Tuesday, March 3, 2009

We Love Books. We Also Like Them to be Free.

It's a well-known fact that the girls and I can generally be counted upon to know the time and location of every large garage sale free day, thrift store store-wide sale, and book sale free day. Monday, of course, was the free day of the Monroe County Public Library Friends of the Library book sale, and therefore, on Monday, there we were:Mind you, the book sale free days are actually really important to me professionally, because as part of my students' work analyzing gender ideologies, I give them each a romance novel to analyze. That's 46 Harlequins a semester, and no, I don't get funds for supplies. Fortunately, book sale free days are often just teeming with Harlequins, and I can usually even score a volunteer who's so stoked to get rid of some of them that she'll actually sit down on the floor with me and help sort through them ("How about this one, dear?" It's about a cowboy and a Russian czarina, although I'm afraid it looks a bit racy...").

With my two little girlies also scoring free books, with their own perfectly-sized real metal shopping cart (I once had to scream at a lady ACROSS A WAREHOUSE to stop stealing some of the free crap from my kids' shopping cart while Willow stood there right in front of her and cried--some people will do anything for a creepy vintage doll), I, as a rule, never get to look for my own reading material, but I did manage to grab several awesome 80s Christmas crafting books, a whole wheat cookbook, and some California travel guides for cutting up for scrapbook embellishments.

The girls, too, got lots of awesome-to-them stuff--books about Botswana, the digestive system, the making of the 80s-era Ramona the Pest TV show, etc.--and I usually respect their haul, but this one I had to take away when they weren't around:Really?I mean, really?

The worst thing is that it totally makes me want a cigarette right now. Seriously--the picture of the smoking cat makes me want a cigarette.

My week is turning out to be a little stressful.

P.S. Check out my tutorial for making scrapbook embellishments from comic books over at Crafting a Green World.

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

I am under strict orders to stay far, far, far away from books: paid or free (except borrowed ones that we have to return eventually). I suppose if I had a good excuse like you do, dh would relent somewhat... ;)

julie said...

Yes, I could easily be one of those people whose house has all the narrow little pathways that run from room to room with huge towers of books looming dangerously on either side of those narrow little pathways.

cake said...

i laughed so hard when i read the line about that cigar smoking cat making you want a cigarette. i can relate. some habits die hard. really really hard.

wish i had made it to the free day of that sale. i don't need to add to my book collection, but i love getting new books for 'smo, and, like you noted, collage material.