Friday, already! The school bus is back to being a daily occurrence, a particular sound on my radar. Students here have just about finished their first week in school. This morning on our walk (and boy did I not  want to go on that walk) it was cold! It’s all relative, of course, but in early September morning temps in the fifties seem quite, shall we say, brisk!

I’ve had too little sleep for two days in a row, so it took every ounce of effort for me to chug along on our walk, but I’m glad I did it. Back inside, I made our second cup of coffee and we sat on the sofa for our morning chat.

Black walnuts, which are abundant on our property.

I finished Shakespeare and Company Paris. It’s a fascinating history of that historic bookshop and I thoroughly enjoyed it. Then I pulled out Grief is the Thing with Feathers  by Max Porter.

Max Porter is a British writer and this novel is unlike anything I’ve ever read. The use of language, the upending of the usual style of a novel, the subject matter – all of it makes for a compelling read. It’s short – 117 pages – which is why I finished it this morning and most likely won’t post it under “Currently Reading” on my sidebar. So I’ve posted it here for you.

Porter is really quite brilliant. And the ending is beautiful. I have his newest, Lanny, on my TBR pile here in the den.

And now I am faced with choosing another book to read within 12 hours of having to choose the last one!

I cleaned the dollhouse yesterday – by dollhouse, I mean the big one in the den. That usually means straightening up things that have become messy, reattaching things that have fallen off the wall, and ‘dusting’ with a small paintbrush.

I don’t know if you’ve been following on Instagram but I posted a couple of ‘series’ about the similarity between Caroline and me in Stories. The second one  is still up there. The first is in my Highlights section under Miniatures. They were a lot of fun to do.

Incidentally, you’ll rarely, and I mean rarely, find me facing my iPhone camera and talking incessantly on Stories. I only did it once and it had to do with children being kept in cages at the Border. There seems to have been a memo sent out to young (and not-so-young) IGers that their audience wants to hear from them face-to-face as it were, sharing every single thing about their day with us. I know that a lot of people love these chats, but I just see them as extended selfies. Some people do it only occasionally. But others? On and on and on until I routinely skip over them. Or, depending on my mood, unfollow. (This is only my opinion, of course.)

I know it’s generational and also my own aversion to constantly posting pictures of myself. Who wants to see that all of the time? I sure as heck don’t. Most of my posts are centered on the garden or the house or something I’ve seen on the road, or books I’ve read. An occasional picture of Don or me.

But this is the selfie generation and it sort of drives me nuts. One of the most troublesome examples of selfie-mania was something we observed in the Louvre. All these young people waited in line to see the Mona Lisa and when they finally got up to the front, what did they do? Took a picture of themselves with the Mona Lisa behind them. They didn’t stop and look at the painting. They immediately took the selfie and then moved on.

“Let’s see, a picture of the Mona Lisa itself because, how cool, I got to see the exquisite Mona Lisa in person, or a picture of ME in primary focus with the Mona Lisa a bit blurry in the background?” It takes a lot of chutzpah to opt for the latter.

Oh well. It is what it is. My parents raised me not to talk about religion (it’s private), politics (I obviously failed that one), or to make every conversation about yourself. These things were verboten in our household. Humility was Shirley’s mantra. That, and saying please, thank you, and being respectful to your elders.

Not a bad way to be raised.

Happy Friday.