Before I get into the week I’ve been meaning to ask, do those of you who comment, get my responses sent to your email? I think I “fixed it” a couple weeks ago and kept meaning to ask if it was working. Jodie, I think you said you’d gotten my response to your email but I wonder if everyone is.

Monday: Labor Day

My birthday was this week, but I was actually born on Labor Day. My mother loved to say she went into labor on Labor Day, heh heh. I’m sure I’ve told that story a million times. When someone dies, their repertoire of stories stops expanding and you have to keep referring back to the same memories and anecdotes over and over for the rest of your life. People might get tired of hearing them, but…it’s all you have left. So it feels good for a moment to remember and share them.

After a week of beautiful weather in NY, Labor Day itself was mostly rainy and dreary. I stayed on the sofa most of the day, reading and petting Janey. And by “petting Janey” I mean pushing her off me when she got annoying, but petting sounds nicer.

Tuesday:  back to work

Remember someone left my office a couple weeks back? The new girl started today. Well, she started last week but I was on vacation, so…this was our first day of being in the office together. And it seemed fine. She’s quiet but seeming comfortable and capable on the phones. The office vibe feels okay. Phew!

I headed up to the little beach for sunset but it was too buggy to sit outside. Boo. It was a bad summer for those annoying little beach gnats! You can probably tell I took this from inside the car through my dirty windshield!

Wednesday

Uhm, I got nuthin. Just a quiet day. Stopped by the pond on my way home from picking up some dinner and enjoyed a nice moment.

Thursday: my birthday

It was an action-packed, hectic, lovely day! I got to the office in the morning to find my desk “birthday decorated” with streamers, confetti and cards and gifts. Some other gifts came throughout the day, as well as flowers from Katie.  I was treated to a pastry for breakfast and a nice lunch.

Somewhere in there I met two of my camera club guys at a nature preserve with a butterfly house, so that was a nice outing.

I had dinner out with two friends then we headed to a beach for a magnificent sunset!

This is what 59 looks like.

Friday

This was a rainy, dreary, quiet day. I think this was our little bit from Dorian. The sky was a funny pink-grey right before dark but that was really the only thing out of the ordinary.

I feel for the Bahamas where they suffered so much destruction. There are many charitable organizations that are accepting donations to help those in need after this disaster. I can’t even imagine, in just an instant, your home is gone, your car is gone, all your belongings are gone, your clothes, your medications, your toothbrush, your photographs, your debit cards. Your job might even be gone. Cell towers. How do people even find one another? It’s heartbreaking.

Weird segue to this photo, but I dropped two antihistamines when I was taking them out of the bottle and they landed on the counter like this, no lie. I probably couldn’t have done this if I’d tried!

saturday/sunday

Lumping them together because the days just blended into one another. I only went out to get an egg sandwich Saturday morning. Grumpy Man waited on me. He was exceptionally  grumpy today and it stayed with me all morning.

I worked on the blog and read and tried on clothes. Started to pull a couple fall pieces over to the “summer” part of the closet cuz it’s gotten so cool so quickly. Watched a LOT of New York Fashion Week video footage. I’ve always loved watching the runway shows.

Sunday we were supposed to go out but I slept poorly Saturday night and just felt exhausted all day so took a pass.

What I Read This Week

Goodbye for Now: A Novel by [Frankel, Laurie]

Goodbye for Now by Laurie Frankel. Frankel is also the author of This is How It Always Is, that I so so loved. So I had high expectations of this book. Which is always a little unfair, but. It wasn’t bad – the writing was still nice – not as lyrical as TIHIAI, but nice. The story was an original and interesting premise – a software that could take a deceased person’s past social history and turn it into an interactive personality for grievers to “say goodbye” to (like Skype for dead people). But there was a pretty big ask for suspension of belief…and that’s just not my jam. So I’ll give it a thumb and a knuckle (!) for nice writing and originality. 3.2/5. If you like something true-ish with a slight element of maybe believable sci-fi, this might be for you.

The Rumor: A Novel by [Hilderbrand, Elin]

The Rumor by Elin Hilderbrand. Not a fan. People making bad life choices on Nantucket…and everyone else gossiping about it. No thumbs. 2.75/5.

A Separate Peace by John Knowles. This is one of thse books I don’t get. Well, I get the BOOK. I don’t get the book’s reputation. “I think it is the best-written, best-designed, and most moving novel I have read in many years.” Nominated as one of America’s best-loved novels. “An undisputed American classic.” Oh, I’m disputing it. It was one of those “this happened then this happened then this happened then this happened then it was the end” books where you keep waiting for The Big Thing and it never really turns into anything. There was a thing, yes, and it could have been a big thing, but…it wasn’t. It was just sort of quietly left there. And there was another thing and you thought “Oh! Here is The Big Thing!” but even that was just sort of…nothing. “Beginning with a tiny incident among ordinary boys, it ends by being as deep and as big as evil itself.” Uhm, no. Evil’s pretty big. This was like, “oh the thing?” “yeah the thing.” “Oh well that sucks but let’s just move on.” Maybe I’m just really really superficial and am not recognizing the deep-lying metaphors or something. Still, I’m giving it a 2.9/5. No thumbs.

This was not a good reading week. BUT I have wrapped my work up early and am going to move to the sofa and watch a movie that looks promising and get to bed EARLY and hopefully sleep straight through the night as tomorrow is Back to Work for a full 5-day week.

Thanks for visiting, thanks for taking the time out of your busy lives to keep coming back and reading and being so sweet with your comments xoxo

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