Carving out time

I find myself in a quandry. I have little time to read these days (what? what the hell are you doing with your time? Put the bonbons down and pick up a book!), so I tend to be pretty particular about what I do read. I don't have as many lazy days that I can devote to munching through a particularly juicy tome, or at least I'm not willing to suspend other activities to do more reading. I suppose it is a matter of priorities. Right now mine lean more toward sleep than literature.

So I find myself doing dribs and drabs, in the car today while Husband did the groceries; during an oil change; just before bed because no matter what I'm reading, at 9 or 10 I react to it like it's a statistics textbook.

I have the disturbing habit of reading many books at one time. Right now my bedside table is supporting a manual on Photoshop Elements, Eldest by Christopher Paolini, Spin by Robert Charles Wilson, and an ever-growing pile of New Yorker magazines. It will take me forever to read them, witness the magazines. Every week we get a new one. Every two weeks or so I manage to sift through one. You can see where this will lead, I'm sure.
Chaos! On my bedside table!

Of course I could be reading right now if I had any sense. I suppose I am, just not in book form. But I wish I could just dedicate a day, a dark, rainy day, to reading a good book. I'd be alone in the house, with a cup of hot tea, some snacks, my cozy slippers. Perhaps I would take a nap in the middle of the day, then fall back into my book as evening came.

I know I'll have the time again. It's just hard to see that far ahead. It seems like the big things keep getting in the way of the little things. Or maybe it's the other way around; the little things do tend to get into trouble on a regular basis.