Summertime (2)

We live too far out in the country to get cable or DSL – welcome to the "dark side" of a charming small town, lol – so pretty much our only option for high-speed Internet is a little thumb drive modem from Verizon that comes with a five gig limit. Five gigs doesn’t go very far between eight people, and it’s fifty cents per megabyte after that, so when we ran out of time a week early this month we had to go back to dial-up. So no pictures today. And if you wrote me an email, I will get back to you eventually, I promise. :)

We’ve had a crazy past few weekends, and then this week was kind of nuts, so I spent most of my weekend in chill mode. Maggie and I went out for dinner on Thursday – just dinner, no shopping, no errand running, etc. It made a nice change, even though we drank way too much mango iced tea (seriously, is anyone else addicted to Ruby Tuesday’s fruited teas?). Some people look forward to the weekends because they get to drink alcohol. I look forward to the weekends cuz I get to drink caffeine after 2 PM and stay up crazy-late – like, as late as 11 or 12!!! – and sleep in til 9 or 10. Yup, folks, I’m living on the edge big time. :)

Fridays are usually my rest days, but we had to take the cat to the vet for an infected abscess, so that ate up most of my morning, then I decided to run the rest of my errands. Friday night, Maggie and I grabbed dinner at Panera Bread while I snuck in a few minutes of Internet on their wi-fi, then we met up with a bunch of friends to go see Toy Story 3. I found the demographics of this group hilarious – eleven of us in total; only three girls; everyone over the age of fourteen; eight of us over the age of twenty. And we arrived early to get good seats. Because Toy Story 3 is that important. :) Do I not have the most awesome friends?!?! Granted, there were a lot of older folks in the audience along with us, but I still thought it was pretty cool that we were all so excited to see a kid’s movie. Although, as we discussed afterwards, the first Toy Story movie was our childhood movie, and in many ways Toy Story 3 is still marketed to our age group, especially in terms of the theme of growing too old for cherished toys but still clinging to the memories they represent. We all laughed through the entire movie, and more than one of us (myself included!) admitted to tearing up at parts. Good film. Go see it and support Pixar! :)

Saturday was pretty low-key... My mom and I went to the thrift store and farmer’s market in the morning, then when I got home the kids helped me clean the house and we headed off to the pool. I tried to catch some sun and got a very, very slight tan. :) I love to read pool-side and that day I was rereading The Great Gatsby to screen it as a possible book to teach next year. After we went swimming, Maggie and I came home and made basil and cilantro pesto with gnocchi, chicken Kiev, and a mixed berry pie (with raspberries from our garden and blueberries from the Amish). It was very nourishing to both body and soul... I love to cook but I get to do it far too little.

Sunday morning was church, then we came home for a leftover gnocchi and roast dinner. I spent the afternoon alternately napping and rereading Wuthering Heights (another potential teaching book). I was napping when everybody else left for church, so I stayed home, lol. It was SO HOT Sunday, so once the sun went down Maggie and I took a swim in the pool to cool off before bed. The stars were quite bright, even with a gorgeous half-moon, and the fireflies were thick and bright and close and felt like living stars around us. :) We enjoyed stargazing and then cloudgazing when the clouds rolled in (beautiful non-stormy clouds that had gorgeous patterns to them and were almost as much fun to watch as the stars!).

It was supposed to be a killer hot day today, but it wasn't as bad as I expected... Abigail and I threw a tea party for her dolls and toys and one very naughty toy lizard who kept biting the toes of all the toys and eating up all the cake, and had to be put in the mailbox for punishment (do you see yet why I lovelovelove my job?!), then we played on the front porch with her bubble machine and the two kitties, Sharon and Cocoa Puff. the kitties jump from the garden boxes to the porch and back again with great agility, and Abigail has decided they jump like Tigger. She is forever asking me to "make" them bounce like Tigger, and how do you explain to a 2 year old that nobody makes a cat do ANYTHING, lol? :) After playing for awhile we picked up the cousins and went to the indoor playground at McDonalds. We were going to go to the big outdoor playground but the heat was getting to be a little much, though it still doesn't feel as bad as Sunday was. Abigail napped all afternoon, and Chris came home a little early, which was a nice surprise treat. I spent the afternoon in the pool, soaking up the sun and trying to read (this time C. S. Lewis' Of Other Worlds). A big horsefly kept trying to land on me, and I kept trying to swat him away, and I finally quit when I accidentally reflexively dunked my book into the water trying to swat him.

After dinner, the rest of the family went off to get hay bales, and Maggie, Ruth, and I (who couldn't help due to allergies or injuries or both, lol) ducked up the street for a slushie. I swear I am on a slushie kick lately. On the one hand I feel sooo guilty about it, because it's basically just frozen sugar-dye-water, but on the other hand, I haven't had a slushie in YEARS, and once I'm done with my little addiction I probably won't have one for YEARS more. I'm more inclined to just go with it. Wawa just got a mango-passionfruit flavor which is driving me BONKERS! I love it! Unfortunately that flavor was being defrosted when we got there so we had to settle for cherry, which isn't half as good. :( If I thought Natalie wouldn't murder me for it, I'd take Abigail and go get one tomorrow. :)

I had to take my truck in yesterday to my mechanic, Rob, for him to look at the AC system. I had it in for repairs a while ago and when I first got it back, it worked great, but over the last few weeks it's just gone downhill until it's barely blowing at all (I thought it was still cooling some, but Rob told me that in his opinion, it wasn't working at all). They called me tonight and told me that the part that pulls moisture away from the AC unit (the driver, maybe? he told me but clearly I've forgotten, lol) was shot through with holes and is useless. I'm a little bit annoyed that he didn't catch this when I brought it in and told him to figure out what was wrong with the AC and to fix it, whatever it was, but oh well. The repair bill is going to come to almost $400, so there goes any fun money I may have had this month. Boo. Strangely, I'm actually so excited about getting my AC working again that it kind of takes the sting out of the bill. I guess this is good. Abigail does NOT like Maggie's car (which I borrow whenever my truck is in the shop) so I know she will be excited, too.