Fox Mural and Funeral

Here's a street scene from Walthamstow that I came across on Friday. Can you see the mural of the two foxes, one grooming the other, by street artists Irony + Boe? It was very hard to photograph given that a van is parked in the alley and those buildings are so close together.

I had not one but two nightmares last night. Weird, right? One was a pretty standard someone's-lurking-in-the-house kind of thing, but in the other, someone had cooked mussels and poured the broken up shells down our kitchen drain! NOOOOOOO!!!!

I don't think I've ever had a nightmare about plumbing before. Clearly I've been scarred by our recent travails.

I spent almost all day yesterday reading "The Ink Black Heart." Olga went for two walks around the neighborhood, but otherwise we were curled up on the couch. I'm up to page 613, and today will be another reading day, so with any luck I'll come close to finishing it. Ideally, I'd like to get it done before school resumes so I don't have to carry it back and forth, the blessed thing is so big.

You know how it's inspired me to go see some sights in London? Well, yesterday I was reading a scene that took place in Whitehall Gardens, with one of the characters hiding behind the statue of Henry Bartle Frere! I thought, "Aha! A place I've already been!"

Speaking of books, here's a cute free library I found on the street in Walthamstow. I didn't take any of the books -- I have plenty to read -- but I thought they did a great job on the construction and decoration. (Though man and bird are clearly not to scale.)

Yesterday was the funeral for my uncle, my mother's only sibling, who you may remember died at the end of November. It took place in Virginia and obviously I couldn't be there, but the funeral home allowed people to tune in online, so I got to participate from afar. I didn't know my uncle really well, but I saw him a couple of times a year as a child, and it was interesting to hear what others had to say about him -- emphasizing his positivity, his dedication to his church and community service through organizations like the Rotary Club, his affection for Ronald Reagan and meatloaf (the food, not the musician). He and my mother (who also did not attend, given her health) did not see eye-to-eye politically but he was a good person and not overbearing or argumentative about his relative conservatism. I do remember him complaining many years ago, post-Watergate, about the Washington Post. My grandfather disliked the Post too. They both thought it was a liberal rag. (I, of course, hold it in high regard!)