Gratitude

 
- Gratitude for last weekend. It started off with a trip that Doris didn't want to go on being cancelled (yes!)! I hadn't been planning on going anyway. So she asked Saturday morning what I'd planned to do in her absence. I said: travel to Schaumburg (a suburb maybe 35 minutes away) and go to the vegan bakery Cinnaholic and go to Eileen Fisher to get a decent outfit (since last week when I'd almost been at an event with the Prez, I'd realized that I had absolutely nothing that was formal-ish and not old). Doris said 'let's go!' In addition to hitting up those 2 places, we decided to stop for lunch. This place Smashburger advertised plant-based burgers and shakes, so we ate there and it was great. We also hit Home Depot. It was fun to just drive around with her since we don't usually do that sort of thing.

- The shit hit the fan on Sunday. We got a ton of rain. Basement got at least 5 inches of water. Thank goodness Doris was there. Thank goodness Chris was able to come the next day. He ripped out the gross, old carpet (most of our basement was already carpet-less but some places still had it). Doris and I threw out, donated, and recycled a TON of stuff from the basement which I was so grateful to get done!! I did go through a box of cards and printed letters from coworkers, some as old as 1997. I think people used to - at least at my company - send a lot more 'nice notes' like that since I hardly ever get them now. It was fun to re-read them before they went to the recycle bin.

- I should mention that it was a 4 day weekend for us, since the 4th of July was a Tuesday. Well, Sun-Tues was all spent dealing with the basement. But by Tues we saw the light at the end of the tunnel so we did eat brunch at Handlebar Cafe, which was great

- The cat did something exceptionally cute, involving her hiding under a chair and rolling a ball back and forth with me.

- Mom visited yesterday. We ate outside at Munch, since the weather was good. We mused that it felt like our Pasadena trip last November which we really loved. Also, mom wanted to go the resale shop. I've been looking for a cute, casual sundress all summer and finally found one. And for $4. 

- This one is kind of obscure. About - oh - 25 years ago, my friend Yok Lan made a tape for me of songs  sung by Grace Chang. There is one song that I absolutely loved. Over the years, I've searched Youtube for it. There's a ton of Grace Chang music, but none of it was this song. Worse, I couldn't remember the English title of it; most of her stuff on YouTube is in Cantonese or Madarin anyway so I can't read the descriptions. I decided to make one more go of it. After sifting through at least 100 songs, I found it!!

- I mentioned several entries ago about a multi-chapter fic I'm writing for Shadow and Bone. When I posted the first chapter, I walked away for 3 hours, came back to 3 comments on it, and told myself that at long last, I'd have a huge hit with mega-kudos. Well, that didn't happen. But. Now that we're on chapter 8, I took a good look at my stats. 93 subscriptions, way more than I've had on anything. 173 kudos, which is my 4th highest in any fandom, and with the way the kudos rise each chapter, I think this fic might hit 200 kudos. (That would make it only my 2nd fic to hit the 200 mark!) And I can usually count on at least 3 comments per chapter. A mega-hit, no. But these are very, very good stats for me.