The Week Will End in Lights

Something happens when I post in this blog.

I've tried other blogs, but nothing happens there. (There are a lot of them. They're like space junk from all my other explorations, and now they just orbit my planet. One of these days I'm going to take a big bucket and get out there to clean up my atmosphere.) Long ago, when I started it, I said I wanted to go back to school. Now I've got a (second, accredited this time) bachelor's degree and a master's degree to go with it. I said back then that I wanted to be able to navigate the transition from having kids in the house to not having kids in the house. Check. There's just something about telling everyone in the whole interwebs that I've got these plans and hopes and dreams -- something about telling them -- it feels like this.

(From Disney's Fantasia, if you can't quite place it.) The idiotic little mouse is pretty pleased with himself in this scene. In the narrative, this turns out to be a good example of foolish optimism.  Hubris. Getting too big for your britches.

But the truth is that it's also a good example of Try It. Sometimes the Try It ends up like this,

 ... and sometimes the Try It ends up like this.

That last one -- the, "oh crap!! Now what?!" one -- it can happen.

But I don't think it's going to this week. I am not alone on this one. I have a partner. And I think this week will end in lights.

Lights around the front windows, and in the windows there will be books. Bookends. A Christmas tree. And we'll be readying the invitation to come on in to North Bank Books, and look around. We'd like to introduce ourselves. We plan to be here for a good long time.

Lights in the ceiling. We will by then have discussed (for the twenty-eleventh time) what on earth we're going to do about the fact that the entire thing, the horrid drop ceiling tiles and all, is painted black. We might checkerboard it. We might leave it until spring. We just don't know. But the black track lights up there will all be lit.

Lights at the front, at the sidewalk, on the posts, wound through greenery, twinkling in the early evening's darkness in December. Lights and ribbons bows and greens, tied down with an abundance of intention because this is the Gorge and the Gorge has wind.

We're scrambling. Stevenson, Washington, has its annual Christmas in the Gorge festivities at the end of this week. (The fire truck with lights is from the (optimistically named) Starlight Parade -- even though water and cloud cover is a lot more likely at this time of the year.)

This year, we won't be open yet, but we will almost be. This year, while everyone's in town to walk the shops and see the sights, at North Bank Books we'll be adding our lights where everyone who passes by can watch us. Inventory won't be done yet. The final touches won't be on. We'll still be getting ready, but we'll be smiling and waving at passers by while we arrange the displays because North Bank Books is about to make its debut.