Everybody has had one and one is enough for anybody.

God, I hate folding sheets. Especially the twin ones with all the elastic still intact. All our double and queen sized ones are so old that there’s no virtually elastic and everyone knows flat sheets are way easier to fold. Thank God my OCD does not compel me to iron them as well. I can only ask so much of my little magic pills. Oy vey.

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I always love reading about the custom of the lady of the house retiring to her morning room after breakfast to deal with correspondence and planning the day’s events. (In Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca, the main character feels uneasy because her morning room and all the tools of correspondence still are monogrammed or imprinted by the former mistress of the house. I’d be so happy to have such a space and such time that I would happily use stationery imprinted with Attila the Hun’s monogram if need be.) I can’t imagine why such a useful custom fell out of use. I need a morning room and an uninterrupted hour every morning to deal with my affairs -- or I can just once every few weeks have a frantic morning like yesterday when I was dealing with bills, forms, appointments, gas meter readings, packages to be mailed, and grocery lists to be written.

Speaking of, I was hauling groceries in from my car when I noticed two teenage girls walking down the street. Just meandering down the middle of the street, in the way which drives me bonkers (I mean, why do we have sidewalks?). Grumpy old me: “Hmmph, should probably close the car up…” When I came back out after dropping off several bags inside, they were standing behind my car. Crotchety old me: “What are they doing to my car?” Then one of them asked me, “Do you want some help with the groceries?” I tell you, I felt about an inch tall. I smiled and said no thanks, and that was a really nice thing to do, and they continued on their way. I guess sometimes I don’t have to be all grumpy and negative and expecting bad things. I just never seem to know when.

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Last night Dan and I had a big stupid fight over really nothing, and I was in no mood to really read a book I had to concentrate on. So I picked up Josephine Tey’s Daughter of Time, an old favorite I have read a gazillion times. I believe I have waxed rhapsodic about Ms. Tey before – she has only 7 books and I have read them all numerous times, but DOT is my favorite because it’s all about Richard III, who in my humble opinion had nothing to do with his nephews’ murder. I am a big Richard fan, and I think Shakespeare, Olivier, and the rest have done him dreadfully wrong. When my mom and I were in England in 97, we even went to York to check out the Richard III Museum. We are not his only fans. Tey wrote a well-researched and gripping novel about a centuries-old mystery involving people long dead. No mean feat.

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My dilemma: This afternoon I stopped at the library to pick up a book I had requested, and there was Elizabeth Kostova’s The Historian staring me in the face. If you’ve been living under a rock, you don’t know that this book is hyped, hyped, hyped, and it’s supposed to be excellent. And yet there was still a copy on the bestseller shelves at the library. I took it. The first page hooked me. But! But…HP comes out in roughly 36 hours, and there’s no way I will finish this in time to start HP on Saturday. Notice I am much more cavalier about ditching both Son of the Circus and Fire From Heaven for the moment to read The Historian. Ditch a book that’s as good as The Historian is supposed to be, crazy. Not start HP immediately upon purchase – even crazier. (Although this might be where I have to admit that I wasn’t all that nuts about Order of the Phoenix. I am less excited about Half-Blood Prince than I have been about any of the others.)

So commend my restraint – I only checked out The Historian, even though the library also had the newest John Irving. (I’ve been reading a lot of Irving lately, and I don’t want to overdo it and then wind up hating his new one without just cause. Familiarity breeds contempt and all that…) Here’s a bonus: My favorite librarian checked The Historian out for three weeks for me, instead of one. Having a favorite librarian has its perks : )

OK, I actually have some real library-related work to do at work tonight, so while I have much to say on the subject of the INXS reality show, the bloodthirstiness of classic children’s literature, and the latest shark attack in Florida, I save those thoughts for another day. Who says I’m not good to you?