Genetic Link to Aunt Frieda

I am definitely related to Aunt Frieda.

A neighbour down the block is having some flooring work done to his house. How do I know? The pile of splintered fir flooring with bent nails sticking out of it on his front lawn. Taking that flooring out to put in something more exotic, obviously.

And I want it. I have no immediate use for a pile of salvaged fir flooring that I'd have to spend two days removing nails from, but I want it as desperately as I wanted the big rocks that they dug out of the street last summer.

As a librarian, I am a great book weeder with a relatively spare office filing cabinet. At home, however, I fight the genetic urge to be a pack-rat. A pile of fir flooring! For free! Someone should use it! What an opportunity!

With sadness, I watched the garbage haulers take it all away this morning.

The sadness of the inner packrat. The hardy exterior resolve of the efficient librarian. Ah, the duplicity of the squirrel who lives in the world.