Books

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations. ~ Henry David Thoreau

A room without books is like a body without a soul. ~ Gilbert K. Chesterton

The books that the world calls immoral are books that show the world its own shame. ~ Oscar Wilde

When I first moved to Baltimore, my mom arranged for me to stay with this family that went to school with my dad. She felt that I needed some support moving cross country. There were issues with this arrangement from the start, I won't bore you with the horrendous details. Needless to say, I am adamently opposed to living with anyone that isn't related to me by blood.

Just to state the facts, I was super nice. I did recognize the fact that I was staying in their house and obeyed their rules. They had children which I babysat almost every single day I wasn't at work, I had no outside friends aside from work, and I was pretty much their live-in housekeeper/nanny/cook/moving service etc. One of the rules was no secular music...so the only time I played non-Christian music was when noone was home. Apparently, their kid had been singing some hip-hop lyrics and they figured he got it from me. And if you know me, you will know that I don't really listen to Hip Hop. He probably got it from school. Lil wanker.

That was what caused the freak-out.

On the last week I was there, things went from worse to worst. I had been staying in a room in the basement and the husband came downstairs one evening and started preaching to me, about taking 'sinful and immoral' articles into my new apartment. I was perturbed, wondering what in the world he was talking about.

He placed himself between my bookshelf and the doorway, and he preceeded to throw ALL my books and CDs in a trash bag. He filled 2 trashbags with about 120 books and about 98 Cds, books and Cds that I've been collecting since my teenage years...and fought me as I tried to get my possessions from him. He was 6'4", 250lbs....I was 5'4" and 120lbs. I attacked him with a ferocity of a mother hen defending her chicks.

Meanwhile his b*tch of a wife is hearing my screams and yells downstairs, and she comes to the doorway and turns right back around. Long story short, he won ~ I was bruised and banged up, and my prized collections were carted off somewhere...to the Junkyard. No, not to a library, not to a yard sale, not even to the trash where I could get them. He drove to the junkyard and dropped them off!

When I tallied up the final figures, he had trashed $2225.89 worth of my belongings. I moved out a week later and haven't spoken to them till this day. You might be wondering why I didn't sue him in court. My best answer? I punked out. Not only can he prove that I stayed there rent-free for several months, I have no witnesses that he stole my stuff. Plus, in my culture, suing is not acceptable. So I just had to wipe my tears and move on.

****end rant***

Over the past few years, I've been slowly rebuilding my collection. Some of the books and CDs are no longer in print/stores, so that part sucked even worse. Thank heavens for Ebay and LWire. Anyway, I just wanted to announce that I finally found a reprint of one of my favorite authors. It was on eBay, and sniped it and bought it before I could even think twice.

Rumor has it, they are seperated and might be getting a divorce. So yeah, Karma can be a bitch.