The Urbane Homestead

The status of the experiment

The embargo on book acquisitions was a complete and utter failure. The experiment lasted about three weeks, I think; fate and my own nature conspired against me. First, there were the financial difficulties of Borders, our hometown megacorp (well, mini-megacorp) and bookstore of sentiment and memories for me. When, after so many years of seeing the writing on the wall, and even of watching it being written, Borders officially announced bankruptcy, I felt, of course, sad. Out of sorrow and pity, I found it necessary to go in and buy a bagful of books I didn't need as my own souvenir and small contribution to our local economy. Clearly it didn't work, because the following week Borders announced the imminent closure of their Arborland store. Well. What followed was weeks and weeks of liquidation sales with ever-decreasing prices, which naturally led to the regular influx of  more bags of books. Since I had already broken my book non-acquisition vow, there didn't seem to be any point to avoiding the weekly Friends of the Library used bookstore, so that regular influx started up again too. And then there seemed to be no point to holding back anymore at all.

The wrinkle is this. At the same time I implemented the ban on book-buying, I implemented a similar ban on shoe acquisition. The motivation in that case was somewhat different. Although I love shoes and own many pairs, I do not suffer from/am not blessed by the same compulsion to acquire. My book buying resolution was prompted by capacity overload; I simply have run out of shelf space. (You may be asking, where are the new books I acquired despite the ban? Um. Well. They are neatly ("neatly") stored in bags and stacks on the floors of my office, bedroom, and in the basement. Sorry, Henry.) The shoe ban, on the other hand, was inspired by lust and greed. When we were in Nevada in December, I fell deeply in love with a pair of Lucchese ostrich cowboy boots. In the normal course of my life, I cannot possibly justify spending $400 for footwear. It was therefore necessary to devise a plan whereby I reasonably could spend such a sum, and hence the ban on shoe purchases. I have, in this case, emerged triumphant from the ordeal; it was grueling, but I did manage not to purchase a single pair of new shoes during the period between New Year's and my birthday. I now deserve to be crowned with laurels (the laurels in the form of boots, and the crown of course being on my feet.)

So what does this say about me? A) I am so intellectual that I can more easily deny myself fashion footwear than mental roughage. B) I am so shallow that I am motivated by the promise of a fancy reward than I am by keeping my family's living space comfortably uncluttered. C) I'm a sucker for a sad story like Border's. D) Please, go ahead and speculate. I'm out of ideas.

If you stop by my house anytime soon, you will find me reading through my stacks of new books, elegantly shod. Ride 'em, cowboy.

Resolution already broken, but that's not the point

The point of not buying new books is to read down the stacks of books I've got. Clearly I will never get to just-in-time inventory status like some people I know (even, inexplicably, some people I am related to). It used to be important to have all the information I might want at any given moment on hand—what if I needed to remember the Proto-Indo-European root of the word "liver?" Or learn how to write a sonnet? Or find out what the per capita GDP of Botswana is? You used to need to have a reference library for those sorts of things. Now, of course, you can look up almost anything you want to know online in a few seconds, instead of spending hours rummaging around in the stacks (provided, of course, you know how to identify reliable information). As a marketing professional, I spend a lot of time thinking about information overload, and the difficulties we face when trying to attract the attention of a public that is actively trying to ignore any message that isn't critical. Even thinking about the overload is stressful, and experiencing it, as we do every day, is mind-boggling. Literally. I read somewhere that a single weekday issue of the New York Times contains as much information as the average 18th century individual faced in an entire lifetime. True? I don't know, but it's  plausible--and that tells you something right there. At the same time, the amount of knowledge that is literally at our fingertips is breathtaking. In my pajamas, at half past midnight on a Monday, I can take it into my head to learn Urdu—and I can start right now. Or I can wonder what the second verse of Cowgirl in the Sand was—and find it immediately. I can get Census data, or historical maps; I have access to the entire photo collection of the Library of Congress and the documents in the National Archives. It's astounding.

