It was a hot one here today. The temps were in the upper 90s easily. We spent the day at the lake of a nearby state park with friends. It was a glorious day to be at the lake. The wind is always zippy up there, and the water felt wonderful. We played for hours, and Abigial discovered the joy of being tossed up into the air by the papas, then splashing down into the water. Unfortunately I wasn't as vigilant with the sunscreen as I thought I was, and I'm paying the price. My back is rosy and my shoulders are a bit sensitive. I did better on the kids thankfully; Vincent is fine and Abigail and Isabella only have rosy cheeks.

I'm still plugging away on the stole for my sister. There are about 6 weeks until the wedding, and I have about 125 rows to go. If I do about 8 rows a day, I can have it done in less than 3 weeks. Lace is not very fun, nor is knitting alpaca in the heat of summer. I wish I'd been more diligent last spring!

I just finished a very interesting book. It was called Braving Home, and it is about people whose homes are in tenous or unusual places, but who like it there and have no desire to leave. It was fascinating and many parts of it resonated deeply with me.

Just rambling on a rainy Saturday morning...

I'm starting to think people around here are overly dependent on air conditioning. As a child, we had a window air conditioner. It went on only a few times a summer, mostly on those 95+ degree humid days. It was turned on in the late afternoon and ran until the cool of the night set in during the wee hours of the morning. Most of my friends' families were similar. We do not have air in our home. It is very old with radiator heat, and central air would be impossible. We do have two window air conditioners, one of which we have never installed and the other of which we haven't used in three years. I close the blinds on the east side of the house in the morning, on the west in the afternoon. I open windows to catch the cross breeze, and leave them open at night to welcome the cool air. If it's really hot (over 90 and humid), we'll open the laundry shoot (about 1' square) and blow cool air up from the basement to the second story. We all cope with it just fine, yet we know many people who turn on their air the instant it is 80-85 degrees out, and simply cannot handle the idea of living without their air. We don't live in an apartment or in areas that are over 95 for weeks. Our nights cool down nicely. None of us has a health condition that would make handling heat hard and I'm not pregnant (the reason the window air conditioner went in 3 years ago). There really isn't a huge need for most people around here to have their air on for much of the summer. However, many spend their day in climate controlled officed and buildings. Their bodies are not given the chance to adjust to the heat gradually as the days warm up. I think this simple fact is the reason so many people cannot imagine life without air conditioning anymore. 85 degrees is absolutely gorgeous for most of us who are able to let our bodies adjust naturally to the seasons, but may bring complaints from people I know who live in air conditioning. It's too bad that so many people are missing out on the seasons like this.

The same thing can be said for heat in the winter. We keep ours at 60-61 degrees, and many people think we are nuts.

I fell off the weight loss wagon about 5 weeks ago, but the good news is I was still maintaining my weight. It stayed the same over 5 weeks, which I feel is a pretty good accomplishment. I've started getting serious again this week. I've dropped 1.75 lbs this week, bringing my total weight loss so far to 28 lbs. I've still got another 11 I want to lose at this point. It's amazing how well the classic "eat less, exercise more" regime actually works!

I've decided to work on weaning myself from emoticons. I was listening to something on NPR the other day (actually, it may have been WPR now that I think about it) which helped me make this decision. Someone was talking about how writers through the centuries managed to portrary emotions, thoughts, feelings and tone without resorting to little clusters of characters with special meaning. Too true. So instead of hammering home my emotions with emoticons, I decided I should start trying to simply be more expressive in my writing.

Now if only I could learn proper use of commas. I had a language arts teacher in 7th grade who instructed us to put commas "anywhere you would naturally pause while speaking". That has forever messed up my punctuation usage.

I'm hosting my sister's bridal shower today. The flowers are arranged, most of the food is done, the games are ready. I hope it will be a fun day. It will be at my aunt's house an hour away since most of the guests live up there. I'm going without the kids, and I'll be getting there early to set up and staying late to help her clean up. I figure with driving, set up, clean up and the party itself, I'll be gone about 7-8 hours. We'll see if Luis appreciates my day more after this day is through. After a day like this he always appreciates the work I do around the house much more for a while.