Girls Just Wanna Have Fun

On Friday I’m flying back to England to spend 10 days visiting friends and family by myself. This is a landmark occasion, mainly because I don’t think I’ve visited my parents without a boyfriend/husband/children since I was in my (very) early 20s and still at university. But this year, the kids are involved in their High School pre-seasons (Dance for Becky, Field Hockey for Lorna) and were anyway reluctant to exchange the NJ weather for that of the UK (although seriously guys, it hasn’t been that great here this year!) Keba, also busy with Global Bridge, agreed to be point parent and so off I go.

Of course, nothing is that simple. Before I can plonk myself down at a bar in Philadelphia airport prior to my overnight flight in good conscience, I need to:

• Complete all essential admin. This includes paying all bills that will fall due while I’m away, billing all clients likewise, and submitting Becky and Lorna’s RVRHS athletics physicals.
• Make sure the menagerie can be left. This includes taking Sofia for her third kitten check (tomorrow), cleaning out the aquarium and visiting Pet Sink…sorry I mean Smart…to stock up on tinned food.
• Finalize tasks whose deadlines occur while I am away. This includes submitting my application (Oh, the triumph of hope over experience!) for a NJ Poetry Fellowship, finishing my edit of a (very interesting) non-fiction book on concussion in the NFL, and writing a “How To” on the Haikoum for a text book.
• Prepare for tasks that occur hot on the heels of my return. This includes ordering Becky’s birthday presents (July 28), my monthly stint at Care 1 (The assisted living residence for older adults with memory loss that is the inspiration behind “The Stolen From“), and my reading for the Powows in Newburyport on July 24th. I just worked out I need to order some more copies of TSF for that. It’s actually been quite successful (and I say that guardedly, as poetry books go, of course!)

Er…that might be it. Isn’t that enough? But seriously, I’m almost ready to look forward to my trip at this point, I think?

I love books, not just the smell of older volumes or the feel of the crisp pages of newer ones in my hands, but the accumulation of them. I look at a full bookshelf and feel greedily rich. So, it won’t surprise you that when Amazon’s electronic reader, the kindle, first came out, and my husband diffidently asked if I might like one, my answer was a resolute No!

Still, things change. Kindle 2 is now available, and apparently it addresses some of the glaring faults in the first version. Plus, we are going to the UK for ten days at Easter, and on any such trip I normally require 4 or 5 paperbacks secreted about our luggage, simply to provide me with in-flight reading material. The lightweight kindle could replace that excess poundage. So, I said, OK! And on our 13th wedding anniversary this past weekend (lucky for some!) my kindle duly arrived.

I love it! Let me give you some reasons why.

1. Believe it or not, I think I actually read faster on the kindle. This is no mean feat, because I wasn’t exactly a slouch in the reading department before. I’m not exactly sure why it is. Perhaps because there are fewer words per page, and my highly-programmed reader’s brain almost internalizes them all in one look? Or maybe because I can press the “next page” button while I am still absorbing the last sentence, and begin the next one without that annoying (seriously!) page turning delay.
2. The kindle is way better for stop/start/on the go reading. I really can hold and operate it in one hand (It’s about the size and weight of a first poetry collection), which leaves the other one free to eat/stir dinner/let dogs out/drive (Just kidding on the last one!) Plus, if I’m reading and the phone rings/ a child calls for help with a fractions worksheet/ the oven timer goes, then I can simply put it down. No hunting for bookmarks or mashing the spine with the book face down on the table. The kindle remembers where I am, even if it goes to sleep (after a ten minute delay).
3. I can email my own manuscripts to the kindle. Perhaps this wouldn’t matter to everyone, but for a small fee I can send My Body, Torn from Me to Amazon, and they will format it into a kindle file and download that to my kindle. Imagine how useful that would be at Poetry Readings, or just for working on the m/s (using the kindle’s annotations function) on the plane.
4. Classic literature is like, really cheap. So, I was browsing the “literary fiction” category (Bit of confusion going on there, Amazon. Maeve Binchy? Really?) and I found British Classics: The Bronte Family, which contains all 7 of the sisters’ novels, the poetry m/s they brought out initially, their father’s poetry AND the first two biographies (Gaskell and Shorter.) Guess how much this bounty cost? $0.99! Really!

Now of course this wouldn’t float everyone’s boat either. But I am in the process of writing an essay about Emily Bronte for the Mezzo Cammin timeline project/ West Chester seminar, so the prospect of having this material available in England (where I will be visiting Haworth Parsonage) is ideal.

I’m guessing that rather like Project Gutenberg, this is possible because copyright on the original editions of these works (It’s the third edition of Jane Eyre, for example) has expired. Might not suit everyone but perfect for me!

In fact, my husband has started to call me “Kindle Girl!”

I turned 40 on July 23rd. Ho hum. Actually it really wasn’t that bad. The previous Saturday we had a party that I had designed to my own precise specifications–even down to the dual guitar Guitar Hero available in the family room. Lots of friends, lots of presents, lots of wine.

On the day itself we had a quieter celebration, especially since my husband was, of course, traveling. Still, two lots of flowers arrived and there was pizza, cheesecake and champagne.

Then the next morning I received the best present of all–a phone call from the Editor of ABZ Press to say that my thesis manuscript, My Body, Torn From Me, had been chosen as one of the ten finalists for their first book contest.

Of course, it probably won’t win, but at least it means that someone thinks the manuscript has potential.