While I'm looking all these things up online, though, my print library is languishing, getting dusty on the shelves. Admittedly, print fulfills a different function from online resources. But still, every hour I'm goofing around online is an hour I used to spend reading....so the books pile up and pile up, and here we all are, Miss Havisham among the cobwebbed dishes of the wedding feast.

But, of course, I do read, and I read every day. My reading curriculum is whim-based. I often go on jags, where I read everything by a particular author, or six books in a row set in the Russian winters, or two months of nothing but space opera. I read only for my own pleasure and to enhance the value and enjoyment of my life. That means I don't have to finish anything I'm not enjoying, and I don't have to read the scary parts, and I can read just the good parts of the same book three times in a row if I want to. At the same time, I feel a sort of voracious anxiety, knowing that life is finite and I might not have time to read everything I want to. The days of lingering illnesses and long sea voyages are gone, which is a shame, because they afforded lots more time for uninterrupted reading.

The moral hazard (as it were) is that whim-based reading sometimes require access to books that aren't already in the house. So the curriculum now, at least for a while, is more restricted. It's strictly physically determined: I'm going to read through a stack, a pile, or a shelf at a time, and see what serendipity brings.

I'm starting with the stack closest to the bed, as listed on the left under "On the Night Table."  First up is Wish Her Safe at Home, by Stephen Benatar, which, so far, is lovely. I bought it at the Borders in Arborland, the one that's closing, last week for full price, because I felt sorry for them. It was worth it; it's one of my favorite genres, the one of quiet novels about slightly nutty British women.

What are you reading?

P.S. Yekwr, a b a b, c d c d, e f e f , g g (for a Shakespearean sonnet, anyway), and about $13,100.

Finished, I think

I think this drawing is done, but I can never tell. It's done with Prismacolor and Derwent colored pencils on Stonehenge paper.

Household Archaeology

Be it resolved....

I like to keep expectations low. That way, everyone is pleasantly surprised when things go well, and no one is disappointed when they don't. As a result, I don't usually make New Year's resolutions; I never have much confidence in my ability to stick to them once the novelty of making them wears off, and it's unnecessary to add additional disappointment to a Michigan February, which is quite grim enough on its own.

Somehow, though, this year I feel the draw of starting afresh and making changes. I've decided to seen if I can refrain from buying any books, new or used, for three months. One motivation for the decision is safety: my bedside table is stacked so high with books that Joe isn't allowed in the bedroom because I'm afraid of loud noises triggering an avalanche and burying us alive until we suffocate under multiple copies of Anna Karenina and The Beginner's Guide to Geocaching.

There are also stacks and stacks of books piled up in front of the bookcases all over the house, all books that look really interesting or that have been recommended or that have particularly good cover design or that happen to be about whatever topic I was pursuing on the day I came across them. I haven't lost interest in these books, but they have a lot of competition for my attention, and most of them remain unread, which seems an unnatural state of existence foryou book. You could probably lock me in this house for fifty years and, with just what's on my shelves right now, I would not run out of new things to read. And between the ever-growing size of the collection and the multiple other demands on my time, what chance do I stand of getting to read half these books?

I've always loved books. When I was a kid, my dad would reward me for special chores like cleaning out the garage by taking me to the Wooden Spoon Used Book Store and letting me pick out whatever I wanted. I collected Nancy Drew mysteries; the core of my collection were old editions of the first three volumes of the series, which had belonged to my mother when she was a girl. By the time I outgrew Nancy Drew, I had collected every book in the series that had been published thus far, in at least one edition. (If you are also a Nancy Drew aficionado, you know that many of the books in the series have been revised and rewritten several times in order to keep up with modern mores; for example, the dialect-spouting "negress" of the blue 1930 edition of The Hidden Staircase is gone from the yellow 1959 edition, and the plot has been completely transformed.) I learned a lot from Nancy Drew; not just the usefulness of Morse Code and knowing how to tap dance, and interesting facts about various exotic locales, but also about the importance of chums who make you look brilliant by comparison, and the value of having a loving but absent father and a housekeeper who doesn't cramp your style, instead of an actual mother who would probably forbid you to drive your blue roadster out to the abandoned house at midnight in order to check on your hunch.

