My Monday Morning Plan, Gone by Monday Afternoon

For Christmas, my dear friend Ellen made me an NPR tote bag. She cut out the individual letters and squares of felt and hand-stitched them together. I beam every time I see it. It is the most beautiful bag in the universe. Even Taffy agrees.

Also for Christmas, this time from my mother, I received the book Pretty Birds by Scott Simon, host of NPR's Weekend Edition. I was elated, as you can probably imagine, because it combines the two greatest loves of my life: literature and public radio. Coincidentally, my two greatest loves happen to be two of the three greatest reasons why I'm a dweeb. The third: the fact that I used the word "dweeb."

When I came into possession of these gifts, I couldn't wait until today when I could strut to the bus stop with my gorgeous tote over my shoulder and wait for the 522 while engrossed in my new book. I was even going to read during the ride rather than listen to one of my many podcasts, nevermind that reading in a moving vehicle makes me nauseous. This was a new year--the start of a new me. I would be a tote-hauling, bus-reading maniac.

I woke up this morning and headed out the door at 8. I felt ultra-informed as I slogged up the icy hill toward my stop with my NPR bag swinging against my side and a spring in my step that proved dangerous along the slick pavement. Every so often, I would find my mind drifting off, imagining a young attractive man--a news-savvy public radio listener, of course--getting on at the next stop, noticing my tote and recognizing the name on my book and practically tripping over himself to take the seat next to me. Four stops later, I was so preoccupied with Pretty Birds that I didn't notice the seat next to me had been filled by a greying, heavyset man in his 60s with a hairline whose recession I swore I was witnessing as he sat. Okay, so not my young, attractive, news-savvy (although my new friend could very well have been news-savvy) male suitor. But I wasn't giving up hope..

Until the ride home. No one sat next to me. I displayed my bag on my lap with the letters facing the aisle (this will probably make more sense if I mention that I was on one of those inward-facing side seats and not one facing the front of the bus), but if anyone noticed the popular public radio logo, they didn't make it known to me. I sat across from a woman who was also reading, and I felt smug and elitist--which is a completely new experience for me--when I saw that her literature of choice was a small, yellowing paperback called "Spoiled Rotten," the letters gold and gleaming above a side profile of a scantily clad woman whose neck and ears were covered in bling. (I'm allowed to use that term because I am a dweeb.) I swelled with pride as I turned the page of my new pristine tome about the life of a young female sniper in Sarajevo in the 1990s. I was gettin' me a edumacation.

But, sadly, no boys.