Hmm… turns out there is no such word as “mindly.” My spell checker has reminded me of that about three times, but I like it. I guess I could have titled this “Books and the Meanderings of my Mind” but I didn’t. First for the books part of this post which is really why I started this post in the first place but it turned into something else entirely. But I am getting ahead of myself …

Just like a truly believe that houses have personalities (a topic for another blog post), I also believe that books have personalities as well. Some books speak to me —read me. When I am looking in a bookstore or in the library (I rarely buy books anymore) for something to read and I don’t have any particular book in mind, my eye is drawn first to the title. When I pull it out, I look at the cover. If I get past the cover I read the flyleaf or the back, wherever the book description is. Then I open it up and look at the print. When it passes all those tests, I then bury my nose in its pages and take a deep breath. 

Yes, I freely admit it. I am a book smeller. There, I’ve gone and said it out loud. Magazines too if you really want to know.

I was prompted to sit down and write this because of the good book I checked out of the library and am reading now. An extra bonus is that it smells good too! Its pages are pungently bookish. It also helps that I am the very first person to ever check it out of the library. Lucky me! This book, Still Life with Breadcrumbs, is also resonating in many ways with the way I am feeling about my life now. Rethinking things. Redefining life as I now know it. Or, if you will, searching for who I really am deep down inside.

What sort of life do I want to lead? One that includes posh dinners out and driving a Lexus, (we don’t own a Lexus by the way, just a Subaru and a Suburban) or stew cooked over a wood stove and a battered old pickup truck capable of plowing a goodly amount of snow and hauling felled trees? Fancy dresses and designer clothing or leggings, warm boots and a hoodie? Manicured nails or nails that can withstand using the wood splitter and some outside work? 

I can be that elegant woman that eats in expensive restaurants, but I can also be the kind of woman who knows how to run the wood splitter too. l am really both women rolled up in one. But if I have to choose, I would pick the simpler life where little things mean a lot. I am talking about life experiences and not material things. Things like seeing a new bird, or an animal sighting of some kind. A hug or good conversation between my husband and me, not the latest fashions hanging on the rack at Bloomingdales (or Bloomie’s as they call it here). Material things are just that. Made and manufactured. Hey, just maybe the Beatle’s were on to something when they sang “Can’t Buy Me Love.” Money can’t buy you a life lived well either come to think of it.

This post got out of hand, so to speak, as my fingers flew across the keyboard, getting farther and farther away from the whole topic of this blog, so I am stopping here for now even though I’ve written another three paragraphs. Stay tuned for Part Two of Mindly Meanderings in which I try to explain what all this is about and how I came to be an outdoorsy kind of girl. Sheesh, two weeks of silence and now you can’t shut me up.

Photo: Sunset clouds last week from my deck.