Two posts in one day! Surely this is a sign of the EndTime!
I'm finally able to access my pictures from our Ohio trip of two weeks ago, so I thought I'd share. We went home to be there for the sale of my grandparents' possessions and a small family reunion the next day.
My grandparents moved into assisted living in the spring, and sold their property to their neighbor, who will farm it. This past summer my mom and her siblings have been going through everything in the house and outbuildings and dividing up the heirlooms and getting everything else ready for a big yard/estate sale. Since my grandparents have lived in the house ever since they were married in 1943, you can imagine how much stuff there was to go through.
Here are all the tables set up in the yard. We grandkids used to swing on that big weeping willow all the time, back before it was pruned. Just grab a handful of branches and take off!
All the kids and grandkids who could be there worked the sale. This is my mom with my uncle Ron (her brother) and my cousin Melanie (Ron's daughter.)
My dad talking with my mom's cousin's husband. (How's that for complicated?)
My aunt Charlotte and my grandma. My uncle picked up my grandparents and brought them over for the sale, but it was hard on my grandpa, and he left after a short time. Grandma hung in there all day, though.
My aunts Molly and Doris:
This is the orchard, which back in the day was a big grove of plum, peach, apricot and I'm sure other fruit trees that I've forgotten. Cherry, I think, and apple too, probably.This is all that's left. There was a huge blueberry patch to the right as well, and every summer Grandma would beg everyone to come pick the blueberries!
Here's a picture I took in the morning of the view just to the left of the orchard. People don't seem to think Ohio is pretty, but farms and fields are plenty pretty to me.
Morning glories blooming on the summerhouse, which was a summer kitchen way back in the day, and which sits right outside the front door.
I was running the cashbox at one point and had to take a picture of this wagon when someone brought it up to buy...it's one of several red wagons around the place that we used to fill up with little grandkids and ride down the hill beside the house. The "hill" seemed like Everest when we were little...now of course it's just a gentle slope. Funny how that happens!
Here are my cousins Alan and Krista who came up from Charlottesville and Atlanta, respectively, for the sale.
My aunts Carol and Kathy, who are my mom's sisters:
My sister Jenita and me:
Todd directed traffic in and out of the long driveway...here he is at a lull:
My uncles Bill and Lowell, Krista and Grandma taking a break:
My niece Kylie (with school spirit day face paint) was very fascinated with helping me count the money:
And my nephew Tanner decided to price himself (one sticker says "$10" and the other says "Make Offer.")
And a last shot of the mailbox. This used to be way down at the end of the driveay, several hundred yards down the hill by the road, but when Grandpa and Grandma started getting "up there" it was moved closer. I remember walking down the driveway with Grandma to get the mail, though.
Well, it was a bittersweet kind of a day, that's for sure. Lots of emotions and lots of laughs and a few tears here and there. This house has been "home" to a very large family for 65 years, and that's a lot of memories to say good-bye to. I was so grateful that I got to be there for one last day.
I got a delightful envelope in the mail today--Mimi's ATC swap! Seven little rectangles of art--the theme was "a favorite quote."
Mine is the one with the tea cup--the others were made by Stephanie and Molly (top row), and Kristina, Mimi, Nancy, and Sue (bottom row.)
Thanks for hosting this, Mimi! Such a nice treat, getting art in the mail!
My neighbor across the ravine in back is mowing his grass and wafting the smell in through the back windows. My favorite smell in the whole world.
I'm trying to decide whether to watch the debate tonight, since they've pre-empted "The Office" for it, so I won't be watching THAT. (Grrrrr.....) I don't like Palin, but I'm not a fan of Biden, either, so it should be fun to watch 'em go at it. Or excruciatingly uncomfortable. Whichever...
On a sad note, we found out today that Todd's former manager at his job in Ohio is in the hospital, in the final stages of liver and kidney failure, and will be going into hospice very soon. His name is Rick, and if you have a prayer or a good thought to spare, please send one up for him and his family. He's a lovely man, and he has a wife and two daughters.
That's all for now...I have pictures and a couple more scrapbook pages to share, sometime later.
