Last night we decided to eat pool side. During the day we went to the local nursery and bought some flowers to liven up the pool area, so it’s really starting to look like a place where you’d like to spend some time. Rick cooked a great meal of Roasted Monkfish. The monkfish was wrapped in a layer of proscuitto that had been spread with a mixture of sun-dried tomatoes, basil, olive oil and cured black olives. It’s then served on top of a bed of arugula dressed with a vinaigrette. We had an ear of corn on the side. [Ed.note: The recipe for the monkfish can be found in Jamie Oliver’s cookbook, Happy Days with the Naked Chef.]

My contribution to dinner was setting the table. A la Martha Stewart, I went searching in my yard for a small bouquet or centerpiece. I came up with two strands of varying heights of fern, a leaf from a hosta, and a single stalk of yellow foxglove. I could never do this in Colorado!! I’ve decided I need more cutting flowers in the beds. Anyway, here is our Table for 2.

It was very pleasant, the temperature was absolutely perfect, and no bugs of any kind to spoil the mood. Sailor decided to get under the table and make us laugh by wearing the tablecloth like a nun’s wimple. He looks devilish, doesn’t he?

And here is another photo of the pool area complete with our new flowers:

GOBBLE GOBBLE! Just as I turned onto our street on my way home after running errands just now, a female turkey and two tiny turkey babies [okay, do you call them chicks? turklettes?] crossed the road in front of me. A very cute sight indeed. Sorry, no camera, no photo.

The calm surface of the water reflects the sunlight, waiting. The day is warm and sunny, but not too warm, around 75 degrees. I wade slowly into the shallow end, letting my exposed limbs get used to the cold water. As it reaches breast-high, I draw a large intake of breath at the shock of the coldness that far up on my body. Finally, I dip the rest of me below the water. AHHHH..nice temperature, not bad at all.

I kick off and swim the length of the pool. My passage through the water is nearly silent as I am doing the breast stroke. I roll over onto my back, throw my arms out with my palms uplifted to the sun, and just float. Floating reminds me of my childhood when we used to vacation in Florida with my grandparents. My Grandmother loved to float on her back, and she taught me the art of floating in the salt-laden, buoyant waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The technique still works today even without the salt.  I open my eyes and stare up into the blue sky dotted with puffy clouds. The clouds are wasting no time today as there is a nice breeze blowing, and they scud quickly out of my limited line of vision. I roll back over and swim the length of the pool in the opposite direction. Esther Williams I am not, but I make decent progress.

I make several more passes of the pool, varying my stroke. Already I am less out of breath than my first session on the weekend. Satisifed and relaxed after about a half hour, I swim to the steps and make my exit. The day is warm enough that I don’t feel the need to immediately wrap myself in a towel, or in the terry robe hanging over the chair, so I dry off by simply laying on the lounge chair in the sun. Time passes. I sit up with a start and look at my watch, which brings me back to reality with a thump as my book falls off my lap. Egads, is it that late already? Time to feed the dogs [who through all this have been shut in the house—What Bliss!]. My little “mini-vacation-at-the-pool” is at an end for today. [Ed.note: The book I am reading is Hollyhocks, Lambs and other Passions: A Memoir of Thornhill Farm by Dee Hardie {a flea market find}]

No…it’s not a misspelling on my part due to too much wine tonight. Don’t I wish. No, in fact, “Kimnapped” is a phrase coined by friends of my neighbor, Kim. When we went to their house for the Memorial Day BBQ, Kim had asked me to join them on a jaunt they were making to PA to a annual flea market. I regretfully declined the invite due to driving to NY to pick up Mom the day after the jaunt. It was going to be an all day thing, leaving at 7:15 and arriving home late in the afternoon. I just felt I couldn’t leave the dogs again for that period of time. Overhearing Kim and I talking about the approximate time we might return, one of her friends that I had just met nudged me and said, “Just so you know for future reference,” she whispered in my ear, “anywhere you go with Kim, be prepared to be KIMNAPPED. You never arrive home when you think you are going to. All bets are off.” Okay, I said as I stored that tidbit of info into my saturated brain cells. I’ll keep that in mind.

