Why I'm doing this

I am deeply envious of Harriet Klausner. Not exactly murderously envirous, that’s get that straight right there. You won’t see me wandering around rubbing my hands together like Lady macBeth, wondering why my husband can’t be the thane of Kawdor.
But jealous, nonetheless. That’s right. Almost every day at some point, I find myself chewing over the essential unfairness of life as I contemplate a certain retired librarian from some obscure part of Pennsylvania, who I imagine most of you have never even heard of. For those of you who did, however, immediately recognize the name, perhaps you can sympathize. Harriet (I like to call her Harriet. I feel like we’re, while not exactly friends, at least acquainted, since I see her name almost every time I log on to Amazon).
Anyway, Harriet is the number one reviewer of books at Amazon.com. That’s right. Number one. Out of hundreds of thousands of people who occasionally read a book and think that it’s either so great or so awful that they just feel compelled to log on and to pen a short review (well, sometimes a long review, but that’s another story), only Harriet, the retired librarian, has the discipline to log on day after day after day, and review book after book after book. I like to picture her, Harriet, dressed in a set of sensible slacks (she’s the type that would call them slacks, I just know she would), with her hair pulled back in one of those Alice in Wonderland type bands (the better to keep it out of her eyes while she’s reading, you know), settled in a comfortable chair somewhere in Western Pennsylvania, reading her historic novels and her romance novels, with a highlighter. In my fantasy, she wears sensible shoes and a cashmere sweater with her slacks and hairband, dressed like some kind of archetypal librarian figure. She has long thin fingers which she occasionally puts up to her face as she lets out a hardy “shhhhh” in the event anyone disturbs her reading. She takes notes on her reading, perhaps even using a rubric of some sort – so that she won’t forget important details when she pens her reviews like the names of the characters or the cities in which the action takes place. She never lies on the carpet while reading and I’m pretty certain she’s never eaten an Oreo (or two or three or four) while reading, mashing the crumbs into the spine of her brand new books from Amazon.
I picture her looking up from her romance novel or her historic novel now and again, pausing as she puts her highlighter down, and picking up her cup of warm, fragrant tea, allowing herself a moment to glance out the window at the rolling hills outside her house. In my imagination, she has some kind of really hairy dog (like a sheepdog, perhaps) who chases a ball and rolls down the hill, providing wry amusement to Harriet as she pauses, only briefly, in her never-ending quest to dominate the Amazon list.
I freely confess here that everything I know about Harriet is cribbed from an article I read in the Washington Post almost two years ago -- which described her house in Western Pennsylvania, and her career as a retired librarian. It also described her work habits and her reading habits. She reads (and reviews) one book per day, usually reading throughout the day and then posting her review in the early evening. She has two sons and a husband and now receives free books from Amazon, which is her due as the number one reviewer. She has an office, I just know she does, where she neatly stacks and organizes her books and her reviews. She prints them out and files them. The files are color-coded, at least in my mind. She has a to-do list. I just know she does.