...is starting to feel harder and harder, isn't it? People on the message boards keep talking about stockpiling food and buying guns to protect it...the polar bears are dying...and this is what we've come up with to take over the country when McCain keels over.
I can't imagine this woman sitting down with a cut-throat like Putin. When Katie Couric can make you look like an idiot, then you know you have a big problem.
Ugh, it's all so alarming. You don't know whether to watch the news or just look away and cross your fingers. I remember telling Todd a few years ago that I thought people in the future were going to look back at the 1990's as the last golden times before the fall, and I'm really starting to worry I was right. What does a country do when it's up to its nose in debt, with no money, no skills, nothing to trade, and a corrupt government that couldn't find its rear with both hands and a flashlight?
I think France's solution 200 years ago was the guillotine, but that seems a little extreme.
I try not to worry because that helps nothing, but it's getting me down. I don't want to be living in a dumpster when I'm 80, dreaming about the good old days before we became a Chinese slave colony.
I'm reading this book about Abigail Adams and the scary Revolutionary times when they all thought they might be executed as British traitors if they weren't killed in a battle first, and the terrifying task of putting together a country and a government that just might not make it, and it gives me a little perspective. But she was a person who felt that a country rose on its morality and virtue, and fell on its vices, and I can only imagine what she'd say if she saw where we are today.
I just got back from a trip to Ohio--more about that later, but I had to post this adorable business card while I was thinking about it:
A round card! I love it! We were at the Rogers sale, because every trip home has to have a visit to Rogers in it, and I was patting myself on the back for not spending too much money and then I smelled it. The handmade soap booth.
I adore handmade soap of all kinds--my friend Bev used to make it for Christmas gifts, and that was quite a treat. We used to have a store in Columbus that sold handmade soap and I had to stop in and stock up every few months when I lived there.
This soap is completely fantastic, very soft and supple and great for shaving. It seems to hold together well and not dissolve fast the way some other handmade soaps do. There's no goat's milk in it, just lots of olive oil, coconut oil, palm oil, stuff like that. And it smells unbelievable. I'm using the Orange Spice right now, perfect for fall.
It seemed that Ellie's husband was the guy running the booth, and I got a very strong Mennonite vibe from him (I can sniff out fellow Mennonites like a bloodhound...a Mennonite bloodhound) so if it's a Mennonite product, then you KNOW it's made with that Swiss-German precision and skill. Just like pies and quilts and barns.
Here's her shop: Ellie's Handmade Soap. Now go make her rich!
(Lifted from Mimi, who got it from this blog:)
Outside my window...it's cloudy, rainy, and semi-cool.
I am thinking...that Election Day can't come soon enough.
I am thankful for...a cloudy day and my sweet DH.
From the kitchen...chicken breasts are thawing, now all I need is some inspiration!
I am wearing...a t-shirt and pajama bottoms.
I am reading...April 1865: the Month that Saved America by Jay Winik.
I am hoping...for a good, safe trip to Ohio in a few days.
I am creating...nothing at the moment, but the urge is stirring!
I am hearing...the dryer, the ceiling fan, and the wind rustling the big tree across the street.
Around the house...getting the living room squared away and painting the last interior door.
One of my favorite things...is PG Tips tea in the pyramid bags.
A few plans for the rest of the week...make family history board for family reunion, hang pictures in living room, go to Lowe's.
Here is a picture thought I am sharing with you...
(garden ornament from my grandma's house)
Sunflowers are such a great late summer flower. This one came up all on its own, from a seed dropped by a bird or squirrel making his getaway from the birdfeeders we had out front this year.
I interrupted a couple having an intimate moment...how embarassing!
I swear the one on top was giving me the evil eye. Deserved, I guess.
Not quite as sexy, but the blooms on my garlic chives are also looking lovely right now, especially when they blow gently in the breeze.
And that's it for the garden, everything else is brown and sad and done blooming. It looks like the mums are getting ready to explode soon, though.
We're doing some fall redecorating--moved our living room around over Labor Day weekend, which is so much more of a process than it sounds. All the home entertainment stuff has to be set up and wires run in new places and holes drilled so wires can run under the house and through the walls...my poor hubby. General Eisenhower had less trouble preparing for D-Day than Todd does setting up his home theater.
