Moodiness....

I'm in the mood for change. It's the 'tired of summer' syndrome, and that time of year when Mama used to buy me new Red Chief tablets, a cigar box with some #2 pencils, and 24 crayons all pointed and paper wrappings intact. I can't sneak onto the school bus, but I can do some self-study and also make some other changes around here.

The color tangerine is appealing to me - likely because the marketers have been pushing it at us for months on end, but it finally caught me. Decorating all things orange for fall should be extra fun this year. I've made some marmalade colored pillows, and am thinking orange sneakers or T-shirts lie in my future. Now that my hair is silvery-grey bright colors have become more important. Beige and I are no longer BFF's. It makes me look like Casper the Friendly Ghost.

Salads and salads and more salads have been the fare around here - too hot for much of anything else, but the idea of making bread and a crockpot of chili is starting to sound appealing. I can't imagine the sound of football in the house without a pot of chili on the stove.

I'm also in the mood to read - big time, crazy, wish I could find a spot somewhere in the house and hide for days on end - mood. A box of saltines, jar of peanut butter and a 2 liter of diet coke would keep me going for awhile if I had a book with me. Right now I'm reading The Book Thief by Markus Zusak and I've hit the point where it's riveting, in a slow-meandering kind of way. It's wonderful, wonderful.

Waiting on the nightstand for me is Invisible Man by Ralph Ellison, touted to be the very best book written in the 20th century. I'll let you know what I think.

And carrying the type of title that brings on merciless teasing from my husband, Anna Quindlen's How Reading Changed My Life. The review said the lists of books alone made it worth the price I'd pay. At less than 1/2" thick it's an afternoon read, armed with a yellow highlighter. The perfect book to take to the library when you have an hour to go up and down the book aisles slowly. That always gives me a krink in my neck, but I usually come home with some great stuff.

My husband has taken over the grocery shopping, we're taking a more casual approach to breakfast and lunch around here. Both of us are liking this arrangement.

I took the old window we brought from our PA house, painted the six panes of glass with grey magnetic paint, typed all the chores on Avery magnetic sheets, hung it on the wall in the hall, and so far the cat box is getting cleaned more often, laundry is getting done, etc. Plus it's cute, cute.

Tomorrow is my first, 'drive-into-DFW-for-two-days-of-loving-on-grandkids', so I'm planning for hubby to grill tonight, then tuck me in early. Pull out of the driveway at 6:20 am listening to A Tale of Two Cities on audio. Lately if I can't have my nose in a book then my second choice is for someone to be reading to me. One day with our son's two little ones, the the next with our daughter who is just around the corner from presenting us with another grandchild. Both families can use a hand, I get to love on little people, and my husband gets to eat what he wants, sleep in the middle of the bed and spend a day fishing - a triple winner situation.

We're right now booking a place to stay in Savannah, Georgia in early September. Our original plans were to go in mid-October, then came the announcement of another grand baby on the way, so we shifted our schedule. Georgia and South Carolina are bound to be sultry, but when it gets too hot we can drive north just a bit and spend an afternoon looking for shells on the beach. Or reading. I wonder if Paula Deene's restaurant, Lady and Sons, has little chairs tucked in corners, where we can get served those cheddar biscuits, while we spend a bit of time, heads down, noses buried in books?

That's what's up around here - nothing riveting right now. Stay tuned. We've got some life changes in the works, but not quite ready for a complete reveal.