The Shelving is Failing Again

It's happening again, folks. No, I don't mean the country going to hell in a handbasket, I mean my office. What with company all summer in the attic guest room and the consequent relocation of bushel baskets full of mysterious stuff, my poor office kind of turned into what they used to call in the British cozy whodunits the lumber room. Not like the lumber they have in the lumberyard, but stuff. At least I have it separated into logical piles: genealogical stuff, writing career stuff (alas, a dwindling pile), stuff from the past—my past, various family members' pasts—stuff you can use to make movies, since I always planned to make a movie sometime, other stuff that might come in handy any day now. My mother's old immigration documents. The video camera before last. My tenth grade report card. All stories for another day.

Because the story for today is the sad story of my little office, and how the final thing happened that makes it useless as an office until I change all the furniture around again. While I was sitting at the polls on Tuesday Harold got in there to winterize my office window. While there he noticed that the bracket supports holding up the Great Bookshelves are pulling away from the wall. Little powdery crumbs of plaster are dribbling out of the screw holes.

You will recall (or not) that last spring—I think it was last spring—the shelves where I put all my sewing manuals, thread, and little boxes of sewing tools took a dive into the middle of the sewing area of the attic. The gremlins of shelving, having trashed the attic, are now at work on my office. At any moment the whole thing could come down with a terrible crash. This time I'll be looking out for it, so when the crash comes I can begin to pick up the pieces, instead of ignoring it in the belief that the racket was caused by our neighbor hitting the sauce again.

But, no! The shelves shall not fall. This time I vow be proactive. Harold suggested that I take everything off the sagging shelves and put it in cardboard boxes until we figure out something else. A good first step, I thought, but, since I hate cardboard boxes, a better first step would be to go online and order new shelving, something that will stand up by itself without having to be screwed by my incompetent hands to the wavy plaster of the wall.

So I did this. Today the delivery man left two tall packages marked "heavy" on the front porch. Harold carried them indoors, but not upstairs, since several days of prep work on the office will be required before it's time to unpack the new shelves.

Onward and upward! As for writing anything, it may be awhile. If you're doing NaNoWriMo, strength to your arm. I'm looking at, oh, I don't know, some time after New Year's before I can sit down in my office and put finger to keyboard. Because there's also the matter of replacing the desk and dealing with the stuff all over the floor.

© 2014 Kate Gallison

What Do You Do When Things Go Wrong?

I just washed my hands with Evian!

There is no water in my apartment. Over the holiday weekend, while we and our downstairs neighbors were out of town, the water heater in our flat decided to give up the ghost and leak hot water into the apartment below ours. The good news is that though the water destroyed part of the ceiling, it largely leaked into a shower and went right down the drain. The bad news is that the woman downstairs did not see the fortunate part of this and returned our apologies with insults.

In an unrelated incident, the batteries in our rechargeable cordless phones are all dying at once, so when the plumber called back, the phone I used to answer his call went dead as soon as I started to speak.

I grabbed my cell phone, though The World Health Organization says it could cause cancer, and called him back. I got his answering service. He is in New York. I am in New York When did all the plumbers in the United States decide to hire an answering service in Virginia?

“Screw it. I will ignore all this tsouris, and write my blog,” I said to myself. I had such a great topic. I was going to call it “Creating False Identities.” It was to be based on a favorite Radio Lab broadcast that posited that we get our whole sense of identity from the stories we tell about ourselves. So I tried to log on to the Radio Lab website to listen to the podcast once more—to be sure I had my facts straight. But the Radio Lab website must have crashed because it gave error messages no matter how I try to access it.

Now I am going to take a dance class that is supposed to reduce my stress. If the sound system goes down, I am going to bed until the gremlins get tired of listening to me snore and go torture someone else.

Picture of Annamaria's Nerve Endings

Wish me luck. See you next week.

Annamaria Alfieri