My maternal grandmother, Marilyn Coe Ross, died this past Saturday. It was both not unexpected and terribly sudden. Her health had been fragile for a number of years — just enough time for us all to get used to the fact that her health was fragile and yet she remained with us, in a kind of fragile stasis.

It became the new normal, as they say. Until this weekend when a sudden aneurysm brought her body to a halt. I got the phone call from my mother at the end of (for a series of unrelated reasons) what turned out to be an emotionally exhausting Saturday.

I have a post full of thoughts about my grandmother, a fellow book lover, writer, and (volunteer) librarian, which I will be sharing when things are less raw.

This is a post about how, following our exhausting Saturday, Hanna and I decided we needed to bring some color back into this campaign before the weekend beat us. So we forged ahead with a pre-planned trip to IKEA for a new chair for the living room and came back with this:

Hanna says it must be something to do with her Finnish genes; I have no excuse.

Geraldine, per usual, felt the need to be in on the action in a very present sort of way as we put the chair together.

Teazle was initially suspicious of the new furniture, but within a fairly short period of time made it her own.

After furniture construction, I went out to buy chips at the CVS down the block and decided on suddenly obstinate impulse to follow through on my recent threat to dye my hair again.

Purple seemed like a good plan, though in the end it’s come out more magenta.

I might go for tricolor next time, now that I’ve got the hang of it. Although I wish I could just use my mother-in-laws organic indigo dye, since the chemical stuff is not something I feel very comfortable using or disposing of!

I hope all of you had some good moments this past weekend and are looking ahead to a productive second week of June.