Checking in

So I'm not exactly sure how this has happened, but I am suddenly the owner of a Kindle.

Kindles are this crazy invention that Amazon has come out with that allow you to download books over something they're calling the Whispernet. The Whispernet is basically free Internet - they don't charge you to use it (though you do have to pay for the books, which are, in my two days of experience, offered at a pretty good discount), and it's kind of everywhere: I don't get it yet, but it doesn't matter. It's there: it works, believe me. You can then read these books on your Kindle, forever if you like. They don't expire, you don't have to turn them in like library books, they're yours. It's a silent iPod. I love it.

You shop for content using the Kindle Store, which at first I thought was just a cutesy name for Amazon.com. I was under the impression (for about five minutes) that every book I could possibly want would be available in the Kindle Store; I was sorely disappointed.

Instead, lots and lots of other books are available, but after looking for one single book and not finding it, I got a little confused. It's not unfamiliar, this feeling, but it rarely happens to me when I visit an actual bookstore. Inside an actual store with books, I can find reading material in approximately 30 seconds. This feeling of confusion was akin to what I normally feel in record stores. In record stores, I have to have some idea of what I want because those CD cases and LP covers aren't giving anything away: I lose my mind in record stores. Sure, now you can listen to them at places like Borders or Barnes and Noble (god I miss Tower Records), but still - you have to start somewhere, and if there's a broken link in the chain of things I'm looking for, I lose all interest and suddenly need an ice cream cone. Even iTunes bewilders me sometimes, if I don't know what I want ahead of time.

Patrick, on the other hand, has no problem in record stores or bookstores - in bookstores he heads straight for the magazines, where he finds his geek music/computer/technology periodicals (I almost always gather up the Atlantic Monthly, the New Yorker, Wired, and People); in record stores he has this ability to find something unusual and interesting, though it does usually take him about two hours. Two hours for him in a record store is nothing. For me it's pretty much death on a stick.

Anyway, I have totally digressed from my original point, which was, for a moment there, heady excitement about my new toy. And now I have no idea what books I want to read on my Kindle.

So somehow, accidentally it seems, I have ended up with two books on "spirituality."

All of a sudden, after months of reading and re-reading Philip Roth and Peter Hamilton, Anne Rice ("The Vampire Lestat" was perfect for floating in the pool), here I am, reading "Eat, Pray, Love" and "Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith."

Neither of which I had any intention of reading. Anne Lamott, the author of "Grace (Eventually)" has been one of my most favorite authors, but since I've started reading her non-fiction ("Bird By Bird" excepted; I can always re-read "Bird By Bird") I have to take a long time in between books. Because those books have started to be about Jesus. And I'm not sure I want to read about Jesus. Even though she does it in a totally entertaining way, the way, if I were going to write a book about Jesus (I am so not writing any books about Jesus), that I would hope I could; it's still not exactly my favorite topic. Jesus, I mean. There's just something about it (him) that makes me squirmy and nervous, even though it's her writing about it (him) (Him) and her writing has always meant something to me.

The other book, "Eat, Pray, Love" is a bestseller, and I downloaded a sample (before I downloaded the Lamott book... I am not telling this story well or in the right order at all, am I) before knowing what exactly the book was about because downloading a sample is something you can do with a Kindle. And this particular sample seemed really long and interesting, and while reading the sample, I discovered that the author also has a good way of putting her hand into my head and patting me from the inside, which was kind of a surprise.

Does that make sense?

So here I am, today, about to get up and start futzing around the house before we have to get ready to go to a funeral and then to visit my parents, where I am supposed to review these papers the doctor gave my mother about this procedure she has to have that's probably nothing special at all, a routine procedure which will make her feel a hundred times better that people all over the world are probably having right now with no problem at all, which she is sort of freaking out about, and I've just been lying in bed for about 4 hours now, reading about Jesus and Anne Lamott and yes, that strikes me as weird.

Yesterday I was talking to my mother about the procedure, on the telephone, and she asked me to come over and read these papers, and I said I would. She told me that she had talked to her (wildly Christian) friend Mary about it, and Mary told her to pray that she would know what to do. What to do? What to do is not the question. The doctor will tell her what to do. I told my mother to pray that God would tell the doctor what to do. I told her to pray that God would help her be brave and help the doctor be smart, and that her job was to try to stop worrying about it.

This made my mother cry.

I did not feel that great, making my mother cry.

But then I made her laugh, which seemed to even things out, except I don't remember exactly what it was I said that she found so humorous. Well, I'll be honest, it wasn't much of a laugh, but it was something. It's okay, I think. I don't know. I worry a little about me telling my mother what to pray for or who to pray to - when I pray, I always sort of do it in typical Judy Blume fashion: "Are you there, God? It's me, Irene."

See, I ask the question, "Are you there?" but then I go and do it anyway.

I wonder if my mother asks, too. I used to think she knew. I'm not so sure now. I think thinking about this stuff makes me sad, which is usually why I try to avoid thinking about it.

Grrr.

Wouldn't it be nice if all I had to say today was that Patrick is out front mowing the lawn and the grass smells so good, and we saw "Nick and Norah's Ultimate Playlist" last night and loved it, and I wish I had had that high school experience and wonder if anybody really does. I liked it so much more than "Juno."

And now I'm going to go do some laundry and maybe run the dishwasher, and then get ready for a funeral, and to visit my parents, and not be sad or confused anymore.