"Look there she goes that girl is strange, no question..."

I have become a hermit since moving to Ohio and have become heavily reliant on books (and the Internet) to get me through the day. I am not a person who claims that "books changed my life". Books continue to change my life. I don't just carry around a book "because you never know when you might find spare time" I carry spare bookmarks. The fact that I carry a book is inevitable. I read everywhere. I used to read being driven to work, while walking to work, at the mall waiting for my Mom to hurry the hell up and buy her crap at Sephora. Having worked at a bookstore (we'll call it Stables & Grand) and a public library just made it easy to amass a collection of books. I also buy books "wherever books are sold" (a phrase I hate by the way).

However, I don't keep majority of the books I read. Even so I hauled at least ten boxes of books over with me. I separate my books into two bookcases. One is of books I will read and give away and one is of classics and old favorites that I have already read and intend to keep. I only unpacked the first bookcase with the intention of bulldozing through those easy reads. I have read thirty-some books so far. I never unpacked the second bookcase, just stacked the boxes in the closet and didn't think much about them. Sometime early in the week I decided to make opening those boxes a priority and a project. The apartment had become especially damp and I was afraid the books were going to get water-damaged. As I was opening and making piles of children's books and adult classics to pack back up I came across books that I wasn't sure why I kept. Modern bestsellers and diet books mostly. I belong to Paperbackswap.com and I decided I would eliminate, approximately, a box of books by posting them on the site.

Now I know there are people reading this screaming "How can you possibly get rid of books?" It's very simple. As a book lover and advocate for literacy I believe in sharing the wealth. Plus, imagine if you kept every book you ever owned from "Pat the Bunny" to the OED. There has never been a time I have looked at our bookshelves and lamented that I don't still own every Babysitter's Club book. You know because they would have complimented David's collection of Third World dictator biographies so nicely.

Working at the library gave me the opportunity to witness the donation of entire libraries of deceased bookworms. We would get excited at the unopened boxes. So many possibilities! Only to open the boxes and find every dime-store novel ever written. Bummer. We would groan and toss the books aside. As far as we were concerned, it was a box full of coasters. I'm not saying you can't read trashy books. I'm saying read as many trashy books as you want just don't think they are gold bricks. Pass those trashy gems to the next person, check them out from the library, recycle them for all I care. They are made out of paper it doesn't hurt them. What hurts them are leaving them in a box to get moldy and bent. I know books are memories but that's why I keep a list. Just seeing the book title takes me back to where I bought the book and holding it in my hands where I read it and if I passed it along to someone else.

Working at Stables & Grand was awesome because I was able to see all the new books as they came out and I never had to buy them. I just mentally noted the titles and then I requested them from inter-library loan for free and BAM! pile o' books on my desk every other day for me to devour. I try to avoid Stables & Grand now that I am no longer employed with them. My hands itch and my vision blurs when I go in and see the shiny new books. I'm trying to work through what I've got at home. More is not what I need right now. That means I'm not going to the local library for the same reason. Plus, the library is a 30 minute walk down a busy road with no sidewalk. I am sparingly ordering books from Paperbackswap.com but I think it's enough to keep the Mail Carrier annoyed at having to take time out of his route to knock on my door. Oh well, a girl has got to stay occupied somehow. Soon I am going to be forced to drive and go to work and other boring adult stuff and all my reading time is going to vanish.

List of books read since moving (not including the book I read on the plane):

Because She Can - Bridie Clark
The Partly Cloudy Patriot - Sarah Vowell
Fat Girls & Lawn Chairs- Cheryl Peck
Looking for Mary - Beverly Donofrio
The Year of Living Famously - Laura Caldwell
26a - Diana Evans
Spilling the Beans - Jose Antonio Burciaga
Mr.Maybe - Jane Green
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh - Michael Chabon
The Wife - Meg Wolitzer
The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street - Helene Hanff
Shutterbabe - Deborah Copaken Kogan
Boonville - Robert Mailer Anderson
Sleeping Arrangements - Laura Shaine Cunningham
Maneater - Gigi Levangie Grazer
Limbo - A. Manette Ansay
By the Lake of Sleeping Children - Luis Urrea
Neurotica - Sue Margolis
Your Oasis on Flame Lake - Lorna Landvik
Another Day in the Frontal Lobe - Katrina Firlik
Hanging Up - Delia Ephron
Joe College - Tom Perrotta
The Discomfort Zone - Jonathan Franzen
Lucky Girls - Nell Freudenberger
The Inn at Lake Devine - Elinor Lipman
The Annunciation of Francesca Dunn - Janis Hallowell
Dear Catastrophe Waitress - Brendan Halpin
Then She Found Me - Elinor Lipman
Diary of a Wimpy Kid- Jeff Kinney
Bed Rest - Sarah Bilston
The Secret Life of the Lonely Doll - Jean Nathan
The Ruins of California - Martha Sherrill
Manhattan Loverboy - Arthur Nersesian
Diary of a Wimpy Kid: Rodrick Rules - Jeff Kinney
Twenties Girl - Sophie Kinsella

"Empty lake, empty streets, the sun goes down alone"

On Saturday night David and I watched the Cleveland Indians lose 3-1 to the Seattle Mariners at Progressive Field (The Jake) because the Indians are the second worse team in the league right now. Watching the Indians lose is a time-honored tradition in Cleveland. I've never seen less hustle out of people getting paid major bucks to do something they supposedly love. We went with David's coworker Jay and Jay's girlfriend Emmy. Emmy was the only native Clevelander so we bugged her every 15 seconds about where to park and where to go once in the gate. Emmy being a true native had no idea about those things because she always got dropped off at The Jake with a bunch of other natives and their Cleveland sense would tingle and then they would end up magically in the good seats.

