I posted a few days ago about getting a gift certificate to an awesome bookstore for my birthday (which was yesterday) and asking for suggestions of books to buy. I though I'd share what I got:

- Not Your Mother's Slow Cooker Cook Book
- Blonde by Joyce Carol Oates (fictionalized account of Marilyn
Monroe's childhood)
- A DIY Project Book
- The Delivery Man (novel about a prostitute in Las Vegas - liked
the cover)
- Black Hole (a graphic novel by Charles Burns)
- Paint it Black (novel by Janet Fitch, who wrote White Oleander)
- The Best American Nonrequired Reading, edited by Dave Eggers

I think that was it. Oh, and a book light, which I have wanted for a long time but never think to buy. And a wind up Hello Kitty toy for my little girl for Valentine's Day.

It was such a perfect birthday - a while ago someone posted about a perfect day - what would you do if you had $100 and the day to yourself, or something like that. That's how I felt! I skipped out of work, took the kid to daycare, got my hair and eyebrows done by my friend who's in beauty school, went to Powell's and spent two hours wandering and browsing and buying books, met my husband for a lunch of cheap sushi, picked up the kid from daycare, went home and chilled and talked on the phone to birthday well-wishers, went out for ice cream, then went to some friend's house for dinner, where they cooked us a fabulous meal and we had lots of wine and good conversation while the kids played together harmoniously, as kids in a perfect world tend to do. Awesomeness.