Sunny Sunday

Today was sunny and warmish -- a high of 63 [17.2 C] -- not exactly Indian summer (or St. Martin's summer as it is known in some countries because it comes around the feast of St. Martin of Tours, November 11.) We are enjoying it because the next few days are supposed to be wet and cooler. Next weekend we will have highs only around freezing.

I got to the gym this morning and had a pretty good workout. I got there a bit later than usual, but I expected to have the place to myself, that often being the case on Sunday morning. There were, however, several other people who must have had the same idea, one of them a young woman who managed to tie up almost all the leg workout machines most of the time I was trying to get there. I managed to do some but not all that I wanted. Later in the week, I guess.

More moving preparations: Last night we got a dish-packing kit and this morning I boxed up the dishes, each one in its own little foam pocket. There is also a glass-packing kit but I didn't bother with that one yet. Tom spent the morning researching TV stands, found what he wanted online at Walmart, but they were listed as out of stock. When he went to Walmart for something else, he found a stack of the TV stands but at a higher price than listed online. He came and got me to go back and load two onto a cart, took them to customer service where he showed them the online ad he had printed. They promptly gave him the sale price, explaining that it should have been marked that way in the store, but -- for reasons known only to the bugs and gremlins -- their store inventory said they didn't have any. So now there are two more large boxes stacked in the entry to the house. Later I took forty-three bags of books off the shelves and loaded them into my car to take to the library when I go there tomorrow.

And I got some writing done. Word-of-the-day is diaphanous: very sheer and light; almost completely transparent or translucent. That one is not too hard to work into a description of curtains in a room. Word count: 43,634. Sample rambling:

“Oh, Mr. Shahene, I didn’t know what to do. I didn’t want to bother you and I knew you were at the hospital and Billy Bob is asleep, he’s so sweet, but it’s later than …”

“Russlene, slow down. We’re still at the hospital… No, everything’s fine. But I’m going to be stuck here for a while and I don’t know when I’ll be able to come home. Do you think you could call your parents and see if you can stay later?”

“Well,” she said, “I don’t think they would want me to be out by myself all night or anything.”

“Yeah, that makes sense. Miz Missy’s here with me. What if she brings Katie home, would your parents let you stay then? I know Katie’s only eleven, but …”

Miz Missy tapped my arm.

“Corny, tell Russlene I will bring Katie home in your car and I’ll stay overnight with the kids myself. As soon as I can get there, Russlene can go home. But she needs to call her parents and tell them what’s going on.”

“Okay, thanks. Did you hear that, Russlene? Call your parents and tell them that I have to stay at the hospital for a while and that Miz Missy will be coming over and let you go home in ten or fifteen minutes. And Russlene, I appreciate your doing this. I’ll give Miz Missy your money and there’ll be an extra twenty in it.”

Russlene promised to call her parents immediately. I clicked off and handed Miz Missy my keys.

“I owe you big time,” I told her.

“That’s what neighbors are for, Corny,” she said, retrieving her purse from the floor beside the chair where she had been sitting. “You come home as soon as you can. I’ll take care of the kids.”

I hugged Katie and told her, “You help Miz Missy with Billy Bob, okay? I’ll see you in the morning. I won’t have to stay long. They just want to ask me some questions, I think.”