Finally I finished emptying my study. It's still full of bookcases, futon, and desk, but everything that can be elsewhere or away is. I admired the effect (all books on shelves instead of on other books and with spines aligned, an empty desk and clear floor) for a minute before unfolding the futon to shrink the room again. We're still using crates for books in one corner of the den, and I asked RDC if he remembered the shelves I asked for.
Theoretically I could make my own shelves, but a saw belongs to that category of Hot or Sharp Tools that I avoid. He has the measurements but hasn't taken the slip of paper along on supply runs. I said shelves would make a nice Yule present.
"So you're really asking for shelves and this isn't a disguised request for diamonds," he said.
"C'mon, last year you gave me a stump. I like wood." Last year he brought from Australia a hollowed emu egg etched with a cockatoo (not an emu), and it lived on its side for months until, at a woodshop, he found an interesting gnarl of manzanita and shaped and finished it as a egg-stand.
Adding three shelves to the two bookcases that can fit them is not going to be enough, especially since I have no plans to stop bogarting the bookage. Books' dense weight threatens the main floor, which is why we removed the two cases from RDC's study this spring.
Everyone else and I in the neighborhood raked our yards today. Mine is an easy one in fall, since I leave most of the leaves in the gardens as protection for the plants against cold and sun for the winter. But I groomed the front a bit and raked the side yard under the nectarine and pear trees. Most of last year's leaf pile has rotted into satisfying dirt, so I removed the groundcloth from the area whose grass and bindweed I'm trying to smother, rake the leaf mold over that, and dragged the tarp full of this year's leaves over it. I took out the tomato plants and cages and the bean trellises, covered the gardens with groundcloth, tossed a length over the woodpile, and omitted to sweep the walk or vacuum the porch since AEK called about our Tattered Cover date.
She wanted to go while the sun was out, and I, not done, suggested our being together as some safety against human dangers, but she countered that safety in numbers is no protection against sunless cold. Besides, this way I could stop. So I hosed off and off we trotted.
I gave my mother-in-law All Families Are Psychotic almost three years ago and she has been asking since for similar books. I finally found one in Mark Haddon's A Spot of Bother. I found that but not Paula Fox's The Slave Dancer, which is next up for reading to RDC--King of the Wind is pretty young. AEK will travel to family for Thanksgiving and chose some picture books for the younger nephew and chapter books for the older--Mrs. Piggle-Wiggle and, on my suggestion, Bunnicula, though tragically not Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH. I also suggested Because of Winn-Dixie; if a seven-year-old can manage Mrs. Frisby he can manage Winn-Dixie as well. But she had already bought enough.
