Hellooooooooooo, Monday!  It’s going to be a busy week around here (what else is new?) so I’m trying to psych myself up for it.  I have five days’ worth of work to do and only three days in which to do it, because I’ve got a client visit on Monday and a very brief business trip on Thursday.  Part of me wishes I could fast-forward to next weekend, when I will hopefully be hiking at the National Arboretum and picking up the plants for Peanut’s and my container garden.  But let’s not get ahead of ourselves… there are five days to power through before then.

We had a pretty productive weekend, and you can see the results above!  I had big plans to get lots done around the house – grocery shopping, food prep, and then a marathon cleaning-out of the bedroom, which is the only room that is not completely unpacked at this point.  But I switched gears on Saturday morning when Steve decided (after seven months of my constant pestering) to clear a path to MY BOOKS and bring them up from the basement.  (Before you get all up in arms, yes, I am sure I could have made that happen for myself if I wanted to badly enough, and no I do not need a man to do anything for me.  But it turned out my books were not where I thought they were – well, some of them were, and those, I had already brought upstairs and shelved myself – and it took him less than an hour, when all was said and done, while it would have taken me the better part of a day or even longer.  So put that in your pipe and smoke it.)  Anyway, with that kind husbandly act, my weekend agenda veered away from cleaning out the bedroom, and straight to organizing and shelving my entire collection of books.  WAHOO!  It did take all weekend, since I had to squeeze the bookshelf project in between regular weekend chores, kid-wrangling, afternoon walks, and a run into the city to pick up my laptop (which I’d forgotten in my office, and which I needed to take to my client visit today).  But the time was totally worth it, and I’m completely enamored of the final result.  And as I said to Steve – there’s even room for more books.  (He rolled his eyes hard at that.)

Reading.  Sort of a slow reading week.  Metro woes continue, so my commute reading is a bit curtailed.  I finished Princess Elizabeth’s Spy on Monday – I love this series! How had I never gotten around to Maggie Hope before? – and then spent a few days picking at Sag Harbor, by Colson Whitehead.  It’s incredibly well-written (of course) and very funny and engaging, but I was just not in the right frame of mind, so after several evenings of mindlessly scrolling through my phone, I admitted that I just didn’t want to read it at the moment, and back to the library it went.  I expect I’ll check it out again later in the year, and read it then.  Book abandonment issues accepted, I turned to the book I really wanted to read – Emily Climbs, for part two of Naomi’s Reading Emily event.  (Blog post coming on Wednesday!)  I finished Emily Climbs on Sunday night and was as delighted with it as ever.  (I think it’s my favorite of the series.  Shhhhh, don’t tell Emily of New Moon or Emily’s Quest that I said that.)  Finally, I grabbed – and have just started – A Gentleman in Moscow, which is due back to the library on Wednesday, so I’d better get cracking.

Watching.  We’re almost caught up with Rock the Park now!  Just a few episodes to go.  I hear that Jack and Colton’s Great Falls episode recently aired, so I’m insisting we power through to get to it!  But we’ve only got a couple more days before we’ll be watching in real time, so we’ve started discussing what we’re going to watch next.  There’s another national parks show that looks like fun, but I think first we’re going to return to, and finish, Grantchester.

Listening.  You guys!  Exciting news!  I finished Middlemarch – all 35-plus hours of it!  A couple of 90-minute drives last week (two client visits – I feel like I’ve been out of the office more than I’ve been in) helped immensely.  I really, really enjoyed the audio production.  Juliet Stevenson’s narration is fabulous, and she brings George Eliot’s rich world to life like no other narrator likely could.  I loved reading the print version, and I’m sure I will return to that format, but the audio was such a joy.  And now I’m back to podcasts for a little while, but I’ve somehow managed to stay on top of my podcatcher, so I only have a few.  My client visits this week will yield me a clean podcatcher, no doubt, so I’ll have to decide what audiobook to “pick up” next.  I’m thinking of the Rachel McAdams narration of Anne of Green Gables, which I have in my Audible library…

Making.  Bookshelves.  Stocked.  With.  Books.  I actually spent a lot of time trying out different arrangements until I hit on something that was pleasing to the eye and showed off my books to their best advantage, since they deserve no less after patiently waiting for over a year in boxes.  I’m still so delighted with the final product, I can’t stop staring at my shelves.

Blogging.  Bookish week around here!  On Wednesday, as I teased above, I’ll have my March post on Emily Climbs, for the Emily readalong.  And on Friday, some thoughts about living without my books for more than a year, about shelf purges, and about curating my library to be exactly what I want.  I can’t promise coherent thought on that one, but there are lots of pretty library pictures in it.

Loving.  I’m a broken record, but the bookshelves have been the theme of the weekend.  I am loving, loving, being reunited with my books.  It really is like seeing old friends, who I’d missed so very much, show me their shining faces again.  Steve thinks I’m crazy, and it’s very possible that I am, but there’s nothing like a tidy bookshelf with all your favorites lined up just so.  It lifts a girl’s spirits like nothing else.

Asking.  What are you reading/making/watching/loving this week?