Catch-up...

Natalie brought Robert over to visit today, and we all had a magnificent lunch of spaghetti and sauce, with a little Caesar salad on the side. I created loaves from dough I had made earlier in the day, but the kids had to leave before the loaves went into the oven. One of the finished loaves underwent quality testing by Galina and myself, and was deemed to have passed with flying colors.

What did not go over with flying colors was the translation I thought I had done rather carefully yesterday and this morning. Fortunately, my machinations with the Lexmark cartridge yielded readable copies of printed documents, which I was able to sit down and process the old-fashioned way: line by line with Russian and English versions next to each other. Fortunately, the deadline approaches and the files have been sent, else I'd have been tempted to go over them again, which experience tells me is more a result of my insecurities than any real need to do so, as previous gyrations of the sort produce no results on a uniform basis.

I finished reading Dick Francis' Proof, which I enjoyed very much. My mother was a fan of Francis for quite some time, though back when I was in high school and college, I thought his work was rather old-school, that he was a sort of Agatha Christie kind of writer who knew a lot about horses and the whole institution of racing, and wove it into his tales.

Grafton's R is for Ricochet is long finished, and was pretty tame, all things considered. Other recent reads were Rough Country by John Sandford (I am beginning to like Vernon Flowers a lot), and Chasing the Bear, a teen Spenser novel by Robert B. Parker, which I picked up as it purported to delve into the events of Spenser's youth that made him the Spenser we all know and love. It was a pleasant read, but definitely on the lightweight side (I might even say, as light as some of the lighter Spenser books aimed at adults). Fortunately, Rough Weather, a recent adult Spenser book by Parker, did have enough meat on its bones to satisfy my appetite.

I've also started reading Losing Mum and Pup: A Memoir, by Christopher Buckley, and it's taking an emotional toll on me, as the author and I are very close in age and we each lost both of our aged, ill parents over the course of about a year. The toll is somewhat relieved by occasional epiphanies, as when Buckley reveals that he said "I forgive you" to his comatose mother after her respirator was removed, and then goes on in the book to explain why:

It sounded - even to me, at the time - like a terribly presumptuous statement, but it needed to be said. She never would have asked for forgiveness, even in extremis. She was far too proud. Only once or twice, when she had been truly awful, had she apologized to me. [...] Now, watching Mum go to bed for the last time, I didn't want any anger left between us, so out came the unrehearsed words. For my sake more than hers.

This was of interest to me, because while I cannot tell you whether I actually said anything like that out loud while my mother lay in bed unconscious and taking nourishment through a tube, I can tell you this: exactly those words crossed my mind.

Perhaps I was grasping at straws, but Buckley's observation rang true for me, especially the last part, about wanting to release anger between us - which at that point was really only the residual anger left in me - and how I was really talking (thinking?) to myself. It should come as no surprise to learn that I've teared up a few times while reading his book (and smiled a few times, too).

As always, my "to read" pile is higher than ever.

* * *I've managed, in addition to the translation I finished to start the massive PowerPoint presentation due Monday evening. As long as I actually can keep my butt glued to a chair tomorrow and Monday, I ought to be okay.

Cheers...