At the risk of boring you all with yet another detail of my creeping progress toward what I hope will become the New Normal -- today I moved the Household Filing Cabinet (there can be only one!) out of the old study (soon to be the guest bedroom) and into the new study, previously Edmund's office. With it came my guitar, which has settled in beside the desk. So my workspace is pretty well settled, although the bookcase is still full of Notable British Trials and volumes on legal theory and military justice. Book-shuffling is a job for another day, after I have finished the Afghanistan manuscript and mailed off the files to the publisher at Army Headquarters. Yesterday afternoon was given over to the task of driving to Guelph to buy a large Persian rug. Guelph looks close to Stratford on the map, but it's still more than an hour away by road and the outbound leg of the trip included an unpleasantly crowded stretch of Highway 401. The weather was okay and nothing bad happened, but I was rather too aware that I have not driven on the 401 at all since last winter and, apart from the monthly visit to the allergy doc's office in Kitchener, I have made only one longish car journey to an unfamiliar destination -- to London to return Edmund's library books. The woman selling the rug completely forgot she had agreed to meet me at three o'clock, and wasn't at home when I arrived. I sent her a text saying that I was ringing and knocking to no avail, and then another ten minutes later saying, "I give up. Call me if you still want to sell your rug." "Oooooh noooo," she replied, and popped out the door of the house across the street. The rug is very large, and made of acrylic rather than wool, so I almost refused to take it, but I had made a commitment to her and it was the right size and colour. So instead of an incredible steal it was an okay deal. It's also punishingly heavy. It took all my strength and hers to get it up the stairs and out to the car, and all my ingenuity to shove it entirely into the car and close the hatch on it. "Now I know how to move a dead body, should I ever have the requirement," I said ruefully, looking at the end of the rolled-up carpet protruding between the front seats and butted up against the dashboard -- fortunately just to the right of the gearshift. "Oooooh nooooo," she said, looking alarmed. I don't think they make jokes like that in Iran, where both she and the rug originated. At home, I managed to extract the rug from the car and drag it into the house, but I just didn't have the strength to haul it upstairs to its destination in the huge "bonus" room over the garage, previously our bedroom. So I pocketed my pride and crossed the street to Neil and Jane's house, where they were just finishing supper, and begged Neil to give me a hand -- again. Oh, what I wouldn't give for a little extra testosterone and the muscle it confers! Neil made me promise not to try to carry anything heavier than myself, and I swore a mighty oath. No, I didn't carry the filing cabinet. It has silicone glides on the bottom, and I pushed it. The weather's nice today, so I'll walk downtown for lunch and a tangle with the insurance people, who seem not to have noticed that they're charging me more to insure two cars than they charged Edmund and me, although with only one driver you'd think the risk was halved.
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