A Drive in the Country

Yesterday, I unboxed a lot of books and organized others to put back in storage. Mostly stuff from college, or Doug's graduate school textbooks, which we do not need to have out. But you better believe my copies of everything by Sir Michael Palin, and all the P.G. Wodehouse is now on display. Our house looks much more like what I love seeing.  

Doug had accused me (he said jokingly) of having a "pathological desire to show people how smart I am" by having the books all out. 

I felt really hurt by that, because first of all, we never have anyone over - we don't have scads of friends or strangers coming here to lookitey lou all up at my bounded up papery things, so that's straight up raggedy nonsense. Thanks.

Second of all, I don't have to put books on display to show people how smart I am, they just know. 

And third, I just like my damn books, okay? I like seeing them. I love seeing their spines, bold titles in specific prints. I don't organize them by categories or colors or height - I put them all together in a hodgepodge collection. Bibles, dictionaries, Pynchon, WWI battle history, cookbooks and The Onion... they're all here for me. 

I only have one or two authors where I've kept their books all together - they just look bad ass together on the shelf. 

Going through the boxes in the basement, I've made more of a mess than I intended. Many boxes were pulled out of storage that are not only books, so they are being sorted through, purged (taxes from 1988? Okay I think I can burn you now). Baby things and kid art that need to be pulled into one box together instead of interspersed with empty printer cartridges and dead flashlights. 

The book project leads to the purification project. And I'm okay with that. 

After working on this both Saturday and Sunday, and just being in my moment and zone for a couple of solid hours each day, Doug suggested yesterday that we just go somewhere. It was about 3pm, too late to drive to the coast and look at the ocean. So he got out a map and picked a destination to our north, not too far away. Our destination was the Azalea Garden and Brighton Dam at the Triadelphia Reservoir. 

We found the place alright but all the parking was blocked off, and the recreation area was closed. No Azaleas for us! We drove north along the reservoir, hoping to find somewhere that you could just kind of drive up and look at the water, but all the trail heads are a bit away from the waterfront, and every one was closed and blocked off. 

It was drizzling, we drove further north and up across Interstate 70. It was woodsy, and green, still felt like very early spring even though we are deep in April coming up to May. This time last year it was hot and sultry, and so far this year we are still socked in with cold damp weather. But it was all my favorite colors of green, and showing the promises of the warmth to come, which will make everything explode into life. 

We were gone a couple hours, prepared with our bandana face coverings should we decide to go somewhere or something. But there's nothing to go to, and it just felt weird to be out with nowhere to go and nothing to do, see, touch. 

Still, it was outside of my house, outside of our many walls, and the boxes of books were waiting for me.