The 2014 Theme

I'm almost embarrassed to say that the theme in our house this year is Organize, but it came so clearly into my head as that the thing that must be done that I just got to work on it as soon as I thought it, which was in November.  So the boxes of baby clothes were all sorted until we got a smokin' deal on 13 containers of used children's items last week that have turned the nursery into a gigantic, insurmountable mess.  It is not organized.

I don't intend to do anything darling and Pinterest-style, but we've begun cleaning out our closets and I finally, after almost five years away from my professional life and have let go of the clothes that (a) no longer fit and (b) no longer suit my lifestyle.  If I'm ever behind a reference desk again, I can go back to the thrift store and buy some new button up shirts.  Steve also has the cold room under construction so that we can get all of our canned goods and food storage and junk together and inventoried.  He had to do some demolition for the project, so we've had a stream of helpers through the house.

Yesterday George and Anne were over to help.  George and Anne are sort of foster siblings to one another and both are sort of . . . slow.  They remind me of the homeless couple who pretend to be Goldie Hawn's parents in Housesitter (you know that movie, right?)  George is very round and he calls Steve every blessed day to talk about ham radios and trains and to consult him on what breakfast cereals to eat.  Anne has no teeth and does whatever George tells her to do and calls The Bairn Ralph, which is nowhere near his actual name, and yesterday told me, as just about her only conversational item, that someone had purchased them a new can opener this week.  Anne is always chewing a piece of gum and when she eats dinner at our house, she takes it out of her mouth and sets it on the table while she eats and then pops it back in her mouth to chew a while longer.

I can only handle about 20 minutes of George at a time.  When I was explaining why this was to Steve, he said, "But isn't George just like those library patrons you used to deal with EVERY day?"

Yes.

George would actually make a wonderful library patron of a particular sort, but I just got rid of all those lovely shirts that require cufflinks and if I'm not keeping the library clothes in my house, I certainly don't want to keep the library patrons here.