Three more bookcases arriving today; two more to go.

Yesterday we started unpacking framed pictures, not because we're ready to decorate, but because the crates were blocking access to the furnace filter. Oh, well; whatever works.

We have too much art, much of it really quite good and most of it original. I inherited lots from my father, who came from a family of painters and makers of interesting stuff, and bought more. Himself has also bought art -- a nice Daumier etching, for example, and has a sister who paints. I actually like some of her stuff, though not all. Then there was my grandmother, who liked to think of herself as a bit of a patroness. Some 40 years ago, she befriended a painter who left us with a fine watercolour of Galway harbour that needs reframing, a large, busy abstract that makes my head swim, and a nearly life-sized seated portrait of me at the age of 27. That last will never find wall space in this house if I can help it. Finally, there is the profusion of "certificates suitable for framing" that Himself has accumulated over the years, of which perhaps one of his four diplomas, his commission and his licence to practise law will go in his office. The rest -- removed from the frames in which they were originally presented -- go in the filing cabinet.

In this house, we can hang perhaps half of the framed items we have now, and I really can't imagine selling or otherwise disposing of the rest, so I plan to kick this can down the road, and make a First World Problem for our heirs and assigns. When I have finished squaring away our glory hole of a basement storage space, it will include a rack for framed pictures, just like (if considerably smaller than) what I have seen in a warehouse at the National Gallery of Canada. When we are dead, the nephews and nieces can sort it all out, and throw it all out if the spirit so moves them. Or perhaps fall in love with my great-grandmother's Impressionist landscapes of the Montreal area ... Who knows?