ESPIONAGE!

 

I’m shocked, but sadly not surprised. He held meetings with Putin that he did not allow any witnesses in. He owes a lot of money and soon it will be much more. Can we really claim surprise?

Perfect Summer Day

It’s late now. Being after midnight, I suppose that technically it is early. And it's also technically tomorrow. So, yesterday morning I woke up, showered, put a load of laundry into the wash and left to go on a walk. 

The weather was perfect, sunny and warm just enough with a nice breeze. I thought about taking the bus into Sumner to browse the shops. But I was still stinging a bit from the trip I took to the beach. It was fine, but I really didn’t plan anything. So I showed up and after a while I noticed I was the only single person on the boardwalk. Then I started feeling self conscious, as if other people were watching and thinking I was creepy for being there alone. So I left after about twenty minutes. Today I stayed close to home. I went to the park and then wandered around town for a while. 

The walk was good for me. I walked until I was completely caught up in the feeling of the moment. With the warm day and cool breeze, the bounty of summer around me I was reminded of a hundred lazy afternoons in the sun. 

 

Itinerary

 

I looked for a sunrise picture on the beach and didn’t find one. Of course. The sun rises in the east. Sunrise on a Pacific beach isn’t going to be all that spectacular. It’s sunsets that are going to be the better picture. It makes sense. But part of me still is set for the east coast. 

I went to bed really early last night. I was exhausted. But now I am up extremely early this morning. And I must admit, I’m not sure what to do with myself so early. I’m not much of a morning person. I did it for all those years when I raised a family and worked. It was demanded of me. But very little is demanded of me now, and nobody cares what time I get up or go to bed. 

Today will be almost ideal weather wise. I should stay home and wash my clothes, but I think I’m going to catch a bus to the beach, maybe have fish and chips at Little Chinooks for lunch. 

As Seen On TV

Today is a beautiful day, 83° F with sunny skies and a gentle breeze. It is a little on the warm side, but it is August. 

Do you have any unusual routines that you use to get yourself to wind down at bed time? Some people read, but I'm the kind that reads to the end of the page, the chapter, oh Come On! I can't put the book down NOW! So it isn't really all that helpful. I can't tell you how many nights I have stayed up reading, knowing that I would have to pay dearly for it. But when my children were young, I used  to make up fairy stories to tell them at bedtime. And I would find myself nodding off too. Who knows what impact staying up the night before reading all night had on that process, but it did seem to work. 

Lately I have been watching the surveillance cameras in a nearby tourist town on YouTube and making up stories about what I see. The town is a family orientated vacation spot, so the nightlife is pretty tame. Even the brewhouse seems to close at midnight. But one night I was watching and I spotted four men run out of it in single-file, one right after the other.  Then suddenly a large crowd emerged from the nearby buildings and watched them run off up the street. There did not appear to be any police to stop them and after a while, the crowd just wandered back to wherever they came from. So that night I told myself a bed-time story about the men having been caught trying to steal from one of the travelers who was staying the night in the inn above the brewhouse. I never write the stories down, because that would break the bedtime story feel of it and keep my mind from winding down. 

Last night I was indulging in my routine, watching the tourist town on YouTube. I was about to turn the TV off and go to bed, when I spotted a man wheel a large dolly filled with boxes up to a door of one of the buildings I could see very well on my screen. What happened next floored me, and left me feeling quite disturbed. Beside the door stood an ornamental shrub that looked to be about four feet high. He tipped it slightly and rummaged around underneath it. Then he used the key he's all too obviously found there to let himself in through a different door. I can only hope they have a key lock box under that shrub, and not just a key lying out for anyone to find. But no, it was all too obvious that there is a key lying out under the shrub by the door....And a camera that broadcast live on YouTube exactly where it is and which door it works on.

Remember, the expectation is that if you are in public, you are being recorded.

Big Brother is watching.

Fever Break

This time last week I was gathering table cloths and towels to cover the east and west facing windows of the house. Tonight, the heatwave has broken. For the foreseeable future, we will have normal summer temperatures. A few of the days will be a little on the warm side, but oh so doable. The chance of rain is miniscule, I will be able to get out and view the damage done. I wonder if the heat killed every flower that bloomed. 

I was able to see the mountain when we went grocery store hopping this afternoon. It was visible despite the air quality being hazy. Unlike after the heatwave last year, it is still covered with snow. I did not stop to take a picture, it was just too hot.

This evening I gave the dog a bath and then took a shower myself. Bear was so happy that he grabbed the buckets that I had warm water in and tried to pour more on himself after he'd been thoroughly rinsed. That dog loves to be clean. He even let me trim his nails. I too, was happy to get a shower. I could feel the heat rinse away from my head and the ache that had been behind my eyes eased. It is so nice to smell decent and not feel sticky and oily. It is better knowing that it will be fourteen degrees cooler tomorrow. The dreadful heat is gone for now. 

Let There Be Coolness

One more day of incredibly hot temperatures and we will be through it. That is what I tell myself. It's what I hope. I hope tomorrow won't be as hot as expected. Does optimism count?

