I've been promising My Darling B a new shelf for her photos ever since we moved in. She had a pair of store-bought shelves before, but they were just awful so I stuffed them into a corner of the basement where even I can't find them. Then I procrastinated for almost three years.

But I finally bought the lumber for a new set of shelves two weeks ago, cut them, sanded them and fixed the parts together. I'd been waiting for a warm weekend to stain them, so I could open the windows, but weather that's warm enough for that doesn't seem to be forthcoming, so I just went ahead and did it. The fumes weren't as bad as I thought ... or maybe they were, and I'm too brain-damaged to realize it.

Worse Than Useless

A work bench that's cluttered with junk is worse than no bench at all. I don't have places to put a lot of the little junk, though, a problem I dealth with this morning.

I got a few of these at the hardware store months ago, to try them out. They're handy because I can throw stuff in them, I can easily see what's in each one, and they clip to hangers on the wall so I can take them down to use them, or to rearrange them.

Since they worked so well, I went back to the store this morning and bought more. Didn't quite count all my fingers, though, and shorted myself one hanger and two bins.

Much better.

Now I can stain the shelves I started working on for My Darling B last week. Or the week before. It all sort of blurs together after a while.

We woke to find a fresh flocking of new-fallen snow had transformed our yard in the night.

Fresh snow highlights the milkweed pods.

Boo sneakes up onto the dinner table by taking a shortcut underneath a folded newspaper.