It was 75 degrees Saturday. Very windy. Very humid.

Many of the books out on the docks got ripply pages—the phenomenon occurs when the environment gets suddenly damp. But it is a mild affliction, and the books will all return to normal.

My older son visited and brought my 18-month-old grandson. While my son was looking at vintage law things I’d set aside, I put my grandson in a Gaylord of toddler books where we store books to box up for the Books by the Box program we offer on booksbythefoot.com.

A bit overwhelmed, I think, but he loved it. He especially enjoyed pushing the buttons on the “talking books.” My kids really enjoyed those as well when they were tiny.

By Sunday afternoon, I was sore and tired. Everything ached. I hope I’m not having long COVID again like I had last year.

I limped home, wanting only to have some gin on ice and watch the replay of the Caps game. It was a West Coast game and too late to stay up for. When I hobbled into the house, it took a few minutes to realize something was wrong.

There were no “litter” lights. The fridge, the stove, the toaster, the thermostat… all the permanent glowing numbers were dark.

The power was out.

Texts started dinging in from the neighborhood text chain. A big tree had fallen across power lines. The electric company estimated several hours to fix it.

So, I couldn’t watch tv. I couldn’t heat soup or any feel good food. It was still light out. I might as well go out and do some work.

I dragged some deadfall branches from the woods around the house and barn. Forest “litter.” I need to do this so I can burn them up before I stop using the woodstove.

I kept wandering by the truck which I left running so I could listen to the PGA Players golf tournament. Poor Rory McIlroy, whose career started off phenomenally a dozen or more years ago, has had years of tough luck. He was three strokes ahead, with only a few holes left.

I kept dragging branches out and leaving them on the driveway.

Now it is tied?!

He ended up tied, and there was to be a playoff on Monday. St. Patrick’s Day.

It was getting dusky. I planted some leftover flower bulbs I’d forgotten in the garage. It is like a refrigerator in there, but I bet they’re dead.

Inside. Still no power. I ate a slice of bread and went to bed. It was just after 7, and I was gone immediately.

At 2:44 a.m., Pip coughed me awake. I was disoriented. The lights were on.

‘Oh, yeah. Power outage last night,’ I thought.

I let the dogs out. Pip’s cough medicine wasn’t due for a few hours, so I put him in the inside pen. I put in earplugs and went back to bed.

My glamorous weekend.

Another motif made my weekend filled with worry. At 5 p.m. Friday, a voicemail dropped in from one of my doctor’s office.

The test results…

I couldn’t look. It could ruin my weekend, and there was nothing I could until Monday. So, I ignored it all weekend. Still, it hovered in my mind like a sword of Damocles. Is the number continuing to go down? Am I slowly sliding into the abyss?

When I got home, my librarian was still there. So many pictures hung and books rearranged. The place has gotten a definite facelift in the past year.

Curtains!

“Stuff” removed.

“We’re running out of wall space.”

Can I put up more walls? I’ve thought about expanding the house but have been stymied. No addition makes sense. Maybe I’ll have an epiphany. Raise the roof?

Silly…

It is Tuesday. Ernest is driving me to Gaithersburg yet again. Two other Wonder vans are going down. Maybe… just maybe if we move stuff around, we can open the new space to customers.

It will take some muscle—thus the three vehicles.

Also, we are going to start leaving a third van parked down there to absorb buys from the public.

We are on our way back.

It is looking great.

We took down the plastic barrier to allow customers into finished areas of the new space.

It is really going to happen.

I hope.

Will this be the “last bookstore” for Wonder?

I dunno. If a great deal was offered in DC or closer in…?

Maybe.

What’s next?

I’m way behind on warehouse work.

The gardens…

Yesterday, Monday, when we were driving down, I looked, with trepidation, at the voicemail from the doctor’s office.

“…your numbers have returned to the previous baseline. Nothing needs to be changed…”

“Sigh…”

A huge burden was lifted. I’m where I was before getting running over in Amsterdam.

Hell, my numbers are where they’ve been for 15 years!

The sword of Damocles rose slowly into the heavens and disappeared in the clouds.

I’m not going down the terrible, dreadful road my brother Tony did for so many years before the horrible final decline and demise.

At least not yet.

Oh! And Rory won his playoff—on St. Patrick’s Day!

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Wednesday

Another beautiful day. It will get up to 67 today.

Ernest and I are driving down to Gaithersburg for the third day in a row.

We are bringing more tables for temporary display until more shelving gets built.

I need to decide on some category moves.

What categories should we expand?

Any votes? Requests?

I know we will expand the science and technology sections. We are getting some amazing math and physics books in. They’re from the mysterious Hungarian guy. I should research his name. Many books have a bookplate with the same name. We don’t know where they came from. House call? Charity drop-off?

More shelves will get erected tomorrow.

Some vestiges of ancient drywall will be taken down so we can straighten some shelves into long aisles.

Much of the old Book Alcove space was offices, workrooms, storerooms. They’re from the 1960s or 70s. When Carl got the opportunity and the mood to expand, he would often just lease another room or two, cut a doorway in the drywall and use the office’s existing door so the little room would have a way in and out. For whatever reason, he left so many walls up that much of the store is like a maze.

We are on our way back.

Cooking and paperback literature and crafts are all moving to the new space today.

CDs and LPs are already there.

DVDs will go when the timing makes sense.

There were a good number of customers in—I think on their lunch breaks.

Some thought we were closing—guessing that from the upheaval—but got much happier when we told them we were expanding.

I just want to go home and sit outside. Maybe write. Maybe just bask.

