The girls are in bed after a badly needed pizza and movie night. We snuggled on the sofa and watched the new Cinderella. So good! The girls had seen before but not me. Jane prepared me for the scary bits.

This was a good week but it passed so very quickly. At the shop, I (a bit frantically I am afraid) found and added online books to the new system. I would look at the clock and realize three hours passed in what felt like maybe 30 minutes. I had been feeling fairly positive all week but today had a low moment. There’s still so much junk around. There are whole sections of the shop that are not working at all. I hate little pamphlet-y types of books and really all books on collecting various things – depression glass, stamps, weird vases. So pointless.

Moving on! The tomatoes! This summer I have eaten so many BLTs. So many. And last Sunday I picked a whole bunch of tomatoes to roast and freeze for later this season. Tomatoes are so beautiful. Especially ones you grow yourself.

Alyssa and her girls came as a bit of a surprise for the girls’ birthday party last weekend. So fun to have them. We decided we wish we could see them once a month. Maybe twice. Cate and Neva are such good friends and fall back into it in just a matter of minutes. I love that my girls have cousins their age.

2. Mom & Dad & Liz & Chris & Mendy came for the party too and we had a great time on Saturday with friends from school and church. We had the bouncy house again this year which is always popular and a good way to get kids tired. We also made fairy houses and the kids were all so into it. It was really great to see the creativity and care that went into these little houses. I had bowls of pretty rocks and beans and glitter and glue and feathers and moss and leaves and various other little doodads for the kids to work with. Just in case: I bought these houses and they were great.

Cate and Gresham are on the same soccer team this Fall. First game tomorrow morning! This is the cutest little owl book you ever did see. Pretty watercolor portraits of the various owl species. Also, I am finishing up Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff (maybe even tonight if I can stay awake long enough!). The novel is about a marriage with one half of the book from the husband’s point of view (Fates) and then the second half from the wife’s POV (Furies). Whew, it’s good. I haven’t quite decided what I am going to read next. I am listening to 1599: A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare and slowing making my way through Edith Wharton’s New York Stories. Too many things to read. Such a good problem to have.

Is that five things? I think so. Have a lovely one friends.

I haven’t been finishing books at my usual rate since we have been back from vacation in late August. Split shifts are my reality this month. I work until school is out, do the usual good family things – dinner, bath, bedtime – then I go back to work for a few hours. Our online selling has been such a mess since we switched over to an inventory system. I basically have to start from scratch and it has taken quite awhile to set everything up on the new system. I have started to add things back to our online platforms just in the last couple of days. Since our online sales make up 20% of our overall sales, this is a priority for sure.  I think I have said this before but the previous owner had a very elaborate sticky note and paper notebook system that made me want to poke out my eyeballs. I had to put listings up on the online platforms separately and then once the books sold, take them down separately as well. The new system will be so much better but right at this moment, it’s just a lot of work. Anyway! All of that to say, I haven’t been reading all that much.

Last night I finally finished The Story of the Lost Child, the fourth and final novel in the Neapolitan Novels. I was talking to a customer of the store, a surgeon that works with Telfer, who is also compulsively reading the series. The books do get a little soap-opera-y at times but by books two and three and four, I was so enmeshed in the lives of Elena and Lila and their neighborhood in Naples that I just could not stop. If you want a Fall reading project I highly recommend these four novels though. I have never read anything quite like them.

I finished My Bright Abyss: Meditations of a Modern Believer (on my Shelf Project #2). Wiman is a poet with cancer and his book is dense and searing and if you are me, really encouraging. An example: “To experience grace is one thing; to integrate it into your life is quite another. What I crave now is that integration, some speech that is true to the transcendent nature of grace yet adequate to the hard reality in which daily faith operates. I crave, I suppose, the poetry and the prose of knowing.”

I also finished Goodbye to All That by Robert Graves, a memoir/autobiography of his time as a soldier in WWI, also on my Shelf Project #2.

I started Fates and Furies by Lauren Groff this morning so it’s too early to tell what I think. It’s A Big Fall Book with lots of buzz and reviews. I *loved* Groff’s other books, especially Arcadia, so I am quite thrilled to be reading this. It’s nice to get away from Naples for a bit.

Out a bit: Isn’t this the prettiest copy of Persuasion you ever did see? As I read this novel about once a year or so, I think it’s next on my list…

Out of curiosity, what are you reading?

