Locktober, Remember Me As, Embracing the Seasons

Kuala Lumpur by my daughter in early October

Locktober, Remember Me As, and Embracing the Seasons. These are all the writing prompts I found for today, that aren't memes as such.

Embracing the seasons was the topic of a novel I think I finished last night. It is called Tender Grace by Jackina Stark. It is her first novel. It is about a 50ish woman who lost her husband to a heart attack. She has her house paid for, her two children, a boy and a girl are grown up. She has two grandchildren. She watches 10 hours of TV a day. She feels dead but alive, I think but don't quote me.

I like the way it was written, as a journal on her computer. She was easy to relate to, except maybe to Australians the scenes that involve yukky stuff may not appeal. It makes her not so middle class in some ways.

Basically the woman learned to see the tender graces as she called them of each day.

Break, break, break

At the foot of thy crags, O Sea!

But the tender grace of a day that is dead

Will never come back to me. ~ Tennyson

She went on a roadtrip and basically got some perspective on her memories I think. And gave herself an opportunity to see people that she wouldn't have had in front of the TV.

Today as I wait for the big event of my second son perhaps leaving home. Loose ends tying up so we can get stuck into renovating again, and the weather going to warmer like it is supposed to, I find that I was doing nothing. The internet was too slow to upload some photos of my daughter's trip to show everyone. I ended up having a little sleep while the children were quite happy, settled they were. I think they liked the clean lounge, the lovely weather and one daughter knew her foot would not allow her to run around too much. My elder daughter seemed quite content and settled after her trip. After I phoned her Dad about why she wasn't in her afterschool cooking class that is.

Then I looked so uninterested, really I was too tired to wait for pages to load, so the sleep must have helped, my husband suggested I watch TV. Not sure why the couch was vacant then, asked where everyone was. The fact that the lawn was nicely mowed probably made it look inviting. I watched The Good Chef and the Bad Chef. They cooked southern fried chicken and a sweet potato and pecan pie to show us how things are done in the US. I noticed that Gary used mixed spice, probably because he knows we can't buy pie spice?

Then a nice salad for tea/dinner. I wonder when we had a salad last? My husband changed around nearly everything in the tuna salad. But it was good and he wrote out the recipe.

So here I am still shocked that I had a nightmare last night, and one of my daughters had a possibly fatal accident with a hair straightener. It gave her a zap, she moved her hand and it shorted out. Is that a tender grace or what? I can't even bear to think about it. I have always had circuit breakers, the electrician on this job didn't come back. We were meant to be moved into our newer house that has circuit breakers. May buy some plug in ones soon.

I enjoyed putting the fan on in my room today. Anyway that was probably a good reason to be not so "up" today. But I find it hard, Facebook is challenging to me. I put a picture of my daughter on it, with nice hair. Others didn't think so, and she does miss her hair straightener, the one I didn't want her to have. When walking around the zoo I thought she looked nice, that she goes to the trouble to look nice.

How do I want to be remembered? I think I do things for myself, to my own standards as much as is possible, because everyone seems to live their life to their own style and they may not like anything I do, even if it is at a good standard. They may not care for them. Hopefully it will be a benefit to someone and they will be pleased. At the moment working out what a person my age is supposed to do when it is no longer necessary to copy what our parents did is challenging. Simple living with a twist? I thought so, but maybe simple living is still fashionable and it is OK for me to do not so much in this season of my life, and I am glad my husband told me to just chill and watch TV, I enjoyed it. And the book is good, I can recommend it, it follows along with the part of the bible called John. I tend to be a little lost after such a big weekend as we had last week and the catching up this weekend. Now back to normality if it is possible with the end of the school year going on. I was pleased with the little debriefing email from the teacher that took the kids to Kuala Lumpur, that helped. Sort of restating the positives of their trip, and I guess our effort.

John 1:16 "From the fullness of his grace we have all received one blessing after another."