But the room looks better. It's long and narrow (like 10-12 feet wide) with a fireplace at one end, a doorway at the other, and windows on the one long wall. It's been hard to figure out a way to set it up so the couch can face the TV (necessary for Todd's optimal surround speaker placement.) The TV competes with the fireplace and the room has never had a focal point.
After visiting his boss's new house a few weeks ago, Todd suggested putting the TV on the wall above the fireplace and turning the couch to face it. I wasn't sure the couch would fit well placed across the room (have I mentioned this is a narrow room?) but it did, and now things are falling into place. The focal points are combined, and the bonus is that we'll be able to face the fireplace and enjoy our winter fires, instead of sitting off to the side and letting the heat wash past us.
I'd share some pictures, but there is literally stuff sitting everywhere--all the wall pictures I'm not sure where to put now, odds and ends, and stereo equipment and wires all over the place...so I'll wait! We've also decided to pare down all our components--get rid of the separate receiver and the 300-CD changer and the two separate DVD players, and Todd found a great system on Craigslist with small speakers and a DVD/CD/receiver in one. So we'll just have that plus the satellite box and one DVD/VHS player left so I can watch my piles and piles of Mystery Science Theater 3000 on VHS. So, three components instead of five, I guess.All the neighborhood kids started back to school yesterday, and we've had a few cool nights here and there so one might start to hope that fall is on the way. Not today though--it's 93 degrees. Ick! I want to go buy some sweaters and move to Maine!
I have not fallen off the planet, just don't have anything going on right now. It's so hot here that all I do is run my errands first thing in the morning while it's only lowercase hot (as opposed to uppercase HOT) and then I scuttle home and do housework and read and crossword-puzzle. This does not make for exciting blog reading.
I am also in my first month of high-dose birth-control pills in an attempt to get my hormones back to normal, and it's been rough--constant nausea, occasional vomiting, migraines, exhaustion--lovely stuff. So I get done what I have to do (barely) and the rest falls by the wayside.
The doctor's office says that the first month is the worst and then I should start feeling better. I hope so!
Anyway, I'll be back.
We haven't had a Saturday with nothing to do and nowhere to go in at least a month, so we're enjoying this one. Todd's puttering in the garage and I'm puttering in my study. We had a late night out last night with a bunch of Todd's former and current co-workers, to say good-bye to one of them who's moving away. So it actually feels pretty good to take it easy today!
I thought I'd show off a few of the things I came home with last weekend, from Ohio.
I have a little collection of china planters. I found the white bowl and the green rectangular planter on the bottom in my grandparents' cellar, absolutely filthy. They cleaned up nice. The top rectangular planter, and the two round green planters, came from the big flea market in Rogers, Ohio, which I know I've mentioned before. Todd planned our trip so that we'd be home two Fridays and thus be able to go twice. It's all about priorities, you know.
I think I mentioned that my grandparents moved into assisted living this spring. Their property has been sold, and now the family is working on emptying out the house. I brought a few little odds and ends home with me. The little yellow pitcher below is from their house.
The sugar bowl and creamer are from the Rogers sale. People were in bargaining moods, and kept making me offers I couldn't refuse! They were made by Shenango China in Pennsylvania, which is near where I grew up.
These are Rogers sale treasures, too:
The teapot is in absolutely perfect condition, and I'd bet it's at least 50 years old. The bowl is Hull, but the teapot and vase are unmarked.
I found this box of wooden spools at a garage sale, and the apron underneath is from Grandma's house.
I like old Coats and Clark spools because of my last name...it's just fun to see your name on things like that. I'll probably pile these into an old Mason jar.
One of these readers in the middle is from a huge pile of old books at Grandma's house, and all the other books came from the Rogers sale. Haven't you always wanted to know 51 ways to save eggs and 101 ways to cook macaroni? I got all of these for almost nothing. Have I mentioned I love the Rogers sale?
I'd never heard of the Rawleigh company, but my mother and mother-in-law were both familiar with them. And it looks like they're still in business, but I doubt they put out booklets this cute anymore.
