Too Many Books

One night in the past seven days, a woman was trying to get to sleep. Her feet were freezing and the empty space on the other side of the bed threw her off nocturnally. Why, at such a late hour on a weeknight, was her husband not in bed already? Didn't he remember that he and his wife are working stiffs, nine-to-five-ish-ers with alarm clocks and whatnot? This particularly beautiful, warm, witty woman couldn't fall asleep. She tossed a little. She turned a ton. Then, she made the rookie mistake of peeling back the comforter and heading out into the living room to see what had distracted her mister. "Are you nuts?" she asked, heading toward her end of the couch and shooting an annoyed face at her husband, who sat on his end of the couch, behind his laptop. She glanced at the monitor out of the corner of her eye, and tried not to appear as if she noticed: little red x's in upper right corners being quickly clicked to close certain windows, which momentari...

Apparently, people like lists. Well, I read that somewhere. Someone wrote it = it must be true. Top Ten Reasons Amber May Discontinue TMI Thursdays in 2010: 10. If her mother read some of them then her mother would be sad. 9. If her husband read some of them then her husband would be mad. 8. TMI is really just code for lack of filter. 7. Future agents/ bosses/ lovers (what? where did that come from?) may not be amused. 6. Oversharing should be saved for alcohol soaked evenings, face to face with "live" friends who will promise to keep my sordid stories secret and inevitably blab them all around town. 5. Do people really want to hear about Amber's third nipple, Amber's nub-of-a-tail, and Amber's illegitimate throng of stephchildren? 4. People might start to wonder if any of the factoids in reason number five are actually true, and if I don't continue with TMI Thursdays... they may never know. 3. TMI does not necessarily stand for "takes more i...

Birches by Robert Frost When I see birches bend to left and right Across the lines of straighter darker trees, I like to think some boy's been swinging them. But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay. Ice-storms do that. Often you must have seen them Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning After a rain. They click upon themselves As the breeze rises, and turn many-coloured As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel. Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen. They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load, And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed So low for long, they never right themselves: You may see their trunks arching in the woods Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground, Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair Before them over their heads to dry in the s...

Isn't it unreal that a decade has passed since we got our global panties in a twist over Y2K? Another year is coming to a close, and my panties aren't in a twist about anything, unless you think the following concerns are something: considering fearing the idea of procreation credit card debt turning thirty in about fourteen months my company being bought out my job changing drastically -- except for the part about it still being in banking my dad turning sixty (it weirds me out, probably more than the idea of saying adieu to my twenties) writing 2010 on things realizing that the two-thousands thus far have been a blur (i.e. my husband and I are still arguing about whether or not we got engaged in '05 or '06.) not knowing what to call the 2010's (I'm leaning toward the twenty-teens) feeling strange about living at the turn of the century (how odd will we seem to the people who are our age a hundred years from now? I mean, don't people who live...

I'm all signed up and ready to read! If you are interested in joining the fun, head over to J. Kaye's Book Blog to enlist. I think I'll start the year with Donna Tarrt's THE LITTLE FRIEND. Next I plan to check out Barbara Kingsolver's much awaited THE LACUNA and Sue Miller's THE SENATOR'S WIFE. What books are you guys excited to read in 2010?

It's a banner day here at musings of amber murphy. Not only is it Christmas Eve (eggnog: check!) and TMI Thursday (hilarious humiliations: check!) but I am also celebrating my 100th post. I thought about linking my most memorable posts -- my favorites, the ones that got the most comments -- but that just seemed like a ton of work to do on a holiday. Instead, I'll opt to focus on the present, and post a TMI for the ages. I'll give you so much information, in fact, that you might regret ever being mildly amused by my TMI Thursdays. Are you ready for this? I went through this phase. I fondly refer to it as my six-month bar-slut phase. It started smack in the middle of the summer in 2002, and basically ended just before I started dating my future husband in early 2003. (Three years from now I can say this all happened a decade ago. I sort of look forward to that milestone.) In July of '02, I ended a two year relationship. Instead of spending weekends c...

I miss the days when my Mammaw used to come down to Louisville, Kentucky for a week in late December. I miss her sitting in the rocking chair at my mom and dad's house drinking her coffee in her deep purple robe and matching slippers. Despite missing the way things used to be, I am mostly just thankful to still have her in our lives, even if we have to go visit her these days. She refuses to move from Indiana to Kentucky to be closer to us, even though my mom is her only child. I guess I know who passed on the stubborn gene to me. The little one in the middle is my four year old niece, Carley. She is currently obsessed with that GAP kids commercial, you know, "We want comfy sweaters!" and "How cute are these boots?!" Clearly, I'm getting her a sweater and cute suede boots (with tassels!) for Christmas, and I'm going to learn the song in the commercial so we can perform it together on Christmas Day. (Formal Attire/ Officially Retired!... I've got a...