When I was in sixth grade or so, my mother volunteered our house as the collections warehouse for a charity used book sale. People would drop off bags and boxes of old books during the day, and following my after-school snack, I would disappear into the basement to loot and pillage. I was like Scrooge McDuck, swimming in his money; there were hundreds of cardboard boxes full of adventure and delight.  My reading list became random and serendipitous, and I ended up reading many, many books I might never have come across otherwise, both good and bad. This earthly paradise lasted only one year, as the weight of the books caused the foundation of the house to crack, and sadly, my parents decided to let the organization find someplace else to store the books. (Now that I have experienced at first hand the trauma--both financial and emotional--of foundation replacement, I see their point.)

My library-building continued throughout my life, punctuated by upheavals such as going off to college, and then moving through three foreign countries, two U.S. states, and the District of Columbia. Living overseas kept the book population down, since English books are not always available in significant quantity. Graduate school also restricted the wholesale amassing of random books, since time is limited and academic books are expensive.

But then life took a unexpected turn; Henry and I moved here and haven't moved again in 13 years. I never expected to live anywhere this long. When we moved from Austin, we got rid of tons (literally) of stuff; but things are like sand, I learned, and come silently drifting back in, grain by grain, and suddenly one day you realize your house is once again filled to the rafters with crap you don't need. Books are the worst of this; they are so readily available (especially when you live within walking distance of half a dozen bookstores), they are small, they aren't expensive, they look so interesting. You say to yourself (again) "Why not?" and one day you realize your house is filled to the rafters with books, all of which you genuinely do want to read, but which are perpetually slipping down the agenda as new books are brought in....It's never-ending, unless you take action. And that's what I'm doing: My resolution is to refrain from buying any books until April 1. Will I succeed? I hope so. If I do, I promised myself a special reward. And it's not a book.

Priorities

I haven't been doing much to whip my house into shape, or even, indeed, to keep it clean. Little tumbleweeds made of dog hair and dust adorn the corners of the stairs.  The color of the kitchen sink has permanently devolved to a light coffee beige. The shower curtain is...well, never mind that. The point is that although I let some things slide, I do have my priorities, and one of those is always having the right earrings to wear with every outfit.

Earrings have to match the outfit in style, of course; I couldn't possibly wear sparkly diamonelle danglies with jeans and a tee shirt. A casual outfit requires something in a plain metal, or perhaps small pearls. Color, however, is of even more importance than style, and so I have come to own earrings of every conceivable color. Morning, which is, naturally, when I get dressed, is not my best time, and the frustration I experience while searching through my jewelry box for the other earring to the right pair is an emotion best not described to those I want to think well of me.

Hence, my new system for earring storage. I have little divided trays (an inheritance from my mother-in-law, the most cleverly organized person ever to exist on this planet) that fit in my jewelry chest. And look how clearly I have indicated which color earring goes in which little box:

 

Clever, no? I could now match earrings to outfit even at the ungodly hour of 5:00 in the morning, although I can't imagine why I would get up that early. Shudder. But I could, if I wanted to, and I would look good, which is what really matters.

About travel, and life in the third grade

We went to the Yucatán peninsula for a week at the end of February. In preparation, I encouraged Joe to practice his Spanish whenever he got a chance—and as it happened, a new girl joined his class a few weeks before our trip, fresh from Mexico.

On her first day, he went up to her, smiled, and said, "¡Hola! ¿Como estas?"

"Shut up," she said.

Afterwords, Maribel turned out to be a very sweet little girl, so I'm perfectly willing to believe that either Joe misunderstood her response, or she misunderstood his Spanish. Still, it put something of a damper on his enthusiasm for Mexico, at least until we got there and he had a fabulous time. And he did, in fact, chat with pretty much everyone we met, in both English and Spanish.

