Chess sets and old books

So...anyway, Bill decided to buy a chess set over the internet.  And it came.  Since most of the packages that come to this house are books and those are addressed to me, we were both excited at this substantial box.  Alas, it was NOT the set he ordered, which he tells me, was a standard chess set.  No, they sent him one of the ornamental sets with the kings on thrones and actual knights sitting astride horses - good for looking at, not so good to play with.  No worries, a phone call later the problem was resolved.  But this glitch sent Bill into the attic to look for chess related stuff.

Come into the attic, dearie!

Or wait, maybe it was the storage unit auction that sent him into the attic.  Maybe it was both.

It does not matter.  All you need to know is that yesterday, Bill spent most of the day dragging things out of our attic.  He found years and years and years of Chess Life magazines.   (Our son played competitive chess through  high school and beyond.)

He found his grandmother's personal cookbook which his mother gave to me before we were married.  I have not seen the book since we moved here 25 years ago.

He found several Cricket magazines.  Have I told you how much I adore Cricket magazine?  I do - adore it, I mean.

He found, and here I whoop with joy, my Robert Service books.  I thought I had more but, at least I have Ballads of a Red Cross Man and Ballads of a Bohemian.

Here they sit on my desk chair.

But wait there's more.  He found a set of china; -  (I knew it was there.  I just forgot) - a rack for audio cassettes and a new use for it; a lot of old Time and Smithsonian magazines, now all carted to the recycling bin.  Good-bye, old friends.

There's a desk in the attic, too, and Bill is determined to bring it down.  He found some trading cards and a photo of me when I was seven.  No, I will NOT show it to you!

Also found - finding things is a theme this week!  A marble chess set from Mexico. missing two pieces.  And a copy of Nomadic Furniture 2.

Return with me to the early '70s, folks, when making furniture from cardboard boxes and packing pallets was, as far as I was concerned, the HEIGHT of suavity.  The idea of providing comfort and utility without taking up a lot of space and weight still appeals to me.  I am a sucker for any kind of convertible furniture - sofas that turn into beds; chairs that are really step stools; tables that unfold and collapse.  I am drawn to these things like the proverbial moth to the flame; like hummingbirds to honeysuckle.  I am helpless with awe and desire when confronted with clever and useful multi-purpose domestic design.

Such a good read!

It's been fun, trekking back through some of the stuff in our lives.  Now, I have to concentrate on now and next week when I rejoin the "working" world and present the first Stories in the Schools sessions for the Parkland Community Library.

Barnheart FOUND!!!!!!!!!!

I found the book!  I FOUND BARNHEART!!  And it was somewhere I would never have looked.  It was...ready?  You won't believe it.  It was behind the bathroom vanity.  I looked IN the bathroom vanity where I keep my cleaning supplies and trash basket and I looked in the drawers.  Until recently, our bathroom vanity was flush against the bathroom wall and nothing could fall behind it.  It's an old, inexpensive MDF vanity and it pulled away from the wall mount and, yes, I know I should get a new vanity but my sink hasn't sprung a leak or anything sooo...

This is a "reenactment" of where the book was found.

 Anyway, I was putting some towels away on the little wicker towel thingy next to the vanity and I moved it (the wicker towel thingy, not the vanity, though I can move the vanity now that I think of it), and there was something behind the vanity.  It was actually further back than the photo shows and upside down.  I just wanted you to see how nicely the book fit back there.  Could it be?  YES, it was!  I had to retrieve it from inside the vanity.  The vanity is "inexpensive" enough to have no back.

And, my replacement book just came at the end of last week.  I am half way through it and when I am done, I will give you a review.  Just know this.  The book is worth the angst I felt when I lost it. 

The original "lost" book rests on top of the replacement book - together at last.

Lost Book

I have lost a book.  This post is a desperate attempt to find it.  As far as I know, it never left this building but perhaps, the book, like its author, wanted a more rural setting and is now even as I type tucked inside a rucksack headed for Pike County.

The book is Barnheart.  I think the author is Jenna Woginrich.  I wish I could tell you more about it.  I had just left the author in the snow outside her new rental, a 600 square foot cabin, on a six acre lot in the woods of Vermont.  Oh wait, no she was already inside with a fire burning and she was making plans for chickens and a garden and fences and possibly geese and she felt very lucky to be where she was.

I WANT TO READ THIS BOOK!  The puzzle of its whereabouts has taken over my brain.  I blew off a committee meeting because this book is missing.  (Blew off as in totally forgot the committee, its purpose and its personnel because they can't help me find the book.)

And now, what am I doing?  Visiting my aged parents?  Sending a wedding present to a young friend? Printing out the photos I promised to send along MONTHS ago?  Weeding the garden?  Doing any of a thousand productive and necessary things I might do?  NO!!

I am fixating about a lost book.  Oh, I have other books, too many other books.  But I want to READ THIS ONE!!!  WHERE IS IT??

Worse than all of this is the fact that this book is an advanced reader's copy and doesn't even exist in cyberworld so I can't just go out and buy another copy.  (I CAN pre-order it on Amazon.  It doesn't come out until January of 2012.  Waaaahhhhhh!!)  Oh woe.  Oh woe is me. (Bangs head against metaphorical wall and moans - metaphorically.)

Can anyone help me find this book?  Please?  I want to read about barns and homesteading and sustainable living and I (grits teeth) want ...to...read...NOW!!

Thank you (sad little sigh of no hope)