The calm surface of the water reflects the sunlight, waiting. The day is warm and sunny, but not too warm, around 75 degrees. I wade slowly into the shallow end, letting my exposed limbs get used to the cold water. As it reaches breast-high, I draw a large intake of breath at the shock of the coldness that far up on my body. Finally, I dip the rest of me below the water. AHHHH..nice temperature, not bad at all.

I kick off and swim the length of the pool. My passage through the water is nearly silent as I am doing the breast stroke. I roll over onto my back, throw my arms out with my palms uplifted to the sun, and just float. Floating reminds me of my childhood when we used to vacation in Florida with my grandparents. My Grandmother loved to float on her back, and she taught me the art of floating in the salt-laden, buoyant waters of the Gulf of Mexico. The technique still works today even without the salt.  I open my eyes and stare up into the blue sky dotted with puffy clouds. The clouds are wasting no time today as there is a nice breeze blowing, and they scud quickly out of my limited line of vision. I roll back over and swim the length of the pool in the opposite direction. Esther Williams I am not, but I make decent progress.

I make several more passes of the pool, varying my stroke. Already I am less out of breath than my first session on the weekend. Satisifed and relaxed after about a half hour, I swim to the steps and make my exit. The day is warm enough that I don’t feel the need to immediately wrap myself in a towel, or in the terry robe hanging over the chair, so I dry off by simply laying on the lounge chair in the sun. Time passes. I sit up with a start and look at my watch, which brings me back to reality with a thump as my book falls off my lap. Egads, is it that late already? Time to feed the dogs [who through all this have been shut in the house—What Bliss!]. My little “mini-vacation-at-the-pool” is at an end for today. [Ed.note: The book I am reading is Hollyhocks, Lambs and other Passions: A Memoir of Thornhill Farm by Dee Hardie {a flea market find}]

GOBBLE GOBBLE! Just as I turned onto our street on my way home after running errands just now, a female turkey and two tiny turkey babies [okay, do you call them chicks? turklettes?] crossed the road in front of me. A very cute sight indeed. Sorry, no camera, no photo.

Last night we decided to eat pool side. During the day we went to the local nursery and bought some flowers to liven up the pool area, so it’s really starting to look like a place where you’d like to spend some time. Rick cooked a great meal of Roasted Monkfish. The monkfish was wrapped in a layer of proscuitto that had been spread with a mixture of sun-dried tomatoes, basil, olive oil and cured black olives. It’s then served on top of a bed of arugula dressed with a vinaigrette. We had an ear of corn on the side. [Ed.note: The recipe for the monkfish can be found in Jamie Oliver’s cookbook, Happy Days with the Naked Chef.]

My contribution to dinner was setting the table. A la Martha Stewart, I went searching in my yard for a small bouquet or centerpiece. I came up with two strands of varying heights of fern, a leaf from a hosta, and a single stalk of yellow foxglove. I could never do this in Colorado!! I’ve decided I need more cutting flowers in the beds. Anyway, here is our Table for 2.

It was very pleasant, the temperature was absolutely perfect, and no bugs of any kind to spoil the mood. Sailor decided to get under the table and make us laugh by wearing the tablecloth like a nun’s wimple. He looks devilish, doesn’t he?

And here is another photo of the pool area complete with our new flowers:

It’s quite hot here today, right around 90 degrees, so we’ve been in the pool twice today! I did my usual skimming after the solar blanket was pulled off and had some interesting things end up in my net. There are these small bugs that keep showing up on the surface of the water and Rick swears they look just like fishing lures that he’s used to fly fish with. Wooly buggers, in fact. [or maybe you spell it boogers?] He’s right; they look just like them. Funny little things. Also lots of interesting winged creatures that I’ve never seen before and cannot identify. I also ended up with the usual Daddy-Long-Legs and assorted spiders,  a dragonfly, and something new. A wee froggie doing the deadman’s float! Cause of death? I think he croaked. [Oh my, what a pun!]

