Bookcases R Us.

The search for bookcases has ended, without having to pay a small ranson to have them custom-made.  Better Homes & Gardens sells beautiful bookcases in two sizes.... we bought ten of the three-shelf size, and my husband and I spent the last three days putting them together.  It was kind of daunting at first, looking at all those boxes stacked in the second-floor hallway, but he carried them up one at a time and after translating the instructions (which always make everything sound more complicated than need be) we were on a roll with those bookcases.

There are now 10 cherry-wood bookcases lined up against one side of the library.... and my books seem happily content.  From the vintage children's books to the 40th anniversary edition of "To Kill a Mockingbird," from my set of Charles Dickens to the Harry Potter volumes, to all of the Edith Wharton books.  A very eclectic library, to be sure.  The travel books are in place, next to a world globe. All of Lawrence Sanders' books are comfortably shelved, as are Joe Coomer's  and John Steinbeck's and Anne Tyler's.  I thought of having one bookcase just for the classics, to avoid shelving Jane Austen and Pearl S. Buck in the same alphabetical rhythm with Elizabeth Berg and Anita Shreve, but I stuck to the public-library A to Z method with the fiction.

We've ordered four additional bookcases, which will take another week or so to come in...... and then my collection of non-fiction volumes, and the books on the British Royals, and the memoirs of Beverley Nichols, can come up off the floor on the other side of the room.... and all the books on home decorating and entertaining.  So many books.... never enough time.  If there could be a rule that a person would not leave this earth until every last book one wanted to read had been read, then I'd be living to celebrate my 345th birthday, at least.

Our Miss C called here this afternoon, all excited about 'the new puppy.'  What?  "The new brown puppy!  In Gracie's old puppy crate! Why didn't you call and tell me?!"  Apparently, Miss C was reading my blog and got to the part about Captain January...... but as soon as she read that my husband had brought Gracie's puppy crate in from the garage, she picked up the phone, wanting to hear the story about our new puppy instead of reading all the way to the end........ so she didn't realize we had taken the little dog to the shelter.  I could hear her jumping up and down at the other end of the phone when she called, and I heard the deflation in her voice when I told her we didn't keep him.

"But he sounded so good... and so cute."   Well, he was.  I haven't come across many little dogs that weren't cute..... and they're all so very good when you first find them and rescue them, but you can't keep all of them.  My dog-loving friend A in North Carolina tells me that she was never fond of dachshunds either, until friends of hers got three of them.  She said their loving dispositions just cannot be beat, and A has had dog after dog after dog for all of her life.

Oh well.... having Captain January for even that short a time was a lesson in itself.  That tiny brown floppy-earred dog taught me that you really can give up something that you think you really want because life does indeed go on... and I learned the correct spelling of dachshund.