Classic South Carolina late-August sky: hot blue with huge puffy white clouds
As summer is on the wane -- two thirds over but somehow it seems like more than that -- and something in the quality of the air makes us think of fall (although it is still scorching here), I feel the need to report.
I'll be honest: as life goes through its many and mini-phases, I am always pondering the ways that beginnings segue into endings, and vice versa.
It's deep water. Even for a pesky pirate. Perhaps too deep. But let's wade in.
Where to begin and where to end?
Well. Our grandson Guy Preston Weber is set to make his appearance later this week.
We are all beside ourselves with excitement, not least Baby Guy's parents, Andrew and Brittany, and big sister Ember.
I began working at age fifteen too ... at Burger King
Speaking of Ember, she started back to preschool a few days ago. Her second year.
She also got her first haircut -- that being significant because both Ember and her mother are known for their abundant strawberry-blond tresses.
(To me, Ember's features resemble her dad, while her coloring -- especially her hair -- are all her mother.)
If possible, after the chichi cut and style, she looks even more like Brittany.
Ah well. She is about to experience the life-changing realities of having a sibling.
That certainly has the potential to curl your hair.
Ember in the stylist's chair
Allissa, one of the (three) original Tar Heel Tootsies, just this week started her sophomore year in high school.
She has also landed her first job.
Our second-eldest granddaughter will be working part-time (mostly Saturdays, plus one or two days a week after school) at Leap of Faith Christian Bookstore in Lenoir, North Carolina.
I'm sure she'll be an asset there but can you believe? Our little Allissa, gainfully employed?
It strains credulity.
There's been a new beginning for our Dagny too. She has begun fourth grade.
She exceeds the legal limit of cuteness
Only, this year, for the first time since beginning her academic career as a kindergartner in 2019, she is not matriculated at Grace Christian School in West Columbia.
She is being home schooled. Classes started last Thursday.
Things are going well so far. Audrey invested in the abeka curriculum, which includes a great deal of instruction by video as well as one-on-one learning via parents and maybe even the well-placed tutor.
Several weeks ago Audrey, Dagny, and I were walking in my neighborhood when we saw that a homeowner had placed an interesting piece of furniture at the curb, with other trash.
It was a table with a sturdy steel frame and a black glass top. Audrey set it upright and put the glass pieces on, and was impressed.
We called TG, who came down with the car and picked it up to, we hoped, serve as Dagny's school desk.
My brave sister battles cancer ... for the second time in ten years
(She has a couple of options for desks, but this was the roomiest surface-wise).
A small piece of glass was lost in translation but TG amended the design to include only one section, and it was the bigger one, so home it went with Audrey and Dagny.
A new beginning for a cast-off table that no doubt believed it had reached its end.
In other news, my sister, Kay, has completed her three chemo treatments for gastric lymphoma and is now going through a course of radiation.
Pierre-Philippe took her out for lunch a few weeks ago, to celebrate finishing chemo. This was huge, because for several months she had been able to eat so little, and had lost a lot of weight.
She is tolerating the radiation treatments well and we are hopeful that soon, she can start all over, cancer-free. Again (she survived breast cancer eight years ago). And her appetite has returned. Begun again, as it were.
A table at its end has begun again ... as a desk
Kay's son-in-law, Jacob, husband of hers and Pierre-Philippe's youngest daughter, Joanna, has ended one thing and begun another as well.
In May, Jacob completed his Doctorate of Musical Arts (DMA) in Piano, at the Cleveland Institute of Music.
He is currently pursuing a career path as a concert pianist, and recently received some good news which I am not at liberty to share. But I will when I am able.
I wrote in late 2021 about the sad news of Jacob and Joanna losing their baby son, Noah.
They already had Freddie and now God has given them a new baby son whom they named Andrew.
We are officially lousy with Andrews in this family.
Jacob and Joanna in Asheville last February
The pirate really digs classical music so Jacob's achievements hit big-time for me. I hope they will for you too.
