked at the map of his current residence, street view, and possible listed relatives. I was among them. Amazing what you can find on Google. For FREE. I also found his phone numbers. I didn’t go so far as to enter them into my phone, but I knew where I could find them again.
On December 29th, I went to see my favorite hairdresser and she gently suggested I might think about contacting him. Just to let him know I was okay. I wasn’t mad, I wasn’t crazy, I had turned out okay. Better than okay. It didn’t sound like a bad idea. Dad was alright. Not the best husband, but a decent Dad. You can be a good Dad but a shitty husband. You can’t be a shitty Dad and a good husband. It doesn’t work that way. I still hadn’t landed on anything, but I told my girls about it. They were supportive of whatever decision I made, or didn’t choose to make, as they always are. Because they’re my girls.
So tonight, I’m sitting here next door at Dale and Bren’s, and I’m catching them up. I was saying how wild it was you can get all this accurate information off Google. I opened up my browser to show them. And I’m greeted with a page full of obituaries.
As the Southern expression goes, I didn’t know whether to shit or go blind.
In case you’re wondering, I did neither.
He died on January 2nd, five days after my last Google search.
So. Here I sit, trying to digest this. Should I have gotten my ducks in a row and went down there at Christmas? I don’t think so. Was God trying to protect me from something? I noticed that his mother was not listed in the obituary, either deceased or alive. More on her another day. He was evidently not married, and had fathered no additional children. But who knows, as I wasn’t listed either. I do not wish to seek any monetary assistance, and I don’t think he had much, anyway, judging from his residence. (It’s not disgusting or anything, just small.) It’s just bizarre. Imagine. All the funerals I’ve attended in my life, and I missed this one.
I know I’m generally close mouthed when it comes to my father, but it’s because there’s very little to tell. But I will say it feels like a punch in the gut to learn he’s dead.
And this is how things go in my life. I know I’ve called or texted some of you just as something traumatic has happened and you’ve remarked about my timing. I’m not looking for condolences, or sympathy. It’s just weird.
To be continued.
I’m here to help because I’m totally exasperated with the male race who pretend not to know ANYTHING about women. Here’s you a How-To. That’s how to make your woman happy.
#1) Tell her she looks pretty. Because she does.
#2) Tell her her hair looks nice. Because she probably did spend more than thirty seconds on it, like y’all did. We have A LOT MORE HAIR AND IT’S ANNOYING.
#3) Hold her hand and open her doors. Take her coat. Walk closest to traffic. Manners.
#4) Pick the restaurant. For the love of all things Holy, PICK THE RESTAURANT. We will find something to eat, I assure you. We just don’t want to have to make one more decision on this day. And if we’re craving something, rest assured we’ll tell you what it is.
#5) Chick-fil-A is never wrong.
#6) Find out her favorite wine and surprise her with it frequently
#7) Buy her a pony. 😁 You might wanna put this in your back pocket to save for when you’ve screwed up.
#8) Stop by her work. It’s ok to show up empty handed, as long as you’re smiling.
#9) Offer to pick up milk and bread.
#10) Text her regularly. If you think of her, text her. Even if it’s just an emoji. She won’t mind.
#11) Talk about the mundane. Let her be herself. She might want to vent; she’s not always looking for a solution.
#12) Show up. If she has an event, go. Even if you don’t want to. It’s important to her.
I hope this helps. Just take an interest in her life. Still at a loss? Get on her Pinterest. Her true loves are there in abundance.
I like doughnuts, Cupcake brand Moscato d’asti, and lilies, if anybody feels obliged to thank me.
Today was the big day!! Book fair day! This rates right up there with Thanksgiving and my birthday for me. We go to the library, where Rhonda has carefully cultivated a selection of about twenty books for us to choose from. We vote for twelve, and the ones with the highest number of votes go on our list for next year’s book club picks. We’re the Pageturners, so there is always an eclectic mix of current literature, suspense/ thriller, classics, chick lit, fantasy, with maybe a YA or apocalyptic one thrown in. It’s a blast, especially if there’s a tie and the ones who want to read it lobby for more votes. This probably sounds super nerdy to those of you who don’t devour books like the four of us us do, but let me tell you, I look forward to this day all year.
