I told Pete tonight that I’m feeling a different kind of tired. Hard to explain. It’s not the sort of tired one feels after they’ve exerted themselves physically, although there is some of that. Best to call this mental malaise.

I have never felt this way before. Most definitely not after spending days on end writing. I never felt this way on any part of a long bicycle, sea kayak, or horse trekking trip.

It’s the nature of the beast, organizing books, getting them all in order, thinking that what is, is then having more books come in.

Becky's chickens

And it’s the little things that come up in dealing with this never ending cycle. The day before yesterday, a fellow called and said that he was cleaning out his parent’s storage locker and could he bring books by. I asked him what kind of books, and, in summation, it sounded like general nonfiction to me.

I then asked him how many boxes he had on hand, and he said 14. I said that was okay, to bring them in. Yesterday the guy appeared – he was somewhat rough looking, had a gut, and was wearing a tee shirt that indicated that he was a Vietnam veteran. He rushed in, and with Robert, wheeled about 4 cartloads of books over to the nonfiction distribution table, set them on the table, then took off. I was bothered by the fact that he wasn’t at all interested in learning about the BLBP.

Grr, grr, grr. Yesterday with Robert, and today with Sebastion, I sorted, cleaned, and did some categorization. There are now several cleaned and stamped books on the sorting table, and a huge pile of outgoing (happy happy) books by the kids bookshelf wall.

This evening I got a call from the fellow who told this guy that we take in books. He wanted to know if we heard from (I think) these people; using Pittman Road Storage as an identifier.

Now I suspect, given that there was family memorabilia and also cookbooks with recipes, and Bibles, that this person may have given away the goods post haste. If this is so, and someone wants these materials back, this will be easy to orchestrate. I am half hoping this is so because half we can’t use.

But this is just another thing to deal with. I got all the kids’ books that came in yesterday organized and ready to clean. And I cleaned and stamped the books that a volunteer brought in yesterday.

I also talked at length with a woman Pete met at a symposium earlier this week. This woman is a grant writer in change of other grant writers. It appears as though she might end up assisting us in writing grants. I am very excited because this was our weak link.

I also talked with a neighbor today, one whose values do not always coincide with mine. But, together, we talked in a civil fashion to one another, a very good thing. I guess it is too bad that as we get older, we get wiser. I certainly felt this way today.

Next: 268. 9/30/23: Tis Fall