It's a long holiday weekend for me. Yippee!

Yesterday morning I had an appointment to visit a second assisted living community for my mother, this one in my hometown. It seemed pretty nice, but the cost seemed nearly as much as the top of the line one I went to a few months ago. I was surprised, because Masonicare is a non-profit. I've also come to the conclusion that my mother isn't ready for an assisted living community; the people there seem so out of it. She would never accept having 3 meals a day prepared for her. She's a health nut, like I am, and she is very particular about what she eats.

Most of yesterday afternoon I spent with a rep from a home health aide agency trying to convince my mother to have someone come over at least once weekly. Nope. Basically, she doesn't want to spend the money. It will be about $20/hr. As is usual, she wound up giving the RN a tour of her art in her condo. It covers every square inch of wall space, including in the bathrooms. He just kept saying "wow." I guess I'm used to it, having grown up seeing my mom's space that way.

After the very nice male RN left, we went for a walk around her condo complex. She's still getting around very well for an 80-year-old. I may try instead for simple, periodic housekeeping services. I would have preferred home health agency visits instead but it doesn't look like that's going to happen.

After I left my mother's, I filled up the gas tank at an incredible $3.29 a gallon. It's so low here. I also stopped in at Lowe's and used up 2 gift cards to buy a new broom, which I tried out last night in the driveway and outdoor stairs. It works quite well, maybe even better than the corn husk broom I had for years.

I watched another World War II movie on Netflix last night. I admit to being preoccupied with WWII and today I found myself wondering what side of the war my German relatives were on. My grandfather came to the US as a teen from a small town in Germany and I figure that was at least 10 years before the war started, but he had brothers he left behind. Were they in the German army or part of the Resistance? I wonder. I exchanged a few letters with Peter H., my cousin and the son of one of my grandfather's brothers. He never married or had children, and my dad and I learned he died a few months ago; I guess he was in his 60s and as I understand, he was the last of the H. line there. I wish I could have asked him some questions about that.

Thank goodness my 2 half-brothers have 3 little kids between them, or my entire family line would cease to exist after we go.

Today I managed to mow the front lawn and mulch the leaves and pine needles at the same time. I also picked up my produce at the CSA. I think we have just 3 more pick-ups left in the season.

Today I got some big 'ol tomatoes, potato fingerlings, a butternut squash, apples, kale and yes, more eggplant.

I bagged some sunflower seed that I'm going to bring to work. It's the strangest thing...there's an Eastern wild turkey that is hanging around downtown in the city where I work, right in front of our building. It is very much out of place and I can't imagine why it continues to hang around. It does not appear that afraid of people but there seems to be nothing for it to eat. Hence the sunflower seed. I am sure the security guards in our lobby will scold me if they see me feeding it, so I'll do it out of sight of them.

Tomorrow my new Whirlpool dishwasher will be installed. The guy is supposed to call today/tonight to tell me what time.

I emptied out my sun room in preparation for the winter season. Since it's unheated in there, I take most things out, although I don't know if very cold air alone will harm things like a bamboo mat or an upholstered lounge chair. As it is, I put all the stuff from the sun room in the family room, which I also close off for the winter. (As an addition, it's the only room in the house with electric heat, so no use adding to my bills just to heat that one room.) I also already put up the insulated curtains on the French doors to that room.

My boss has ok'd me reverting to my "winter hours" at work once Daylight Savings Time ends in a few weeks, which means 9 to 5:30 p.m. instead of 8:30 to 5. I'm up at the crack of dawn with the summer sun, but in winter I can't stand getting up in the dark, so the later start helps with that. It will be dark when I drive home, regardless, but at least I'll have a more leisurely morning routine.

I called my handyman to see if he could tackle my next home improvement project in 2 weeks when I am taking a Friday off. I'm trying to steadily knock off a long laundry list of things that need to be done.

This project is all about the ceiling in my office. It has some wood moldings that criss-cross the ceiling that I've never seen anywhere else, kind of like tic tac toe. I like the look, but there is so much old paint, and some ill-advised caulk that I applied, that it looks kind of crappy. I want him to hand sand all the criss-cross moldings and then paint the ceiling. It's probably something I could do but it's a little labor intensive and I know his full day charge is $200. I figure it's worth it for him to do. Maybe it wouldn't even take a full day, but maybe it would with all the prep work.