Then, we go to the eatery of choice and have dinner and drinks and discuss the previous month’s selection.
January’s pick was The Night the Lights Went Out by Karen White. Of course I’ve been fiddle farting around for some time now and didn’t get it read. I’m about halfway, but I had it figured out, for the most part. It didn’t matter. I’m there for the food. I mean, companionship. 😂🤣 We had a great time, discussing everything from Nazis to Pentecostals. We called turkeys and laughed and cried and laughed till we cried. We talked about boys and bullies and kidnappings and cats. We analyzed and planned and just had the best time. We named the lobsters in the tank and probably scared off some patrons.
I wouldn’t trade this day for all the tea in Tennessee.
{#777 “I shouldn’t have consumed that water from Saturn”}
My name is Amy Farrah Fowler Cooper. I married the world famous string physicist Sheldon Cooper in a small ceremony five years ago, and to date, this has been my greatest accomplishment. Admittedly, this is a fairly disparaging state of affairs, as I should be as famous as he is for my work in neuro-biology. But I’m not.
So, one day about four years ago, Rajesh came to me bragging about how they were putting a man on Saturn like they had back in the sixties with the moon. Howard was designing a top-secret Rover for it. Howard would not be going, seeing as how the one fiasco in space nearly did him in. Of course, the excitement was palatable among our little group. And now we await the return of our cadet and all the spoils from deep space nine.
Rocks for the geology lab. Some dirt for the ecologists. And data for everyone! Except me. I could study the brains of the astronauts, but I didn’t expect to find anything different than I ever had before. Maybe some endorphins from going where no man had ever gone before, pardon the pun, but no Earth shattering evidence of anything.
I was bemoaning my woes to Sheldon that evening over dinner when he said in that offhand way he has with actual interesting information (instead of his usual tedious fact sharing), “You know, don’t you, they brought back water from Saturn?”
“There’s no water on Saturn,” I quickly replied, cutting my pork chop into more chew-worthy cubes.
“Oh, contraire,” he said in his condescending way. “They have some.” Sheldon, of course, wasn’t eating pork chops, had instead elected to eat pasta noodles. Plain. He toyed with the idea of adding some low salt soy sauce or spicy mustard but refrained. He didn’t want gastronomic distress on a Wednesday night by upsetting his routine.
So the next day I called Howard at the lab to determine if this were true. Not that Sheldon would lie to me, but we all know about his “Bazinga!” tricks he considers wily. Indeed it were true. “Have any effects been tested on an animal post-ingestion?”
“As it were, we haven’t given it to any,” Howard informed me. “We don’t have much, so they’re using it sparingly. Know of a test subject in case we find something in a rat?”
“As a matter of fact….”
And that’s how it came to be that I drank the water. Looking back, it wasn’t the most brilliant idea I ever had. Of course, first I tested it on my monkey, Lizzie. She’s game for anything. And what I found….well, what I found was what made me want to drink it in the first place. Lizzie’s brain lit up a like an Edison light bulb. No prior lab work had ever yielded such a profound result. Both right and left hemispheres not only sparked, they glowed. I couldn’t type fast enough to note all the differences. And it appeared that Lizzie desperately wanted to communicate something with me, but her primate brain just couldn’t articulate. So she lapsed into the bit of sign language I had taught her.
“Trapped,” she signed. “Not happy.”
I assumed this must mean when she was in her cage.
“It’s the only way,” I signed back.
“Mean. You try it,” she replied.
“Try being married to Sheldon,” I aid aloud. I wondered if I passed her the keyboard if she would be able to type. But that was a ridiculous notion..and impossible to resist. I slipped it under the lip in the cage, not daring to unlock it. With all her smarts, she might decide to latch onto my face once and for all.
Like a fish to water, she typed furiously. I read, and after I did, I fainted. And when I woke up, I drank the water from Saturn. I should have never consumed it. But it was too late. And now, now I knew things. I knew what it was like to be a test monkey. I knew what was said when my sample of water was collected. I knew what it felt like to be born, and not as a born-again Christian, but really and truly born. I knew who liked me, who didn’t, and who tolerated me. I knew what color car you drove in high school, and how much gas was in the car you are driving today.