Yesterday I called Kim to thank her again for making us so welcome and to ask her where she bought her chili for the All the Way Hot Dogs. She said she had just tried phoning me only to find the line busy. What a coincidence! We agreed to have lunch today. Great, she said, I’ll pick you up and we’ll have lunch in Warwick. Where have you been already? I told her we hadn’t eaten out much just yet. She swung by my house at around 12:30 and we made our way to the quaint and very cozy town of Warwick, NY. [Home of the Sunday market in case you’re keeping track.] She had chosen a little French restaurant that Rick and I had spied on our last Sunday market day. Tucked away on a quaint street, the restaurant has outside bistro-style seating, and when we first came across it on market day, a couple were sitting outside sipping bowls of café au lait. Both Rick and I promised that next time we visited the market we were going there for breakfast! We had a nice relaxed lunch, and got to know each other a little better. We discovered that both of our husbands were out of town and frequently travelled. After lunch we went through the unique little shops that line the main street. Quite a few home decorating shops, a nice little shop offering fine writing papers and the like along with office supplies, some trendy little clothing boutiques, and lastly, a French bakery.

We got home around 4:00 p.m. There were 2 messages on my machine; both from Rick. The first one said well, you must be out scooping or having a swim, call me. The second message said, well either you’re out scooping or you’ve been Kimnapped, so call me when you get in. I have to admit, I would gladly be “Kimnapped” any day. It was a very enjoyable way to spend the afternoon. And it sure beats “out scooping” with the dogs! Kim and I vowed to check with each other as to when our spouses would be out of town and get together again for either lunch or dinner.

Oh, yes, a couple of things in closing.  Just for the record and to keep you all updated, nothing was done about our cable today. I called again tonight. I am starting to turn into the Cable TV Shrew. I hate this. And, it started to rain shortly after I got home, so no swim in the pool.

SIGH. No wonderful aroma of brewing coffee to awaken me this morning. You see, that’s Rick’s job as he usually prepares the coffee the night before and sets the timer on the coffee machine. But Rick is travelling for a few days and I forgot to make up the coffee last night. I miss him when he’s gone, and not just because of the coffee! The dogs did allow me to sleep a bit later, so that was good. It’s a pretty morning out there with a light coating of dew and the sun is out. No dogs have fallen into the pool in two days. These are things to be thankful for as I start a new day.

The cable TV is still not working. I know, I know, it’s so ridiculous. Today is day 12 without it. I have talked myself blue in the face and finally, I think I may have made a bit of progress with one of their supervisors last night.

They kept telling us we needed a new cable laid and we kept telling them the cable was not the problem. On Monday a very nice tech came out and had a brilliant idea. He ran a new cable on top of the ground from our box out front directly to both TVs, just to finally prove whether or not the problem was in the cable. It wasn’t. We still didn’t have any glimmer of the digital channels and the analog channels are so fuzzy you go cross-eyed just looking at them. He wrote down on the work order what he did and referred the problem out to another department. Herein lies the problem. Another great tech had come out the week before and told us that it was not in the cable but somewhere in the box, and no one read the fine print. All they saw was “referred to such-and-such”. No one was reading what the techs were putting on the work order!

So, last night when they put me through to yet another supervisor and he started smarting off about how I didn’t know what the problem was and to let him explain ONCE AGAIN that we needed a new cable, etc etc., I saw red. I felt like a bull does when the bullfighter waves a red cape in front of him. I blew up. I yelled in his ear “LISTEN TO ME FOR JUST ONE MINUTE!!!!!!” and proceeded to tell him about the experiment that we had performed just the other day. He said he had no knowledge of what I was telling him [what happened to the work order with all this explained?]. I asked him if he wanted a copy of MY work order since it spelled it out pretty plainly on mine. He said no thank you, I need to check this out with my field supervisor and I"ll call you back in 20 minutes. Yeah, right. But, the phone rang in 10 minutes and he started by apologizing to me and saying that I had been correct [you’re darn tootin’ I was!] and that the problem was in our box and he would have a crew out within 24 hours to work on the problem. HURRAY! That was a major breakthrough for someone to finally concede that the cable was NOT the problem. So, the saga continues. We’ll see what happens next.

On the bright side, I am going to lunch in Warwick with Kim [the neighbor from across the street] and that should be fun. After that, maybe a dip in the pool if the weather holds. We’re supposed to have t-storms later on, so swimming sounds like it won’t be possible.