Our House

 We, on Friday, became the proud owners of a mortgage. We have actually lived in this house for 20 years, and it has changed hands a few times, so we've had ... three? four? landlords. 

In 2019 or so, our landlord said he wanted to subdivide as we had such a big backyard. It was put on pause because of the pandemic, but in the past couple of years he built a house where our backyard was and sold it. The neighbours are quiet but I do sort of miss having grass. I don't think J does, as he's the one who has to mow it.

Around the same time, the landlord came to us and asked if we wanted to buy the house. I went to the bank and they couldn't lend us enough at the time, so advise us to consolidate our debt, and try again in  a few years. So we had another run at it in 2021 but J had just started a new job, and one of the terms was both of us had to be in a job for at least a year.

Fast-forward to last year. The landlord came to us again and asked if we wanted to buy the house. He was going to do it up (carpets, wallpaper, new kitchen etc) and sell it anyway, so he gave us first refusal.

He went ahead and did all of the renovations and we went back to the bank. This time, it was good news.

The landlord said if we bought it, he'd sell it to us for the valuation price, and given the NZ housing market right now, I know how lucky we are. 

So we set a settling date of the 21st of April, and then let the bank and the lawyers do the heavy lifting.

Leaving us with a mortgage, a house of our own, and something that we can leave to spawn later on. 

The best part is we don't have to move. I hate moving.

Review - The Witness for the Dead

 

The Witness for the Dead is set in the same universe as Katherine Addison's novel, The Goblin Emperor. Which you should read, if you haven't, though The Witness for the Dead isn't a direct sequel.

Thara Celehar is a Witness for the Dead - he can, sometimes, speak to the dead.

Exiled from the court after making too many enemies, Celehar lives in the city of Alamo. He lives a quiet life, though he can't quite escape politics.

He's called in as a Witness when a woman's body is pulled from the river. She has clearly been murdered, and it's up to Celehar to find out what has happened to her.

I LOVED The Goblin Emperor, and honestly The Witness for the Dead is right up there as well. Katherine Addison definitely knows  how to tell a story, and her characters are very compelling. It's a short book, but I would have liked a glossary of names, as I did get a bit confused, especially with the titles used by various people. 

That's a fairly minor criticism though. Celehar is a great character, as is the city, and the mystery is satisfying as it unfolds as well. 

Definitely recommended if you're a fantasy reader and you're looking for something a bit different.

The Sunday Post 5; It's Monday! What are you reading? 5

 

The Sunday Post - a chance for bloggers to have a chat and a catch-up - is hosted by Kimba, here: https://caffeinatedbookreviewer.com/ and It's Monday! What are you reading? is hosted by Kathryn, here: https://thebookdate.wordpress.com/

I missed last week. I can't quite remember why - possibly because there were more teenagers in my house than actually live here and it slipped my mind. 

On the Friday night (Good Friday) spawn had a friend over for a sleepover. That was fine.

On Saturday morning, taking Friend of Spawn home, I learned that his grandparents who were staying with his parents (albeit in a caravan so they could isolate) had COVID. And on the way back to his place, he found out his mother had tested positive. I swear this kid lives in COVID central.

When we all got it last year, he's the one who brought it in to our house after coming over on a teacher's only day. He tested positive the day after, and spawn tested positive at the end of that week.

Anyway. Fast forward to Easter Saturday, and sure enough, spawn starts coughing. Then he complains of aches and pains and has a (thankfully not bad) fever. So I tested him on Easter Monday, and WHAT DO YOU KNOW. It was positive. Tested myself, and also positive. 

The guidelines for COVID here at the moment are you stay home for 7 days if you test positive, and any other household contacts need to test every day, and can still go about their normal lives as long as they test negative and wear masks.

So I worked from home that week. Oddly, I didn't have any symptoms at all, and after the first couple of days neither did Spawn. And J never tested positive at all. Something to be thankful for.

What else. Settling day for the house was on Friday (I'll do a full post on that one) so we are now the proud owners of a mortgage. 

I've watched  a few movies - Murder Mystery 2 (meh), Marie Antoinette (okay) and The Boston Strangler (pretty good). 

I finished The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison, and Silver on the Tree - the final book in the Dark is Rising Sequence. Enjoyed both of them.

