September felt like a very busy month, and still I managed to read seven books.
1. Girl with brush and canvas: Georgia O'Keeffe, American artist (2019) by Carolyn Meyer. I grabbed this from the America 250 display in the library because I needed a book. I think it was a day that Josie had an appointment. I really liked this work of historical fiction, but it was very well researched and felt biographic. I guess it is actually a biographical novel, because it is told in first person, but obviously the story was not told by Georgia herself, but by Carolyn Meyer. Still, well done. A good read.
2. Restart (2017) by Gordon Korman was recommended by Diana G. Chase Ambrose has amnesia after a fall, a chance to change his life for the better. Because he was...not a very nice guy. But he didn't remember that. Thougth provoking and also funny in places, because that is the way Gordon Korman rolls. I am very proud of Gordon Korman, who has been a published author for most of his life, who is Canadian, and who is only six years younger than me. I was a university student when he published his first book. You can read about him here. (My favorite book of his is still McDonald Hall Goes Hollywood. Laugh out loud funny, imo.)
3. Short Stories in French (2018) by Olly Richards--I mentioned this book before, as I was slowly reading its eight short stories over the course of several months. The book has comprehension questions and vocabulary lists, and the stories were of interesting variety. I have started the second book with more intermediate vocabulary--I will probably take months to read it, too. It was delightful to read and understand.
4. Portuguese Irregular Verbs (2003) by Alexander McCall Smith was on the display shelves when I was working at the fifth floor help desk, and it is thin, and I like the author (No.1 Ladies Detective Agency series) so I started it when the desk was quiet, and finished it because I liked it, even though the protagonist of the book is quite insufferable. Poor Professor Dr. von Igelfeld never quite gets the girl, the job, the prize...easy for the reader to understand, bewildering to him.
5. When rain clouds gather (1968) by Bessie Head takes place in Botswana. A friend on Facebook, Ruth, has a friend named Charis (who is a music person and friends with many of my friends, though I do not personally know her) and they recommend books to each other. They are reading their way through 150 place books, set in different countries, and this was the one for Botswana, and it was good. Blurb on back of book: The poverty-stricken village of Golema Mmidi offers a haven to the exiles gathered there. Makhaya, a political refugee from South Africa, Gilbert, an English agriculture expert, Paulina from the north work together to revolutionize subsitence farming. The pressures of tradition, the opposition of the local chief, the harsh climate--threaten to bring tragedy, but hope remains for the future.
6. Heartburn (1983) by Nora Ephron is also a biographical novel. It is about her own breakup with her second husband, Carl Bernstein (of Woodward and Bernstein Watergate fame) and it was thinly disguised to the point that Bernstein wanted to sue her, but I don't think he did in the end. Nora Ephron is best known for her screenplays, like Sleepless in Seattle, for example.
7. The correspondent (2025) by Virginia Evans. Oh my. Very touching. I loved this book. I read it in a day. I had placed a hold on it months ago because it is our Book Club book for October, but it came too soon, so I returned it so the next person could have it, and then by the end of September, I was the third hold and worried that I wouldn't read it in time, but then suddenly my hold came on Friday, and by Saturday, I was finished. So beautifully told! Life is hard, and this had been true for Sybil, who is a letter writer, and an e-mailer, and a note-writer, but not much of a talker. She has a very painful relationship with her daughter, and this sentence just resonated with me: "You think of me as your mother, but inside I am just a girl." Yes! Me, too. This book is Beautiful.
Plus more: Monday was a terrible no good very bad day. I was upset with myself over many small things, but they added up to feel heavy. Just silly things like I left work too late to stop and get gas, I didn't remember to get the envelopes to mail things to Nancy, things like that. Although, I also needed to deposit a check that came for Andrew, and when I really looked at the check, it said, "Void if not cashed by October 26," and I was freaking out because it was the 28th!! But then Rachel said, "It is only September still; you have lots of time."
Then, we decided that Josie would go to her PT appointment, and then take Rachel's car over to Linda's house, where it is going to live for awhile, since her PT is in Springville, halfway to Linda's house. But holy traffic jam!!! Josie had to call and reset her appointment because it was clear that we weren't going to get there in time or maybe at all. So since we were in two different cars, she called me to say to just drive straight to Linda's. It took one hour and fifteen minutes to get there!!! It is like a 15-20 minute drive. Maybe a half hour if driving slow. Crazy!
I took a picture of Rachel with Trevor and Linda:
It has been 13 years since Trevor's bike accident. That is a long time. The car will be happy at their house. They have more driveway space than we have here.
Monday or Tuesday, I should mention, Microsoft did this new thing to Outlook, and we now have to sign in with Duo, or two factor authentication. This messed up my LibCal Calendar, so that happened, but I didn't have time to deal with it that day.
