I spent the morning getting some cleaning done in the house: washing the floor and tidying the kitchen. It was cool again, so that doing housework was not a chore. It's been so hot for the last two days I've been on the verge of hysterics—heat just makes me want to burst out crying.

I also finished the clothes washing, and gathered up all of Mom's books that I didn't want. We took them out to Readmore in Taunton, MA, which only took about half of them, and we got some odd assorted books with the credit, plus I bought a book about the Blizzard of '78. We came home and dropped the books off, then, since it was three and James hadn't eaten lunch, had a quick bite at Friendly's: salad for me and soup for him, and of course both an ice cream (no dessert for us tonight!).

We had talked with my cousin Anna about having something after the funeral, like a luncheon, at a restaurant. Before people would bring food after the funeral, but apparently it isn't being done anymore. I thought about it and called a few places, but it bothered me. I don't want to go to some strange place after my mom's funeral. So, if we still can, we are going to get some finger sandwiches from a place called T's on Park Avenue. Plus we bought some rugulach, brownie bites, marble cake (which we sliced), and other finger foods at Stop and Shop and are going to the bakery tomorrow for others, and bought some paper plates and things (in blue, which was my mother's favorite color), and are going to borrow a punch bowl and make punch with the juice and soda my mom had stocked up on, and just have it in the house ourselves.

Had a quick supper and fixed all the things we bought on plates and trays, I shaved my legs and ironed our things, and now we should be going to bed.

The operative word is "should."

Other stuff: we took Twi through a car wash today. It was the kind where you sit in the car and the brushes and mops and things come around you as the car is pulled through the wash. I had a damn panic attack from the claustrophobia and was freaking for a couple of minutes and felt like I couldn't breathe, which was stupid because the air conditioner was on the third notch and clearly blowing air in my face. I hate this. It's getting worse and worse.

My cousin Janice came over while we were eating supper, with the collage she had made of the photos we had given her. It is absolutely stunning. It is about 36 inches long and 24 inches high and divided in half longways. The pictures on the left are of Mom up till the time she got married and the ones on the right after I was born, the ones on the right being almost all in color. She bordered and divided the photos with a repeating red rose (my mom's favorite flower) photo. It's lovely. I will have to post a photo here.

The guy behind us put up a new fence separating the properties today. He took down our chain-link, which my dad had to replace when I was in junior high because the heat from burning the paper (we used to burn the paper back then, before air quality laws, in a big aluminum barrel that looked like a trash can except it had holes in it to allow the fire to burn) had melted part of the fence and also because the stupid kids from the junior high used to jump a different, sagging part. The neighbor also replaced what was left of my godmother's chain-link fence, which gave me a bit of a pang, because that bit of rusted fence was around 80 years old and was all that was left of the "speedway," the car race track that had been here in the 1920s. (It was originally a horse track where Governor Sprague could race his champion trotters, and then later a fairgrounds. My dad said he saw a Wild West show like Buffalo Bill's here when he was a very little boy, probably about 1920.) It's silly to be sentimental about a fence, but I am; I spent a lot of time in my godmother's back yard when I was little, sitting under the grapevine arbor that was there back then, and eating fruit with her mother.

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. . . . . noted and logged by Linda at 11:06:00 PM

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