The only other baseball stadium I have ever been to is Dodger Stadium (thanks for the memories, Mikka!) which is a bit different than the Jake. For starters when you go to Dodger Stadium you drive right into the parking lot (like Disneyland or a shopping mall) which is convenient. That doesn't happen at The Jake. David brought it to my attention that The Jake is a classic field of the east coast-ish region. It is situated in the major city's downtown. So we drove around like dummies looking for the stadium parking when we realized that parking is handled by surrounding small lots. One lot that provides parking is a Catholic Church. I said we should park there next time so God would watch over our car. We only live about 30 minutes from the field and Cleveland has little traffic so it was an easy drive even with the parking confusion. It was so odd to look up past the scoreboard and see buildings and not endless blue California sky. I was shocked to be in a major city watching a baseball game, don't ask me why I just was. I've read that The Jake is closer to a "classic" field and that means reminiscent of fields of olden days. But I don't know what that means so I can neither confirm nor deny that observation.

I've read on the Internet that there are no "bad seats" at the Field. We were in the view box so we were high up enough to freak Emmy and I out that we were going to trip on the narrow concrete stairs and fall to our deaths. We were far enough away from the field for me to also worry that no magic treat men selling fine sugared goods would dare travel that far,but they did, just not selling the good stuff (cotton candy).
Even that far up two foul balls got hit straight our way which caused me to duck and cover in a panic. I wasn't about to try and catch one and fall, like some dude down below did catching a foul, (he didn't fall far) or get a souvenir bloody nose. Those boys may not be the best in the league but they still hit hard.

At the game I tried to keep my "AND THIS ONE TIME AT DODGER STADIUM" comments limited to only the very important moments. Like the time Matthew McConaughey was sitting merely rows away from us and I really didn't know who he was because he wasn't shirtless and on a skateboard.

All in all a good time. We didn't see how fast the pitches were because the radar gun was broken. I was bummed about that. They also played Ohio's official state rock song,"Hang on Sloopy" by The McCoys and everyone did the O-H-I-O dance (it's like the YMCA dance) and sang along to what is quite possibly the lamest song on the planet. I should know, I read the Wikipedia article about it and that makes me an expert. It didn't rain and the fans were friendly. David had a little trouble getting home even with the GPS navigator. We have more tickets so we will be going to another game sometime soon. I look forward to going and continuing on the path to becoming a well-rounded Cleveland citizen and just as depressed.

On a completely unrelated side note: David got a speeding ticket and I am now an officially licensed Ohio driver. Well, officially licensed at least I have yet to actually drive. It was a busy weekend, indeed.

Even Further East

David and I spent the 4th of July weekend with this two older brothers in Massachusetts. We did it the crazy way and drove because our knowledge of East Coast geography is flawed. For some strange reason we thought Massachusetts wasn't very far away but Pennsylvania is a long-ish state and we took a detour to pick up one of his brothers in Brooklyn. The Brooklyn, like Bed-Stuy, where Jay-Z, Biggie and Lil' Kim grew up.

The only part of this trip I was against was driving into Brooklyn at 3 AM (we left after David got home from work and drove through the night). I adore my husband's brothers and we would have picked up any one of them on the way if possible. But driving into Mordor is not my idea of fun. We have a GPS navigator so I wasn't afraid of getting lost and I wasn't afraid of the ghetto. I was afraid of David's terrible driving instincts when wielded in a big city. We didn't get lost or run anyone over but on the way in we did start to doubt the GPS. It was telling us to go in loops and we ended up in an industrial part of God knows where. I called my bro-in-law to ask for directions. Never ask a New York transplant for directions. He started asking me questions. "Are you in Manhattan? Did you take the BQE? Are you on this bridge, that bridge?" I just wanted the boy to speak English. There weren't any street signs. My knowledge of NYC is paparazzi shots of celebrities. The one piece of info he gave us that helped was that the GPS was telling us to go "weird ways" because we were now in one way street land. I hate one way streets with the same hatred I have for toll roads. At this point it was 3 AM, we had been in the car for 10 hours trying to obey the law and drive properly unlike the citizens of Pennsylvania and New Jersey and I had witnessed two cows fornicating in Pennsylvania so I was ready to get to Massachusetts. We successfully picked up David's brother and he drove the last leg of the trip.

Two days in, what I call, Granolaville, Massachusetts city of hippie-ish-organic people where David's oldest brother lives. Totally chill, no complaints about Massachusetts.

I did dread the drive home and the thought of having to be in the car with David driving during the day in Brooklyn. Our car has Ohio plates we might as well have the word HICKS written on the windshield. David's Brooklyn brother drove us in and we drove out in remarkably good time. Several of my friends and family found it odd that David and I would just make NYC a pit stop on our trip. We weren't there for touristy stuff we just wanted his brother. I am not the adventurous type and I have no problem never going back to NYC. I never had the dying need to go in the first place. I can take it or leave it. Crowds,trash and crazy people aren't really my thing. I know there are awesome parts of NYC but I'm okay just knowing they exist.