Today I am taking my mother in for a cataract surgery, so I drove up to work so I could leave early. I wake up, it’s warm and nice outside, and I think, ‘I don’t need a coat,” so I don’t wear one. I’m up to Sandy and in the headlights, I think I see a flake of something. It was sort of a shock. It’s been beautiful and I looked at the forecast yesterday and it was sunny and warm 10 days or more out. That one flake was soon many, and suddenly visibility was nada, and I was just so surprised. By The time I got to my office there was an inch of snow. It is beautiful. Luckily it seems though, it is wet, so maybe my drive home won’t be so bad. Everything seems to melt on the asphalt.
The other day I was thinking about the books I read in Jr. High. Judy Bloom and that sort of thing. I remember some of them were obviously outdated, happening in the 50’s or 60’s because girls wore skirts and saddle shoes. I remember loving ‘Hail, Hail Camp
Timberwood’, about a girl’s trip to summer camp. Oh, the trials and tribulations of roommates, boys, and failing at macrame! I myself went to camp one year with the YWCA, which was awesome. The red-headed lifeguard I’d had a crush on since I was 6 was there, telling ghost stories, and we got to ride in a canoe. It was only a couple of days. I went on a longer trip with my class, probably a week. We had cabins and swimming and all that. Sherilyn Johnson got the best boy of course and I remember crying because I’d had a crush on him first and she always got the guys! Everyone sympathized with me of course, because she’d taken all their guys too. What was worse was she was nice and one of my best friends! How 
could she! Anyway, reading that book was really fun. And all those like them. I have a box of books from my childhood and they are all there. Somehow when the time came for Chantel to read them, she wasn’t interested. She’s always been more of a ‘classics’ girl. Oh well, maybe the grandkids will like them. I’ve been thinking of pulling them out for Kiki. She seems like she might like them a lot.
There are so many memories of reading that bring back fun times in my life. I remember sitting on the fence near my mother’s garden bawling my eyes out for an hour after finishing ‘Where the Red Fern Grows”. I remember pushing my door open a crack at night so that I could read in that thin stream of light. Then there were the times where I would just disappear somewhere with a book. the big platform that was the tree-house my dad never finished was a good spot. The first time I read my grandma’s copy of Pride and Prejudice I remember feeling so happy we both liked something so much. She’d died when I was seven and even by that time she was so much a good force in my life I missed her. Anyway, enough reminiscing. I think I’ll watch the snow falling for awhile.