The Urbane Homestead

Resolution already broken, but that's not the point

The point of not buying new books is to read down the stacks of books I've got. Clearly I will never get to just-in-time inventory status like some people I know (even, inexplicably, some people I am related to). It used to be important to have all the information I might want at any given moment on hand—what if I needed to remember the Proto-Indo-European root of the word "liver?" Or learn how to write a sonnet? Or find out what the per capita GDP of Botswana is? You used to need to have a reference library for those sorts of things. Now, of course, you can look up almost anything you want to know online in a few seconds, instead of spending hours rummaging around in the stacks (provided, of course, you know how to identify reliable information). As a marketing professional, I spend a lot of time thinking about information overload, and the difficulties we face when trying to attract the attention of a public that is actively trying to ignore any message that isn't critical. Even thinking about the overload is stressful, and experiencing it, as we do every day, is mind-boggling. Literally. I read somewhere that a single weekday issue of the New York Times contains as much information as the average 18th century individual faced in an entire lifetime. True? I don't know, but it's  plausible--and that tells you something right there. At the same time, the amount of knowledge that is literally at our fingertips is breathtaking. In my pajamas, at half past midnight on a Monday, I can take it into my head to learn Urdu—and I can start right now. Or I can wonder what the second verse of Cowgirl in the Sand was—and find it immediately. I can get Census data, or historical maps; I have access to the entire photo collection of the Library of Congress and the documents in the National Archives. It's astounding.

While I'm looking all these things up online, though, my print library is languishing, getting dusty on the shelves. Admittedly, print fulfills a different function from online resources. But still, every hour I'm goofing around online is an hour I used to spend reading....so the books pile up and pile up, and here we all are, Miss Havisham among the cobwebbed dishes of the wedding feast.

But, of course, I do read, and I read every day. My reading curriculum is whim-based. I often go on jags, where I read everything by a particular author, or six books in a row set in the Russian winters, or two months of nothing but space opera. I read only for my own pleasure and to enhance the value and enjoyment of my life. That means I don't have to finish anything I'm not enjoying, and I don't have to read the scary parts, and I can read just the good parts of the same book three times in a row if I want to. At the same time, I feel a sort of voracious anxiety, knowing that life is finite and I might not have time to read everything I want to. The days of lingering illnesses and long sea voyages are gone, which is a shame, because they afforded lots more time for uninterrupted reading.

The moral hazard (as it were) is that whim-based reading sometimes require access to books that aren't already in the house. So the curriculum now, at least for a while, is more restricted. It's strictly physically determined: I'm going to read through a stack, a pile, or a shelf at a time, and see what serendipity brings.

I'm starting with the stack closest to the bed, as listed on the left under "On the Night Table."  First up is Wish Her Safe at Home, by Stephen Benatar, which, so far, is lovely. I bought it at the Borders in Arborland, the one that's closing, last week for full price, because I felt sorry for them. It was worth it; it's one of my favorite genres, the one of quiet novels about slightly nutty British women.

What are you reading?

P.S. Yekwr, a b a b, c d c d, e f e f , g g (for a Shakespearean sonnet, anyway), and about $13,100.

Stinky

As my sister mentioned on her Facebook page last week, many pairs of socks changed hands (as it were) among the Sikkengas over the holidays. Mom knitted her a pair for her, while I knitted a pair for our brother (well, half a pair—I'm almost finished with them now). Meanwhile, Karen had drawn my name for our gift exchange, and presented me with a box filled with about a dozen different pairs of nice new socks of all kinds. Later, Karen passed on to Henry three pairs of men's white Gold Toe socks, still in the package, that she had found at the thrift shop. They smelled a little mothbally, but they were brand new, and nice and cushy. Great! I took them home and threw them in the wash.

