Slept much, much better on the couch last night, it was quite a bit softer than the air mattress. It took awhile to get into a good position with my neck and upper back straight and not over the side of the couch. I might be able to keep my humanity and sanity by the time the new bed gets delivered and assembled. I guess its a bit more than plunking down a box spring and a mattress over a bed frame. Still..two weeks?

Anyway, did the deep decluttering of the linen closet. The floor became a miscellaneous storage area along with shelves stuffed with bed linens, beth towels, hand towels, dish towels, napkins, tablecloths, pillows. I tossed three boxes worth of stuff - two boxes of magazines (anyone for Consumer Reports 1996?) and fifteen year old scientific journals. It felt a bit sad, but I hadn't looked at them since we moved here six years ago. And there is always the Internet and the library. I bound up a very large plastic bag of clean linens for donation and put it in the car trunk. Out of sight, out of mind...only the memories remain.

I mentioned it to DH in passing. I didn't want to be a complete sneak about this, but I have to use some special strategies with him. Yesterday I mentioned that I put a large catalog out for recycling and that I did the same with his Chilton manual on his old car (the one that was wrecked, now is gone)...he still wanted it! He has this fantasy of putting the manual on the hood of the first 1988 Corolla AllTrak he saw. That book cost $60!, he said. DH never went to college...you get a little blase about book prices when you do!

I'm rolling my eyes here.

My special strategy is to put the manual in the car, because he must be out and about and driving when he blesses some hood with the manual. He can look at the book in the back seat for a week or so. Then I move the manual to the floor of the car, kind of out of sight, then the trunk, and then...poof. If he asks... I dunno, where did you put it?

Transfered $200 into ING today. Its not all my bonus, but a good chunk of it. I figure my raise works out to about $40/paycheck, so I've hiked my pay-yourself-first rate by $25 at the beginning of the month, and $50 at the fifteenth.

Ate breakfast and coffee out today, and celebrated the linen closet by a gigantic fruit and green tea slurpee concoction. Yum.