The Last Day of Summer

I sort of disappeared for a few days. Not really, because Instagram is easy and I was there, but I feel like it’s hard to write the blog if there’s no real art progress and all I’m really going to say is that I read a lot and hung out a lot and ate some foods. Not that those are bad things…we should all do that at some point in our lives. I just wasn’t motivated to write about it. I find that writing here does motivate me to get stuff done, though, which is mostly why I do it. Plus the whole family knows that if we can’t remember when an event happened, we can just check the blog. Which is how we know Kitten is 10 and not 9 (my phone thinks she’s both 9 and 10, and that’s not possible). Most important use of my blog? Figuring out how old the animals are. Yup.

So we were only at Lake Arrowhead for two nights…a short trip. The girlchild isn’t here for long and I have a pile of crap to deal with before school starts, which officially is tomorrow. We have Shakespeare tonight and a birthday dinner tomorrow night, and then she leaves. And school starts. And life continues.

So here’s three days of Arrowhead in no particular order. Lots of blue skies, cooler temperatures, and lake water.

Oh yeah, and sleepy dogs. Very sleepy dogs.

And not dogs. Also sleepy. This is what the week after working 10-hour days all summer looks like. Plus maybe some jet lag.

She claims I took this picture last year. I did not. It must have been her other mother.

Views of the lake.

It was beautiful.

That’s a huge acorn cap.

We don’t have a regular boat. We have access to a canoe and a kayak. It works.

Calli plays in the water, as always…

There’s a bit of a hike back up to the car…

I’m obsessed with manzanita at the moment…want one for the front yard…far away from the house.

We have to haul stuff to and from the dock.

Like dogs.

I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of these in the water…

More dog entertainment. We do a lot of that.

Girlchild in the kayak…

While me, the boychild, and my ex all canoe. Yeah, it’s weird that I vacation with my ex, but when your kid is only home for a week, you do shit like that.

It was a little rough out there…

Hogging the shade…

Grandpa comes too…he’s in charge of keys and dogs and boat maintenance. Like the 17 spiders we had to kill in the canoe.

Everyone reads. Well. The dogs don’t.

They mostly sleep.

Even with concrete as a pillow.

We all had a chance in the kayak in the afternoon…there’s the boychild wandering off.

Dad sits on the dock with the dogs. I got pulled over by the Lake Association during my kayak trip out. He assumed I didn’t have a boat license. Bam! I did. It was in my bra. I pulled it out. It was exciting. No one else got pulled over. He was probably worried about my technique.

Whatever. Sitting around on a dock reading is not a bad thing.

I did finish one binding and started another very-not-important one while watching a video.

While guess who slept.

At night we attempted this musical game…and then poker.

With marbles, because we couldn’t find poker chips.

We had two cars because of the dogs…who found ways to sleep on the way back…

Home.

I did a final steam iron of the big piece in the afternoon, but then was fighting tiredness and significant nausea all evening. The new meds may be the problem…hard to say. I did finally start stitch down at around 9 PM…and fought the machine for a while. It took about 5 or 6 tries to get the tension right. Aargh. It’s different every time I do it. I had the spool horizontal, but the thread was catching on the spool edge and feeding irregularly. So now it’s vertical and threaded differently than the manual tells me, but it’s mostly working. Remind me to take it in after I finish this one.

I got most of the water parts stitched down…I still have a little bit of it plus the mermaid’s head to do.

See? Good tension. Not a rat’s nest. Such a relief.

I went to bed early because I was tired, but the nausea was still pretty bad. I gave up on water and tea last night and found a ginger ale hiding in my stash. It helped. But it’s way too high in sugar to drink regularly. It’s better this morning, but I’m afraid to eat anything. I barely ate last night.

Anyway, today is full of tons of things…need to find two quilts and ship them out of here, and then copyedit, and stitch down…plus be ready for school tomorrow (ugh. So not ready. Positive attitude! Um. Really. For tomorrow’s conference of random professional development? I don’t have any. Really. Can’t.). Last day of summer. It’s the last day of summer. Sigh. It’s OK…last year, I also felt like I got nothing done all summer. Seriously something wrong with that.