Book purge 09 – the booklist

forgive me if there ends up being 4 copies of this post. Windows Live Writer is being odd this morning

I’ve mentioned the booklist a few times but I have never really explained it. The booklist, in it’s current incarnation is an Excel spreadsheet that lists every book I owned over a roughly 20 year period. It start in 1985 as a list in a notebook of all the books in my possession, after I bought some duplicates at a used bookstore because the cover art was different. It was handwritten, eventually rewritten into a loose leaf binder alphabetically. I entered it all into whatever the DOS based spreadsheet program was on the 286 DH bought in 1991 and it eventually evolved into an Excel spreadsheet with categories and subcategories and could be sorted by author or date or topic etc. It even spent a brief period as an Access database, but not successfully, so it went back to Excel. It was handy to have a spreadsheet to use when I was learning to do different things in Excel so it ended up with a lot of information I didn’t exactly need or originally intend to track.

I can tell you how many books I bought in 1997. I can tell you how many of them were history- women. At one point I could have told you how much I spent.

142 and 5 respectively and I am really sort of glad I deleted that column about pricing.

I stopped keeping the list in March 2005. By then my book buying had seriously fallen off & most my reading material came from the library. The booklist was intended to track what I owned, not what I had read. Plus with 2 toddlers underfoot who had the time to enter data? There were 1861 books on the list when I stopped keeping it.

I did a big purge sometime in 2006. About 500 or so books left the house then with another 100 or so leaving in smaller batches between 2003 and 2008.

I joined Library Thing in March 2008 and began scanning every book in the house, then I added the books from the booklist that were missing, then I added the books from the library that I remembered reading in the past couple of years (mostly series books). I had 2042 books when I was done. I’m up to 2201 currently, but 71 are tarot decks and I added some comic books I already owned as well. I know I read at least 56 new books in 2008 after I reached 2042.

These are all the books I have read since 1985.

I failed to tag the ones I physically had with ‘owned’ so I have no idea who many or which books I have in my house.

Which was the whole point of the booklist in the first place.

I have about the same amount of money to spend on books now as I did in college and the buying power is still fairly close in used book stores, though new books that were $2.99 then are as much as $6.99 now, so I still need to be very careful I am not wasting my money on books already in my possession, only with different cover art.

When I am at last done with this purge I will print out my Library Thing booklist (all 38 pages of it) and work my way around the house, marking the ones I still own. Then I will go back and tag the darn things in Library Thing so I can look them up on my phone when I am in a bookstore and see that, yes, I do in fact already own “Because of You” only my copy doesn't have a picture on it, which is why I didn’t recognize it.

That part of this purge probably won’t be completed until May or so but then it will be done and I buy so few books I ought to be able to maintain it.

Havoc is starting to enjoy chapter books. He’s going to need a list of his own soon.

Weekly Winners - Week 13

I have a mixed bag of photos this week. The rainy weather is keeping me in the house still

First we have the kittens at almost 2 weeks old.

Mayhem had a dentist appointment (He brought a friend with him)

 

We had spaghetti for dinner one night

You can’t keep the baby dinos out of spaghetti, they love it so much.

Havoc’s weekly winner

For even more weekly winners check out Lotus at Sarcastic Mom every Sunday

Book purge 09 – science fiction

Sitting cozily next to the 2 shelves of fantasy (and overflowing on to them) are the science fiction books (not including the works of Douglas Adams, which are in a special category all their own – Holy and UnPurgeable).

The scifi books were the victims of the hard core purge a few years ago. There were 183 then and only about 60 some books remain. I have 159 books tagged with sci fi in Library Thing, which makes me wonder what 20 or so books I have mis-tagged, either in the booklist or Library Thing. Possibly the Thomas Covenant series,…

pause while I consider matching up 183 books in Library Thing…no, not today.