Oh sweet baby Jesus. I am exhausted. I have power-shopped the last two days away, and I am still not finished. My calf muscles are throbbing, what with months and months of general unuse, and though I shopped in sneakers, seem to be screaming at me that it is unfair to sideline them all year and then demand they work overtime around the holidays. My feet ache in agreement. I'll be honest -- there are one and a half shopping days to go and I am not quite sure I am going to be able to finish without beating my head against Wal-Mart shevles or just plopping right down in the middle of Barnes and Noble and sobbing. Um, I'm yet to buy one single gift for my husband, and also have not completed one iota of bagging  thoughful gift wrapping. You might ask why I am sitting here staring at my monitor, pounding out a blog entry. How can I sleep at night? With all there is to do, where do I get off taking leisure time this evening? To you I respond with this: suck my balls. I...

     So, people have been posting scenes from their writing today in which the characters kiss each other. It's the Official Kissing Day Blogfest , and I am applying Soft Lips, spritzing Binaca, and trying my hand at this virtual tongue tousle. If you participate, you can link to the hub here. This is an excerpt from my current WIP, which might be titled ANOTHER MAN DOWN, or FOR THE LOVE OF LAUREL LANCASTER or THE DEAD END, or perhaps none of those. Warning: it's a sad kiss.      They sat on top of the picnic table outside Latte Da. Adam dangled his legs off the edge and Laurel looked down at her jeans and picked at the frayed edges around her ankles. She could not look at him.      "I don't know that I've ever really been myself with you," said Laurel. "I want everything you don't. I want the white picket fence and a husband and children."      "What are you trying to say, Laurel?...

Where's this snow the weatherman talked about? Today there's nothing but a cold December rain here in Louisville, Kentucky. I'm supposed to be cleaning the house and wrapping my grandmother's Christmas gifts, as we are leaving for Bloomington, Indiana in a few hours. So far this morning, I have puttered around facebook, caught up on my google reader, smoked four cigarettes, and had two diet cokes for breakfast. Oh, I started a load of laundry. I'm on task! My husband is working -- he'll finish up around noon thirty -- and when he gets home at 1:00, I plan to be packed (and have him packed) and showered and ready to go, and I'll inevitably stamp around as he sits on the couch and takes forever to claim that he is ready to leave for our road trip. This is how we operate when preparing for travel. If we're going to visit my side of the family, like today, he won't be ready to go on time. If we're going to visit his side of the family -- well...

I am so zapped today. I think I need to stop staying up so late every night. Seriously, I do not even have the energy to compose this. My eyes are closing. Oh God. Caffeine crash. I am pretty sure this is like the time Jessie Spano (from Saved by the Bell, of course) was strung out on uppers and was soooo excited, sooo excited... so, so scared. Not only am I fatigued, I am also tired of certain elements of my job, like not being able to straight cuss out certain people who I work with. Seriously shut the hell up and do your job. Khtankxbye.

I may have mentioned before that my first real, live job was as a popcorn pusher. I was sixteen and a half, equiped with a driver's license and a gift from my parents -- of the minivan variety -- in which I could cruise around town. Tangent, to the tune of Ghetto Superstar: Ghetto Aerostar/ that is what you are/ You don't need a car/ vans are best by far/ Drive away with me/ from my parking space/ We can take the whole family/ Whoa-ohh-oh. Anway, I was a working girl. There was a new world of boys to crush on that fall -- not boys from my high school or youth group, but coworker boys who didn't already have an impression of me as the formerly gap toothed semi-nerd or churchy goody-goody. And then there were the assistant managers, twenty-somethings, I assumed, waltzing around in their shirts and ties and acting all wordly and superior. One (what was his name?) had a right hand that was painfully larger than his left. We gossiped about possible causes of ...

I haven't had the time to write a thing today. I've been so busy, so on task, so focused. My boss should be proud. And it's really hard to focus when this time of year rolls around. It's a race to the finish line that is December 25th -- turkey comas and black Fridays fading into the distance as we have left November in our dust. Anywho, I'm testing the waters for a new blog theme to throw in every once in awhile. Let me know what you think! This day in History: disclaimer! All trivia is subject to wikipedia being correct, so don't hold me responsible! December 16, 1944: The Battle of the Bulge Begins December 16, 2009: Amber eats a chocolate truffle three chocolate truffles. December 16, 1978: Cleveland, Ohio becomes the first post-Depression era city to default on its loans, owing $14,000,000 to local banks. December 16, 2009: Amber realizes she paid on the wrong credit card, and hopes she doesn't get a late fee. (Yes, I am a banker. We...

