Living the dream

I've been craving magazines. Thick glossy fashion pages, trashy celeb gossip, over-intellectual pieces printed on recycled paper, reviews and profiles and ads…I want it all. Maybe it's a direct result of my early 20th-century novel burn-out (3 down on my book list, 97 to go—I'm officially taking a little break), or maybe it's just a side effect of living the life of leisure. I've been somewhat successfully ignoring them in grocery check-out lines, instead being content to daydream about which subscriptions I'll splurge on this fall (at the moment I'm thinking The New Yorker, Women's Health, and Domino).

I had just about reached a breaking point, succumbing yesterday and buying the Atlantic Special Fiction Issue. And then today I got the most glorious, perfectly-timed package in the mail. Before I left for the summer, I got a private mailbox in H-town, but I keep forgetting to have them forward my mail because I pay all my bills online. I finally called them Monday to get the past 6 weeks' mail, which, as I discovered today, contained almost exclusively magazines: 5 weeks of Entertainment Weekly and a Vanity Fair with my (gossip) girl Blake on the cover. I'm in magazine heaven.

The BossiPod's playing the "My Favorite Ladies" playlist, the Bossy Cat's dozing with her chin on my arm, and I'm drinking lemonade and eating green grapes with Cabot Extra Sharp Cheddar, happily ensconced on the couch surrounded by magazines.

Unemployment has its perks.