I haven’t picked up one of these books since that purge. But I can’t quite let go of them. They are the products of my happy, prosperous, child free days in the late 90’s, when I was making lots of money in the phone business and chatting on Doctor Who email lists. I can’t give these books up! I know some of the authors!

well…’know them’ in the way you ‘know’ people who’s posts you read on an email list of several hundred people over the course of a couple of years. It’s not like I ever privately emailed or chatted with them, but my name is mentioned in one of the books. I get murdered along with dozens of others from the elist…

***sigh***

Ok,lets be ruthless about this.

There are 8 Dr Who books I really enjoyed out of the 41 I still have. That gives me 33 books to be sold in 4 lots on ebay. I can group the Missing Adventures together, the Decalogues together, the 7th Doctor adventures from BBC Books together and the Dr Who New Adventure series together. I  used to have almost all of them published between 1994 and 2000 or thereabouts (about 100 books), but I got rid of most them in the previous purge.

stares quizzically at next group of books for a few moments, followed by a pause for some internet research

I thought I had the complete collection of Bernice Summerfield’s New Adventure series, but I only have 16 still. Now that I think about it I did get rid of the ones I didn’t like last time around.  Bummer. I could have gotten more for a complete set probably.  I enjoyed the Benny books a lot. I forgot about them though and I haven’t touched them since they were reshelved after last time. I probably ought to just sell them…

looks around at open spaces now starting to be visible on the shelves

I’m going to hold onto them for now. If space is still an issue when I am done with all the books, they can go. Otherwise I’ll keep them until the end of the year. If they aren’t reread by then they can go to a new & more deserving home.

touches remaining books fondly

No. I can’t get rid of the Star Wars books, not the dozen I have left. They all feature Han Solo and Han Solo is….well, he’s HAN SOLO.  I’ve been in love with the character (and Harrison Ford) since 1977. I’m not getting rid of the books. Plus a part of me hopes the boys will read these. These really are viable ‘boys might read them’ books.

Right?

At one point I had most of the Star Wars books published between 1994 or so and about 2001 (I had 36 of them), but they too went out in the great purge, except for these 12. Those hardback copies on my local library shelves? Those are mine. I know because they have my monogram in them.

Geez….when I think of all the money I spent on sci fi books in the 90’s…  many of the Star Wars ones in hardback, many of the Dr Who paperbacks bought from England at about $1.40 to the pound.

Plus shipping!

From England!

ah, to have money to burn like that…

A clean slate

This isn’t about books this time.

Yesterday I was feeling the beginning of a stomach virus coming on, the one that half my family has had in the past week. So I was laying in bed, idly browsing the web. I realized I had to log in everywhere I went, which is unusual. If I closed Firefox and reopened it, I had to relog in everywhere again.

My first thought was VIRUS so I ran Malwarebytes and searched the web. While cleaning up what I thought was the problem all my Firefox user data was deleted.  All of it – bookmarks, history, logins & passwords, add ons. GONE.

Not even system restore could bring it back.

So now I am rebuilding it all. I’m trying to be positive about this. There were an unworkable number of bookmarks, I had disabled several of the add ons. Everything that I used, I will miss and will find again, resulting in an easier to navigate set of bookmarks & less clutter. Nothing is gone forever from the interwebs

Right???

Seriously, I want to cry.

But it did take my mind off of the intestinal distress.

Wordless Wednesday

 

The itty bitty kittys are moving around a lot more

Tuesday Tribute – patient dental people

I was going to do a book related tribute because it’s all things books here until the purge is done, but I was sidetracked this morning by a couple of dental appointments.

Today was Mayhem’s first cleaning. He and Havoc had simultaneous appointments and DH came along so each boy would have some company.

Mayhem’s major concern about everything these days is “How long is this going to take?” said in an impatient tone. Anything that takes longer than about 10 seconds is too long.

And forget opening his mouth for anyone, to do anything but complain things are taking too long.

The hygienist was great though. She went through all the different tools she used, demonstrated them on his clenched closed teeth and gently coaxed him to open his mouth.

Over and over and over again. Every time she stopped doing something the teeth snapped shut and a whine about ‘how much longer’ escaped the barely open lips.

Repeat.  Three times.

I would have been issuing threats about Star Wars games & movies going away forever if he doesn’t keep his mouth open and stop whining. But I stayed out of it because she was dealing with it just fine.

