Iced Tea Chat: Summertime Blues

Come in, come in.  Lemon and lime and there's mint, too for adding to  a tall tinkling glass of iced tea.   You'll appreciate this cold drink today! It's hot on the porch and the gnats are fighting mad at everyone so we'll just sit here in the kitchen and enjoy the air conditioning, ok?



I am deeply appreciative of the air conditioner just now. Katie and I were out yesterday morning and it was hot out there.  I worked up a good old fashioned sweat unloading groceries at Walmart.  I don't typically shop for groceries at Walmart since it's a little further up town and let's face it Aldi is hard to improve upon overall.   However, Katie was getting an eye exam and I had few needs this week, so I thought I'd kill two birds, as the saying goes.

I picked up four new t-shirts.  They are in lovely autumn colors.  I find the Terra and Sky t-shirts run true to size and hold up well enough.  I got mustard, teal, deep berry, a gray blue.   I may wear these initially as part of my fall wardrobe while it's still hot when I'm longing to pretend the season is really here come mid September, lol. They are inexpensive enough that I don't mind the few times I'll get to wear them while they are really nice.  They can move easily to the around the house wardrobe.


Katie and I each took a turn sitting in the car while the other ran into other stops along the way.  This time of the year, it's almost worth the exercise to just go in but there's danger too, if you haven't a pocket full of money to cover the little odds and ends that you might pick up.   Hence why we each took our turn sitting in the car!

When I returned home, John had just come in from mowing the yard.  My but the lawn looked nice!
We sat down almost immediately to our meal of fried chicken and a salad.  I'd have liked to skip that chicken, but John asked me to bring home fried chicken two weeks ago and I refused to then.   The man seldom asks for anything specifically so when he does I try to insure I buy or make it.   When he asked me today if I was going to bring anything home for lunch, I knew what he was hinting at...I'd noted that the fried chicken was on sale this week.

We're in a bit of a snug season financially.  There are so many things I just long to do, not just for me and my home but for my family members, as well.   I was down hearted about it earlier this week but then I did something I am learning to do more and more often.  I started looking for the blessings.  I found them, too!   Fewer groceries were needed this pay period, no doubt because we've  had three pay periods in this month...and there's another blessing!  That little habit I acquired about a year ago of rounding down deposits to the nearest dollar and rounding up purchases to the next dollar amount resulted in a little extra money.  Good sales and coupon combinations have come up at exactly the right moments.  Repairs required have proven to be very minor.  Groceries have stretched in a lovely abundant way.  And yesterday afternoon, on my way home, I realized that for all the things I can't do due to lack of funds and material there are two or three jobs I can...No, they are not fun or creative  but they are the sorts of jobs that will make a big difference in appearances even if they are more full of elbow grease and require no pretty paint colors.  Other blessings come to mind:  sometimes, you run across a really lovely silk floral pick that rival real flowers, or a houseplant that is exceptionally well priced which works as well indoors as it will on the porch.  The new foundation on our home has lowered our electric bill...  And then my creative side started kicking into high gear and I could see little ways I could help others, ways that were helpful without busting our budget.  You see?  Blessings!

Just this morning, my Bible reading led to a devotional attached to one of the chapters. The author said,  "What if we set a stone  for every blessing in our lives?  We could build walls!"   Wow oh wow!  And that's exactly what I'm doing.  I'm going to build up walls of gratitude by counting my blessing stones.  Just let those old blues try and come in!

This week I had a comment on my Roots and Rabbit Trails blog, which is still a slow work, and it was from a distant cousin who shared the great -great -great grandparent I had posted about.  She'd never known anything about him, since her mother knew little.  I'm so happy that information was available for her to discover her own roots...and that's exactly what I hoped to have happen when I started that blog.  I hoped to be a blessing to someone else who was seeking and having trouble digging up the information it took me years to piece together.  Not that the search isn't fun. Maybe just maybe, someone will be inspired to do more research and add to my information, because their starting point will be further ahead than my own.

