Home Sweet Bookshelf

In the words of one Lane Kim of Gilmore Girls, I am a fanatic bibliophile, and there are obligations that go along with that (except she was a fanatic audiophile. The principle still totally applies, though).

Because of those heavy obligations, I haven't yet bought the sorghum flour needed to make Pancake Games Recipe #2. You have my deepest and sincerest apologies, but there's nothing I could do. My bookshelves arrived from Wal-Mart via UPS, my brother D and I cataloged all my books and packed them into boxes, and from thence my responsibilities arose.

It has been a crazy week and half of taking carloads of my junk out to H2 (my apartment, in case you missed that post) and setting it up. Last Friday, I built two bookshelves, a TV cart, and pretty silver shelves for my kitchen (I have basically zero counter space, so my microwave/mixer/etc needed a home). It was ridiculously fun building all that stuff. I've never actually built anything completely by myself before. I mean, yes, my dad had to help me when I accidentally hammered a thingie in crooked and couldn't attach it to the other thingie because it didn't line up right. But other than that, I did it all on my own. It was, as Princess Mia would say, a very self-actualizing experience. Very "I am woman, hear me roar," and all that stuff. I had a screwdriver and I knew how to use it!

Anyway, once the bookshelves were vertical, OF COURSE my books had to be put away. For years they've been suffering, stacked on one bookshelf (the regular way and then all kinds of crazy ways, on top of others and in front of others and diagonal across others . . . it was pandemonium) and some under my bed (where sadly they have gathered so much dust/cat hair that I couldn't read most of them, being severely allergic to dust and moderately allergic to cat hair). The poor babies! Now, however, at H2, I have TWO WHOLE BOOKSHELVES for them to live on. So on Sunday I spent the day unpacking them and arranging them onto the shelves (after, of course, I moved the shelves all around, trying to find that exact right, feng shui spot for them). There's one shelf for my "fun" books: aka books I buy just for fun. The other shelf is for my school books: aka books that are also fun but are slightly more scholastic in nature, like Norton Anthologies (I have, like 8 of those), or come from a distinct literary period (in case you were wondering, they go like this: Old English, Medieval, Renaissance, Romantic, Victorian, 20th Century, Modern). The "fun" shelf is already almost full. Four out of five shelves have inhabitants. The school shelf only has two full, but once I start shopping for my textbooks for this fall, that will be very quickly remedied.

As you can see, this clearly took priority over the Pancake Games. My books are my babies. I actually got a little teary as I tried to decide which ones to send over to H2 now and which to keep at home with me until I leave. Yeah. It's true. You can ask my brother D if you don't believe me (I offered to pay him $2 if he helped me pack them up. It took us four hours just to do the one bookcase in my room at home--we haven't even started the ones under the bed or in the garage. He demanded more money about halfway through, and given the insanity of the workload I had to acquiesce).

H2 actually feels like a home to me now, with my books in position. I have no furniture, no appliances except the fridge and stove set up, and nothing hanging on the walls, but with my dear friends standing on their shelves, bold and free with their spines actually on display, it feels like home.

(I also got my DVD holder/shelf/thingie from Wal-Mart/UPS, and put all my DVDs in it--except Gilmore Girls seasons 1-7, Monk seasons 1-6, and various others like "Miss Potter" and "X-Men," because clearly I can't live without those for another three weeks--but that isn't part of the whole bibliophile deal. They do, however, look exceptionally nice, because they used to be stacked on the floor of my closet.)

So now I feel like H2 is actually a live-able space, as opposed to a bunch of rooms with some giant ants crawling around and that weird apartment smell. That, my friends, is progress.

Tomorrow we are going back (for the fourth time in seven days, people. Even for someone newly converted to the Bob Villa way, that is a lot of times) because my couch, chair, ottoman, and mattress/box spring are being delivered. While we're waiting:
-My dad is going to build my bed frame and scour my bathroom with this super-
powerful germ-killing stuff he got
-My mom is going to continue with her previous job of contact-papering all the shelves
in the place (which is a really tedious job that she says gives off crazy glue fumes)
and then set up my bathroom
-I am going to wash and put away all my dishes and set up everything in the kitchen,
i.e. the microwave, mixer, coffee pot, etc.

H2 is very needy and a lot of work. Thankfully, I am house/dog-sitting for some friends of mine from this coming Saturday to next Saturday. They have a pool, cable, and the cutest dog ever, so it will be like a little vacation for me. I won't be going out to H2 at all because I can't leave the dog alone all day (that would totally defeat the whole purpose of me being there), so it will be a beautiful week of swimming, dog walking, and What Not to Wear.

But the good news is that today I finally got my butt up to the store and bought some sorghum flour, so the next pancake recipe is right around the corner. Not tomorrow, of course, because I have to get up early to go to H2 and do all the aforementioned stuff. But maybe on Friday or Saturday, to kick off my little final vacation before the grad school madness starts.

Ahh . . . vacation. So quickly coming to an end. Like sands through the hourglass are the summers of our lives . . .

P.S. To find out what all the types of "philes" are in the poll to your right, go here. (just scroll down a little to get to the list) There are so many good ones that I had trouble choosing which to put in the poll! If you are a different kind of phile than the ones I have listed, let me know!