Then the dentist came in, which annoyed Mayhem to no end because he thought he was finished. And he wanted nothing to do with that metal pointy thing the man was holding. But the dentist patiently persuaded Mayhem open his mouth & keep it open. He spotted to cavities & wanted to do xrays.

Again the hygienist was wonderful though I am sure Mayhem was thoroughly confused by the woman who had been insisting he “open up. open up big. show me how wide you can open your mouth” was now telling him “Bite down. close your mouth and bite down hard”. 2 xrays were eventually taken and 2 cavities confirmed.

Naturally these are on opposite sides of his mouth, needing 2 visits.

They are just a general dentistry office, they don’t do special pediatric things, papoose boards & nitrous, etc (bummer about the nitrous from my point of view too. I get really wigged out when I’m at the dentist but no one around here offers it). You hold still, you get a shot and then they drill. No one knows if Mayhem will hold still long enough for a filling but they are willing to give it a try. They have a pediatric dentist they recommend, which is an hour away from our house & of course costs more. We have no dental insurance. So I am hoping that these wonderfully patient people can manage to convince Mayhem to let the filling happen. If they can’t then I’ll call around to a few pediatric dental places I have seen in the phonebook and find out exactly what they do & how much it costs.

So here is to those wonderfully patient people who deal with wiggily & worried kids in such a calm way.

Book purge 09 – the booklist

I’ve mentioned the booklist a few times but I have never really explained it. The booklist, in it’s current incarnation is an Excel spreadsheet that lists every book I owned over a roughly 20 year period. It start in 1985 as a list in a notebook of all the books in my possession, after I bought some duplicates at a used bookstore because the cover art was different. It was handwritten, eventually rewritten into a loose leaf binder alphabetically. I entered it all into whatever the DOS based spreadsheet program was on the 286 DH bought in 1991 and it eventually evolved into an Excel spreadsheet with categories and subcategories and could be sorted by author or date or topic etc. It even spent a brief period as an Access database, but not successfully, so it went back to Excel. It was handy to have a spreadsheet to use when I was learning to do different things in Excel so it ended up with a lot of information I didn’t exactly need or originally intend to track.

I can tell you how many books I bought in 1997. I can tell you how many of them were history- women. At one point I could have told you how much I spent.

142 and 5 respectively and I am really sort of glad I deleted that column about pricing.

I stopped keeping the list in March 2005. By then my book buying had seriously fallen off & most my reading material came from the library. The booklist was intended to track what I owned, not what I had read. Plus with 2 toddlers underfoot who had the time to enter data? There were 1861 books on the list when I stopped keeping it.

I did a big purge sometime in 2006. About 500 or so books left the house then with another 100 or so leaving in smaller batches between 2003 and 2008.

I joined Library Thing in March 2008 and began scanning every book in the house, then I added the books from the booklist that were missing, then I added the books from the library that I remembered reading in the past couple of years (mostly series books). I had 2042 books when I was done. I’m up to 2201 currently, but 71 are tarot decks and I added some comic books I already owned as well. I know I read at least 56 new books in 2008 after I reached 2042.

These are all the books I have read since 1985. 

I failed to tag the ones I physically had with ‘owned’ so I have no idea who many or which books I have in my house.

Which was the whole point of the booklist in the first place. 

I have about the same amount of money to spend on books now as I did in college and the buying power is still fairly close in used book stores, though new books that were $2.99 then are as much as $6.99 now, so I still need to be very careful I am not wasting my money on books already in my possession, only with different cover art.

When I am at last done with this purge I will print out my Library Thing booklist (all 38 pages of it) and work my way around the house, marking the ones I still own. Then I will go back and tag the darn things in Library Thing so I can look them up on my phone when I am in a bookstore and see that, yes, I do in fact already own “Because of You” only my copy doesn't have a picture on it, which is why I didn’t recognize it.

That part of this purge probably won’t be completed until May or so but then it will be done and I buy so few books I ought to be able to maintain it.

Havoc is starting to enjoy chapter books. He’s going to need a list of his own soon.

