My weekend has turned out a little different than planned. I've not been able to putter around as much as I would have liked to. If you recall this very destructive event, this weekend has turned out to be the perfect time to replace our roof. I'm lucky as I have family members who used to work in roofing or currently work for roofing companies, so once we got the materials it was just a matter of getting everyone together to get the work done. I'm a proud owner of a brand new roof and am pleased with how it turned out.
I'd share a photo, but 1, I'm way too tired and lazy to take one and 2, surely this can only be an exciting event for me, so I won't bore you. I don't know how people can get up on roofs and ours is pretty tall. The most I could manage was climbing the ladder to see the porch roof when the old layers were coming off (my house is more than 100 years old and the shingles were original, so I wanted to see what they looked like). To see someone standing up there on the slope like it was no problem made me just a little dizzy! I did help, though. I consider cooking for all those people (twice yesterday) work, particularly since cooking is one of my least favorite chores. I also helped clean up the trash--all those old shingles that didn't make the dumpster on the first throw. To say nothing of little scraps of black paper and many, many nails! We have now replaced our broken windows, replaced dented screens, and now pretty much repaired the roof. There are a few more things we need to fix, but then the house will finally be set to rights.
So, all this to say I have no short story to share with you today. Perhaps tomorrow or later in the week. I'd still like to give one of the collections I brought home from the library a try. I did finish reading Ruth Rendell's A Judgement in Stone on Friday (much puttering was accomplished that day at least). I've started reading Beth Gutcheon's Good-Bye Amen, but I'm not sure I am going to click with it. I really enjoyed Leeway Cottage, which was a "sprawling family epic". Good-Bye Amen takes up at the death of Sydney and Laurus Moss, the main characters in her last novel. The story begins with the children and grandchildren coming together to divide up the spoils after the funeral. It seems to be told from multiple vantage points, moving from character to character, each getting a short passage to share his or her part of the story. The book is also unusual in that there are actual family photos (I'm curious who these people really are) in the middle of the book. I've seen this done before, but this is the first time I've read a novel with this sort of set up. I'll give it a little more time and see how it goes.
I am getting on well with the R.I.P. book I finally choose, Mary Stewart's The Ivy Tree. I'm having a little deja vu, though. I'm sure I've not read it before, but it seems oddly familiar. I'm about two chapters in. The story is about a young Canadian woman who travels to England, to Northumberland, where she believes her family is from some generations back. As it turns out she is a doppelganger, or she has a twin, whichever way you want to look at it. She's told by more than one person she looks exactly like a woman who left the village years back and then died. Can you see where this is leading? It reminds me of Brat Farrar, which has a similar storyline (no doubt where my deja vu is coming from). In any case, it is definitely the right book at the right time as I am having a hard time putting it aside!