Benjamin Franklin by Benjamin Franklin

I am very picky, too picky, about what I read, and I am hyper picky about what I read before bed. I don't need any stressful or disturbing images entering my head right before I go to sleep, especially when the altitude alone is giving me vivid, bizarre, and intricately detailed dreams. Last night, I dreamt that I was dressed as a geisha and following a group of people up the stairs of a building on the west side of Central Park. However, my face was painted green and I was the only one who knew that I was minutes away from getting in serious trouble for it. It was a doozy, but I digress.

I have been combing Meghan and Ronnie's bookshelves, looking for something that will calm and mildly entertain me. Nothing dense; nothing riveting. So I look shelf by shelf. Long, long, boring, boring, long and boring, educational, poetry, too many characters, read half in high school, etc. I have already finished their two Baby-Sitter's Club books, Stacey's Lie and Stacey's Emergency. (On a sidenote- two Stacey books? What about Claudia or Kristy or Jesse? I don't know, Meghan and Ronnie, your choices seem a little Aryan.)

Tonight I have settled on The Autobiography of Benjamin Franklin, written, surprisingly, by Benjamin Franklin. I was reading A Million Little Pieces, which has a pretty blue cover with sprinkles on it, but decided that it was a bad idea after staying awake for an hour reading the play-by-play of the narrator's root canal, which was done without anesthesia or painkillers. That is not what I need to be thinking about when I am trying to rest up for a big day of baby-sitting, nor do I want to start recalling my own days of orthodontia (braces in college- another story for another day.)

I am not expecting much out of Franklin's unabridged biography. I just noticed that is cost $1.50; that does not bode well. All I hope is that Ben and his junior high school friends started an after school baby-sitting service in Stoneybrook, Connecticut, where they had adventures with strict parents, crazy kids, and messy art projects.