Jacob was guest pianist with the Asheville Symphony Orchestra last February. He played the Norwegian composer Edvard Grieg's only piano concerto during their Masterworks 4 Aurora Series.
If you'd like to hear Jacob play, treat yourself to this half hour on YouTube. That's our Jacob, playing Sergei Prokofiev's Piano Concerto Number 3 in C Major, Op. 26, with the Cleveland Institute of Music Orchestra.
It's all jaw-dropping but the last minute or so of Jacob's performance is positively hair-raising. For all the right reasons. So if you cannot or prefer not to watch all of it, at least watch that.
This is Russian collusion I can get behind.
I'll keep you posted on Jacob's pursuit of his dream job, but for the nonce he has joined the faculty at Cleveland Institute of Music.
We treated Henry to lunch at Cracker Barrel. Photo by Dagny.
Meanwhile Henry, my late mother's widower, turned ninety-one on August fourth.
TG, Dagny, and I met him at the Cracker Barrel in Simpsonville a few days later, and treated him to a birthday lunch.
Henry looks good, feels good, and is more active than many men half his age.
An ending will eventually come (of his life on this earth), but the Grim Reaper does not appear to be dogging his steps.
Perhaps the sickle-wielding ghoul is distracted. One can only hope. At any rate, we are grateful.
As you know, our brother-in-law, Johnny, did not fare as well and has been gone now for two weeks.
Dagny's fourth-grade classroom. Click to embiggen.
A celebration of life in his honor has been scheduled for early September, in Ohio.
Lord willing, TG and I will be in attendance for that, and will stop in Knoxville both on the way north and on the way back south, to spend some time with Andrew, Brittany, Ember, and Baby Guy.
They say anticipation is part of the fun, but waiting on a baby to arrive is the most exquisite agony.
And I'm just one of the grandmothers.
I mentioned that, being the end of August, it is hot here.
And I mean H-O-T like, fry an egg on the sidewalk and bake a batch of cookies in your closed-up car, hot.
Rizzo occasionally wakes up and looks around, then goes back to sleep
Try not to boil your own brain walking into the store and back to your car, hot.
For the most part I stay cool, in the house. If I'm out of the house, I am in the pool.
With one exception: I have begun rising just before sunup, so as to get in a half-hour walk before the heat begins to be an issue.
So far, it is working well. Oh, so you're an early riser? you may be thinking. That's surprising.
I will thank you not to snicker. No, I am no stripe of an early riser. The pirate is a stay-up-late-er.
But I can get up to walk, because do you know what?
Sweetness a-doors being given free roam of three rooms instead of only one
When I get home after that walk, it's only seven fifteen. The birds are barely up.
And I return to my pillow.
Sometimes I even go back to sleep, for a little while.
And then I get up for the second time -- a new beginning -- and make coffee and empty the dishwasher and feed the pets. And do all the things.
It seems to be working well and I know that before too long, setting my phone alarm for six thirty will no longer be necessary.
Temperatures will become less nuclear and I'll be able to start walking a tad bit later in the day.
Ember is up early a few days a week, for preschool
I look forward to that but for now, I enjoy walking down the street in the early morning. The air is sweet.
Also as I go, I am listening to a book. That way, I don't get bored.
Rizzo and Sweetness don't seem bored either, but then how does one tell if a dog or a cat are suffering from ennui?
Sweetness has been allowed free roam of part of the house -- kitchen, TV room, sun room -- for an hour or so most days.
She scouts around for anything to get into and then, finding nothing, slouches in a corner or in front of the door to the upstairs.
Not being confined to the sun room all day seems to appeal to her, but then she is not hard to please.
Stay cool my friends
Rizzo sleeps the requisite sixteen hours a day but still knows how to tell time, as in, when it is time to wake up for a meal or a treat.
I know when it's time for a treat, too. I shall now treat you to this post finally being over.
And that is all for now.
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Happy Monday :: Happy New Week
