Morning kitchen with red-checked tablecloth and coffee. There's another man here now to look at the basement, as the contractors yesterday had run into a problem which the man who had given us the estimate had not indicated would be a problem, even though it was staring everyone in the face the whole time. Suffice it to say that this whole basement project --- drainage and mold abatement, it started out being, but now we're into structural integrity territory --- is going to cost considerably more than we had anticipated, to which the only other thing to add is of course.
We seem to have had rain last night. I know we had thunder and lightning. We also had people shooting off firecrackers around ten p.m., when I was out walking with Dora, who had finally calmed down. We were enjoying the cool of the night and the quiet of the neighborhood, as we always do. Then the banging started, and she lost her mind and more or less dragged me home at a gallop. Then she didn't want to go into her crate, and cried and was anxious once she was in it, and then the thunder and lightning started, and I wound up sleeping about half the night in the recliner to keep her company and keep her quiet.
On the upside, we did walk a total of five miles yesterday, two of them, in an afternoon round, with a ten-pound weight in my daypack. This was doable and not unpleasant, though I need to figure out some better way to keep the weight high on my back. I had put in some padding so that it wasn't riding right at the bottom of the pack, but I'll need more to keep it between my shoulder blades. Anyway, again, this was quite doable, and I plan to keep doing it. I could feel the difference in my legs and glutes, especially walking uphill.
Yesterday was a productive day, with many emails sent that I'd been needing to send: replying to people who had queried me about various things while I was out of the country, but also querying other people about things I've needed to query them about. That's meant a various round of loads off my mind.
The Texas Daughter also needed a copy of her high-school transcript, because she wants to take some community college classes, and apparently her college and graduate-school transcripts weren't sufficient for them, so we spent some time yesterday hunting all that down. End of story: for our entire homeschooling life I used a website called HomeschoolReporting.com, which keeps records and will generate a very nice transcript, so I just re-upped my old $20 subscription and generated a fresh transcript for her on the spot --- which I emailed to her and saved to my Google Docs for future reference. If the internet goes down, we're in trouble, but then if the internet goes down, everybody will be in trouble, so I don't think I'm going to sweat it beyond this point.
Tomorrow she heads for home again, with a stop to visit her grandmothers on the way. AND the Arty Daughter's boyfriend is coming to take her place, so I've got sheets out for the Arty Daughter to change that bed and make ready. Air BnB might or might not be on the verge of collapse, but we keep on running our little family bed-and-breakfast just the same.
Last night's dinner: a chicken curry with mango, because I just can't get enough mango lately. I didn't have rice, so we ate it over quinoa, which is probably the eighth Deadly Sin, but it tasted good enough. This curry was just frozen chicken-breast strips (not breaded, obviously) with plain old curry powder, ginger paste, cilantro paste because I'm out of coriander, cayenne, chili powder, garlic and onion, plus a little brown-sugar Swerve, finished with and simmered a fairly long time in coconut milk. It was quite good, and I look forward to eating it for lunch today.
Wearing today:
Continuing my dresses-that-didn't-go-to-Norway theme, and pushing my luck, in Sierra. The last warm day I wore this dress, she kind of melted down below my knees in the humidity, but I'm trying again anyway. No dress unworn!
But she is sleeveless. My other option for the day would have been Willow, who is not sleeveless. After two straight days in the same Maggie, I was kind of looking for something different, anyway.
So in a while I'll walk the poor dog, taking my "rucking" backpack with me again to get in more of a workout. Then I hope to settle down to some work. I need to be reading a book I committed myself to write about (deadline: mid-October, so of course my brain is going, You don't need to think about that yet), and to be adding poems to the Futures list for the Sun calendar.
I'll probably play around a little more with my packing and capsule-outfit options for Houston next week as well. I'm happy and relieved to have all those details squared away and now am looking forward to going and having 36 hours of fun before I have to come home again.
So, now to get to it all. More later, I'm sure.
SOMEWHAT LATER:
Back from a very warm rucking walk. Not any hotter in Sierra, I don't think, than I would have been in anything else. Here's my rucking getup, pre-walk:
Most of the bulk in the pack is wadded-up dog beds, which don't weigh anything, really. Then on top of that, a 10-lb hand weight. This is less than 10% of my body weight, so a really modest starter challenge, but it's enough for now. We walked about two miles in the heat, with this weight, and that was truly sufficient, as morning exercises go.
In the heat and humidity, Sierra has now stretched to touch the bottoms of my knees instead of the tops, but wuddeva.
So now Dora is resting in her crate, and I am drinking water and feeling vanquished --- but we did went out and done it.
Looks like the basement project isn't going to run us massively much more money than the original proposal, thanks to some strategic tweaks in the plan. Thank goodness for that. Dudes are down there now, jackhammering a massive hole in the floor that will function as, basically, a well with a submerged pump. It'll be filled with rocks, so nobody can fall down it. Meanwhile, the basement walls, which are dirt, will be shored up with cinder blocks, which will make the whole thing cleaner. I'd actually forgotten that the floor of that basement wasn't dirt, because that's what it's looked like for so many years.
So our whole foundation will be reinforced, which is good news --- better news than the alternative, anyway.
ALSO:
Continuing my purchasing-pause fantasy shopping obsession by contemplating the new London midi dress as a late-fall/birthday possibility (assuming it doesn't sell out). It only comes in two colors, black and plum, so I guess I'd get plum, a color I have considered in other dress designs.
What I like:
*The length. I do love a good midi dress, especially in rotation with shorter dresses.
*The cut, which seems very flattering, potentially, to many body types. It seems like a very retro-90s kind of design, with that set in raised waist and the long flowing line --- I had, at one time, a Laura Ashley cotton knit floral dress in very much that kind of shape, which I loved and wore until I got pregnant and then was nursing, and it didn't fit anymore. That dress was always right on the edge of being too small, though in my pre-pregnant phase in Cambridge (basically the first two years we were there), I was as fit and thin as I've ever been in my life, and that dress was just it. I'm sure I'm drawn to the London because it reminds me of that dress.
*The sleeves, which seem good for winter without making it strictly a winter dress. I could see wearing a dress like this, in that color, in Advent and Lent, but also beyond those seasons, with boots, sandals, etc. I'd really kind of love a longer, slim-line dress to wear with knee-high boots . . .
But of course I am dreaming.
PS: I could be persuaded by the Norah, too, to be honest, especially since she comes in cobalt.
EVENING UPDATE:
It was pub night, with all the kids, or at least the 3/4 of them who are here. After the day's hot rucking walks, I cleaned up and this is what I wore:
Still doing the "Dresses That Didn't Go to Norway" thing, in Audrey, worn here with my teal Kosher Casuals crop top for a little contrast. I wasn't sure how much I'd like this, but I really do. It's a fun layered look for the heat of the summer.
A shout-out, again, for these little Kosher Casual crop tops. No, they're not natural fibers, but they're thin and lightweight and truly don't feel like an extra layer under your dress. They're really perfect for summer, when you want a little more coverage than your dress provides. I repeat: they add virtually zero weight, and they don't get noticeably sweaty. They're easy to hand-wash and hang dry, too, when you need to. With this dress I mostly wear the charcoal-gray crop top that matches it, so that it just looks like a higher-necked dress than it is, but I find that I do really like this little pop of teal as a tank layer.
This was a fun outfit for a fun night out. Now I've walked Dora --- we've done almost 5 miles, and maybe we'll get in the last 1/5 of a mile just going out for a shorty later on. I wanted to do her long evening walk before it got dark and people started setting off firecrackers again. So now we've done that, and I'm about to go sit on the porch to watch the last light fade away and the lightning bugs come out.