A Touch Of Cool

6:51

I was up at 6:00, on the dot, the sun having just risen, hidden by clouds, a much cooler morning, 64º, a relief from heat and humidity of the past few days.  In fact, today's high is only in the mid 70's, so we can turn off those air conditioners.  A chance of thunderstorms in the morning and then it looks like three days of sunshine and pleasant Chautauqua like weather.

Halle, Our Youngest

Yesterday was hot and humid, from the get go,  more uncomfortable in the house than out despite the fact that we close windows, trying to keep it cooler inside then out.  It did not seem to work because anytime I walked in from out doors, I seemed to wilt.  Give me the winter (but not the below zero winter)! Our son Tom was at the lake and flying his daughter Marlena back to KC, so they only had the morning to enjoy the lake.  So once the whole gaggle of granddaughters was up, we got busy enjoying the lake.  I kayaked and swam, in fact, before anyone was up because it was such a great morning on the lake and I wanted to beat the heat.

Hayden, Our Jock

Around 10:30, I drove Hayden over to Bemus for her three miler, up Lakeside Drive, and I took a bike ride through Long Point Park and Lakeside Drive while waiting for her.  It was much warmer than her previous run so she looked a little like a wilted flower when she got back to the car.  She deserved a coffee frappe, I figured, from the local coffee shop, to bring her back to life, a smile to her face.  It worked.  We then went to the library, to pick up a book I reserved called THE CARTEL, by Don Winslow, a book about the Mexican drug cartels and the US's unsuccessful and costly war on drugs.  It got good reviews in the NYtimes.

Tubing In The Morning

Marlena and Marisa

While we were in Bemus, Tom and Evie took the girls out tubing, again a perfect morning for it.  They came in just as we returned, and it was time for lunch, or snacks, of something as the girls seem to constantly want something to eat but then don't eat much of their major meals, preferring I guess to graze.  Hey, it's vacation, right.  Tom and I watched some of the British Open while finishing off the leftover English cut, the girls helped Marlena get ready for her plane ride.  They left at 2:00, much to our dismay, as we are now down to three granddaughters here at the lake.  The girls, now that Marlena was heading home, got the bright idea to clean their room, a la Kondo style.  In fact, Marlena packed her bag, loving the Kondo method for folding her clothes, saving so she said, lots of room. Their room was cleaner, more organized than Granny's.

Marisa Missing Marlena

We then spent the rest of the afternoon on the dock, swimming and enjoying the dock, the only cool place on Chautauqua Lake.  Around 5:00, we got out soft drinks for the girls, beers for Evie and me and took a before dinner cruise, again enjoying the breeze out on the lake, cooling things off.  Around 6:30, I drove into Erie to pick up Mitch and Beth while Evie and the girls had dinner.  It was great to have the family together again.  We let the girls watch their show, The Fosters on TV while the rest of us sat in the living room talking, planning the next couple of days until the Albarrans fly home to Dallas.  It was a good end to the day.

The Quiet Before The Storm (Awakening Grandchildren)

6:30

Dusk

Evie and I are sitting here on a Monday morning and it seems like old times, actually two weeks ago. The sun has fought its way above the clouds, we are listening to NPR, drinking coffee and the house s silent.  Wow.  Not for long I know but it seems strange, just the two of us...uh oh...just heard a creaking of an upstairs bed! It's now 8:30 and the house is scary quiet.  Where are those grandchildren; Evie and I are getting bored!

Perusing 2014's Photo Album With Uncle Tommy

Yesterday was another 'close' day, temperatures and humidity in the 80's, sticky and uncomfortable whenever we tried to do something inside, like cook breakfast or dinner, wash clothes, straighten up the house.  It was, however, pleasant enough outside, especially in the water, the only sensible place to be during the heat of the afternoon.  Our days are becoming predictable, girls rising late, hanging out in the living room until they are saturated with videos.  They then arise, hungry, wanting some breakfast and Evie responds, usually pancakes on good days, cereal when tired.  Tom, who had flown into Cleveland at 3:30 a.m. on Saturday night, drove to the lake and arrived around 12:30, tired but happy to see Marlena and the rest of the gang.

Loving The Lake

Marlena And Her Dad

Tom immediately took the girls out on the dock and jumped in the lake.  Evie and Hayden, then, took off to Tops in Mayville, to replenish some of the supplies for the week, for dinner, like three more half gallons of ice cream.  I don't think it was Hayden's influence.  We then alternated between the house and the dock, with naps, especially for Tommy, because of his late arrival in Cleveland.

Around 4:00, when some wind picked up, Tom and I took the girls tubing, going round and round in circles, trying to get them some waves and bounce which they love, screaming with fear and excitement at the same time.  While we tubed, our eldest, Hayden, the good girl, actually took a run in the heat and did some of her workout.  She must have her father's DNA, his Special Forces discipline because I certainly was not that way as a youth.

