Wait, I said what?!

Something strange happens to me when I come home: I open my mouth and strange things come out, things I would never say. Like, “So, Mom, are you going garage sale-ing on Saturday?” And the next thing I know, I’m dragging myself out of bed at an ungodly hour so we can be lurking outside the first garage when the sale starts. I don’t even like garage sales! But I’m here to hang out with my parents, so…

I came away with a book for my mom, a book for me (a Meg Cabot, as I’ve only read The Princess Diaries and wanted to try one of her adult books, too), and two books for the local library sale, which I’ll be helping set up tomorrow (Mom’s on the committee).

After lunch, we headed up to our family cabin in the Adirondacks. My grandparents bought the land early in their marriage, and although their farmhouse is no longer there, my dad built a log cabin just before the ’80 Olympics. I was 13 at the time, so the cabin is like a second home for me (even more so now that my parents no longer live in the house I grew up in!). My dad was already up in the area, but at hunting camp with his hunting buddies. He came out of the woods for supper with us.

The fridge had been closed at some point while turned off and had been infested with mildew, so I spent part of the afternoon taking everything out and scrubbing the hell out of it. The living room also needed a good vacuuming and tidying, so…

After supper my mother plied me with wine again and proceeded, for the second night in a row, to beat me at Trivial Pursuit, despite her insistence that she was bad at both version (they have the 80s one at the house, and some weird British edition at the cabin. You’d think I’d be okay at the British edition, but I know nothing about snooker, footie, or obscure English politics. My mom, on the other hand, made up answers and got them right.)

Today I took a walk down to the brook that borders the northern part of our property, and lay on a rock in the middle of the water and listened to the brook and the wind in the trees and didn’t think about anything at all. There are few places where I’m able to shut off my brain like that… I really didn’t want to leave.

I’d also like to know how I’ve been able to forget what autumn leaves smell like.

When we got home, I got back to scanning and indexing family photos, breaking 700. (Lest you think I have some inhuman powers of scanning, note that I’d previously hit about 580, so these are on top of those.)

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If I can make my mother laugh so hard she cries, I consider it a good day. It’s been a good few days.

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Today’s Halloween Sock Watch: purple with witches and brooms and black cats and bats.