I Used To Dream In Technicolor

I dreamed I was a crouton the other night.

Oh no! You read that correctly.

In my dream I was a crusty stale crouton sitting on top of someones wilted salad greens. Then do you know what happened? I got picked out of the salad and put down on a napkin, before they poured all that boisterously fun salad dressing on top. Yeah. It's been kinda like that lately. I blame my kids*.

You see, it's hard to write on this blog when I'm all depressed. All those unfun type of emotions swim around in my nervous system and if I let them out they'd just plod around all scowly and weepy, half-heartedly kicking car-licking buffaloes in the head and making all my Twilight jokes soggy. Not cool. Plus, I'm not even sad about real stuff. (You know, like cancer, or global warming, or, um... the color gray.) I'm sad because I read a book. Well, three point zero two books, really. And I blame my kids. Yes. Again. But this time it really is their fault.

You see, Ellie and Katie pick out most of my books from the library. Something like twice a month, before I turn them loose in the children's section, I drag them over to the adult section. I'm not insane. I don't take them near the regular stacks. Oh no! I take them over to this section of our library where they put a lot of popular titles all mixed together on a couple shelves: fiction, non-fiction, biographies, self-help, whatever, all mixed together. Quick. Simple. Um, quick. Because usually after about 30 seconds Katie whines, "Can we go to the kid's section now? I'm booooorrrrrred!" and Ellie yells, "GOOOoooooo!" all long and drawn out while she toddles off pumping her arms in the air to keep herself upright. So, I let my kids hand me random books, which I dutifully put in our library bag to check out. I've been pleasantly surprised at times. Other times?

There are dead brothers, dead babies, a father who commits suicide, dead babies, dead baby ducks, more dead babies, and a mother who is murdered while carrying her baby on her head. And that last one was a picture book from Katie's pile! (Did you know Babar was that dark?) The only book I didn't read more than two pages of was entitled, A Gate at the Top of the Stairs, because after the previous three books I knew it was just going to be about a safety gate at the top of some stairway that goes on a baby killing spree. Obviously. It took me awhile, but eventually I caught onto the overarching theme there.

Now don't get me wrong. I get the whole deepen the main character by killing off some of the other characters in the story bit. Dude, I've read Harry Potter. But come on! Every single book this week? I can't handle it! I'm just not myself anymore. I even found these online:

And I was all, "eh...kinda...cute...(insert heart-wrenching tear jerking sigh here) maybe...."

Kinda cute? Kinda cute !?! They're BALLOON ANIMAL DOORSTOPS PEOPLE! Puppy balloon animal doorstops nonetheless! I should have been, I don't know, doing a Mary Poppins dance or, at the very least, belting out a slightly ribald Girl Scout camp song about my underwear!

But I didn't.

And, guys? Library day is coming again. Soon. (insert whimpering sigh with a sad puppy eye look here) Do you have any book recommendations for me?

*I figure I can keep blaming my kids, for just about anything, until they develop their own mad interneting skillz. Which, if they take after me should be around the age of 30. If they take after Jon, it should be next week.