Making hay while the sun shines

I'm glad I'm not a farmer, that's all I've got to say. I would hate to be out there making hay in this weather. I'd rather be indoors, making my own kind. Although to be perfectly honest, I'd rather not make any hay at all, preferring, when all is said and done, to sit and read.

My "hay" is housework today. I've taken up a few tasks that I've been neglecting, accomplishing a surprising amount of work in a relatively short time. I've taken down curtains, picked up bathroom rugs and done a load of towels, the companionable chugging of the washing machine keeping me company as I traveled around the downstairs with my long-handled Swiffer, taking down cobwebs and dusting the walls. As soon as the sun moves, I'm going to get doggy nose prints off the south- and west-facing windows. I've vaccuumed the whole downstairs, including baseboards, registers, cold air return ducts and behind furniture. (I found three ink pens under my husband's reclining chair, that miserable hoarder! Wait 'til I get my hands on him! He obviously didn't know they were there either, but still...)

There is still a lot to be done. A lot. One of my most-dreaded fall cleaning tasks still remains, which is dusting hundreds of books and straightening up the shelves they sit on. When we moved to this house several years ago, I patted myself on the back smugly for donating several hundred books that I deemed non-essential to our lives, but the number seems to have increased again. Do they breed? Could I put a group of young female books in one bookcase and young male books in another bookcase, shelving all the old books -- ones passed down from my grandma to me when she died -- on the middle bookcase, to act as chaperones? I can just see my great-grandmother's copy of Anya Seton's classic, Katherine, glaring fiercely at Meelyn's new copy of The Taming of the Shrew as it tries to mingle with the devilish Wine for Dummies.

Or....maybe not. If you've ever read Katherine, you'll know what I mean.