A couple weeks ago, Heidi was up visiting me in Seattle and observed a couple of new habits I'd picked up. These included:
- Filling up my coffee mug with hot water to heat the cup before putting the coffee in
- Cooking bacon in the oven, rather than in the frying pan
- Cooling the bacon pan outside, on the stoop
After seeing these, Heidi commented, "You are sooooo turning into Grandpa!"
It's true: these are classic Gramps maneuvers.
But so what? I LIKE having a hot mug for my coffee-- it helps the coffee stay hot longer! And I LIKE cooking bacon in the oven-- it's less messy! And I LIKE cooling the pan out on the stoop-- it rescues the kitchen from permanent bacon-aroma!
I mean, you know-- COOL that I'm picking up the idiosyncrasies of a 79-year-old man, but... whatever. The Gramps has good ideas.
The latest habit I've adopted is perhaps my favorite: I'm listening to an audio book in my car. I LOVE IT. My entire life, I have LOVED being told stories. I loved being read to-- I loved LOOKING at books, even before I could read... I love plays, I love novels, I love picture books... And I LOVE being told stories. Dorky to admit I listen to books-on-cds, but I loooooove it.
Right now, I'm listening to Atonement, by Ian McEwan. What a story. I got it from the library before a long drive out of town last weekend-- it made the three hours there and the three hours back FLY by. The story has me enraptured-- I've become totally lost in the descriptions of the lazy hot afternoon in the Surrey countryside... Of the bizarrely erotic moment when Cecelia strips off her outer clothes in front of Robbie and plunges into the fountain... Of the dinner, and the delicious, horrific tension... Of the thick dark night that the search party scatters out into... Of Briony's frenetic fantasies... Of Robbie's exhausted walking through the war-torn French countryside...
I get of school now, jump into my car, and once more am transported into this delectable story. It's such a chocolate truffle, every time it begins again.
And the best part is! It solves the problem of hardly EVER have time to read for fun. On breaks, I gobble up books, but I'm always bemoaning the fact that there are so many books out there that I HAVEN'T read yet. Maybe it's cheating to listen to them rather than read them-- but what a great way to use this otherwise wasted time in the car! I'm becoming more well read! Sort of!
It's totally my new favorite thing.
Anyway: I probably WON'T be picking up Grandpa's appetite for peanut-butter and mayonnaise sandwiches, nor his habit of wearing a nightcap to bed... But the audio-book thing is a stroke of genius. Oh, the STORIES...!
