Mockingbird Hill Cottage

Mockingbird Hill Cottage

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Day Three Hundred Twenty-Three

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Closer to the finish.

I finished up the rivers and the shorelines, added Central Park and St. Patrick’s Cathedral  – now I have to fill in the neighborhoods, as well as Union Square and a couple of other parks. I find this kind of thing so absorbing and stimulating, while at the same time, very calming. There’s nothing I love more at the moment than working on this puzzle with Don playing music and singing at the other end of the room.

I’m about a hundred and twenty pages into Winter Solstice  and I’m really enjoying it. Pilcher is a master of describing time and place. Her characters are complex and beautifully written. Someone suggested in a comment here that this book was like a Hallmark movie. To me? With all due respect, not one bit. Hallmark movies are meant to be superficial and surface level, with impossibly pretty actors and shallow plot devices, because they’re a form of visual escape, just like Harlequin romances were a form of escape for me when I was younger. I get it. I’m not at all into those movies now, but I understand their appeal.

Pilcher, on the other hand, is an excellent writer and her books have far, far more depth. There’s no comparison. There are elements of romance of course, but they’re character driven and beautifully written. I hadn’t read one of her novels in several years and I forgot what a pleasure it is to be in her hands. All this is to say, I love her books. This is just what I need at the moment – interesting, complicated characters, beautiful descriptions of the English and Scottish countrysides, cottages, houses, the streets of London, and characters who are forced to face heartbreak and change and move on in the hopes of something better. Characters, I might add, who have weaknesses, regrets, and resilience in the face of the unknown.

The forecast for Monday and Tuesday keeps changing. Yesterday: 1-3 inches of snow with 1-3 inches overnight. This morning: 1-3 inches of snow with 3-5 inches overnight. Apparently, the forecast models keep changing. So, we won’t really know anything definite until sometime tomorrow.

We’ve been looking through a book of Jeff Bridges’ photographs, all taken on movie sets with his Widelux camera. Some of them are from Crazy Heart, which we saw when it first came out. Bridges won the Oscar for his role. So we rented it from Amazon Prime last night and I’m so glad we watched it again. He’s brilliant in his role; heartbreaking, touching, dissolute, sad and, in the end, inspiring. Also wonderful – Maggie Gyllenhaall, Colin Farrell, and Robert Duvall. It’s so damn good.

Don will pick up groceries today. I’m forcing myself to clean the bathroom. Then we’ll do all the disinfecting, etc. Then, I hope to hear some music from my husband. I sang to him last night. I don’t sing a lot these days but I sang onstage, in church, and professionally for years. When Don catches me singing while working in the kitchen, he asks for more. What a good guy he is!

Really, really cold out there. But sunny.

Stay safe.

Happy Saturday.

Day Three Hundred Five

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Not much to report, my friends.

I worked a bit of the puzzle yesterday, though it’s slow going as the edge pieces are all a solid off-white with no real distinguishing marks. But I don’t mind slow. I sit down at the table and add a few more pieces, and for a while I’ve escaped the madness.

I find that both Don and I nod off rather easily. I nodded off in my chair during the day and later, we both fell asleep while watching Rachel Maddow. I think it is a normal reaction to everything that is going on. We need rest. We need a brief respite. Even after the brief naps, I still slept my full 7 hours last night.

Some of the books I ordered arrived.

I supposed that only one of these would be classified as ‘comfort reading.’ That would be Winter Solstice  by Rosamunde Pilcher. I read a lot of Pilcher a few decades ago, so I can’t remember whether I read this one. I don’t think I did. Either way, she wrote beautifully and I know I’ll enjoy it. Jane Casey writes great police procedural mysteries – I have read all of the books in her Maeve Kerrigan series save two. One of them is Cruel Acts, which you see here. And then there is part three of Stephen Fry’s memoirs, More Fool Me.

I have two more arriving today; two classic ‘village life’ novels by Miss Read and D. E. Stevenson.

I don’t know about you, but I need to escape – at least for a few hours a day.

Still waiting on my dollhouse wallpaper which is taking a meandering path to my mailbox. So I can’t do anything on that project.

We decided to order our groceries this week, as COVID is spiking in New York state. We just placed that order this morning and we’ll pick it up tomorrow morning.

That’s it. Routine, everyday things like cleaning the bathroom, vacuuming, reading, chatting with Don – the stuff that keeps me sane. Oh hey, I found a recipe for sugar-free cocoa/hot chocolate, which uses Monk’s Fruit sweetener, pure cocoa, and milk. I ordered the sweetener from Amazon and bought the cocoa (a mix of regular cocoa and dutch process dark cocoa) from our local supermarket. I treat myself to it once a week and it’s really good! Don likes it, too. I had some yesterday around 4 pm and it was perfect.

All part of my Must Have Comfort initiative.

Stay safe.

Happy Tuesday.

Day One Hundred Twenty-Three

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View of the rocks from the bathroom window. I had to resort to taking this photo because the groundhog (not sure which one) was dining on the grass and I didn’t want to scare him.

Another day in an endless series of days in this strange and unsetting time. I mowed the back forty, the corral, and the area around the shed yesterday and it was much hotter and more humid than I had expected it to be. Of course, I mowed more than I had planned to, as well. So there’s that. But boy was it overgrown out there! It needed it.

Needless to say, I didn’t accomplish much else for the rest of the day.

Today is grocery pick-up day. We’re really down to almost nothing, having made a vow to use what we had for a span of two weeks. We did it, I’m happy to say. So today’s pick-up is much needed!

Because of the aforementioned mowing, I didn’t get to the dollhouse yesterday. I just have a bit of stonework to finish on the back of the house and then it’s on to my experimentation with ‘grout.’ Wish me luck!

I’m currently reading another book from my TBR pile, Death at La Fenice, by Donna Leon. I’m enjoying it. She writes well and I love reading her descriptions of Venice. Beautifully plotted, as always. The fiction TBR pile is almost gone, so I’ll have to decide what to order or re-read. The nonfiction pile is still pretty high but, for me, nonfiction is not an automatic choice. I have to be in a certain mood to read it, as my preference is always for fiction. I really want to order Hamnet  by Maggie O’Farrell, which has been published in Great Britain to great acclaim. And I also want to read Michael Connelly’s newest, as I never miss one of his books. And then, on September 1st, Louise Penny’s newest, All the Devils are Here, will be published. Gamache will be in Paris!

Wish I was.

Stay safe.

Happy Tuesday.

 

Lambs Like to Party

Lambs Like to Party

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