The one book has a hole punched in the upper left corner so you can put a string through it and hang it from a nail for handy use.
This was the absolute best thing I found at the Rogers sale:
Here's a close-up of the little birdies:
This little picture (it's in its original frame) is quite old and needed some cleaning up. I just love it. I was going to hang it in the little pass-through from the kitchen to the downstairs bath, but now I think I need to find a place where I can sit and look at it all the time, not just in passing!
I don't need more stuff, but old stuff just makes me happy.
I also came home with a big box of old greeting cards that my grandma saved for years and years. I'm scanning them a few at a time and sharing them on a new blog I started. Please do check it out! Greetings, Love and Thoughts of You.I think I'll stir up some sweet-and-sour chicken for dinner and then we'll probably settle down and watch another DVD of "The Tudors." It's well-acted, but everybody looks way cleaner and buffer than I imagine they actually were 500 years ago. Their teeth are too white and their skin is too un-smallpocked!
I met a guy online last fall and developed a tiny crush on him. His name was Lester, he hung out at the PaperbackSwap forums, and, oh yeah, he was 81 years old.
Lester is hands-down THE coolest person I've ever come into contact with on the Internet, and maybe in my whole life. Smart, articulate, wise, kind, hip. He was a huge favorite at PBS. Grant Wood's American Gothic was his avatar picture, as he was a proud Iowan.
When I came home from vacation on Sunday night, I was dismayed to read a post from Lester's wife stating that he had had a very serious stroke at the end of June. His daughter updated briefly to say that he'd been moved to a skilled nursing facility. Tonight the family seems to have closed his account at PBS, and there's no way of knowing what that means. They did not sound optimistic about his recovery, though.
Lester was a wonderful and genuine conversationalist, but he also had a knack for rolling just the right thought off his fingers at just the right time. Some of the folks at PBS have been gathering some of their favorite Lester quotes from the past few years, and I wanted to share some of my faves here. He is a gem, and he's very much in my thoughts and prayers right now.
"If there's nothing else to do, and my eyes are too tired to read, I watch the Weather Channel. Yup, old people's MTV."
"What on earth makes you think that I have started to feel like a grownup? I know that I have to act like a grownup, but it's an act. Sure, there's some wisdom that comes along with growing older, one hopes, and some perspective, and there ain't much that life can throw at me that it hasn't already thrown at me once already, but if you mean 'grownup' to be the person who always knows the right thing to do, the one who can always be in charge, the automatic authority for all matters spiritual and temporal... ...then I guess my certificate of grownupness got lost in the mail."
"If you live your life with zest and continue to be curious about things, if you have something or someone that you care about, if you have passion about something - even if it's collecting... I don't know ... matchbook covers or something - but have a passion, you will likely never feel old."
"I don't think you have to be able to recite a recipe from memory, or name all the Presidents in order, or be able to describe the Krebs cycle on demand. But I do think a certain ... awareness of the culture in which you (generic you) live is required in order to live life fully and to understand and put into appropriate context the things you see and hear daily. I think anything else is mental poverty, and sad."
"I'm willing to judge a person by their actions, I guess, but not by what they read, neither do I define myself by what I read. Books are like friends to us readers, and not every friend has to be an attorney or a brain surgeon or some "worthy" person. Some friends you just kick around with and have a brewski and bask in the warmth of friendship. Life is long, and tastes in friends change. Tastes in reading do, too."
"Oh, man, there is no feeling in the world like holding that grandbaby. When my kids were born, fathers weren't allowed anywhere near the delivery room, so the first time I'd held a minutes-old baby was when my first grandchild was born. Oh, I still get a little bit misty just thinking about it. The intensity and fierceness of the love is beyond anything. I mean, I would die for my children, even now. But I would kill for my grandkids. I think you understand the distinction."
"Brownies should always be frosted and have walnuts in them. Amend the Constitution now."
"M&Ms, preferably with peanuts, are eaten one at a time, after sufficient cooking time in the hand to ensure the proper melty-ness of the interior."
"We men are simple folk at base. We're driven by food and lust."
