Women's Work

So, of what is women's work comprised? Well for one thing: making things with power tools. This is the fourth shelf of this size I've put together. It's made of three 1"x6"x4' aspen boards. One goes under the Skil Saw to become the two vertical boards and they are dowel joined using a doweling thing-a-ma-bob (Hey, I got the carpenter talk down pat for when things go wrong, I don't have to mess with the other vocabulary). All in all, pretty slick!

Here is one of the previous shelves in service:

And the big kahuna shelf:

This bad boy started out as five 3/4"x12"x6' edge-glued pine boards. It still needs some kind of back for cross-bracing. The little ones are pretty stable as is, but this one is taller and heavier and tends to prefer parallelogram to rectangle. With a load of books, things could get ugly pretty quickly.

The new shelves are a result of a desperate attempt to get organized. It's going slow, but yesterday, I unpacked 1.5 boxes of kids books that have been in one box or another since 1987 and a half a box of books that have been packed since we left Iowa City in 2005. At this rate, I should be in great shape right about 2025 or so.

Those crazy kids!

Miss Bean got another dolly from a friend for an early Christmas present last night. She and Bug were making plans for playing house on the way home and while getting ready for bed. At one point, she came into the bedroom to update their progress and announced that Bug was willing to be the father "which was good, because then he could do the dishes and that would leave her time to do 'women's work'."

The Novelist

Bug has not only taken up writing, but he is ready to publish his first novel. The only problem is that he wrote it in magic marker on the wood of his loft. Gonna be a serious pain in the tuckus to get it in an envelope to submit for publication! It is an enthralling and thrilling story about the Bionicles. Pictures and a (lightly edited) transcription can be found here.

I am just tickled beyond words by the whole thing, but I did gently suggest that he might consider using a notebook in the future. A word to NaNoWriMo 2010: Bug is looking at you!