How we spent the Oklahoma Ice Storm of 2007

Once upon a time, we had a vast wall of shelves filled with books, which was packed up, moved, and relegated to the furthest reaches of our garage, since a library was low man on the totem pole as far as our Oklahoma living quarters went.

Fast Forward to last weekend.

Once we finally progressed far enough on the restoration and painting of the library in our house, we were able to retrieve our disassembled beech veneer Billy shelves (Ikea, circa 2002) from the bowels of the south wall of our garage, and proudly erect each of every one of them...

Once S found the box where I had safely hid the bag of hardware needed to construct the shelves, that is.

Fast Forward to this weekend.

Once the shelves were up, out came the 22 boxes of novels, periodicals, children books, textbooks, Time Life Supernatural Series (we only have 7 volumes), my wife's Nancy Drew collection, my Spenser mysteries collection, photo albums, photo albums, photo albums (repeat a dozen additional times), scrapbooks, first editions (one), paperback editions (dozens), autographed editions (couple), atlases, travel guides, dictionaries, some manga, a few foreign language novelas, and a few hundred more things that can be read, fondled, cherised, and used to collect dust and store dollar bills in.

Once the shelves were filled and our library was once again complete, we felt that tinge of joy that comes with surrounding yourself with your own stuff.

Once we've completed a room in our "new-to-us" but "old-to-the-world" home, and fill it with our "old-to-us" but "new-to-the-room" belongings, we can't help but feel just that much more grounded in our surroundings.

Once upon a time I was a single guy, S was a single gal, our daughters were distant dreams, and Oklahoma was a far off land of wild weather, relentless car and furniture tv commercials, and lovely small towns waiting for California transplants. Yep, there's a lot of history on those cheaply made but decent looking Swedish book shelves. Seeing them once again becoming part of the environmental backdrop of our humble abode, warmed us inside, as the mercury dropped and the sleet fell outside.

Bonus - I get a wall back in my garage which will become my welding/metalwork station. Grunt.