Typing till I'm sleepy...who needs paragraphs?!?

It's late enough that everyone in my house is asleep. Well, everyone but Jolie and me. Jason always tells me how hard it is for him to sleep when the wind blows a gale outside....hmmm....I can hear the sound of his breathing (snoring, really) over the wind outside, the hum of the freezer, and the whirring of the ceiling fan! It's almost as if my mind knows that I'm going to start having later nights in the near future--like this is a self-imposed trial run. Let me tell ya---I'm not so high on it. I will admit, I have a tendency to want to sleep in. I think I get that from my daddy, no, scratch that. I KNOW I get that from my daddy! He's the world's worst about staying up watching sports, movies....anything that interests him really-until all hours of the morning. I remember a long time ago, back in the earlier years of my teens, I woke up to hear the sounds of a documentary on Edgar Allan Poe. I thought I'd left the TV on that channel so that I might wake up later and watch it, but then I realized I hadn't. (I used to read lots and lots of Edgar Allan Poe, until it all burned off my bookshelf back in '04.) As I walked into the living room, there was daddy. Sitting in his chair, a book in one hand and a big diet pepsi in the other. That's his thing really-reading. He may buy a pay-per-view movie for $4 or $5, then spends the most part of the movie with his nose in a book. My old room is almost inaccessible--there are paper grocery bags filled with paperbacks that he's read and done with. I don't mean one or two bags....I'm talking 10-15, all full to the brim. I can remember all the times when I was younger, when my daddy would take me to the book store. More often than not, I found more that I wanted in the book store than I ever did in a toy store. I realize now that I think back on it, many times in the book store I was never told no, as far as to what I could pick out for myself. Lots of times when it came to books there was almost no limit--on the other hand, at Walmart or the toy store, there were much more stringent limits as to what a little girl might pick out for herself. It stands out so clearly in my mind now how important the love of reading was to my father, and how thankful I am that he invested the time and effort in me to instill that same love in my heart for the written and printed word. I just ordered three books from Amazon.com, which isn't uncharacteristic of me. Over the last few years, I read in spurts it seems. I adore anything by Nora Roberts, and over last summer read one of her series in a matter of days. I managed to come by the first installment of the series, then absolutely had to have the rest of the saga to know how it all turned out. I told you that to tell you this--I treated myself to a new book at our little hometown *discount* store earlier this week. Very rarely do I ever have the time to read, so it really is an indulgence to buy any sort of book. I had heard so many people rave about Stephanie Myer's series, that my brain itched every time I saw one of her books on a shelf. As we perused the magazines last week, I saw a book that caught my eye...I admit, I was almost ashamed to pick it up and put it in our basket. I bought it, then read it in less than 20 hours. I loved it! I can honestly say it was hard for me to put it down, and a book had to be exceptionally enthralling for me to read it cover to cover in such a short time. I was temtped to read it again today, but I was afraid that it would take some of the effect away from the story if I already knew what was going on! I managed to wait until very late today to order the rest of the series--I finally talked myself into buying them. I'm positive I could've borrowed them from someone or even found them at the library here in town....but it wouldn't have been the same. For me, when a book captivates my attention the way Twilight did, I have to own it myself for future reading! I have several sets of books from my teenage years that I almost wore out. I'd read them all once or twice during the year, sometime more than that. I lost a few of them when my house burned, and it was heart breaking for me to lose some of those books. I was more upset about losing most of my books than I was about losing all of my clothes! Rambling about books incoherently at midnight is probably an often unnoticed symptom of hormone fluctuation.....but I wouldn't bet on it! Now that I've written my own short novel, the yawns are working their way up the back of my throat, making my jaws pop and my eyes water. Mission accomplished.