I guess we're keeping each other

After eleven years of living together and almost nine of marriage, it's finally happened: we've merged our book collections. I am thrilled about this. We merged the CDs long ago, but now I finally feel completely married. Phew.

The merger is a result of having to consolidate Mr. K's study into mine so that his can become the baby's room. Even though we've been working like dogs for a couple of weeks now, remarkably little has happened in what will be the nursery; it's all been going on in my room and the master bedroom.

Mr. K has complained for years that he's tired of having IVAR shelves. I've lost count of how many times I'd suggested Billy, only to have him veto those as well. So we've lived with IVAR for more than a decade, and it has served us well. Last weekend, however, I suggested getting an IVAR desk, and that seemed to push him over the edge. On Sunday he phoned from IKEA and said, "How about some Billy shelves?"

I am proud to report that I didn't climb through the telephone wire and hit him.

So now we have Billy shelving in the study we will share. Installing it involved taking all the books off the old shelves, disassembling the old shelves, assembling the new shelves, and putting most of the books back onto them. They have somewhat less capacity than the old ones, so there've been piles of books sitting on the floor quietly awaiting new homes.

Some of the IVAR has gone into our bedroom closet, which is (thank you, idiot architects and idiot builder) too shallow to hang clothes in. (We had to spend a large chunk of money six years ago to get a wardrobe and drawers installed along one wall of the bedroom.) All the trade paperbacks went in there, as did my collection of film books.* That closet is now done, yay.

* A great interest in silent film a few years ago resulted in the accumulation of a decent little library about it. My changing interests are reflected in my books: I have collections about not only silent film but representations of the female body, knitting, writing, teaching ESL, weightlifting and triathlon training, and Shakespeare. And that doesn't touch the novels.

Because Mr. K was out of town for the weekend helping his parents get their place ready for their 50th anniversary festivities in a couple of weeks, K. and J. came over today to help me move the five-foot solid pine table out of the study and assemble the new computer desk, which is considerably more complicated to put together than the Billy shelves were. Despite some very frustrating moments resulting from our not having read the directions carefully enough, we all managed to maintain remarkable equanimity and good humour. Hooray for us. I now have a new, fully assembled desk.

Left to do: take down the other wall shelf so that the printer can go on top of the desk. Plaster over the holes in the wall, and sand, prime, and paint them. Empty the contents of the large pine dresser (a ridiculous quantity of yarn and an embarrassing number of unfinished knitting projects) into big plastic tubs (yet to be bought) that will go into the linen closet. Move the dresser out of the study. Put my computer desk into place and reassemble the computer. Move Mr. K's computer desk into the study. Buy a four-drawer filing cabinet and fill it with the contents of both two-drawer filing cabinets. Dispose of the two-drawer filing cabinets. Sell the large pine table. Sell the big queen-sized futon that used to be our couch. (Snif. So many guest-based adventures happened on that futon. I'll be sorry to see it go.) Get a smaller pullout sofa to go into the study so that we still have room to put up guests. Paint the baby's room. Move the dresser into the baby's room. Get a changing table and a crib, preferably one that can be converted into a bed.

I get slightly dizzy thinking about all of it. And I don't stop working until the middle of September, and my parents arrive on August 23 to stay for two weeks. I still don't know where we're going to put them.

Best student error I think I've ever received, in a short essay about earthworms: "For instance, earthworms destroy the soil cover by taking neutrinos from pants."

Memo to my students: do NOT trust the spell checker. Just don't.

(Beware the pants neutrinos!)