Just This Side Of Dizzy

Another busy couple of weeks around here. Not so busy that I feel like I'm hyperventilating, but enough that I'm left inarticulate by the end of the day.

While the kids are both at school, John and I have been packing up books and sorting piles of papers in his office, getting ready for the big move to the shiny new building. It turns out it wasn't ready to move into in May after all--surprise, surprise. Word on the street is that people start moving in next week. Not that I would actually know how close the offices are to being ready because I walked right into the building and took a look around despite signs posted on the unlocked doors telling me that the building's not yet open to the public.

Although I hate hate hate packing, it's been nice, really nice, hanging out with John for a couple hours everyday. We work well together, and we've got enough time that we aren't having to rush the job. We keep slowing down just to chat or to laugh over book titles or to read out loud years-old to-do lists one or the other of us wrote up. And anytime is a good time to take a coffee break.

The conundrum of what to do with all of the books (6 boxes so far, probably 3 more by the time we're through) that we need to bring home is vaguely stressful. Our house is full of books already. The living room has at least one bookcase on each wall, there's a bookcase in the playroom (kid's books), one in the dining room (cookbooks and food writing) and bookcases in the bedrooms. A colleague suggested putting a bookcase behind our couch, not knowing that our couch is already in front of a bookcase. Getting rid of piles of books--the obvious solution--is just not going to work. Neither of us can stand the idea of letting books go, even books we know we will never look at again. Besides, who would take the books we don't want? No one, that's who.

If John builds a new floor-to-ceiling bookcase in the living room and we juggle categories around (our books are sorted: poetry, fiction, nonfiction, reference, textbooks and ordered alphabetically by author's last name), we may be able to avoid having to cover up one of the windows. Anyone visiting here any time soon better brush up on alphabetizing skills. I'm just saying.

On Friday night John and I were invited by an artist acquaintance to a preview of her current show (with 2 other artists). For such a small, rural county, we've got a rather lively "art scene". There are a whole lot of local artists and plenty of galleries and giftshop/galleries and coffeeshop/galleries that take themselves very, very seriously. This show is at one of the few places that takes itself seriously and deserves to be taken seriously. So, we dressed up a little and we left the children--people kept asking us where they were--with the family I lived with while I was in college. In particular, we left them with the family's youngest daughter. She's in highschool now, and learning to drive and taller than I am, but I used to take her to preschool; leaving my kids with her was kind of surreal. I'd like to see someone try to paint a picture about that.