Tuesday

From the aftermath of Borders, I made my first Vegas friends. In trying to write about them without using any actual names, I've decided to go with the placeholders Martha and Stewart.

Both Martha and Stewart are very pregnant presently, and were much too gravid to accompany me on a recent shoe shopping adventure. (Very rarely does reality allow such a thing to occur in nature. I needed backup.) Words fail to describe how much these two ladies mean to me. I opened the doors of my house for Martha, and she stuffed it full of people and presents and owl-themed decorations for her baby shower. (It was epic, dear. I hid upstairs for decent portions of it.) And so it was that Target.com flubbed my order for Stewart's registry, and I came to her more modest shower event with a Halloween-sized bag of Skittles with a bow on it. Stewart chewed her way through half the rainbow before I met her mother.

I was entertaining Stewart with sprightly impersonation of Martha when a series of texts hit my phone. And in the center of a baby shower, I learned one of the old Borders crew was dead. Not only that, but a young lady we all came to love during the Borders store closing, barely a month gone by. One hired by Stewart's husband, who kept a tender presence at the shower, mostly by Stewart's side. Did I mention they are having twins? Stewart hired me to Borders a year and a half ago and I knew how desperately she wanted children by the end of the interview.

It was all just pink and blue for a while.

But it was the sight of Martha's confident waddle down the sidewalk, laden with pastel parcels and trailed by her stalwart husband under his own load of gifts, that gave me strength that day. I claimed a seat of honor at the end of the gift handlers line and stacked a fort worth of baby clothes, toys, organic diapers, and Martha's two homemade, crocheted baby blankets. Zoning out was entirely acceptable during discussions of baby diapers and the size of any discrete parts of mom and/or dad.

Many people better than I are acknowledging and commemorating the gentle soul who passed on. You can't write this kind of tragedy. I certainly don't want to.

Guilt blunts the edge of new job excitement and looms over the countdown to my parents' first visit. At the same time, a splinter of cold fear inspires new thoughts. I realize how quickly it could all be over. And as suddenly as that, I've let fear keep me from marrying the greatest partner I've ever known.

I have a problem with that.

crisis managed

I closed Borders. It was unpleasant, but not without entertaining acquisitions, like a filing cabinet, or a box of Oregon Chai. I enjoyed a pleasant bout of genuine camaraderie among my fellow booksellers amidst excessive slacking. Also bowling. And then it was over.

But not before a large moving truck full of Russians delivered a billion rotting cardboard boxes that hadn't seen the light of day since last Easter. My former life caught up with me in one tremendous rush, just in time for my job to end and a gigantic celebration of baby-making to possess my house.

After that, I took a week off to play the entire Quest for Glory series as a Paladin. Then I got two jobs.

I didn't realize how damn fulfilling it would be to tutor my 5th grader. Nor how lucrative.

Somewhere in there, Barnes & Noble hired me. Now that my sense of competition is six feet under, B&N provides a natural evolutionary stage for Bookwench. Besides, I like my e-nom de plume.

My 5th grader has a thing for Borders, specifically the coffee shop. It's all he wants to talk about. Whenever he gets confused about a math problem, I put it in terms of muffins and lattes. It inexplicably works! Of course, now he's very pro B&N and wants to know exactly what baked goods stock the cafe. I feel like this kid and I have similar priorities.