Can I get you some tea? I have a selection of herbal teas, milk, juice and I actually have ginger ale and sparkling water – two beverages I rarely have.
I’m sitting and doing my best to relax this weekend – the last weekend of summer for us.
It is the last day of August. How is that even possible? In some ways it seems like summer just began, though with all the heat we had summer also feels like it was very, very long.
This Tuesday we start homeschool officially.
This past Tuesday Little Miss and I had a wonderful day swimming at my parents. The pool was in perfect shape and the temperature was absolutely perfect.
We ate some lunch before we went and took lunch to my parents as well. Then we spent two hours in the pool, took a break for a light supper, then back in the pool for another 90-minutes. The temperature was fairly high outside so the pool was perfectly nice inside.
Little Miss enjoyed swimming underwater, doing flips, and practicing floating on her back – all skills she learned this summer.
The Boy helped my dad with mowing the lawn since Dad has been suffering from a pinched nerve in his lower back that has made doing work outside very difficult.
On Wednesday Little Miss and I went back to the pool and Dad and The Boy went to a county fair near us.
We figured it might be our last swim since temps were set to drop the rest of the week.
It looks like it might be close to 80 tomorrow but the pool water probably will not be as nice as Tuesday and Wednesday.
We have had a lot of fun in that pool this summer.
Today Little Miss is having another sleepover which is hilarious to me since I said the one a few weeks ago was her last for the summer. Sigh.
Anyhow, we just had a downpour here and I told the girls to go out and run in the rain.
They ran for coats and shoes and umbrellas. Good grief. When I was a kid, we just ran in the rain! We didn’t worry about covering up. I feel like I have failed my daughter. *snort laugh*
On Tuesday I will start classes with the kids, even though I don’t have everything I need yet for the oldest. He, however, only has a couple of classes to take to finish out the credits he needs to graduate since he is also attending a technical school this year.
Little Miss will be my main focus this year and we are trying new curriculum in almost every subject. We will see how it goes but what is great about homeschool is that I can switch to a different curriculum at any point if needed. I am looking forward to some more routine, which will hopefully make me sit down and finish my book that I hope to have out in the beginning of November.
How was your week last week? Did you do anything interesting or exciting?
(P.S. Aren’t you glad that I’m not talking about “hot statutes of Lucifer” today?)
How was your week last week? You can let me know in the comments after I ramble at you about my week, which was rather calm thanks to chilly temps and a car that needs to pass inspection before we can drive it again.
Yes, in Pennsylvania your car has to pass an inspection every year and thanks to some lovely incompetence on the part of a local salvage yard and of another seller, we have been unable to get our headlight that was destroyed by the deer we hit last year fixed until this week. And that is well over when our inspection was due. We have an inspection appointment this week and then I will have a car during the week when my husband is at work.
I didn’t really want to go anywhere this past week anyhow. It was superbly chilly and rainy, giving me the autumn vibes I have been craving.
I spent three blissful days inside my house reading books and working on Gladwynn Grant Shakes the Family Tree, all while cuddled up under my grandmother’s blanket. Grandma has been gone since 2003 so I didn’t steal her blanket. I inherited it. Ha! I always figure I should clarify that since it sounds like I stole my poor grandmother’s blanket and she’s at home shivering in the cold.
All the coziness ended Friday when I had to leave my little cozy cocoon and take my teenage son to get his haircut and pick up groceries.
The Boy started school at the tech school again this past week. This is his second year there and at the end of the year he will be done with school because he is – he is – sniff – a senior!
I can’t even believe he is about to graduate from high school. It makes my head very woozy.
I have started asking myself things like, “Will he still want to go on family vacations with us? Will he go out to dinner with us? Will he still hangout with us? Will he still live here because I really want him to live here for a very long time and my heart will shatter if he moves too far away?”
I’m not handling all of this well and I’m not afraid or ashamed to admit it.
After we picked up groceries and brought them home, Little Miss and I attempted to go swimming at my parents. The nights have been very cold so the pool was like an ice bath. We lasted about an hour and then gave up.
Back at home last night I was again under the blanket as the temperatures went back down. This week the temps are supposed to be back in the 80s but I think our days of wickedly high summer temps are behind us. We shall see.
Even as some forecasters say our autumn season will be warm and dry, The Farmer’s Almanac says it will be cool and wet. We will have to take it day by day and see who wins out. When I first heard we might have a warm fall I wanted to cry. I really want some chilly days where I have an excuse to stay inside. I have no excuses to stay inside in summer unless the weather is so sweltering I know it will make me sick.
In Autumn I can be like, “It’s just so chilly out. I think I’ll stay at home.”
Which is code for – I’m going to read a book and watch an old movie.
Speaking of movies – Erin (Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs) and I are gearing up for another Comfy, Cozy Cinema starting September 5.
She’s already made some great graphics to go with the feature so if you want to join along, here is our list:
A little update today on Timothy The Spider, who I wrote about last week – he is currently MIA.
Earlier this week it was raining very hard outside and I think he could hear the rain and wanted to get out because he climbed behind one of our curtains and it was the last we saw of him for the rest of the week.
So far I haven’t seen him on the floor but we have brown hardwood floors and a carpet of various shades of brown so he could be anywhere. If I see him, I will most likely kill him. Poor Timothy. Alas, his life might be short. Or he could already have been eaten by one of the cats, I have no idea. All I know is he isn’t hanging over my head anymore and I sort of wish we had killed him before because now I don’t know where he might show up or when.