I am thankful for Friday evening. The girls are just finishing Charlotte’s Web and Telfer and I are sitting outside thinking about making/eating dinner here in a bit. It’s been such a full week. First grade! Jane is five! The light is different, the mornings are chilly, the afternoons flashy hot and then by 7:00 PM, so cool and lovely and just a little bit too dark. Last night after the girls were in bed I went down to watch a ten-year-old friend perform in a local production of To Kill a Mockingbird. For me, that story is never old (maybe it’s partly because I have little girls?) but even with the new book out, it’s still fresh and funny and heartbreaking and true and so very relevant.

Oh and #1 on the Friday Five was the couple of hours we spent on the boat the day before school started. The clouds (photo above) were beautiful although Telfer didn’t catch any salmon. I read a bit and snuggled the girls a bit. Perfect couple of hours.

2. All my people on one sofa.

3. Last Saturday both girls got their ears pierced. My party line on ear piercing is as soon as you want to sit in the chair and not freak out, you can get your ears pierced. Jane totally led the way and went first. They haven’t complained much and both are really, really into cleaning and twisting their earrings. Cate’s face here is pretty great.

4. Jane’s officially five! Yesterday she spent most of the day with me at the shop, then arrived at her little school with cupcakes in tow and then in the evening we met Grammy & Papa at our favorite Indian restaurant for dinner. Up until last night, she has only had take-out. She ate as much as I did for sure. Cate, on the other end of the spectrum, was not at all impressed.

5. These are really pretty pens that we just restocked at the shop. Everything is going well. We still have many, many books to inventory and not all of them are quite worth keeping around. It’s such an interesting, active challenge to shape an existing space and inventory and customer-base. I keep adding good things and subtracting the noise and I hope that the overall feeling of the shop errs on the side of relevant. It’s getting there. We still have a ways to go, but I can see it. It’s hard to be patient though.

Have a lovely weekend, friends.

It’s been a big day people! Cate started first grade this morning. It went so well although she is exhausted tonight. She is in a first grade/second grade split and most of her friends from last year (her K/1 split) moved up together. Her teacher this year is her student teacher from last year. We had a very smooth morning. All three of us were in the bathroom this morning getting ready together, chatting away, and I was struck with how much life has changed since the baby days. I love having these older girls who get dressed, brush their teeth, have opinions, and are just great little people.

Jane also turns five tomorrow. Can you believe it? It’s been five years since we had the rough start in New York. She is healthy, happy and I think my obsession with food while on bed rest was transferred through the umbilical cord… We gave Jane a bunch of choices for dinner tomorrow night and she chose to go to our favorite Indian restaurant for her birthday. She’s only had takeout thus far and so this is her first time eating at the restaurant. Curry for all! Cate is less than pleased on the restaurant choice as I am sure you can imagine.

Our time at the Oregon Coast, as you can see, was pretty wonderful. We rented a really great house in Rockaway Beach for five days. There was a shark head with antlers above the mantle and an arcade in the basement and a hot pool (tub) for the girls which they got in and out of 47 times a day. Eleanor stayed with us while most of Telfer’s family stayed in Cannon Beach. Telfer had lobster rolls delivered as a last hurrah for my birthday and Eleanor’s birthday. I will take it! Then we packed up stayed in a hotel in Cannon Beach for a couple more days. All the adults went to EVOO which was lovely as usual. All together, the week was a really good mix of extended family, our family and alone time. It’s really my favorite week of the year.

Summer feels over. This last week has been so rainy and it’s lovely and we need it but yesterday felt like October not the Sunday of Labor Day weekend. But today the sun is shining and I am hoping to make that summer feeling last a bit longer. I have the day off, Telfer is doing an epidural and I suspect will be at the hospital most of the day. The girls and I are hatching little plans. I think the park and a stock-up trip to Trader Joe’s is on the docket. Also, my butcher block counters are giving me the stink-eye. Theoretically, I don’t mind oiling them every few months but this last stretch has gone on entirely too long.

First grade starts on Wednesday (!) for Cate. Mama is ready and Cate is *more* than ready. One example: one morning she woke me up before 7:00 a.m. whisper-yelling: “Mom, school starts in SEVEN weeks. We need to order a new dress for the first day of school.” Yes, seven weeks, we’d better get on that Cate! She picked out her yearly pair of converse yesterday and I am thinking she needs at least a new pair of jeans and a couple of cardigans here soon.

And note: I am going to post every couple of days for the next few weeks just to relearn the habit of posting here. I am not sure why I stopped? I hate when good habits fall by the wayside. It’s so depressing.