blogging, Liam, moving away and Chuck

I've been a bad blogger.

Well, an absent blogger.

In these hectic times of trying to find an apartment in our price range in a city two thousand miles away, which will be big enough not just for me and Gabe but for me and Gabe and Liam the Baby With Many Belongings, I find myself with less time to blog. Blogging only happens on my laptop and I haven't had much of a chance to pull it out from under the couch (where it's safe from Liam's curious fingers).

I've also been a bad blogging buddy. I haven't been keeping up with and commenting on the lives of handful of readers. If any of you actually have been reading. Or re-reading since there's been nothing new.

I do have big plans. The move northeastward will commence in four weeks. CRAZY! My brother-in-law is marrying a very nice lady next weekend. I have art supplies for a beautiful project I am planning, hoping it will be as beautiful as I plan. And sellable on Etsy.

And Liam's been amazing. Since I have been MIA, he started crawling, pulling himself up to stand and sprouted his first tooth. That all happened within seven days of each other. He'll be nine months old this Thursday. CRAZY! More about him later.

Once we move I will no longer be working at a bookstore with amazing prices and an amazing employee discount, so I am trying to collect a few books I really really want, before I can never afford books again. Last week I bought Diary by Chuck Palahniuk, and this week I found copies of Fight Club and Rant. The bonus about that is, I didn't even know Rant existed until I saw it sitting on the counter, and my new copy of Fight Club was published before the movie was released (or it's a re-issue) so it doesn't have Brad Pitt or a bar of pink soap on the cover. I hate movie tie-in book covers. The problem with it is that it's a pretty old copy that I had to take spiderwebs off of when I found it and it makes my fingers smell like stale storage and maybe even cigarette smoke while I read it. Reader(s), that's a big deal for me since I am a germaphobe and never buy used books from our store that are icky. But this one, I had to. It doesn't have Brad Pitt on the cover!!!

I started reading it last night and seriously. I want to kiss Chuck Palahniuk. Figuratively. For writing the way he does. I am really loving this book. I was sitting on the couch reading it last night and my heart was actually racing. Because I loved it so much. That had never happened to me while I read a book. Maybe when I was a lonely, depressed teenager who read PG-rated kissing scenes in lame teen novels, my heart raced a little in envy because I sure wasn't kissing anybody. But as a mostly happy adult who gets to kiss someone regularly my heart does not race while I read. And I work in a bookstore. Maybe my reading habits had seen busier days before the arrival of my son, but I have read a lot of books.

I do wish I had read the book before I saw the movie, not because they are of opposite quality, but because whenever the narrator mentions Tyler Durden I picture Brad Pitt and whenever Marla Singer is on the page I picture Helena Bonham Carter. I have nothing against Brad and Helena but I picture their very Tyler/Marla mannerisms, and even though (and probably because) my heart races for Chuck's words I wish I was creating these images from pure imagination. Funny, though, I haven't pictured Edward Norton yet while reading, and I like him more than Brad and Helena.

And my lovely Gabe decided a couple weeks ago to ever so casually mention that Choke will be a movie due out later this year and didn't understand why I FREAKED OUT! got really excited about it. I loved Choke. Chuck is co-writing the screenplay, as he did with Fight Club, so it should be a close representation. Be still, my fluttering heart.

xoxo Nora