And the knowledge would kill me. It was too much. I forced myself to throw up, because I knew, too, that would be the only way I would live to tell about it.
I lay on the cold tile floor of my lab. That’s where they found me that night when I didn’t make it for Taco Night Trivia.
I can only think of one story I want to tell.
There’s this local color here in the mountains. Fly fisherman extraordinaire; he’s been featured on the Heartland Series several times. Everyone knows him for his singin’, and his late daddy for his preachin’. He’s an excavator by trade, but a big cut up at heart. To know him truly is to love him.
So one day, I’m standing at my post behind the counter at the Co-op and he ambles up with his long legged stride. I don’t know how he finds overalls to fit. Toothpick in his mouth, he says to me, “How ya doin’ girl?” Same as always.
I grin. “Just fine, Mr. Ball. And how are you today?”
“Oh, I’m a-gittin’ by. I been at the hospital a-visitin’.”
“Oh no, I hope whoever it is gets well! The hospital is no place to be.”
“You’re tellin’ me!” As always, a smile was playing on his lips and his eyes twinkled. I had no doubt he had brightened the day of whoever it was he went to see, just as he always brightens mine. “I got in the elevator, and it was busy, you know. Lotta people sick this time of year. Anyway, there was seven or eight of us in there, and this lady standin’ next to me, she leaned over and said to me real quiet, ‘Smells like somebody forgot to put their deodorant on this morning!’ And I said, ‘ma’am, it wasn’t me! I don’t wear any!'”
With that, he burst into a full fledged grin as I just died laughing. You never know what you’re gonna get with him. Who knows how much of it, if any, was true. That’s the best part, he probably had been up at the hospital. And he’ll have you in there, hook, line, and sinker before you know it. Someday I’ll tell you about the time he got pulled over. He calls them his “little funnies” but to me, they’re great big funnies.
“Let your smile be an umbrella,” he always says as a way of goodbye. I do love Ray Ball.
{#411 The story you shouldn’t have overheard on the bus}
I was looking at their shoes and thinking they didn’t belong. I admit, I judge people by their footwear. I can’t help it, I profile. Forrest was right, you can tell a lot about people by looking at their shoes. Where they are headed, where they’d been. And these Christian Louboutin’s did NOT belong on a scuzzy old city bus past midnight, or any other time. You’ll find duct taped running shoes on the bus. Or polished-within-an-inch-of-their-life secondhand oxfords. Or sensible thick soled lunchlady shoes. People eking their way through life, working two jobs in order to scrape by. But never Louboutin’s. Maybe some knockoffs on a hooker, some that she’d painted the soles red to fool no one. Because the people who knew what Louboutin’s were knew they weren’t gonna find ’em on a girl painted up like a brazen hussy at two o’clock in the afternoon.
But as I was saying, it wasn’t two o’clock in the afternoon. It was two in the morning and I sat very still in my muddy Redwing work boots, pretending to look at my phone but really watching a guy on the aisle two rows up on the right, silently nodding along to his iPod music. Or maybe he was listening to preaching, I don’t know. I hadn’t gotten far enough along in my investigation to know that much about him.
The heels clicked past me on the dingy scuffed floor. Their owner collapsed on the seat behind me. These shoes had been worn to some snazzy event. I didn’t know where they were going, but headed anywhere on a bus in the middle of the night, can’t be good. She was quickly followed by another lady wearing the same brand who sat down more easily, but with discernible difficulty. They passed in a fog of expensive perfume and some sort of gin, if my nose didn’t deceive me.
“I think I’m gonna be sick,” one said.
“No, you’re fine. Here, drink this.”
I hoped she was producing ice water from the depths of her enormous leather bag, and not more alcohol, as the smell was still wafting around me.
A pause, then the one drinking sputtered, “What is this? It’s wretched!”
She giggled. “Remember PGA punch from Kappa Gamma’s?”
“Unfortunately. Shit! I can’t believe you’d make that stuff!”
