Friday, October 10th

Friday, October 10th 

Sunny’s 

Pages 178-210          

A Discovery of Witches 

It’s a Friday afternoon and I had planned to meet up with one of my friends and colleagues at 4 o’clock for a beer in the Aksarben area of Omaha. Fun fact: Aksarben is Nebraska spelled backwards! If you didn’t know this, don’t feel bad. I actually lived in the Aksarben neighborhood for almost a year and never put two and two together. 

As happens every so often on a Friday (ahem at least every other Friday if not every Friday), I start to get a little antsy around 2 pm. I decide it would be a perfect time to get some Roaming Reading in since it’s still 80 plus degrees outside and I don’t have a whole lot else to do. So I head down to Aksarben at around 3 and find a little spot in an outdoor bar area called Sunny’s. Sunny’s is only open from about May until mid-October and has concerts, outdoor games, a fun little mobile bar, and other events. Usually my friends and I hit it up at least once a summer and I’m happy I get to experience it one more time before the weather changes.

I find a spot that looks cozy but soon realize that I am in the direct sunlight and that there is no back support whatsoever on the outdoor couch I’ve selected. I move to a shadier couch and steal a pillow from another area and get settled. I find it a little hard to truly get into the book because A: there are two very chatty teens behind me who are gossiping about everything from bad fashion choices to boyfriends and B: the book is really taking a turn toward the cheesy with groan-inducing entries like this: 

Somewhere in the center of my soul, a rusty chain began to unwind. It freed itself, link by link, from where it had rested unobserved, waiting for him. My hands, which had been balled up and pressed against his chest, unfurled with it. The chain continued to drop, to an unfathomable depth, where there was nothing but darkness and Matthew. 

Uh huh. That good  ol’ rusty chain that keeps holding us back from the love we truly desire. I briefly picture cuddling up to my husband in bed and whispering, “You’ve unfurled the rusty chain inside me” to see what he’d say. His response would likely be, “Are you drunk?” Which is a fair question. I often am. 

I am not, however, drunk at that very moment and I kind of wish I was because, in addition to the gossipy girls and the purple prose, I am getting molested by tiny black bugs who are sucking my blood faster than Matthew Clairmont. Or whatever the vampire’s name in this book is. He apparently has six of them. I make it through about 30 pages and decide to call it good.