Library principles

As Martha Stewart says, which books you want to have in your library is a very personal decision. But if you're like me, eventually you run out of places to put new shelves and you have to actually pick a few volumes you can live without -- before the shelves make like a black hole and collapse in on themselves, taking the books with them.  (Dun-dun-DUNNNN!) You never know.

I'm finally coming to a place where I can admit that just because it's a good book doesn't mean I HAVE TO OWN IT. This has taken years, y'all. I'm finding the easiest ones to get rid of are classics that the library has, or are readily available -- like Shakespeare. I have the complete works; the library has the complete works; the internet has the complete works; I do not also need to have all the plays in single-play bound format, though I'm keeping the copy I used when directing a play because that's full of notes like a scrapbook and therefore irreplaceable.

So to make your sorting easier, I now present you with some principles for your personal library.


Good Reasons to Keep a Book:

1. You like it.

2. You want to lend it to friends.

3. You want to read it a lot and will almost certainly want to read it next after nine p.m. or after the libraries are closed.

4. You want to read it a lot and the library is apparently run by philistines and doesn't have a copy.

5. It's just that awesome.


Inadequate Reasons to Keep a Book:

1. You've read it.

2. You haven't read it yet.

3. Somebody gave it to you.

4. You paid money for it.

5. It was free.

6. It's a good book.

7. It's so bad, you want to quarantine it.


Anybody have any good stories about culling their libraries, or not culling their libraries, or really epic collapsing shelves?

(This list brought to you by popular request after my Kitchen Principles post. I love getting popular requests.)

In which we rearrange, which is always more complicated than it looks

Jonathan is now officially full-time job hunting. His last position ended last Friday. He has some good leads, with one he's really excited about, so all that's coming along, and also we're re-thinking our house set-up. We love having Daddy home, and we're pretty sure Daddy likes us, but at the same time everyone's happier if he can just go away and shut the door. I hear new retirees have this problem, too.

Inconveniently, we don't have a spare room, so Jonathan's computer was smack dab in the middle of the living room, which translated into the middle of everything. There is a limit to how much Meg and I can be out of the house, especially when it's always either over ninety outside or else raining and I'm trying not to go shopping every day, so nobody was getting anything done and by Thursday the Time Had Come to Rearrange. However, it was the Fourth of July and we had other things to do, so it got put off.

The only thing I could think of was our room. The bed only takes up a little more than half the length of the room, and the other end mostly gets used for holding stuff. Admittedly, it's useful stuff like clothes and shoes, but maybe we could get creative...?

July 5 we got up, not very early because we'd been at the fireworks, and started organizing. We had cleaned our room earlier in the week, so it was in pretty good shape. We started by cleaning Meg's room, moved most of the moveables out of our bedroom and into hers, cleaned off the sci-fi-and-fantasy bookshelf in our room, and made the inconvenient discovery that the desktop is plugged into the modem, doesn't have a wireless card, and the modem has to be plugged in in the living room. Um. Jonathan assured me he did want internet access on that machine, unfortunately. But giving up was not to be thought of! We must rearrange! We'll figure it out later. Jonathan hoisted the computer desk from the living room into the bedroom to make a kind of office nook, adding three boxes of law books, two short filing cabinets, and the now sci-fi- and fantasy-free sci-fi-and-fantasy shelf for extra beauty, and tidily arranged all the computer stuff around on it. Then we moved dressers, other shelves, and stuff around the rest of our room.

It actually looked pretty good. At this point the bed was covered with sci-fi and fantasy, not to mention all the usual flotsam, jetsam, and paraphernalia that magically appears when you move furniture. Meg's room was full of the rest of our junk, I mean treasures. The living room had big dusty holes where there used to be a computer desk and two filing cabinets. But it looked pretty hopeful.

Mid-afternoon Jonathan had to go out and do something, so he went and did it. Meg and I took a nap.

When he got back, we tidied up and started rearranging books for real. The shelf at the end of the hall - pshh! The shelves are all bending down in the middle, but they'll be fine. We can fit a LOT more books onto that. In fact, maybe I can hold up the middle of shelves with stacks of books on the shelf below. Also, I started a massive giveaway pile of books in the middle of the hall, because we didn't really need to walk down that hall. After vacuuming the desk hole, we moved two shelves into it, and loaded them up with cookbooks, Shakespeare, and medieval-ish fiction and theology, because obviously those belong together. The Greek and Latin all moved into the shelf at the end of the hall with the other history and language, which freed up enough room in the living room for the sci-fi and fantasy. Which freed up our bed. Which meant, happily, that we could get into it, which we did, and called it a day.

All we're lacking now is wireless for Jonathan's computer and somewhere to put laundry, my shoes, and bedside stuff, and we might need a charging station and another lamp because it's kind of dark in his office nook when the sun goes down. Not too bad!

I guess cleaning is scary

Jonathan: "Why are you climbing into the crib?"
Meg: "I don't want to be cleaned up by accident!"

Failure to communicate

Meg dropped some applesauce onto the table this morning, and I looked up to see her finger-painting with it. So I handed her a paper towel. She looked at it confused and then delicately, delicately, wiped one finger on the towel.

We all burst out laughing.