My husband finally fixed the gutters  after six months of me not nagging him at all. See ladies, this is how it's done. You just inwardly groan and curse his very existence , and things around the house that need fixing will evetually get fixed. In truth, the only reason he finally mustered the motivation to fix said gutter is because his brother (and his brother's new girlfriend) are spending the night at our house this weekend, to dog sit for Carson, while hubs and I head to Bloomington, Indiana to for Christmas with my grandma . In truth, I don't care why the gutter is now, once again, snugly in place -- I am just glad it is no longer dangling precariously from the house and threatening to slice through my skull on the next blustery day. Sadly, now that hubs has completed this long overdue task, I have the sneaking suspicion that he will expect me to tidy up the indoors, lest my potential sister-in-law get the impression that the Murphy'...

It's really December. We're really two weeks into December. Oh. I suppose I should start my Christmas shopping. I swear, I'm worse than the stereotypical man. I have bought one gift so far -- I ordered the book my mom wanted from amazon, since it isn't in stock (or even available for reorder) at B & N. As I window shopped around the internet (ha - is it just me or is the idea of "window shopping" online seriously fitting and funny) I thought about how I could so easily become one of those introverts who does all her shopping from the comfort of her couch. No crowded parking lots to nagivate, no canned Christmas music blaring from speakers, no greedy little children shouting... update: By the way... I totally hit the   publish post tab before I meant to...

A Banker's Christmas Tree: I would like to inform you that the tree skirt is fashioned out of bank envelopes. Please also note the suckers and the money strap chain. And the rubberband balls. Vanna White  Leigh with the tree. And wrinkled kakhis. My boring office. I stay out of it as much as I can. The rest of the joint. I would like to tag Kentucky Blonde  in this photo. She's the, uh,  blond one. Hell on earth = demanding that hundreds of customers empty out their safe desposit boxes before this branch building closes in February...

Yes, I'm all serious and writerly, but I'm a sporty girl, too. I mean, not in the coordinated, running aound with athletic gear sense, but in fandom... if there is a bigger Indiana basketball fan than me, I would like to meet him! I took these photos at a game I went to last year at Assembly Hall in Bloomington, Indiana. A friend of mine has season tickets, and her seats are pretty high up there. This was our view of the court during the first half of the game. However, at halftime the most wonderful thing happened. A man was leaving early and sold us his tickets for $10.00. They were in a section called The North Lodge -- behind the home basket and ten rows from the floor. Can you see this picture at all? Once we were cozied up in our amazing new seats, I took a picture of the nosebleeds, thinking just how far we'd come. I mean, we'd hit the big time scoring these seats, rubbing elbows with the newspaper photographers, the wealthy, and the alumni. Just look how ...

For the first bit of my overshare, I would like to announce that I have monster cramps. They came on suddenly, just when I thought I might be two days late and have exciting Christmas news to share with my family. I actually got a bit emotional thinking about it last night, about how, if I were knocked up, my mom would get all misty-eyed around the Christmas tree, and that all the attention would be on me the news would make everyone so happy. Then, I watched a bit of that Barbara Walter's special on fascinating people, and saw a shot of Kate Gosselin's bare belly -- back when it contained six little people. I started retching a little. (You see, I'm not trying to get pregant. I'm just not trying to not get pregnant.) So. There is no bun in my oven. Perhaps my breadmaker's yeast does not rise. I do not know yet, nor am I devistated or concerned in the slightest. All I know is, I will never go the route of modern medicince in order to conceive. Kate Gos...

I feel a bit like Dorothy today. It is incredibly windy here in Louisville: tornadically so. The doors at the entrance of the bank are being swept up in the gusts, and keep slamming open and shut. Out one window the sky is slate grey. Out another is sunshine and a puffy cloud. The local paper reports that we can expect wind gusts as high as 50 mph. I'm starting to have flashbacks of last year. I might need to take a mental health day, or a little white anxiety pill. See, September 14, 2008 is a day which will live in infamy in the minds of Louisvillians. Hurricane Ike, over 1000 miles away from us, brought us a gift in the form of 81 mph winds. It was a quiet Sunday afternoon until the wind started to whistle. Trees bent as if bowing at dignitaries. My new husband and I watched from the living room window. Having barely bested Tropical Storm Hanna while on our Myrtle Beach honeymoon (we'd been back less than one week!) I wondered if the univer...

