Ever since kindergarten when it became apparent that there are gradations of perfection in coloring and pasting I've been a Type A obsessive workaholic, so the fact that these traits have followed me into my fifth decade (okay, almost sixth, but let's not talk about it) is probably no big surprise. I do bookselling like I do everything else -- by total immersion. So to take a weekend off to go to Michigan to see our oldest daughter and her family, whom I love beyond words, is a classic push-pull situation if ever there was one.
We hit the road early last Saturday, Eric looking ahead to the festivities and me fretting over not shipping orders. But, as always, as soon as he popped an audiobook into the CD player at the Ohio Turnpike I was transported to Michigan mode. The problem with Michigan mode is that I'm fine as long as there's nonstop activity, but give me some downtime and I'm on Moira's laptop checking to see what's happening in the book world. This time I did pretty well though. No sneak peaks until after Tyler's soccer game, we'd swung on the swings at the park, visited with Mary, Moira's mother-in-law, and Dylan at age one had been hugged, kissed and played with until he fell asleep face down on the family room floor from sheer granny exhaustion. Only then did I log into my web server to check my email. Four orders from ABE, one from alibris ....
"Don't do that, Gran! We're ordering pizza and I want you to watch Karate Kid with me."
One look at Tyler's six year old face puckered with consternation and I closed the laptop without even confirming the orders and put in my own order for a veggie with everything. By the time the pizza arrived and the movie was ready to roll, even Baby was ready to party. I never thought of the books again until I was ensconced in the guest room several hours later without a book to read. In the throes of my early morning angst over not shipping I'd forgotten to pack my book. I could borrow one, but I knew from past experience that the offerings on Warwick Drive were confined to the definitive works of Anne McCaffrey and Nora Roberts. Given THAT, what could a bookseller do but contemplate the precarious future of bookselling until she fell asleep?
The next thing I knew Moira was at the bedroom door informing us that the tornado sirens had sounded and we needed to hit the basement -- NOW. So off we flew, two sleeping little boys in tow, to sit on the old leather couches in our jammies and watch omnious red splotches on the TV screen. By the time we got an all-clear forty-five minutes later I was quietly freaking out. A year ago we'd had a mini-flood and lost some of our inventory. What was happening in Ohio? Torrential rain? Tornadoes? A plague of locusts? HELP! I NEED TO GO HOME NOW!
Back in the guest room I inwardly had two nervous breakdowns and one general meltdown while Eric snored beside me. "Do you think everything's okay at home?" I whispered when I couldn't stand another second of solitary hysteria.
The fact that he answered immediately was less than comforting. "I don't know. It crossed my mind that we could have trouble."
I thought about the flood, books floating, the roto-thingy guys stopping work to argue over who was going to kill a #$%@% spider .... Oh God. We need to go HOME! But then I thought of Dylan's birthday party the next day. My sweet baby turning one. How often will THAT happen? If the books were going to get wet they were probably already wet, so going home wouldn't change a thing. Yes, but the mess and the not knowing was too awful... Back and forth it went until around two a.m. when a baby who smiles like Charlie Brown trumped the books, wet or dry.
In the end I decided to pull a Scarlett O'Hara and not think about it until after the party. And for once that's exactly what I did which is how I came to have these cute pictures. As for what went on in northeastern Ohio while I was fretting about biblical weather -- nothing.
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