saxikath

chenoameg very generously let me borrow their car to drive up to NH. I ended up picking up my cousin M at Logan, where she'd flown in on a redeye from Salt Lake City. She just defended her master's thesis, which is mind-boggling to me -- how can she possibly be that old?? But we had a very nice chat in the car, and then I handed her over to my aunt, uncle, and cousin A at the Concord bus station. (They were off to spend the day with my uncle's family; his dad is not at all well, so it was important for them to be there.) I then continued on to Laconia, where my grandmother is living in an assisted living facility.

Grandma is... getting frailer. Her short-term memory is much worse than it was, and she seems physically weaker than she was. I think she's basically blind in one eye now. But, she still seems very cheerful, and reads and does crochet and other things she's always liked. We had dinner (at lunchtime) in the dining room of the assisted living facility, sharing a table with two very nice other women. There were various phone calls with relatives after that, and then I drove back to town. I hung out for a while at

ringrose and

chenoameg's, watching a very entertaining session of the Order of the Stick board game and generally kibitzing, and wound up with leftovers from a Thanksgiving dinner I didn't eat. That felt a little weird, but hey, I have turkey and mashed potatoes. :)

Today, I slept in a bit, and then lay in bed a while longer listening to NPR. Then it was breakfast, and then, finally, plunging into putting together the tribute to Mangie, a former NPL editor, which I've been not getting done for several months now. It was a lot of putting stuff together, and I ended up spending basically all day working on that. It's done, pending proofreading; I hope people will find it appropriate.

Then cooking. Baked chicken breasts with an orange juice-sage-mustard sauce, cabbage (from my Boston Organics delivery this week) braised in cider, and couscous. Yum.

And then cleaning. With Mom coming to see the show, and not much time before tech week kicks in (i.e., we have set building tomorrow, a 2 p.m.-10 p.m. tech rehearsal/runthrough on Sunday, and dress rehearsals Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday!), I needed to get the house in shape. The living room and dining room are decluttered, dusted, and swept; all my LARP stuff is stowed away and out of the guest bedroom, and that's been dusted and swept; and the bathroom's clean. Still need to declutter the kitchen and clean the floor, and make the guest bed. And do laundry. I think that's Wednesday's job.

Whew. Time for a hot bath and bed. I hope we don't have to spend too long on the set tomorrow, given that we made a lot of progress last weekend.