“I didn’t,” she informed her seatmate haughtily. “Craig did.”
“Jesus.”
I heard her head hit the back of the her seat. “God, I’m a mess.”
“It’s to be expected.”
“Tell me again why we’re on this bus.”
“Because we have to be invisible when I tell you this.”
I thought, oh boy, here it comes. She’s coming out to her best friend, or she slept with her brother, or maybe she wrecked the other girl’s car. I strained my ears.
“I had him killed, Liddy.”
A strangled laugh.
“I’m serious.”
The tenseness of the moment expanded and there was no air to breathe, even if I hadn’t been holding mine.
“What?” She whispered.
“I couldn’t stand it. And you, left without a dime because you know what your Daddy said all those years ago.”
“He’s nothin’ but trouble, Sugarbutt,” the one named Liddy said through tears I could feel.
I dropped all pretenses of looking at my phone, my current culprit forgotten as I heard this confession unfold two feet behind me.
“So I found this guy, it wasn’t hard, and he said he’d take care of it.”
I had a feeling she wanted a cigarette. I did. And a glass of Jack and Coke.
“But…how…I don’t-…”
“It’s ok. It’s done now. And you got to be the grieving widow, instead of someone to be pitied and ridiculed until you moved off or on, whichever came first.”
The bus sagged as we lurched around a corner of Jackson Square and I pitched to the left in my seat.
Silence from both girls. I heard a compact snap shut. What a time to refresh your lipstick and powder your nose. I tried not to shake my head in disgust. Now what? Was I gonna arrest this girl since I had just heard a confession? We likely wouldn’t get it again. She appeared tough as nails and twice as sharp.
“So when you’re at that graveside tomorrow, don’t tell me you’re sorry. You’ve got nothin’ to be sorry for. He had everything, so I just took what I could for you. He deserved everything he got and then some. And you didn’t deserve what he gave you, so I took care of that.”
“It was supposed to be forever,” Liddy whispered.
“And this way, it is,” the other one said, completely reasonable.
A choked sound. Not a sob. The girl was throwing up. The smell reached me and I almost added to the mess on the floor. But then she began to laugh. A high pitched, hysterical laugh that chilled my innards to ice. And then they both joined in and I couldn’t stay on the bus any longer. The driver let me out on Bay Street, way past the best part of downtown, their laughter still ringing in my ears. As I began my slow walk back, it started to rain.
You have to wait 21 years for the privilege of learning about people. You will find no more truthful person above the age of five than you will at the bar. You will find no bigger liar than you will at the bar. You will find love, heartache, loneliness, and elation at the bar. You will find quick tempers, bruised egos, generous and agonized souls at the bar. You will find great senses of humor and know-it-alls and the barely literate at the bar.
You can also find excellent examples of these in almost any church pew, but I’ve found that you get to know them much more quickly over a Miller Light than a hymnal.
Once upon a time, at a bar in Gatlinburg that has been closed for at least ten years, the bartender said something that has stuck with me forevermore. “Don’t ask, just pour.”
I was eating twenty-five cent wings. It was Monday. I had been at work all day. His wisdom was beyond his years. I did want more beer, but I don’t think he was only referring to my empty glass. A good bartender knows to let the patron initiate conversation. I didn’t want to talk about why I was at the bar without my boyfriend. I didn’t want to talk about my crappy day spent waiting on the ungrateful spoiled public. I didn’t want to do anything but sit right there on my barstool and drink till the world got just a little blurry.
Then it would look better.
I’ve sat at many bars over the years. I tend to travel alone by choice, and the bar is a welcoming place. If you don’t want to talk to anyone, sit in the corner. Don’t make eye contact. Pretend you don’t speak English. (Had to do that in Vegas. It was excruciating). You don’t draw as much attention to yourself as you do sitting alone at a table. If you don’t want the pitying looks that one would get on a Saturday night, the bar is your best option.
Recently, I met a bartender with fake eyelashes who played football. She was a she, was a she, was a she. She was from Del Rio, if that explains it. She was going to spend New Year’s watching the ball drop in NYC. Several years ago, moving from my spot next to a touchy guy to one that looked much less invasive, I met a nice guy who’d been to the funeral of his grandmother. He bought all my drinks, and all my friends’ drinks. It was a substantial bill. He didn’t ask for any of our phone numbers. I don’t know what he was looking for, but we drank together and had a nice conversation.