Relaxing in the Shade

We had another one of our kids favorite dinners, an English cut or chuck roast a couple of inches thick or more, marinated for at least twenty four hours in a soy/worcestshire/lemon/ marinade, then thrown on the grill and burnt on both sides for about 40 minutes. The outside is charred, inside rare and tasty though a bit chewy because it's a chuck roast.  Tommy devoured it, as did the kids.  We also had a large bowl of local corn which no one ate to start with but by the end of dinner, most of it was gone.

Around 8:00, the night and lake were so spectacular that we took a long boat ride down to Whitney Bay, across to Sunset Bay and home.  The sky was amazing, the air cool and pleasant, and the girls even seemed to enjoy it though to them, it was probably like a Sunday afternoon drive was for Evie and me with our parents.  Evie went crazy taking photos because it was such a beautiful evening, to the amusement of Tom and me, the seeming annoyance of the grandchildren.

Boating On A Sunday Evening With Grandparents

Dad With His Daughter

We were home in the dark,  and we all grabbed seats in the TV room and started watching THE HELP.  Evie dished out bowls of ice cream and all were  happy but tired.  We made it through half of the movie before going up to bed and best of all, no fire alarm went off last night and we all had, I think, a good sleep.

Tom  and Marlena have a 6:30 flight from Cleveland to Kansas City today, so they will be able to enjoy the lake this morning and early afternoon.

Hayden, 14 Years Old  In August

Marlena, 12 Years Old

Marisa, 12 Years Old In August

Halle, 10 Years Old

Out Of Gas/ Batteries Low

8:20

It's 8:20, and a beautifully sunny morning, warm like yesterday, the high in the 8o's with mega humidity, great for boating but not sleeping.  Strangely, few boats are out on the lake but there is action in the neighborhood.  Only Evie and Marlena are up, the rest still sleeping.

Yesterday, as the title suggests, everyone kind of loss their mojo, so for much if not all of the day, we just stayed inside, no swimming, no boating, despite the fact it was probably the hottest day of the summer.  We had pancakes for breakfast, as good a way to start and at 10:30, we drove into Jamestown to get Marlena's ear checked out.  I took the girls on a brief tour of Jamestown, really brief, stopping at a neat little plant/pottery/jewelry store and the girls helped me pick out earrings for Evie.  We then went to Jamestown Skate, and I showed them their indoor skate board arena, really cool.  We hoped to go to the local art gallery but it did not open till 1:00.  We then met Evie at CVS to pick up a prescription for Marlena, which took  at least a half hour though the clerks were very helpful with the insurance.  We then stopped, as promised and begged for by Marisa, at Ryder's Cup for their frozen hot chocolates and other assorted drinks.  The girls loved them and no doubt will want to go back.

When we got home, the girls zonked out, and Evie and I put air conditioners in all the bedrooms because it was so uncomfortable inside the house. The girls got out their iPads and books and spent the rest of the day lounged on the living room couches, or up in their air conditioned rooms, content to just do nothing.  Evie and I felt the same way, so we wasted a good dock/boat day but we needed it to recharge our batteries.

Evie made a simple dinner of BLT's and chips for dinner, enough for the girls who had been snacking on and off most of the day.  We then watched an old movie, Corrina, Corrina, with Whoopee Goldberg which was 'appropriate' and the girls liked it as much as the popcorn and ice cream sundaes they ate while watching the movie.

We struggled to get them in bed early, but are never successful.  I think they finally settled down around 10:30 when our goal was around 9:30.  So we all slept soundly until 3:30 when our stinking fire alarm went off.  The girls hustled out of the house, frightened of course, and Evie found the breaker to turn it off.  We checked the house thoroughly but could find nothing amiss.  We thought it might have something to do with four air conditioners and fans so we turned them off.  And because the girls were still frightened, we made beds for them downstairs and Evie slept downstairs with them the rest of the night.  Three are still sleeping and only one, our early riser Marlena is up now, at 8:30.

Our son Tom was flying to the lake to fly home with Marlena tomorrow, but his flight was four hours late, arriving in Cleveland at 3:30 in the morning. So he got a hotel room and will drive to the lake later this morning.  Things have not been going well lately for us; they will get better.

