Into October

I returned from my late September retreat to a newly-revamped bird & squirrel feeder outside my kitchen window. I returned to continued mild weather, making a very green Autumn. I returned to a mound of firewood needing to be stacked (a seasonal favorite; no joke). I returned to just enough crisp in the air to justify the dusting off of my most delicious stew recipes.

I also returned to a scary call-back for a second mammogram and ultrasound (they found nothing but exceptionally dense breast tissue, thank goodness). And... after a few brief weeks of transitioning back to normal life, there was a fatal hard drive crash that ended everything abruptly.

With a family vacation on the calendar for the next week, all I could do was take the failed hard drive to the Geek Squad and pray for the best. Normally a faithful monthly backer-upper, I had lapsed in my good habits for months. Meaning master copies of any new design and financial records were under threat of being lost forever. Re-creating them would have taken weeks of my time, so I paid the big bucks for the highest chance of retrieval, packed my suitcases for vacation and tried to leave the worry behind.

Summer Break: Week Three

The week started out so stinking hot it made every part of me hurt. Not really, I don't suffer from chronic pain, so I don't want to make light of that statement. But heat and Beth do not mix well. And since the heat comes so rarely to our part of the world, most people don't have air conditioning. I make do by hanging quilts over all of the West-facing windows, basically turning the house into as dark and cool of a cave as possible. It always works well for the first day or two, but by the third and fourth day of a heat wave, it's pretty much impossible to bring the house down under 80 degrees. Which does not make me a happy girl.

Enter the new swimming pool. Which is still so cold from all of that well water, that thirty minutes soaking in it chilled me to the bone. Afterward, sitting in an 80 degree house, it took 3 hours for my feet to warm back up. It feels good knowing that I now have a legitimate coping mechanism for heat waves. :D

Other than trying to stay cool, there was VBS to take the kids to, and the usual errands to run. The Farmboy took the week off and started tearing the nearly-20-year-old deck off of the back of the house. We ate in the front yard almost every night and tried to relax as much as possible. I even dialed my work back quite a bit, only taking two runs into town to mail orders, and only answering the most pressing emails.

I ate the first blueberry of the season and showed up to band practice wearing the same shoes as the others (minus one) (yay for Converse!). There were two giant Jackfruits at the local Grocery, which impressed the kids. And I got to end the week with a tea date with my Mama and two Sisters and one highly squeezable Nephew.