Book Fiend

Well, I was so excited about discovering swaptree.com, that I ran around my house last night looking for books that I no longer needed. I found 3. Entered them in the database, and it seems they are books nobody wants.

Sad... :^(

So, it occurred to me that sometimes there are books available on craigslist or freecycle so I popped over there before bed last night, and there was a posting saying that the library in Poway was giving away THOUSANDS of books!! YES!!

It started at 10am this morning. But did I ever mention to you that I have twin toddlers? And that its not always easy getting out of the house when you want to? I pulled up at the library at 10:20 and there were hordes of people with boxes and boxes of books. Someone LITERALLY had like 15 boxes stacked up outside the room and had hired children to tell people that these books were taken, thank you very much.

Then the horror...

The sign, posted beside the door, and above the line of parked strollers, stated, "NO STROLLERS INSIDE ROOM", said room being where all the freeness was! Inside I could spy any number of women with a child on one hip and a tote bag on the opposite shoulder, browsing happily. Well not exactly browsing. More like speed-browsing! Books were being grabbed and bagged up left and right!

Now, did I mention I have twin toddlers? Ones who are very heavy now and do not like to hang out on your hip when you are in a new place. Ones that, in fact, if they were to stay on your hip, take up BOTH hips and leave no room for a bag of books. Who, in fact know very few words but do know how to scream, GET DOWN! GET DOWN! GET DOWN! while doing that thing babies do where they stop clutching you, turn slippery and slide down your body like a greasy fire pole.

She must have seen my panic and my need for tradeable books.

This kind lady sitting at a cafe table with her family and feeding her own small baby, offered to watch the double stroller so that I could go in.

I thought about all those bad mothers, and how you shouldn't leave your babies with strangers. But then, I also saw that she had four kids of her own, and people with four kids don't often kidnap babies much less twins, and likely didn't even have room in her minivan if she did want to kidnap my babies. I looked back into the book room. In that moment of decision, another hundred books had been scooped up by the rabid masses. I figured, gee, her kids are sitting there so polite and nicely, if she did steal my kids, they would probably turn out better mannered than I could ever make them.

I decided to risk it.

I popped out a couple baby bottles, thanked her profusely and ran in with my empty tote bag. I was kind enough to pop my head out every three or four minutes to see if she needed relieving or had run off to make my kids her own, but they were all fine.

Obviously, most of the best books were gone by now, but I scoured. Not so much for stuff I wanted to read, but for stuff that was popular and tradeable. I came out of there with 35 books, including The Lovely Bones, a book I had planned to put on my WANT list anyway!

I again thanked the woman profusely for not stealing my children, and I came home with my booty, put the kids to bed for their overdue nap, took a fleeting look at the dirty dishes in the kitchen, the toys all over the floor, the fingerprints on the mirror... and sat down to enter all my books into swaptree.com.

Now I am done. It seems the database doesn't recognize many of the older books, but I was able to enter 30 books. And now! Now! Now I have my choice of 516 books, 147 Music CDs, 122 movies, and 9 video games!!

Isn't that awesome!!??

I need to go out and get me some shipping envelopes with the little bubble wrap layer inside.

OOooooooh, this is gonna be fun. Now I just have to find time to read!!