Well, It Finally Happened, Just as Dad Warned

Except Dad always said they would fall ON me while I slept. This book loaded tower of shelves toppled forward along the side of the bed about 10:15 Sunday morning. Only four hours or so after I'd gotten to sleep. I'd spent all day Saturday pulling stuff out of that area also known as my office, cleaning, rearranging, organizing and putting as much as possible back into place before Ed's bedtime. My desk and computer had remained in the living room thank goodness. I had moved them out there the first evening Ed's folks were gone--Thursday and didn't move them back in until Monday evening. So the fix Ed and I applied to the book tower had one night to prove itself.

I hope one night was enough.

Saturday afternoon I had noticed the stack was beginning to lean forward so I strapped it into place by wrapping sticky silver packing tape around it from inside the closet door to the right and around back to inside the green book shelf behind it--right across where the top crate set on the second one down. It seemed sturdy and like it was going to hold. My only concern was that the tape would not adhere well to the wooden surfaces of the closet door and the green bookshelf. But the tape did not loose its grip on the two ends until after it broke and ripped across the front.

Our fix was to substitute a bungee cord for the tape and install it just under the top edge of the top crate.

If we hadn't been able to stabilize it to Ed's satisfaction I'd probably be straddling that forth crate under my desk as I have been since last fall.



Merlin jumped up into this shot just as I began to press the button on the camera. I was trying to show the space which is behind my desk before I moved it back in. I didn't realize he blocked the view until after the camera batteries died.

You can see, though, that I've moved the printer back into the closet on top of my sewing chest

And you can see a corner of the big box we use as a hamper which used to be on the other side of the sewing chest behind the closet doors. Making that hamper more accessible was one of two primary motives for the rearranging of my office. The other was to add the forth crate to the tower and stabilize it which I thought meant only moving that floor lamp out of the way so that one side of it would no longer need to be propped up by various objects because the other side was on top of the lamp's base.



So here we are with the 'desk' back in place. This is my view as I sit on the edge of the bed which is where I spent the bulk of my waking hours when my in-laws are home.

They arrived back home while I was prepping this post. They had left Spokane early this morning with their youngest son driving the whole way.

I had expected to be finished with the room do-over and the laundry by Saturday night and have all of Sunday and Monday for my own vacation which I intended to use writing my Script Frenzy script, reading, watching DVD on the big screen TV in the front room, crocheting and working out on my new mini-tramp which we picked up Thursday to replace the one whose sun-rotted elastic bands had broke six weeks ago.

I didn't get the final touches put on the room until 8:30 tonight. But I had to take a break from that project last night when Ed went to bed and couldn't resume it until after I had put the rest of the house back in order which I had accomplished for the most part by noon today but then I rewarded myself with two movies on the big TV before tending to the room and moving my desk back in.

What I accomplished on my 'vacation':

• a visit to the library and Jo-anne's on Thursday afternoon.
• watched equivalent of 7 movies on the big TV (four episodes of the BBC comedy Black Books counting as one) Black Books, The Big Lewbowski and Rattatouille with Ed; Atonement, Secret Life of Bees, Being Julia, and Dreamgirls by myself. Hey it's research!! :)
  
• half a dozen or so gentle getting-to-know-you 'workouts' on the new mini-tramp.
• read half a book on script writing
• 3 loads of laundry
• general cleaning of room
• major overhaul of office
• watched 3 episodes of Monk online--the first three of the last six episodes of the series. I've been holding the last three out as a reward for after getting the chores done--for after Ed's folks got home and I was back in the room without access to the big TV. I meant to save them all (plus Lost episodes) for after I was holed up in the room again but I had needed a short break a few times and didn't want to commit to a two hour movie. Watching a TV episode online is usually 45 minutes.
• cleaning kitchen twice (Ed did it several times as well as cooked all the main meals bless him)
• two long late-night phone visits with my sisters--one on Friday night and the other on Saturday.
• sorted one major junk drawer--the bottom one in my sewing chest. Yay!!! It was stuffed to the gills with various sizes of plastic bags. Between what was in that drawer and another bag full I found in the closet, I managed to toss at least a bushel of musty plastic bags. This hoarder is patting herself on the back
• washed a dozen or so plastic zip bags--sandwich, quart and gallon sizes--for use in the craft and sewing sorting projects in the near future I hope. I had rescued them out of the bag of bags I'd been shuffling about the closet for the last couple years. They were the only ones I kept but I promised myself that I would either wash them along with the dishes this morning or I'd toss them. They would not return to the room awaiting another opportunity.
• pulled all my shoes out from under the bed and organized them, putting several in the bottom half of Merlin's crate which is under the bed and several more in a cardboard box that will slide under the bed but can serve as my foot rest while sitting at the computer. Now Merlin's access point to under the bed is blocked and he can't go under there and drag my shoes by their laces out of my reach.
• a lot of thinking and a little bit of online research for my script. [I said in Friday's post I was going to switch to adapting one of my completed short stories to a script if I didn't get going on scene writing for the Snags in Her Stitches story by this evening. But that was when I was sure I'd be done with eh bulk of my chores by Saturday night. So I'm extending that until Wednesday evening as I HAVE worked out a lot by thinking about it while I did my chores this weekend.]

Things I did not get done that I'd hoped to:

• a lot of scene writing on my script
• finishing the novel A Reliable Wife which was due today. [made it to page 4 on Thursday night and didn't pick it up again so I'll have to get back in the queue which is at 15 now]
• finishing the purse crochet project which stalled out a week ago Thursday when I ran out of black thread for which I made the trip to Joann's on Thursday.
• cutting out the sections of the silver cloth for the linings of the crocheted purse and the two 3 panel needlepoint bookcovers. [for this I need to set up a card table somewhere where there is very good light or bring the light to it.]
• several serious 'break-a-sweat' workouts on the tramp while I could have it indoors