A Rainy Day

We have had lovely sunny and warm, not hot, weather for a few days and I have got used to taking my breakfast bagel out onto the deck and sitting under the new shady umbrella, But this morning when I looked out, rain! I opened the back door and poked my nose out and it was c-o-l-d!

I haven’t done a single thing today and I loved every second of it!!

Well, when I said I did nothing, I actually fed machines which did the work. While I was sitting on the bed and dallying with my Kindle, a machine in the kitchen was washing our dishes. In the basement, two other machines were washing and drying our clothes. {There is a fortune waiting for anyone who can devise a machine that will put clean clothes away, right?} I put Fred’s clothes neatly on his side of the bed and he put them away. I put mine away. And I spent the rest of the day reading with the Kindle.

What I am reading:

• For many years, I was a single mother with two jobs. My "main" job was as a writing teacher to seventh graders. And my second job was as a bookseller at Waldenbooks, a chainstore bookshop in a mall. My manager was a woman who assigned each of us one or more sections to be responsible for, and as part of the responsibility, we had to read some of the books to be able to discuss them with customers who had questions or asked for recommendations. My first section was science fiction which I have always liked. But, unfortunately, a part of this was the "series" books. And that included the Star Trek series books. Now I LOVE the Star Trek television and movie series—hmmm, well, let’s say I like rather than love Star Trek: Enterprise– but I had never read one of the books. So, as well as dusting them and shelving them in alphabetical order by author, I read some of them; actually, I read a lot of them. Most of them were just ok, a few were really bad, and one or two were excellent. Which brings me to Ishmael by Barbara Hambley. When I found this book, I was amazed and delighted. I loved the writing. {I have in fact used bits of her books as examples for my seventh graders in how to include all the senses in writing} Ishmael immediately sent me looking for other books by Ms Hambley and I stayed with her until she ventured into vampires which is where I dropped out as a fan. Somehow in moving, I had lost my copy of Ishmael so when I saw it on the list of Kindle science fiction books, you know what I did, right? And I am happily rereading it.
• I am still trudging through the Cevennes with R. L Stevenson and Modestine the donkey in his Travels with a Donkey, our book club assignment for this month. It has its moments…

At our next book club meeting, it will be time to make suggestions for the next few months. I am going to suggest "Your favorite author of poems and/or your favorite poem" What do you all think? I would love to get to know a few different poets. {I am going to use Philip Larkin as mine.} What we do is write our suggestion on a bit of paper which is put into a container and then the titles are picked out one by one and assigned to a month…

Fred just brought me a bowl of strawberries and whipped cream…

QUOTATIONS:

"Step by step. I can’t think of any other way of accomplishing anything."

Michael Jordan

None will improve your lot If you yourself do not.

Bertolt Brecht, 1933