In closing, I thought I would share a weird conversation The Boy and I had last night about a statue of “the devil” or Lucifer that was sculpted in Italy in the 1840s by Joseph Geefs.
Geefs statue was commissioned and installed the St. Paul’s Cathedral in Belgium but was then determined to be “distracting allure” and feature “unhealthy beauty” in its portrayal of Lucifer or Satan.
So the church hired Geefs’ older brother Guillaume Geefs to sculpt another statue to represent the devil and that one turned out to be just as “sexy” or even more so by some definitions. That second statue is still in St. Paul’s Cathedral.
The Boy and I agreed that the second sculpture is actually more beautiful and distracting than the first so we’re not sure why the first one was replaced by the second one.
(The first statue on the left, second is on the right).
What do you think? which one is more hot?
How was your week last week? Do anything interesting?
Welcome to a Saturday Afternoon Chat. I’m sipping lactose-free milk with maple syrup mixed in today and snacking on chocolate chips (just a few). Healthy snack? Not exactly, but also not the worst. What are you snacking on today? Or sipping? And what are you doing? I hope to get some reading time in myself after a fairly busy week.
Today I thought I’d write my post like a “week in the life” type post – so here is my week in “diary form.”
Monday I’m one of those women who sometimes says things to herself like, “I don’t need a man to make it through life.”
And I don’t need a man.
I want one, which is why I have my husband.
I do, however, enjoy acting like I just don’t know enough about home repairs because I’m just a dumb housewife when a window replacement guy comes and tries to talk me into a “free assessment of your windows because we were in the neighborhood.”
I was in the middle of creating content for my Instagram today when a man knocked on our side door. He was holding a clipboard and wearing a uniform. I don’t trust people holding a clipboard and wearing a uniform after some bad experiences.
I went to the side door and discovered our collection of Daddy Long Legs are back. One of them was hanging out on the handle. About a month ago we had like ten of them hanging out in that entryway because we rarely use it – normally only to bring groceries in and sometimes we just use the back door instead. My husband cleared them out with the broom while I watched from the hallway and said things like, “Ew! Oh my gosh! Is that one climbing in here?!” and he said things like, “They’re Daddy Long Legs! They’re harmless!”
Anyhow, on this day there was a baby one right on the door handle. Right on it. No room for my hand to open the door without touching it.
“Just open it!” my son cried from behind me while he held the barking dog back. “It’s just a Daddy Long Leg!”
“But it is still a spider!” I cried.
I finally pushed the thing aside and opened the door. Standing outside was the man with the clipboard, a beard, and some sweat beaded across his ruddy face from the sun beating down on him.
“Hello, ma’am I was in the neighborhood and happened to notice your windows are bowed out because …” blah-de-blah-de-blah seller talk blah. “Can you see how that window reflects oddly there like a funhouse window? Well that’s because Argon gas is getting in between the panes there and blah-blah.”
“We don’t have any money,” I interrupted.
Go away I wanted to say.
“Oh that’s okay, ma’am because we can send an evaluator out for no cost to you and –”
I was already looking bored and rolling my eyes but he wasn’t taking the hint. I have to admit he was very smooth.
Cue “dumb housewife who can’t do anything without her husband’s permission mode.”
“You know….is there anyway you can stop by another time when my husband is home. He’s the one who handles all the house stuff.”
And then I stepped back into my house and pulled my spider-covered door closed in his face.
I was so proud of me because the last time one of those guys came, I talked to him way too long and was way too polite. This is what my teenage son said when I finally took the guy’s card and went back in the house that first time, but this time when I got inside my son said he was very proud of me too.
He also told me that the gas the guy said was getting in between our windows is the third largest quantity of gas in our atmosphere and the guy was a scammer.
Tuesday
Tuesday was a weird day in some ways but it got better. I woke up super groggy after some weird dreams and it took me most of the day to snap out of it.
Some family friends we haven’t seen in like, well, thirty years or more, came to visit my parents so Little Miss, The Boy, and I headed over there for the afternoon. Well, honestly, The Boy went over earlier to help clean the house and mow the lawn. Little Miss and I went over later and visited with everyone for a little bit before they left and we jumped into the pool.
We didn’t last long because the water was extremely cold which wasn’t a surprise since it was only 70 degrees (F) out.
Wednesday
Little Miss and I tried swimming again on this day. It was warmer outside but absolutely freezing in the pool. We lasted maybe an hour. I kept hoping she’d break first so I wouldn’t have to be the bad guy and I was thrilled when she finally she said, “I think we need to get out. My teeth won’t stop chattering.”
Whew. I was free to jump out and take a warm shower.
“Let’s stay in our clothes in case we warm up and want to get back in though,” she said.
I did not want to do that. Not one little, itty-bitty bit but I said, “Okay.”
While drying off after the shower I heard what I thought was a fan blowing but there isn’t a fan in my parents’ bathroom. I looked out the window to see if the wind was blowing. It was not.
Finally I thought, “Wait. Is that rain?”
So I looked out the bathroom door and indeed it was pouring – I mean totally down pouring outside. We had seen nothing on our weather app about rain.
And not only was it outright pouring but I could see from looking through the bathroom door and the outside door window that two of our car windows were down.
Sadly, I was naked, my 9-year-old doesn’t know how to turn the car on and my parents both have mobility issues so I had to let the car get soaked until I could finish getting dressed and get out there.