I always sort my laundry very carefully: dark colors, jeans, medium colors, household linens, warm colors, whites and very pale colors—all get washed separately in cold water, with scent-free detergent. Jeans are washed inside out, many things are washed in mesh bags for protection, and silk, fleece, and delicates are air-dried. There are a couple of reasons for all this foofarah. First, I think it makes our clothes last much longer than they otherwise would. Mostly, though, it's about the only part of my life where I really believe I have control. That's why I'm going to be in therapy for years now: washing them made those stupid socks smell even more strongly of mothballs. Not only that, they made the entire load of white and delicates smell strongly of mothballs, including the two new bras that were in the load—one of which I had paid full price for just the day before. Oh, the pain. I turned the water to hot, added some borax, and washed the load again. An even greater reek of mothballs plumed from the washer when I opened the door. I girded my loins, gritted my teeth, and, trying not to breathe, I sorted through the wet stinky clothes and pulled out all six white socks, which took straight out to the garbage. I tossed in a generous scoop of Oxy-Kleen and washed the load again. It still smelled poisonous, but, reluctant to subject the clothes to further torture, I went ahead and dried them. I wish there wasn't this faintly repellent chemical odor emanating from my chest. It can't be healthy. But on the other hand, I haven't seen any moths.

But wait, there's more

What a weekend! We were a flurry of activity. If we hadn't spent most of our time in the basement, where it's cool, we probably would have churned ourselves into a little pool of butter. (That's possibly a very age-specific reference; when I was a child in the 1960's,it was already pretty dicey).

It started with the realization that we had NOTHING scheduled all weekend. No religious school on Saturday. No family dinner on Sunday. No friends to see, no errands to run, no overage of work to get out of the way. And, now that Stella and Cindy clean our house for us every other week (making them eligible for beatification, in my opinion), we don't have to spend our free time vacuuming and scrubbing the toilets.

With such a bounty of time stretching ahead, I suggested to Henry that he make good on his promise to build some shelves at the bottom of the basement stairs. I need storage shelves because I now have five (5, yes, 5) sets of dishes, plus three extra sets of plates, for parties and such. We are not unusually sociable; our dish plethora just happened. Partly it's the result of the fact that Suzanne, my late mother-in-law, an inveterate collector of all kinds of things, had even more sets than that, and I ended up with a couple of them. Partly it's the result of getting married, and receiving a couple of sets as gifts. And partly it's a genetic thing, my mother tells me; people of British heritage just like dishes. That's another way of saying that my mom bought them for me.

While we were down in the basement measuring for the shelves, it became apparent that it would be a lot easier to build the shelves if the bikes were out of the way. So we (well, Henry) installed a rope and pulley and rack system in the ceiling for the bikes to hang from. They look great, moving through the air toward the wall.

Then we realized that it was too hard to find any nails or screws for the shelves, so we spent a couple of hours sorting them into little plastic drawers. At first we laboriously labelled the drawers ("molly bolts" "little bitty brads" "rubber washers"), which involved many, many reiterations of the following conversation: "What's this?" "That's a machine screw, just like the last one." "It's not just like the last one! It look totally different!" "Look, just finish the label, okay?"  Luckily, inspiration struck ("Ow!") and I got out the glue gun. A picture speaks louder than words, and an object itself speaks loudest of all.

Then it seemed like it would be a lot easier to cut the wood for the shelves if so much space on the work table weren't taken up by the 12-foot pieces of original trim, coated with cakey layers of lead paint, from the second floor. So I got out the Citrisolve and some rubber gloves and commenced to strippin'. That stuff really works, and you don't feel like your brain cells are expiring by the thousands as you inhale it. After I refinish the wood, I'll install where it belongs on the second floor, which will keep the rabbits from snacking on the plaster. (Don't ask, because I don't know.)

And while I was down there in the basement, I did six loads of laundry, ironed a bunch of linen napkins that have been sitting in a crumpled pile since the Cenozoic Era, used the hot iron and a thin spatula to take the price labels off a stack of antique opera libretti, sorted out bike parts into functional categories, made some broad bean stew with baby onions (in the kitchen, of course, but the beans were from the basement), and did a science experiment with Joe involving a boiled egg, a crayon, and a lot of vinegar (and while I was at it, I cleaned the drain with vinegar, baking soda, and boiling water).

The shelves haven't gotten started yet, but I'm glad to be at work today. I need a break.