Reading.

Spending my days, in between bouts of insanity over animals, putting covers to my books imported from Goodreads to LibraryThing. I feel like Scrooge McDuck swimming in his vault of gold, I am fingering my way through my vault of books.

I was just musing on my library and the books I read and realized no-one can judge me based on what I read because the range is vast. The only judgement anyone can make about me and books is...I read to the detriment of everything and everyone in my life and spend too much money on books. On every list of 100 Must Read Books...I generally have read at least 75-85 (not matter the type of list (scifi, classics, popular, encyclopedias, cartoons, biographies, autobiographies, dog care, cat care, famous writers oeuvre, books of quotations, books of jokes, books of famous people, books of photographs, mysteries and cosies and poetry. Barbara Cartland and Harlequin Romances had their place in my life at one time and so did Women's Weekly). One very important point is....I do not care what anyone else thinks...books are my life, the more the merrier. Nobody else reads enough to impress me. I have read Tolkien, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, and the Russians. Kafka bored me, I could not finish Proust (though I got half way through the massive trilogy). I have read my share of literary fiction and genre fiction..I have no prejudices. I am not fussy about quality of writing just as I can eat steak today and eat weiners tomorrow..everything is grist for the mill.

On the other hand, if there were a computer programme that you could enter your entire read library into that would run an algorithm and spit out a judgement of who, what etc. about you based on what you read...I would like that. Humans, nope, they are too full of their own inadequacies and prejudices and jealousies and ignorance. You cannot really trust the opinions of other people. What they think of any given politician can be the result..today..of something they read or saw on television or in the news. So few people actually read enough to be entitled to an opinion of other people's reading matter.

As for my mood at the moment, I am relieved. My animals have made me frantic with worry and today I got a break and I am coming up from the pits or down from my flights of dungeon building in the sky.

Elsie Schmocker

My mother-in-law Elsie Schmocker died on August 11, 2019. This has not been a bad year for personal deaths (knock on wood). I do not write here often enough. Time is flying by and I am reading my way through my personal library..I am currently at 214 books on the year. I am dealing with agony and anxiety over Ashley who, seemingly overnight, went blind, deaf, nose blind and demented. I emailed a mobile vet to check prices on a Saturday and the moment I pressed send it was like the fog rolled out and I could see. I sat and planned how I was going do death with her and it was not going to be euthanasia. My life and my concentration had been shot for two months while I rode the roller coaster of indecision and panic. But once I made a plan, things calmed down. My life is, essentially, on hold while I deal with Ashley and her needs. Nothing I read or researched can help. I am winging this alone. Then Mac, the cat, decided to stop eating and drinking (this is the cat that barely eats anything on any given day anyway) and the litter box was empty and everything I read online said PANIC NOW. My calm shattered, my thoughts scattered. This started on Wednesday August 21st and I think it resolved itself today Monday, 26th but it has been a nightmare few days capped by Ashley having one of her bouts of diarrhea and shitting on Elsie's handmade rug. Which brings me back to Elsie. She was 96, in a nursing home, suffering from dementia and in a wheelchair since some time in 2018. She died peacefully in her chair less than a minute before Peter walked through the door to visit. So he wrote three lines to say she died and that was it. No information for twelve days. I finally contacted Brenda Grape his cousin-in-law and she said no one else had heard anything. I gave her his phone number and she called and got the information and relayed it to me. The following day I get an email updating me...Elsie had been cremated and put in a box made by Peter (like the ones he made for me, Brandon, Hanna and Alfred and Renate (all used as urns for those who have died so far) and there will be a memorial service soon and could he borrow 50.00 till the end of the month. I sent an etrans with the money. She as a big part of my life for 20 years and was a nice, inoffensive lady who did not intrude and never criticized me in any way that I found out about. Unlike second husband, John's mother hated my guts from day one and I could not do right by her. My first husband's mother was dead before we got married and never socialized once with his father or his grandmother...the marriage didn't last long.

I will not be attending the service..no wheels. An part of my life ending. Visited Lena last week. She is 100 and beginning to show frailty but she was all there the day I visited. She still lives alone in her three bedroom house. Still no news about Andrew but then he was a lousy grandson..never gifted her, never called, never visited.

On the other hand, she lived 33 years longer than my mother who died at 63. You can pack a lot of living, happiness, food, joy and fun into 33 years. So I am not grieving at her passing.