"Incredible," said Tapens. "You mean how much space they take up?"
"Yes."
"Are you trying to put them all on shelves?"
"I don't even know what I'm trying to do," said Tapens. "And that's the difficulty. Not knowing exactly what you want to do. Ugh," she said with a sigh.
"Honestly," said her husband, "I thought that was exactly your character trait. The problem with you has always been that you always knew, and knew too well, what it was you wanted to do."
"What I mean," said Tapens, "is that we are getting older, that we get some—well, let's admit it—rheumatic pains, especially when we try to stretch, you know, when we stretch to place books or to take something off the shelves or when we kneel to find something on the lower shelves and then we can barely get up."
"Yes, yes," said Tommy, "as a general assessment of our abilities, that seems right to me. Is that what you wanted to say from the start?"
"No, that's not what I started to say. What I started to say was that it's wonderful to be able to buy a new house and find it exactly where you always wanted to live, and that it is the house we always dreamed of having, making, of course, some minor changes."