I have just finished reading Anne Lamott's Traveling Mercies. Good book, but it leaves me wondering about myself. Specifically, I wonder why I am drawn to autobiographical books by people who grew up in the 60's who are either a)recovering alcoholics; b)recovering drug addicts; and/or c)products of seriously dysfunctional families. It also makes me wonder if any of us who grew up in the 80's will have anything to write about ourselves. Not that I wish I had a) or b) in my past, although I suppose I do have a fair bit of c)... not to the point of the people who write the books I read, though. And you can only say so much about the glittery blue leg warmers you had as a ten year old. Or how you secretly wanted to be a Solid Gold dancer, but settled for spending hours in your bedroom singing songs from Friday Night Videos into your crappy black tape recorder.

Maybe that was too much information.

(My daughter, who was just sent to her room for hitting her brother and then throwing a fit about the injustice of it all roughly on par with the performance of any Oscar actress, has now decided to sprawl over the chair beside me, weeping, because she has a split fingernail. I am being very callous.)

In any case, the next book on my agenda is The Spiral Staircase by Karen Armstrong. Since she was a nun for 7 years, I don't think she has a lot of heavy drinking in her background, but the back of the book seems to indicate that it will be primarily about rising out of depression. So it still fits in the box. Then I have a book about Buddhism and coping with the ups and downs of everyday life.

The 3 for 2 table at Borders is a wonderful thing.

I hope to get back to work on my short story this week, too. We sign the closing papers on the house in St. Louis this Thursday, then the papers on our house here in two weeks (after having been taken for everything we have in order to get it -- which is why I need that Buddhism book), and then in another week and a half (don't ask) we'll move in. Still, I have signed up for E's Strong Man Writer's Marathon, in order to borrow some motivation. I have a piddly goal of 30 minutes a day, but if I can manage that, I will be happy, and I may even get a short story out of it.