Take Five

Cousins Rock

7:29

7:30

It's 7:20 and I have been up for an hour, seemingly the only one in the house.  Everyone else is sleeping in although I just heard gunshots echo over the lake and the hunters are up and out.  It looks like a wet New Year's Eve, much like the past week of drizzle and changing weather patterns.  And as I look out my window, there's a vivid pink/orange glow over Tom's Point, signaling the sun's slow rise. 

Yesterday seemed like the day after, whatever that suggests.  All I know is we started the day with twelve, Mitchel left at 3:45, Jill and family at 8:00, and Mary and Marlena at 11:00 and then we were five. 

Mary, Off To Kansas City

Marlena, The Beauty

So the ambiance changed from activity, at times chaos, to one of quietness and calm.  It was hard to adjust to this seeming emptiness although there were still five.  We did get busy, especially Evie, putting the house back in a semblance of order, getting the kitchen and refrigerator back into good shape, vacuuming, and reorganizing the bedrooms, putting away the extra mattresses we no longer needed. It's a good way to keep your mind off of the families leaving the lake, probably until next July. Everyone helped out, so we were back to normal house wise by 11:00.

Around 11:30, Evie and Beth made up a shopping list and took off for Wegman's for the first time since Thursday and Marisa and Tyler went to workout, leaving me home alone. I did not know what to do with myself, having been left by the gang.  So I did what I usually do on Sunday afternoons, watched football and had a lunch of two Slovenian sausages sandwiches with horseradish.  Soon tiring of football, I read, fell asleep on the couch, only to wake when the shoppers returned home with the groceries.  

Kayak Afternoon

One of our grandson Tyler's favorite Chautauqua lake meals was barbecued chicken with noodles, so Evie got busy poaching the chicken, getting it ready for barbecuing outside on the grill.  Early afternoon, all five of us went our ways.  About 3:00, however, the sun came out briefly, enough of a spur to get me to grab a paddle, boot on my boots and go for a paddle on a partially frozen lake.  I was able to find a path through the ice out and in and it another fine afternoon to be on the lake, a solitary paddler, the sun shining through the trees, warming me on the lake.  

A Partially Frozen Lake Front

Kayaking Into The Sun

When I returned, the gang wanted to go to the Reverie Creamery, an excellent cheese shop just up the hill from us.  We spent 15 minutes tasting different cheeses and came home with two the creamery makes, Luna and Tom and one other, Camamilla.  When we returned home, Tyler and I barbecued the chicken and put it in the oven to keep warm while we had our cheese and wine time.  We liked all three kinds of cheese but the award-winning Tom was our favorite.

Dinner was just what Tyler wanted, a summer barbecue, chicken and noodles, salad and broccoli.  And best of all, we have leftovers for lunch.  We were not sure what to watch, so Tyler convinced us to watch the new Spike Lee movie, Blackklansmen, a good choice.  It was loosely based on fact, set in the 1980s, where a black policeman joined the Klan in Colorado Springs, with the aid of his department.  As a film, I would give it a B, worth watching, but by the end, it ended up being a political drama, clearly a criticism of Trump and his racial animus.  The film ended with clips from the Charlottesville Klan rally and Trump's speech about the 'good guys on both sides.'  It was after 10:00 by the time it was over and we had our dessert, a triple berry pie with ice cream, so four of us went to bed, leaving Tyler up to play his games with friends.
 

Baba At Rest