I had a brainstorm this morning about how to deal with a piece of furniture recently acquired from a friend and I am now being driven to utter distraction with my inability to go get started right now. Donna, my friend, gave me her great-aunt's dining room set - neither her sister nor cousins wanted it and she, knowing that I prefer old furniture to new, offered me the table, chairs, two (!) sideboards and small china cabinet. That we don't have a strict need for all of these pieces deterred me not a bit in my (perhaps unseemly speedy) acceptance of her offer for the alternative to me taking them was that they'd be put out at her curb. No, not on my watch.

Such was the disconnect between Donna's feelings about the furniture and my own that at her recent graduation party (she's a lawyer now) I kept thanking her mother for the incredible gift of their family heirlooms and her mother kept thanking me for taking "all that junk" off their hands. Count this among my life's burdens, my tendency to fall in love with peoples' junk (someday I will tell you about the bag full of costume jewelry I grabhandedly selected from my friend Anna's mother's estate - that it was offered to me reduces my shame only slightly). Whatever. I now have six matching dining room chairs, only a teensy bit in need of recovering, a thrill for which I thank Donna's great-aunt from the bottom of my junk-loving heart.

The china cabinet we put into a back room, not sure how it might be used. Our long-range plans include the purchase of a mountain house for vacations and/or retirement, but it seems a shame to keep a lovely piece set aside for what is at the moment a rather vague notion. Then this morning it hit me while reading an account of a woman glazing unlovely laundry room fixtures - the perfect use for such a sweet little cabinet.

I think I'd like to paint it for use in the Girl's bedroom as a bookshelf. Last September we brought home my own "little girl" furniture - white with brass and china pulls - and I can totally see this piece painted glossy white and filled with the Little House, Illustrated Children's Classics, Nancy Drew and all the other books that currently fill a rather rickety and very unattractive IKEA workhorse (bought in 1993 for my first "my own" apartment and now quite worn) in what is otherwise a very nice bedroom. In exchange, the existing bookcase will go into the storage room to help organize empty canning jars and sundry gardening tools.

I am so excited about this plan and so frustrated by my inability to do anything about it for at least, let's see...seven days (birthday parties - for my own and others' kids, out-of-town company, scout meeting, a girls' gathering at a friend's house, family dinner with my newly engaged (!) grandmother, etc., etc., etc.) that I am going to have to force myself to stick to the knitting, as it were, until then. The not-so-small matter of convincing Braniac that this is a good idea (he being of the twin beliefs that furniture probably oughtn't be painted and that dining room furniture belongs in the dining room and living room furniture belongs in the...) makes nary a dent in what I am certain is an excellent plan.