At home in a book

So, the sore throat that nagged at me last week, settled itself into a full-blown cold this weekend. Any kind of sickness on top of our chronic fatigue completely does us in. Every tiny bit of energy we may have "goes off to war" to fight the new invader and leaves us stuck in our tracks. Stuck: Not. Able. To. Move. Think. Talk. Pass Go.

Thankfully, dh was off this weekend. But he had worked an extra day last week, out-of-town, and wasn't at his normal full speed. So we couldn't really get ahead of the game - as in lots of extra left-overs for when he returned back to work.

There were leftover pancakes to heat up yesterday for breakfast. For lunch, Brady managed to form some hamburger meat into burgers to put on the broiler pan and we heated leftover vegetables from Sunday noon. But that was it for the leftovers, so for dinner Brent fried us eggs and toasted some bread.

I wasn't able to go the spring library sale on Saturday, of course, even the last thrilling hour: "a bag of books for a buck" part of the sale. What a hard thing to lie in bed and think about; all those books missing the opportunity to be adopted by me and placed on my beautiful bookshelves, surrounded by other lovely book sale finds.

On Monday, I still needed consoling, and so I went down to my previously adopted books to remind them that I loved them and would again someday add to their bountiful family. To experience part of the adoption process that I missed out on, I dug for a "find" and brought it upstairs to the couch to enjoy. (The couch conotates a small improvement, as the first days of my cold were spent in bed.)

I found the perfect companion to curl up with. It was from the free library sale shelf of my old hometown library. This little library was the one I worked part-time in during my 7th and 8th grade years. It was such a small library that my days to work gave the librarian her days off. It was just me and the books and a few patrons, whose visits spread out here and there through-out the day. The large room in which the library was housed was part of the new building built by the city; the garage for the fire-trucks on one end. There was no other scent like the smell of this new room with both old and new books sitting on the shelves.

As soon as I pulled this book off my shelf, I sniffed it (doesn't every reader do that?) I immediately knew this was the cure to my weekend pining for good 'ol used books. The smell. Even with my cold, if I held the book up close and inhaled, I was back in my hometown library. Really. What a wonderful treat on this gloomy, "I feel like I'm going to die" day.

Of course, it needed to be a children's book, with my head feeling stuffed-up and heavier than a bowling ball. I delved into Family Sabbatical, by Carol Ryrie Brink, which actually made me feel all the more homey and content, since the author grew up in the town I'm currently living in.

All in all, not a bad place to be stuck.