Books, I have decided, have a unique property unlike anything else, in that the more you pack away in boxes, the more still remain on the shelves, until you wonder if you actually just imagined packing them all up and if the stack of sealed boxes in the garage are just full of very heavy air. Also, in case it wasn’t obvious, we have an awful lot of books. I packed up several more boxes yesterday, and sealed up three more this morning, and still it feels as if I have made barely even a dent in the numbers.

This morning I got up earlier than I needed to, simply because I just couldn’t sleep, and decided to make good use of the extra time by cleaning out the linen closet and the bathroom drawers. The nice thing about having big, deep drawers in the bathroom is that you have lots of room for lots of stuff. The not so nice thing about having big, deep drawers in the bathroom is that there is lots of room for lots of stuff, or more specifically, lots of stuff you forgot you had. I filled up two bags full of garbage – old makeup, half-empty bottles of medication that expired years ago, mostly used sample bottles of toiletries we collected back when we were traveling all over the state for Benthic Creatures, and so on. The cats were all happy because I also unearthed an unopened bag of catnip, which I set down on the bed at first, in order to deal with it after I finished the bathroom, but then gave up and emptied all over the bedroom floor because somehow it mysteriously developed holes that looked suspiciously like bite marks of the feline persuasion and I figured catnipping the floor was easier than dealing with a cat injesting a plastic bag in order to get to the happy drugs within. Then I tackled a few of the kitchen shelves, since people will be opening cupboards to see how much space we have, and that means clearing and organizing and cleaning and also figuring out which kitchen appliances and paraphenlia I can live without for the next few months so that the presence of completely empty shelves tells potential buyers that this kitchen has more cupboard space than they could possibly use.

The recorder group played today, so I headed off to church early to rehearse. There were only four of us, but luckily it worked out so there was one person on each part and I think it is safe to say that we have never sounded better than we did this morning. Then we met my parents for lunch and got around to discussing the location of the house we’re hoping to buy, which ended up in the dragging out of maps and the spilling of very cold iced beverages all over the table in the excitement.

A friend came over to do a quick walk through of the house for us, pointing out a few things we should work on, and we went to the hardware store and stared at walls of paint chip cards and eventually came back home with a little sample pot of color which turned out to be exactly the perfect color for what we had in mind. I know that I would have never picked this color out if it were up to me, because when it comes to choosing colors – especially paint color – I am beyond hopeless – but I slapped a few large patches of paint onto one wall of the living room and what do you know, it works. The only room in this house that was ever painted beyond the move-in white was the dining room, which I sponge painted in three shades of blue, and even then I had to have a friend help me figure out which shades. I have already warned several of my more artistically inclined friends that I intend to bring them into our new house (when we get a new house), hand them a huge stack of paint chip cards, and set them loose to tape appropriate color chips to the walls. I do not mind doing the actual painting work; I just want someone else to tell me what color I should use. I had intended to go back and get a full quart of paint to finish off the walls, once we all decided that the color worked, but by the time we got back out to the hardware store, it was closed. So the living room wall will have to remain strangely splotchy until Tuesday night, at which point, armed with painters tape and a brush, and sheer determination, I will transform our currently bland fireplace wall into a vision of beauty (or at the very least, a wall that is slightly more interesting than it currently is, which will not be hard at all).

We finally got an estimate for the work that will be required to fix up (and paint) the exterior trim, and tackle the issue with the warping marble wall in the master bathroom shower, and treat the ground underneath our house for the termites that, it turns out, were there all along (sigh), and it is a number that is a little bit daunting to be confronted with, but I am telling myself that at least now we know the worst (and it isn’t as bad as it could be, especially considering the termites) and that the silver lining here is that when someone does decide to buy this house and sends in their inspectors, we will not get any more nasty surprises.