Memories of travel

There's a discussion going on in the Interworld about the worst airline meal ever, based on a letter written by an irate passenger on Virgin Air. The meal in question, to my mind, looks perfectly reasonable for airline food. At least you can tell it's supposed to be edible. Years ago, I flew from Athens to London on JAT (the Yugoslavian airline). Dinner on the flight consisted of six thick slices of processed meat, each different and each unidentifiable, garnished with a single small pickle. I was young and very hungry, so I was willing to try it anyway, but it was so tough the tines of my plastic fork broke off. Then the flight attendant stumbled in the aisle and spilled an entire pot of coffee (fortunately lukewarm) in my companion's lap. That was a meal I'll never forget.

Stinky

As my sister mentioned on her Facebook page last week, many pairs of socks changed hands (as it were) among the Sikkengas over the holidays. Mom knitted her a pair for her, while I knitted a pair for our brother (well, half a pair—I'm almost finished with them now). Meanwhile, Karen had drawn my name for our gift exchange, and presented me with a box filled with about a dozen different pairs of nice new socks of all kinds. Later, Karen passed on to Henry three pairs of men's white Gold Toe socks, still in the package, that she had found at the thrift shop. They smelled a little mothbally, but they were brand new, and nice and cushy. Great! I took them home and threw them in the wash.

I always sort my laundry very carefully: dark colors, jeans, medium colors, household linens, warm colors, whites and very pale colors—all get washed separately in cold water, with scent-free detergent. Jeans are washed inside out, many things are washed in mesh bags for protection, and silk, fleece, and delicates are air-dried. There are a couple of reasons for all this foofarah. First, I think it makes our clothes last much longer than they otherwise would. Mostly, though, it's about the only part of my life where I really believe I have control. That's why I'm going to be in therapy for years now: washing them made those stupid socks smell even more strongly of mothballs. Not only that, they made the entire load of white and delicates smell strongly of mothballs, including the two new bras that were in the load—one of which I had paid full price for just the day before. Oh, the pain. I turned the water to hot, added some borax, and washed the load again. An even greater reek of mothballs plumed from the washer when I opened the door. I girded my loins, gritted my teeth, and, trying not to breathe, I sorted through the wet stinky clothes and pulled out all six white socks, which took straight out to the garbage. I tossed in a generous scoop of Oxy-Kleen and washed the load again. It still smelled poisonous, but, reluctant to subject the clothes to further torture, I went ahead and dried them. I wish there wasn't this faintly repellent chemical odor emanating from my chest. It can't be healthy. But on the other hand, I haven't seen any moths.

ta da!

Yes, it's true. I really have, finally, graduated. For years I have been styling myself as the "most educated, least degreed" person I know, thanks to my years and years of graduate work without a conclusive event (i.e., the receiving of an actual graduate degree). But no longer, because now I actually have a graduate degree. It's not quite the one I expected, earlier in my life. On the other hand, an MBA means you have learned some things that people will actually pay you to know, which makes for a nice contrast with linguistics.

I have many plans to fill up the empty hours ahead, now that I won't be sitting through three hours of Finance class on a Monday night, or eight hours of Strategies of Growth on a Saturday. The months ahead will include:

• Training the dogs for Good Canine Citizen certification.
• Setting up a Torah study website for the temple. I already have a design in my head.
• Planning the vegetable garden ahead of time this year.
• Organizing the basement, so I have room for
• Making Art.
• Translating Crónica de una Muerte Anunciada (because I happen to have a copy and it seems as a good a way as any to practice Éspañol).
• Writing more.
• And of course, vacuuming. And working to pay off that student loan.

What a great day!

Not only do we see the beginning of a new era of civil (in all senses of the word) government, but our new espresso machine arrived this morning. Even as we speak I'm waiting for the water tank to heat up. I look forward to a future in which I am well-governed and fully caffeinated!