Monday, Sept. 5

Happy Labor Day! The official last day of summer. The days are getting shorter, now, and it's dark around 8 p.m. I'm not a real fan of short days and long, cold winters.

Got up at 6:30 on this very windy, fall-like day to go to water aerobics. I'm glad I decided to dig a fleece outfit out of storage. It felt really good on the hike to and from the pool.

The water was as chilly as ever, and felt chillier because we were all already chilly from our windy walks. About 15 of us showed up this morning. Our leader wore a blue swimsuit and a bright red glittered ball cap. She said the ball cap was the closest thing to a worker's headgear that she could find in her wardrobe.

The session ended a little early...because we were all a bit shivery, and because we were still dispirited about our friend who lost her daughter to a murder-suicide crime last week.

I don't feel so bad about my own forgetfulness after talking with one of the members as we swam in the deep end of the pool before aerobics began. She said as she was cleaning her car Saturday for an anticipated trip to Branson this week, she found two envelopes in the side pocket of a back door. They were addressed to two great-grandchildren. So she delivered the envelopes right away. They were Christmas cards from her daughter that included gift checks. We both wondered why her daughter had not called after she balanced her checkbook every month for eight months and found that the checks had not been cashed yet!

Back home, once I was ready for the day, Mother and I prepared a lunch of leftovers from yesterday's country ribs dinner. Then, around 12:30, we headed to a town about an hour south to see the movie, "The Help." This movie from the bestselling book by the same name, is set in the 1960s at the dawn of the Civil Rights movement, and was another film appropriate to Labor Day.

A society girl wants to be a writer, and she decides to interview black women who have spent their lives working for and raising the children of white families. Along the way, unlikely friendships (for the times) are forged, as a book emerges and is published. Not everything goes smoothly during the interviews, or after the book is published, of course. This is a must-see movie that will no doubt be a contender for an Oscar. Too bad our local theater was too shortsighted to offer the film. It would have drawn decent-sized audiences, I think.

We left Shih Tzu home while we were gone, of course. Hubbie blocked her in the kitchen, since we figured she would have an accident while we were gone (and she did), but she couldn't hurt the tile floor. We didn't want her wandering onto the carpets in the den and dining rooms.

I accompanied Mother to her house as soon as we got back. For supper, Hubbie and I had grilled cheese sandwiches, and then watched TV, including a 2009 movie called, "The Beacon." A woman photographer and her husband lose their son, and when they move to a new apartment, she begins seeing the ghost of a little boy who died in the building. With the help a professor and a tough cop, she investigates how the boy died, and hopes to free his spirit to take a message to her own son. Another entity doesn't want the boy to leave, though.