Little Miss helped me with rolling up the windows – well, she walked out with me and we both got soaked in the cold rain but she didn’t help roll the windows up in the end. The cold rain made her decide it was going to be much too cold to try go back into the pool so she changed and then helped Grandma make tuna melts for dinner, which I didn’t eat of because I am still a picky eater at my advanced age and don’t eat tuna melts. Thankfully I had picked up some fried chicken from the only supermarket in a 15-mile radius so that’s what I ate instead of tuna melts.
While at my parents I called The Boy and asked him to kill a spider that’s been running around on our ceiling for two days but Little Miss and I are too short to kill or chase off.
It’s a black one. Somewhat big but not huge. So, yes, on this day while we were at my parents and he was still at home I called and asked him to kill the spider on the ceiling.
He said, “What spider?”
I said, “The one on the ceiling.”
He said, “I don’t see a spider.”
I said, “He comes and goes.”
So he said, “This is the dumbest call you’ve ever made to me. You want to me to kill a spider but you don’t know where it is?”
So I said, “Yes, exactly. Do it before we get home so it doesn’t fall on our head. Bye.”
The end of this story is that the kids have named the spider Timothy and have decided to leave him alone on the ceiling. The problem with this ending is that I can’t find Timothy as I am writing this and if I find Timothy on me, I’m going to have to kill Timothy.
On this night I found an episode of Classic Mary Berry that I hadn’t seen yet and I was so excited. Mary Berry feels like comfy, cozy watching and Little Miss and I watch her especially in fall and winter.
I also found out there is a more recent series of hers on The Roku Channel so I will be starting that series later this week.
I felt like a total dork for getting so excited when I saw that I could access new episodes of her shows. You would have thought I found a bunch of money in my couch or something with the way I was clapping my hands and telling the children.
Little Miss was excited.
The Boy was less excited but that’s okay.
He politely listened to me, nodding and smiling like you would with a patient at an insane asylum.
Thursday
Update on Timothy: Today he moved to the part of the ceiling over where I sit to do my writing and then over Little Miss. I moved myself to somewhere else in the house when he was over my sitting space.
Little Miss, on the other hand, decided to whip him away when he came to her part of the room by whipping at him with a cat toy. He moved some but then decided to hang out on the wall instead of the ceiling. Little Miss decided he was getting too close for comfort so she was going to kill him.
She pulled out a broom but the end of our broom was missing so it was just a hollow tube. This meant Timothy might be able to climb inside and come out to get us later so we added some duct tape to the end. Then she slapped at him and he avoided every hit somehow by scurrying up and down the wall away from her. She finally hit him enough that he fell down behind the bookcase. I figured he would be on the floor crawling toward us, so suggested she spray flea spray behind and under the bookcase.
We hoped he was gone but later in the day we looked up and he was back, crawling across the ceiling again.
I’m now starting to wonder if he is a CIA spy, something I’ve been worried about happening ever since I found out our neighbor’s son has CIA clearance.
Friday
Today was a lovely day and I thought it might not be. I knew it was going to be a long day and it was, but somehow, I had energy to get everything done I needed to.
I drove 40 minutes to pick up a friend of Little Miss’s.
Little Miss had to go in and visit their kittens and I needed a potty break.
Then we left but not even a few yards down the road, Little Miss said her friend needed her teddy bear dressed in a frog outfit so I offered to turn around.
That was a dumb, rookie mistake because after the bear was retrieved we headed out again, only to be stopped by a construction worker who had set up between the time we turned around and came back.
Before we left the first time I noticed a helicopter hovering over the field in front of our friend’s house. There was something hanging down from the helicopter, which was near some power lines that have those large red balls or round thingees as I call them on them. The ones they put on power lines in spaces like that to let airplanes know that there are powerlines there. I thought the helicopter was replacing those and watched for a few moments.
When we got stopped I was grumpy and got even grumpier as the minutes ticked by. Twenty minutes later we were finally allowed to move forward on a road where we couldn’t turn around and there was no cell service.
That’s when I was able to see the helicopter moving up the hill to my left in a large space cut into the hillside where the powerlines go up and realized that the thingee hanging down from the helicopter that I had seen before (I use thingee a lot. I’m a writer, yes, but I’m old so that’s the word I use when I don’t want to try to think of the real word or look it up) was a type of saw and the helicopter was actually trimming the tree line.
I wish I had had time to take a photo or a video but by then there were a line of cars behind me and I just wanted to keep going forward to get our groceries, which we drove another half an hour to pick up.
After driving up and down hills and around bends in the road and admiring the views along the way, we grabbed our pick-up order and then drove another half an hour to get home – or to my parents anyhow.
I made these videos for Erin from Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs because she thinks I live in a super remote area … and she is right.
Once I got to my parents, I dropped off some groceries for them, picked up The Boy and left the girls with my parents and my brother who was visiting. The Boy and I took all the groceries in and then headed back to my parents to briefly say hello to my brother and take the girls for a 90-minute swim.
After that, it was back home for some pizza and Bluey and Minecraft and then Little Miss’s friend went home.
We weren’t sure we’d be able to swim again before summer was over for a variety of reasons – cold weather, algae, high chlorine, and rain, but today the weather was perfect and the pool was fairly warm until right before we decided to leave. It was nice we were able to get the swim in today because it is supposed to rain a lot on Saturday (today) and Sunday.
