My local public library has a major fundraiser every summer -- the book sale. I love the book sale. The village really gets behind it, a line forms around the block (veterans know to bring their own shopping bags, or carts, or even the occasional baby stroller to fill with books), and we pay $5 to get in there and look at books that sell for 50¢ to $2. It's social and fun and a good way to support a tremendous community asset. I also enjoy looking to see what once-popular book is now sooooo over (last year I spotted many hardcover copies of The Nanny Diaries). But the book sale is not really what this post is about.
Because I love the book sale (and because there's another sale in another town coming up to support the animal shelter where I got Reynaldo), every summer I bug and nag and cajole my friends to bring me their cast-off paperbacks. (I don't have a car, which makes hardcovers a bit difficult to manage.) Usually I get a dozen or so, which is nice because every bit helps and besides, my friends are a diverse group and a good selection of books always makes for a better book sale.
My coworker, the one who is FINALLY getting divorced, asked me if I wanted the books she and her husband are divesting themselves of. Sure, OK, why not? She's had to go through a lot of pain during this break up (pain she has not been shy about sharing with me ...), and why shouldn't some civic good come of it?
She says she has four big boxes of books and will be here with them at 5:30 tonight. Then we can go to dinner and have a few drinks and ... I just asked for the books on Monday. I didn't expect anyone to get them together so fast. And I don't know that I want to spend my Saturday hearing EVEN MORE about her upcoming divorce.
Is it evil that I hope she cancels?
I don't feel like seeing her. I don't feel like seeing anyone. I know it's Saturday, and I'm supposed to want to go out. But there's a Cubs game on tonight, I have a movie rental I really should either watch or return ... I'd rather be alone than go out with her.
I wouldn't mind talking on the phone to my mom. Like the Cub game, by dropping off the books and going to dinner I'll miss my weekly yak with her. And I really, really miss my best friend. I haven't talked to him since Monday and, as always when he's incommunicado, I'm unraveling a bit.
Does this feeling count as lonely? When I have a cellphone list filled with numbers and there are only two I want to call, I'm not sure I'm lonely. Antisocial? Spoiled and unsympathetic to a coworker's pain? Lazy?
Oh well, I'll just comfort myself knowing that I'm helping the library ... and that maybe she'll cancel.
