Please don’t find it alarming

Oh, it’s so hard to be home after such a lovely week away!  And it doesn’t help that the weather was absolutely gorgeous over in San Diego.  Sun, sun, and more sun, followed by warm temperatures (almost too warm!) and compelling blue skies, with some sea air thrown in for good measure.  And today it was cold and windy and blustery, with loads of rain, and now all the gorgeous fall leaves have fallen to the ground.  I completely missed the height of the fall colors by being in San Diego for six days.  Go figure.

And it was just one of those days.  You know the ones, where nothing ever goes right.  Grace, for whatever reason, is deciding to be as contrary as she could possibly be.  Maybe I should have named her Mary — you know, “Mary Mary, quite contrary, how does your garden grow?”

Then I look back at my photos from the Javelina Hunt (and I am still uploading the damn things; I took at least 100 each day I was there, so I had to pick and choose which to upload.  Even still I’m only up to Saturday afternoon.  I still have to post the lovely photos from Beanie’s and my trip down to La Jolla to see the seals), and I remember what a great time I had.  And I see a lovely photo like this:

and I remember what a lovely time we all had.  This was at Major’s Diner during the road rally.  I guess Heinous decided it was time to cause a ruckus, so he tried sticking his cocktail sword into poor Peggy’s mouth while Terri collapsed into giggles.  We’d gone in there to get a quick bite to eat, but it took a while for the waitress to come over to take our order after we’d told her what drinks we’d like.  Then it took us another hour after placing our order to get our food!  I’d gotten a guacamole burger, and it was overcooked, well into the well-done category when I had asked for medium, and the guacamole was just meh.  Which it shouldn’t be, not in the land of the avocado.  That’s why we ultimately gave up on the road rally and instead made our way through the Cleveland National Forest.

I love Peggy’s shirt as well.  It reads, “Horses leave hoofprints on our hearts.”  Is that her or what??

But at least I have been reading some excellent books to keep my mind off of everything.  Just before I left on the Hunt, I finished Peace Like a River by Leif Enger, part of KitchenLogic’s monthly bookclub.  If you are not a member, go sign up!  It doesn’t cost anything, and none of us are Judgey McJudgeyPants.  If you like that month’s book, great!  If you don’t, that’s fine too!  The only requirement is that you are to share a recipe you enjoy, and even that seems to be rather optional.  Anyhow, that’s how I got to read Peace Like a River, and it’s really a fantastic book.  It was one where I kept thinking about the book, even when I was doing something else.  I love it when that happens!

Then on the plane I started reading The Sixteen Pleasures by Robert Hellenga.  All the reviews on the back cover and the first few pages made it sound like it was going to be a dirty novel — not that I really have anything against those sorts of things; I just normally don’t go for such things.  The novel follows a girl of 29 who decided to head to Italy after the flood of the Arno in 1966 to help try to save the nation’s fragile treasures, as she is a book conservator.  And of course, she finds herself while in Italy, through many twists and turns and false starts.  Yet it was a gripping tale, though I didn’t really know where it was going for the first few chapters.  I just stuck with it because I really enjoyed the writing, and I started rooting for Margot and her journey through life.  Plus I used to work in the Manuscripts & Rare Books Department, and later in Preservation & Conservation, when I was in college, so I am rather familiar with old and fragile books.  I’ve done a wee bit of conservation in my life, though nothing to the extent that Margot performed on her found copy of The Sixteen Pleasures, however.

Now I’m onto Philippa Gregory’s The White Queen, a book that takes place during England’s War of the Roses, an extremely tumultuous time in that nation’s history.  And now with a sinking heart I realize that Elizabeth Woodville’s two sons from her first marriage are the two princes in the Tower, the ones they never found, and whose fate has never been revealed to this day.  Yeesh.  I’m only eighty pages into it, so Elizabeth has just married King Edward, of the House of York, though her family has been Lancasterians for years, and she’s managed to marry off all her relatives to people in high places to secure her place as Queen.  It’s quite enjoyable, though, and I look forward to going to bed so I can read some more!  I know Terri loved it, and what Terri loves, I usually do as well.

Hopefully tomorrow’s weather will be better, though considering how much housework I’ve accomplished, I’ve more than earned a day off to lay on the couch and read — as much as a fussy one-year-old will allow me, of course.  Everything I do, I do with ME’s indulgence.  Gotta love being a mother!