A Chilly, Forty Eight Degree Morning

6:47

6:50

I slept in some, till 6:45 or there about, which felt good...no waking around 5:00.  It's chilly outside, not a surprise as the papers have been talking about 'fall in July' for much of the eastern part of the United States.  We both love this kind of coolness, if it does not come accompanied by rain but our kids start arriving today, so we are not too happy about the cool weather, especially the forecast for some rain.  It does seem that every time our son Tom and family visit, the weather cools and we all get out our fleeces.  I remember our first summers here at the lake, in the 1980's, usually in August, when a typical day was in the 60's or 70's, never hot like the past five or ten years.  I am not saying it's global warming because I wouldn't want to disagree with the marvelous trifecta from two years ago of Sarah Palin, Herman Cain, and Rick Perry, the cream of conservative politics.

We got lots done yesterday, never stopped really until around 5:00 in the afternoon, getting things ready for this evening, when our son Tom and family arrive and tomorrow, when Beth arrives with her family and the fun begins.  It took Evie most of the morning to get our room ready for the girls, all four of whom sleep on the floor in our bedroom.  It takes moving our clothes out of our dressers, for the girls to use, then dragging in mattresses and blowing up air mattresses, then arranging pillows around the wall, leveling out the huge bed, then finding away to put on sheets, then covers and quilts . Before that, we moved all the furniture off to the side, vacuumed, and by early afternoon, our room was ready for our granddaughters.  Needless to say, they love the huge mattress for four, spend a large part of the day on it.  It sounds easy but it's not.  While Evie worked on our bedroom, I spent a good hour and a half on our brick walk way, edging and weeding, a thankless task but it looks much better once done. I helped some upstairs, vacuumed the bedrooms, moved all my clothes into the attic, so now the upstairs is ready except for the air conditioners, which we will put in today.

Food wise, I sliced up the brisket, and Evie made a gravy to put over it, and we packed it up and froze it for Saturday night.  Evie also made another soup, mushroom barley, another one of our favorites, and I snuck some for my lunch.  We also bought a new tube for the kids, and I got out the air compressor and blew it up.  It's supposed to handle four but from the looks of it, two sounds about right.  Let's hope it lasts a couple of summers.  I went to Mayville mid afternoon, picked up a chicken from the Lighthouse for dinner.

Around 5:30, we relaxed on the dock with a beer, Evie intending to take a swim.  But after a half hour, it was so cool and breezy that we decided to go in and finish our beer on the porch.  We got out the Utz pretzels, some thing we both have started to really enjoy with a beer.  Our dinner was easy, baked potatoes, chicken and a salad.  We watched Stewart and Colbert, what else, and Evie cut up some peaches for dessert.  I couldn't wait to go upstairs to read as I am enjoying my new book, Fourth of July Creek, even though it's depressing so far, as Pete, the main character and a social worker, visits unbelievably sad, poor, often violent and dysfunctional families, all living in the mountains of Montana. My hope is that 'alls well that ends well.'

As I write this, Evie's already busy, making hard boiled eggs, boiling noodles for a tuna macaroni salad, perfect for lunches, corn chowder, homemade blue cheese dip and snickerdoodles, the boys favorite cookies.   We are going to make one last trip to Wegman's and Sam's later today, to pick up whatever we have forgotten from our other trips.  Probably the last thing that needs to done is cutting the lawn and, of course, Evie will take care of that.