I could write a thousand stories of all the people I’ve met in bars, all the friendships I’ve cultivated over drinks. I don’t have many pictures commemorating these events, because when you’re there, and in it, you’re having too good of a time to worry about pictures.
I hope I’ll never forget all the awesome times I’ve had with all walks of life in a thousand different bars all over this country. And I’ve been there with many of you!
Go out some weeknight….I challenge you to sit at the bar. Maybe you’ll meet someone new who has a good story. Maybe you’ll sit next to me and I can tell you one.
{#112 A man goes to a pawn shop with one single item. What is the item, why is he at the pawn shop?}
Jena chose C, the word prompt is peanuts.
This should truly be a challenge…🙄
**********************************
He was down on his luck. He was down on his knees. He was in a pawnshop two towns over.
“They’re magic beans,” he assured her.
“Man, you crazy!” She replied, flipping a long braid over her left shoulder, popping her grape gum loudly. This was followed by the drumbeat of her outrageously painted nails on the scuffed glass countertop. Girl sure could make a lot of noise.
“I’ll give you a dollar, Jack, and that’s just because I’m kinda hungry and don’t want to eat another candy bar.”
“They’re magic beans,” he insisted.
He was here because these truly priceless magic beans, disguised as lowly legumes, had broken him. They had broken him mentally, physically, and financially. He would have sold his soul to the devil as a young man to get his hands on them…but now…now they only caused him pain and remorse.
“They’ll take you anywhere you wanna go. You just gotta believe.”
“Where I come from, you put ’em in a RC cola and watch ’em fizz,” she said absently.
He shrugged, keeping his eyes steady. “You can do that too, but that would be a waste of power.”
“Old man, here’s five dollars. Get outta my store.”
Five dollars wouldn’t buy him much, but it would buy him the gas out of here. He would never have to look back. He could walk away from the beans that produced a beanstalk, after all. A beanstalk that took him to a whole other dimension. A beanstalk to his past that could have been.
His name wasn’t Jack, but he guessed it should have been. He was old, she had that part right. Five dollars was five dollars, and Lord knew he sure could use it.
She narrowed her eyes at him as he hesitated. “If they’re so powerful, why you standin’ here wastin’ my time? Go back to wherever it was they took you and make you some dough.” She giggled. “You done lost it.”
He had lost it. He had lost everything in his quest to regain his one true love. You can’t change the past. Not with magic beans. He took the five dollars and the bell above the door didn’t jingle as he went out.
The girl looked at the peanuts on the counter.
What if they really were magic? She watched enough TV to know anything was possible. She eyed the top layer of nuts. Well, it wouldn’t hurt to try just one, surely? She’d thought about throwing them in the trash; obviously the scruffy old man was one step above homelessness or at least the psych ward. And what if he wasn’t crazy? What did she have to lose, besides a job working in a dead end pawn shop, constantly watching for shoplifters and keeping lecherous men at a distance?
She shut her eyes as her fingers closed around a particularly attractive peanut. Her mind shot back to when she was just a little thing, playing on the floor of the room she and her brother shared. It was one of her happiest memories. Her brother had been dead since she was ten, he died of leukemia. The doctors found it too late.
The shell cracked with a satisfying crunch and she popped the nuts in her mouth.
Before she could chew, there she was, back with Tony, swinging on the playset in the backyard of their apartment building.
She had been transported, and not only was she there presently, she was six years old, and best of all, Tony could see her. She’d gone back in time.
She could save him. But how long did she have here?
{#63 Word count 200. You are on death row. Describe in detail your final meal}
It arrived on a styrofoam plate but even that couldn’t diminish my delight. The bacon wrapped filet, prepared medium rare, was the most perfect piece of bovine excellency I had ever laid eyes on. (It could nearly be cut with my fork, but I had been allowed a plastic knife for the occasion). Paired with a two pound sweet potato, dripping with cinnamon butter and brown sugar, I couldn’t get it in my mouth fast enough. There was spinach maria too, creamy, cheesy, salty, and steaming. I sunk my fork into the shallow dish and watched the cheese stretch. A marvel.
