But a belly rub would be better

Deep

I'm currently reading TRICK OF LIGHT by Louise Penny. This is 7th of 7 in series featuring Armand Gamache, Chief Inspector of the Sûreté du Québec, in the village of Three Pines, in southern Quebec, Canada. Here is a summary:

“Hearts are broken,” Lillian Dyson carefully underlined in a book. “Sweet relationships are dead.”But now Lillian herself is dead. Found among the bleeding hearts and lilacs of Clara Morrow's garden in Three Pines, shattering the celebrations of Clara's solo show at the famed Musée in Montreal. Chief Inspector Gamache, the head of homicide at the Sûreté du Québec, is called to the tiny Quebec village and there he finds the art world gathered, and with it a world of shading and nuance, a world of shadow and light. Where nothing is as it seems. Behind every smile there lurks a sneer. Inside every sweet relationship there hides a broken heart. And even when facts are slowly exposed, it is no longer clear to Gamache and his team if what they've found is the truth, or simply a trick of the light.

It was published today and has 352 pages.

Here is an excerpt:

Oh, no, no, no, thought Clara Morrow as she walked toward the closed doors.
She could see shadows, shapes, like wraiths moving back and forth, back and forth across the frosted glass. Appearing and disappearing. Distorted, but still human. Still the dead one lay moaning.
The words had been going through her head all day, appearing and disappearing. A poem, half remembered. Words floating to the surface, then going under. The body of the poem beyond her grasp. What was the rest of it?
It seemed important.
Oh, no, no, no.
The blurred figures at the far end of the long corridor seemed almost liquid, or smoke. There, but insubstantial. Fleeting. Fleeing.
As she wished she could.
This was it. The end of the journey. Not just that day's journey as she and her husband, Peter, had driven from their little Québec village into the Musée d'Art Contemporain in Montréal, a place they knew well. Intimately. How often had they come to the MAC to marvel at some new exhibition? To support a friend, a fellow artist? Or to just sit quietly in the middle of the sleek gallery, in the middle of a weekday, when the rest of the city was at work? Art was their work. But it was more than that. It had to be. Otherwise, why put up with all those years of solitude? Of failure? Of silence from a baffled and even bemused art world?
She and Peter had worked away, every day, in their small studios in their small village, leading their tiny lives. Happy. But still yearning for more.
Clara took a few more steps down the long, long, white marble hallway.
This was the "more." Through those doors. Finally. The end point of everything she'd worked toward, walked toward, all her life.
Her first dream as a child, her last dream that morning, almost fifty years later, was at the far end of the hard white hallway.
They'd both expected Peter would be the first through those doors. He was by far the more successful artist, with his exquisite studies of life in close-up. So detailed, and so close that a piece of the natural world appeared distorted and abstract. Unrecognizable. Peter took what was natural and made it appear unnatural.
People ate it up. Thank God. It kept food at the table and the wolves, while constantly circling their little home in Three Pines, were kept from the door. Thanks to Peter and his art.
Clara glanced at him walking slightly ahead of her, a smile on his handsome face. She knew most people, on first meeting them, never took her for his wife. Instead they assumed some slim executive with a white wine in her elegant hand was his mate. An example of natural selection. Of like moving to like.
The distinguished artist with the head of graying hair and noble features could not possibly have chosen the woman with the beer in her boxing glove hands. And the pv¢té in her frizzy hair. And the studio full of sculptures made out of old tractor parts and paintings of cabbages with wings.
No. Peter Morrow could not have chosen her. That would have been unnatural.
And yet he had.
And she had chosen him.
Clara would have smiled had she not been fairly certain she was about to throw up.
Oh, no, no, no, she thought again as she watched Peter march purposefully toward the closed door and the art wraiths waiting to pass judgment. On her.
Clara's hands grew cold and numb as she moved slowly forward, propelled by an undeniable force, a rude mix of excitement and terror. She wanted to rush toward the doors, yank them open and yell, "Here I am!"
But mostly she wanted to turn and flee, to hide.
Clara stared from the purse on the gleaming marble floor to the man crouched across from her.
It wasn't Peter.
Instead, she saw her friend and neighbor from Three Pines, Olivier Brulé. He was kneeling beside her, watching, his kind eyes life preservers thrown to a drowning woman. She held them.
"Deep breath in," he whispered. His voice was calm. This was their own private crisis. Their own private rescue.

************************

The nearby fire has apparently grown to 2000 acres and still going. What a bother. I had to get groceries after work so Steve is walking the boys. I plan to deal with dinner and clean up and then perhaps to read. It got hot again today. Bah. Yes, it's still August but can we stop with the 90s already?

Much love,

PK the Bookeemonster

Just taking the express....

Monday Monday. What can be said? It's passed. Typical calls, typical co-worker issues.

So tomorrow is release day for the new Louise Penny. I think I'll go pick it up at lunch. Heck, I've got an hour, have to take that hour, so might as well do something useful. Today's lunch hour was gas-Moby-day.

Tonight on TV is American Chopper and I may tape HGTV Design Star. I know, I know, how did I get strung into it again? I skipped the last season and swore never again but I saw an episode and now I'll tune in because I have nothing else going on.

We finally had a thunderstorm come through this afternoon to break up the heat. Now it's in the high 70s but windy. A grass fire got started about 5 miles away from our house, fairly decent size and lots of smoke. I took the boys for a run in the field and I could see the red of the flames in the distance.

Hope y'all have a nice evening....

Much love,

PK the Bookeemonster

Sunday

Sunday morning. The dogs got me up at 7 and are walked. Had some breakfast. Took a shower and now all buffed and puffed. I'm doing a quick peruse of the emails but then I will buckle down on the newsletter. Supposed to be in the lower 90s. Ugh. But maybe a thunderstorm. Yay!