Book Purge 09 – fantasy

I decided to start with my smallest fiction subject. I used to be a huge fantasy fan. If dragons and/or wizards were in a book, I bought it. I had dozens and dozens of fantasy books, almost 200 according to the booklist, actually. 219 books are tagged ‘fantasy’ in my Library Thing library, which includes library books. It is my 3rd most used tag.

But gradually my interests shifted more toward historic fiction and mystery. Plus with so many people writing stories in settings like Krynn, the quality got uneven and Raymond Feist became so prolific I couldn’t keep up.  When the time came to purge a few years ago, most of the fantasy books were shipped out.  I kept my favorites. The original Dragonlance saga books, the Rose of the Prophet series, the first 4 of the Riftwar series and everything by David Eddings.

There really aren’t that many books. If the Eddings books were not almost all hardbacks they would only fill one shelf.

hhmmm…the Eddings books…

stares at book titles thoughtfully for awhile

I *love* the Belgariad series and the Mallorean. They are great books, very well done with entertaining characters and a fine storyline. I can’t wait until I can read these books to my boys (another year maybe, if that, in Havoc’s case. Though I might just get them on mp3 and we can listen to them in the car this year.) The prequel books about Belgarath and Polgara are also good, though I think Belgarath is a better & more rounded character than Polgara, so I like his book better. The Rivan Codex is also very interesting. I can’t get rid of them.

I like the Elenium and the Tamuli series,they have a good overall plot and it started off well but it got a little too witty toward the end in that “I noticed you noticing my noticing that” sort of way. There was character repetition from the previous series but I can overlook that because there are only so many archtypes out there & there were sufficient changes to details that it didn’t seem that striking to me. The plot had similarities as well. The setting though, was different and interesting and there were enough changes to the overall plot and in the various small details that I enjoyed the series.

Except for one thing….this series introduced the Manipulative, Too Clever for Words, Child Brat Goddess character – Aphreal/Flute/Danae (one character with 3 different personas, all equally irritating). She wasn’t too bad in the Elenium but towards the end of the Tamuli I was ready to slap her. She would win my vote for single most annoying character in a fantasy series ever, except they topped her in the next series (which, honestly, I would have thought very difficult to do). Still, not enough of a negative to get rid of the books.

Then there is the Dreamers series, which kept the annoying Bratty Child  Know It All Goddess character, ratcheting up her manipulative, kissy kissy, wittiness.The other character duplication was also so strong I couldn’t overlook it. The new setting & plot were not enough to overcome it. They were entirely too close to the Belgariad’s base characters. Like they were imported wholesale with only the names changed.  Plus…

(I’d call this a spoiler but really the only thing I am spoiling is you wasting your time reading this series. You’ll thank me. I don’t tell you how it ends just in case you want to read it anyway.)

Every book in this series is the exact same plot as the other books in the series. Only the look of the landscape and a the god’s name have changed. So if you read the first one, you have read the other 3.  And the ending!!!! OMG!!! Seriously, it seemed like no effort at all went into this series apart from some minor scenery changes for each book. Not their best effort.

I can probably ditch them.

And Redemption of Althalus, which I couldn’t even finish.

I think I will sell them in a lot on eBay.  Just because I think they sucked doesn’t mean others will. I checked for finished auctions. People are buying them.

Now I just need to get a battery for my scale so I can figure out shipping.

5 whole books on their way out of my house.  I’m just rocking this purge aren’t I?

Weekly Winners - week 12

This week’s photos are all Project 365 photos. It’s been grey, rainy and cold and we’ve all mostly been hibernating, so I haven’t had the camera out much.

I’ve been purging my bookshelves. Guess what my area of study was in grad school?

It was time for a new bra. But what size?

A misty morning

99 cent kid meal night at Buffalo Wild Wings is a family favorite

Our not so stray cat, Tux, had a litter of kittens (free! to a good home! in about 6 weeks)

1000 yards of a cotton/silk/wool blend. Someday it will be a shawl. Right now I am still trying to roll it into a ball.

Havoc made Grandma a monkey for her birthday next month.

