Joining Ginny in her Wednesday Yarn Along:
I'm in the final section of the Whipporwil shawl for my daughter. This has been such a fun knit, and much quicker than I thought it would be. Hopefully it will be blocked and ready to photograph next week.
My friend Annie sent me a book of short stories called, Lucy's Eggs, which I am enjoying. And, I started the second book in P.B. Ryan's Nell Sweeney series. This one is called, Murder In a MIll Town. One of the things that I find annoying about reading series books is the inevitable re-cap of past events and characters at the beginning of each book. I wonder if the authors think that it's important, or if it's something that publishers require them to do in an attempt to make each book stand-alone. It really destroys the pacing of the story. But, I love Nell Sweeney's character and the setting of this series enough to suffer through the re-caps.
Today our power was out for almost two hours, which sent us rushing off to the nearest pet shop to find a battery powered air pump for Z's fish aquariums. He said that if the power was off for much longer than two hours the fish would die. Unfortunately, the pet shop's electicity was out, too. The traffic lights were also out, making driving quite hazardous. Happily, by the time we got back home the power had been restored, and there were no fatalities, human or aquatic.
I spent the morning editing a story for a friend who is taking a univeristy fiction class. She and I grew up next door to one another, and the story was based on her memories of when her childhood home burned down. I was three years old when it happened, and she was five, yet we both have pretty vivid recollections of it. I remember being woken up in the middle of the night, the sky flickering orange-bright, casting weird shadows on the walls of my bedroom, my father's strong arms lifing me. I remember the fire engines filling our narrow lane, how loud they were, and how big. My family went across the street to my uncle's house. My aunt made me hot chocolate and toast. My cousin Judy was asleep upstairs and couldn't play with me; I was disappointed. I was wearing a pink blanket sleeper. It had lost it's softness and was covered in pills. When I read my friend's story of her memories of the fire, I cried. There were things that I had forgotten, like how her sister had to jump from a second story window and broke her leg, and that her asthmatic brother was hospitalized with smoke inhalation. Her family had to live in a rented house for almost a full year while their house was being re-built. I had forgotten all that. It's funny, the things you recall, and the things that you don't.
Today was the first sunny day of the week. I'm still waiting for the trees to burst into color. It seems late to me. I did see a large V of Canada Geese high in the sky this afternoon, heading south for the winter. Does the fall foliage seem to be on schedule where you live?
