Right now

Right now...* 

*(an occasional (mostly monthly) meme, alternating from time to time with "The Current"). (Explanation of how this started & my inspirations in my first "Right now" post, here. Also my first "The Current" post, here.)

Pandemic diary/update: October was month #43 (3.5+ years) since the COVID-19 pandemic began. It's difficult to know exactly what's happening, since reporting is so limited these days, but from what I'm hearing anecdotally, cases are on the rise again... :(  We remain covid-free (knocking wood, loudly...), and continue to mask in most stores and other public places, especially where there are a lot of people. We also got our latest covid shots (#7, I think!)  this past weekend (at the same time as our flu shots!). 

October flew right by for us!  (How is it already November?)  Among other things this month, we: 

• Went to the mall on Oct. 3rd (where I got new batteries for my watches!) and briefly on Oct. 25th (visited our telecomm provider's retail outlet there to see if they had a new, compatible receiver for our TV set -- they didn't...! -- as recounted here!). 
• I indulged in a pedicure and later stopped at the bank to get some cash on Oct. 4th. 
• Visited Little Great-Nephew at his grandparents' house on Oct. 6th, while his parents enjoyed a belated anniversary dinner out.  :)  
• Flew "home" to Manitoba with dh on Oct. 7th to spend a week (including Canadian Thanksgiving) with my family there, and back again on Oct. 15th. (Wore masks, both ways.)   
• While there, we didn't get out much, apart from a couple of outings to get groceries, to the post office and to pick up pizzas for dinner one night.      
• Went grocery shopping with dh at the supermarket the day after we got back (Oct. 16th). 
• Had a nurse (unmasked) visit our condo on Oct. 16th, giving dh some basic medical tests as part of an application for life insurance through our retiree benefits. (He's had insurance since we were married, but last year -- perhaps not coincidentally since he turned 65? -- the monthly price tag more than QUADRUPLED, which left us searching for cheaper alternatives.)  
• Had coffee at BIL & SIL's with the nephews, their wives and the kids on Saturday night, Oct. 21st. Felt like eons since we'd seen them all.  :)  
• Went out on Oct. 24th with stops at the bookstore, two different supermarkets, the bank, AND (later) the gelato shop!  :) (It was a balmy 19C outside... enjoying it while it lasts...!) 
• Went to dinner with BIL & SIL at dh's cousin's house (the cousins with the lovely cottage/lake home) on Oct. 26th.  His parents (dh's uncle & aunt) came later for coffee too. (See "Eating," below!) 
• Got both our latest covid shots (#7, I think?? -- Pfizer this time around) along with our flu shots at our family doctor's office in our old community last Sunday afternoon (Oct. 29th). 
• Picked up my new e-reader and cover (ordered online) at the bookstore on Oct. 30th. 
• Tried to return our old TV receiver to the "Big Blue" store on Oct. 30th, only to be told they don't handle equipment returns there (!), and I'll now have to go through the hassle of finding a box (dh threw out the one the new one came in, and it probably wasn't big enough anyway...), printing a label from the website and mailing it in. (They are going to hear from me, once this is all done...!) 
• Celebrated my 16th (!) blogoversary!!  :)  (on Oct. 31st)

25 years ago, in mid-October 1998, I returned to work after the Canadian Thanksgiving long weekend, after 2+ months on leave after my daughter's stillbirth in August. Two days later, I abandoned work again and flew west to be with my family when my beloved grandfather died on Oct. 15th at age 86. 

• September/October 1998: Home alone (warning: another long one...) (I think this was the last of my "10 years later" posts, written monthly in 2008 -- this was written & posted in October.) 

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Also right now:  

Reading: I finished 4 books in October (reviewed on this blog, as well as Goodreads & StoryGraph, & tagged "2023 books").  

• "Over the Top" by Jonathan Van Ness, the October selection for my Childless Collective (formerly Gateway/Lighthouse Women) Nomo book club. (My review.) 
• "The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie" by Alan Bradley -- the November selection for my Childless Collective (formerly Gateway/Lighthouse Women) Nomo book club. (This one was my suggestion!) (My review.) 
• "The Reason You Walk" by Wab Kinew (who was recently elected premier of my home province of Manitoba).  (My review.) 
• "The Blue Castle" by L.M. Montgomery. This was a re-read with my LMM Readathon Facebook group, which first read this book together back in fall 2020 -- and I've read the book many times before myself.  It's one of my favourites, not just of LMM's novels, but of any book I've read ever. (Past reviews here, here and, from an earlier book-related post, here... and my latest review here.) 