Now I'm re-reading The Fellowship of the Ring and I also started A Billion Years by Mike Rinder - a former high-up in scientology. 

I have work tomorrow, and then Tuesday and Wednesday off. Tuesday as it's ANZAC day, and Wednesday just because. 

How about you? How's your week? What are you reading?

Review: Again, Rachel by Marian Keyes

 

Again, Rachel by Marian Keyes is the sequel to Ms Keyes' earlier novel, Rachel's Holiday.

Rachel's Holiday is one of the Walsh sister series of novels, and deals with Rachel's drug addiction and rehabilitation.

Again, Rachel is set around 2019 I think? Pre-pandemic, anyway.

She's split from Luke and has a new man. She's also the head addiction counsellor at the Cloisters, where she spent her own recovery.

Things are - as far as Rachel is concerned - good.

Then Luke Costello comes home to Ireland for his mother's funeral and all hell breaks loose.

And. See. Here's the thing. I love Marian Keyes. And I LOVED Rachel's Holiday.

But Again, Rachel ... just didn't really work all that well for me? It's written well, and some of it is good, but some of it I really struggled with. 

All of the Walsh sisters are in and out of the book at various times as Mammy Walsh's 80th  birthday party - a surprise party that Mammy Walsh is, of course, planning herself, is happening, and it just feels like too many Walsh sisters in one place. Also, these grown women - all in their 40s and early 50s - are acting like teenagers. 

I'm all for maintaining a youthful spirit and not aging gracefully, but the way these women act is just plain annoying. 

To be fair to Rachel - she does have a deep-seated grief from her marriage to Luke (they lose a much-loved baby at almost full-term) and there are a LOT of issues she plain has not dealt with. But. She's also in a lot of ways the same Rachel as the previous book - deeply in denial and therefore causing damage to those around her. 

I don't know. I did what I always do - look up the Goodreads reviews to see if people agreed with me, and there were a lot of 5-star reviews. So maybe it IS me?

Or maybe it's time to move on from the Walsh sisters. 

(One of them tries swinging, with her husband. Tell me that's not the book equivalent of jumping the shark.)

The Sunday Post 4; It's Monday! What are you reading? 4

                                                                                

 

The Sunday Post - a chance for bloggers to have a chat and a catch-up - is hosted by Kimba, here: https://caffeinatedbookreviewer.com/ and It's Monday! What are you reading? is hosted by Kathryn, here: https://thebookdate.wordpress.com/

Let's see ... it was a short week here because of the Easter break. And on Thursday I woke up with a sore throat and blocked nose. Tested, like a responsible citizen, but it was negative. However, as I am a responsible citizen, I took a sick day from work. So I think I just have a mild cold - it certainly hasn't got any worse over the long weekend.

I didn't do much on Friday - possibly a little bit of stitching? Some reading? Not a lot, anyway. Spawn had a friend over for a sleepover, so I did the responsible parent thing. I ordered pizza for tea. 

Yesterday I decided it had been far too long since I had visited my parents' gravesite. So I went to a secondhand store and bought a small vase, and some flowers from the supermarket and took them down in the afternoon. There were a few people around, but the cemetery was actually pretty quiet. It was quite nice. 

Went to my friend's place as usual last night for stitching and TV. 

Today I've done some housework stuff (ugh) and I also went for a walk in Queen's Park, which is smack in the middle of the town I live in. And even though we're halfway through autumn, quite a few of the roses in the rose garden were still in bloom. The park is starting to look autumn-ish finally (we've had a very mild autumn in my part of the country so far) so I took a couple of photos.

The second photo on the left is part of the rose garden - much more impressive in person, and the first one is just the view of the park from where I was sitting. It was nice to just ... be outside for a bit, I think. 

Tomorrow is a public holiday here as well, and then back to work on Tuesday.

As for what I've been reading... I finished Again, Rachel by Marian Keyes, the sequel to Rachel's Holiday, and there will be a review up later this week for that.

Currently I'm re-reading Silver on the Tree by Susan Cooper, and reading The Witness for the Dead by Katherine Addison. It's not a direct sequel, but it's set in the same world as The Goblin Emperor, which I LOVED. And so far The Witness for the Dead is great as well.