But I know if I do that I’ll see things that need to get done. I’ll move wood. Or, like last night, cut wood lying around the house’s perimeter that’s too big for the woodstove.

I’d bought a lot of cheap chicken from Walmart when I went to get my prescription. If I grill it, there are no pans to clean up.

The grill worked. The dogs will be thrilled with what I cut up and add to their dry food for a week or two.

(It looked a lot better when it was fully cooked.)

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It is Friday morning. 2 a.m. I don’t know why I am not asleep. Reading a couple chapters of John Dickson Carr’s The Arabian Nights Murder would help, I thought. Maybe I’m overstimulated.

The forest outside my window is swaying maniacally in the strong winds. A cold front is coming in.

“Please don’t rain too hard.”

If one thing can ruin the daffodil show, it is heavy rain.

The woodstove warms the house silently. Only a small fire is needed.

Earlier today, my silent prayer was, “Please don’t get too hot.”

If another thing can ruin the daffodil show, it is a heat wave.

I worried as we walked around the couple hundred-acre Glenstone Museum campus. We were walking on one of the long zigzagging boardwalks when I felt some dampness on my back.

Sweat?

Too much heat wilts the flowers prematurely.

One of the “joys” of gardening is the constant worrying and fretting. If you’ve never read it, Karel Capek’s (Chop—ick’s) The Gardener’s Year poetically and sympathetically explains why gardening is so full of travail.

“If a favorite plant dies, look at it as an opportunity to plant something new and different there.”

That’s the spirit. Very heartening.

Why had I never heard of the Glenstone? It is very close by in Montgomery County. Maybe I’d heard of it long ago and eschewed it in favor of going to the more traditional museums in DC.

A new friend wanted to introduce it to me, and we made plans nearly a month ago.

The shelving contractor was in Gaithersburg putting up more bookcases. He kept trying to reach me, although I’d sent a van and a helper with him to get supplies—a whole pallet of homasote. He will paint that yellow and hang sheets of it on bare walls and other spots so we can pin bagged ephemera into it.

Much to his chagrin, I refused to take calls or texts from him while I was in the galleries. Finally, I slipped into an haute-design men’s room and texted him.

“You know what to do. We won’t load the shelves heavily, so if we need to move a row an inch or two, it will just be a matter of loosening some screws.” He’s been putting up shelves for me for 35 years.

“When are you coming down?”

“Not today. I’ve been there every day this week and most of last week.”

Though some of the art confused me, the building and the natural campus were inspiring. Curated groves of trees run throughout the acreage. Many of the buildings have floor-to-ceiling glass walls where you feel you are part of the outdoors while surrounded by the gray white stone block walls.

Outdoors, the vistas are at every turn. All turn your eye inward toward the many galleries. Trails take you below the main pavilion and along a little creek. Skunk cabbage is just emerging from the earth. Dry brown remnants of cattails rattle in a breeze. Then you find yourself up on a hill, and there’s the cluster of pavilion galleries below and off to the side.

Photography is forbidden inside. (I wonder why?)

One gallery is entitled the Library. It has a window on the world—a long slope with tall dead dry grasses from last season. On the opposite wall is a long shelf of used books. Curated into a nice collection of mostly literature in mid-century hardcover bindings. Those you could touch and pull off the shelf.

(Other galleries had docents who would caution not to touch things “even if they don’t look like art.”)

We had lunch. A rarity for me. I even had a glass of pinot noir.

The 10,000 steps went fast, and my feet were light. But we only saw a portion of what they offer.

It will be a grand place to visit each season and experience the changes to the landscape.

The drive back was quiet. We had spoken a good deal—mostly orientation, as they had visited many times before.

It had been a “coming out” for me. It was the first museum I’d visited since Amsterdam in early November. I’ve worked every single day since I’ve been back—including the day of and the day after my arm surgery.

Odd. No trips or even day expeditions in nearly 6 months, and I am still behind.

When I got dropped off at the warehouse, it was midafternoon. The warehouse gardens are in bloom.

I bought seeds this week.

As a gardener who knows the possible fates, I wonder, ‘How things will turn out?’

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Three great books came in this week amongst the dozens of really good books and thousands of books that stand somewhat lower on the ladder.

The Vesalius is stunning. Huge!

The Langston Hughes—the “author’s copy” with notes and corrections in his hand is inspiring.

But the Frankenstein is out of this world.

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I don’t know why I didn’t sleep last night.

Overstimulated?

When I got home, I planned to drag more mulch off the truck, but the sky turned gray, and winds rose, and it began to rain. Fortunately, it wasn’t a hard rain falling.

I played with the dogs, who are always so happy to see me and so anxious to run off into the wilderness.

Some leftover Chinese food was heated, and I took it into the “Great Room” to watch the hockey game. Ovechkin scored #888. 7 more goals, and he will break the all time record—at age 39.

I scored suite tickets for the April 10th game from an advertiser we use. Maybe Ovechkin will tie or break the record that night.

It is 7 a.m. The sunset has almost left the stage—even from a window as far south along the house that has an unobstructed view.

The temperature is in the low 30s—perfect for the daffodils to hold their blooms.

And there are fireworks inside. It is late, but I have 7 amaryllis in various stages of blooming.

Because of yesterday’s excursion, I fell further behind.

Even though I did a lot of carts before and after my day trip.

I’m going to have to surrender. I can’t do it all. I’m going to drag Annika from her desk into the fray to help a couple few mornings a week.

One of yesterday’s finds was this copy of Bill Clinton’s 1998 speeches, which he graciously inscribed to friends.

Remember to look inside.