Stilettos on the Town

I found that there's a benefit to this getting up early thing -- it made sleeping late on Saturday a lot more fun. Then I was up early again Sunday, and again today. Today, though, I didn't try to exercise before breakfast because my plan was to get to the library soon after it opened. I was done with breakfast earlier than I planned (since I got up even earlier than I planned), so I thought I'd check my e-mail, and while I was at it I verified the library hours -- and found it opened an hour later than I thought. So then I had to wait an hour and rearrange my schedule.

Meanwhile, lately I've been thinking a lot about Mary Poppins. I'm not entirely sure why, though there have been some TV ads about a touring show of the stage musical coming to town later this year, and maybe that set it off. Anyway, what I've been thinking about is the discrepancy between the cultural image of Mary Poppins and what's in the original books. The cultural image is based more on the Julie Andrews version from the movie, where she's cute and perky and sweet and optimistic, spoonful of sugar, and all that, but as I recalled from the books, she was definitely not sweet and perky and was actually a little scary. I've got the ghosts of a beginning of a character swirling around in my head, and one of the things that came to me about her was that people kind of derisively call her "Mary Poppins," thinking in terms of the movie character, but what they don't realize is that she's really more like the book character underneath. So, if I wanted to use that, I thought I ought to re-read the books. I was sure the library would have them and figured I'd get them the next time I went to the library. While I was waiting for the library to open, I searched the online catalogue and found that my branch doesn't have the first in the series. I was just starting to get annoyed about having to place a hold and wait for it, when I got a vivid mental image of a particular copy of the first book. I got up, went to the bookcase, shoved aside the To-Be-Read pile in front of the shelved books (the TBR pile lives in the spaces of the bookcase in front of the shelved/read/keeper books), and sure enough, I own a copy of the first book. I've been sitting around thinking about wanting to read a book and waiting to check it out when there's been a copy on my shelf all along.

But now I have to get to work after a weekend that was actually kind of like a weekend (though I did work some). I was even social! I took the Infamous Red Stilettos out to a party. They were probably overkill for the event, but they haven't been out to play for a long time, and shoes like that shouldn't be kept on a shelf. They might get ideas of their own or build up dangerous levels of energy, or something equally frightening. They should be safe now for a couple of months.