Today it rained all day. Life moved slow and I was okay with that.

“Don’t forget to take the Marsh Road to avoid the road construction,” my husband texted me Friday morning. I did as he said, avoiding the main highway, and taking the more scenic route via a back road, on my way to pick up groceries.

I came to the end of that road and found myself here:

In the middle of said road construction. This made me decide to take a right here:

Which would take me down the hill and after the bridge at the end of the road, to the left and up past my parents’ house, and then around some winding dirt roads back to the main highway again.

When I got further onto that road, however, there was a township tractor or whatever it was, doing some dirt or stone (or something) spreading so I had to pass that once he waved at me to do so.

From there it was fairly straightforward to the highway and Aldi for my grocery pickup.

On the way back I decided I would take a different detour to my parents to drop off a few groceries I picked up for them so I had another tour of the back roads of the township my parents live in. That road features a lot of one-lane roads, which inspired me to make a silly video for Erin at Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs because I like to joke we live in the middle of nowhere since we do actually have to drive 20 minutes one-way to get to our grocery store and a Walmart is 40 minutes either direction. We also have one stop light in our entire county so…yeah…we do live in the middle of nowhere.

The views of fields, farmland, woods, and ponds are very nice on those small roads, though, so I like taking this detour once in a while. Never at night, however.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Lisa R. Howeler | cozy mystery author (@lisarhoweler)

The drive on the way back took me by the house of a distant cousin where we have a family reunion every autumn and also the house of the widow of a former co-worker of mine. He had cancer and was not very old when he passed away so it’s sad to drive by there.

The road also takes me past the family-owned greenhouse that is open about a month and a half out of the year and then closes its doors for the rest of the year. The wife of the couple who opened it is in her 80s now and her husband passed away a few years ago.

Once I dropped off the groceries and left my parents I took another detour to get back to my house. Little Miss wanted to pick up her favorite popsicles at the local Dollar General so we took yet one more middle-of-nowhere detour/shortcut to bypass the road construction to get to the Dollar General.

That’s one thing about our little town – we now have only one supermarket left but we have two dollar stores – a Dollar General and a Family Dollar – and we have two gas stations next to the one stoplight in the whole county.

I should add, by the way, that my parents actually live in the next county over but only about five miles from us.

For some reason that makes me think of a story my dad used to tell me about a man who talked really slow. He ran a store, I believe, in our little tiny village where I grew up and my parents still live. A man stopped and asked him for directions. This was probably in the late 40s or early 50s. Anyhow, the man who needed directions asked the man at the store for directions but the man at the store spoke very slowly so he started, “Well, you go up here about five miles and you take a left…”

The man who asked for directions was in a very big hurry so he said, “Thanks” and left.

Unfortunately, he hadn’t let the man at the store finish so he got lost and had to come back.

“I thought you said to go up five miles and make a left!” he said to the storekeeper.

The storekeeper, still speaking very slowly, said, “I wasn’t finished before you left. I was going to say that after you take the left, you go about two more miles and take a right….”

That story could be a good life lesson – reminding us all we need to slow down and listen to our elders, our family, and our God, or we are bound to get lost.

On Wednesday and Thursday of this week, Little Miss had a friend over to go swimming with us at my parents. Bad storms were coming through that night so we ended up having an impromptu sleepover.

I slept with them downstairs and slept on the couch, something I will not do again. I am old and that couch was not comfortable so at 5:30 I left them in the living room and hobbled upstairs for a couple more hours of sleep.

The girls had a lot of fun swimming and Little Miss even started to learn how to go underwater, something she has not yet been comfortable doing.

Even The Boy jumped in, something he rarely does these days as a “mature teenager.”

Little Miss and her friend had a water balloon fight on Thursday, even though the temps were a little cool for summer.

Today it is raining outside and we are under both a flash flood and a tornado watch. We are hoping that neither of those things happen. Before the rain started to fall, the kids and I visited the cemetery near my parents to place flowers at the graves of my infant sister (she died when she was two days old about five years before I was born), my great-grandparents, great-aunt and great-great-grandparents.

Tomorrow we will most likely have lunch with my parents and maybe swim if the weather is warm enough.

How was your week last week? Did you do anything fun or exciting or anything relaxing? I’d love to know!