a new direction.

see you there.

the end.

i am at the end of a chapter. maybe the end of an entire book. the awkward bumps and fits that were me, settling into being a new yorker again? they're pretty much over. i live here. i was born very nearby, i was raised very nearby. i am home.

i have learned some painful lessons since i have been here about friendship and relationships in general. i have had to let people go - new friends and old.

i never was good at letting go, because i thought it meant that i had failed somehow.

so i put up with passive aggressive behavior. unsupportive and jealous "friends," and people treating me in ways i've never let myself be treated before in my life. and finally i reached a point where i realized i would either just shut up and deal with it...

or not.

so, things ending don't necessarily mean failure to me anymore. it means i am finally confident enough to stick up for myself.

the end.

the man, himself.

so, j.d. salinger has passed on. i knew it would be soon. i knew he was born in 1919. i knew he was old.

and now that he's gone, the one hope and prayer i have is that the man has some completed and publishable manuscripts.

please. please. please. i have been waiting since i was 16 years old to read another book by jerome david salinger, and i knew it would never happen, as long as he lived.

i haven't exactly been looking forward to his death, but uh...

maybe i should stop there. i still call him my favorite author. of course i'm sad that he died. but he lived a long, hermit-y life.

this is not exactly the tribute post i had in mind. oh well. read it and weep. or not.

what's new with me

I gave up on posting every day because I ran out of things to say.

I placed a hold request for a book at the library and there are 52 other hold requests in front of me. If everyone that held it gets it, I will be able to read the book in approximately two years. Not really, because the library does own 4 copies. And there are also inter-library loans, which are also currently all checked out.

So maybe just a few months. Oh well. I have a couple of holds to hold me in the meantime. I can't remember what they are. I have already plowed through the books I checked out the last time I was at the library. I have 1.5 left.

One is a really awful mystery, so I may not finish it. I just grabbed it because I've been such a mystery snob. But I grabbed a stinker. Are there any good mysteries out there? I can't have anything involving paranormal activity of any kind because I like sleeping. And I can't have anything involving lurkers because, well, I used to be afraid of the dark.

The other is actually a book of short stories by a Nashville author, and I didn't know that when I picked out the book. I liked the first few sentences of the first story, so I took a chance.

Sigh. Tomorrow is work, and I have no interest in working right now. I've just had a very lovely weekend, and I want it to stretch all the way through the end of winter, so I can just wake up in spring.

I'm kicking myself for not buying that little $2 crocus plant in Wegmans tonight. Even if it dies... I really thought it was so sweet and pretty. $2 is not too much to spend on something sweet and pretty that reminds me of spring.

xo
amy

looking forward. thankful.

i'm looking forward to a friday, a weekend, and a short little drive on sunday.
i'm thankful for my darling rico, who makes my life better just by being in it.
i'm thankful for people.
they surprise you, if you will let your guard down long enough.

xo
aims

i've found my calling.

it's reader. professional reader.

i used to be one, once upon a time. i was blessedly able to read, absorb, proof, and edit for about three years. the problem with doing it for a living is that by the time i was done, i did not want to read another word. that meant that my hobby of reading became nonexistent.

when i was little? i used to read shampoo bottles in the shower. that's how much i loved to read. any printed surface i could squint at was going to get read. my parents had to force me to go to sleep at night, because i just had one more paragraph! meaning chapter! pleeeease!

i am currently reading a few books. i have torn through three books in four days. i started five at the library tonight. i am reading everything i can get my hands on. i read in the morning when i get up, at night before bed, and on my lunch break.

right now i am in what i like to call "cover-shopping mode" - i only pick out books with intriguing covers. if i don't like the cover, i shelve it.

i'm also stuck in the new fiction section. i have ignored fiction for years. YEARS. i have read the odd book here or there, but i am diving in now, head first, among pages and letters and call numbers and bar codes.

i think, in this short amount of year that can be called "this year," i've read more than the last three years, combined. i have a lot of catching up to do.

see you in the spring.

A mish-mash, at best.

Why does my neck still ache, 6 days later? Why does the shower head start dripping and never stop? Why haven't I written a book, if all I can seem to do lately is sneer at predictable plots and weak character development?

Why are Hershey's Kisses so irresistible to me?

Last night, no kidding, Eric asked me if I was going to get my hair cut, or "do something so that it doesn't look like a tail." I don't know why I like to go so long between trims. Just tonight, I realized that my fingernails are completely lovely and at the perfect length. Still, I will not keep them this way. Next week, they will be too long, and I will bite them all off in one day. Or, maybe, I won't.

I'm more like a poet than I must seem. I can't be me, really, most of the time. I just sort of laugh along with everyone else, but I don't think that they get the joke quite like I do. I'm being completely insincere because we have no common ground to stand on... get it? HA HA HA.

It's not funny, really. It's a travesty, this "fitting in" business. I never much wanted it. I preferred to be alone in my room, with a book. When Kristen's older sister broke the shade in my room and told my mom that I did it, I learned that you can't trust people. My suspicions were confirmed that one time, at Lisa's house, when she told me that if I wanted to go to the bathroom I had to use the baby potty. It was a tiny wooden stand in the middle of the basement, barely big enough for a doll to sit on.

I walked three blocks back to my house, and peed down my leg after the first few steps. When I got home, I refused to tell my mother why I peed my pants, where I was, or anything else about my day.

A baby potty, indeed.