It’s hot! Temperatures in the 90’s with heat indexes well into the 100’s. Whew! Here are just a few ways some of us are coping.

Sam’s idea is to stretch out his body as far as he can for maximum cooling.

Alex’s advice is to stick your head under the tablecloth while eating outside to shield your face from the sun. Also lay with your back legs spread in frog-style to keep the belly cool.

And here is the best way to cope that I know of. Stay inside in the air conditioning until the sun goes down. Jump in.

Those my thoughts yesterday as I bobbed around the pool. What a perfect day for it! Blue sky, hot and slightly humid, cicadas starting up. The pool temperature was perfection! Here is Rick before I nabbed his hat.

We did get up early though and go into the Warwick Farmer’s Market. It’s a great drive in Mia over all the back roads.

The rest of the day was spent around the pool. Here’s to lazy summer days!

Side note: I know it’s not the Panama Canal but at least it’s something!

Really, I do. I need something or someone to kick start me back to blogging on a more regular basis. Every time I sit down to compose the entry on the Panama Canal I end up staring at my brand new HD computer screen. No words come. I end up playing one of my “hidden object” games instead and zone out for an hour or so. What is wrong with me? Summertime blues? Sheer laziness? Maybe a little of both. To quote one of the blogs I read every now and then, her excuse for not blogging was that “I guess I am living the life instead of blogging about it.” That about sums it up for me, but mine is pretty boring.

My camera is gathering dust. I did go to the Botanical Gardens a week or so ago and what you see in this entry is the result of that visit. But there wasn’t much to aim the camera at and I threw away all but a few of the photos that I did take. I am in a rut there too.

Yesterday I read a book. One whole book in one whole day. (It was a light read.)

Let’s see ... what else have I done?

Last week Rick and I went to a “gala” reception at the Lincoln Center in New York City. We got dressed up, had a nice dinner and then went to the event. A lovely night! Going in to the city is always exciting and fun. Such energy in those sidewalks filled with people!

At home we’ve been enjoying the pool which is now above 80 degrees and very comfortable. It’s not even the weather that is making me lazy as the days have been sunny and warm. Delightful. Our last rain/thunderstorm was a week ago.

The fireflies are far and few between now but the cicadas have started up ever so slowly. In fact, as I type there are two going out there now. Ah, the sound of summer.

We have at least three bats in our winnowed-down bat population. They swoop and dip over our heads when we take our nighttime swims. It’s good to see them.

The turkeys bring their cute little babies around almost every day—the end result of all that turkey sex in my front yard this spring. Sometimes just one of the hens with her brood will show up, while other times it looks more like a turkey day care center and all ten or so of the babies.

I also went with neighbor Kim this week to see a litter of six week old Irish Terrier puppies that they will getting a new puppy from. The breeder was halfway out on Long Island and I have to tell you that it’s a nasty drive! Yikes, I won’t be going out there again anytime soon. The traffic! The puppies were adorable though and it was nice to breathe in puppy breath and talk dogs again.

We also had a six o’clock a.m. visitor yesterday. We were still asleep when Alex started barking downstairs. It is not his norm to bark for no reason, so I got out of bed and looked out the front window. Nothing. Rick got up and took a look around too but he also didn’t see anything. After laying there for a fitful twenty minutes more I got up and went down to feed the dogs and cats. I looked out on the back deck and saw that one of the planter boxes that was on our deck railing had been knocked down and the poor petunias were out of their pots, the nearly indestructible Squirrel Buster Plus bird feeder pulled around in an abnormal position, the iron hanger it was on slightly bent. Okay, a bear for sure. A pretty brazen one too to come onto our high deck. It’s only happened twice before in our five years here that we’ve had bears on the deck. It’s not a good feeling. I have to say that I am more than impressed with this bird feeder. Not only do the squirrels not bother it but it held up to the bear mauling with not a scratch!

So, I go to feed the cats and eBay is nowhere to be found. I call her, searching high and low but I can’t find her. She is always ready to to eat so I figure something must be wrong. Finally I hear a tiny mew coming from the laundry room. When I pull out the washer, there she is. She ventures out very tentatively into the kitchen. She peeks around the corner into the sun room and out to the deck where the bear was with her eyes wide and her tail all puffed up. Aha! She saw the bear too and it scared her so badly she was hiding from it. Poor kitty! So, the bird feeder comes in at night and when I am not at home.