The water is up to 74 degrees, but it sure doesn’t feel that warm when you first get in. I was first in this afternoon. Watching Rick acclimate to the temp was pretty funny. He started making noises like Mario does when he only has one life left. If you’ve never played a Mario game on Nintendo than you probably can’t relate. It goes something like this: ewh, ewhh, ah! ah! ohhh, ah! ewh, ewhh. I just had to laugh at him. The water was luscious and cool. The perfect way to cool off after some yard work. I did the dog paddle for the total circumference of the pool without stopping. I like doing the paddle, lots of work but easy.

Rick is off again now to Boston for a few days. After this he won’t be travelling for several weeks. Good thing. I’ve been seriously considering taking up Rick’s boss’ wife’s way of coping with the travel situation. She hates it when her husband travels, so each time he does she either rearranges an entire room in the house or buys a new piece of furniture. Sounds good to me! I could end up with some really nice pieces of furniture that way. Time to hit the antique shops! About a minute after he left the driveway the phone rang. It was Rick. He wanted to tell me he had just seen Mama Turkey and her two babies crossing the road nearly at our house. So, she must live in the area close by. He said the babies were flapping their wings like crazy trying to get across the road as quickly as Mama. Too cute.

So, he’s off again and I’m alone with the dogs. At least now I have TV to watch. Yep, but that subject warrants a whole blog entry to itself. Stay Tuned. And if you’re reading this and you have no clue what I’m talking about, you’d better go back and read the blog in chronological order, which is now possible by clicking on the link at the intro to my blog site. Check it out.

At least that’s what they told us. After 2 weeks of people coming out here, arguing over whether or not our out-of-date underground cable was the problem, daily phone calls to complain,etc, etc., etc., we now know that lightening on the day of that hellacious T-storm was the cause of all our cable TV woes. Simply that our cable boxes BOTH got fried by a lightening strike. Why didn’t they think of that before? Too easy, I guess. I kept telling everybody everything was fine until the storm. Duh, get a clue folks! Yesterday two guys came out from Cablevision [yes, on SUNDAY, can you believe it??] and worked on the problem for about 2 hours. They were very thorough [one of the guys had been here 2 weeks ago and was the 2nd guy on the scene] and just started troubleshooting everything they could think of. Things weren’t making sense to them.

They took our cable box out to the street and plugged it directly in. Great signal, digital channels all there, etc. So, not a problem out at the box like they thought. Neither was it the cable coming into the house. We never would have found the problem if we had given them another cable box to experiment on. Rick gave them the one that we had switched out when we were having pixelation problems the week before all this started. We thought we had switched the boxes after the storm, but instead it was before the storm, so the cable box they tested was working in a way that the two fried ones weren’t. It hadn’t been hooked up at the time of the storm and it was working perfectly. ding, ding, ding—JACKPOT! That’s it; there’s the answer!

The sad thing is that we could have been watching TV all the time by simply by-passing the cable box and feeding the cable wire directly into the TV. Now we wouldn’t have had TIVO, or digital signal, or high definition [my mom is so cute, she tends to call it high deficiency instead of high definition, and in this case she’d be right!], but we could have had all the channels just the same. Sure wish we had known that. Why didn’t they tell us that before? or try it? Good questions.

They switched out the box in the livingroom but didn’t have a high definition box with them, so we’re missing out on that for the time being. But at least the TIVO works and we can watch TV. And none too soon, since Treasure Hunters started last night and it looks ike its going to be really good. Kind of like The Mole was, and we loved that show. Not really sure why it never took off like some of these other reality shows have. Anyway, I’m off the track again. They still couldn’t get the TV to work from the cable box in the kitchen area, so they just wired the cable directly into the TV and we can still watch it. They think the lightening took out the cable wiring within the house too. Must have been some strike! So, they need to come and redo the wiring in the next few days, as well as replacing the outside underground bit.

Lightening is a scary and strange thing. The only thing we can figure is that it hit the old TV antenna that stands tall, proud & pretty ugly on our chimney and travelled down the line. Now the antenna is not hooked up into the system anymore, so it doesn’t explain it completely. Both Rick and my Mom remember me saying “I think that one hit the house” after a particularly close-right-on-top-of-us strike. The thunder and the light flash were simultaneous. No wonder the dogs wanted in the basement! If we have one like that again I’ll be right down there with them.

Why they couldn’t have figured it out before this I surely don’t know. I guess people don’t normally start with the easiest answer. Anyway, the TV is working, and for that we are thankful.