Friday Report

[adair]

I've been sluggish this week, and had too much other activities to get much done. I did a little more work on my attempt to move 500 personal books (not counting stuff I got for Books to Prisoners) out of my house. So far I have taken 22 books to B2P for sending out or for our spring booksale. According to me calculations I need to get over 40 books out per month to meet my goal. I am about halfway there for January, but I don't think I will make the total amount. However, keeping at it is the key to getting things done, removing books included.

We had some sort of wetness issue in our over-stuffed coat closet, so I pulled everything out and piled it on the futon in the living room. I put back coats and jackets I had worn recently, one had had not worn but can see the need to keep, and my mother-in-law's mink that I can't and don't wear, but B hates to just get rid of it since Helen waited a long time to get it and it meant a lot to her.

I did throw away one coat, from the 70s, with an open seam that would be difficult to repair. There is still a big stack of jackets that I need to make decisions about. The coat closet is now fairly full, but it is much easier to take things out and hang them up. I was forced into this closet clearing, but at least I am slowly making decisions to move things on.

Comments

[kalloway]

Oh, coats are difficult. I'm in the Midwest and get a full range of Weather and need a coat/jacket for pretty much any possible temperature, which looks like overkill when I open the closet but I really do wear all of them. (I do have one from my grandmother - faux fur - that I wore a few years ago during a horrible cold snap and I have a nice parka now, but I keep thinking I may need 'dressy cold snap' instead of 'shoveling sidewalk in middle of night at work during cold snap', which is 100% my parka.

[adair]

Yes, the Midwest requires a whole range of coats and jackets. Here we have had temperatures in the 25 below 0 changing in 2 days to in the 40s, and then moving down again. It's always a question of what coat, what hat, scarf or not, which gloves, and keeping track of all these things. They do fill up a closet. Then you add the issues for women of what color for what you are wearing. That's what causes the keeping of several jackets. I am dumping a couple that have odd sleeves from the 80s, and one sweater I knit myself (really good work, in Irish wool in an Aran cardigan pattern( that I do not wear because the sleeves a waaay too long. The Aran pattern needed the length to shape the sleeve for the armhole, but it hangs about 5 inches over my hand.