Book Creep

Not quite one year ago, I decided to quit my job at the library.  That's a long story, with which I've regaled my readers elsewhere.  It's important to know, however, that had it been for one thing, I might have left years earlier.

The pay sucks, the primary tasks range from dull to annoying, but workers in our library system had the absolute best fringe benefit.

No, it wasn't great health care, or terrific hours.

We were fine exempt.

So each time I reached a point where I might otherwise have bid adieu, I thought about having to live in a world where I was no longer fine exempt.  And I stayed.

When I realized a year ago that the job was eating me alive, and there was nowhere I could run to get away from it, even Belleair Beach, I faced the fact that I would have to live like the rest of the lowly library patrons.  So I returned over 150 library books.

Thanks to the reigning library director, a different kind of library creep, the overdue fine has gone up to $ .20 per day, which adds up.  So I would have to be serious about only checking out books I could read in the amount of time allowed.  I started with a modest eight books.  And I return them when I'm supposed to.  Sometimes I stress over not having time to read, which is silly, but one way or the other, they get returned on time.

But somehow, and believe me it just happens, I do request more books than I have time to read.  And sometimes I return them and check them out again, because I just don't want to miss a good book.  Over the year, it seems that my library books are taking over again.

I started out with one fairly defined small (for me) area designated for library books.  I was proud of the fact that I had exercised some restraint.  But over the year as the spot filled up, I had to expand -- to the sides, to the top:

And of course, the four or five or six books I read at a time all had their places, in the bedroom, the kitchen, the bathroom.

And this week I finally had to admit to excess.  No, I didn't return the overflow.  After all, they weren't yet due, and I hadn't read them yet.

I just created a priority location; where I keep "currently reading" I've added "new" and "next reads":

I can handle this.

A Brutal Reality Check

So I'm reading Dave Barry's new book, Insane City, in which there are, among other crazy characters, an old couple named Sid and Rose.  In one scene, Rose and Sid were up early, taking turns in the bathroom, because, as per Barry, "as older people tend to do, they spent a substantial chunk of each morning in the bathroom, laboriously striving to execute bodily functions that younger people take for granted."

"Huh," I thought, "Don't I know."  And then, as I was reading, it occurred to me that Mr. Barry is a year or two my senior and was apparently also writing from the perspective of Sid and Rose.

Talk about a reality shift.