For even more weekly winners check out Lotus at Sarcastic Mom every Sunday

Book Purge 09 – non fiction, the esoteric

I am still working on the non fiction part of my bookcases. I have moved on to the esoteric case – books on spirituality, the goddess, Wicca, druids, philosophy, tarot, Arthuriana and child rearing.

Some of my goddess spirituality books

Some of my tarot books

Does a woman who had not really read the cards in 7 years actually *need* 36 books about tarot? That’s not counting the books that come with the decks. I have 77 tarot decks (I was a collector in my child free days), at least 30 came with substantial sized books. Do I really need 77 tarot decks? No. No I don’t, but that is a purge for another day. 

I also don’t need quite so many goddess books. I’ve been walking this path for almost 16 years now. I am beyond the ‘gather every book you can find on the broadly defined topic’ stage and my interest has drifted from the Celtic focus. Working with ruthless determination & speed I kept maybe 10 of those books and about that many tarot ones.

I wish I could show you my shelves of child rearing and Arthuriana books. But there is only about 18 inches between them & the back of the sofa and it is impossible to get a shot of them.

Most of the child rearing books were passed on to me. I am passing those on too. I am beyond the Happiest Toddler stage and my kids are finally sleeping  so the half a dozen ‘get you child to sleep’ books Havoc led me to find, can at last leave my home. I’m keeping the 3 ‘raising boys’ books and Protecting the Gift, Spiritual Parenting and Buddhism for Mothers. But the rest will be going.

I’m torn on the Arthuriana books. I loved Arthurian legends and read everything – fact & fiction about that era and those people.  The fiction ones are for the most part well done & entertaining, the scholarly ones are mostly really dry reading.  But what if the boys take an interest?

*sigh*

I can’t go there. I just can’t. If I accept that as a valid reason to keep books, then I will only be able to purge the romance section of fiction. I’ll keep the Stephen Lawhead series and Mists of Avalon but the rest need to go.

The first of many trips to Goodwill, the library and other donation places *sob*

Fiction will have to wait until next week. Havoc and Mayhem have today and tomorrow off from school for Parent-Teacher conferences. Havoc has been getting notes home lately about him making poor choices in his behavior, so it’s probably not going to be the happiest of conferences this evening.

Book purge 09 – Non fiction, part 1

I decided to start with the non-fiction books reasoning that:

A. I am more of a fiction fan so they might be marginally easier for me to purge in a calm & rational manner

B. They are what is the first two bookcases of the office and are more likely to be grouped together in other bookshelves.

Mostly B was the driving force because I am attached to all these books & can rationalize keeping every last one of them.

I approached the first bookshelf and tried to be detached about it’s contents – history.

Oh but I *love* history. Especially Tudor era history which is the bulk of the books, and the history of women from ancient to Tudor times, which is most of the rest of the books, and London, which is the rest of the rest of the books. So I can’t get rid of ANY of them.

….stares at the shelves for a bit, fingering the titles fondly…

Ok, maybe I do not need 5 autobiographies of Elizabeth I, maybe just my 2 favorites and I never really liked Mary, Queen of Scots so we can get rid of those books too. There are rather a lot of books on the role of women in various ages…perhaps it is time to admit that thesis will never be written & if it was would probably want more recent sources than 1989… Yes, it is my ‘field’, but honestly, what in the past 15 years have I done in that field except engage in online arguments about the history of midwifery? And when was the last time I did that?

My goodness, just how many “history of London” themed books does one woman need? And wow, that is a lot of books on the kings & queens of England. Really, I think I have more than the local library does. Possibly the boys might find some of them helpful over the next decade should they need to write a report on an English monarch. But do kids these days even look in books? Don’t they find everything on the internet? Even if they do look in books, do I really need 11 books on the subject?  Probably not.

What about these travel essays tucked up here behind these knick knacks? Obviously they are not being re-read or the knick knacks would be behind them. Are collections of essays worth keeping when you only really enjoyed 3 out of 16 of the essays, though probably 7 others were good reads, maybe just not worth rereading? What if you can’t recall any of the essays? Do you keep it and reread it & then decide or do you toss it on the theory that since you can’t remember the book it must not be that good?