In the 1999 article, Virtual Reality: The Perils of Seeking a Novelist's Facts in Her Fiction, Sue Miller -- one of my favorite authors -- discusses her perpetual annoyance with those who ask to what degree her novels are autobiographical. It's bothersome, she believes, because it is "a kind of potential diminishment" of her work, and implies that it is "possibly no more than the stringing together of episodes lifted directly from my life, or from the lives of fascinating characters I have known." Then, she has this to say: For the true writer, though, however close the events may be to his life, there is some distance, some remove, that allows for the shaping of the work. The shaping, after all, is what it's all about. Every reader can sense the difference between a writer who embodies meaning through the events he describes and the writer who seems simply mired in those events. It is that struggle for meaning that lets the writer escape the tyra...

I'm stealing   Tina Lynn's Make Me Laugh Monday series so that someone can throw me a bone today. (Tina, you can yell at me later. I know that I just totally jocked you, and I understand that there is the possibility of a cyber throw-down between you and me because of it. This is a risk I'm willing to take.) Come on -- leave me your best jokes in the comments. I really need to hear something funny. It's been one of those Mondays.

I'm about to find out. I bought THE PACT today, because it was the cheapest of her reads available at Half-Price books. I love that store. When I pulled into the parking lot, there were half a dozen people carrying in boxes of books to sell. I thought for half a second that I might get a box together and do the same. But, it's hard to part with books. I think I would end up buying them back. My favorite books on my shelves: The Virgin Suicides A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius The Poisonwood Bible The Good Mother A Spot of Bother While I was Gone I am Charlotte Simmons Shopgirl Hamlet Othello The Glass Menagerie night, mother The Hour I First Believed Lucky The Lovely Bones I could go on. What are your favorite books on your shelves?

I was tagged by Tina . I love that she tagged me, because I like to answer questions about myself, escpecially with words. I am not a fan of surveys that require a click of a radio button to opt for one of multiple choices. So now that I have established that, I am required (upon penatly of nothing) to tag to other writerly souls. I pick Travener and Roni , and will happily await their responses should they feel compelled to participate. 1. What's the last thing you wrote? What's the first thing you wrote that you still have? Well, the last thing I wrote was a little re-vamp of my mc's breakup with her first serious boyfriend in my WIP. It was kind of fun to be a bit melodramatic, since Laurel is well aware that she is acting that way, and it sort of scolding herself for it. I dig it. The first thing I wrote (creatively) and held onto was a children's book for Young Author's called FREDDY THE BAKER. But, in fairness, I had help from my dad. So, the first t...

I would really hate it if my sister felt a little left out because I sang the praises of her husband in yesterday's post. I mean, I would seriously feel really bad about that. And, since she seemed to so enjoy my TMI Thursday last week, I thought, what better way to reward her interest in her older sister than by featuring her in this week's edition? This one's for you, sis. To know my sister is to know a walking contradiction. As a child, she was loud. I mean, we are talking about a voice that carried and projected in a way that would make a stage actor jealous. This voice, coupled with a serious lack of tact, meant that we knew better than to tell her anything secret, for fear that she would leak the information, and loudly, at the most inopportune of times. However, she could also be extremely and completely quiet; as a toddler, she once stayed silently hidden behind my grandmother's couch for I don't know how long, while the whole family...

How awesom e is my brother-in-law? In response to my post about feeling "overexposed" on Thanksgiving, he left this gem for me: Amber's Bro-in-Law said... Let me first start off by saying that I do enjoy reading Amber's blogs, but not with the intent that most family members have. You see, Amber and I... We just get each other; maybe it's that we both understand living with her sister (my wife), or something else, but we get along well. I think that she is a brilliant writer who speaks from the heart no matter what the topic is. I also really enjoy the strikeouts! So whether she is writing for personal reasons, emotional reasons, or because she sees it as a place to vent, that is not for me to judge... No permanent lurkers here... I prefer the term - follower :) To Amber: Feel free to write away, because whether this is a secret or not, I'll read with a zipped lip and will always look forward to TMI Thursdays :) By the way... if you need h...

Back in October, I blogged the news that a few poems I penned were accepted for submission to the University of Louisville's literary magazine, The White Squirrel . Recently, I received word that two of my entries for this year were selected as well. To my knowledge, there will not be an electronic version this time around. However, the print copies are available today. (I'm grinning just a little.) Here they are, for your edification: hope smeared ink, the pages are crying, and i know what you are trying to say. arranged, the letters spell out the simple truth: all lies. lavish language flows like a river of tears, and in far corners of my weary mind i see your form, huddled over an ink stained book, salty water escaping from your silent eyes. the artists we stir it up and then it mixes, it hardens, it gels. sidewalk/ cement/ very definite in shape: sized. and then they pick at it. they chizzle away, before we can get our hands on the ...