pictures and presents

i guess i have a lot to say today. i want to bring a gift for Susan tomorrow. what does one buy the woman who is responsible for the fact of one's very existence and who has proven herself as unselfish and loving as humanly possible. (more selfless than firefighters, even! and those are some pretty selfless folks! hmmmm.... do you think if there was a firefighter who released a child for adoption because they believed that the child would have a better life with another family, that would be, like, the most altruistic human ever?? i do. probably instant sainthood, in the right context. but i digress.) so, a gift. susan and i both talked about reading and our love of books in our letters to one another. so the obvious gift is a book, right? i was thinking, like, one of my very favorite books. but which one? and what kind of publication? my favorite books of all time are A Tale of Two Cities (another classic example of selfless love) and Their Eyes Were Watching God... but i am not just going to go pick up a penguin re-print of A Tale and call it a meaningful gift. so perhaps an older printing of the beautiful classic novel, but it might be a bit late to be thinking of this, as i would probably have to have ordered something like that from somewhere far away. and i don't want to pick up some cheesified version of Their Eyes with images from a freakin' Oprah movie that did almost nothing like justice to the beauty of the novel. incidentally, one of my other favorite novels is Catcher in the Rye, but i don't want her to think i am a serial killer so that one is off limits. ( i have never ever understood that association, by the way. there is nothing so particularly anti-social about Holden that crazy-ass stalkers and assassins should feel such kinship to him... but what do i know, perhaps i am missing something. or perhaps i share it and don't even know it. all the more reason to avoid giving this novel as a gift, i guess. but i digress again.) and pictures. i am going to have some pictures of my life with me when i go, and i will determine during our initial conversation if it is appropriate to offer to show them to her. my mom is very dedicated to documenting absolutely every stage of our lives, so i have complete sets of me smiling while propping up my birthday cakes, me blowing out the candles on all of my birthday cakes, me standing by every christmas tree, me standing by every christmas tree next to my brother, me and my brother sitting under the mantle of our fireplace singing christmas carols, me and my brother on the first day of school from kindergarten until he graduated, me in the living room wearing all of my sports uniforms..... a well-documented life.... there are so many pictures. i have no idea what she might want to see, if any at all, so i will just hope my instincts inform me correctly tomorrow. ok. i have to go now. i have to shop for a present. and some new shoes. then i have to go to the tanning store and whiten my teeth and condition my hair. the vanity has not relased me from its wicked wicked grasp just yet. it's my new favorite sin.