I usually have no less than five books that I’m reading. Other people are like this, it’s true, but most people are more linear and less attention deficit and they read one book at a time. They complete one book and pick up another. I’ll ask my son, “Can you grab my book?” and he’ll ask, “Which one?” (and then he’ll ask what color it is). I used to think that I read so many books at once because my book reading mood changes so frequently- and it’s true that I usually have a variety of books open at any given time- a classic, a junk book, a non-fic, a magazine, a Serious Lit, a contemporary novel, an autobiography, for example. Sometimes it’s just not a non-fic day and I need some junk, and later that day I might tire of junk and require a classic, and then I might decide that an anthology is better for a short dinner read. I used to think it was just my ADD at work, yanking my chain.
But then I realized that I required so many simultaneous reads because I lose my books constantly.
I thought that if my house was clean, I’d stop losing my books, but that is not the case, because my house is currently clean(ish) and I’m still losing the bastards left and right. I was reading one at dinner (a junk one), and I went to get it for my pre-bedtime read, and it had disappeared. I tried retracing my steps several times. First, the kitchen table. No. The chairs? The counter? Back to the living room. The buffet? No, it’s freakishly clutter-free. The couch? Maybe I put it back on a shelf? HA! That’s the last place I’d put a book. The bathroom? Did I carry it to the bathroom and leave it on the counter?
Which brings me to Roachie. I have a big water roach living in my bathroom. I think it’s just the one. I have no way of knowing if it’s the same one, but I think it is. Anyway, I’m not scared of bugs. I grew up in Texas, and bugs were just a fact of life, not something to squeal about. The only time I was ever scared of a bug was the time I was lounging in a bath and opened my eyes to see a large water roach on the ceiling right above me. I thought it was going to fall on me, and that freaked me out. But generally, bugs don’t bug me. I even kind of feel for them. When there’s a bug in the house, I pick it up and take it outside. I never step on bugs, and I kind of think that people who step on bugs are mean. We really have an unfair advantage over bugs, whatall with our giganticism, and geez, it’s not like they’re attacking us. Except for mosquitoes. I don’t think you’re mean for killing mosquitoes, because they really are attacking us.
(Bonus anecdote: we were at my son’s doctor appointment on Friday, and my four year old was with us. In the examination room, she pointed into a corner and said, “Look! A bug!” There was [yet another] large water roach, on it’s back but still alive. She wanted to examine it closely, but I encouraged her to observe it from a distance. I may not be scared of roaches, but I also don’t want my kids petting them and taking them for walks. After I’d named it Pierre and my four year old deemed it “cute,” a male nurse came in sporting latex gloves and twenty yards of paper towels and removed it. We never saw Pierre again.)
Anyway, when I went into the bathroom, there was Roachie, perched on the counter. No book. Roachie and I stared at one another, neither of us blinking. I considered capturing him in a Dixie cup and releasing him into the wild, but Roachie is a fast little bastard, and I’ll never catch him. I turned off the light and went back to retrace my steps again, this time including the freezer and pantry in my search (I once put a cordless phone in the fridge, so I know I’m capable of these things), again with no luck. I went back to the bathroom, and Roachie was in the exact same place I’d left him ten minutes before, and I looked at him and thought, “Look at how cute he is!”, because he was indeed positioned in a very cute way. I mean, if he’d been a kitten in the same position we’d all be in agreement: cute! Alas, Roachie is a roach, and it struck me that many people would be appalled by my tolerance for Roachie and that I should never tell anyone that I had just thought the roach in my bathroom was “cute,” so of course I immediately came to the computer to blog about it. And when I sat down on the couch, I felt something hard under the couch blanket, and it was my book.
So it all worked out in the end, and this is how ADD-afflicted people spend the hour between midnight and one a.m., in case you were wondering.