Book ‘Em,Grando

This week were asked to expound on what we’d do with a $5,000 tax refund…may as well $5mil for the likelihood, but we’ll go with it.
It got a bit scary here when I realized the actual need I had for an ‘extra’ five grand…the old place could really use some sprucing-up, like getting rid of the wall-to-wall carpeting. I am never without my own rug machine, yet it is never truly clean enough for me, not for any length of time, anyway. Of course, my big dog has not helped matters, nor have my butter-fingered granddaughters.
Let’s not even talk about a nice chunk that five thousand would add
toward a nicer car. My husband has held on to an ancient Blazer that was his mother’s
and an old Chevy Caprice that was our son’s. They both run… that is all I can say, but he is
determined to hang onto them AND drive them.(The Blazer’s engine is worth more than both cars put together, or so my mechanic tells me.) The car I drive is a slight bit newer but has airconditioning ‘conditions’. The one that I had just previous to this one was another of my mother-in-law’s. It was fortuitously involved in a non-injury accident which was fatal to it. No, I didn’t do it. I wasn’t driving…(but I may have willed it.)
When I asked for ideas for such a windfall, the Husband said, “We’d take a trip to Europe”. Maybe. I’d also like to get my cousins from my mother’s side together, (wide-spread in location and age that they are), since my father’s sides have ‘re-found’ each other in the last few years.(I inadvertently started family reunions with them by visiting the home state and others joined in.)There are other places to see, but this being a writers’ blog, I have to say that I would seriously consider putting in built-in shelving in my ‘library’. among other areas. I have books in nearly every room of the house and they are often double-stacked, at that.
When we moved in to this house I had a dedicated room for most of the books and it doubled as a classroom when I homeschooled my sons. Later, I moved some of the tall shelves out, a daybed in  and it become a den/guestroom, which then evolved into a sewing/craft/storage room. When a replacement piano was offered to us it did not go into the living room.The bed came out and it went in the multi-purpose room,so it is now a music/sewing/craft/storage/book room, with a small sofa in the middle,(“temporarily” from my son’s old place), yet we still call it “the Library”.
I also have a niche at the end of the hallway, (which at the moment has a large free-standing bookshelf), that is just crying for full utilization. Think of real shelves, ceiling high there and in the one room, with most of the others out of storage in the bedrooms! When someone wants a particular book, no digging! No lifting! And dusting would be easier.
Are we bibliophiles,? Surely. A couple of ‘Crazies’ here? More than likely. “Book-hoarders”? I prefer the term “rescuers” and possibly “investors in the literacy of the future”, as it never ceases to amaze me what classics libraries dump to make room for modern works.(Libraries should be expandable.)
Yes, I’m going with that thought … happiness would be my own honest-to-goodness library.

I know one of us gets rid of her books; she sent one to me. Are any of you book-keepers? Have you a better idea for an extra $5k?