We had pizza last night for dinner from a place called Stawhat Pizza. It was okay but not spectacular. I picked up from their place at Shiloh Crossing. It was freakin' busy. I had to muscle my way through 20 or so people waiting in line for seating to get to the counter. Steve and I watched a little of Cops, a little football.... so then I cleaned up, opened up the windows for cooler and air and read the Enron book some more.

Tonight we have Ice Road Truckers to watch and that's about it. I don't know what to do for dinner, maybe enchiladas. Two more days until the Penny book.

Wow. What a boring blog.

Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster

Yeah, hanging out in the pool....

Missed yesterday. Per usual for a Friday, I got off work at 4:30 but I had to stay away from home because Steve didn't want Ryker to go for a walk without trying the new shock collar that he picked up at Cabela's. I looked for some shoes and then hung out at Barnes and Noble. Then I got home, we had dinner, we tested the collar which may seem to work (Ryker has a lot of fur so we had to switch the tips on it) and then we got to watching a movie on TV. No blog.

Today, I walked the dogs in the early morning -- on leash the whole time so no need for the collar and worked on "sit" which Ryker also can resist if there isn't a treat involved -- then went for a haircut. I realized recently that everyone has the A-line cut now so I had to do something different. I looked for a cut this week and found one so voila, I have a new hair style. It is sassy-ish, layered, and easy to style. Supposed to look best somewhat ruffled, to give an idea. It's lighter, as in not so hot and heavy on my head, so that's a plus. Then I stopped by a gym to check out if I wanted to join. I may. We'll see. Got home and vacuumed and started laundry. Working on the newsletter which will be late going out this time. I lost a weekend because of the cellulitis.

It's is still blasted hot, upper 90s. I'm so ready for fall. I don't know what to have for dinner but I'm thinking it may be something from out because I don't want to add any more heat to the house.

Tomorrow, I must devote much time to the newsletter. It will be late. But can't be helped.

Still plugging away on the Enron book. I picked up THE HUNGER GAMES in book form while at B&N and I asked Steve to read the first one. We'll see how that goes. He was going to go to a gun show today but I don't think that ever happened.

Much love,
PK the Bookeemonster

Ohhhhh, wow, that looks so good right now

I won't talk about THOSE books.

I've started CONSPIRACY OF FOOLS by Kurt Eichenwald. The book about the rise and fall of Enron. It has a good narrative flow and I'm learning about how an oil pipe company became the energy monster it was before the end. At least at a point of where it was starting in its first branching out -- it "invented" the gas bank where they were the middle man between natural gas suppliers and buyers and then sold the investments of them like bonds therefore the liabilities could be taken off the books because the company didn't own them anymore. And I'm realizing how much I am just not a sharp person when it comes to things like that and there people out there who have instincts in that area that are scary. This may keep me occupied until the new Louise Penny on Tuesday.

It is still freaking hot. Day after day this week in the 90s and yesterday the compressor of the ac on our side of the building at work broke and the email today from the management says a replacement had to be ordered and may be in next week. And I also learned today what makes my hackles rise without conscious thought. It is being spoken to thusly: "Look, lady....." I didn't not respond negatively but I surely wanted to clobber the guy.

We've decided we need to get Ryker an electric collar. He simply will not listen and runs off ignoring us when we take him off leash for runs. I hate the thought of the things but in this case we feel it is needed for his safety. If we yell stop or come here and he ignores us as he does and he is in danger from being hit by a car or about to have an encounter with a dog we know is unfriendly or someone in their yard is fed up with loose dogs and takes a shotgun out, well, we can't have that. Just like with the electrified wire around the fence line, we gave him many opportunities to behave and limited his options to misbehave but he continues. Coda doesn't do it as much and usually is following Ryker so I don't know if Coda will get one too.

Nothing on TV for me tonight. I picked up some sweet corn for dinner and will have it with round steak. Speaking of which, I need to go husk some corn cobs.

Have a lovely evening....

Much love,

PK the Bookeemonster

My evil plan is working....

Obsessions. I have had this happen a few times. It is rare: when you read a book that was SO GOOD that you are obsessed with it. After you’ve completed reading it, it will not leave your thoughts. THE HUNGER GAMES trilogy has done that to me. I need to take my focus to something else. The next book I read will suffer in comparison because it WON’T be those books and the emotional ride it gave me. So I’m going absolutely opposite: reading a nonfiction book. I won’t tell you what about. Okay, I’ll tell you: the downfall of Enron. Dry, right? It’s been a long time … in fact, I don’t know if I’ve ever had the urge to immediately re-read a book upon completing it. THE HUNGER GAMES, yes. Perhaps the thrill wouldn’t be the same but I don’t want to leave that world. But it is over because the story is completely over in the trilogy of books. The end. There will be no more books. And I don’t know if I want to see the movie being made of it because I don’t think it will compare. I don’t think they can do it justice because the narration is very internal to Katniss. But I will see it, of course. But for right now the characters are as I see them in my mind and not some actors. You know, I would even try to make Steve-the-Nonreader to read the book. I tried with THE PASSAGE by Justin Cronin with him but I think the sheer size of the book turned him away. This will be different: fewer pages and I’ll MAKE him read it. Ha! I will make EVERYONE read it. Bwa hahhahaa!

Took the dogs for a run, had some dinner, and now I'm getting tired. I wish I could accomplish more in the evenings but I just get wrung out from all day on the phones with people. Steve is out shooting and I've given the boys some rawhide bones to keep them occupied. I may read for a little and then call it a night.

Much love,

PK the Bookeemonster