You start at 1 and keep going til you run out of fingers and toes. Then you get creative.

Giles ran out into the night. He leaped over the stone garden wall and disappeared up the mountain slope into the forest. It is a cool drizzly spring morning. The house is warm. I lit a fire last night to take the chill out of the home’s bones. I imagine Giles is loping like a ghost hound—white tall lean and lanky.

I finally got around to washing the flannel sheets and pillowcases. Though the dryer chimed that the load was ready, when I pulled the fitted sheet out, it was twisted and still damp inside. I put it back and went to bed. I slept hard on the mattress with just a loose sheet and a throw blanket atop me.

I’m still sleepy at 5:30. I could easily curl up and sleep some more.

I did. Just for an hour or so. Dawn has come. The forest outside my window is gray but for the thousands of wet black bare tree trunks and branches.

Being warm feels so good after this long brutal winter.

I have started the spring cleaning in my house. There’s a lot to do. It is not my forte—mostly because I find that work tedious. Put me in front of a mile of books, and I’ll stand and work on them for hours.

When I got home last evening, I unloaded a truckload of next year’s firewood in the barn.

Some of those weigh 80 pounds!

I will have to do a lot of splitting and stacking before I can dump more in there.

Then I blew off a lot of winter’s debris from the driveways, porches and garden borders.

It was time to walk and watch the flowers. Despite much of the first wave having been flattened, the beds have rebounded, and everywhere you look there are riots of color.

(Pardon Merry’s wheezy breathing.)

I think we are nearing midseason. Perhaps the peak will come next week. But I planted plenty of late-season bloomers, and there will be daffodils well into May—perhaps a few outliers flowering in June.

The two new large beds I put in are coming up. New plantings always bloom a little late. And I was very late getting these underground as well. (I’ll show images of those when more are up and coloring.)

I’ll start marking spaces with thin garden stakes so I’ll remember next fall where I want to put more in.

The hundreds of hellebores are reaching for the sun. I’ve seen lots of seedlings, and I’ll make an effort to colonize other areas with them.

But this morning, I am tired and sore. Those big logs were heavy.

I’d already spent much of Thursday on the massive projects we are still inundated with at the warehouse and stores. I estimate we have pulled 25,000 (out of 60,000) books from the stores to sell to a mega-buyer.

Counting and Gaylording that many books is a daunting task.

Used Gaylord boxes are in high demand currently. A week ago, I purchased 106 from a broker. They smell lovely. McCormick Spice from Baltimore had used them. I was concerned our customers might not appreciate the scent, so I ordered 270 after being assured they were odor-free.

Clif was concerned about the quantity. Even folded, they are very big and bulky. But he managed to get most of them inside.

Some stacks had to remain outside under our building’s overhang.

And so it goes. When you feel you are at capacity as a person or an organization and more is thrust upon you, you get… creative.

Sometimes when I’m trying to train or mentor young people here, I can’t convey that speed is important in some tasks. (Take walking, for example. You can’t imagine how slowly people can walk. Maybe it is like a national park here to some. Wonder National Park.)

“Find another gear!” I’ll suggest. Then I’ll do my work, asking them to observe.

“If I can move this fast, you, as a teenager, can move at least as fast.”

We got a nice Harry Potter group in.

These are often tricky.

Her autograph is very tricky to verify. There are a LOT of forgeries out there. There’s an “expert” who will charge you $75 to verify an image and send you a certificate.

Hmmm…

A bookseller friend—an old friend—allowed me to dump a huge hoard of amazing scientific pamphlets, offprints and monographs on his team. They were amazing. From the Gach hoard. They were also a white elephant. This friend has great connections, and if anyone…

I shipped them about 10 years ago and forgot them.

I’ve started buying low and midlevel stock from him, and it occurred to me he might want to be rid of them. They dropped them off with a load of books this week. 380+ huge volumes. Now they are my burden again. However, they cataloged the “elephant” extensively.

The Smith Ely Jelliffe Collection of Medical Offprints (circa 1890-1935)

Truly amazing scholarship.

How did this whirlwind week begin?

Monday. 6 a.m.

I awoke at 5:30. I slept hard and deeply. I dreamed I was at the country club. I haven’t been there for 20 years. The family was having a dinner. Each of us had a small tabletop oven to grill our steaks in. People came and went. Mostly older women coming from a function in another room, a small ballroom of sorts.

After I woke up, I rose to get my phone. It was in the cradle charger on the counter in the kitchen.

Dead.

It was warm. The tiny light that comes on in the cradle when the phone is set in it was on. I pushed the buttons to force it on.

Nothing.

I’ve never put wifi in up here.

Disconnected.

Out of touch.

Alone.

No one could reach me. I can reach no one.

I tried other chargers.

Nothing.

Is everything gone?

So much of my life is inside that little slab.

What will it mean for today?

I had plans.

What will the weather be?

Is there any news?

When I got home last evening after an impossibly long and complicated day, I went out and sat on a stone step in the front garden. It was a beautiful scene. Warm. It had been 84 driving home. I poured a martini into a stem glass. Botanist gin from Scotland. I sat next to a little stone pillar I’d set in the ground years ago. It is naturally square and straight and even has a very flat top. I set the glass atop it.