"You know what's scary, and that's when you open your mouth and your mother - or father - talks. The first time I said (or hollered) to my kids, 'Don't you make me come upstairs and take care of this fight for you' it was my father's words and my father's voice. That, along with, 'Well, what in the world did you think was going to happen when you stuck your hand in there?' It's as if it's in your DNA or something."
"It's good for kids, I think, to be exposed to things outside their comfortable little world. And adults, come to that."
"Learning to entertain yourself is part of growing up healthy. Some of the best talks I ever had with my siblings happened as we were just watching clouds drift by."
"Living a life of peace and joy, letting the love of God shine out from you and be manifest in your life, without saying a single word about religion, will bring more people to Christ than all the Bible shouting, pamphlets, slogans, threats, and condescending 'Jesus loves you' in the world."
"Half of parenting is learning to keep a straight face."
"Knowing who the VP is has had me praying, sincerely, for the health and well-being of George W. Bush for almost 8 years now."
"I admire people who have -- what's the opposite of a sense of entitlement, anyway? I value people who don't think the world owes them a damn thing, who don't see themselves as victims of something or other."
"I genuinely believe that love does not die. Our energy changes forms, but the love goes on."
"Shakespeare is right when he says that troubles come not as single spies, but in battalions. It's so hard to lose good friends, old companions, people you've known forever even if you aren't close friends. Your world changes a bit, gets a little colder for awhile, with each one. Sometimes you just have to wallow in it, you know? Sometimes you just have to feel bad and cry a little or mope around some, and didn't they deserve that, a little sorrow and some sadness for a little time?"
"I'm about to turn 81. Life just keeps getting better. I don't recall having difficulty with turning 30, 40, 50, although perhaps the cult of youth was not so strong then as it is now. I do remember when I turned 60 realizing that most of my life was behind me, and making a new resolution to make the best of every day, to find the good in every day. Since then I have been more mindful of my life, more aware of the seasons, nature, the small pleasures life brings, or can bring if you're alert for them."
"I like to watch my wife put on makeup. I love the faces she makes at herself in the mirror. I like the way she rejects three lipsticks that all look the same to me and then selects a 4th one that also looks the same to me. It's only fun if she doesn't know I'm watching, though."
"Omigosh, has anyone else seen this? Is it a new form of teenage speak? Text speak? LOLspeak? They're putting an apostrophe before a d. Examples: My wireless router die'd. I got divorce'd. Pre-cooke'd ham. He think's you campe'd in the wood's. If this continues, we will have tomatoe's for sal'e and no parkin'g. Every sign will look like a Gerard Manley Hopkins poem."
"Never give an old man an excuse to talk. :-)"
It's been so rainy here the past couple of days! Unusual for this time of year, but really nice.
Some more vacation pics:
My in-laws live in a mobile home at a small lake/state park. They've tricked out the trailer beautifully with a screened in porch and multi-level deck. When the whole family gets together for the Fourth of July, which is our annual "get-together" holiday, sleeping space is at a premium. Todd and I, or sometimes just I, sleep at my parents' house. Todd's sisters and their families sleep in two pop-up campers. It's quite a nice little arrangement:
That's my sister-in-law Lisa and my mother-in-law relaxing in front, and my brother-in-law Tony is the blurry guy passing through. Todd took this at dusk without the flash.
Some nights we have a campfire and roast marshmallows:
In the daytime the kids mill around and sometimes we have chats:
The girls and I did a lot of drawing and coloring at the kitchen table:
On the Fourth, I went in swimming with the kids and we lasted about ten minutes. It was coooooold!
My nephew has about 2% body fat and had to get out pretty quickly and wrap up and sit with his mom!
Off we go to sit on the pontoon boat and watch the annual Fourth of July boat parade.
You wave at the boats as they go by, and this year my niece found four old American flags at the flea market, so we had flags to wave, too.
My father-in-law has this little boat that all the womenfolk of the family secretly shake their heads about...it looks barely seaworthy and a little ridiculous as well. Here he and Todd and Tony try it out. I think it looks like something out of a Popeye cartoon.
