Next To The Bed
A few times I’ve engaged in those getting to know you email quizzes. Often they are stupid but sometimes I like the questions. Once I got one that asked the reader to list the items sitting next to their bed and I thought that was a pretty good way to learn something real about someone.
So here you go…items currently sitting on my bedside table:
– The Heart is a Lonely Hunter by Carson McCullers. I’m half way through it and it’s a lovely book. This is my current “fun read”.
– God is Not Great by Christopher Hitchens. Everyone should read this, I’m going to have withdrawal symptoms when I finish it. This is my current “hard read”, except it’s not hard to read at all.
– Getting The Love You Want by Harville Hendricks. Hey, it’s cheaper than therapy. This book has been recommended to me so many times that I feel like a moron for not having finished it sooner.
– Compact History of Mexico by various authors. I never seem to finish this one even though I like it. I start it and read 50 pages and then don’t come back to it for another year, hopefully this time I’ll finish it.
– The Secret Gratitude Book. It was a gift and I’m grateful for it. And I’m finding that the meditation of being grateful makes it much easier to be happy.
– The American Heritage English Dictionary. I can’t live without a dictionary next to the bed. This is the best dictionary I have right now, but it’s not good enough. I’m going to buy a better one, one with more words in it, next time I have the chance.
– The New Oxford Annotated Bible. I’m reading the Bible because the Hitchens’ book keeps referencing it. I always find the Bible fascinating, especially because so much of it seems so removed from modern day life, I mean I don’t exactly need advice on how much to pay if my ox gores your ox, or how much to pay if I sleep with your slave…
– A notebook with lined paper so I can write down ideas when they pop into my head in the middle of the night. I usually end up waking up at least once per night and writing some inane thing in there.
– A pencil so I can write in the notebook while lying on my back and not have to fight gravity with an ink pen.
– An Ultra Jewels alarm clock, given to me when I taught one of their employees how to use a complex piece of software. They gave me a bunch of other stuff too, including some lovely perfume and expensive make-up, but none of that is on my bedside table.
– A 3 inch piece of copper wire with 6 beads on it, don’t ask why I have it because I have no idea. I think it was part of a gift-wrap job that my artist-sister did once, either that or my kid made it. Regardless, the cats like it so it won’t be on the bedside table for long.
– A telephone with the ringer switched off. If someone calls while I’m in bed I always wish I could kill them, and I hate talking on the phone in bed, it makes me feel like I’m giving a speech naked. I actually have no idea why I have a phone in the bedroom, it probably has something do to with the idea that there could be an emergency that would make it worth talking on the phone while in bed.
– A small pad of skinny post-it notes. I use these to mark passages in the books I read so I can find them later and read them out loud to my husband who sometimes pretends to listen.
– A ceramic lamp that I painted myself about 15 years ago at one of those paint your own ceramics places. Cancun needs one of those places.
– And finally, my cell phone is sitting there charging.
March 11th, 2008 07:52
Holy crap! That’s a big bedside table!
March 11th, 2008 08:54
LOL, not really, the books are just stacked up too high and the pile falls over all the time.
July 10th, 2008 11:07
The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is a beautiful book isn’t it?