CHIEF INSPECTOR GAMACHE SERIES

Great to hear from you Anna. I was concerned as to what was wrong. Now I see. I had to stop and get my breath after reading your post.

I hope your Dad recovers soon. It is so frustrating to have a loved one ill and not be able to “make things right”. I think of your Mother often as my MIL nears her 105th birthday on the 22nd. I am saddened that I will not be able to attend her funeral due to my estrangement from the family. I’ll remember her in my way and say a prayer here by myself while they have the funeral.

Not a sick dog, too. We are not going to give Petey the steroid inhaler the Vet wanted. I just can’t upset him by trying to give him another inhaler twice more a day. More and more we are fortunate if we can get him to let us give him the ProAir inhaler once a day rather than twice. He is aging and he is less patient with what to him is just an annoyance. If he bites one of us, the Dr. is required by law to report the incident and an investigator will come to our home. Petey adores everyone but like any dog does not understand why we put the inhaler around his snout and hold it there for 12 seconds.

Is Erin excited about being a Senior in High School? At least that is how we describe it. I can’t remember what my friends said when their English grandchildren were in their last year.

Hope your arm is mending. I never realized what an inconvenience having one arm not working was until rotator problems.

You gave me a huge laugh when you wrote about discussing murder locations during dinner.

The newsletter gave the name of the new book. It is located in Three Pines so we get to catch up on our friends.

More later, Folks.

It has been so quiet lately. On some level, I feel guilty talking here about other books we’re reading, though I know that Louise understands that she can’t write fast enough to account for ALL our reading needs, hahaha. I’m having a nice quiet stay in these days. I think I’d never get out of pajamas if I were left to my own for long. As it is, I’m finding out how many things I can get delivered instead of having to go out and buy them, and it’s making a hermit of me!

Still, it’s nice to have a few weeks with no responsibilities. I keep saying “yes” to things outside my comfort zone, so this summer, I’m teaching a glass on faux grain painting. My business partner and I have for a few years, made paper mache boxes that we grain painted and filled up with needlework tools and sold online. They sold really really well, and people were always clamoring for them. Now that we’re not doing it anymore, I told one group in Utah I’d teach them how to do it on their own. Of course, the time they picked was August. It will be far too hot for people to be outside working on the boxes, and far too messy to be inside. So, I’ve got to do it in a slide presentation! Yoiks! I’ve almost got it all planned out, and now need to paint a box while taking photos of each step as I go along… Plus, I need to make it something that others who are not there can download and follow along on, so not only do I need to talk people through it live, but my written instructions have to be clear and thorough… What is wrong with me that I keep agreeing to do these things? hahaha

Oh, Barbara – I’ll worry about you and Sam driving in the snow! I hope it really is gone by then. The news brings so many images of people stranded, and terrible car accidents. I hope you feel well enough to visit with your sister – sometimes those sinus colds can take hold and not let go. If you were so ill you couldn’t read, I imagine you were very miserable, indeed! I’m here in the sunshiny Pacific Northwest (okay – for the moment, the sun is shining at least) and hoping you are not too cold and sick. We won’t get any of the white stuff, still, but plenty of driving rain, which is a sign of a very bad storm that, once it’s passed through here, will turn to snow in the rest of the country – I hope very much that temperatures are soon mild enough to turn to rain for them… Though the flooding images aren’t really any better.

I was at a needlework guild meeting yesterday for which I was teaching a class on advanced cross stitch. There was one woman in the class who managed to suck all the air out of the room, and I feel that my mood will take some time to lighten. I did come home with a heightened awareness of how lucky I am!

Barbara, I’m so glad you like the new Dr. – that’s one of the most important things, I think, to feel at ease with a Dr’s orders – to like and trust him or her. I know that sounds kind of frivolous, but it’s not – we have great instincts – the reason we might not like a Dr. is because we know they are not doing what’s best for us…

Opening the flood gates and having homes flooded out is awful – the choices we face sometimes can be heartbreaking. Even if there is money given to people to help mitigate the devastation, nothing is going to bring back precious belongings lost in the floods – photographs, especially. I am glad that basically ALL of my photographs are on the computer and therefore, also in the cloud, so they can’t be lost. Even all the old family photos – we scanned them in years ago for my parents’ funerals and shared them around the kids, so we all have a set. Mine are in the cloud, so I will always be able to get them back even when I lose a computer. Actually, wouldn’t that be a good project for kids to do for families – scan in old photos and put them on the cloud, so everyone in the family can have copies, and also so they won’t be lost…

I’m still busy reading along in the Anne Perry books – I had read what I thought was all the books available in the Monk series long ago, and but clearly either I hadn’t, or it was so long ago that she has done so many since… I don’t know how fast she writes – Louise’s one book a year seems lightning fast to me – how much faster could you do a good job, and Perrry’s books are full of research, though I expect a lot of it is almost second nature to her now as she must have been researching Victorian London for years now. But this latest one I’m reading is all about the life on the river and the docks, and the Pool of London, which is a term I hadn’t even heard of, but basically, the London Bridge was so built-up all around the pilings that it basically almost stopped the flow of the Thames in a big part of the river in the city and formed a “pool” which is where all the ships docked and unloaded cargo. The life of the poor people who lived on or near the wharfs there had to be hard to research, and she goes into great detail. I’m enjoying the books, and even more so now that I know some of her history, as I think it colors all of her discussions about good and evil.

I stand corrected. There is a Federal Law that bans the use of bed rails in nursing homes. I understand the dangers but falling on your head is also dangerous.
Anna, are you home? Hope you have recovered.
I see the new pulmonologist this AM. Couldn’t get warm late yesterday and head congestion came during night. At least I have an appointment.
The practice my former Dr referred me to did not answer the phone for two weeks after a call to say I needed to reschedule. The machine had the message that I was calling out of office hours even though I was not. I hope all goes well today.
On another, and more interesting topic, I learned last week that the dam shown in the Hunger Games was Thurmond Dam near us. Digitalization was used to show the dam with all the flood gates fully open. Recently, the Army Corps of Engineers, which manages the dam, opened all the gates fully due to too much water coming in from rains north of us. They waited too long and had to release so much water that homes along the river flooded. The gates were open for days. The local news showed breath taking views of the water roiling through the gates. Many pictures were on facebook as people posted pictures of themselves by the dam. The gates are not often opened fully so some wanted pictures.
Must dress for Dr.’s appointment.