The Trail

Our library, where the computer lives and breathes on an old Workbench dining table, is next to our bedroom. The library would be a wonderful room if it were picked up for a home decorating magazine photograph: original mahogany bookcases with glass doors surround the fireplace, the newer bookshelves installed by the previous owner are oak stained dark to match the mahogany, the windows overlook the front, and there is a pocket door between the library and our bedroom. However, as a well-used room, it is NOT suitable for a magazine photograph.

I am going to clean it up over the next couple of days, now that the dreaded paper on the Muslim hajj is complete. For posterity, however, a litany on the trail leading from computer to bedroom:

A stack of books on the hajj, a J Jill catalog, a camera, hand lotion, two colors of nail polish, an empty glass, a stack of papers and printouts from IslamiCity.com, the local paper's editorial page from April 7, and the same from last Sunday, which argues that Hip-hop feminism is not an oxymoron. I have only just noticed the presence of "moron" within the latter word.

A hugely thick notebook containing all the materials from the art history course I took on the Renaissance two years ago -- out because one of my students just did a PowerPoint on Michelangelo -- and one of the notebooks from one of my Ignatian spirituality classes -- out because there's always something.

Hairdryer, curling iron, scrapbook from family trip to Italy which we should have taken AFTER the Renaissance art history course. Guess I will have to go back.

Rebels of Ireland: The Dublin Saga, which I am finally going to get to read; a magazine from the organization assisting with our church's sort of reverse-mission trip (learn together as opposed to impose religious faith) to Nicaragua this summer, on which my decidedly non-religious husband will be a participant due to his interest in fair trade issues (I got Iona last summer; he gets Nicaragua next month); Yiddish Civilization: The Rise and Fall of a Forgotten Nation; and the ever-scintillating State Academic Content Standards for Social Studies.

A couple of other books on (generic) pilgrimmage, the Oprah magazine (how did THAT get here ?!), running shoes, clogs, Tevas, and the blanket lying in a heap on the floor because -- guess what ?! -- someone in this house can no longer sleep under a blanket.

We have made it all around the bed to: Time, Harper's, Qur'an, Bible, more novels, more Ignatian stuff, and an orange highlighter.

One of the more daunting aspects of the Gannet-Goes-to-Seminary Project involves the sale of this house and the downsizing we so desperately need. There is enough stuff in these two rooms alone to completely fill any of the condos and townhouses we looked at last week-end.

Well, I wasn't planning on a kitchen anyway.