Casual Fridays

First things first: I got a little "Currently Reading" widget on the blog! (It's the little things, y'all. And go me for even knowing what a widget is, right?!) Look over to the right of the screen and check it out. (If you read my blog on your phone, it's very likely that you'll need to scroll to the bottom of the page and click on "Web View" in order to see all the extras I have on the side of the blog. I wouldn't personally know because I'm back to that flip phone life, but that's usually how it works.) I created a GoodReads account solely for the purpose of getting that little widget for my blog. So if you ever just want to stop by and check on what I'm actually reading, you can! I'll do my best to keep it up to date. 

And now I will proceed to talk about my anniversary which may get me all sappy and romantic and braggy about my amazing husband so if that totally makes you gag, feel free to skip this part because I so get that. (But don't miss out on the crazy book haul which I will definitely be talking about later in this post.)

Our anniversary fell on a Saturday this year, and my sweetheart's schedule had him working the three days leading up to it (he's an emergency room nurse so his schedule is whack). So Friday night after another long 12-hour shift, he stopped by the store to pick up some goodies for our 4-day weekend. Usually, this means that he will walk in the door with flowers for me and I would be lying right now if I say that a teeny tiny corner of my heart wasn't a bit disappointed that that wasn't the case Friday night. 

However, I wake up at 4 in the morning alone in bed and go out in search of my husband. He intercepts me in the hallway and says he needed to get a drink of water or some such nonsense like that and sends me back to bed. Well, after several minutes of him still not coming back to the bedroom, I walk out to the front part of the house to find him arranging the most gorgeous dozen red roses you ever saw and setting up the table with this banner from our wedding day that I thought had never survived the drive away from the church. Enter scene of Cody being so exasperated that I ruined his sweet surprise and me having an emotional meltdown because I actually married the best guy on the planet and I can't even handle it. We ended up staying awake and exchanging cards (which were not identical but they both said "Happy You & Me Day" on the front—stop it), reading our love letters out loud to one another (more waterworks: we wrote these as a part of our pre-marital counseling and they are framed and hang in a prominent place in our home—even if you're already married and didn't do this, I highly recommend it; it's the sweetest), and dancing to our song (I warned you how sappy this could get, don't hate me). The whole morning is my new favorite memory and I never want to forget a single detail. 

I love you, Cody Aaron Hancock, and I don't deserve you. 

Anyway (for those of you trying to get past all the mush, here's where you should tune back in), later that morning, we drove out to Lake Wales to check out a new little used bookstore I've been hearing whispers about, and we hit the mother lode, y'all. We walked out of there with no less than 14 books, and that was only after me getting through one shelf. You guys, I cannot recommend this place highly enough. It's called The Book Shelter and they're only open on Fridays and Saturdays from 10AM-6PM, but you need to check it out. They have a fantastic selection (obviously), great incentives (we got a free book just for finding the silverfish—ask me what this means), and the prices are insane (to put this in perspective, the stack of books from The Book Shelter on the left side of the roses cost less than the four new books from Barnes & Noble on the right side of the roses). I can't even, and yes I'm going to list all the books we got because I know you want to know. If you decide to check it out, tell them I sent you. 

And now for the books. The stack on the left side from top to bottom are as follows:

A Walk to Remember : Nicholas Sparks

Hatchet : Gary Paulsen

Dogsong : Gary Paulsen

Mrs. Dalloway : Virginia Woolf

The Joy Luck Club : Amy Tan

The Devil in the White City : Erik Larson

Housekeeping : Marilynne Robinson

Lila : Marilynne Robinson

Gilead : Marilynne Robinson

The Idiot : Fyodor Dostoevsky

The Scarlet Pimpernel : Baroness Orczy

Love in the Time of Cholera : Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Beloved : Toni Morrison

East of Eden : John Steinbeck

And the new ones from Barnes & Noble because we don't just throw tradition to the wind even when we've already bought 14 books somewhere else:

Present Concerns : C.S. Lewis

The Woman in White : Wilkie Collins

I Am The Messenger : Markus Zusak

The Hunt for Red October : Tom Clancy

Cody only chose three out of all of these. I have a problem. We also walked down the street from The Book Shelter and finally spent a gift card I've literally had since our wedding. Six years seemed like long enough to hang onto it. And, of course, we had our date night to The Melting Pot and Barnes & Noble. Six years and it just keeps getting sweeter. 

The Melting Pot : 5/19/2018

Have you read any of the books from my list up there? Can you guess which three Cody picked out? Can you guess which two I've already read since Saturday?