I felt good about the purchase, 40% off the regular price plus a 15% off coupon. Whoo-hoo! Higher threadcount sheets were at long last joining our household.

I washed them, put them on the bed. Still felt good about the purchase.

Then my husband showed me a pillowcase where the seam had come undone, the fabric frayed. This was not good.

The department store accepted the returned sheets without fuss despite the fact that I had thrown away the packaging. As the clerk processed the exchange, she commented about this problem sometimes occuring with the treated wrinkle-free fabrics, and that thought stayed with me. What if I washed this new set and the same thing happened? What if it didn't happen right away, but would eventually happen?

I expect a certain level of commitment from my bed linen. It's got to hold up to repeated washing. Have you checked out some of those prices lately? This stuff is an investment.

In addition, I wasn't all that thrilled about the idea of adding more chemicals to the environment with treated sheets (I haven't seen much available yet in quality organic sheets, although I am curious about bamboo sheets).

I returned to the store, spoke with, HURRAY!, a clerk who seemed to know the merchandise. She tactfully steered me away the sateen cotton sheets, okayed the Egyptian cotton set I was carrying around, but gave me the hard sell on the pima cotton sheets.

Moderately confident in my purchase, I washed and dried the new sheets, dismayed to find they looked horrible. The stitching was all puckered, the sheets wrinkled. A little sizing can go a long way in masking poor fabric quality.

The late, great, Erma Bombeck used to joke about ironing sheets, a thought I'd dismisssed as 'not in my lifetime.' That was before I got a summer job at a retreat center where I devoted a chunk of my work week to pressing sheets in a mangle (a wide machine with large hot rollers). Those sheets were crisp, even if I was a sweaty blob toiling away in the high humidity.

Of course I realize that some people do, indeed, iron their bed linen. I just never realized that I might become one of them. It might help if I were Three sheets to the wind. Although I've never been much of a sailor, it is easy for me to get off course.

Danielle Ganek's novel offered an opportunity for a little background research on the art world. I wasn't expecting to be so charmed by Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him.

Mia McMurray, first person protagonist and would-be artist, works as a gallerista, an often decorative young woman who is part guard and part greeter, but always observing the Soho gallery scene.

The novel opens (prologue?) with an auction where Mia is attempting to dodge familiar faces and blend in at the back. The painting generating the greatest interest is titled 'Lulu Meets God and Doubts Him.'

The bulk of the novel occurs as a prolonged flashback, building up to the auction. Mia meets the artist of 'Lulu,' an delightful middle-aged man who has been living abroad, returning for this, his first opening. When he steps outside for a cigarette and is killed by a taxi, demand for his work and disputes over true ownership drive the plot.

Along the way, Mia searches for her own identity, aided by her friendship with the artist's niece, Lulu. The painting depicts Lulu as a child and serves as a message for her, a metaphor about self-doubt and the creative process, belief in the transformative power of art.

A love interest for Mia plays a supporting role in the novel but the secondary characters bring much to this story. Not surprisingly, it's a very visual sort of book. I want to see it made into a film, and I want to cast Jennifer Coolidge in the role of Connie, the obsessive art collector who will stop at nothing in an effort to buy her way into the inner circle of serious collectors. Coolidge is a delightful character actress, known to varied audiences for her work as Stifler's Mom in American Pie (sexpot), Paulette in Legally Blond (kind-hearted, klutzy ditz), and many, many other films and TV shows.

Ganek is a serious art collector and her knowledge of the art scene builds the credibility and adds to the details in the book.

I arrived twenty minutes before the office opened, flashed a photo ID, surrendered my purse to the scanner, and became number six in the line waiting in front of the IRS office.

At 8:30 a.m. the doors opened and the line shuffled forward. The receptionist asked each of us to state our business, then handed us a coded number. I couldn’t help but be relieved to see mine was 002.

The red lights on the wall flashed into operation: 500 03.

Oh my.

001 07 followed, then, fifteen minutes later, 501 01.

A family arrived at 9:00 and the receptionist informed them the wait would be three hours.

Oh dear. I had only plugged the parking meter for an hour and a half--did I dare risk leaving to feed it more quarters?

Tick, tick, tick.

Finally, one taxpayer left a cubicle after meeting with an IRS representative, giving us all a glimmer of hope. Collectively, we leaned forward, our slips of paper in hand like we were playing the lottery, but the red lights did not perform their shuffle.

A half an hour passed. I twitched, parsing out monosyllabic responses to taxpayer 201’s erratic comments. He had two weeks to prove that somebody had stolen his identity--and my vote as ‘person most likely to return from a cigarette break with a semi-automatic.’

Ethan, an adorable two year old with mischief in his eyes, ran circles around the rows of chairs in the waiting area, arms flapping. I wanted to join him.

Ten minutes after my parking meter expired, my number flashed and I sprinted to cubicle 7 to learn that the Taxpayer Advocate I’d spoken with had given me erroneous information. There was no form to file, nothing I could do to correct the incorrect listing of my name, no rebate check until we file our return next year. It is what it is.

I wasted gasoline and a big chunk of my morning, but at least there was no parking ticket stuck under my windshield wiper. Everything is a matter of perspective.