It was a beautiful scene. Serene. All around were hellebores and daffodils. Dull maroon, faded pink, vibrant yellow, gold, orange, cream, white. I took some pictures. A bumblebee buzzed by and landed on a flower a few feet away. I took a short video of it buzzing around nearby. I texted some pictures to friends and family. And then the battery ran out, and the screen went dark. I rose, stiff from the hard stone seat and the hard day of work and travel. In through the front door I rarely use. Up the 14 wooden steps to the main level. I set the phone into the cradle and put a piece of bread into the toaster. I heard text messages chiming onto the phone but had had enough of the day and didn’t go over to check them.

Then to bed a little later. And dreams. And deep sleep. It had been a difficult day but satisfying. I would be ready for Monday’s big project and a week that promises to be iconically busy.

And then I awoke to this new problem.

The teakettle is rumbling in the other room. It is a drizzly morning. Gray. There won’t be a sunrise. The horizon is obscured with clouds. I turned on the satellite TV when I put the water on to boil. I wanted to be sure the world was alive and only my phone was dead. Yes. The morning news was on. The world out there is working.

Now the teakettle is screaming. Up and across the house to the kitchen. I poured the bubbling water over the teabag in the bottom of the mug. The water turned amber.

Back into bed. It is just after 7. People are opening the warehouse.

I will write a little into the journal. Then shower. Then bump down the mountain to work and try to figure out what to do.

Damn! Sunday had been so complex, and the work so hard and endless but satisfying.

The dogs are sleeping deeply next to me.

What will the day bring?

We are supposed to go to Hagerstown and begin the massive pull of books. I will need to coordinate that. I have a battle plan in my mind. I will be a general today… for the beginning. Then I’ll be a supplicant to someone somewhere who can repair my phone. Or replace it.

Then what?

Sunday was going to be broken. I knew that. There was a 12:30 hockey game. I’d meet my son, his husband and my two grandkids in Virginia and ride up to DC to see the Caps.

So, I pushed myself when I awoke at the usual 4 a.m. I was at work before 6. Strange being there alone in the morning. Quiet. At first, I couldn’t find my laptop. Had I left it at home? Up and down the long aisle of carts and pallets of books. Walking. Scanning left and right. Would I have to drive home? Lose another hour?

No. There it was atop a cart.

I worked til 10. Then drove south on I 270. Onto the Beltway. Across the Potomac River and into Virginia.

Back up into DC with my 4 relatives. The game was fun. The kids enjoyed the first 2 periods, and then we needed to leave so they could get their naps. We ended up missing Ovechkin’s 1000th goal! Oh well, I was “at the game where he scored his 1000th goal.”

Another massive week.

We’ve begun the 60,000-book pull from the stores. Vans drop off loads of full yellow plastic tubs every day.

The tubs are rolled to the northeast corner of the building on pallets. There, they are counted as they get loaded into some of the 270 Gaylords I bought this week. We cut “gates” into the front and one side of the giant 5-ply cardboard boxes with a reciprocating saw. The gates make it possible to reach the bottom of the boxes so that the books can be set in them flat.

When I get in this morning, I’ll try to estimate how many books we’ve transferred from the stores to the warehouse. When we get close to 30,000, that will be enough to fill a truck. The first truck.

We are struggling to refill our shelves in the warehouse. That dramatic push yields more and more byproducts. The byproducts are books that the computer can’t be trusted to add. They require a trained human to review them. That human is most often me.

The result is that there are more carts herded up for me. While all around the building, there is more chaos.

More work.

More balls in the air to juggle.

I often go in before dawn. I’ve missed most of the sunrises. Clouds and fog have obscured more. Now the sun has left the stage. It has gone into the forest north of the gap.

(Turn your sound on.)

The sunrises won’t return until September.

Sigh…

I’m missing much of the garden show as well.

When I got home Tuesday night, I got a saw out and went down to cut up some big branches blown down by last week’s tempest.

It is useful wood, as it is dry enough to burn now. It is good exercise carrying up canvas totes filled with “heat.”

The woodstove is barely warm to the touch this morning. That’s ok. I needed the warmth last night. Today will rise to 76 degrees.

The 2 new big gardens planted almost too late in 2025 are sending up shoots. A few flowers are popping open. I look on them with fatherly affection. Next year, they should mature into full participants in the flower show up here.

Merry gave me a scare this week. He became lethargic. He wouldn’t eat. He refused his pills hidden in dollops of liverwurst. Even worse, he has learned to manipulate the wurst or pill pockets to eat the treat but spit the pill onto the floor. He’d become very reluctant to rise and go outside. When coerced, he would walk so slowly. Then he would come in at the same pace and search out a cushion to curl up on and fall asleep.

It was so bad I prepared myself to come home to the worst on Tuesday. If he was still alive, I’d carry him down to the vet. When I got home, he greeted me from his pen with his tail wagging and his eyes bright.

So much to do. And none of it is fun.

I need to replace the conversation pit sofa/recliners combination. I’ve picked one out. It will come in 7 sections. But I’m worried in case I’ve mismeasured and it won’t fit right.

Currently, I watch TV (and often take my meals) on a single chair in the middle of the large room.

(I started The Crown a couple of nights ago. Very cool.)

I need to choose a shingle color for my roof this morning.

Which would you choose?

So much to do and none of it is fun.

An old friend who has moved to a new company wants me to buy a truckload of media (DVDs and CDs mostly.) It is a great deal, and he will even pay the freight. But where will we put 42 Gaylords?

Sigh…