We're going on a road trip

Can you hear me whistling, humming, singing?  We're getting out of here THIS WEEKEND.  We're going to Balboa.  We bought new tires at Costco.  We had the timing belt replaced, the oil changed and the transmission fluid flushed.  Our car is ready.  We're ready.  Sam and Sarah are leaving Saturday and staying one night in St. George.  We're leaving Sunday and meeting them in Las Vegas.  Yippee Skippy.  They're staying in a Weston Hotel in Newport Beach.  We're staying in La Quinta in Santa Ana for $59.00 a night.  But hey, who are the retired geezers?  At this point, I'd sleep in my car.  Can you hear me yodeling?

Library books

I get my books at the library these days, because whereas I once had discretionary funds, I seem to have them no longer.  Wordy, but you get the point.  It makes me feel claustrophobic to be without funds.  I want to drive off in my car to Mexico, but I'd have to sleep in it as well.

Anyway, I go to the library and pick books the way I used to when I was a kid:  by the Holy Ghost.  Here's a list from the last few weeks:

GILEAD by Marilyn Robinson.  I recognized her name and knew she could write and I was not disappointed.

DICTATION by Cynthia Ozick.  Very literary and academic.  Four stories.  If I'd known that I wouldn't have taken it, because I prefer novels.  One story had Henry James and  Joseph Conrad meeting socially at James's house.  She did a fine Henry James imitation.

A SIGHT FOR SORE EYES by Ruth Rendell.  A well-written mystery.  She must have been close to Marilyn Robinson.  I didn't know a thing about her, but find out she's British and well liked.

DIVE AT CLAUSEN POINT  by Ann Packer.  I couldn't believe the ending.  I was so annoyed with it and the protagonist.

THE MAIDENSTONE LIGHTHOUSE by Sally Smith O'Rourke.  Just a sick romance/mystery, but I got hooked with the plot.  It had a cheesy lighthouse cover on the front.  I should have known.  Sally Smith O'Rourke is really a woman and her dead husband who used to make up book plots together and she has written them up since he died.  Boo hoo.

Ann Dee Hale loaned me THIS IS WHAT I DID which I thought was an excellent YA novel.  I especially liked the way she incorporated silences.

I also check out a half dozen house design books when I'm at the library, because those are my favorite picture books. 

Cry for Help

Get me out of here!

Reading journals

Tom is teaching the memoir and imagination class at BYU, and he's also substitute teaching two or three times a week, so I offered to read the journals for him.  What strikes me is that everyone, and I do mean everyone, feels like a slacker half the time.  We are uncommonly critical of ourselves.  

This must be human.  What is pathetic is that it never goes away.  You get older, but you're still a slacker.  It hardly matters what you've accomplished, there's always room for self-criticism. 

 Did cave people feel this way or is this what we call civilized thinking?  Did cave people stare at the stars and think, "Geez, I spent way too much time looking at the fire this week," or I should have been killing a tiger instead of cave painting.  I'm such a caveman."

Anyway, the writers in Tom's class are so earnest and young and worried about their standing in the universe.  It's a bittersweet read.

My interior designer self

In my next life I will work with design and color and not words.  Maybe I shouldn't wait for the next life.  This is one of my all time favorite creations: this corner of my kitchen on Prince Edward Island.  The cupboards were all a terrible dark brown, much too dark for someone like me, a greedy light hog.  The walls were yellow like pee.  A terrible yellow.  We painted everything white and added stars and enamel pots and pans and a checker board from the Folk Art Museum and a cow sculpture from one of the island artists.  There is a black chest that anchors the room on the right and above it are black and white photos of my Dutch ancestry and some kind of boat gauge that looks like a clock and STUFF.  All of it good stuff.  We took down the immense and ugly fan and put up those hanging lights (eight dollars a piece from Ikea).

Out of that window was a wide open field of hay surrounded by trees, and mid-summer, someone came to cut the hay and roll it into bales to dot the landscape and catch the evening's magic golden light.  Down the road  a mile was Blooming Point Beach which went on forever.

I think the reason I like to move so much is that each house, each apartment is like a canvas to create a personal space.  Now I'm going  through this house room by room.  I've painted five doors this week.  It's a project that should last many years.

Seeing my PEI kitchen again has made me completely happy.

I didn't paint a door or write

 I took the Christmas tree down.  The home teachers were coming.  Shame is a powerful incentive.  I got all the decorations stored in two plastic boxes, which I scrubbed thoroughly.  Then I hauled the full-sized tree down the stairs and into the basement and felt like one tough babe.  I vacuumed, dusted, waxed, took out garbage, and sweated like a wrestler during it all.

It's the first day I've had any real energy since the nasty virus hit on Christmas Day.  It felt good to get physical.  It was like channeling my mother.  My wonderful wonderful mother.

I'm moving to Holland

In my dreams.  The white house next to the brick is for rent for $1800 right now.  It's in Breukelan just a short block from the drawbridge, which is a short block from the bakery with the pasteries with the almond paste fillings.  Isn't it picturesque?  Isn't it perfect? Three bedrooms, two baths.  We can move right in.

I'm restless, obviously.  I'm on my fourth novel in the last seven days:  THE DIVE FROM CLAUSEN'S PIER by Ann Packer.  So far so good. I read a young adult novel by Ann Dee Ellis this morning.  It was excellent.  Spare language and silences.  She was my student and is now in my writing group.  I didn't teach her a thing.  I just said, keep doing what you're doing.  And she did.

Tomorrow I will write and paint one door.  I promise.  I will write and paint a door.  I will.  I will.