I used to know the difference between 'further' and 'farther.' It was precise, a clear distinction in meaning and usage. But Webster's, my once cherished friend, you've let me down.

I looked up 'further' only to find 'farther' listed as its first definition.

I know it's a living language, but 'further' and 'farther' are not interchangeable words.

One definition for 'further' states 'in addition to,' and the first definition of 'farther' offers 'to a greater distance.' These seem like the definitions I remember.

The eleventh edition of Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary provides an explanatory paragraph regarding the usage of these two words, specifying that they were used interchangeably but are now 'showing signs of diverging.'

A few months ago I sold an old dictionary at the thrift store. I figured the new owner was either a collector or a Scrabble enthusiast. He told me he prefers the older dictionaries because they contain a lot of words and definitions that are no longer offered in newer editions.

I'll have to look into that further, farther down the road.

The large wall mirror in the entryway was the first thing I noticed when I entered the house that became our home. It brought some much-needed light into a potential cave-like part of the living room, creating good Feng Shui and providing a place to check how my shoes looked with my dress.

Two months after we moved in, one of the guys tearing out the old flooring cracked the base of the mirror.

Had I been more assertive, maybe the company doing the flooring would have paid for the replacement. Anyone who has had their entire home under renovation and is clinging to sanity has an inkling why I did not push harder. You’ve got to choose your battles.

The tile guy was an artist, a true craftsman who knew what he was doing. His boss, alas, was a complete and utter doofus. The tile artisan put in long hours of hard, focused work. He was personable and polite. The boss liked to talk and brought his enormous, maladjusted dog along. The dog struggled with separation anxiety or inbreeding or ‘I-live-with-a-doofus’ syndrome, nearly destroyed two sliding screens and left large ‘presents’ in the yard and probably the neighborhood, and yet, the boss was the more annoying of the two.

Referrals would not be forthcoming.

Four years passed. We kept the crack covered with the strategic placement of several family antiques. Periodically we debated our options to replace the mirror or paint the wall and try to find matching molding for the baseboard.

I thought the crack had been dormant during this time. Turns out it had been on the move, creeping upward like thawing ice.

The time had come. Or, perhaps, the time was grossly overdue. It’s all a matter of priorities and resources.

We ordered a replacement from a store that boasted a surprising lack of choices (most of the comparable vendors operated out of their trucks). For a mixture of reasons – living in an artistic community in the southwest, volunteering at thrift store that handles high-end merchandise – I’ve become accustomed to seeing a lot of beautiful, unique mirrors. That was so not the case at the mirror store. We were surrounded by shiny gold-framed mirrors and silver shower stalls; the quality seemed fine but nothing matched the style or materials in our home. After a panicked, ineffective attempt to communicate with my husband by opening my eyes ultra-wide while he nodded and waved me away like a demented fly, we arrived at the same decision: to recreate the same mirror we had.

The job began with the same guy who had measured for the replacement. He salvaged four beveled sections of the mirror, saving us additional expense. He then attempted to pop the large mirror from the wall.

Nope, not happening. He called for reinforcements.

It took three guys a half hour to saw through the many blobs of silicone holding the mirror to the wall. Hard work. They had good leverage in using a heavy wire to separate the mirror from the adhesive holding it firmly in place until they reached the bottom of the mirror. Then things got ugly.

The new mirror looks nice but now I know what the wall underneath looks like. There were all of these black circles where the silicone had been, and now there is mirror mask in whatever pattern the guys employed. It’s not like I could have said ‘wait, hold everything while I paint, the surface dries, and then you can put up the new mirror.’ I’m guessing the adhesive works better on a non-painted surface anyway, yet the compulsive side of me would sure like it if both surfaces were clean.

My husband returned the antiques to their accustomed positions and I eased them away from the surface of the mirror. I may even scoot them over to the other side of the entryway.

I was an impatient reader last month. I cruised through Lauren Willig's The Seduction of the Crimson Rose (4th in the Pink Carnation Series), then dabbled with a couple of other novels, frustrated to find myself drowning in backstory and unlikeable characters.

Continuing with my rereading of Elinor Lipman's novels, I moved on to The Inn at Lake Devine. The idea for this story about a young girl's fixation with an anti-Semitic inn-keeper was based on a letter Lipman's mother received in the 1950s from a vacation spot. I enjoyed the texture and layering of the story, the examination of cultural conflict with enough humor and detail to keep me engaged.

The high point of my recent reading is The Last Lecture. ABC ran a special on computer science professor Randy Pausch this spring, showing excerpts from a lecture he delivered at Carnegie Mellon last September. Someone posted the lecture on You Tube and it sparked something of a phenomenon.

Paush focuses on childhood dreams for the core of his specch, emphasizing the importance of identifying and pursuing your dreams, providing wonderful illustrations from his own life. His lessons on living are underscored by the reality that he is dying of pancreatic cancer. He is a dynamic individual with a positive yet pragmatic outlook, and he is leaving a beautiful legacy for his young family.

When I read The Last Lecture (written with Jeffrey Zaslow), I was reminded of what I love about teaching, the connection with students and colleagues, and I kept thinking that this would be a great book for the Great Teachers' Workshop, once offered through the University of Iowa at the Lakeside Lab on beautiful Lake Okoboji.

"Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted. And experience is often the most valuable thing you have to offer."