It's a nice if chilly day today.  My clematis has grown up the side of the garage and out onto the phone line back  towards the house.  It the afternoons  it looks like red stained glass.  I'm going to try to catch a picture of it tomorrow, I waited until too late in the day today.

I skipped the pain pills this morning so I could drive myself to the library, a short jaunt.  I got three DVD's and Dana Stabenow's "Hunter's Moon" to read.  The films I got are "The Book of Eli," "Elizabeth - The Golden Age," with Cate Blanchett, who is one of my favorites, and "Eat, Pray, Love," which got mixed reviews but I wanted to see it, and I love watching Javier Bardem.  It's a lot better than trying to find something on daytime television.  I was surprised how tired I was when I got home so I took a little nap.  When I got up I defrosted some of my homemade chili for dinner and started in on my book.

My friend Merry offered to loan me a new book she has, the latest Louise Penny, saying they "were trying not to read them too fast."  I can sure appreciate that, if I zip through them they are gone, like old friends leaving after a visit and not to return for a long time.  So I think I will follow her lead and read more slowly.  I know I was in mourning for awhile after I read all three Steig Larsson's "Girl Who..." books, in despair that there would be no more.  The upside is if my memory gets worse in the coming decades I can probably read them all over again like new books.

Weekend

Sister Susan on our Alaskan Cruise July 2011

I'm looking out the kitchen window this morning watching the leaves slowly drifting down.  I like sitting at this kitchen counter with my laptop and gazing out the window.  I've been retired for awhile but still can't seem to get caught up with projects, and still the first thing I do every Saturday morning, is put in a load of wash like I had to go to work Monday.  This morning I got to the clothes hamper and...there was nothing in it.  Ack, now I'll be off all day.

I could start sorting through the photos of the Alaska trip Susan and I took with two friends.   I did one post once then forgot about it doing other stuff instead.  Still haven't put the roof on the first rooms of the doll house my grandgirl and I are slowly building.  I need to clean up the garden before it freezes, some silly little cherry tomatoes and some peppers actually managed to ripen even though anything resembling warm weather has passed.  Drain and roll up the hoses. Prune the roses and pile mulch under them.  Finish knitting a muffler.  Actually make a wreath out of all those pine cones I collected in SE Oregon.  Work on my painting some more. 

What do I do?  Read a lot, go the gym intermittently, volunteer with Art Lab this school year, an art program in the grade schools here in Walla2, visit friends, home school a granddaughter once a week, and go for walks.  This summer though I've felt like one the lilies of the field, "they toil not, neither do they spin."  I do portage granddaughters often so I do a lot of driving but get nowhere, ha, ha.  It never occurred to me I'd be a mom/taxi again with my grandgirls, but that's good, I like being in their lives.  Did I mention I read a lot?  And play on the computer, the new computer.  No more black screen of death.  Whoorah!  Now I can write up my blurb on an artist named Ming Fay for the Art Lab so the 5th graders we are taking on a field trip to the Walla Walla Foundry here will learn (I hope) something about a current, and successful, working artist, whose works have been made here.  I have an art degree and made most of my livelihood drawing airplane parts and working in technical publications. It supported me and my family so I'm not complaining.  Still, I get all excited about someone who has managed to make a living with their art. 

Yesterday, with book in hand, I went to pick up two grandgirls after school for an afternoon of snacks and pumpkin carving. I left really early so I could drop off other library books and get a good place to park in front of the school.  I thought I might read while I waited. I'm finishing up a Kate Sugak mystery by Dana Stabenow, an addiction lately.  Instead, I rolled the van windows down, let the mild air drift in and blow away fragrance of wet soccer shoes and socks, left the radio on a smooth jazz station and watched the trees in the sun and just chilled.  Wonderful.

Oh, and I do buy a lottery ticket now and again, and last week actually won $100, which I will spend on more Dana Stabenow books.  Life is good.