For Valentine's Day this year, I got a day to myself. Oh, it wasn't exactly intentional, mind you. It only happened because Richard wanted to spend a day at Dundracon (local gaming convention, for those of you non-nerd types) and today was the only day that would work this weekend. But still, it's been nice – a whole day with nothing whatsoever I had to do; nowhere I had to go; no one I had to coordinate with.

I suppose I could have spent the day curled up in bed reading or knitting or just being blissfully lazy with the cats, but I decided I might as well take advantage of the free time. So this morning I headed off to a hardware store and coerced a nice young clerk to help me heft three huge steel shelf kits into my trunk. And then I drove them home and dragged them out of my trunk all by myself, with absolutely no grace, and spent the next few hours sitting on the floor of the garage surrounded by boxes and random pieces of metal, assembling shelves and rearranging the garage. It's one of those chores I've wanted to do for months now because after almost three years in this house, the garage has started to look a bit messy. It's not bad yet, but 'yet' is the operative word. I knew it was only a matter of time before it would become unmanageable; after all, this seems to be the natural order of garages. So I figured the best thing to do was to try to corral all the stuff onto shelves before it got the chance.

It was actually kind of fun, sitting there, trying to wrestle the shelves together all by myself. The first one was easy, since I turned it into two shorter shelves for all the recycling bins. The second one was a bit trickier, since I made it one single unit and it ended up being taller than I am, so I had to stand on a stool in order to get all the final bits in place. Plus, each of these shelf units weighed about 75 pounds when completely assembled, so dragging them into their final spots was a bit of a challenge. Considering I was dealing with heavy things, sharp things, *and* a hammer, and still somehow managed to not only get them together, but also move them and a few other things around in the garage without injuring myself at all, I would call this afternoon a qualified success.

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