This brings me to 40 books read to date in 2023,  89% of my 2023 Goodreads Reading Challenge goal of 45 books. :)  I am currently (for the moment, anyway...!) 3 books ahead of schedule to meet my goal. (I also started the month at 3 books ahead of schedule.)  

Current read(s): 

• "Murder Most Royal" by S.J. Bennett (#3 in "The Queen Investigates" series).  
• "The House on the Cliff" by D.E. Stevenson (with my DES group. I'll count this one as a re-read once the group finishes its chapter-by-chapter discussion, in late December.).(My original review.)   
• "Living the Life Unexpected" by Jody Day.  Re-reading (for the 5th time, I think!) and discussing one chapter per month (for the second time) with a group of other childless women within the private online Gateway/Lighthouse Women community. If & when I/we complete the full 12 chapters (likely early in 2024), I'll count it as a(nother) re-read. We recently covered Chapter 6. I missed that discussion, but hope to take part when we cover Chapter 7 in mid-August! (My most recent review -- with links to previous reviews -- here.) 

Coming up: Most of my book groups have their next reads plotted out for a few months in advance -- and listing them here helps me keep track of what I should be reading next. ;)  

• For my L.M. Montgomery Readathon Facebook group: TBA... 
• For my Childless Collective (formerly Gateway/Lighthouse Women) Nomo book club: 
• "Ella Minnow Pea" by Mark Dunn (for December). 
• "The Travelling Cat Chronicles" by Hiro Arikawa (for January). 
• For my D.E. Stevenson group:  This list of upcoming books should keep us busy through 2024, and into 2025!  (A couple of the books are ones we covered when I first joined the group back in 2014 -- you know you've been around for a while when....!)  
• Bel Lamington 
• Fletcher’s End
• Miss Buncle’s Book
• Peter West 
• Miss Buncle Married
• The Two Mrs Abbotts
• Crooked Adam 
• The Four Graces

• For Lyz Lenz's Men Yell At Me book club: "Ex-Wife" by Ursula Parrott -- considered scandalous when it first published in 1929!  Discussions on this book will start in November. Most MYAM newsletter discussions are for paying subscribers only, but the book club comments will be open for anyone who wants to participate. (Hint, hint.)  :)  Details here. 
• For the Notes from Three Pines (Louise Penny mysteries) Readalong: The last discussion was for book #3, "The Cruellest Month," posted June 7th.  So far, no word on when we can expect a discussion of book #4, "A Rule Against Murder" (reviewed here). Meanwhile, I recently finished #5 ("The Brutal Telling," -- see above), and book #6, "Bury Your Dead," is on the horizon as one of my next reads...! 

(Nora McInerny of the podcast Terrible, Thanks for Asking, has also started a book club via podcast & Substack chats. She's been featuring some really interesting-sounding books too -- but I figure I can go back & listen to the relevant podcast episodes when I actually have time/get around to read those books...!)  

A few recently purchased titles (mostly in digital format, mostly discounted ($5-10 or less) or purchased with points):  

• "The Rooster House" by Victoria Belim
• "The Best of Everything" by Rona Jaffe 
• "The Girls" by Emma Cline 
• "Graceland, At Last" by Margaret Renkl 
• "The Bandit Queens" by Parini Shroff 
• "The Rachel Incident" by Caroline O'Donoghue 
• "Cassandra in Reverse" by Holly Smale 
• "All Our Lies Are True" by Lisa Manterfield 
• "Touched Out" by Amanda Montei 
• "Swipe Up for More!" by Stephanie McNeal 
• "Raising Hell, Living Well" by Jessica Elefante 
• "On Our Best Behaviour" by Elise Loehnen
• "Hey, Hun" by Emily Lynn Paulson 

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Watching:  