Little Miss wanted a sleepover tonight but I was strong this time and told her ‘no.’ It worked out well because she was overstimulated and glad for the ddowntimewhen her friend left and quickly fell asleep and we both were able to get up today and simply take our time waking up.
We do have one last summer sleepover planned for two weeks from now after The Husband takes Little Miss and her friend to the county fair.
School starts for The Boy this Thursday and for Little Miss on August 28.
Saturday (today)
Today the weather is gloomy but I don’t mind. I’m inside writing this blog post, my Sunday Bookends blog post for tomorrow, working on Gladwynn Grant Shakes the Family Tree, watching old movies, and planning to read a bit later on.
Little Miss and I are decompressing from the day’s events while The Husband covers some events for the newspaper throughout the day.
The Boy is enjoying sleeping in and lounging about for his final weekend before school starts. Timothy is still on the ceiling and has been enjoying the edges of the room more where I think he’s realized we can’t reach him easily.
So that is my very long post about my week.
How was your week? I’d love to know. Let me know in the comments by linking to a weekly round up post or just by letting me know.
I am starting this blog post while sipping a cup of warm tea with local honey — Something I thought I would have to wait another month to have without feeling overheated. But luckily, the temperatures have dropped into autumn weather for a few days at least.
And of course, I have been drinking some warm tea in front of the air conditioner or fan to make it feel like fall anyhow as I have mentioned in previous posts.
I needed the warm tea to help relax me after a fairly busy week. It wasn’t the worst, but it was a lot of back-and-forth running to activities on some of the days. I was so grateful today to just lay in bed and enjoy the morning instead of rushing out the door to some activity or another.
For four out of the five days, I took Little Miss to a half-day Bible camp at a church about four minutes from our house. On Monday we had a 4H baking camp for about two hours in the evening and on Wednesday, we went swimming for 2 1/2 hours at my parents in the rain, which was actually very fun. On Thursday we took a break after camp and caught up on housework and just relaxed.
On Friday we went swimming again for another two-and-a-half hours but this time we broke up that time by getting out of the water and eating a little before we went back in again. I don’t swim a lot when I get in the pool, by the way. I mainly watch Little Miss and this week I watched her learn how to swim underwater for the first time, which was a lot of fun. She was so excited that she was able to do it and overcome her fear of having her face in the water.
Today, I am heading out to pick up groceries from Aldi and also swinging around and pick up a friend of The Boy’s. For people who are not familiar with the area I live in, “swinging around” actually means an hour-long trip for groceries and to pick up the friend. That’s one hour one way and another hour on the way back. That’s why we carve out a half a day to a full day for things like a grocery pick up because we have to figure in the driving time.
I usually try to make the grocery pick-up trips as quick as possible so that it isn’t as tiring. I actually do pick-ups now because walking around the store plus the half an hour to and from the store just seemed like a lot, especially when my autoimmune issues are acting up. Unfortunately, I never know when those issues are going to act up so the pickup is a better bet.
Circling back a bit — we had a little of a nerve-racking experience on Monday when we went to the baking class because in the middle of it, a tornado warning alert went off on all of the parents’ phones. We were all in a rather sturdy brick building and knew that running out and getting in our cars would not be safe so the class was continued to try to distract the children from the darkening sky outside.
Little Miss has been battling anxiety lately, and I am sad to say that I am certain it is my own battle that has caused her to deal with the anxiety as well. Sadly, when anxiety hits her, she sometimes becomes faint and has fainted three times in the past.
So far, she has fainted about once a year in the last three years after a fright or traumatic experience. Once she fainted after a non-venomous snake bit her and that time she hit the corner of a very hard wooden table on her way down. That required a trip to the ER because she went limp after hitting the table and couldn’t keep her eyes open or her head up. In the end she was okay and cleared by the hospital, but we kept a close eye on her (a.k.a. I woke up all night long that night and checked her breathing and shook her awake a bit to know she was okay)
About a year later, she drank some orange juice very fast and it burned her throat and she had a hard time getting a breath for a brief second. She became a little anxious and her body reacted by causing her to pass out. She came to less than 30 seconds later and was OK but frightened.
About two weeks ago she broke a glass at my parents’ and cut her hand. It wasn’t a big cut but at the sight of blood, she went down again on me.
What I am amazed at is how quickly her body reacts and how quickly she will faint in a stressful situation. I’ve started calling her the fainting goat of our family.
We had another slight medical scare last week that turned out to be nothing, but I had to work through it with her by putting a cold cloth on her face and asking her to tell me three things she saw around her, what the cold felt like against her skin, and what she’d liked most about our dog, Zoom The Wonder Dog.
She calmed down quickly that day and we were able to avoid a fainting spell.
When she heard about the tornado warning on Monday, I knew that I would have to ground her and help keep her calm or I would have to pick her up off the floor. My anxiety was pretty high at that point as well, but with a lot of prayers she and I both made it through even when the lights went out in the building and the generator kicked on leaving only dim lights in the hallways.
The other children played and ran, sliding in the hallway on the linoleum floors. This distracted Little Miss and she tried some sliding as well. Ultimately, the area escaped any major damage with only a few trees down. South of us there were trees down and power out.
Little Miss’s fainting spells remind me of the girl in Anne of Green Gables who was always fainting when something scary happened. I can’t remember her name at the moment.
