Mysterious Books

We were moving this family, some good friends of ours, from a tiny little rental house to a much larger rental house up north, kind of north-west, nearer to the place of business where the very nice lady works, and it was one of those cold, miserable, snowy kind of days where you just bundle up and hope for the best, trying not to track snow into the new place, knowing that it's going to need to be cleaned all over again after you're done, even though the landlord has worked his tail-bones off getting the place clean in the first place.

And we probably tracked a lot of snow into the house, surprised that the heat from our bodies didn't boil it out of the air with all the huffing and puffing we were doing.  Lots of heavy boxes, heavy furniture, up the stairs, down the stairs, lifting, hefting, turning, twisting, watching your feet as you try not to trip or slip or dip or smack into a wall that snuck up on you.

It was a long, hard day of work, but it felt good to get it all done, knowing that the very nice family was going to enjoy their very nice new-to-them rental house, feeling all warm and snug and cozy inside from the sheer joy of sharing the experience.  The kind of thing that makes you look around for some more joy.

And there it was, just down the street - a little, teeny-tiny used bookshop nearly hidden away in a roadside micro-strip mall.  The perfect place to relax for a few minutes, peruse the stacks of paperbacks, breathe in the familiar woodsy, slightly mildewed aroma of cheap books and old shelves, find some old Classics to take home and enjoy.

So I did.