Tuesday, I took a picture of our one tomato plant. Because it is ginourmous and taking over the yard!
I was watering it so carefully while it was always 100 degrees, and then I stopped and have not watered it specifically at all--it just gets what the lawn sprinklers give, and what the rain gives upon occasion, and apparently that is what helps it to thrive.
We had Panda Express with orange chicken for Rachel on Tuesday for her "last" meal. For her birthday, I got Panda Express and didn't get enough food. This time I got LOTS of food...and then Rachel was leaving and didn't even get to eat lots and lots of orange chicken.
Wednesday was MTC drop-off day, which Nancy wrote about. I was also feeling a bit "off"--probably because I have become used to having Rachel around, and she just walked right off to the MTC all ready to go, and maybe I wasn't feeling really ready. I am a sentimental old lady.
Also on Wednesday Nancy's blog roll finally updated! I guess it was getting into the spirit of moving day, since Nancy and family moved and Rachel moved. It mght as well move, too!
And then, at work, I did put in a help desk about my Outlook/Calendar problem, but told them I didn't have any free time on Wednesday afternoon because I didn't. And then, Adam brought me this folder of Lena Stein-Schneider music which had gone to Ellen for scanning for ScholarsArchive, and said it was all finished, and that reminded me that last week when I was spending quite a bit of time at home with Rachel so she had a person to walk with and talk with, that my opera singer friend in Germany had sent me an email asking about some Lena Stein-Schneider pieces, only I couldn't remember which ones because the titles are all in German. So I looked up her name which is quite unique, and my email didn't find it. Well, my email is bad at finding things, so I used the built-in copilot option to look for it, and it told me that I had NO emails from her. It found her name, but only in emails from me to her. So weird--I knew that she had emailed me often in the past year, which is only as long as I have known her, since some time in 2025.
So then I scrolled down in my email to try to get to a few weeks ago...and my email ended on Monday at 12:47 (that was September 28) and if I clicked on "find more on Microsoft Exchange" the more started on September 29...2025. Literally one whole YEAR of emails to me were gone.
So I put in another help desk. But...no time for it on Wednesday, because I had to take Josie to the PT appointment she missed on Monday due to the traffic jam. (We made it on time going via the Freeway--but only because her appointment started 15 minutes later than we thought, so we ended up being about ten minutes early.)
So this morning, the IT guy came. He fixed my Microsoft/Calendar problem, although the calendar glitch HAD double-booked me, and I didn't notice, so a poor student got stood up by me because I had to be at the 5th floor help desk for the same hour his appointment was, and the next appointment, too, only Tim took that one, and it was a football player, and they had a good time. Probably better Tim than me.
But the IT guy could not find any reason for a year of emails to disappear. Like, my SENT folder is fine, just my RECEIVED folder is not fine. There was nothing in my "Deleted Items" folder, and nothing in the "recover" folder. So he told me he would scale it up to OIT.
And he did, and a few hours later, they found my email, and by the end of the day they told me it was all in my "recover" folder...and that thing is a beast. Over 9000 items, and the display is not super user friendly, and everything that looks like what I am looking for turns out to be SENT from me, and is already in my sent folder, so then I have two of them?
I think I will just send an email to the library telling what happened, and saying, if you sent me something important and I didn't do it, because I have been away a lot the past two weeks, please send again, because I do not have it.
AARGH. So frustrating. I did email my friend in Germany and ask her to resend her email, which she did. So I have that. (Now I just have to find the music and THAT is also frustrating me extremely.)
Totally feeling frustrated over here!! And I still forgot about the envelopes!!! (I did get gas on Wednesday, so at least I succeeded at one thing. No, two things. I did deposit Andrew's check, too.)
But tonight I went to a lovely dance recital at the MOA. This was the follow-up to the Mimi Chen Ting exhibit I wrote about in April. Dances inspired by her art. It was lovely--good music, lovely dancing.
It happened that a girl asked me if she could sit by me, and then her friend came and sat by her, and we had a lovely chat. Her name was Zuzu, named after the character in "It's a wonderful life." And she said her aunt worked in the library and I said who is your aunt, and she said Lili Sharp, and I said, how is she your aunt, and she said she and my mother are sisters. And I said, so Betsy is your grandmother? And she said yes, how do you know Betsy? and I said I worked with her at Orem Public Library, and she said, oh my other grandmother worked there too, Kathy Homer, and I said yes, I knew her too. So small world. And I told her that also my son David is friends with Tracy, who is her uncle. I don't remember how David knows Tracy. Maybe they were in a musical together?
Anyways--we had a nice visit! And I am feeling slightly less frazzled. I will try to get ahold of myself--maybe I need some stimming, which I had never heard of before, but Nancy talked about here. Maybe I need a baby to hold and rock! I will try to dream of one tonight.