…stare at the bookshelves awhile longer…

That would require a lot of rereading if I am going to go down that path. Not that that is a bad thing but it is going against the goal here of removing books. These travel essay collections are likely to end up on the library shelves rather than their sale room. So theoretically I can still reread them at my leisure.

Why do I have a bunch of Day in the Life photography coffee table books? A Day in the Life Australian from 1982, A Day in the Life Soviet Union from 1987 (possibly of some historic significance), a Day in the Life Italy from 1990, etc…some of these really should go, stunning photography or not. I haven’t looked at them in years.

That removed about 40+ books from my collection. A bit more than a shelf’s worth but by reorganzing them I gained almost 2 shelves and filled a whole box, plus have a small stack for listing online.

tune in tomorrow for Non-fiction part 2 – the esoteric

Monday menu planning

I haven’t done much advanced menu planning lately because I have 30lbs of boneless skinless chicken breast, 22lbs of ground beef and I am not sure how many cheap cuts of beef in my freezer (lots! they had London Broil on sale for $1.99 a pound back in January). So I have more or less known what was for dinner – chicken or beef & have been falling back on tacos, meatloaf, broiled beef, rolled stuffed chicken and chicken nuggets with random breading, and the occasional frittata (18 egg set, BOGO!).  But it’s gotten a tad boring. So yesterday I dug out my recipe cards and we will be having

Thai inspired noodles with beef & veggies

Cider vinegar braised chicken & potatoes

Chipoltle chicken rolls with avocado dipping sauce

BBQ chicken pizza

and the usual suspects

Tacos

Mini meat loaves

(which later become) spaghetti with meat balls

Goldfish breaded chicken strips

Scotch eggs & salad

Soup and sandwiches

Plus we have a parent teacher conference during dinner one night so that will be mac & cheese and I have bunco one night so that will be fish sticks and broccoli noodles.

DH will also make dinner one night, either pork chops & applesauce or pancakes and bacon.

Weekly Winners - week 11

This week is mostly nature shots but first we once again started the week off with baking.

Daddy made cookies, with help

Please note that cookies do not attract dinos. They attract crocodiles & race cars (I’m not sure what the horseradish sauce is doing out. They were chocolate chip cookies)

It was beautiful for a couple of days so I decided to get some photos of spring.

Budding trees.

A lone flower blooming

Tiny pinecones growing

Havoc took some photos as well.

One of his weekly winners

We also took photos of the local wildlife. This is Nefertiti.

This is Tux.

This is Ghost.

And of course, these guys. (Havoc’s photo)

Then it snowed

Please visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom to see some more Weekly Winners!

update on the hair thing

Not too long ago I mention putting purple streaks in my hair. I did eventually go buy a highlight cap and proceeded to dye my hair.

Twice.

The second time I made a point of pulling big clumps of hair through those holes.

You can kinda see the purple. If you are outside, in daylight and know what too look for, or if I am standing up close to a mirror in my bathroom under the lamp I can see a few purple hairs. But it is not photographable.

Problem is, my hair is medium brown. Noticeable color will require bleaching first and nothing on this earth will persuade me to bleach even a few dozen hairs.  I think if I went with the foil and bigger chunks of hair I might get a more noticeable result without bleaching. But that requires DH’s help, which means after 8:30pm and the stuff has to stay on 40 minutes so it’ll be after 9:30 before I can rinse it out and I go to bed at 10. I don’t like washing my hair in the evening.  Especially right before bed.  even if I blow it dry it still feels all damp on the pillow. We’ll see how the weekend plays out.  Maybe I’ll find some time Sunday.

……

I was checking my Woopra feed today, just out of curiosity, for things people searched to find me.  My favorite is “preserved fruit packaging” which I am fairly certain I have never mentioned or even used all three words together in a single post.

My other favorite is ‘middle manager’ which appears on a number of posts about Mayhem, who is a born middle manager.

The last is ‘stacey havoc’ which I assume is people who know me in real life trying to find my blog after forgetting the full name of it. Hi! 

