Summer’s Ebb and Flow

August is probably my least favorite time of the year. Summer’s hottest month here where I live and everything takes on a dry, arid look. I am a creature of the Pacific Northwest and generally love the rain. Maybe not as much as Hurricane Ida just dumped on the southeast and east coast. My heart goes out to everyone affected.

In spite of not being my favorite time of the year, August was full of family and friends and joy. It flew by.

First was a camp out. Smokey air and 102 degree heat didn’t keep up from enjoying ourselves. It just meant we spent more time in the water.

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Then we had kids and grandkids staying here for a week. Going from a household of two to a house full of six worked out really well. I loved the time with the grandkids and took them swimming and played games. It was awesome.

We watched our granddaughter get her white coat, her entrance into medical school. Congratulations to her!!!

Then came our grandson’s wedding. It was a beautiful day. Just cloudy enough to make the pictures pop with perfection. Such a joyous day, since they’d cancelled their wedding in 2021 due to Covid. Plus, our grandson built the arbor they were married under. A chip off his grandfather’s block. 🙂

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Finally, we finished up the month with a close friend’s visit for several days. Yo and I met when our husbands were stationed in Germany and we’ve been friends for 45 wonderful years. The time apart falls away when we’re together and it’s like we live next door to each other. Comfortable and full of laughter and fun.

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Now September is here and I’m more than ready to hunker down for a while. To watch the weather change and do our part to keep COVID-19 at bay. While we were careful at these summer events, we’re happy enough to just be home by ourselves for a while.

Except, the ocean is calling. So who knows. Maybe there will be Autumn adventures in our future. 🙂 I hope you’ve had a wonderful, laughter-filled summer.

For more information about Laurie Ryan:
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Sticky Fun and Games

Here in the UK we’ve had soaring temperatures and, until the last few days, almost unbroken sunshine. Glorious. Hoards of people have been out and about enjoying themselves and the shops have taken full advantage with summer sales popping up everywhere. Of course, yours truly has been indulging herself, and I’ve managed to bag a few bargains.

During my shopping sojourns, I’ve noticed a preponderance of those annoying discounted stickers that they place on sale items which advertise by what percentage the item has been discounted and/or the sale price. No amount of nudging, scraping, scratching, wetting or tugging can remove these things. They’re never unobtrusive either, but are always in loud, garish colours that stand out a mile. You may manage to dislodge a few tiny pieces around the edges, but most times the darn things refuse to budge. Persist, and you’re left with puckered or stretched areas of the material that highlights where the sale sticker once lay. The worst culprits seems to be those stickers that they place in the heel bed of shoes. They are almost always impossible to remove.

Recently, I couldn’t resist a pair of adorable strappy sandals. I didn’t need another pair of sandals, but since they were just sitting there, the only pair remaining of their kind and in my size, you know? I mean, how is a girl supposed to resist? But I digress. Positioned in the heel bed of one sandal was, you guessed it, a sticker declaring by how much percentage they had been discounted. And would it budge? No, it most definitely would not. I was tempted to leave it, but fearing it would be visible as I walked, proceeded to do the usual scraping, wetting, peeling thing. I eventually gave up. So how come, a few days later, while on a shopping trip with girlfriends and having spent what seemed like hours in changing rooms dressing and undressing as we tried on just about every dress in the high street, did the sandal’s sticker miraculously remove itself? Did it do so surreptitiously and unobtrusively? Not on your life. Unknowingly, I walked out the store proudly displaying a bright red circle with white lettering on my derriere announcing 30% off! Cue muffled, but slightly hysterical, laughter from friends as they pried the offending sticker off my jeans amid cries of “if only it were that easy, and we could pop a sticker on our backsides which would instantly reduce them by thirty percent”.

After lunch, during which they plied me with a couple of glasses of vino, purely for medicinal purposes of course (seeing as I was still pretty mortified, I think that counts as medicinal), I was able to see the funny side of it. There followed some hilarious conversation about if we could place a sticker on any particular part of our bodies and instantly remove some of it, which part would we choose. After some animated discussion (you can see that when we get together the conversation is pretty intellectual), it was decided that we were only allowed to have one sticker.

For my sticker I think I’d chose my tummy, but then my thighs could do with a bit of trimming as well. Hmm. Would have to give this some serious thought before finally deciding.  Which part would you choose?