I know that fainting in children can be common but the first time it happened was terrifying. Now I know that she will be OK within 30 seconds so I simply hold her tell her she’s fine and that she’s going to be sitting up and fine any minute now. I do find it interesting that despite all my years of anxiety and panic attacks I have yet to pass out. I’m very glad of that as we can only have one family member at a time who faints so easily.
After such a full week I am looking forward to only having one activity on our radar next week – a second week of the beginner baking class. Hopefully there won’t be another tornado warning.
In the midst of all this running back and forth we’ve also been dealing with fleas on our pets because the flea medicine didn’t work last month. This is the second time this has happened in about a year so it is very frustrating. We heard that Dawn Dish soap can help but I was terrified of bathing the cats because – well – cats hate water. One morning, though, the youngest cat, Scout, was lazily laying on the bed so I took the opportunity and dunked her. It went better than I expected but I knew the cat we call The Beast would not be as easy.
It wasn’t. All I remember was flailing cat legs, splashing water, dark fur and me somehow narrowly missing getting any scratches or having my throat ripped out by her massive paws. In the end she was wet but not washed.
We just waited until we got the new dose of flea medicine a few days later. Unfortunately they no longer have the medicine that takes care of both ticks and fleas – saying it had been discontinued, which I highly doubt.
Treating our animals costs us close to $80 each month and the products aren’t working as well so it is very frustrating.
Busy summers and an uptick in fleas remind me why I love Autumn and Winter. For one, less fleas and for two, I can stay at home and not feel guilty for not “being outside in the lovely weather.”
I can always use chilly or bad weather as an excuse to stay home and not deal with some of the complications that come from leaving the house.
Of course, winter has its downside as well because when the weather is too bad you can’t leave your house for a long time and then come down with cabin fever.
One thing I forgot to mention above about our busy week was how on Wednesday we had a flat tire on our car and I was very down because I wanted to take Little Miss to the Bible camp. I was able to get the tire pumped up and decided to take her anyhow, planning to take the car to a mechanic afterward.
It was a hectic morning, but I had still remembered to brush my hair and didn’t think I looked the worst I’d ever looked anyhow. I stepped into the gathering to check on Little Miss at one point and a little girl, very loudly, asked Little Miss, “Is that your grandma or your mom?”
I do have some gray hairs sprouting up – more than I would like to see – but I didn’t think I looked that old.
After I went back to my car, I texted a friend who reminded me that children anywhere around the age of 5 think anyone over 25 looks old.
I also told myself that we have a lot of young grandmas here because of the high rate of teen pregnancies in the area so I’m sure that’s why the little girl wasn’t sure if I was Little Miss’s grandmother or not.
Ahem.
So that was my busy week – how was your week? Busy or sort of mundane? Let me know in the comments and join me again next week for an afternoon chat and tea.
About the time this post goes live, I’ll probably be out to dinner with The Husband for our 22nd wedding anniversary. Or we will be home watching a movie together or something else relaxing.
At least that’s how I hope the day will go after a somewhat, but not really, busy week.
And hot week. Did I ever mention how much I hate the heat? I’m sure I haven’t mentioned that yet here on the blog, have I?
Not like 18 times in the last week? Nah. I haven’t. I’m sure.
Yes, I do have a case of sarcasticitis and have had that for years.
Anyhow, we did our best to cool off at the pool at my parents that Dad has worked so hard to keep clean and running, but it was so hot and Dad had added a heater to the pool, so a couple of times the water was super warm and not as refreshing as we expected. Luckily on one of those days the sun went behind the clouds, allowing the water to cool off some.
Little Miss and I were very excited that The Boy joined us one day. It was fun to see him like a kid again – just enjoying himself in the pool. I love to swim in the pool and look out at the view from my parents’ house on the hill.
I do realize how lucky we are to have that view.
On Thursday, we traveled to the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon at the suggestion and invitation of my brother.
The Pennsylvania Grand Canyon is, of course, not the “real” Grand Canyon but it does offer a beautiful view and nice hiking trails.
The canyon is also called Pine Creek Gorge and begins in a town called Asonia along Route 6 in Pennsylvania and travels 47 miles. Two overlooks – one in Leonard Harrison State Park and another in Colton Point State Park – offer the best views of the Canyon, according to the Visit Potter and Tioga County website.
We visited Leonard Harrison State Park, which is the easiest place to see the view from.
They have remodeled the visitors center there, adding a gift shop and very small conservation center.
The parking area was widened and a roundabout added to allow for drop offs from busses and for disabled people, but the building itself wasn’t that overwhelming to me – even though it is nice.
The new gift shop is quite small, but many of the items offered there are produced locally. There is a small area that focuses on conservation and hopefully they will eventually expand that. Little Miss enjoyed handling the turtle shell and seeing the spine of it and then telling me all about how a turtle’s spine is actually attached to the shell itself. She then told me that one of the pelts there is a coyote, but I believe one was a raccoon and the other was a red fox.
I took a photo of an ad they had on display in the conservation area after the expression of the one little girl in the photo caused me to burst into laughter.
Not only does she look like she’s completely over hiking but she actually looks sort of like I did as a kid and that’s how I always looked when I had to hike. I don’t know if I had the heart issues as a kid that I was diagnosed with as a teenager (it was a rapid heartbeat and I have it from time to time now but it is much better) but I hated hiking. I did get tired out easily but I also found it terribly boring. I have never been someone who enjoys hikes so not only does that kid’s expression remind me of myself then but it reminds me of myself now.
