Today was not a good day, so I put off doing the boxes again and concentrated on the bookshelves at the end of the office. I used to have a half one there, only waist high, but I like the privacy the bigger one gives me so it’s staying. It just can’t stay like this:

So once I pushed the boxes away (yes, I know it would be easier if I did the boxes first, but those boxes are awful, those boxes are plotting against me, I’m convinced of it, bleah on the boxes), I started pulling books off the shelf and determining if they’d stay because they’re research (in which case they go into labeled bankers boxes) or go because I was done with them (anywhere but here). There was also minimal tchtochke clean-up; my friends think action figures are hysterical which is why I have two Spikes (Val), a male nurse (Susan Wiggs), Jane Austen (Robin LaFevers), and Anya Bunny (okay, I bought that one). I also have a nice lot of Corpse Bride figures, but that’s research for Always Kiss Me Goodnight so it doesn’t count. And don’t get me started on the Wonder Woman stuff I accumulated with Don’t Look Down; it’s all in the TV room with my comic book stuff anyway. Do they make a Hellboy action figure? They must. Actually the one I want is Liz Sherman. “You should be running.” I want that on a t-shirt.

Where was I? Right, the bookcase. What became apparent fairly quickly was that this was the place to put the research books for all the stuff I’m working on or thinking about working on. But since you can see the bookcase from both the hall and the office, one side was always going to have the back of books (see above) plus I needed a lot more space than lining the books up on the shelves was going to give me. Which meant putting the books in banker’s boxes. Except banker’s boxes, even the white ones, are ugly. I thought briefly about getting colored ones, but Staples didn’t have them and I didn’t feel like paying $40 a box for leather ones from some pricey upscale office store, so I went to Target and bought contact paper. There wasn’t a lot of choice, but they had a pattern with spots (I love spots, also checks and spirals) in brown that was close to the floor and blue that was close to color I used in the hall. So I bought it and came home and covered ten bankers boxes in spotted contact paper.

This was important because today was Wednesday, NYT day. Next Sunday, the NYT will report that Agnes is #24, but today we found out that the following Sunday, Agnes is not on the list. Bleah. Well, I found out, Bob is somewhere on the road in the Explorer, assuming it hasn’t blown up on him, crossing the country in his quest for the Pacific Northwest. And inner peach, probably. He likes driving alone. The only problem is when he falls asleep and run into a tree in Georgia, but he should be long out of Georgia by now. Actually, I don’t think he went through Georgia. So he’s driving in blissful ignorance, full of peach, and I’m sitting on the floor putting contact paper on banker’s boxes because it’s a very mindless process and I need a little mindless right now, although my pulse is racing from the half quart of peanut butter cup ice cream I ate after Meg called. I would have eaten more, but that’s all there was in the carton.

Okay, contact paper on banker’s boxes is not high tech, nor is it easy to get smooth, but I like it. The only problem is that all this light blue which goes great with the hall does not go with the black and red window seat. At the moment this is not bothering me, but it will, it will. I’m a Virgo. We obsess.

So a few words about the legitimacy of what I did today. All those boxes are full of books. They are not full of all the books that were there, so some of those books got moved to the hall with the rest of the bookcases. This smacked to me of merely moving piles around without cleaning, except that i took books out of the bookcases there to fill the research boxes. So I think I’m good. It’s a judgment call.

And the whole thing was really enlightening because while I had one box for Emmeline (Always Kiss Me Goodnight) and one box for Shar (Dogs and Goddesses) and even one box for Petal who may never get written, I had five boxes for Nadine. Which leads me to believe that the Girls in the Basement have big plans for her. The other two boxes? One’s Emily Jessica, the tentative name for the heroine of the children’s story I’m tentatively writing (probably not) and the other is books on graphic novels because I’m pretty sure I want to do one. So all my research in one place is a very good idea. And I think I like the contact paper. If not, it was only ten bucks.

So the bookcase is done, and now it looks like this:

Which means there’s only one part of the office left.

Kill me now.