I awoke this morning determined to get our “caretaker’s flat” in order. After almost three straight weeks of travel and deadlines, the place looked something between a laundromat and a pet grooming facility, both at closing time. Fur, cloth, yarn: not a surface had been spared the clutter. Even the cats had given up trying to find spaces to sleep down there.

Fortified with three cups of coffee and a leftover peanut butter chocolate chip crumb cake from the cafe, I prepared to do battle for our next-to-Godliness souls.

And the bookstore door opened.

In came four people who had driven from South Carolina, clutching copies of Little Bookstore they wanted signed. And one of them had brought us a present.

“I’m downsizing my library, and thought you might like to have a few of my old quilting books,” she said. Four boxes later, they scooped up kittens, scoured the mystery room for Cadfaels, and then went upstairs (sans kittens) to have Our Good Chef Kelley’s amazing tomato bisque with grilled pimento cheese.

And I began categorizing “a few quilt books.” Two hundred of them. It took me most of the morning, but hey, needs must. There were so many, we had to find a new place to display them, reorganizing a little bit of the shop, cleaning a few things on the way. It turned into one of those “tidy as you go” operations.

Jack says I like to sneak in cleaning in those moments. Whatever.

So my morning tidy of our flat went away, but I had such a good time talking to the couples, learning about their lives in South Carolina and Montreal, looking at the books, and generally being a bookshop owner hand-selling good books and enjoying her customers.

Go by, mad world. The dust and clutter will be there tomorrow, when I may or may not have time to attend to it. Joy is random, and sometimes, randomness is joy.