And, for the record, I didn’t like to hike even when I was a skinny kid and teen!
Another really cool new addition to the overlook is a viewfinder that allows people who are colorblind to see the fall foliage. Yes, the view from there in the fall is mind blowing. I would like to go there again this fall even though the drive was two hours because of a detour we had to take thanks to a bridge that was damaged by an oversized load.
My son will be 18 this year and I think he was about 8 or 9 when I was at the overlook last.
He and my dad have been there since then because they went biking there on trails that are at the bottom of the canyon.
The site was designated a national landmark in 1968 and in addition to the overlook there are walking trails to waterfalls, or overlooks, bike trails, and camping sites.
When I was a teenager, we visited there with my uncle who was deathly afraid of heights and he refused to look at the view. He really missed out but I can’t blame him. He did stand back a bit and look out some so he didn’t totally close his eyes or anything.
My husband isn’t a huge fan of heights but he could handle this since there are sturdy railings in front of it.
Before we went to the canyon, my brother took us to this cute country store in – well, the country.
The Stony Fork County Store is a Mennonite-run store with amazing deli meats and subs and a great selection of foods sourced from Pennsylvania and other places. My brother purchased subs, drinks, and chips for us and I grabbed some fresh cantaloupe, ginger snap cookies, and candy for Little Miss. I tried not to look too long in the store because I know I would have purchased even more homemade goodies.
The store was actually built in 1883 as a store, hotel and residence. From 1930 to 1980 it was operated by one family and now it is operated by a Mennonite family who recently expanded it.
We took the food up to the canyon and ate it at a picnic table inside the main gate.
After we left the canyon we stopped by the park in town and visited the Wynken, Blynken, and Nod fountain, which is a statue and fountain built and installed in the park in Wellsboro in 1938 in memory of a woman named Elizabeth Cameron Bailey by her husband Fred Bailey.
The statue is a recreation of the original sculpture designed by Mabel Landrum Torrey that is located in Denver, Colorado. Torrey designed the sculpture at the Art Institute of Chicago, but donated the original one to the mayor of Denver, who liked it so much that he commissioned a marble one and in 1918 it was installed in the children’s of Washington Park in that city. The sculpture was inspired by the poem by Eugene Field who wrote more than 500 poems for children.
Fred and Elizabeth Bailey were Wellsboro natives who moved to Colorado after marrying in 1892. They spent their married life in Denver where Fred became a senator and a major stockholder in Cripple Creek gold mines as well as the Brown Palace Hotel. After Elizabeth died, Fred commissioned a bronze replica of Torrey’s sculpture to be installed on the green in Wellsboro.
It was dedicated in 1938 and Torrey was in attendance.
Now the sculpture and fountain are the centerpiece of the town and a wonderful place to simply sit and listen to the water and enjoy the park.
I sat and enjoyed the fountain for a few minutes while the rest of the family walked to the old-fashioned candy store on Main Street.
After they visited there, we stopped by the town library, where my brother works as a staff member (mainly cataloguing books). It was my brother’s day off so he didn’t actually go with us, preferring to stay away until he actually had to go to work.
The Husband picked up a cozy mystery for me from the books on sale out front and then we headed over to my brother’s to give my sister-in-law a quick hug before heading home.
She wasn’t able to go to the canyon with us because she needed to sleep for her job as a county 911 dispatcher.
Our drive home was wet as the dark clouds that had threatened rain all day opened up and finally drenched the area with much needed rain. It continued to rain for most of the night, which may be why our weather was a little cooler yesterday.
That cooler weather helped when we met a local homeschooling family at a park along a creek in the town my husband works in. We met them to get in preparation for a homeschooling co-op we plan to join this upcoming school year.
Little Miss had a blast exploring the creek and it was fun to see children being children without devices or a TV.
Tomorrow we will probably visit my parents, go swimming, and make some s’mores.
How was your week last week? Do anything exciting or interesting? Let me know in the comments.
I am not a summer person which I think I have shared many, many times on this blog.
I am an autumn person and not in skin tone or fashion sense.
I like autumn. I like cozy days with a soft blanket and a warm cup of tea and the leaves on the trees a mix of pretty colors.
Okay, I like green on the trees too so I do like that part of summer.
I hate, however, the heat of summer.
If it could be 68 to 70 degrees (F) all summer long, I would be overwhelmingly happy about that.
All these temps in the mid-80s to mid-90s. (Today’s high is going to be 87! Yuck!)
No. Thank. You.
I am so ready for fall and I know my friend Erin at Still Life, With Cracker Crumbs, is too because she is already planning for our comfy, cozy movie watching that we like to start in October. She and I have also been trading memes and reels talking about how in our minds we are already watching the leaves change colors and sipping tea while reading a good book under a blanket.
Today I thought I’d share how I am trying to hold on to the cozy feeling of autumn, even though it isn’t autumn.
First, I turn the air conditioner up as high as I can without my husband complaining about it. Our air conditioners are portable so they don’t work as well as window air conditioning units, but they do a fairly good job and if they aren’t taking the heat out of the air, I sit right in front of it and soak up the cold.
The funny thing is that Little Miss started doing this the first day we had the AC on. Then she grabbed a blanket and pronounced that it was officially autumn. She and I are way too much alike.
After we get it as cold as we can (mainly in the living room because the AC isn’t strong enough to also cool down our kitchen), we click on the candle warmer so it kicks out a apple cinnamon flavor that makes us think of fall.
