October 4 – “Busted”

We braved the teeming masses yesterday to wade through the annual Rosenberg Library used books sale.  Once through the door we split up.  Divide and conquer strategy, of course.  Chris went straight to the children’s books.  I went across the hall to check out the so-called “rare” books.  Now in the past they have had some fascinating and really old books for sale, often at quite reasonable prices.  Yesterday, however, the most I can say for the books they offered is that they were … old.  Some of them.  Others weren’t really all that old, but they looked like they had been through Hurricane Ike and left to dry out in a dank storeroom somewhere.  Not much to offer, so I weaved my way through to the other side to join Chris.

And the children’s book section proved to be … a challenge.  There were people everywhere.  It was honestly difficult to turn around, much less scan through the tables of books.  And there were tables of books all right.  Science and nature and first readers and picture books and even DVD’s.  We ran across a few of our teacher friends who were scarfing up books for their classrooms, passing discoveries across the table to each other and waving in the general direction of where they saw the easy readers or the animal books or the save the planet ecology books.  Once I located Chris she asked if I would text Christi and Christina, our family homeschool Moms, to see what they would be studying this year.  April was already there with Nathan and Cailyn, accumulating their own stash.  My instructions soon arrived, so I had my mission.  Astronomy.  Cheetahs.  Land creatures.  Got it.  I found some astronomy stuff.  And plenty of land creature books.  Surely one of them had cheetah stuff.  A later text requested dragons or trains, but sadly, and surprisingly, I was not as successful with those.  Maybe next time.  We tossed in two DVD’s with our box of goodies.  Despicable Me 2 and Tangled.  I still haven’t seen that ice queen movie from last year.  The one with last year’s Halloween favorite, Elsa.  They didn’t have that one, though. 

I would say we made it through without spending too much money, and that’s the point, I guess.  We saw several friends and met a few new folks.  Like when the scanner went off as we were leaving.  Busted.  I was carrying the box, so I immediately cried out, “I confess.  It was me.  I did it.”  The security guard was standing right next to us, and with a chuckle, he informed us that I had just paused too long in the security scanner’s line of sight.  So basically it was telling me to get out of the building.  Happy to oblige. 

Hebrews 4:7 says, “Therefore God again set a certain day, calling it Today, when a long time later he spoke through David, as was said before: ‘Today, if you hear his voice, do not harden your hearts.’”

Father, than you for the great things available to the imagination of those who read.  Amen.