Kittens and Books

Yesterday was a rough day for me. I hurt my knee just walking and had a hard time getting my steps in. I discovered a mistake I made that could have cost my school thousands of dollars.† I came out of work to a flat tire with two nails in it–and the other front tire had a nail too, it just hadn’t gone down because the nail was blocking the air. Both had damage too near the sidewalls to be repaired.

$228 later, the kind gentlemen at Discount Tire had put me in their long queue to put two brand new tires on my car. As I sat down to wait the estimated ninety minutes, the pharmacy called to say that my daughter’s prescriptions weren’t covered.* Did I want to pay cash?

Naw, thanks, I thought I’d pay rent with that money.

So yeah. Rough day. When I was done talking with the pharmacy tech, I opened the Kindle app on my phone and fell into the first book I saw. Two hours in the tire store flew by unnoticed–I wasn’t there. I was in deep space fighting bad guys. Next to me, my housemate was…well, possibly in the Regency. Maybe in space. Maybe Chicago, with werewolves. Her e-reading app makes her life so much easier. No one can see what she’s reading to judge her by it.

Don’t ask–I have no idea what that’s about. But people who haven’t read a book in years will scoff at someone reading a romance novel on public transportation. And everyone seems to think that when a person is nose-deep in a book is a good time to talk to her. Weirdly she’s found that if she’s reading on her phone, people leave her alone.

That may seem like a tangent, but it’s not. Because really all this post is about, is how reading can be such a wonderful escape, and should be allowed to be an escape, and if you don’t approve of someone reading to escape then you probably don’t approve of snuggling kittens to feel better and anyone who doesn’t approve of kittens is clearly a monster. Or maybe just kitten-deprived. Anyway.

I say we could all use a little more escape in our lives, and yes, a few more kittens. The first rule of writing is butt in chair, hands on keyboard. The second is probably “see rule one.” But somewhere in the top ten, absolutely, is “write what you want to read.” I write escapist stories because I so often need an escape. There’s nothing wrong with that.

Escape. Because sometimes, you just gotta.

† Found out today that I did not cost my school thousands of dollars. Yay!
*Don’t worry. I will fight that battle, and I will win. I just dunwanna hafta.