One of my daily routines is to water all the outside plants before taking a shower, check on the pool temperature and add chlorine every other day. I slip on a pair of shorts and t-shirt and head out with the watering can. It’s a nice way to start the day, especially with the weather we’ve been having. I don’t even mind if the humidity is high that time of the day. Bella usually helps me with this particular job. Every other day or so I’ll tip all the water out of her wading pool and refresh it. She loves this! The minute I start adding fresh water she’s in there wading around, scooping up mouthfuls of the cold water straight from the well.  I’ve also gotten into the habit of letting one of the dogs come with me out in the front as a special treat for them. No leash, just hanging out with mom while she waters. I check on the progress of the figs daily and I have to say I can’t wait until we can eat them.

You never know what you might see while watering. The little clearwing hummingbird moths have started hovering around as I water. I just love them! While I was watering the deck flowers the other day I found this moth clinging to the petunias. Isn’t it pretty? I have never seen this particular kind of moth before so I looked him up. I think it’s some kind of Sphinx moth—possibly a Virginia (hog) Creeper Sphinx Moth. No matter what it’s name is, it’s beautiful.

For those of you that I’ve talked to over the past week, I apologize for re-hashing all this boring, trivial stuff about my life again. Ho hum. Which brings me to another topic of conversation. I have no idea who is reading this blog anymore other than family members and a few close friends and those of you that comment from time to time (thank you Debra, Maggie & Joyce!). I get numerous “junk” comments every single day that I have to delete which is very disheartening. You should read some of them! They always include a link to whatever website selling some garbage. I am so very tired of them. It’s long been in my mind to make this blog private and if Rick can figure out how to do that without too much trouble on the part of anyone then we will do so. If you still want to read all you will have to do is sign up to be a member. You don’t have to comment, you can still continue to read as you’ve always done. The only change will be that not all those crazies out there will be able to read things about my private life anymore. Because this blog really is about my daily life. But, that’s all in the future and hopefully we can make it happen.

Okay, so I’ve sat here long enough this morning filling this entry up with boring tidbits, neglecting my watering duties which are calling me, so I will close this entry now. If you are still awake after reading this, bless you. Hopefully this will kick start me to finish my vacation blogging. Check back in a day or so to find out!

I had forgotten all about them. The little gold box of letters we found when we cleaned out my mom’s house after her death. Letters written by my father to my mother after he moved to Florida, while we stayed behind in New York preparing for the move. Letters written from March 1967 through April 1967; 10 letters in all. Letters also written by my father to my mother when he went back to Florida in 1980 to work and my mother stayed on in Colorado, spanning time from January 1980 through June 1980; 15 letters in all.

I came across the little gold Godiva chocolate box bound by a rubber band tucked away inside a box of miscellaneous old photos and memorabilia. I held it in my hands for a few minutes, debating. Do I read them? Yes? No? It would be like reading their personal diary, or at least my father’s side of things. A one-way window into the world of the adults that were my parents together, as a couple, and not just the"mommy and daddy” I was familiar with. Do I really want to know? Especially the 1980 period which might contain things I don’t want to hear about. That was in the middle of what I call my father’s “dark period.” I finally decided that I needed to read what my father had written all those years ago that made my mother keep them. After all, both my parents are gone now so I can no longer judge them for whatever might be written on all those folded pages neatly tucked inside their envelopes.

And so, the decision was made. I brought the little box of letters upstairs and sat down to read.

Bee balm in bloom.

We had a good weekend. Mostly the weather cooperated except for Sunday when we woke to rain and thunder, and it rained/drizzled for most of the day.

On Saturday we took Mia and drove down to Lake Mohawk near Sparta. The weather was picture perfect as is the boardwalk at the lake. Perfect temperature, blue blue sky, a slice of pizza for lunch.

Baby figs!

We ate well over the weekend:

BBQ baby back ribs, coleslaw, and homemade baked beans.

Goat shoulder tacos and sweet corn. For a more detailed description of the goat tacos, see Rick’s blog entry, Get your Goat, Part 2.

Frangipane fig tart (seen here before baking).

Yesterday’s lunch poolside: grilled eggplant sandwiches stuffed with goat cheese. The baby eggplants were sent via priority mail straight from my sister’s garden!

At last but not least, Papaya Margaritas! These were seriously good!

Yesterday was a good pool day and we spent most of the day either bobbing around the pool or sitting in the cabana reading. Even with the rainy Sunday (we needed some rain) I can’t complain one whit about our weekend. Hope yours was good as well!