Now I am going to go edit some photos for my weekly winner post Sunday. Be sure to check back. It’s a natur-iffic set this week

Misunderestimated

I ordered 11 books off of half.com last week. I got them for a total of about $60 including shipping. That is probably the most I have spent in a single time on books in over a year. It is certainly the most books I have purchased at once in well over two years. They are either books I have heard on audio & want to read again or books I have checked out of the library often enough I decided to just buy them.

So they have started arriving the past few days and I went to put a few of them on my bookshelves. This proved more of a challenge that I expected.

A couple or so years ago I got rid of ALOT of books. HUNDREDS of books actually. Boxes and boxes of books went out of this house. About a hundred or so were listed on half.com or bookmooch.com.  So many books left my house that, despite the evidence of my own eyes, I firmly believed I had gotten rid of most of my books and all I needed to do was reorganize what was left & there would be all this space on my bookshelves.

I am not exaggerating either, several hundred books have left my house. When you lug boxes and boxes of books out of your house it is natural to think “Gosh I have given away nearly all my books”

Unless you started with 1800 books and are in denial about that.

This is what is left. Books in the office

more books n the office

books in the living room

books in the bedroom

books in the kitchen

Rough estimate is that there are 1000-1200 books still in the house (and those are just *my* books. I haven’t added DH or the boys’ books to that total)

So, um, yeah, I haven’t really gotten rid, proportionally, of that many books and it is clearly obvious there is little to no room on those shelves.  But for the past year or more I have thought of myself as book deprived because I got rid of so many & have bought so few.

Even now I look at those shelves and think “but there can’t be *that* many books. this isn’t *that* many books” Probably because I am used to the shelves being double stacked & double packed. I mean really, just WHERE was I keeping all those books anyway?

So now I face the unpleasant task of once again purging the books and this time it will suck. Last time wasn’t too bad. I was able to go through them fairly easily & get rid of the ones I didn’t enjoy that much or was fairly sure I no longer needed, ones who’s thesis have since been disproven, the information outdated, ones on topics I am no longer interested in. 500-700 books fell into those categories.

Which means the ones left are the ones I like. I have read every book in my library at least twice, many I have read many times. Nothing on those shelves is superfluous or unnecessary. All of them are books I am likely to read again or want for information.  Maybe 20 of them can go… some of the travel essay books & some of the romances. But 20 books doesn’t even make a dent.  That’s not even a whole shelf.

I’m going to have to make some hard choices. There is no space for more bookshelves, every possible open bit of wall has a bookshelf on it, even the bathrooms, except the hallway and in the interest of letting people get to their bedrooms I can’t in good conscious put bookshelves there.  Unless….Dh could make the inset kind in the wall cavity in the hallway. That would be really neat actually. But meantime, I have 2 little up and coming readers & I have to make some space for them. Their shelves are filling up and soon they will need more room.

I guess Sunday I will start the doleful task of deciding what stays & what goes.  ::sniff::

Feeling vaguely guilty

We live in a poor rural county. Studies show that your poor rural areas, or maybe just poor areas in general, are less likely to have books in the home and less likely to encourage reading in children. Schools obviously want to combat this, especially at the preschool & kindergarten level. The kids bring a book home from the school library every day, this month is 2 at a time for a special reading program, and are often given books by the local Literacy Council, the PTO and Scholastic Books(the schools earn points to get books to give away or keep in their library).

Mayhem has been given 5 since the beginning of the year. He’s being given another one today (Goldilocks)

This is where the guilt comes in.

Mayhem doesn’t need those books. In that same space of time the boys have checked out 17 books from the county library, in addition to the 4-5 a week from the school library and I have bought/traded for 8 more. The boys have 6 shelves stuffed with their books in the house, plus the library basket. Books are the one thing I buy without much question. They have their own line item in the budget. My children have always had access to books & always will. I love to read. I spend part of every day reading to them or encouraging them to read on their own.

I feel like those 5 books ought to go to the kids who need them, the ones who don’t have shelves of books in their rooms and regular library trips. At the rate they are handing out books, between them Havoc & Mayhem will have been given enough books to account for an entire class. 18-21 more kids could have gotten a book or a second book if mine didn’t get one.