• Season 2 of "World on Fire" on PBS, which began on Oct. 15th (3 episodes so far). It's been quite a while since season 1 aired back in the fall of 2019 (!).  Both covid and the war in Ukraine delayed production of season 2, and (sadly) both Sean Bean and Helen Hunt were unable to participate this time around.  Lesley Manville, however, is back, as the delightfully bitchy Robina Chase, as well as the impossibly good-looking Jonah Hauer-King as her son Harry, now fighting in North Africa, and caught between two women -- Lois, his childhood sweetheart and the mother of his daughter, Vera;  and Kasia, the Polish resistance fighter he married -- who is now in England, living with Robina AND Vera!   
• This season dropped a couple of plot lines & characters, but introduced others -- including Marga, a naive teenaged schoolgirl in Nazi Germany who is excited to learn that she's been selected for the Lebensborn program, in which she will essentially serve as a nameless incubator (all participants are simply referred to as "Mutti," or "Mother") to produce "racially pure Aryan" babies fathered by elite Nazi officers and then adopted by "suitable" Nazi couples. (This was a real thing!)  The reality (and the horror) of her situation finally dawns on her when a brute of a young soldier arrives in her room one night after only the most perfunctory of introductions.  
• It's pure soap opera, but even dh is watching!  lol 
• The latest Ken Burns documentary on PBS, over two nights this month: "The American Buffalo."  Moving and sad and downright infuriating.  :(   (Here's an article from Salon about the program.) 
• (One of my favourite movie memories is the buffalo hunt scene in "Dances With Wolves" -- not the fact that they were being hunted and killed, but just seeing hundreds and hundreds of those magnificent creatures running across the prairie, the way they must have, hundreds of years ago, before they were slaughtered to the point of extinction.  I had tears streaming down my face in the dark theatre. It was just so, so beautiful, and it spoke to the part of me that will always belong to the Prairies. I previously wrote about this scene, and my reaction, here.) (Also worth noting: the bison is one of the primary symbols of my home province, Manitoba.  :) ) 
• Right at the very end, there was an Indigenous man who had been an eloquent commentator throughout the program. He talked about the return of the buffalo and what they meant to his people, said -- and I am paraphrasing from memory -- that he wanted his children and grandchildren to be able to see them and know them. And he said he wanted it for the rest of us too, for our children and grandchildren. I was on the verge of tears by then anyway -- it was all so very moving -- but all the talk about grandchildren and legacy had me bursting into tears, much to dh's bemusement. "Not our grandchildren," I told him. "But maybe Little Great-Nephew and Little Great-Niece, and their children and grandchildren."  I hope so.    
• Also: I stumbled onto a documentary called "Picture My Face" about a Canadian punk rock band that I remember from my youth, Teenage Head, on TVO one Saturday night. (Missed the first 20  minutes or so but saw the rest.) Their biggest hit, "Let's Shake" (1980), still gets airtime regularly on our local classic rock station. They started out in their hometown of Hamilton, Ontario, in 1975 -- never made it as big as some thought they might, or should -- but they're still out there. Part of the film shows them returning to play a concert at their old high school -- the same place where they played their first gig as teenagers, in the cafeteria -- and meeting the teenaged son of their late lead singer, a student at the same school. 
• You see those grizzled old guys on stage, and the old guys (and gals!) in the audience, pressed up against the stage, bopping their heads to the music like they were 16 again (and realize that YOU are roughly the same age as those old guys...!) and... 
• It was sad in some respects -- their lead singer (Frank Kerr, AKA Frankie Venom) died of cancer in his 50s;  the guitarist (Gord Lewis) suffered from mental health issues. (After this documentary was completed, he was murdered in August 2022 by his own son, who had mental health issues of his own.)  But I loved it. :)  

Listening:  To a few recent episodes of New Legacy Radio.   

Heardle Decades: Stats as of Oct. 31st:  

• Heardle 60s:  77.40% (309/399, 134 on first guess), down slightly from last month. Max. streak: 15. 
• Heardle 70s:  80.1% (113/141, 69 on the first guess), up several points from last month. Max. streak: 15. 
• Heardle 80s:  39.1% (9/23,  5 on the first guess), up from last month. Max. streak: 2. (Early in the month, all my stats disappeared -- AGAIN. Oh well, I generally don't do that well on the 80s Heardles anyway...!  Second (third??) chances??) 
• Heardle 90s: 35.85% (49/137, 11 on the first guess), down from last month. Max. streak: 4. 