A Saturday Like No Other

7:47

A Swim With Baba

Sisters

Up around 9:00, slept in, a sunny morning and warm; I am not sure how much the humidity well effect the day but it's in the air already.  Yuck

Shopping In The CI

Marisa and Halle

I will briefly describe yesterday because I am not in the mood to write much.  So, early I did various errands, hitting the bank Home Depot and Wegman's, a it was the last two days with the Albarrans so we wanted to do some special meals.  Unfortunately, Wegman's did not have the English cut I wanted, so when I got home, I drove to the Lighthouse for ground chuck and an English cut. When I got home the girls, as usual, were hanging out inside because it was not very inviting outside, cloudy with hints of rain.  Because of the gray day, I dropped Evie and the four girls off at the Chautauqua Institution.  They could get in free on a library pass, so they walked around their for an hour, stopped in the library, the bookstore, and did some shopping, each picking out a purse in a different color.  They had fun developing their shopping skills.

Leaving The CI

The rest of the day went like most others, checking on Mitchell, then convicting the girls to go outside and swim.  They eventually went kayaking with Granny, then swam some during the afternoon before I took them tubing around 4:30 as the sun began to peak out.  For dinner, we had burgers, cooked on the grill and local corn, with a salad and sides.  Afterwards, I took them to the local ice cream shop, just up the road in Stedman, across the street from the coffee shop, seemingly in the middle of farm country and it was busy.  We had homemade ice cream cones from Addies, a famous ice cream shop on Findlay Lake.  It was good but hard to see if its anything special.

Doing The Tango

Twilight Paddle

A Night Swim On A Hot And Humid Night

Evie and the girls then went for a kayak paddle just at twilight, enjoying the last light of day and then taking a night swim before coming in for bed. Everyone was tired so we went to bed early.

After breakfast, we are headed to Jamestown's Urgent Care, as Marlena, we think, may have an ear infection and we cannot take a chance, so all of us are off to Jamestown.

Halle

Hayden

Picking Blueberries On A Fine Summer DayI

Photo By Mitchell On His Go Pro

7:15

I actually slept in, till 6:40, a seeming miracle, and came down to an empty coffee pot.  So I made the coffee, went outside to take a photo of the morning, nothing exciting, and came in to relax with my computer.  It's 61º out, a partly cloudy sky, with a chance of precipitation late in the day.  The martins are busy, noisy, taking care of their babies, and a heron, gangly and huge, just alighted with amazing skill on a dock, a miracle of nature.  And a paddle boarder just skimmed by, a guy in a life jacket, hat, and shorts, not something we usually see this early.  He makes it seem easy, perhaps it is.

Yesterday was the perfect day on the lake, sunny, blue skies, a whiff of a wind, warm enough to be in a bathing suit, but not so warm that you had to come in and get out of the sun.  The girls slept in till 9:00, which they need, having had a busy Wednesday.  It was so nice early that I took a long kayak paddle, the lake smooth and blue, over to Long Point, to Wells Bay and back meeting our neighbors who were also out for a paddle.  The lake remains surprisingly quiet for a beautiful July morning but I am not complaining.  They will come.  

Ready For Blueberries

Halle Loves Her Granny

The Girls With A Blue Bucket

Around 10:30, we rounded the girls up and took them off to the blueberry farm we always visit, about ten minutes away.  In fact, Evie's photo album cover for this past summer, was taken picking blueberries. The fields opened less than a week ago so the peak is a week or two off, yet we found lots of large, lush berries.  We were greeted with hugs by Margaret and her husband, who we have come to know over the years.  There were two or three cars there when we arrived, about ten when we left, and one driven by our neighbors daughter, so Woodlawn was well represented.  The girls did not seem as in to picking berries this year, so we stayed for forty five minutes max, but walked away with eight pounds.  

Silliness Personified

When we got home, Beth went shopping, picking up some things we needed for dinner and Mitch and Hayden went to Turner's, to work out.  Good kids.  The rest of us hung out on the dock, swimming and enjoying the day, the girls once again making up games, practicing their dives, jumping on the floats.  And that's how our day went, enjoying the water for an hour, coming inside to get something to eat or relax with a book or iPad, then back out to enjoy the sun.  We went tubing around 3:30, my boat still not up to snuff though the girls loved it.  As I mentioned, the boat seems to have no guts, goes slow.  Well, I decided to wash the hull and found the bottom filled with tiny shells of some sort, not algae but like little grains of sand.  I worked on getting them off, sometimes submerging myself under the hull.  And guess what, the boat ran normally, so all the angst about the engine really wasn't the engine, but the hull's surface which slowed us down.  What a relief.

Beth's Art Class

The Whole Gang

Around 4:00, Beth got out the paints because the girls seemed bored with swimming, and we all sat in the shade, on the picnic table, painting rocks, a perfect way to end the afternoon.  The kids are amazingly creative whereas I had no inspiration, embarrassed by my efforts at rock art.  We spent a good hour and a half, our neighbors, the Leonards stopping over, to admire our work.  Because the boat was fixed, or rather clean, the girls wanted to tube again, so around 6:30, we went out for another bout of tubing, the girls loving it when I went in circles, forcing them to jump over waves, close to but not falling out.  It was great fun just watching them scream and laugh.  