That one comment is also an inspiration to continue what I'm doing with the other blog.  I can tell a story about these people I've been tracing these last years.  I've come to know some of them in a way.  I'd like to help others who may be distantly related to feel they know them, too.

I was so incredibly blessed as a child.  As rocky as my home life might have been, I was surrounded by generations of people who were related to me.  Great, great, great aunts, and great grandmothers and great grandfathers, grandparents and uncles and aunts and cousins. I might have been unhappy but I was connected to all these people who were part of me. My children didn't know as much of their family as I was privileged to know but it grounded me in a way that I hope to ground generations of our family to come.  Because we are forever connected to those who lived before us.  We breathe and live in a body laden with cells that developed from their DNA.  It is lasting.  It is who we are.

Honestly, I know it might sound rather egotistical to talk of generations to come, but...We have 12 grandchildren with these two new babies on the way.  Twelve!  I am pretty sure that Amie is done having children and Sam and Bess say they are, too.  I don't know if Jd will have any more or if Katie will either.  But I started with four children...and now I have twelve grandchildren and it's inevitable that those children will grow and marry and have children of their own as well.  If I can be the connection between the generations who went ahead of  me to the generations who will come after then I count it a great privilege.

John and I sat about all afternoon yesterday after lunch.  We had an outing planned at 5:30.  It was open house at the Primary school Josh will attend this year.  Sam is a great tall boy standing over 6 feet tall and he looked so funny sitting in those tiny kindergarten chairs.  He had to fill out a questionnaire and he included Josh by asking him the questions on the paper and putting down his answers.

Isaac was delighted with the class room.  The chairs just his size, the teaching tools that looked like toys, the streamers hanging over head which he pointed out to me, and someone in the lobby passing out cookies...Well hey!  If I were two I'd think school was a mighty awesome place, too!  Oh poor baby!  He's going to miss Josh terribly and since he is capable of doing everything Josh does (in his own mind at least) he will be heartbroken to be left at home...I wonder how he'll feel come February when that new baby arrives and Mama's attention is absorbed?

On our way home we rode eastward, watching the rain clouds ahead of us and saw a lovely rainbow woven in and out of the clouds.  I've been seeing signs of seasonal change ahead.  I don't want to rush summer away, but I can't help but see what is written by nature.   Goldenrod standing tall in the unused fields and alongside roadways.  Trees with a bit of color tucked in amongst the green.  Fields turning russet with ripe grain.  Lush fields of peanuts.  Hayfields ready for bales.  Peach season dwindling to an end...The signs are there.

My heart twists a tiny bit.  I want to tell summer to linger a little bit longer while at the same time, my mind rushes forward and dreams of frosty mornings glittering in the sunlight.  I am torn between wanting to enjoy what I have now and anticipating what is to come and loving both  while knowing I must let go of one in order to have the other.

It stormed once we were home and the while it rained the tree frog sang for still more rain to fall.  We haven't had any really harsh storms this summer at all.  John doesn't care for thunder and such but I don't mind...if I'm snug indoors and have no need of going out!   And there was no need of going out.  I put bread on to bake for tonight's Shabat evening.  I made us a simple supper.  We turned off the tv and listened to the storm play out and thunder rumbling far away in the distance.   I felt myself relax and breathe more easily than I have in days and days.

This morning John and I were both sleeping soundly when my text message notification sounded.  I almost slept through but I always worry that it's an emergency.  Now by rights, I know full well that my family would call if it were an emergency and they wouldn't bother to text.  But I lie there and worry, while I groggily wish I might go back to sleep.   Eventually I give in and check the message and discover it's no emergency just family wanting to share something or ask a favor.   So it went this morning.

I think there's something in the air whenever I have determined I might just possibly sleep late...seriously.  Every time I think this, the very next morning, in the early hours, the texts and phone calls begin to come in, lol.

I shall end here.  It's been a short chat for sure, but it's all I have time for now.   Talk to you soon!