Eating/Drinking:  

• Way too much for (Canadian) Thanksgiving at my parents' house. My sister & I got the turkey stuffed and into the oven; I made a coleslaw salad;  my sister makes excellent gravy;  my dad got the potatos & turnips peeled and chopped and on the stove. We also had peas, cranberry sauce, a cottage cheese/Jello/marshmallow "salad" and apple pie with ice cream for dessert -- all traditional stuff we eat at Thanksgiving and again at Christmastime.  :)   Dad also cooked a ham before we got there, and we ate ham and turkey leftovers all week long too (for dinner, and sandwiches for lunch). 
• We also had two dinners from the local congregate meal program for seniors, where my parents have been getting meals several times a week over the past year or two.  You can go there (to one of the local seniors' facilities) to eat (at lunchtime), and share a meal  and conversation with other seniors in the community, you can have your meals delivered to your home, or you can pick them up (which is what my father does) -- well-balanced, home-cooked meals for an incredibly low price ($7.50 Canadian!!)  -- and very tasty, too!  
• One such meal was a hot roast beef sandwich with gravy, homemade fries, coleslaw, a bun/dinner roll, and chocolate zucchini cake for dessert;  the other was roast pork with mashed potatos, gravy, mixed vegetables, dinner roll and apple crisp/crumble.
• Near the end of the month, we had dinner at dh's cousin's house (the one with the cottage/lake house where we've spent a weekend for the past few autumns). Luckily for us, our hostess is an excellent cook who loves to entertain. The menu included orechietti pasta with sausage & rapini;  quinoa with chunks of sweet potato, pumpkin seeds, pomegranate, red onion and probably a few other ingredients I've forgotten (really good!); salad, and red velvet cake (contributed by SIL)  and fruit for dessert. (Dh & I brought a couple of bottles of wine.) Yum!  

Buying (besides books, lol):  

• Plane tickets back to Manitoba for the Christmas holidays. :)  Got another good deal (20% off), albeit more expensive than our tickets for Thanksgiving were. 
• Flowers to be delivered to my aunt/godmother on her 90th birthday, earlier this month. 
• N-95-equivalent masks and rapid tests (purchased online -- stocking up for the winter...!).   
• A new Kobo e-reader -- the Clara 2E. Over the past year, my 8-year-old Aura H2O has become highly temperamental when it comes to downloading new books that I've purchased from the Kobo site (as I complained earlier this month, here). I guess 8 years is a pretty good run in e-reader terms...!  It was fast and easy to set up, and so far, so good... (fingers crossed, knocking wood...!)!  I'm still using my old Kobo too, finishing up the books I have open on it. 

Wearing:  We've had both chilly spells and warm spells (it reached 23C on Oct. 27th!) -- so my wardrobe has still included capri yoga pants (although I stopped wearing denim capris outside by the time we headed west for Thanksgiving), as well long jeans and socks with shoes (and sometimes slippers in the house).  I've also occasionally had to put on a cardigan in the house. 

Noticing & enjoying:  The amazing fall colours. :)  I love this time of year, and autumn in Ontario is generally pretty spectacular!  

Trying:  To stay organized as things start getting (even more??) busy... 

Appreciating:  The flight attendants who somehow managed to carve some extra space out of some very full overhead bins to accommodate our carry-on luggage on a very crowded flight back to Toronto! (as detailed in this post!) 

Wanting:  More hours in the day, sometimes..!  (And I'm retired! AND childless!! lol)  

Wondering: What to get LGN for a birthday present??  (4th, coming up soon...!)  

Prioritizing: Getting the laundry & cleaning done earlier this week so that we could go see our banker on Thursday, plus the HVAC guy is supposed to be coming on Friday (fingers crossed...!).  Of course the banker messaged me today that he's sick and likely staying home tomorrow (so we'll have to reschedule)...!  Oh well, it's done now!  

Hoping:  That the non-surgical procedure Older Nephew had done on Monday does the trick and brings an end to the problems he's been having...! 

Loving:  Seeing photos of both Little Great-Nephew & LGNiece in their Halloween costumes last night. :) (LGNiece is too little for trick or treating yet, but her parents dressed her up as a ladybug, lol.  LGNephew was a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle -- Leonardo, I think?  His dad & uncle were also big Turtles fans when they were kids.)  

Feeling: Wondering what happened to October??  -- and how is it November already??  Shocked to realize how quickly Christmas will be upon us...!  Grateful for so many blessings in my life, including the time I got to spend with my family this month, and the beautiful fall colours (which are dwindling, but still in evidence).  Missing LGN, but glad he's enjoying school, and thankful for the time we did get to spend with him this month (including cottage time! -- even if it was cut short...!).