you know what i hate?

When I spend money on a book that I'm really excited about and then I start reading...and I'm not so excited anymore.

But to back up a little bit...I forgot to tell an exciting story.

When I was about thirteen years old, my room was a mess. like, all the time. Occasionally I would pay it some attention, and when I did, I was always rewarded for my efforts. Without fail, every time I would clean my room I would find loose change on the floor, on the dresser, on the desk, on my nightstand...pretty much everywhere.

It would just be a nickel or a dime, so nothing big, but then I had a vision.

And I walked into the storage room and grabbed a big ole mason jar, set it on my desk, and dropped that nickel in the jar.

For the next seven years (years!) every time I found any spare change I would toss it in my jar. Occasionally I even cleaned out my wallet (this was even more seldom than cleaning my room)  and would toss all the change in the jar, just so I could see some progress.

I determined early on that this money would go toward a "book fund" and that when I filled the jar all the way up to the tippy top, I could go shopping.

Fast forward seven years.

I'm married now, still don't clean my room, and have still contributed to my little jar. It's quite heavy now and kind of a pain to lug around.

So one day I'm sitting in our kitchen doing homework when Kolton lugs this jar out to the table and is just beginning the process of dumping the jar of coins onto the table when he notices the horrified expression on my face.

"What. are you doing. with my jar." I calmly asked him.

"Well, I thought we could the quarters for our laundry..." he says as he gives me a funny look.

At this point I start shaking my head.

"No. NO honey. That money is not for laundry." I then tell him the whole long boring story I just shared with you about how that money jar came to be. And of course I emphasize that whole seven years thing. "Seven years, honey. I've been saving that money for seven years."

He just shakes his head at me and returns the "book fund" to it's rightful place on our dresser and tells me that he'll cash it in tomorrow. I give him the go ahead and he ends our conversation by saying something along the lines of "...It's most nickels and dimes. iIll bet it only has twenty bucks in it, and that's probably not going to get you far."

I just waved him off and breathed a sigh of relief.

And the next day I was shocked to see how this:

turned into this:

BAM!

$103. 47 to be exact.

Then I got the brilliant idea to shop at the secondhand bookstore where the books are cheap and therefore extensively add to my collection.

It was a beautiful day.

So I went to the bookstore and that place seriously

stresses.

me.

out

There are just millions and millions of books and I just didn't know where to begin. It's the kind of place that you'd have to spend hours in, just to browse.

But I did finally end up with a hefty stack of books.

And that's where my original story begins...

So while in the bookstore browsing the millions of books, I found a copy of the book Wicked. I bought it without giving it a second thought because first of all- I think it was six dollars, and second of all-I went to the play in NYC and fell in love with it.

But alas, I started reading it the other day and I kind of secretly hate it.

a lot.

But I just keep reading it because I just keep thinking It'll come back and redeem itself.

And plus, I spent six whole dollars that took seven years to save on it. I just can't abandon it, so I keep reading through my disappointment.

And I'll probably finish the dang thing too which is such a waste of valuable reading time.

ah well...