Books and More Books

With company coming to stay this weekend, I at last tackled the long-overdue task of cleaning our upstairs guest room. This one doesn't get a lot of use as we have another, more convenient spare room downstairs. This one, originally a loft over the living room, tends to collect junk, waiting to be disposed of. It also collects dust, cat hair, and dead lady bugs. So it was a real pleasure to put it to rights, including taking all the books off the shelves, dusting shelves and books, and re-organizing.

The shelves to the left hold the books of my childhood and teen years. I was a great reader of science fiction in the Fifties and, now that I've handled some of these old friends, I have a feeling I'm going to have to reacquaint myself with this old passion.

Before sci-fi, I was a faithful reader of the Oz books; some of these are mine and some belong to my older son ( who left them to me as he acquired nicer hardback reproductions.)

To the right of the door are mostly gardening books and photo albums --each one a temptation to sit down and wander through -- one reason the cleanup took so long.

But what a pleasure, now that it's done -- floors mopped, shelves wiped with lemon wax, the bedding washed and (mostly) free of cat hair.

All the time I was struggling to finish Miss Birdie, I was actually looking forward to some really satisfying house cleaning -- and this was just the beginning.

Paint . . . I'm ready to paint some walls now. And reorganize the pantry and finish cleaning my workroom and . . .

Spring always does that to me -- the desire for a clean sweep, a new start.

Everything seems possible.