I am happy to say that the shelves look good. Now all we need to do is the other side.
We're trying to think of a title for Husband's book. I think he should wait until he is done (he's a third of the way through?) But he's going hog wild finding website names (ever since he had to pick a name for his project with his bro. They got "Pixelhunt.com" but now that he knows how hard it is to get what you want, he tries to snap up names as fast as he can), and I know he just wants to stake his claim on the title. He's already got the .dom name for his main character.
I finished Book 5 from The Wheel of Time series. So fun! What's going to happen when Lan goes to meet Myrelle, only to be thrust in front of Nynaeve, and this right after he's sent word that she needs to be done with him? The heart beats faster in consideration! And will Aviendah ever let Rand touch her again? Talk about an anticlimatic love scene, by the way. Oh well, at least I can't complain that it was too graphic. I was fine with seeing Moraine go (she had no romantic interest so who cares about her?), a little bit sad to know that Lanfear won't pop out anymore to eviscerate any woman that Rand looks on too fondly, and I liked Rahvin gone. I want Luca to go chase down Nynaeve and reveal that he has some channeling power, to give Loser Lan a run for his money. I'm not a fan of Elayne, either, that spoiled, simpering princess. Maybe Aviendah can challenge her to a fist fight for the honor of loving the Dragon Reborn. And in support of geriatric love, let's see Gareth Bryne locked in a passionate embrace with Siuan. But at Robert Jordan's speed, that's probably part of the last book that hasn't (and now never will be) written yet.

Sigh.

Our library is smelling fumy. Yesterday, Husband and I stained the shelves (well, half of the shelves) that he put up a couple of months ago. As we were just getting started, we were chagrined to see that we had purchased the pre-stain conditioner for water-based stain, instead of buying the conditioner for the oil-based stain, which is of course the type of stain which we had bought. Well, he suggested he could go back to Home Depot to buy the correct material, but I opined that with these shelves which are theoretically going to be covered with books, it probably wouldn't matter if we skipped it, and at any rate, we could just do one shelf (the top) and if it didn't look good, we could stop, get the conditioner, and then do the others. Well, as with many things in my life laziness won out and we chose to forgo the pre-treatment. We used an ebony stain and were a little startled at how dark it was. ("Ebony" is black so we shouldn't have been surprised). We like how it looks, though, especially when the light hits that wood grain that we can see through the stain. We still have to put on the polycrilic finish. I remember my Grandma saying that her least favorite part of carpentry was putting on the verathane. I'd just like to be able to apply the stain in a way that it wouldn't splatter across the wall. Several times. I kept thinking, "This is actually fun. If only I were really good at this; we could stain things all the time."

I'm sporting two band-aids on my fingers. In the dry of winter, the skin on my hands shrivels up and becomes papery. Add to that my compulsion to wash my hands when I touch anything having to do with Boon Dog, or diapers, or laundry, or even mail (yes, I've had issues with the safety of mail ever since the anthrax scares after Sept. 11). Compounding the problem is my seeming inability to dry my hands after I wash them. Yes, logically I know that the moisture that evaporates off of wet hands includes what tiny amounts of natural moisture I had had, but still I don't do dry my wet handsproperly. Maybe I do it to subvert Husband's wishes.
I love Dr. Seuss. I'm working with my five year-0ld, we'll just call him Cheeseball, (see The Perilous Plot of Professor Poopypants), and last night I whipped out Hop on Pop. At first he was a bit skeptical about reading (we'd read a word here and there occasionally, but I've tried not to push it), but as I gently worked with him, he was able to go 6 or 7 pages before going to bed. I've done Hop on Pop with my older children and while it's never been completely smooth sailing, they've all enjoyed such pride from being able to finally read a book.