Having spent the day with my books and my shelves and my catalogue*, I find that I now have 8.5 shelves left empty, which wouldn't be bad if I didn't have 10 boxes of books. I've filled the built-in shelves in the living room with hardcover books (sorry, Snick, I know you liked it with just the knick-knacks) and filled the built-in hutch over the computer with my reference books (how did I wind up with all these dictionaries?). I have a shelf in the basement which should be enough to handle the overflow (at least until the box from Amazon gets here), but I don't know where I'm going to put it. It's an old one that my dad made out of 2x4s, which I washed and painted to match my bedroom. Why not put it in the bedroom? Because all of the bedrooms in this house are dinky, and mine already has too much furniture in it. However, I may be forced to take that route when I run out of space in the library/study. The shelf certainly can't go into the guest room--I'm aiming for elegance in there, and brown 2x4s certainly aren't elegant. Not that it's all that lovely in there at the moment, with Christmas presents, boxes, wrapping paper, mailing paper, etc. strewn all over, but next weekend, I should be able to do something about that.
I'm halfway between regretting lazing away Thanksgiving Day and glad I did. On the one hand, if I had started on the books then, I'd be done by now. On the other hand, it was a good break from the chaos and craziness that so often marks my life. And my life isn't even particularly stressful--I work, I come home, I clean, yak on the phone or the internet, read, maybe rot my brain with some television, sleep. Oh, and take care of the puppymonsters, but still--I don't know how modern parents manage it. Or even people who have, you know, those "life" thingies.
I keep buying presents for people I already have presents for, and still haven't gotten anything for my middle liddle brother or my younger nephew. Ack! I know what the kidlet likes, I just don't think my brother and sister-in-law will let me live to New Year's if I buy him $25 worth of MatchBox cars. ;) He's not a stuffed-animal kind of kid, so that's out, and yes, I probably will get him some clothes and books, but since his brother is getting a toy, I want Dip to have at least one shiny cool toy too. At this point, I'm about to get my brother one of those joke sacks of coal and leave it at that, since he won't give me ANY ideas.
For all of my friends, a blessing I found today, which I send with love and hope to all of you:
"May the light always find you on a dreary day.
When you need to be home, may you always find your way.
May you always have courage to take a chance.
And may you never find frogs in your underpants."
*A friend told me cataloguing my books is "sexily geeky" and when I told her it's alphabetically by author, she swooned. *grin* Made my day.
5 comments:
I think you should have that printed on cards to send to everyone you know.
but what if we like the slick, wiggling sensation of a frog in our undies?!? I mean, Frogs of Hell (tm and patent pending) are warm and cute and keep one's privates warm on a cold winters day!
Sherri,
I think I'm going to put it on my Christmas cards. :)
Jay,
You may have all the frogs in your pants that you like, as long as you don't feed them to the cats!
Oh, update: 1,712 books in my house, all catalogued. Sadly, not all shelved.
You are cataloguing your books?
oooookaaaaay.
It reminds me of my ex- bro-in-law, who apparently thought he was prepared to save the world's collective knowledge in case of disaster. (He was the disaster.)I imagine he has at least 5 times the books that you have, with the glaring distinction being that he never actully reads the books he collects.
Heh. I thought you already knew I catalogued my books--I've been doing it since the '90s.
Glad you're out of the family of disasters. ;-)
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