I’m finding it hard to believe that summer is coming to an end. I wasn’t sure where I’d be by now, but I thought I’d be a little further along in my plans than I am. I have definitely been procrastinating. Waiting for a sign that the time for change has arrived. But I continue to look the other way, missing the signs!
Just a few miles from here, towns have been destroyed by the hurricane that shall remain nameless. Countless homes are under massive amounts of water. The rivers haven’t all crested yet and I imagine that the topography in these areas has been permanently changed.
We’ve been up since 4 am bailing water out of our basement, but given some of the flooding and other damage around here, I consider us lucky. We didn’t lose power and our sump pump was working, so I can only imagine what a disaster we would have had on our hands if either or both had decided to crap out on us, as they’ve done in the past. I’m glad it’s over. The wind wasn’t nearly as bad as we had feared, but the rain just wouldn’t stop. I think we had about 9 inches of it.
It’s the calm before the storm. Except that we have one very excited little Sophie, who has just lost her first tooth. Exactly one month before her sixth birthday. An event that was certainly accelerated by her biting on a cherry pit a couple of weeks ago.
Update at 6:11 pm. About 12 hours after writing my post below, it’s still calm here – other than some intermittent rain. We’ve done all we could to prepare, and now we’re just in waiting mode. Sweet Sophie, concerned about her stuffed animals, has hidden them underneath her bedcovers so they won’t be scared.
No we’re not. But you should have seen the look on Chloe’s face when I told her that we were thinking of canceling it. Priceless. A look of pure disbelief. Wide eyes, open mouth – you get it.
For the first time since she was a little, little girl, Chloe came into our bed last night after our new dehumidifer in the basement, which works well but is too noisy, woke her from her slumber and freaked her out just a little bit. Which I totally understand, because we’re hamster-sitting this week and boy does he make a hell of a lot of noise at night, which freaks me out. Especially at 3:30 AM, which is prime time for ghouls, goblins and other fantastical things that go bump in the night.
I escaped from work on the early side today so that I could make good on a promise to Chloe to bake a fruit tart. We didn’t have time to accomplish the task this weekend, so I rushed home to get it done for dessert this evening.
Chloe and Sophie arrived home yesterday and if I hadn’t known that they were in Cape May for the week, I would have thought that they had spent their days on a desert island in the South Pacific, they came home so tan. Really, really tan.
Life is so damn difficult for Chloe and Sophie this summer. Really torture. Not sure how they manage to ride a surrey bicycle, spend several hours building sandcastles, riding the waves and reading at the beach, and play 18 holes of miniature golf. Yes, that’s all in one day. How are they ever going to return to real life after the summer they’ve had?