That's me chortling: I got gas for $3,98 at Costco. The "cheap" station near my house is $4.09 and it was $4.59 near Emily's in Worcester.
Happy Thanksgiving to my Canadian friends. (Believe it or not, they commiserate with me about the current administration and it won't prevent them from visiting in Palm Springs. Many Canadians are avoiding the US altogether, even some are selling their property in Palm Springs. I wonder if the Ontario Canadians are selling their condos in Florida.)
And happy October 12 to US people. I am sorry that some people consider it a day of mourning, but many of us geezers just celebrate it as a day off from school or work.
I was very happy that Costco was open today. Of course, I went for two things: gas and mini boxes of kleenex. Many dollars later, guess who arrived home without kleenex. Oh well, I guess I really didn't need 30 boxes. And I have lots of food, much of it pre-cooked (yay!). I also ordered new glasses. Getting new frames made the faster (7 to 10 days), whereas if I had used old frames there was some mailing involved.
It's a lovely fall day with 70 F. temperatures and nice sun to illuminate the half turned -to -color trees. It has been another bumper crop for pumpkins. People selling pumpkins cover their whole front lawn in Hadley, Mass. (right next to Amherst). I didn't stop to take pictures, sorry about that.
I had done a stupid thing by deleting this email group list and Deb helped me to re-create it. So, no, I did not lose the whole month of September, I just couldn't get to it. Highlights include going to Crafties once a week making things to sell at the Sleighbell Fair (the Saturday before Thanksgiving), helping to make jam, putting tricky pickles into jars, helping to process beets, and helping peel 60 pounds of apples for applesauce. There's the once a month lunch Sue gathers for current and retired Library employees. Sue is the retired South Amherst branch Librarian. And I hosted a couple of luncheons with Mexican Train Dominoes at my house.
And paperwork. At the moment, I'm a bit overwhelmed, but it sure is interesting being bi-coastal. (The westerners think everybody is from Boston even though I tell them I live 100 miles inland. And the desert sure isn't near the coast which is about 2 hours car ride away.) And I just found out that in CA, you pay real estate taxes to the county, not individual cities and towns. So I'm going through a bit of culture shock about that and trying to track down the utilities (why can't they just call it THE Electric Company?). It's all good. I can do this.
We are having a Memorial/Celebration of Life Happy Hour for Mom (Dorothy Swift-Grant) on December 3, 2026 at the Agua Caliente Casino in Rancho Mirage at 4 p.m. You are invited, please let me know if you will be attending. Yes, there will be snacks!
Happy hours with friends were one of Mom's favorite things and I know she would have been pleased with the snack choices. We had a lot of fun times at that casino, even if we didn't win. But if one of us won, we bought the other dinner!
I feel very privileged to have had my mother with me for so long, but that makes it harder to realize she is gone. So many situations bring back memories. When we used to go to Costco together, once Mom got behind a carriage, she could outrun me like a race horse going for the win. And she used to disappear making me wander the whole store three times before I could find her. I began to think it was her game and I considered getting a pointer arrow to put on top of her head. She would never go for that though, because it would mess up her hair.
And Mom brought me on my first Viking Riverboat Cruise in France. Here is my landscape quilt rendition of Monet's Garden (taken from a picture I took).
And because I'm showing you things I love, here are my pansies, done in Japanese embroidery called Bunka. It was hand stitched by my sister, Sherylann Smith. It's hanging in my living room right across from my favorite TV watching chair.
Please excuse the window light reflection. I am too lazy to move things around to eliminate the glare. No, I have no idea how long that took. I'll bet it was a LONG time! Someone once asked me how long it took me to hand quilt a quilt. (I don't do a lot of hand quilting any more.) And I said I didn't know exactly but I can hand stitch about a foot or two for one Law and Order.
I hope you have enjoyed the Blog About Nothing. I wish you peace and good health.
