As usual, my grandkids were completely brilliant. When it was time for them to go to bed, I think they were out cold before I turned off the lights.
For the first three days, I had Kitten to myself all day. She's a lovely baby and very easy to deal with. She let me know when she was tired or wanted to snuggle but she never really fussed, not like a discontented baby can. She's only five weeks and she hasn't given us a real, deliberate smile yet. She seemed on the verge several times while we played.
The weather was spectacular all week. Blue skies, warm temperatures and lovely breezes brought June in like a caress. The two of us sat on the new screen porch and enjoyed it all.
Monday, after Megan came home from school, I drove over to a field just south of the Arboretum to join a painting class. We painted as the sun set behind the hill over the pond. It was a perfect evening and there was just enough of a breeze to keep the bugs away. I did have to anchor my easel so it didn't blow into the pond. It was about as good as a Monday evening can be.
It was the perfect way to unwind after an exhausting day of snuggling a baby on the porch.
My painting turned out okay, although the sun went behind the hill before I could do much with my water.
On Wednesday, I popped Kitten into her car seat and drove into town for lunch at my Mom and Dad's place. My cousins who live in Europe were in town and we try to get together when that happens. There were ten of us for lunch, so we had a private party room in the restaurant. The salads and sandwiches were delicious but the company was the best part. As I may have written in the past, my cousin Kevin and his wife work for Catholic Relief and are based in Asia. They're very good at what they do so are continuously being sent to the most strife-torn places on earth to try and help the people. Kevin was the guy they sent to Sri Lanka in the wake of that horrible tsunami in '04. He had just been shifted out of the Congo and was here for Christmas, saying what a breeze the middle east would be after that interminable civil war when the wave hit. He and my brother, Joe, who was a professional warrior for a decade, used to run into each other in Iraq and Afghanistan and compare notes as to how things were going on each front. I think they would both enjoy the book The Heart and the Fist, by Eric Greitens. It's the story of a guy who started his career with humanitarian efforts all over the globe and decided the best way to help victims was to stop the victimizers so he became a Navy Seal. Susie, Kevin's older sister, who retired and moved to Italy, was also there. Annie is the youngest of the cousins and she lives here in town. She and her husband have an old pitching machine they're going to let me give to Babalouie! Kitten behaved like a lovely little doll all through our lunch. We managed to beat the afternoon traffic home. In the evening, a storm blew in just about dinner time with the ferocity of a grizzly bear. We saw it coming over the fields to the west of the house and Megan and I went out to close the windows on the porch to protect the very few electronics out there. The porch has floor to ceiling screens and these really nifty, light weight plastic windows that you can put up in just such a situation. They aren't built to withstand hurricane strength winds, however. As Megan and I tried to raise the windows, the wind was punching them right out of their tracks. That wind was a lot stronger than we were. Eventually, we realized we couldn't win that fight so Megan grabbed a grill cover and we tucked it over the sound bar and DVD player. Then we left the windows open enough to give the wind somewhere to go. Because of the storm, the State Champion Ultimate Frisbee game had to be postponed, which wouldn't have been noted by me at all if not for the fact that my niece Molly is a senior on one of the teams duking it out for gold. It's bad enough to be all psyched up and ready to go, only to be told to save it for tomorrow. It's much worse if you have orientation at the University you're planning to attend next year, and tickets to see Dear Evan Hanson tomorrow. Molly announced that she'd rather go to community college next year than miss her championship game and a few phone calls to family members took care of the theater tickets. It was all worth it when Thursday evening rolled around and MOLLY SCORED THE GAME WINNING GOAL TO TAKE THE STATE TITLE!! Not to be outdone, while Molly was bringing home gold in UF, our nephew Vince was striking out the last six batters to take his baseball team to State! Vince already played in the Prep Bowl last November, so even if he doesn't win gold at State, he might be the first member of the family to make it to State in two sports. Although, Gus may have him there. That's right; Saturday morning, another of my parents' grandkids anchored the silver medal 4X800 relay team at the State Track Meet. Gus is a spectacular runner and may very well have competed in the State Cross Country Meet but track and CC are hardly two different sports. They're more like two different flavors of the same sport. Maybe all that has something to do with Kitten giving us her first deliberate smile on Thursday. Good timing, either way. Thursday, Megan finished up with school so I was able to pack up and head back home. I should have packed up earlier in the day but I didn't and it was my own fault I hit traffic. Ty's place is a little over 30 miles from us and in theory it should take no more than 35 minutes to make the trek, as it's highway nearly from door to door. Traffic in the cities these days is a nightmare. The powers that be have a dream of turning Minneapolis into an all pedestrian/bike/mass transit City of the Future, by choking traffic to death all over town. The main arteries through town have had half their lanes turned into bike lanes and they're planning to shut down the alternate routes people have been using to force everyone onto those same, truncated main arteries. In short, they think they can force us all onto their buses and light rail by making driving a perfectly miserable experience. I made the first 27 miles in 25 minutes. Then I hit the city traffic. I took the first exit off of the crosstown highway, thinking the city streets would be quicker. I didn't factor in how many cars had the same idea. I joined the 30 or so cars on the offramp at Gleason. Cross traffic on Gleason was such that cars could only exit the offramp at a rate of approximately one per minute. I pulled out the rosary I keep in my purse, figuring I could put the time waiting to good use. I finished the entire rosary and I was still about the sixth car in line to get off. The last five miles of my trip home took 45 minutes. So, in addition to all those cars, emitting God knows how much exhaust into the atmosphere while they sit and wait, that's how many man-hours of wasted productivity and happiness. .. all so Minneapolis can Virtue Signal it's Greenity! When the unintended consequences of your stated objective create the diametrically opposite effect you claim to aiming for, is it merely rank hypocrisy to refuse to recognize that fact or does it rise to the level of evil? These are the philosophical conundrums I had time to ponder on the offramp. Friday was yet another glorious and gorgeous day. I spent the morning painting down at Lake Harriet and the evening at a family barbecue, celebrating the visit home of my niece and her husband from Chicago. They're expecting their first baby, so in addition to the full family cook out, there was a baby shower on Saturday morning. It was great fun and I enjoyed all of it tremendously but I'm as worn out as if I had been the one catching the game winning pass in UF, striking out the last six batters and anchoring the 4X800. I'm kind of relieved that Sunday dawned cool and overcast with a likelihood of rain. I need a day off to recover from all the fun. |