Insomnia can lead you to read books. I didn't sleep at all last night.

At the Massage Envy where I used to work, we had a break room. In this break room was a small collection of books and magazines. Most of the books were reference materials, pertaining to things massage therapists might need to look up, the better to formulate a treatment plan for their client.

Also, there was this book. "The End of Eve" - A Memoir by Ariel Gore. It showed up on the break room table one day, nobody knew who left it there. It was published in 2014. But I don't remember precisely when it showed up on the table. Our break room table was not that big, so the book got stuffed in with the reference books. 

Not this Eve.

Nobody ever did anything with it. It just sat there in the break room, hanging out with the reference books. A few times over the year and a some months it sat there, I considered reading it and picked it up and read (and reread) that it was about a the last days of a slightly crazy woman dying from cancer. Okay, more than slightly crazy. The author, her daughter, doesn't really go into the rest of her mother's life in great detail. 

So I would remember that I didn't want to read this book and I'd put it down again, back with the pathology reference book and the trigger point chart. On my last day of work there, at the Massage Envy in Algonquin (in November 2015) I just appropriated the book and took it home with me.

The book itself, as just a book, is slightly intriguing. It has a sticker on it. It says "in lieu of galley". I don't know what that means. It's also been read by someone, because it has sporadic underlining. But the underlining doesn't seem to have any reason behind it. The underlined bits don't really seem connected to each other and don't appear significant in any way to me. But I guess they must have been to who ever read this first.

Ah. I looked up "in lieu of galley". If you submit a book for review somewhere and send the actual finished book instead of a bound manuscript or a galley proof, you put that sticker on it. 

There's an inscription in the front. It's difficult to read, the handwriting looks rushed. It sort of looks like it says, "Dear June - Jan. 28 or feb 11 rebs!" with an unreadable scribble of a name (I'm assuming) below that. I have no idea what that means. I don't think the name is the author. The first letter of the name looks the same as the "D" in what I think is "Dear".

It was an interesting book, not a hefty read. But odd, very odd. I'm not reviewing the book. I'm not coherent enough to do that, given my insomnia of the past few days and my raging writers block. Also, I'm not really sure how to review books in the manner that people who know how to do these things do these things. I'm also not good at synopsisizing or summarizing or anything that needs to be concise yet informative.

  ___________________________________________________

I still have fucking writer's block and I'm damn sick of it. It's making me crazy. I miss my characters but they won't come out and play with me.

Copyright Sathis Ragavendran

Baltic Amber Cognac Necklace

These two things will make more sense later. Trust me.

I'm going to the Friday morning MA class. Hopefully that will wear me out enough to sleep. Also, I just need more than two classes a week if I'm going to show any improvement. I was supposed to be on call for the chiropractor on Fridays, but he hasn't texted me or called me in over a month. I'm not sure if I even work there anymore. I'm going to have to deal with that soon because I'll need my 1099 for filing our taxes and also I have some supplies there that I paid for.

I'm going to class. It's at nine am I think and it's a two hour class. That should work.

_________________________________________________

Or perhaps not. I was sitting here, having a snack before class so I wouldn't faint and I'm crashing. I doubt I'd be able to get up to the dojo without having to pull over. No class for me.