Quieting And Calming Down

Back to reality as I am up at 6:00 in time to see the sun break through the clouds, briefly, on the beginning to a warm morning, 64º, and day, a high of 87º.  It's not our favorite kind of Chautauqua Lake day.  At least the lake has settled down, the weekenders have gone home, and the lake is practically empty of any action at the moment.  What a contrast to 4th of July weekend.

6:01

6:21

It was a sad making Tuesday morning, as my sister, Ellen, and her family headed home.  We did, fortunately, have a nice, relaxing morning with them, however, as her daughter, Julia, and husband, Hampton, wanted to make all of us a special breakfast called Shakshuka.  It was great, as are any eggs that are baked in the oven with tomatoes, peppers and spices, or the way Evie makes it, with garlic spinach.  So we were able to enjoy one last breakfast al fresco before both families packed up and left around 11:00,  As usual, it was like letting air out of a balloon, as we walked back into an empty and quiet house.  And nothing had to be done right away, so we both took it easy for awhile but, like always, the leisure was killing us, so we got busy for a bit, cleaning up the kitchen, the bedrooms, but we were not crazy about straightening up.

A Final Kitchen Photo

Breakfast, A Tunisan Shakshuka

A Farewell Breakfast

I watched some tennis, did some reading, had a lunch of leftovers, before we decided (yes, we are crazy), we needed a new refrigerator.  What else do you do when you are bored...shop, spend money. It's something we have been putting off but there seemed like a great deal at Home Depot and I had already checked it out and thought it was perfect for our needs.  The problem is, however, the new refrigerator is 3 inches wider than our old one, which meant a two foot wide wood panel needs to be taken down and some minor carpentry done.  So we called our builder and friend Jerry, and he came over within 10 minutes, measured the wall, decided what kind of filler was needed, drove over to our cabinet guy at Chautauqua Brick and ordered what we needed.  Talk about great service!  So the new refrigerator search was on.  Around 3:00, after enjoying some sun time, we drove off to Home Depot.  We walked in, saw the refrigerator that was on sale, and Evie loved it, just what she wanted.  Within 15 minutes, we walked out with the papers for a new Samsung refrigerator, to be delivered to our home a week from this Friday.  We never have made a decision this quickly or easily, so we must have been on something, a family overload or rush from the weekend. We then stopped at Wegmans to pick up a few things for dessert, strawberries and buttermilk biscuits.

We were home in time to enjoy another hour of sunshine on the dock and go for a swim before coming in to enjoy a glass of wine on our empty, quiet porch.  Fortunately, it was another perfect evening on the lake, a clear blue sky and lake.  For dinner, we had pea meal bacon sandwiches, with eggplant and tomatoes which was a perfect combination, pork and eggplant.  And we had an Evie special for dessert, buttermilk biscuits, with marinated strawberries, and hand whipped  cream.  We watched another Real Time but both of us were really tired so we went up to bed earlier than usual.