Countertops updated

Apparently countertop replacement requires the skills that Eisenhower brought to the invasion of France.  Materials must be chosen and paid for.

  Then the fun begins.  Your old countertop must be removed.  Including the sink.  Next, special estimators will arrive to measure the size and shape needed, leaving the kitchen unusable and looking like a crime scene..   So no cooking or washing in the kitchen.  If the procedures duplicate my previous experience with contractors, since they have been paid, they will return some time in the future which suits them.  The remote future.

  Some day, if you're lucky, they will return with the new countertop, which you have to pay them to install, or do it yourself.  I can''t picture myself wrestling unaided with a large and awkward  sheet of quartz weighing approximately ten tons, so I will have to wait until they condescend to send someone to install it.

  So I started with new flooring, which does so much for the kitchen, and the countertop returns to the wishlist behind the longed-for trip to Australia.  In short, in Neverland.

Books I like

Since I dislike so many books, people want to know what books I like.  I must like some of them since I waste so much time reading. 

  First I want to mention why I hate writing review of books I like.  I am not sure why I like them, or what about them I like.  When I re-read a book, I find so much in it that I didn't appreciate more.  There are depths in a good book, layers of meaning.  Every time I re-read anna Karenina, I find something new--re-reading  opens up unending new insights and I appreciate it not better, but differently.

My favorite classic fiction: Anna Karenina, Pride and Prejudice, Middlemarch, Great Expectations, anything by Dickens, practically anything by Trollope.  I have no objections to long books, if they are good.


Books I hate is a much longer list: Anything with a political message, particularly progreesive.  Anything "transgressive," anything by "women" writers, published because the author is a woman.  Anything where the characters have winsome names, like Turtle or Tempest.

I like American history, because I am an American and learned something about American history, albeit reluctantly, because I had to,  in school.  Other countries, not so much, because I know so little about them that I can't fathom the background. I would need to know much more, to know where I am. English hisotry, about the Tudors, particularly Elizabeth I.   British and Irish modern history, because I typed so many papers about them when my husband was getting his PhD in British history, and because the Irish are such greeat writers.  I particularly like Conor Cruise O'Brian. 

  I also like reading about musicians, and musical instruments.  I recently read a biography of Maria Callas,  and an auto-biography of Placido Domingo, and one by Julie Andrews.  I recommend them unreservedly. These people knew who they were at an early age and believed in themselves, a revelation to me, who still don't know what I want to be when I grow up, even in the face of mortalitty.

  Music reveals new depths every time. That's why you can listen to the same pieces over and over and find new things to love and admire.

The dog that didn't bark

The Mueller report was a bullet to the brain to the democrats, but unfortunately it takes more than a bullet to the brain to shut up these guys.  Possibly they don't have brains.  Or maybe they are the undead and it takes garlic to silence them.

  In any case, they are a hardy crew, who have the stamina to arise from their graves every four years to vote.  Not like the rest of us, who do nothing useful to anyone and just molder in our graves, taking no part in public discourse.