An Ode to Easton

The Magical Makeover is back on track. And not only that, but yesterday twenty-four Easton Press titles, all of which look hot off the press, blew in on the morning wind. Oh such rapture! Such elation! Such bliss! The sight of them is enough to make you want to grab the stub of a pencil and compose an ode on the spot. The sad part is that I want to SEE them. I want to walk past them lined up like fetching little girls in formation behind the nun in the flying wimple in the Madeline books. I want them safely snuggled on the built-in shelves in the living room where we can sit before dinner, sip our evening wine, and feast our eyes on their leather loveliness. So put them there, you say. But if only I could! The reality is that there is not enough room for even one more book on those enormous shelves, much less two dozen. I know I could move some others to clear space, but the Eastons would be better off out of the sun anyway. One of the reasons they’re so blindingly beautiful is that they have resided in a cabinet , untouched, behind glass, for more than two decades. Besides, their seclusion in the closet in Moira's childhood room will no doubt soften the blow when they sell.

Oh, yes, I know all about how their prices have plummeted thanks to sellers who know nothing about quality books and care even less. But I don’t care about those sellers. The first thing I said when Eric brought them in the house was, “I am NOT casting these pearls before swine!” which of course is a biblical way of saying that the book sites aren’t getting their clutches on these babies! I refuse to pay the commission and the extra postage on the large ones. But even more than that, I refuse to play bookseller limbo. How low they go will be determined by me, not by the last seller in the line-up. I will price them fairly, but also with a degree of respect for the books themselves. So that being said, I’m left with only two sales avenues – my secret site and the antiques mall. For now I’m going with the former, but later, I might take a few to the mall for the holidays

Of course all of that will have to wait because we are deep in the throes of the Magical Makeover. Sunday night it started looking like the whole shebang had slipped off track and hit a brick wall. We opened the can of Cashmere paint from Sherwin Williams (which, I might add, came with a cashmere price tag), rolled on a test patch, and nearly had a conniption when the wall took on the color of old underwear. Well, one of us nearly had a conniption. I’ll leave it to you to figure out who. The important thing is that when we woke up yesterday morning it had dried to the perfect shade of grey I had so painstakingly chosen. And I do mean painstakingly because by the time I was done musing over the various hues we had enough little paint chip cards to play gin rummy.

Eric applied the first coat on half the room this morning, which means that all we have to do now is pull out the built-in desk, finish the first coat on everything , slap on the second one, paint the trim, paint and install the new closet door, install the hardware, paint the ceiling, paint the cabinets black, change the overhead light, roll out the new rug, put together the new desk and move everything back in – without going offline if possible. Piece of cake, right?

Well, maybe not. Even though I deep-sixed my annual Fourth of July bash this year, the Michiganders will still be here for the weekend. And – get this -- tonight Eric is off to see yet another collection.