My Office

Now that Bridge to Haven is in Tyndalean hands and moving toward publication, it’s time for me to clear my working space.  To my left is a wall-length bulletin board on which I’ve pinned pictures of my characters.  Some are people you would recognize; others are unknowns whose pictures I found in magazines or newspapers.  I also created the town of Haven, complete with a grid of streets, with pictures I took of stores (giving them new names) and family homes, and where the river runs through my imaginary town.   I love towns with a western/Victorian feel. 

I also have several 3.5 inch binders divided and full of information, and numerous loose notes and bits of dialogue scattered around my typing stand.  All of these things will be gathered and tucked (stuffed) into a box(es) and moved to our storage unit to languish with tax files, Rivers Aviation Services files and various treasures we’re saving for our adult children.  Someday, Rick and I will be gone, and some poor someone, most likely our daughter, will have to go through it all and decide what to keep and what to discard.  My advice:  make liberal use of the dumpster. 

My office closet was a complete disaster until Rick and I went to Gettysburg and Philadelphia and left our daughter to house-sit while her husband was traveling on business and her children were away at camp.  We told her to relax!  Have a movie marathon!  Enjoy the house!  She did.  She also loves to organize, bless her.  She went through all our canned goods.  We came home to a table laden with cans in categories:  will expire shortly, expired, and Ewww!  I think one or two cans had been moved from Sebastopol to Windsor to Santa Rosa over the last twenty-eight years.

My daughter-in-law came over to hang-out with her and reorganized our albums, complete with colored stickers so they (eventually) end up in the right hands.  With the cabinets complete, my daughter launched into the more difficult task of my office closet.  She took “before” and “after” pictures.  Let’s just say I have enough blue Bic pens to last the millennium, personal journals to last a lifetime and be given out as gifts at my memorial service, and print cartridges to write two, possibly three more books.  And I’m not even getting into the colored pens, the tole painting supplies I hope to use again someday, the cassette tapes and player, the miscellaneous cables that belong to equipment I probably gave away.  Ahh, but when I open the folding doors, everything is in neatly labeled in clear plastic containers or stacked in perfect piles.  I clapped my hands like a kid and would have jumped up and down if my arthritis hadn’t kicked in.

Everything will be in perfect order, everything in its place – until the next project begins.