13 Hours

5:58

6:15

It's 7:00 and both Evie and  are up, sipping coffee, listening to the pundits diss Trump, even the conservatives.  He continues, however, to dominate the media, for better or worse as 8 of the 10 most read articles in the NYTimes today are about Trump.  Unfortunately, I don't think the Trump voters are listening (or reading).  They don't care that he lies (70% of the time according to Fact Checker), is a racist, a scoundrel, a blow hard, a narcissist.  I could go on but it doesn't matter to his voters; facts don't matter, qualifications don't matter.  Their affection, if that's the right word, is visceral, not rational.  It speaks to their gut.  And nobody, especially not the media, is going to tell them who to vote for.  Enough.  I feel better now.

It's a lovely morning, calm lake, light blue skies with some cloud cover, a chilly 47º but it will get up to the 60's later in the day.  The boys should arrive about 8:00 or 9:00, approximately 13 hours from now.  Scary.  Three teenage boys for a week!

Yesterday flew by, and I can hardly think what we did.  I started the morning by washing the windows facing the lake.  Evie loves clean windows and now they are spanking clean.  Evie was busy in the kitchen, making lemon/ricotta cookies, getting the bedrooms and bathrooms ready, and making a final shopping list for Wegman's.  I put another buoy in the water, just to make sure our swimming area remains boat free.  And I then vacuumed all four bedrooms after Evie dusted.  And I cleaned out a closet in the small, back bedroom, so the boys will have room for their clothes.  So that was our fun morning here at the lake.  And this sort of exercise happens every time we have visitors.  I can't understand it.  Evie wants the house clean and neat for our guests. -- go figure.

For lunch, I had tuna salad on a bagel, watched some of the Cavs game, quickly got bored and finished lunch and then read and took a nap.  Evie took it easy for part of the afternoon and went out on the dock to get some sun.  I joined her but wore a fleece because of the wind and chilly air. Neither, however, stopped Evie from jumping in the lake for a refreshing swim.

Around 4:00, we took the final step in our preparation, the dreaded final grocery trip to Wegmans. Evie made up two lists, one for me, one for her, so once we arrived at the store, we went our separate ways. It saves time but I am always done before her, so I checked out my cartful, waited for her to finish her list, much longer than mine, checked her out and we then filled the car, both trunk and back seat.  We were exhausted by the end and thankfully, we had cancelled plans to go out to eat with friends.  We knew we would be out of gas by the end of the day.  So, for dinner, we picked up a mushroom man pizza at the Ashville General Store, then drove home and unloaded the car.  It took a good half hour putting things away and we still have a bunch of stuff sitting on our kitchen counters this morning.  We just said enough, sat down with a glass of wine, and relaxed until we got hungry.  The pizza was great, just what we wanted, and we relaxed and watched the final episode of The Americans, which left us, of course, wondering whether the family will flee to Russia or not.  No way and Philip's son showed up, so he will play a big part next year.

 I could not wait to get up to bed to read and Evie quickly followed.  Sleep, nothing like it when you are tired.