Day 2

Day Two

We went for lunch at Rumor's in Cullman

I had the turkey and provolone with cranberry honey mustard sauce and a bag of sea salt and vinegar chips!

Matt and Jacki checked e-mails...

Afterward, we drove on down to the Mulberry Fork to check out tubing conditions for later this summer. I found them to be perfect! Fast water, not too deep and very clear.

This is the point where we would get out of the river.

The arrow shows the put-in place, about 2 miles upstream. There is parking and easy river access at both points.

The last thing we did was head to the Shrine for a little while.

Visits

Last night, we went to the airport to pick up our long-time friend, Jacki. She flew in from the Cayman Islands to stay a week in Alabama...in July. That's love.

We are off today to have lunch and sip tea and do other fru-fru things that good southern women engage in. I am pretty sure I can fake it.

Within One Mile

Jake and I drove 'around the block' today and got these within a mile of the house, on the way back from the video store.


Soybeans

Airplane hangar

The airport.

Flurr!

When I was a kid, I lived with my Daddy after the divorce and he would say, "Did you sweep the flurr?" He was capable of saying 'floor', but chore-related, it was flurr. Daddy has a dual vocabulary for many things. He is actually quite smart, he has a degree in theology and one in entomology. Bugs don't have souls.

But that is not my point, my point is, I am redoing the kitchen floor and inside my head, it is the kitchen flurr. Here are the before shots:

And here are the 'between' shots:

There is a baseboard missing, it was easier to paint with it gone.

The plan now is to seal the base layer and then have friends over to paint designs on the floor and seal those. I can't decide between a big 'quilt' and individual patterns or a tree and everyone add leaves and birds and bugs to a branch or just let everyone paint whatever they want anywhere they want. Like a big mosaic/mural. That would be best, but I can't get everyone I know in the kitchen at once to paint in tandem, it would be very chaotic and things would be stepped in and on. So maybe the squares would be easier. I would be able to seal them off as they are finished.

It's a work in progress, the only kind I seem to have. : )

Summer Doldrums...

It's hot here in the 4-way stop town I live in. My dogs have dug up half the bushes in the yard making wallows for themselves in the shade. Each day they dig a little further down, exposing fresh cool earth for hot bodies. The cats arrange themselves like bearskin rugs, bellies down on the cement porch, eyes slitted against the glare and they barely move all afternoon.

Not much going on, the grass has stopped growing so fast and there is a lull in the frenzy to keep that jungle at bay. We spend our days indoors or up to our necks in other people's pools. We use sunscreen and bug spray, eat peaches and peanuts raw, go barefoot all day and lounge around watching old movies or reading stretched out in front of a box fan.

The kids are more subued, school time has lost the drama it normally envokes and they all sit and do their work, pens scratching paper as they work on a poem or journal entry or practice some math facts. Or listen to me read quietly, their usual jitters and shuffling gone. It's an odd stretch of days, these dogs days of summer.

Not that we have not been busy, I have taken advantage of my captive audience and gotten closets and dressers cleaned out, bookshelves purged and toys sorted. We have cleaned and painted and rearranged things in the house.

It feels like a time of waiting, the humid air damp with the promise of something more, the cooler mornings and evenings a relief. Maybe it's that expectations are lowered in the heat, suddenly a popscicle is about the best thing there is. Simple pleasures, fresh fruit, lazy afternoons. I love summer.

July Marches On!

Lunch play days, swimming, playing at home and repainting the floor. Summer days are great!

Splash

We went to Heather's twice last week to partake of her pool and hospitality.

The Ghost of Swimsuits Past