What's Mom up to today?

This week I helped Mom write a Get Well letter to an old friend. I knew we were in trouble when the first words out of her mouth were, "I don't know what to say."

"How about 'I'm sorry to hear about your hip. I hope you're feeling better'," I said.

"OK," she looked at me hopefully. "Now what?"

"Ask her a question," I suggested.

"What is your favorite meal? My dad's favorite meal was pancakes. He always wanted pancakes when he came in from the barn," she offered.

I dutifully wrote this down in the card and then waited. She looked at me and said nothing. This was like pulling teeth. "So how about telling her what Dad's favorite food was?," I suggested again.

"Huh, whose food?", she countered.

"Dad's favorite food."

"Whose dad," she asked.

"MY dad," I said.

"Whose your dad?" she queried.

"Your husband, Bill!" I shouted. "For Pete's sakes, Mom, who else would it be?"

"What time is it," she asked petulantly. "I think I've written a letter long enough."

I couldn't have agreed more.

Joys of a booksale

What a day! We helped out most of the day at the opening day of our college's library booksale. Since I've worked at that library, I've never been there for opening day. I've always helped with the setup the evening before and then just browsed through the books on my lunch hours during the work week. But now that I'm retired, I decided that my hubby and I would be cashiers on opening day.



Let me tell you, when those doors opened, it was a mad dash down the steps and to the sale tables. Book dealers and book afficianados alike were elbowing for space and grasping treasures to their chests (or their boxes). We even had folks with little handheld scanners this year that were scanning books to, I assume, find out what the current market value was of the books. How nifty was that?



It was interesting to see the old school dealers and the "new school dealers", too. The folks I would call "new school dealers" were more like house flippers.....get in, grab books, bag them, do a fast turnaround, make money off of them, and then go out and buy more books. The "old school dealers" were more apt to take their time and have lists with them of books they were keeping an eye out for or be looking for titles that they knew regular customers were wanting.



Then there were students carefully counting out their coins to purchase their treasures. I was apt to find them muttering over copies they had just discovered on a table or crawling under sale tables to view the books that we had stacked on the floor until there was room enough to bring them up onto the tables.



I was particularly delighted to wait on the booklovers who just couldn't stay away from the sale and made two to three trips in to purchase more books today. One wonderful man told us that he was concerned that he might have to reinforce the beams of his home because he had so many books there that he was afraid that the weight was going to overtax the load-bearing abilities of his floors. Now THAT'S a reader!



Tonight I'm footsore and weary but already looking forward to heading back to the sale this week to do some browsing of my own. Who knows what treasures await me?