Libris Ho!

It was fifteen years ago that I built the portion of our house that was to house our bedroom and my study. Of course, immediately after completion of the construction, we left the United States for a year and a half. And by immediately, I mean the next day.
We came back, and despite spending a portion of the next thirteen and a half years in res, the study grew every more unstudylike and ever more warehouselike. My old (really old, around 130 years old) roll top desk became hidden by piles and boxes, then those became hidden by yet more stuff. The book shelves remained unbuilt, the wood stove uninstalled, the mice took over and a state of semi-forgotten quiet became the room's own.
And so it might have remained, save for The Wife. Last year, she decided that it Was Time for me to move in to my study and start to use it for its intended purpose. She pressed offspring into unwilling service, moving boxes and boxes of books and other detritus into the basement, building material into the barn, And debris into the rubbish bins. She swept and cleaned. After a time, she said, "There. Now you can use it."
It still needed a bit of work, to say the least, but it was true that there was a space in the middle-- a fairly big space, and room to move things around. I put together a table that we had bought a year or so earlier, and moved it in. Then I relocated the roll top desk, and bought a carpet. I replaced the dead light bulbs (odd, what the passage of a decade and a half will do to light bulbs...) and started thinking again of how I wanted to build the book shelves that I'll need to absorb the few thousand books cluttering up the rest of the house. It's not that I have a lot of books, but the house doesn't have much in the way of book shelves, so it seems like a lot. A friend has promised to help with the design and construction, which won't be trivial, but at the end of the day, I'll be able to take the books out of the piles and heaps and boxes where they now reside and put them, spine out, on yards and yards of nice new shelves.
Meanwhile, amidst the clutter that remains, I've been working, not on the study, but in the study, doing the sort of work one would do there, appropriately. I've been writing and editing. It's great! It's not done yet, but the beginning of the end is in sight! Whoo, hoo!