Eating and Drinking

Yeah, the last two days I've been eating and drinking to take a break from packing and sorting. But "Eating and Drinking and Packing and Sorting" seemed like too long a title.

Yesterday after tennis I wandered down to the gym to see if I could find a missing commuter cup (I think I left it there the day before) and to say 'hi' to FFP because his car was in the parking lot. I would have worked out a little but FFP was leaving and, after we pawed through the lost and found to no avail, we decided to go to the pro shop grill and get a salad. This was more satisfying than going home and looking through the frig and pantry. A Cobb Salad with boiled eggs, bacon bits, avocado, diced tomatoes and such. Tasty. The night before, as I admitted yesterday, we went to Fino and actually we had more than 'drinks and apps.' I actually had two drinks and a glass of wine. And we ate an entrée. I took this picture while we were having apps and drinks on the patio. That's the bartender's version of a Sazerac. He used Herbsaint which gave it a real anise quality.

Anyway. The food was good and it took my mind off all the sorting and packing.

After my tennis and lunch yesterday I came home and plotted how to move out of my office. I've been sorting stuff out of the files, closet, bookshelves and drawers for months and months. But the time has come to figure out how to move everything out. I have room to move my computer and printer upstairs, I think. But the bookshelves are going to have to go and a huge desk arrangement will have to be disassembled. The thing is 36 inches deep with a couple of six-foot sections held together by a necessarily huge corner piece. It needs to move off the floor it's on so the floor can be refinished. I've thought of putting it in what we call the storage room which is actually a heated and air-conditioned space behind the garage and below FFP's office. If it would fit, it would show that room as usable as a family project room or office. Of course, some things have to get out of the way there. I swear it's a puzzle like one of those we had as a kid with the little plastic squares with numbers that had to be pushed around until they were in order. Except that there are hundreds of pieces.

I decided I had to box up books I was keeping. (Theoretically. I keep winnowing down the ones I'm saving.) It was a step I could take. Without thinking too much about all the other steps. Of course, I had to think about where I was going to store them. In the aforementioned storage room there is a closet under the stairs. At the moment it was pretty full but with mostly empty boxes. We cleaned out under there and we had tossed or given away so much stuff that we had lots of empty boxes. We knew we'd need these but we put them under the stairs to get them out of the way. Now I decided full boxes of stuff from this office would have to go there for the interim. So I pulled out all the empty boxes. I found some boxes for some cheap (World Market) dishes we'd purchased for one particular dinner party. I'd decided they didn't have a place in our condo lifestyle so I used the boxes to get them out and get them ready to give away. (Fourteen dinner plates and fourteen salads.) I moved all the empty boxes out of the closet and started packing up books I'd identified as keepers and changing their location in my database to the boxes they were in. We've kept a database of our books for years. It was never completely accurate or up-to-date and now it contains hundreds (if not a thousand) books that we no longer own. I'd also placed a bunch of books on Library Thing. Actually a 'bunch' is too strong. Less than a hundred. Anyway, those are the ones I packed away. All nicely cataloged so I know what books are in the (three) boxes. This attention to detail will not last. I won't even say 'probably' won't last. It won't. So goes all my organizational ideas. I just have to accept that. I have to look with kindness on the stuff we are getting rid of and how many cubic feet it constitutes.

But back to eating and drinking. This sorting and packing is crazy-making. It's so much nicer to go out to eat. Last night we went to Zoot with three friends. We had a perfectly lovely meal and a fun discussion. I briefly quit worrying about how to deal with all this stuff.

But back to all that. Perhaps the urge to catalog each and every book I keep will encourage me to get rid of more of them!