Then I make a cup of tea or cocoa and choose something cozy to watch – maybe even old shows or YouTube videos from autumn.
I pretend it is not sweltering outside for as long as I can and, whenever possible, I stay inside – since being outside in high heat makes me feel sick anyhow.
All this being said, I do like a couple of aspects of summer, as long as it is cool enough for me to enjoy it. I enjoy swimming with Little Miss and The Boy and watching fireworks.
I like to make s’mores, even though I only eat the chocolate.
I like fireflies, if I catch sight of them that is. I don’t see them like we used to anymore. I like that it is warm enough to go out and look up at the stars, which we can see at our house, thankfully. I love that our wild roses come out in summer, even though I can only enjoy them for a short time.
I love that fresh fruit is more plentiful in summer (especially watermelon).
I think that’s just about all I love about summer.
I tried. *shrug*
This past week Little Miss and I didn’t swim as much as we could have. One day we waited too long and it had cooled off too much. Another day Dad was out of treatment for the pool and we are 40 minutes away from the closet store that would have it so the pool was a bit green.
He used Clorox before the Fourth so we did go swimming on that day.
I didn’t take any photographs this past week but hopefully I will next week since The Husband is off of work. As usual, we don’t have any big travel plans but we will be taking some day trips and we will be going out for our anniversary, which is Saturday.
Here are a few photos from earlier this summer and past summers instead.
How was your week last week? Let me know in the comments.
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.
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!
This whole week was me trying to decompress and stay cool inside the house. The temps for us, as they were for many of you if you are in the U.S. (especially the Northeast), were very, very high. We are not used to those high temps so many of us hid inside our house with the AC.
Our house doesn’t have windows that open up (they roll out) so we have to use portable AC units that usually cool the house down in summer but really struggled with a heat index that hit 103 to 110 for three days in a row.
We have two units – one for upstairs and one for down. The upstairs one is not doing much at all because we have to put it at the top of our stairs since these units need a hose that goes out through a window and that is the most centralized place to put it to try to cool the entire upstairs.
We are considering another, smaller unit in case we have more high temps like this later in the summer. For now, we will deal with what we have.
I hope you are all managing okay in the heat.
During the heatwave Little Miss had a couple of friends visit briefly. Sadly, neither of the sisters seemed to know how to play anymore because they had been allowed to go on TikTok – for what reason, I have no idea. The children are 9 and almost 11 and do not live locally year round so my daughter only sees them once a year now.
They couldn’t put their phones down and ended up only being here an hour before they had to leave for other things.
The first day the one sister left because Little Miss had a bit of a sinus thing/possible cold going on. The second day, the other sister left to see a relative she doesn’t see much since the girls now live in another state.
Even before, that, though, she sat on the floor and scrolled on her phone instead of playing with my daughter. The next sister to visit a couple of days later also couldn’t put her phone down and it was clear she didn’t know how to stop scrolling. I told her TikTok wasn’t allowed in my house so she did put the phone down but proceeded to have a dazed look the next 15 minutes she was here as well as deciding to play a game on her phone less than two minutes after I told her to get off TikTok instead of interacting with my daughter.
It was more than disgusting for me to see those kids so hooked on their phones that they couldn’t even look up from them – it was frightening.
We are losing our kids to devices and social media and I think a lot of us don’t know what to do because we are just as addicted. I have been addicted myself so I know that this epidemic of cellphone use and social media scrolling is not limited to children.
The problem is that children are way more susceptible to becoming addicted to sites/apps like TikTok because the frontal lobe of their brains are not yet developed and that part of the brain that controls addiction is very fresh and alive, ready to be manipulated.
It has been hard for me even at my age to stop scrolling or reaching for my phone to check Instagram. Any time I want to procrastinate, I am on that phone. I’m getting better but it is a true struggle some days when I am very down. Instead of doing things that could really lift me up or make me feel better – such as reading the Bible or a book or praying or writing or drawing – I go to that phone and zone out.
So if it is a struggle for an adult – yet we have a brain developed enough to know we need to stop – then it is really a struggle for young children/teens.
Sorry for going heavy on what is normally a light post but that really upset me this week.
Because Little Miss’s friends didn’t want to actually play, I ended up in the slip n’ slide with her and reinjured my knee a bit – not by sliding because I am dumb, but not that dumb. I literally said to myself, “Don’t kneel down on your knee when you get down to put your butt on the slide and scootch (word? I don’t know) down, and what did I do? Immediately, I knealt on my knee.
Luckily the pain didn’t last long and I was able to find other ways to play with Little Miss in the water and also cool myself off. I do not have any photographs from that experience and you wouldn’t want to see them anyhow. I am sure I looked quite ridiculous sitting on that slide with the water running around me. Sort of like a hog wallowing in mud.
Here are a couple photos from a few weeks ago of Little Miss with a friend doing the same thing. They are way more photogenic.
The Husband came home and immediately grabbed the house and soaked himself down, not even bothering to change out of his work clothes. That was how hot it’s been all week.
I stayed inside as much as I could because I, sadly, have legit health issues when I go into extreme heat. I spent my time watching the 1970s Nancy Drew/Hardy Boys show and giggling over it and planning to write a blog post about at least one episode.
On Friday we headed up to a town 20 minutes away to get our groceries and it was fun (not really) watching the car thermometer go from 85 to 88 to 95 when we drove into the town with all it’s concrete, asphalt, and brick buildings. I’m so glad it was just a quick pickup.
