summer thoughts

It's a problem when your backup camera starts to assert its age and begins a cycle of malfunctioning. I mean, backup by definition means that it should back you up, say when your one good camera is in the repair shop and will be there still for several weeks. When I traveled, I always slipped the extra little guy into my pack. Just in case. It's come in handy! Too, it's small. Perfect for those times when you just can't stand draping that hunk of photographic machinery around your neck. The backup camera has to fit in my purse. And I do not own one of those mega purses that would fit everything in your possession. Big purses make no sense to me. You never use one quarter the junk you carry in them. So -- small purse, small backup camera.

Except now I have this malfunctioning backup camera. Ed says it's just the battery connector -- it needs the occasional wipe. Really? Like, how does dust or grime get in there to mess with connections?

As you can see, I'm itching for a new backup camera. 

I tell myself -- it's okay. You cancelled a trip to Italy. You saved money. Italy is way more expensive than a small backup camera. Still, Ed's attitude toward buying stuff has to rub off on you! The planet is small and in trouble. We need to aspire to have less and use more of what's in the head rather than in the house. 

But it doesn't hurt to look at backup cameras on line. Just to look...

 

First though, there is that lovely morning walk on the most splendid August day! Warm but not hot. Bright, with clear skies and an unreal amount of August fragrance.

 

(opening the window in he mud room before I step out)

(Cherry and Dance: you're late with our food!)

(where will the froggies go when the lilies are all gone?)

(Happy, waiting to see what's next)

(August flowers)

(picnic table pots)

(the last two bold and beautiful girls: see you next year!)

(Am I the only one who does not mind the sloppy chaos of August in the garden?)

And of course, breakfast outside!

And then I just can't leave my post on the porch. On that white chair with the blue cushions. All morning long.

In the afternoon though I recoil. I hate feeling so spoiled. I've never just "relaxed" all day long. Really never. It's not that I have a strong work ethic. (Do you? I don't. Ask me how hard I worked as a kid in school...) It's that I have a million things I would like to do on days where I have a chunk of free time. This includes getting more active again. Not necessarily to return to the day-long toil outside of the spring season, but to do something that actually counts as aerobic movement. So I hop on my bike and pedal around the new development rather aimlessly, and this spurs my motivation, and I turn toward Lake Waubesa...

I park my bike and watch a family with big kids and maybe cousins or aunts wade into the waters, clothes on, just for the fun of it. They speak a language I don't understand. Maybe Hmong? (Some 20% of all Hmong Americans live in Wisconsin.) They seem, well, happy. And I'm happy with them. Despite everything. I mean, we live at a time when today's New Yorker cartoon seems so apt -- the guy says to his partner, both watching TV - "would you mind if I changed the channel to check on the other disasters?" Yet if you are so lucky as to be in a time and place where this hasn't destroyed your life (yet), then giggling foolishly as you swim in your sopping wet clothes and your aunt snaps pictures of the whole lot of you with her smart phone -- that's exactly what you should be doing.

I peddle home, still smiling.

Evening conversation with my Chicago grandgirl: about beach trips (hers), resident twelve-baby turkey family (mine), and December flowers (her mom's). 

More reasons to smile.

With love.