A Work in Progress

My mother had Alzheimer's. This is a horrible disease that took her away from us bit by bit and made us mourn her well before she passed away two years ago. So it was with both curiosity and fear that I got the audiobook, Still Alice by Lisa Genovese, from my library. It's a novel about Alice, a Harvard professor of psychology, who is diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's at the age of 50. It is perhaps the saddest, and oddly, the most hopeful book, I've ever read. It's sad because of the way the disease progresses and because of the way it changes her relationship with her husband (although I couldn't decide if it just highlights what was already lacking in their marriage). I found it hopeful and reassuring that some of what made Alice unique was still there and cherished by her family even when she began to forget them. The fear in getting the book is probably something that every child of a person with Alzheimer's has--does forgetting some tri...

My final college tour trip with my daughter last week went smoothly. I left my summer school job on time and less than an hour later we were parking at the airport. The flight was on time and the hotel was easy to find. My daughter's interview at the first college went well and she was pleasantly surprised by how much she liked the campus. She admitted to me that she is "a sucker for a quad" (so am I!) and this lovely institution has two of them. After lunch on campus, we wandered up the road to a small shopping center and found these fat halves in a quilt shop. They had more of the Amy Butler fabrics my daughter loves so we got some yardage to make a quilt for her. I does amaze me that she loves bright, bold prints since I fall in love with nearly every piece of fabric in an autumn color and/or a small print. Day 2 of this trip was a little less successful as neither of us were wowed by the second college we visited. We had high hopes as it sounded great on paper and dur...

I mentioned in a previous post that I don't buy books anymore--well, not many books and certainly not very often. This is why. It's about half the books that are stored in a closet in my sunroom. They were moved there three years ago when we remodeled our master bath and I had to take books out from under my bed and nightstand. They're causing the shelves to sag slightly. And I'm not even showing you the books that have crept back under my bed and my nightstand, nor the ones that are piled on top of the TV in my bedroom. (We rarely watch the TV but it makes a great bookshelf.) So I'm making a commitment to read at least 10 of these books while I'm off for the summer. That's one book a week. Now if I could just keep from checking the latest bestseller out of the library.