So I got another Sarah Dessen book at Barnes and Noble today. Yes, they're adorable and teenager-y, but they're my guilty pleasure, emphasis on guilty, because everyone reads them. Besides, they're mostly about a girl who meets a guy who sparks some break from her normality and teaches her to be more impulsive and less of a perfectionist about her life.
I mean, every book.
And I made the mistake of (unknowingly) picking one where the main character is already sort of a party girl. The drinking, carefree type who is starting to slide back into old, dangerous habits when some sweet guy saves her and takes her home when she almost passes out. Ick.
But I ramble. The point is, the attitudes of the main characters in novels always rub off on me. Sarah Dessen has a way of making her characters really believable - which, don't get me wrong, is a great skill for a writer to have. But they become so believable that I start to agree with their decisions. Which, in this particular case, isn't the best idea.
So essentially, I'm in a backsliding, carefree mood, and if the friendly, almost-ginger boy from the bookstore were to walk into my kitchen and hit on me, I wouldn't push him away and freak out like the normal me would.
This is not a good thing.
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"Is this a fairy thing or an angel?" Olivia blurts in her curious-yet-blunt eight-year-old voice, jerking me for the fifty-seventh time from my book. I glance at the necklace she's referring to. It is neither a fairy nor an angel, but an Eagle, Globe and Anchor, the symbol of the Marine Corps, which was given to me as a Christmas present by my parents when I was about twelve.
When I said she could wear something of mine, she clearly picked it thinking it was something more whimsical. When I explain to her what it is, I can see her in the side of my vision studying the charm; it is losing its appeal.
"Which one do you think is cutest?" She continues before I can put my nose back to the page. She displays the back cover of her chapter book, which depicts a row of different books in the series, all with pictures of different puppy breeds on the covers. After a very, very cursory glance, I tell her the white one.
"So, you think I should have gotten that one?"
"I don't know." By now I have almost lost my place on the page of my book.
"Or maybe this one?" She is determined to keep my interest.
"Olivia." I lower the thick volume briefly. "I'd really just like to read a little."
She slumps a bit, disappointed. "Okay."
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Because reading someone else's writing always causes me to narrate my own life in the same way. Had to get that out.
In other news, my package of gifts I sent to Okinawa has arrived, and I received a thank you wall post from one of my friends. This means that within a week or two I'll either be getting one awkward thank-you email from someone, or the same familiar silence. Don't know which I'd prefer.
And a bloodcurdling scream has just erupted from the basement, which means Olivia is in yet another spat with her siblings. Ah, cousins.
Gotta go.
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