Speaking of books I’ll never finish, I picked up three more from the thrift store on Saturday. Three (short stories) by Flannery O’Connor, The Comedians by Graham Greene, and Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut. Well, I’m sure I’ll finish that last one at some point, but it doesn’t count since I’ve read it before. No repeats! Books shmooks. I admire my friends who can sit down and finish one (or ten), because I can’t seem to muster the attention.

Unrelated, I know we aren’t supposed to apply the word “love” to inanimate objects because it cheapens the emotion, but I just can’t help it: I love our deck! Now that it’s finally gotten warmer outside and the leaves are pushing out of their buds and the neighborhood is coming back to life, I’ve been struck by an incurable bout of spring fever. And there is no better place to suffer through this malady than on our deck. Really. I love it. I do.

(A note: Last year Spring Fever was Jenny Lewis. This year it is Belle and Sebastian. Roll down your windows and listen.)

(Another note, upon second reading: I really grabbed from the standard stock of transitions in this post, didn’t I?  It reads like something I would have blogged four years ago.  Cute, in some ways.  But there, wait, am I becoming a snob?)

Anyway, in between painting breaks today I stopped by the library, as I recently had to return my previous selections (of which I finished only one, Lauren Winner’s, and a couple stories by Capote and Sedaris. As for the Jim Wallis book, I never even cracked it open!). Today I gravitated back toward the graphic novel section and a funny thing happened. I had picked up two books, one by Daniel Clowes and another by Adrian Tomine, and I guess if you’re not familiar with graphic novels they are two of the big shots, and anyway, I couldn’t do it. Normally I love reading those things, but I couldn’t check them out, or any graphic novels for that matter, because they are all so dang depressing. It seems to me like a lot of comic artists feel that to really establish themselves as legitimate adult artists they need to lay on the drugs and profanity and nudity real heavy. Which is no different than your average movie, I guess, but for some reason today it just struck me as really unappealing. So instead? I checked out two books by a couple of pals of mine (at least in my imagination they are my pals), C.S. Lewis and Madeleine L’Engle, both stories about their respective conversions to the Christian faith. I haven’t read anything by L’Engle since A Wrinkle In Time so I am pretty curious about this one.

Well, in other news of the creative variety, I made a song today. Maybe you would like to hear it? It’s called “Door Mat” and it can be found here. Here are the words, if you are interested in that kind of thing:

Door Mat

If it’s a doormat you’re looking for
I think I’ve got one more for you
Right here in storage
And there’s no need to keep it clean
Go on and wipe your feet
And make your joy complete.

For you will get mud on your shoes
And anyone would blame you
When you get their carpet dirty.
And everyone swore you’d been here before
I guess I missed you that day
But I saw your footprints anyway.

Chorus/psychedelic musical interlude

You have dirty soles and the doormat wants to make you whole
He wants to clean them, can you believe him?
You have a dirty sole and the doormat wants to make you whole
He wants to clean it, can you believe it?

Chorus again.

I don’t think that enough songs get written about doormats, anyway. Also, I finally put up the gem of a cover that my friend Laura and I recorded one night when she was visiting. It’s Little Boxes, also on the Family Band page. You will never hear two girls strain so much to hit the high notes! Well, in case you are worried that I spent my whole day working on songs instead of painting, do not worry because I painted also. I love Saturdays