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| Mom and her cat settling into their new home. |
Weather: Lovely fall day. The last few days have been rainy and windy but not today. Today we have blue skies and lovely fall colors to enjoy.
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| Mom's Crew |
Standard Time: Today we set our clocks back an hour. Back to official standard time. This past week we were with my mother helping her move into a retirement apartment in a very lovely facility and
beginning to prepare her house for sale. My three siblings, one brother-in-law, and my husband all worked very hard to help mom pack, move, get set up, and then start the process of cleaning out a lifetime of stuff. It was tiring, but rewarding to work on a project together, all the while knowing mom is happy and safe in a new place. But each evening we would collapse in front of the TV or over a bowl of soup, tired from the physical and mental demands. As we drove back up the freeway after a week in Eugene I commented that it felt like we were returning to our life. The next day my sister called and essentially said the same thing, that she felt like she took the week off and now had to turn her attention back to all the other demands. We're back in our standard time life.
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| Garage Sale 2.0 spoils |
"Garage sales": Mom wanted to give her things to neighbors and friends after the family claimed the items we wanted. She decided to invite them to her old house for what she kept calling a "garage sale" though I hoped no one would feel like they needed to pay if they wanted a scarf or yard frog. Many of her friends dropped by and I think mom was pleased. Don and I packed up a box of treasures to bring home to share with our daughters. Yesterday we had "garage sale" 2.0 at our house and our daughters/grandchildren took home china pitchers, table runners, games, and a braided rug. I'm sure my mother will be pleased to know these treasures are now going to live a new life in her grandchildren's homes.
Back to Eugene: We will be back in Eugene again twice this month and I'm sure many more times in the next few months until we get the house cleaned, cleared, and sold. Our daughter and s.i.l will join us one weekend so they can visit Mom in her new digs and go to a football game with us. Every visit with Mom will feel like sacred time, though she's warned us she may live for eight more years, like her uncle who lived to 104. Ha!
November reading challenges: 'Nonfiction November' and 'Novellas in November.' With any luck I can combine the two as the novella challenge also allows for short nonfiction. Here are my plans for each:
Other blog posts from the past two weeks:
Read and reading:
- White Nights by Fyodor Dostoevsky -- My current Classics Club Spin Book and a novella. 10% complete, print.
- Invisible Cities by Italo Calvino -- another classic novella. 10% complete, audio.
- Henry and June: the Unexpurgated Diary by Anais Nin. This will finish up my StoryGraph Genre Challenge for 2025. 55% complete, e-book.
- The Buffalo Hunter Hunter by Stephen Graham Jones. An Indigenous Vampire who preys on buffalo hunters who wiped out the herd which caused a chain reaction of starvation and death among his people. Don and I both enjoyed it very much even though we don't usually read horror novels. Audiobooks. 5 stars.
- Timecode of a Face by Ruth Ozeki. A short memoir about a favorite author where I came to understand much about her Buddhist beliefs. Audiobook. Short nonfiction. 4 stars.
- Persuasion by Jane Austen. The last of Austen's six novels. This one closes out the Austen250 challenge. I was supposed to read this one slowly, 12-pages a day, but I zoomed through it. A reread. Print. Rating this time: 4 stars. (Last time - 5 stars.)
- Convenience Store Woman by Sayaka Murata. A novella set in Japan. The main character is on the autism spectrum and keeps hoping she'll be cured so she can just be normal. Charming. Don and I listened together and both awarded 4 stars.
- The Afterlife of Data by Carl Ohman. Another book for the Stroygraph Genre Challenge. I didn't get out of this book what I hoped: What should we do with a beloved's Facebook account when they die? E-book. 3 stars.
- Ursula K. Le Guin's Book of Cats. A poetry, essay, letter, illustrated cat collection from the famed Sci-Fi author. An indulgence. Print. 4 stars.
- My Friends by Fredrik Backman. A book club selection which I've been working on for months. I finally decided to bear down before it was automatically returned to the library (again for the third time). Audiobook. 4 stars.
- Theory and Practice by Michelle de Kretser. A Goodread Challenge book and a novella. I think I need to upgrade my rating since I've been thinking of it alot. Audiobook. 3.5 stars.
Up next (I already have them checked out):
- Audition by Katie Kitamura -- National Book Award Finalist and novella
- Heart the Lover by Lily King -- novella
- The Teacher of Nomad Land: A World War II Story by Daniel Nayeri -- National Book Award finalist, novella
- All My Knotted-Up Life by Beth Moore -- memoir