Several times we already owned the book they were given, giving us 2 or 3 copies, if Havoc was also given one.

I know they can’t sort out who to give books to because people who don’t like to read would opt out & that would defeat the purpose and then you have the problem with kids wondering why some people got books & they didn’t, so this is probably the best way of reaching the most kids.

But I still feel vaguely guilty that I am being given a resource that other people need more than I do. I’m going to find out at the parent teacher conferences where I can donate some of these books, at least the duplicates & the ones the boys read once & never looked at again.

Trying to step up my kitchen

I tried to do some grocery shopping yesterday at Target but failed when the bulk of my available time was sucked up in a search for tablecloths, placemats & napkins. We swapped out the smaller trestle table that came with our breakfast nook, for the kitchen table we inherited from DH’s mom. The kids are now using full sized plates & silverware & that is taking up the space where we used to put food & condiments. The kitchen table is a 35 year old low budget,extendable table with 2 drop leaves. If I had the space, I could seat 14 at that table, but some of them would have to be outside because the kitchen just isn’t that big. In fact, with just one leaf up it is impossible to get to the seats against the wall without climbing over the side bench & once you are there you are trapped for the duration of the meal.

So we put Mayhem on that side.

Anyway, because it is a low budget 35 year old table it is full of scrapes & burn marks that can’t be sanded off, because it’s laminate & not that thick, so my ILs covered it with contact paper – several times. Fake wood contact paper, that has been peeling off in spots for at least the 6 years it has been in our possession (I’ve been using it as a craft table & have added my own nicks to it). I have no idea how to peel it off or a what to do with the table once I do because I am sure the adhesive itself will have done some damage or I will taking it off. So I figured I’d just toss a tablecloth over it and call it done.

I just wanted a wipe off plastic tablecloth with a fabric backing. Not the really cheap ones you use on picnic tables & perhaps some color other than white. Then after about 30 minutes of wandering I just wanted a tablecloth, any tablecloth. I could not find tablecloths in Target. My first thought was too look in the kitchen area because they have plates & glasses & dishtowels so tablecloths & napkins seemed a natural fit. But no. So I wandered around towels & bedding, reasoning that perhaps all the fabrics were kept together (though why dishtowels were not was beyond me).  Up and down the aisles I went. Looking at the posted signs. Rugs, curtains, towels, sheets, comforters, aprons, more dishtowels (on sale this time) but no tablecloths. I finally found them, hanging on a facing wall, disguised as hand towels and single pack bed sheets, which they were packaged like and hanging next to.

$20 for 4 napkins? Really? The tablecloths were reasonably priced but they were almost all cloth and mostly round. Target has gone back to the 70’s in their kitchen color scheme.  Had I wanted burnt orange or olive green or umber or goldenrod I’d have been in luck (though I am sure the color names are updated these days) My kitchen is white with some purple and dark green touches, medium wood and blue grey slate. Burnt orange only works in October, if it has pumpkins & black cats with it.

After a full 10 minutes of looking at every.single.package.there. I did find a plastic topped cream/green patterned tablecloth of appropriate size & shape and quite out of the blue discovered a 12 pack of white cloth napkins for 8.99 in the clock aisle while headed toward groceries.

The DH called & said “I’m 10 minutes from Arbys." (which is where we were meeting for dinner. He’d been at a gun show). So I had to go check out with the 6 things I did find and now i have to go back and get the actual food today.

I think I’ll go to Wal-Mart. I know where things are there

Weekly Winners - week 10

The week started off with muffins being made

Naturally this attracted our local wildlife

I’ve often wondered about the dinos affinity for muffins. Apparently they insist on being given them

“I can’t turn them down Mom”

We went to Buffalo Wild Wings for kids’ night

They seated us under a TV

Mayhem had show & tell at preschool

This guy insisted on coming along as well

and I made a camera strap & snuggie for my D40 yesterday

For more Weekly Winners visit Lotus at Sarcastic Mom