I'm also trying to watch a movie at least once a week, so on Friday night I watched Murder Mystery 2 on Netflix. I enjoyed the first one more than I thought I would but this was. A movie. That I watched. 

How about you? How's your week? What are you reading?

Building a reader's corner

 

There is a longer story behind this photo but the SparkNotes version is that our landlord has spent the past few months doing up the house with the intention of selling it.

By our very good fortune, he offered it to us first, and we have been able to buy it. More on that after settling date, because I'm superstitious.

One of the good and great side-effects, however, has been that we've had to clear out a lot of stuff. And by "we" I mean J, because he's done all the work with shifting stuff around and throwing stuff out.

My room was the last to be done up and I had what can only be described as hoarders' corners. They've been cleared out, and the stuff is either books in bookcases, or in bags and containers in the garage, ready to be sorted through.

Once the work was done, I realised something. I have room for a reader's corner. It's not very big, as you can see from the photo, BUT it IS big enough for a chair, and a little bedside table which will eventually house a lamp and a small pile of books.

Meanwhile what it has is a blank spot, a placemat that my mother made many years ago from leftover scraps of patchwork projects, and a mysterious sculpture. I say "mysterious" because while I *think* I remember buying it, I have absolutely no memory of the artist. 

So next on the agenda is doing some thrifting. I need a chair - and because I'm a shortass - I also need a footstool. And a lamp. 

Because I had so much stuff all piled up, a reader's corner only ever seemed like something that happened to other people on YouTube or Pinterest.

But now - hopefully - it will be me. In Real Life.

The Sunday Post 3; It's Monday, What are you reading? 3

 

The Sunday Post -  a chance for bloggers to have a chat and a catch-up - is hosted by Kimba, here: https://caffeinatedbookreviewer.com/ and It's Monday! What are you reading? is hosted by Kathryn, here: https://thebookdate.wordpress.com/

My week was much the same as the week before. Work stuff and then home, lather rinse repeat.

Although there's nothing wrong with that. 

I didn't do any stitching last week. Most weeks I try to do at least one thread of a colour a night, but some weeks it just doesn't pan out. The side effect of this is it seems to turn me into more of a stress bunny than usual. And - of course - I always forget. So definitely this week I need to try and do at least a little bit.

I did do some on Saturday night at my friend's place, but that's always a given so I don't really count it.

Saturday... what else did I do on Saturday? Not a lot. I've been re-watching CSI:NY so I watched half a dozen episodes of that, and painted my nails. I'm trying to paint them weekly or fortnightly in seasonally appropriate colours. It's autumn here (and the clocks have just gone back, ugh) so I painted them Royal Rajah Ruby by OPI, which is described as jewelled burgundy. It's sort of a deep red with shiny bits. 

Today, J and I went to a friend's place as she asked for his help with computer things. She's someone I used to work with many years ago, and have stayed friends with so we had a proper catch-up.

We got home later than expected so had a late lunch of McDonald's. I need to stir some energy to make my bed and my lunch for tomorrow, and then I can just kind of hunker down for the evening.

I know a lot of people hate Sunday evenings, but I love them. I used to work Sundays, 4 to 12 and it's a miserable shift. It's been many years, but I don't take it for granted.

As for what I'm reading now ... I'm reading Again, Rachel by Marian Keyes which is the sequel to Rachel's Holiday. 

Rachel's Holiday is a great book, one of my favourites of Marian Keyes - only surpassed - for me - by Lucy Sullivan is Getting Married.

Again, Rachel is. It's good, it is. But there's something a bit lacking? Some tiny hint of magic or .. I don't even know how to describe it. It's definitely eminently readable, and Ms Keyes can tell a good story, but. It's just a bit lacking. For me, anyway. Review to come, once I've finished it.

Unusually, for me, I'm only reading one book (normally I have at least two on the go). After Again, Rachel I'm going to read Silver on the Tree, the final book in The Dark is Rising Sequence. And I've been meaning to re-read LOTR for a while, so Fellowship of the Ring will surface soon, I think.

What about you? How's your week been? What are you reading?

This week's posts:

The Embroidered Book review: http://lifetheuniverseandcats.blogspot.com/2023/03/review-embroidered-book-by-kate.html

About Lily: http://lifetheuniverseandcats.blogspot.com/2023/03/about-lily.html