the rain in Spain

may stay mainly on the plain but the rain on the Gulf Coast Plains doesn’t know when enough is enough. Small showers off and on all day Friday and yesterday as well. This on top of the weeks of rain we’ve already had (and more predicted for today and tomorrow). You know, I hate to moan about the rain because the alternative, apparently, is drought, but the ground is pretty saturated and puddles are everywhere. I have to admit all the green stuff loves it, everything is looking lush even though it’s a little steamy out there. I was going to add that at least there’s no thunder and lightning, the little dog can tolerate quiet rain. She doesn’t like it but she doesn’t go into full panic mode.

I finally called for an appointment to get my hair cut. I loved my long hair when I was young but it had more body then and didn’t look so limp and lank so after letting my hair grow again, not from intent so much as laziness, and putting it up in a bun or ponytail every day as soon as it was long enough to do so and since it had gotten slightly longer than shoulder length I went and got a haircut yesterday. She cut off at least 6 inches, maybe more, so now it's off my neck and out of my face. I hate having hair in my face.

The first Thursday of the month at SHARE has usually been slow, people have gotten their benefits but now that those benefits have been slashed and in some cases denied, we were just as busy as the previous end of the month Thursday. When I got there Walmart had sent a big box of just past prime tomatoes, globe and roma, still firm or slightly soft, maybe not best for eating for perfectly fine for cooking. I’d been waiting for this to make my tomato sauce so I bagged up 6 pounds and set them aside (don't worry, there were still more than enough for our clients). 

Saturday I had prepped the tomatoes, peeled and cut up the garlic, getting ready to slather it all with olive oil and put it in the oven to slow roast when my daughter texted me. Did I want to go with her to get a pedicure and then to the Peach Creek Market. Let’s see, stay home and make tomato sauce or spend the afternoon with my daughter. Yes, I said so she picked me up and we went and got our toes and fingernails done, just cut and cuticles, no polish on the nails but my toes are sparkly silver. (The baby toe is from when I was six and dropped a heavy glass coke bottle on my toes requiring stitches and apparently broke a bone which resulted in a loss of growth from about halfway up.)

The attendant did a great job especially on my two big toe ingrown toenails, no pain, no blood, and cut back far deeper than I manage. Whenever I work on them I end up bleeding and very sore. 

The plumerias are starting to bloom, at top and below.

Well, I’d best get in the kitchen and get those tomatoes in the oven.

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Two more book reviews.

How Bad Things Can Get by Darcy Coates - As a child of 7, Ruth was the only survivor of the suicide cult Petition where the members literally tore themselves to pieces, a fact she has kept secret for the past 20 years. Years of therapy has helped her put it all behind her even though she still has nightmares. Now her boyfriend Zach and his best friend Carson and Hayleigh have won tickets to a week of games with large monetary prizes put on and paid for by the influencer Eton on his privately owned and remote tropical island Prosperity, an island with its own history of a cult. The first game begins shortly after everyone arrives via cruise ship and the participants are selected at random except Ruth has a niggling feeling that she was selected specifically but shrugs it off. Things start unraveling pretty soon with injuries and reports of missing and dead guests and it’s not a coincidence that this is the 20th anniversary of Petition’s demise or that Ruth’s group won tickets. Then Ruth learns that her identity is not a secret, she’s been betrayed, and her presence has been orchestrated so that Petition can finish what Ruth escaped as a child. Good story, well told, kept me engaged.

One Of Us by Dan Chaon - I really enjoyed this book. Twins Evelyn and Bolt, born in 1910 and so close they could read each other's minds, became orphans at 13 and soon after a man they had never met who claimed to be their uncle (he wasn’t but had known their father) came into town and took them under his wing however he was a murderous scoundrel at best. The twins managed to escape and went to live in an orphanage where the orphans were put on a train and headed out west to be adopted by whatever family deemed them suitable for whatever reason. Because they were unlovely children they were not adopted until the last stop when Mr. Jengling rescued them to be part of his traveling carnival full of all sorts of misfits. Bolt settles right in but Evelyn is perpetually suspicious and resists all attempts to be drawn in. When their ‘uncle’ tracks them down and kidnaps them, Jengling sends three of his crew, guided by the mental directions of Rosalie who lives mostly in the astral plane. I don’t want to say too much more, but it’s a good story.