My office windows, take 3
Yesterday the window guy installed the new woven woods in my office.
And the one thing the woven woods have shown me is that the room needs to be painted. We had it painted the yellow before we moved in but I think it needs a sage green now so the woven woods don’t jump out at you. So since the books all have to come off the bookcases for the new ones then we might as well paint the room then, right?
I wonder how long it will be until the office is back together again? I don’t do change well, not even changes that I want, so all this is really hard on me. I need to keep telling myself that it will be worth it when it is all done.
On the plus side, I finally found an old desk on craigslist. I was looking for one of the big oak teacher like desks with drawers on each side and the little pull-out trays. After some odd experiences on craigslist (like the one that was called antique and was about a year old and the lady who refused to sell her desk to me because I spelled her unusal and very long name wrong in an email) I found one! It came from the physics dept at US Berkeley so maybe there are some creative juices still hanging around it. It doesn’t need a speck of work done to it. The top is a bit rough but I went over it with my Restore-a-Finish and it looks fine, especially since it came with a glass top to cover it. I hate that I can’t use the center drawer but we need to remove it in order to mount the keyboard tray. This weekend we’ll move it into the room and I can start organizing the drawers at least.
Progress. Slow, but still, progress.
Still working on the office
I am actually gaining control over the clutter in the office but I am worried that I haven’t thrown away enough stuff. 1 huge over-sized basket of file stuff and that’s it so far. Well, plus 7 boxes of things that didn’t need to be stored in my office went into the garage. And 1 bag for Goodwill. Still I’ll be happy if I can a) actually have enough room to work in there without feeling claustrophobic and b) actually FIND something when I need it. I know I should sort through the books – they are stacking up vertically on top of the horizontal stacks – but it is so hard for me to get rid of books. I think because when I first moved from California I sold all my books, including the old first editions I had that were worth some money, in order to finance my move. I’ll never get a lot of those books back again but I am loathe to let go of what I have. And we will need to, soon, I imagine as throughout the house we have over 5,000 books. Sigh. It is a comfort to me to see them all. My security blanket.
I have adopted a strange method of sorting what is left in the paper files, I know you’re not supposed to touch a piece of paper a gazillon times but hey, this is working so I am going for it. I have a big stack of paper in front of me and as I pick up a piece, if I know immediately where it goes, I put it away, if not, it goes to the new to-be-sorted pile. Mostly I am find things like receipts (Oh yeah, I’m gonna need those at tax times) and scraps of paper that have contact info or writing ideas. Once I’m done with the easy stuff I’ll have to go through it all again. This could take a while. I have 4 Xerox paper boxes filled with my paper that needs sorting.
Off to wrap birthday presents and drive to Sacramento for my daughter’s 23rd birthday and my grandson’s 1st birthday. They were born on the same day. Expect to see many indulgent grandma pictures upon my return. I haven’t seen him since Christmas.
Original art by Susan Taylor Brown