Apparently the Midwest is being swept by a new yard game called "cornhole," where you toss beanbags at boards with holes in them. This is a word that has a different and unsavory connotation to me, but I managed to keep my giggles quiet as we held a cornhole tournament for the adults on the Fourth.
My father-in-law made the boards and my mother-in-law made the beanbags...then we saw the boards selling for $95 at the flea market, while a set of beanbags was going for $25. I think my in-laws could become cornhole tycoons!
A communal meal on the porch. The kids get set up on the deck when it's clear, or in the kitchen, when it's not, so the grown-ups can have a semi-quiet meal.
When we're not out on the pontoon boat, kayaks are in use:
Believe it or not, I have a family, too, and I did spend quite a lot of time with them this weekend, but you'd never know it apart from the fishing pictures I shared the other day. I'm going home again in September, and I promise to do better by them all then!
Last load of laundry's done, blueberry muffins are baking (more about that later) and I am catching up with a couple of my favorite blogs. RedMolly has this book meme at her blog...100 books you should have read, according to the people at The Big Read. The list seems to have lost a couple of books in bouncing around the Internet, so I'll try to think of two of my own beloveds to add at the bottom.
The idea is to bold the books you've read, underline the books you've read and loved, and italicize the books you intend to read one day. These lists are always arbitrary, but fun.
1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger
19. The Time Traveller's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
37. Captain Corelli's Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
38. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
39. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
40. Animal Farm - George Orwell
41. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
42. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
43. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
44. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
45. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
46. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
47. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
48. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
49. Atonement - Ian McEwan
50. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
51. Dune - Frank Herbert
52. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
53. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
54. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
55. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
56. A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
57. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
58. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
59. Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
60. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
61. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
62. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
63. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
64. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
65. On The Road - Jack Kerouac
66. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
67. Bridget Jones' Diary - Helen Fielding
68. Midnight's Children - Salman Rushdie
69. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
70. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
71. Dracula - Bram Stoker
72. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
73. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
74. Ulysses - James Joyce
75. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
76. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
77. Germinal - Emile Zola
78. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
79. Possession - AS Byatt
80. A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
81. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
82. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
83. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
84. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
85. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
86. Charlotte's Web - EB White
87. The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom
88. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
89. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
90. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
91. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
92. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
93. Watership Down - Richard Adams
94. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
95. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
96. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
97. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
98. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
My contributions:
99. Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
100. Year of Wonder - Geraldine Brooks
We're home! I'm working on a pile of laundry and nursing a sore throat.
I have lots of pictures...once the laundry's done, I'll get onto sharing some.
Hope everybody had a great Fourth!
We are off to the Buckeye State for our annual Fourth of July vacation. See y'all later; hope everyone has a fun and safe holiday!!
My dad talking with my mom's cousin's husband. (How's that for complicated?)
My aunts Molly and Doris:
This is the orchard, which back in the day was a big grove of plum, peach, apricot and I'm sure other fruit trees that I've forgotten. Cherry, I think, and apple too, probably.This is all that's left. There was a huge blueberry patch to the right as well, and every summer Grandma would beg everyone to come pick the blueberries!
Here's a picture I took in the morning of the view just to the left of the orchard. People don't seem to think Ohio is pretty, but farms and fields are plenty pretty to me.
Morning glories blooming on the summerhouse, which was a summer kitchen way back in the day, and which sits right outside the front door.
Here are my cousins Alan and Krista who came up from Charlottesville and Atlanta, respectively, for the sale.
My aunts Carol and Kathy, who are my mom's sisters:
My sister Jenita and me:
Todd directed traffic in and out of the long driveway...here he is at a lull:
My uncles Bill and Lowell, Krista and Grandma taking a break:
My niece Kylie (with school spirit day face paint) was very fascinated with helping me count the money:
And my nephew Tanner decided to price himself (one sticker says "$10" and the other says "Make Offer.")
Well, it was a bittersweet kind of a day, that's for sure. Lots of emotions and lots of laughs and a few tears here and there. This house has been "home" to a very large family for 65 years, and that's a lot of memories to say good-bye to. I was so grateful that I got to be there for one last day.
