Yesterday afternoon I was sitting at my desk when I noticed the UPS truck slowing down in front of our house. I watched as the UPS man grabbed a fairly large box and carried it to our front door. As he left the box at the doorstep, he rang the doorbell and walked back to the truck.
“What did you order now?”, I ask my husband, knowing that all of the packages delivered lately have been something to do with his electronics hobbies.
“Nothing”, he replies.
Then, a smile comes across my face as I remember that large order I placed on Amazon last Monday…the one which shipped only on Thursday. “That was fast”, I thought.
My husband looks down at the large box from the upstairs balcony and asks, “How many books did you order?”
“Uh, five, I think.” Ok, it was really seven, but who’s counting.
“Are you going to read all of those?”, he asks.
“Sure, eventually…”, I reply. Yes, eventually it will be as I recall that another seven books were delivered to our door less than a month ago, three of which were for the kids.
I decided to check Amazon’s “Your Orders” section, selected “Orders placed in the last 6 months” from the drop down menu, and counted five orders which made a total of 35 books. Yes, thirty-five books. A dozen books deal with food and food photography. Nine books were children’s books, two were for my husband as a Christmas gift and dealt with woodworking, four are in the photography/videography category, two deal with psychology, three have to do with business and/or writing, another is the new Grisham novel (which I finally finished a couple weeks ago), one is book of poems, and the last book is one woman’s story of moving to a small village in Croatia with her husband and two children for several months. I’ll have yet to find time to read that book. Of course, I’m interested in seeing her view of the encounter with her long-lost ancestors, even though she had no immediate connection to any family and, most importantly, did not know the language before embarking on this adventure. One day I hope to write a book about the island where I spent several of my summers as a young child. In my case, I do know the language and do have a lot of family scattered about the country – both along the Dalmatian coast and in northern Croatia. I also plan on including many photographs.
I’m looking forward to spending time with all of my latest books this year as I explore new recipes, photograph the food resulting from those recipes, and watch my children look through their new books – my favorite being “Harold and the Purple Crayon”. I’m sure it won’t be long until the UPS man returns with another shipment from Amazon. Until then, I’ll be "plenty" busy.