I should apologize to my mother someday for my youthful opinions of her reading habits. I’ve been reading Heyer lately and they are far from the clones-in-Empire-dresses-or-dashing-neckcloths I once thought them. Though all are genteel young women of spirit, somewhat past their first youths (in Regency terms), Venetia is nothing like Frederica who is nothing like Sophy, and ditto for their male consorts. Given the number of fictitious engagements, foiled elopements, annoying brothers, and would-be duennas hopping about, I wasn’t expecting so much well-written variation on the theme.
I realize everyone but me has known this for years.
However, when out of other reading material I did read more of Mom’s modern romances and I still find those to be a dance of clones, even the best of them. (Who, at that period, would have been Essie Summers and Mary Burchell. Though Burchell would have gone up many notches in the estimation of both of us had we known then that she’d originally written romances to raise money to smuggle Jews away from the Nazis!)
Yesterday’s day off managed not to be relaxing at all. First I woke up at 5:30 and never really got back to sleep before Ted’s alarm went off at 6:30. I did get to hang out for a bit and then have a nice row, though I couldn’t really take my time on the water as I had to get back in before the other people rowing then left, so I had help getting the boat in. (I can carry the weight of my own boat, but they are awkward to handle and boats are stacked very closely here so it’s difficult to get one in the rack without hitting another.) Then I figured I’d do my food shoppig on the way home to save time, until I got to the register and could not for the life of me remember my bankcard code. Since I was coming from rowing, I only had it, ID, and my keys with me, no cash or other cards. I finally had to give up and slink out. (I was bad and did not put the food away either. Too embarrassed to stick around. If this is perimenopause, it is not for the faint of heart.)
The cleaning service, who seem to come at a completely different day and time every week, chose that day as I expected but managed not to come at the very worst time. They arrived only at the second-worst possible time – right after I’d gotten out of the shower but was still wearing a towel. SO I left to do my afternoon shopping without getting to hang out and rest after rowing. Somewhere at the first store (the chocolate shop!) I found that as I half expected, my bank card had indeed been blocked because I’d put in the wrong PIN earlier. (I knew I shouldn’t have tried that third time!) At least since it was during banking hours I was able to go get that fixed right away. Then I was able to get cheap rubber sandals for rowing because the strap on my Crocs broke, failed dismally to get a silk blouse for my next Japan trip (oh, Ann Taylor, why do you not have a branch here?), and went to get my eyes checked. It turned out that even though things still look crisp in the distance, they’ve degraded to -0.25 in one eye and 0.5 in the other, so I ordered glasses for driving in the hope that they will fix the dizzying floaty-brain feeling I’ve been having while driving. Oh, well, at least I had two years with uncorrected eyesight – and I still wouldn’t really need these if my brain would only behave. I don’t expect to wear them for anything else – and I do figure it’s my own fault my eyes have degraded since the LASIK, for spending so much of my time staring at computers, books and yarn.
I hit the *other* supermarket for my chicken so at least we had a nice roast chicken dinner for Erev Rosh Hashanah, after which I made the soup carcass into soup and made a batch of matzo balls, which have been dinner tonight.
Have a healthy and happy year to come and may all the year’s surprises be pleasant ones, whether you are celebrating the holiday or not.