Sunday Salon...The Grass is Always Greener...

Weather: Raining. One thing you can say about all this cool weather and rain, the grass sure is green. Our neighborhood is gorgeous with everyone's lawn being so green and the azaleas and rhododendrons blooming. Don got his two tomato plants in the ground yesterday. Let's hope there is enough sunny days, not too hot, for them to bear fruit.

Don is 65! We had a family gathering yesterday in honor of his birthday. I am the photographer so you don't see me but the whole family is together, including the dog. (See photo above.) We've all been nursing colds/allergies so we weren't in top form but it was a good day! Now Don is in South Dakota on his very last business trip before retirement.

Welcome Miles! My brother is a grandfather. His daughter, my niece, and son-in-law are now parents to a darling baby boy. Can't wait to meet him.

The First Responders Memorial at Mountain View Cemetery

Final goodbye: Deputy Dom Calata, my cousin's daughter's husband, was laid to rest in a final ceremony with past Monday. His final resting place is in a memorial section of Mountain View Memorial Park in Tacoma in a section dedicated to fallen First Responders. The service, a Christian Committal, was one where we committed him to eternal life with God. It was another heartbreaking day, but also one full of much comfort. 

COVID still lurking: While at the committal service Don and I were exposed to COVID. It was outdoors and the wind was blowing quite a bit, so we thought our risk fairly small that we'd get it but we still laid low for a few days until we could confirm if we had it or not. Oddly our church members made it through the first, second, and third waves of the disease relatively unscathed. But our defenses seem to be down and every week we learn of yet another person in our congregation who contracted COVID. Fortunately all or nearly all of these folks have been vaccinated.

Double play-structure day: I switched days that I watch our grandchildren this week, just in case of COVID. So instead of Wednesday I had both boys with me on Friday. We had a busy day playing at two different play structures in between naps and lunch. Ian, who is four, was very helpful with his younger brother showing him how to climb and crawl through tunnels or waiting at the bottom of the slide ready to catch Jamie if he was going down too fast. 

Books:

• Completed this week:
• So You Want to Talk About Race by Ijeoma Oluo. A book club selection. This one is toughie because the subject is so important but the topic is so hard to process. I know we will have a good disucssion and hopefully everyone is making baby steps in the right direction. (Audio)
• French Braid by Anne Tyler. A possible book club selection. This book points out how much we are a part of our families, even when we wish we could break free. (Print from library.)
   
• Currently reading/listening to:
• The Heart's Invisible Furies by John Boyne. Several bloggers have shared how much they like this book and I see why. It is a boy/man's story of growing up in Ireland in the 1950s/60s and his awareness of his homosexuality. There are some super sad bits but other hilarious parts. The book is long, almost 600 pages so I may be working on this one for a while. (Print book I own, 34% complete)
• The Island of Sea Women by Lisa See. Another potential book club selection has been on my TBR for several years. Set in Korean in the 1930s, based on actual events around these women divers. (Audio, 16%)
• Dialogues on Race: Essays by Various Authors. This was the book we used for a Sunday School Class. I got waylaid in my reading and participation in the class, but I want to finish the book. All the essays are written from or toward a Christian audience and certainly speak loudly that we need to do better in race relations than we've done in the past. (Print, 66%)

What one thing would you change? That question was asked of us in church today. What we would change right now to make the world a better place? I'm not sure I heard the whole sermon because I was fantasizing about all the things I'd change. I started fairly small thinking how wonderful it would be to get rid of Fox News off the air so that people could stop being brainwashed. Then I decided that Putin needed to go. But wait what about climate change, women's reproductive rights, Black lives matter, and world peace! The answer, it seems, is all wrapped up in love. Can we be more loving to everyone? Let's try this week.

Ah-h. A two-headed cat? Fred and George have merged into one being. Ha!

 

-Anne