Catching Up and Looking Back

Today was a day for catching up. Two big Mary Kay orders will go out tomorrow, I believe and so the packing and paperwork that accompanies them had to be completed.

My new young helper came and the Christmas tree is back in its box in the closet until the end of the year. I am looking forward to bringing it out again and watching it sparkle but I am looking forward to everything in between first! Valentine's Day (and Ash Wednesday) are next. Then Easter and May and all the summer flowers. Fall is far away, but it is always my favorite time of the year. Right now I am thinking about the warm time, to ward off the chill.

My helper and I also sorted through papers in one room and books in another. I have two oversized (enormous, actually) book cases, stuffed full of books in two different rooms of my house. Both need to move on, but one is positively inefficient as it is in my bedroom, blocking a perfectly good outlet that cannot be reached. I have been looking at this room, my bedroom and thinking about life in a wheelchair. Crammed with clutter as this room is, it makes my life more difficult. It will cost no money, only time to clear a certain percentage of the books and make more space for the person who "lives and moves and has her being" in this house.

The process has begun with a small number of books cleared to the go away pile, a smaller number moved to other places and alas the majority going back (for now--how many times have I said that in the past!) Going through the books feels like falling into the sins of my past life--so many books accumulated, so much time spent reading, maybe there was something more productive I could have been doing back then? Certainly, I can't help wondering how much money I could have earned in interest on savings if I had borrowed the books, instead of buying them. (There is a truly not heartening thought for a cold, dreary late January afternoon.)

Beloved books on medieval history, liturgy, calligraphy, spirituality and even my four Mary Stewart novels, the best retelling of the Arthurian legend, emerged from the dust today. Now at least I have a sense of where some of them are. Two little Lenten books are now where I can reach them to use them this year and the Arthurian novels where I can re-read them. I will have no regrets if I buy no new books this year. There is plenty to read right here.

Looking at them--there were even several on herbs and gardening--reminded me of the stages of my life, the progression of interests where there even to three or four little paperbacks of Freud's writing and one of Jung (that one hit the discard pile! I can't stand Jung.) There will be things for a yard sale when the sun shines again.