Let's just say it was temporary insanity and call it a day.

There are very very few things that I feel are superior about myself. Average looks, average housekeeping skills, average cook, average at most things despite giving my best at everything. Well, maybe my hair. I have terrific thick hair that is usually, unfortunately, pulled into a sloppy ponytail. But the potential is there, dammit. I do not purport to be better than anyone at all of these things and many, many more. But. BUT! I am a GREAT reader. I love to read kind of like I enjoy, um, breathing. It is essential to my well-being and I must have a book that I am in the middle of at all times, lest my brain get that foggy, unused feeling. And, oh boy, am I ever a book snob. It is one of my biggest hangups and I just cannot get past it. The gist of it is this: I WILL JUDGE YOU. I will see you with a trashy grocery-store romance novel with a busty maiden riding off into the sunset with Fabio and I WILL JUDGE YOU FOR READING IT. I can't help it, I've tried. I like books that require an IQ above 90 to read and actually have some sort of underlying message or deeper meaning beyond OMG, they totally fell in love and grew old together and had an idyllic life the end. Which is why I'm more than a little bit ashamed to say what I am about to say. I READ TWILIGHT. AND I LIKED IT. In all honestly, I LOVED it. I went into what I now refer to as My Dark Place, which included reading...nay, DEVOURING...a whole 700-page book in two days. FOUR TIMES. Yes, all four books. Each in two days. My children may or may not have had to bathe themselves and eat Cheerios off the floor for lunch while Mommy was reading, please for the love of Jeebus, leave Mommy alone, I NEED TO FIND OUT IF BELLA AND EDWARD EVER JUST DO IT ALREADY OR IF THEY JUST WHINE AT EACH OTHER FOR ALL ETERNITY. CRIPES. I still to this day do not have the foggiest idea what it was about these teen-romance-vampire-fiction books that put me in a completely idiotic trance. It surely was not the writing. My hat is off to you, Ms. Meyer. Well played, ma'am. You took a plot line and characters and other-worldly creatures that are best suited to a Harlequin romance novel and you have managed to turn it into a worldwide best-seller, a feeding frenzy of teenagers and housewives ensuing in it's wake, Bravo. But a way with words you do not have, madam. Me thinks you were betting on girls and women everywhere caring oh-so-deeply for your hero, Edward (SUCCESS!) and reading your books one after another just to get more, more, more, oh God, I read those books like a crackhead in need of another hit, it was just sooo good just one. more. page. Ahhhh. So on that front? Well done. All of that to say that the writing left much to be desired, so it wasn't that. Hell, I can't say what it was that compelled me read over 2800 pages of that garbage. I still feel ashamed to admit that I have crossed over into the group of twelve year old girls who read this crap. I have read Chaucer. CHAUCER. And my top four favorite books of all time are The Secret History, Anna Karenina, The Fountainhead, and Orthodoxy. I consider myself a well-read, intelligent person. Yet I fell prey to this vampire-werewolf nonsense phooey just like the preteen angst-ridden girl thumbing the pages of book #3 on the school bus. But I did. And I loved every minute of it while I was in the midst of glittering vampires and stuttering, awkward heroines and romantic werewolf love interests. And I will see the movies, because I cannot stop myself, apparently. Would I read them again? Eh. Probably not. I'll file that week of my life in the same place I filed that night in high school when I tried a certain, um, "thing" that left me seeing dragons and Oompa Loompas: ridiculous, unnecessary, and slightly frightening. And kind of thrilling.