Comfort and Contentment

There are some pleasures in life that I group in a specific category. I guess the theme could be comfort and contentment loves! One pleasure in there, a nice cup of hot tea. Ah, the Irish influence in our family has made all of us women very avid tea drinkers. In colder weather, I will have many cups of tea a day. Not iced tea. Piping hot tea with sugar and milk. Mmm, just wonderful! Another thing, rainy days. Maybe to some, rain is not a comfort, but to me it is. Normally, I hate any sort of weather besides hot and sunny. But occasionally, if I have nowhere to go, I really enjoy a rainy day! If I'm not playing in the rain, I like to sit on my deck under the canopy and read a book and even write some poetry. The rain always inspires me so much. Of course, that is when I have quite a few cups of hot tea, further increasing my comfort and contentment! Another comfort love, the color gray. Yes, maybe that one sounds odd, too. But for some reason I have always associated gray with comfort. It's a cozy color to me. On rainy days, I like to put on my cozy, baggy gray sweatshirt and sip a cup of tea. Wow, seems like my picture of comfort is almost complete here, but it is missing a very key element! We have hot tea, rain, gray, and next, a book! Of course comfort and contentment cannot be had without a good book! And my favorite kind of book is an aged book! I hope you all know what I'm talking about, if not you have been tragically deprived, my friends! A book with a hard cover, and worn, frayed binding. Old, classic writing on the cover that is fading with the years. The pages are slightly frayed on the edges, and have for some time now been yellowed with age. Books like that have a certain feel as you crack open the cover. The pages feel a certain way as you turn them. And the smell! I confess, I am a book-sniffer, and proud of it! I unashamedly walk through a book-store or library with my nose in an open book, inhaling deeply and wearing a face of sheer contentment! I stopped noticing the looks a long time ago! A book like that is a treasure! My mom had a few books like that when I was growing up. I read a few of them. The Sun Also Rises, Jane Eyre, Root Out Of Dry Ground, and others. As I read some of those books at a young age, they went slightly over my head. But that was no matter to me because reading a book like that was utter joy! I love old books! My mom has books like that, my grandmother does, but I have none of my own. And for quite some time now I have been wanting to start building my library of classic literature and those book treasures. Today, I officially began my aged book library!

My library has a little used book store. I have visited there a couple times before, but did not find anything I liked. But today, their "Aged Books" section was stocked!! YAY! I got 3 beautiful books! The Feather Merchants by Max Shulman, Woollcott's Second Reader, and a 1964 edition of Roget's Thesaurus in Dictionary Form, first copyrighted in '31. And the best part...I only spent $1. 75!!!! I found such amazing treasures, and it didn't even cost me $2! I felt like I was robbing the two, little old ladies running the store, but I was not tackled by a security guard on my way out, and God hasn't struck me dead for stealing from old ladies, so I think I'm okay. But wow, I feel like I've hit the jackpot here, folks! I absolutely adore these books! You have no idea how much having these three books has made my day! No, my week! I am in love! I keep rubbing the covers and opening the pages to smell that classic, old book smell! Mmmm! Yay! I am in book heaven right now! And I'm sure you are all a tad bit creeped out, but you know what, I have my books, and I don't care!!!! :)