Little Library

Yesterday the dog barked indicating that there was someone outside. When I looked out the window, I saw a city official vehicle. I recognized it, so I went out side. GG was refilling my little library.

The City of Fort Lauderdale will give you a little library, for free, fully decorated or not, to put on your property. They look like oversized bird houses, and if you’re paying attention, you’ll see them all over town in parks and such.

One of my neighbors, owns and operates a thrift shop. They also bid on abandon storages, and sell off the stuff on-line. Well, as it turns out, nobody buys books any more. He can’t even give them away. He told us that he has a wall of books at the store that say, Free and hardly ever any body grabs one. So he just recycles them. But now, I have a library in my house! He’s been giving me a steady supply of books so I can keep my library stocked.

The thing is that people are taking the books! I’m having to refill that thing every other day. The husband was concerned, because of the shear amount of books that are being taken in such a short time, as to what is being done to these books. But people are just reading them!

As I take the books out of the boxes, I read the titles. Pretty standard romance and crime detective books are the majority, but occasionally I’ll fine something like Steve Harvey’s book: Act Like A Lady, Think Like A Man. You guys, it’s even highlighted all over the place! That was unexpected. A lot of them are library books from other states, over a decade old. I also found the Conan series in there.

They other day it rained and some of the books got a little wet, so I had to go through them one by one, to see which ones were still good. In the middle of that, I found Nicholas Sparks: A Walk to Remember. I haven’t read any of his stuff, I don’t know why, I just haven’t. But as I flipped the pages making sure that they were dry, I found two pieces of paper. One was a phone number. And the other one had this:

Life is a game in which you are juggling 5 balls. The balls are called WORK, FAMILY, HEALTH, FRIENDS & INTEGRITY. And you are keeping them all in the air. But one day you finally came to the understanding that WORK is a rubber ball, if you drop it, it will bounce back. The other four balls FAMILY, FRIENDS, HEALTH & INTEGRITY- ARE MADE OF GLASS. If you drop one of these, it will be irrevocably scuffed, recked, perhaps even shattered. And once you truly understand the LESSON OF THE FIVE BALLS, you will have the beginning of balance in you life.

Story of the five Balls

Really. It’s a quote from the book. That’s not what’s interesting to me. We all have life philosophies. What is interesting to me is that someone took the time and effort to write this down because it was important to them. Was it a high power lawyer trying to balance her career with motherhood? Was it an ignored wife? Was it a teenage girl, preparing herself for the the future? Was it an grandma, reminding her husband that it’s time to retire? I don’t know… but I like it.

But now, I may have created another OCD pattern: every time I get a new box of books, I’m going to go through each one, to see what else I a can find!

Based on the handwriting, I’m pretty certain the previous owner was a woman….