On the way back, rain started to fall and I watched the temp go down 20 points. It was amazing but by the time we made it back to our house, the temps had gone back up again. I thought the rain was following us and was very excited but then the clouds came over, dropped a few sprinkles, and moved on. Very sad.
(Look at those Pennsylvania roads — aren’t they just lovely. Yeah…..anyhow…)
Later that evening the dark clouds came in and there was lightning and thunder and we got excited again – hoping that would mean we would get a cooling rain.
Nothing happened. There was a crack of thunder, a flash of lightning, and then…nothing.
Today it is supposed to be more of the same – high temps and little relief with rain.
Tomorrow … yep, the same. By Monday the temps are supposed to be lower. About 80 and I’ll take that since our heat indexes have been in the 100s all week.
I hope all of you have been able to stay cool if you are in an area that was dealing with high temps this week. I also hope you remember to stay hydrated and not only with water but also with drinks that have electrolytes.
I sound like an old lady, now, I know.
“Make sure you’re staying hydrated!”
I just know the dangers of it since two weeks ago I was in the ER with what felt like a skipping heartbeat and they loaded me up with fluids and think that might have had something to do with how I was feeling. I think now the skipping feeling is actually related to something with my stomach, but they were right that I had not been drinking much that day.
Here is hoping that all of our upcoming weeks get better and we can enjoy summer instead of sweating through it!
A temperature in the mid to high 60s is perfect for sitting under a blanket and reading a book and that is where our temps were most of this week despite it being summer. I have absolutely loved it.
It’s made me want to jump up and down, but I can’t since my knee is still healing. I have, instead, been doing some dancing in place while grabbing my grandma’s blanket and running to the couch with my Kindle.
If you didn’t read my Sunday Bookends, post, you might not know that I fell on my sidewalk last week while trying to take groceries into the house. My foot caught on the curb, I went flying, and my left knee took the full brunt of the impact. When my knee made contact, I had a horrible feeling that this was not going to be one of those falls you shake off and move on from.
So far it hasn’t been. I’ve been stiff and sore all week. My entire body reacted to that fall, and I’ve been a bit of a sore mess all week. Not a big of enough mess that I couldn’t have a fairly good week, though.
No ER visits this week despite that fall so that’s one good thing.
There were other good things about the week, though.
Little Miss attended an art class all week with the local 4-H group. Well, Tuesday through Friday.
On Monday, the kids and I drove 45 minutes north to visit with our homeschool evaluator and family friend. She learned about our school year and interviewed the kids and then wrote evaluations for both children for me to hand in to our school district to show they had a good education this past year.
On Tuesday we started the art class which was for four hours a day.
It was only a week long but there will be other 4-H events throughout the summer, including the horse and pony club which meets a couple of times a month, and a baking club which will be meeting every Monday in July. I also found out yesterday that there will be another art class like this one in August.
The building the classes were held in is an old shoe factory that built in the 1940s. It now houses a state representative office and offices for various community or county organizations.
My grandmother once worked at the shoe factory. She’s been gone since 2003 and was two weeks shy of 94 when she passed, so that gives you an idea how old the building is.
The building has, obviously, been remodeled and I love the mural that is on the walls when you first walk in.
The mural was painted by Kat Badger, who paints murals all over the world, but was thrilled, according to an interview with the local TV station (WNEP) to paint a mural in her own hometown. The mural features all the different aspects and features of Sullivan County – the waterfalls in the state park near here, the covered bridge in a tiny town near us, the people who worked in the shoe factory.
It’s truly beautiful.
The building is only about eight minutes from our house and all the other parents left their children there, but I was somehow asked to pick up the lunches each day, so I stuck around and mainly sat in the car and read books or worked on my book. In other words, it was relaxing in many ways, sans having to get lunches.
The plants outside the building in interesting “pots.”
On Friday I usually get our groceries, but I had to drive to the town we live in to take Little Miss to class, then back to where we live to pick up lunch. The problem was that when I got there, the business that was supposed to provide lunch never made it, saying their manager had denied the request to make a lunch for the local 4-H group. They did not, however, let the local 4-H group know this so at the last minute the local, family-owned supermarket was called and made subs for the group like the small town heroes they are.
After having to wait another half hour for that order then going back and waiting another hour and a half for the class to end, and then driving back home, I was glad I had decided to wait until today to pick up our grocery order since it is a 40-minute round trip to do that.
Next week, so far, looks to be a lot slower week. It is supposed to get very warm so we will probably be inside or in the sprinkler most of the time.
My dad has had a lot of health issues this year, so we haven’t been able to get the pool at his house going. Some things are going to have to be laid to the side this year, I think. There aren’t a lot of public pools near us but maybe we will find one to go to later in the summer.
There is a lake but Little Miss insists something touched her leg last time we went so she resists visits there. I still insist it was just some seaweed-like material and not some sort of lake monster but she doesn’t want to believe me.
I did enjoy looking at our wild roses this week. I was disappointed that some of our peonies didn’t bloom, but I think the frost at the end of May might have destroyed one of them. I missed their hot pink blooms but I was able to admire the dark pink blooms of the other peonies. Sadly, my knee issue didn’t let me get as many photos of the flowers as I wanted this week but I was able to get a few of the roses at least.
How was your week last week? Do anything interesting, exciting, or simply relaxing? I’d love to know.