Rock Art

When we got in, the spaghetti dinner was already on the plates, so the girls hustled out of their suits, threw all the wet stuff down by the dryer, and sat down to eat a tasty spaghetti and meatball dinner, with a great Evie salad and Beth's garlic bread.  Everyone was starved yet we have quite a  bit leftover for lunches.  We did not finish eating until around 8:00, so we decided to watch a movie we had saved from HBO called Parenthood, which we thought would be a good family movie.  Wrong! The plot was familial, about a father's angst over his introverted son's unhappiness, but in between the plot lines were some fairly vulgar intimations, not something for your grandchildren.  We never learn, thinking back on a movie, not realizing that there are parts which make it more than PG rated.

Baba Gets A Make Over

The movie ended after 10:00 but no one stayed to see the end.  So we ended the day around 10:30, happy with the cool night air, ready for a good sleep.  

The Big Chill (46º)

Cairns At 7:00

6:26

6:49

I was up just before 6:00, a foggy morning here on the lake, the steam rising off in the distance because of the cold air.  There's a  narrow cloud bank over the eastern shore, obscuring the sun but it will soon rise above it to clear skies. And a blue heron occasionally drops out of the sky, settling on our dock, looking for breakfast.  It's a beautiful early morning on the lake.

Barcelona Beach On Shores Of Lake Erie

Yesterday began at 7:30 for Beth and me, as we drove 15 miles north to Barcelona Beach, on Lake Erie, for our annual rock collecting excursion.  We spent a good hour, looking for that perfect rock, to paint or to use with a cairn.  It was a stormy, gray morning, a bit of a drizzle, the way we like it sometimes on a beach.  Afterwards, we went to Jack's Diner, just off the beach, a local place for breakfast.  Beth had the Barcelona special, eggs, home fries, sausage, and toast and I had a potato pancake, with sour cream and apple sauce, a strange item on the breakfast menu but it was delicious. I highly recommend it, lots of flavor from onions, egg, as well as potatoes. Yum.  On the way home, we opened up Portage Pie, four or five workers in the kitchen, getting ready for the day.  We bought a cherry pie for dinner, then went to the Lighthouse and picked up four pounds of thinly slice Delmonico steaks, for our teriyaki dinner.  And we could not forget Beth's favorite, pea meal bacon, so we picked up a pound of that and a dozen ears of local corn, the first of the year for us.

Getting In Shape For Cross Country

When we got home, the gang was up, on the couches, wrapped in blankets, on their iPads, with ear phones, watching or playing something.  It was not very inviting outside, so we relaxed until about 11:00 when it cleared up.  So, I drove Hayden, our soon to be freshmen in high school, over to Bemus so should could get in a three mile run along Lakeside Drive, in preparation for cross country season.  I rode my bike back and forth as she ran, so we both got a workout.  Afterwards, we stopped at Wired On Main, the neat coffee shop and boutique in Bemus and Hayden got some kind of coffee frappe.  She loved it. When we got home, the cupboards were bare, meaning all the girls and Evie were off to the petting zoo and campground store.  They were gone until at last 1:00, when they came home and all had some of Evie's corn chowder soup.

The Girls Are Back

The rest of the afternoon was spent outside, off and on, the girls swimming for 10 or 15 minutes in the cold windy air, before coming in to warm up and read or play on their iPads.  Mitch and I built cairns, so we now have four in our front yard.  Evie started getting things ready for Hawaiian dinner, having already made a macaroni salad and put the Delmonico steaks in the teriyaki marinade.

Late Afternoon Swim With Granny

Cozy Cousins

The McClures arrived around 6:00 for dinner, to the delight of the girls, who love seeing them.  We all sat on the front porch, with beers and wine, cheese and crackers, and enjoyed the late afternoon. While we were sitting there, the girls got the crazy idea of going for a swim, so three of them put on their suits and went for a dip in the cool air.  With hardly a hesitation, they all just dove in, loving the water, us watching them swim.  Around 7:15, Mitch and I went out and grilled the steaks, each taking about two to three minutes because they are only a quarter of an inch thick, the way we had our steaks when living in Hawaii.

Dinner With Linda and Ron

Then, ten of us sat around the table, hungry and happy, devouring the steaks, macaroni salad (a must on a Hawaiian plate lunch), salad, and corn.  The meal ended with all of us sitting on the couches, eating either brownies or cherry pie with ice cream, a good way to end the evening.  McClures went home around 9:45 and Evie then hustled the girls up to bed, with little problem as they were all tired from their swimming and hike to the campground.

Looking At The Photo Albums With Linda Hepp

Today is going to be sunny but cool, high in the mid 70's, a perfect day for both the dock and going blueberry picking.