I've worked hard not to whine, but this is the sixth day of this dreadfulness. Mostly, I have stayed inside, moving fans around to accentuate the coolest airflow through the house. 

Karen and I were stir crazy enough yesterday to decide to take a field trip. At first she wanted to visit some garden. But she found out that it was more than an hour away and would close soon after we got there. We made the sane decision to wander more closely to home. We decided to visit several stores that are on the way to Enumclaw. The road winds through the Muckelshoot Reservation and farmland. The stores are more interesting than almost anything we have in downtown Auburn. There is a butcher where if I was so inclined I could purchase a side of beef or swine. They have lockers to store it in too. But it is great meat at decent prices. There is a farm store that sells fruits, vegetables and local selections of home made soaps and honey, greeting cards and Sasquatch paraphernalia . There is a flower shop, that is not to say a florist. But I would wager if you need flowers for a wedding they'd be able to handle it. How I wish we had something like this to walk to in our town. 

Tomorrow will be hot again. If I could only wish it away! And then it will get cooler. I so need it to be cooler.

Hot

The Puget Sound did not participate in last weeks Burn the Nation event. Our temperature was only in the 80's. We were fairly comfortable. We have vowed to make up for it this week. We were hoping that we'd done our stint in Hell last year when the glaciers melted off the snow capped mountain that overlooks our valley. We were overly optimistic. Global warming stops for no man. 

It is a good week to take it easy, relax with a cold hydrating drink. That is exactly what I am doing. In true southern girl fashion, I made a cold macaroni salad for us to have for supper and I have ice cold sweet tea in the fridge.  Keeping it cool friends.

Two Steps Back

 

We've had some sobering news. Three close friends have Covid. Coming on the heels of Mollie and Chris having had it too. We had already started wearing masks in indoor public situations. Now we are considering foregoing indoor public events again. So, no restaurants. theaters, etc. I suppose I should postpone my plan to begin travelling on public conveniences too. 

They are working on a new vaccine. It will be the same story though. Half the people here don't want it. Most of the world can't get it. This is a plan to fail.

Life is a Hurricane

 

Have you seen any of the James Webb Telescope images? I have been enthralled by them, watching them at night before I go to bed. It's very calming. 

But it struck me that in it's natural state, all of life is a spiral. Nature uses them to grab our attention: tornadoes, cyclones, hurricanes, time. Ancient people drew them, lived in them, danced in them, built temples with them. 

And when I nearly died, I remember the tunnel that swirled with fog and twinkling lights. I remember the bright light in the center. 

Sunday Selections

Sunday Selections is a meme that I was introduced to by Elephant's Child. The rule is simple, post pictures that are chilling in the camera folder, and link back to her. Her pictures are always amazing, so you should go see them. 

My theme for this weeks seems to be what I do most, pictures from draft posts that never see the light of day...

This picture is from a blog very recently. I took it to talk about the wonderful summer weather we were having. Then I learned about the terrible heatwave that the rest of the country was having. Only to be shortly followed by news that Britain and Europe were in the same dire straits. It really didn't seem appropriate to publish that one. 

I take almost as many pictures of this shaded walk as I do the mountain. And I keep trying to work one of them into a blog. But nothing so far seems to fit well with the way it feels to me. The walk seems almost spiritual, like a protected place to me. It's very peaceful and meditative. 

I was just walking through the walkway once, when this little creature ran quickly by, from behind me. He scared me as much as I think I scared him. Then ridiculously, I wondered if the walk was his cathedral and I had just disturbed his prayers. He certainly brought a surprised halt to my meditations. 

I don't see many wild rabbits here. I suppose they have to may predators. One of our neighbors used to free range some domestic hares, but they have stopped keeping them. Presumably for the same reason.

I love the wild flowers here. My walks are beautiful all summer long. It is a good thing that I can now snap a picture and leave the flowers undisturbed. When I was a child, I was constantly in trouble for picking flowers I thought grew freely along the sidewalks. I don't suppose the PNW homeowners would take it any better than the southern women did back in the day. I've only ever had one person complain about me taking a picture, and she's kind of strange.

This picture was taken with the thought of talking about my grandmother. She grew them in her flower garden every year. She had roses, tulips, iris' and hyacinths too, but when I think of her garden, I think of the glads. 

She would fill a large crystal vase full of them and place them on the table in front of the pulpit at church on Sunday morning. She wanted everyone admiring her gardening abilities while she played the organ for them.  

In the south, they are a spring flower. I don't recall seeing them much after the 4th of July. Here, the sun lovers like glads don't bloom until after then. 

As much as glads remind me of my grandmother, hydrangeas remind me of Woodstock, which I've taken to calling "Home" in my thoughts. While it was my home for many years, it isn't now. Home is here. I do miss Woodstock. Hydrangea bloomed well all summer there. But the one's there were all one color, whether it was blue, white, purple or pink. Here, they can be multicolored. 

I take as many pictures of sunflowers as possible while they are bloomed for the summer. This is the flower that I associate with summer, but it really is an autumn flower. 

Do you want to know who really appreciates the sunflowers we grow?

Happy New Week...