I gulped the sweet tea and reveled in memories of decades ago, on my momma’s porch, before everything went so wrong. Mama tried. Lord, she tried.
The roll I requested was hefty with quality grains and yeast. I slathered it with butter and didn’t look up except to eye the turtle cheesecake patiently waiting for me with a glass of milk.
I took my time, relishing in every bite, savoring the texture and all the flavors.
Bless the hands that prepared it, and the farmers that grew it. Let them never know the evil that I had in me.
You don’t have to crack the spine to read a book. I’d prefer you never crack it at all. If given the opportunity and GIFT of holding a brand new book in your hands, simply open it, fan through the pages a couple of times and gently bend the front and back covers 90°. That’s all that is necessary for breaking in a new book.
Now, once you’ve chosen your new book, or it has chosen you, as is so often the case, you just open it up and get to reading. My preference is to be in a chair I can nest in, with my water and chapstick nearby, under a good light. I plan to stay awhile. I don’t want to be sidetracked, so I don’t have my phone near my person.
I might even bring snacks.
And then I’m whisked away, often to the Lowcountry, but sometimes my Book Club forces me out of my comfort zone and I have to read about the poor women in Kabul, or tribes in Africa two hundred years ago. Sometimes I don’t read about people at all. The best part about reading is there are no rules. Whenever I meet someone who says they don’t like to read, after I swallow my disdain and overall nausea, I quickly ask them about their interests. And guess what? People always enjoy reading something, whether it be local interest stories in the newspaper, or articles about celebrities in People. Magazines are for readers, too! Lots of men like to read manuals. Not everybody is into Dickens and Shakespeare and Tolstoy. Read what you like! I wish that high schools and colleges would require some casual reading as well as the required literature so students wouldn’t be left with such a bad taste in their mouth. Like coffee. I didn’t think I liked coffee, but I’d only had it the one way: black. And it turns out, if you put enough sugar and hazelnut flavored creamer in it, it is actually quite delicious! So now I can be one of those fanatics that drink coffee. You just have to find a flavor you like. Same with books. It’s important to find authors and genres you like. I enjoy WWII fiction and non-fiction, both, but I also have to have some chick lit and fantasy to set it off. And I will never be too old for animal stories. I came upon the greatest little book one time for only a dollar at the Dollar General.
https://amzn.to/2RLIXF2 <<<that’s the Amazon link to buy your own. If WordPress wasn’t such a pain in my ass, it would let me show you a picture, but clearly that is too much to ask of a blog that costs me several hundred dollars a year.
Anyway.
This is why I read, because you can’t put me out in social situations without things grating on my nerves and I have to tell everybody all about it. I’m better off being left to my own devices. This was discovered at an early age.
Here’s a link to some, but by no means ALL, my favorite books. https://www.goodreads.com/review/list/33427814-amy?shelf=my-very-most-favorites
You probably have to be a member of Goodreads to see them. And you SHOULD be on there, Goodreads is like Facebook without the drama and garbage! I highly recommend it! I only wish I had found it sooner. I’m such a nerd that for years I had a three ring binder with a list and short review for every book I’d read. Now I don’t have to keep up with that and I can go back and edit what I’ve written without it looking all messy.
So. Back to my favorite subject, books. I can’t get enough. I beg you to read. It’s a wonderful way to relax and pass the time. You can read ANYWHERE and it won’t be frowned upon. Except maybe funerals. However, I encourage you to read at mine, if you’d like. I approve. Just leave your dern phone in the truck. And even if you’re reading crap fiction, you’re learning something. You’re reading about a character who lives somewhere you’ve never been and has different interests than you. As I always say, in every bit of fiction, there is always some truth. And best of all, books are FREE. Oh yes. You didn’t think I could talk about books without reminding you of the castle in every town, the crown jewel of all government funded services, the LIBRARY. ***My heart, my heart, my heart***
Go now, dear reader, crack a book and drift away.