Special reasons

"But I don't want to share the car with Daddy! I need the car for special reasons. FOREVER." Meg

Pink skirt

I've been wanting one of those knit skirts for a while. You know, knee-length, stretchy, a little bit flared, maternity-friendly, and preferably brightly colored. The least expensive one I've found so far was $10 at Wal-Mart, which while not that much, is kind of a lot for a Wal-Mart skirt that I plan to wear for maternity: not to be a clothes snob or anything.

But today I was at Wal-Mart and found a $3 shirt, size 4X-Large. Now THAT, my friends, is about right. It caught my eye because it was a good shade of hot pink and had some cute stud detailing around the collar. I could do something with that.

XXXX-large shirt

Ta-da! Pink skirt. It looks much better on me than on the hanger.

The sleeves became pockets and the studded collar became studded pocket edges. I think they keep it from looking obviously homemade.

The sides of the skirt come up in a subtle scallop. It's such a casual skirt, just zig-zagging it was enough. It will be easy to hem it later if I decide it needs it.

A legal lunch

Meg tried to snatch back her hamburger bun before eating the hamburger, and Jonathan warded her off. "YOU don't have a vested interest in this bun. You have a vested interest subject to divestment! And I have divested you of this until such time as you eat your hamburger!"


Then Meg started singing.
"Row row row your ketchup
Gently down the french fry.
Merrily merrily merrily merrily
Life is bun a dream."

The rain it raineth every day

We're having a grand rainstorm this afternoon with tornado watches, flash flood watches, dire hail predictions, the works. I think it was a cold front plowing into a hot (yep) humid (yep) mass of air? The radar maps are very exciting with lots of bright red on them. Anyway, we decided it was not a good day to go swimming, and also we won't be able to go to Bible study this evening if it doesn't calm down.

Meg was particularly concerned about Bible study, because that's where the dessert is. So she tried to get me to make it stop raining. When that didn't work, she took matters into her own hands.

"Rain, stop! Rain, be still! STOP!"

Without ice cream there is only darkness and chaos

There was no ice cream and the power stayed on today, but we did have a certain amount of chaos. It all started when I picked up a big package of chicken thighs at the store and had Meg help me fix them. We discovered she has a passion for dredging chicken in flour - which is great, because I don't particularly like doing that. She dredged and I browned and we were a great team until we ran out of chicken. Then it (amazingly) started snowing chickeney flour all over that corner of the kitchen. I mopped it off her hands, feet, face, and stepstool, had her wash her hands, and then she snuck back and started spreading the love again. So I washed her thoroughly again, exiled her from the kitchen, rescued the chicken at a suitable shade of brown, got the crockpot going, and declared naptime.

Then I wiped off the counters, swept, and decided that what this world really needed was a pot of rice. The rice wasn't where I thought it was, but I came across it in the pantry, so I was able to get it going and sit down to peruse recipes.

Was that something... burning?

It sure smelled like something burning, so I got up, moved the rice off the burner, and went to fill the pot lid with water to add back into the rice pot, to cool it off. Only I forgot that the pot lid was glass. And it was hot, since it had been on the rice pot.

BOOM!

The lid exploded all over the sink and floor. I spent the next half hour sweeping and picking up little cubular shards of tempered glass. We didn't really need that lid anyway. However, I still need to go borrow a shop vac and suck the remnants out of the disposal.

On the up side, the rice was just fine and the chicken, cooking merrily in the crock pot, was really good. I can definitely recommend pre-browning the chicken thighs, if you're willing to risk chaos.

Kitchen principles

I feel like so many people are working so hard be healthy in what they eat. And yes, it's important. But unless you have a particular medical reason, I can't help but suspect that balance and moderation go a lot further than all this baked-everything weirdness full of kale. In my quest to spread cheerfulness and light and because I think certain foodie trends are silly, I'm compiling a list of principles which you are welcome to ignore completely as it suits you.


1. Just fry the French toast already. It'll take five minutes and taste right.

2. Eat the yolks too. They're full of choline and who knows what all that you probably need. Eat a reasonable number of eggs, not five dozen like Gaston, and it'll be fine. The exception is if you're cooking something fussy that you actually need only egg whites for, like meringue.

3. Put sugar in the ice cream. Don't add corn syrup, aspartame, or lovingly hand-harvested organic agave nectar. Then eat a reasonable serving, not the entire batch.

4. You may eat kale if you actually want to. If you want to put caramelized onions and bacon bits in it, do it. If you secretly hate kale, please use it for centerpieces and eat something else. Exception: if your hostess fixed it, you may eat it anyway.

5. Bread won't kill you unless you're genuinely gluten-sensitive. I think the era of worrying about carbs is mostly past... I hope. It goes without saying you should also be eating things that aren't bread.

6. Have you ever noticed how much saturated fat and cholesterol is in coconut oil?? Compare it to olive oil sometime. Don't use coconut oil for, on, and in everything. Use it sometimes (like for frying French toast, yum).

7. There is no shame in macaroni and cheese. Probably don't eat it every day unless you're expecting. Grilled cheese is another completely legit food item, especially around small children.

8a. Potatoes are food, not fiend. Sweet potatoes are good too, but they're not regular potatoes, so please don't use them for all the same things.

8b. Zucchini slices and spaghetti squash are not pasta. They're good too, but they aren't pasta.

8c. Greek yogurt is not heavy cream.

9. If someone offers you something they grew themselves... eat it and thank them!