And now

I have 40 minutes left of the day. I spent nearly the entire day clearing off my desk. This meant I took 6, yes 6 full garbage cans full of trash to the big trash can outside. Now that is full and the cleaners will be unhappy with me because they won't know what to do with the trash they collect between now and Weds., when the haulers haul away the trash. I generated 5' worth of trash today. A combination of damaged books I had on my desk that needed to be discarded, old union stuff (the detritus of negotiating 3 contracts and 3 grievances), a year's worth of Kirkus Reviews, months' worth of Publishers Weekly and various prepub stuff from jobbers, notes from an incredible number of meetings, all of my leave requests from 2003 (which had been stashed behind my monitor)and a lot of goofy papers. Among the gems I discovered were 2 really important items I'd been desperately searching for, a manual I needed to write an article about and a bunch of stuff I was happy to find. Plenty of things I could file in folders, more stuff I don't know what to do with, some gift books I will have to deal with (everyone who writes anything about the Adirondacks insists on sending me a copy of the book, regardless of what it's really about--i.e., poems--and I have to decide if we really want it on the bookmobile), policy statements for the System from the 70's that no one knows we have, about 20 outdated sample collection development and weeding policies and a bunch of other stuff. But it's all manageable now and I have a big empty surface in front of me and on either side of me. Very exciting. Part of my journey. Only the people I work with can really grasp the magnitude of this.

On my way home I'll stop at Lowes to buy weatherstripping for the front door--in the winter the draft coming through there would blow out a candle. I'll get more plastic for the windows and a plastic step-stool for the heater to sit on in the cellar, since the wooden chair got too wet and has rotted. I'll get hose for my sump pump so I can replace what's there now, that has pin holes in it so everything gets sprayed each time the sump pump comes on (at least 20 times a day). This means I'll have to take off the old hose and attach said new hose. Not looking forward to that. The joys of home ownership. I'll go to the grocery store to replace the peanut butter that Chances ate. People were impressed that she ate the whole jar, but what they were most impressed with was that she got the top off. Heck, that's NOTHING. The dogs also drank nearly a gallon of cider, which I had left on the railing in the snow to chill. They dumped it out in the snow, then lapped up the snow, like sno-cones. The pigs. Right now they're eating the fermented apples on the ground under the apple trees along the driveway, but I see deer tracks there too, so there aren't many left. I'll also stop at the orchard and get myself another gallon of unpasteurized cider. I'll go to the liquor store for wine for Sunday dinner. Then I'll stop at Ken's for a visit and I'll finally get home, to carry in 2 loads of wood and start a fire. It all seems like a whole lot of work to me. I'd rather stay here at my nice neat desk, where my chair doesn't have holes in it and my dogs aren't jumping on me.