eebmore: Because Cleaning Stories is About as Exciting as it Gets Nowadays

Because Cleaning Stories is About as Exciting as it Gets Nowadays

March 15, 2006

I own thousands and thousands of books. Not because I am smart or particularly well read (I am neither), but mostly for sentimental reasons. When the old man started pushing up daisies, I ended up with the majority of his library. My sister kept what books were meaningful to her that were practical to transport to the west coast, I dumped the pulp, and still have everything else. For better or for worse he owned very little pulp and never threw a book away. This leaves me with an ungodly number titles of every subject he had a passing interest in over the course of 60 plus years - which is why I have not and will not give the books up, even though I will probably never crack open 90% of them. It is unlikely that I will ever read a complete book on the Sumerians; it is fifteen times less likely that I will ever read fifteen of them. Everything is all erudite and tweed-with-leather-elbow-patchy; classical studies, philosophies, midieval european histories, Christian and Jewish religious evolutions, 20th Century political theories, anthropologic yippity yap, Disraelisms, Bronze Age thisandthat, First Nations whoisthat, and lots of stuff on dinks. Thank God he was never one of those dorks who obsessed over the American Civil War. What books he bought were actually relevant and reputable. Knowing what books were relevant and reputable was his bid’ness. In a way, the books are a partial definition of who he was, or at least who he wanted to be, and he could ramble on for hours and hours and hours... AND HOURS, keeping me up until two or three in the morning listening to him spit out what was inside those books. Even though the necessity for these sort of books are becoming outdated, I can pretty much find out whatever I’ll need or want to know about the Sumerians using wikipedia, when I start pushing up daisies myself, some poor fucker is going to have to figure out what to do with all these old books.

Consequently, even though I am not the brainiest person in the Universe, my apartment suuuuure does look smart. Who needs wall decorations when every available wall is hidden by a bookshelf? Unfortunately, books get dusty, dust gets moldy and mold makes apartments get funky. I have no idea how often one is supposed to clean all the books and the shelves - I suspect about once a year - I have not given them the required scrub down in about two and a half. I’ve devoted this week to tackling the task. I’m about halfway through the job, and after having spent about ten hours already removing books, vacuuming books, dusting shelves, oiling wood and replacing the books, I can’t help myself from partially wishing that the old son of a bitch collected stamps instead.

12:33 PM | Permalink

Comments

stamps get vinyl pockets in binders. much easier.

Posted by: miss kendra at March 15, 2006 12:52 PM

can you please perform a seance and explain this to my father? cleaning all these old books is a HUGE pain in the ass. of course, had he been a stamp collector, i would have had to listen to him talk about stamps for thousands and thousands of hours growing up, and I would have been embarrassed by his memory, but cleaning them would be less of a bother. everything is a trade off, i suppose.

Posted by: eebmore at March 15, 2006 01:10 PM

my god, i'm glad you didn't have all those books when we lived together, b/c back then you probably would have dusted them once a week.

also happy you used the word "erudite" you wrote this word in a really nasty long letter to me once and i didn't know what it meant and had to look it up which just made me even madder.

love
erin

Posted by: esf at March 15, 2006 04:40 PM

hahahaha! my old dirty laundry has come back to haunt me in my comment section.

Posted by: eebmore at March 15, 2006 04:51 PM

which nasty letter was it? (fyi to the universe: all nasty letters to "esf" were angry roommate letters left when we were fighting. I'm a dick, not a psychopath. long long time ago. we're friends again - i think)

Posted by: eebmore at March 15, 2006 04:57 PM

have fun moving all those books if you ever move out of your apartment. I've been hauling around boxes of books with every move, and that shit's heavy.

Posted by: Neckbone at March 15, 2006 05:01 PM

esf, I wouldn't have cleaned them every week. back then, I would have cleaned them every day - and have left you whiny letters about "not doing your share"... and cried myself to sleep because you didn't wove me. ahhhh. the memories.

Posted by: eebmore at March 15, 2006 05:03 PM

neckbone, moving them once was a nightmare.

Posted by: eebmore at March 15, 2006 05:12 PM

it was the really really really long letter, it was like 4 pages front and back. yes, we are friends now. i thought you would think it was funny also, thought i'd tell you about not knowing what erudite meant because at the time i wasn't going to give you the satisfaction. he he

esf

Posted by: esf at March 15, 2006 05:52 PM

oh my god. i don't remember the specifics of the letter, but I remember the fight we had after i left it. you got all up in my face for calling you erudite sarcastically. hahaha! what's even lamer was i think I wrote that letter three times. you got the final draft. oooo, I bet the fact the definition for erudite is pretty much "learned" was an extra sting? I probably looked the word up while I was writing that dick letter. Now, I can't be sure of this, but i probably planted that to make you feel stupid. heh. Man, I CAN be a dick. I have this image in my head of you looking up the word, seeing "learned," steam blowing out of your ears and slamming the dictionary shut. I hate to admit this, but the image in my head is fucking hilarious.

I AM SO SORRY! I'm laughing balls, but i'm sorry. Nine years later and it is still paying back. hahahaha!

Posted by: eebmore at March 15, 2006 06:02 PM

i know what it said! it said something about, "your erudite indie ears."

Posted by: esf at March 16, 2006 05:33 PM

It get's worse, books actually produce dust through decomposition.

Posted by: tfg at March 16, 2006 07:45 PM

my erudite mother left libraries of books and they ain't goin'with me. I shipped a semi of them out to Montana. They've never been dusted.

Posted by: molly at March 17, 2006 09:33 AM

so that's why there are all those herds of ferral books roaming the west with what's left of the bison and the mustangs.

Posted by: esf at March 17, 2006 10:52 AM

molly, what with all the sandals you got from her, where the hell would you keep them?

esf, herds of books roaming Montana is a good thing. if only the injun savages can put down their whisky bottles for a second, perhaps they can hunt them and be a little better informed the next time a western power exploits them.

Posted by: eebmore at March 17, 2006 11:12 AM

Its one thing to keep a few dozen sandals but quite another to keep two rooms of Ceramic History, one of Art History, two of Anthropology and so on. The people who want to continue her research were quite happy to get them. I have my toucan.

Posted by: molly at March 17, 2006 08:24 PM

yikes, that is way more books than I'm dealing with... also more purposeful. no researchers have a specific want for these. they're better off right where they are.

Posted by: eebmore at March 17, 2006 11:58 PM

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