Pants!

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Yeah, this image really grosses me out.  But there you go... Spaghetti pants.

Punchline first, then joke.

My sister: Do you want to come over and get a pizza and watch tv?
Me: no, I'm anxious and I wouldn't be comfortable. I just want to be at home where I can do my stuff.
My sister: Ok.  I hope you get the ants out of your pants.
Me: Imma put these ants in YOUR pants.
My sister: Ok!
My sister: Pants!
My sister: Spaghetti!
Me: You're spaghetti pants!
My sister: I like that one.

So, clearly I have been shirking my responsibilities with this blog.  Meanwhile I have been focusing on tumblr, which requires less typing.  And before you think about how LAZY that is, think about tendonitis.  I think it's been exacerbated by packing and moving big boxes of books.

Mr. Cereal and I are planning on cohabitation.  In a deconsecrated church.  In upstate New York.  When I put it like that it sounds an awful lot like squatting.  But it's not.  The place we're going to live is really beautiful, and I will have enough room to DO things, like making things, and organizing things.  I'm really excited. 
I am less excited about all the moving and the packing.  I love my books.  They seem to love me a lot less.  Unless they are into sadism, in which case they are showing their love the only way they know how.

This is my bad time of year.  This is the time of year where I want to hole up and do nothing but hibernate.  So having to DO THINGS like organize, pack, look for a new job, look for a new car, organize a car loan, be pleasant, leave the house, all of it is draining and daunting, and TIRING.  I'm freaking exhausted all the time.
But not too tired to call my awesome sister spaghetti pants.

the things we leave behind

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“Second hand books are wild books, homeless books; they have come together in vast flocks of variegated feather, and have a charm which the domesticated volumes of the library lack”
- Virginia Woolf



 Ever since I started reading I have been entranced by the things I have found within books.  These have included pressed flowers, postcards, receipts, lists, monopoly cards, and tickets.  The books I have with names and inscriptions are outnumbered by those which are not my own, though I have a few Shel Silverstein books inscribed to me from my parents, and a few others from dear friends.  I try, when gifting someone a book, to put in a book mark, a book plate, or something of that sort.  On rare and special occasions I have been known to fill lovely books with related ephemera-- such as a copy of A Very Long Engagement filled with associated postcards and photographs placed in just the right pages.

This article lists things found in a secondhand book shop in Oxford.  There's something romantic, mysterious, nostalgic, about these items.  At least that is the way I've always felt about what I find in books.  There were a job lot of one woman's collection in my local used bookstore, and I was so taken with her taste and her bookplates that I was tempted to buy up whatever I could of her collection, just so they weren't separated.  I am, obviously a sentimental fool.  Unfortunately, or perhaps fortunately, I couldn't afford to at the time, and the books went to their separate homes.

I do love new books, don't get me wrong, there is something amazing about being the first person to own a book.  But there is something even better about being one in a line of book owners.  (I have to say that when a book comes to me I am often the last person to own it, at least in my lifetime.  Though I do try to pass books along when I can.)  I guess I will take my books any way I can get them, preferably in paper.

Back to the point...
Not only is there an article, there is an exhibition.  The exhibition features writer Wayne Gooderham's collection of books inscribed with personal messages of all kinds.  Information about the exhibition here, and Gooderham's blog full of the book dedications here.

And, a little song about secondhand stores, sort of.