Happy Monday! I had a 4-day weekend that began with a run to the old homestead to pick up some planters we left behind, zip around town trying to get my address changed and bills paid (two did not arrive, this month), visit old neighbors and my former personal trainer and eat lunch with the husband. That was just Thursday! The rest of the "weekend" began on Friday with a trip to Oxford to visit Kiddo. We took the futon to his apartment because the poor fellow had only a rocking chair and a beanbag in his tiny living area. Visitors had to sprawl on the floor. He's very happy to have some decent seating.
Saturday, we ran to Memphis to meet up with Eldest for lunch (he was in town for a wedding) and do some critical shopping, including the search for a new, padded desk chair for Kiddo (success!). His other chair was a wreck and very uncomfortable. It didn't take much complaining to convince me that we needed to find a solution. I think we've got Kiddo's home away from home pretty well kitted out, now. We stayed with him both Friday and Saturday night and discovered you quickly figure out what your child needs when you spend the night at his place.
I think I forgot to mention that this book arrived for TLC Tour, last week:
On the other hand, maybe I did mention it. At any rate, we're excited about it and have already cooked one recipe, "Heavenly Salmon Salad". It was absolutely amazing.
Here are this week's arrivals and purchases (in front of a pile that I unfortunately misplaced for a month -- I have some serious ARC catch-up to do):
Top to bottom:
Ned Kelly & the City of the Bees by Thomas Keneally - purchased at
Burke's Books in Memphis
The Girl Below by Bianca Zander - from Paperback Swap
Soldiers - Fighting Men's Lives: 1901-2001 by Philip Ziegler - purchased at Burke's Books
The Man Who Never Was by Ewen Montagu - Extremely exciting library sale discovery
Flight Behavior by Barbara Kingsolver - ARC for review from Harper
Sixties: Years of Hope, Years of Rage by Todd Gitlin - Library sale purchase
On Prejudice: A Global Perspective ed. by Daniela Gioseffi - Library sale purchase
Wildflower by Mark Seal - Library sale purchase
Not pictured:
Collected Ghost Stories by M. R. James - Another library sale find
Totally out of order:
A photo of moi driving past Sun Records in Memphis. Note the tourists snapping pics on the sidewalk.
The Monday Malarkey photo at the top of this post shows my new goat sculpture, which I purchased at our favorite produce stand -- to which we are now much closer in proximity (squee!) -- standing in one of our planters. Below, the same planter about a week later. Our broccoli is growing like crazy! We've also planted mums, an aster, salvia (to draw the hummingbirds), basil and cauliflower. Some pansies and a new gerbera daisy are waiting to be planted.
Some day I'll finish the whopper of a chunkster pictured below, but it's taking me so long that I set it aside to read two of my purchases, this weekend.
I read The Man Who Never Was (about WWII's Operation Mincemeat) and Ned Kelly & the City of the Bees (a children's book about a boy who goes into the hospital with appendicitis and ends up spending the summer in a bee hive -- apparently based on a hallucination the author had when he went into the hospital at the age of 10). Kiddo does not have a TV, which made for quiet evenings with plenty of reading time. Both books were quick reads and very, very enjoyable.
You can imagine how much I appreciated Vice President Joe Biden's use of the word "malarkey" in last week's televised debate. I think the word needs to be used as often as possible. I just do.
Since I didn't have time to load a Fiona Friday pic, here's your kitty fix:
How was your week?
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Isabel very politely posed in front of the mirror, for me. I love "twin" kitty photos!
Jiggers is the story of a dog who becomes lost during a blizzard. I think. I haven't read it in a few years. Note that I keep my copy in a plastic bag. This is not the copy I had as a toddler. When I realized I didn't have my childhood copy, I became a bit obsessed with finding one and eventually located it on eBay at a reasonable price. Do you remember the first book you fell in love with?
I haven't updated our progress on the house in a while, primarily because I haven't been making any. I've been diagnosed with an auto-immune disease but am still in the preliminary testing stages and am obviously hoping the diagnosis is wrong. However, I've had enough trouble functioning that it's been all up to the man of the house to get nearly everything accomplished. In the photo below, I had to cover up the half-dressed person painting above our built-in entertainment center because he is Strongly Against having his photo uploaded to the internet. I left the hand with the paintbrush, though, so you can see he was hard at work.
The living area is almost done! It's been great to watch the yellow disappear. It was just not my thing. In the kitchen? The sunny yellow is tolerable with a lot of other color thrown in. In a living area, not so much. At any rate, we've managed to move our "good shelves", the IKEA Timmermans, and hope to load them up soon. We've been loaned a pickup truck for a week and this week will be more about hauling as much of the remaining furniture as possible rather than settling in, though. Most everything has been moved in CR-V loads, so you can see why our move has stretched out over 2 months, already. Here are the Timmermans, all sad and empty, prior to being moved to the new house:
The tree photos in my Advent post were from 2010. I was hoping we'd have a little less trouble with the felines if we built a tree out of books, but let's face it . . . cats, trees, lights, gifts. They just don't mix. This one's blurry because I had to shoo Fiona to get her to stop trying to eat the bulb.
I didn't mind her untying ribbon, though, till she came away with a chunk of it in her mouth. 
