CAVEAT EMPTOR -- HELPER BEWARE . . .

I started packing tonight. I love packing. I love finding that last little nook inside the box for that one oddly-shaped trade-paperback novel. I love layering just the right-sized piece of bubble wrap between china plates and glass picture frames. I love sifting through all that I have accumulated, saying goodbye to things, reacquainting myself with other things, clinging desperately to aged but precious other things. I even love UNpacking and putting everything in its rightful place.

In this next segment of my life, I have resolved to live simply. I don't mean just in financial or materialistic terms. I mean in terms of not having so much STUFF around me. No more tiny little candles everywhere. No more stray papers and pens stuck in wire holders. No more mismatched picture frames. No more indecision in choice of color scheme. All of my individual photos are going into black Pottery Barn-esque collage frames and are going to be hung on the walls. All of my little knick-knacks and collectibles are going to be in one dust-free cute little cabinet. All of my papers and files and stationery products are going to be neatly contained in proper containers and drawers and boxes. Of course, it could be a while before I can afford the collage frames, the curio cabinet and the containers, drawers, and boxes ... but as Appa just reminded me, I'm a homeowner with a 30-year mortgage. I have thirty years to neaten up my place into a mini-museum for big, chunky and bold items.

As I prepare to move, though, I must offer a deep, heartfelt, humble and most sincere apology to those who unwittingly volunteered to help me transport my belongings from hither to thither. I have lots of books. You think you have lots of books, but you don't. I have lots of books. I have lots of heavy cookbooks. I have lots of oversized baseball books. I have hardcover biographies and non-fiction social-study books. I have lots of trade-paperback novels by John Irving, about 19th-century English history, about women surviving in the ghetto, about New York City history. I have multiple copies of the same books, in different editions and by different publishers. Hey, it's not my fault -- everyone translates Shakespeare differently. I have books still in boxes from when I moved from my apartment in NYC back home right before law school ... six years ago. Oh, I have my law books too. I know I don't need them, but the red bindings comfort me sometimes. I have old journals and Bibles and study guides and photo albums. I have scrapbooks and notebooks and even magazines I have saved because Princess Diana looked radiant on the cover and now she's dead. I even have one morbid scrapbook devoted entirely to 9/11, just because I refuse to forget.

So I'm sorry. I promised you dinner, anything you want to eat, anything you want to drink. But it just doesn't seem adequate for how much you're going to hate me when you pick up the first box of books. And yes, I'm labeling the boxes "Books," "Cookbooks," "More Books," "More Books and Cookbooks," "Do You Hate Me Yet Because Here Are More Books." Perhaps I should offer my movers a day at the spa instead ...