"Excessive Heat Warning". No Kidding!

That's what we have for the next three days.......excessive heat warning. I guess when temperatures start to creep over the 100 mark that is getting excessive. Today was only in the 90's so it was bearable, but barely. I raked up the grass globs that were sitting on the lawn from mowing yesterday and mulched my vegetable garden with them. Once I was finished doing that I was so hot I didn't want to do much else. Grilled a cornish game hen for dinner and it was scrumptious. Had green beans from the garden. And lettuce. And cucumbers. The garden is really producing right now.

Went for our walk tonight. We did the hill pretty well considering how hot it was. When we get to the UCONN branch, which is where we turn around and come home, Paul likes to do a U-turn in the road and start right back down the hill. I like to walk through the parking lot and sit on one of the benches by the flower pots, relax, take a minute to catch my breath and enjoy the scenery. Tonight was MY night, which means that we did the parking lot tour. Tonight our rest on the bench was a bit longer than it usually is. It felt so good to sit down and cool our heels.

I was thinking that chilled cucumber soup might taste refreshing in this hot weather, but I have never had it. Has anyone ever tasted it? Is it gross or good? Does anyone have a good and EASY recipe that is tried and true?

I watched "Rudy" tonight........again. Such a good movie. I never get tired of watching it. It's a great movie for kids. Good message.

Thank you, Sarah, for an unforgettable day!

We had our annual family picnic today. It was quite small by Frueh standards. Only 10 of us. But I am sure it was one that none of us will EVER forget. One of those family memories that will have us saying for years..."Do you remember the year we had the picnic at Sarah's?"

Yes, we had our picnic at Sarah's new house. The house that is so new she hasn't even officially moved in yet. She has done LOTS of work. And she has LOTS of work still to do. It is a cute little house but the former owner was a bit of an eccentric and was never really seen much by her neighbors for the 50 years she lived there except when she came outside to harrass them. This woman had dogs and dogs and dogs. Sarah's house shows the effects of years of dogs. When she took the switchplates off the walls they were packed with dog hair inside. And there is other evidence of dog habitation around the house. But the house is as cute as a button and has so many unusual little built-ins that it is worth all the work and loving care that Sarah is giving it. Sarah has already done over the porch and it is a place you want to sit down in and never leave.

We all agreed that we had the BEST food this year of any picnic and I'm sure we'll all agree that we had the most unusual occurance of any picnic so far.

Earlier in the day Hank had driven his van into the yard. We noticed that one of his tires had made quite a sink-hole like depression in the ground. He was afraid he had perhaps damaged some tiles in the septic field. He knew there had to be some reason for this "sinkage" so after lunch he got a shovel and started to dig to find out what had caused this sink-hole in Sarah's lawn. "A grave", some of us chuckled.

Hmmmm.....what could be down there? We're not sure but from that terrible, foul odor it sure could be a septic field. PHEW!! MAN OH MAN!! And it seemed to be attracting flies right away. There was lots of speculation going on. All the way from buried treasure to a coffin. Eventually Hank unearthed a rectangular square plastic box. No more specualtion. Paul recognized it right away. "It's a dog coffin", he yelled out. The bizarreness of the whole thing reduced us all to a pile of giggling, helpless morons, except for poor Sarah................

Awwwww, no! Say it isn't so, Uncle Paul. In MY yard? A little doggie coffin??

Sarah bounced back from her little traumatic experience fast and by the time we left she was all smiles again and wondering what else we might be able to recover, or uncover! She has done an outstanding job with this little house. What a worker. I can't wait to see it next year at this time. It is so cute. GO SARAH!!

Check out the sub-album,"Sarah's Family Picnic, 2006" under "The Frueh Gathering" in the photo gallery for more pictures of our picnic, including some crime photos of the dig! Or just click right here.

3- H Day

Today was very humid and hot and muggy. It was a day to move very sloooooowly. Paul spent the whole day very sloooooowly painting the porch. I spent the afternoon slooooowly cleaning out the refrigerator. Believe it or not, even that was a hot job. Then I very slooooowly re-planted the hosta plants that I lhad to move when the foundation for the porch was being dug.

This morning I went grocery shopping which was a pretty quick job because they keep the darn grocery store so freezing cold that you have to move fast fast fast just to stay warm. I always bring a jacket to put on because it is so cold in there but I look like a real dork with my jacket and shorts. Then I go back outside and I look even dorkier pushing my heavy shopping cart across the hot parking lot with a jacket on in 90 degree weather. After dinner we went for our 45 minute walk and we kept up a pretty good pace for two old goats in hot and humid conditons.

Just hot...............

It is just hot hot hot. It is going to be hot tomorrow, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. No one knows beyond that. Swimming pool, get ready! We're having a family picnic on Saturday. If I have a choice between hot or rain, I'll take the hot. I hope Sarah has a few shade trees!!!!!!

Today was spent doing a major cleaning job on my deck and barbecue grill. I was going to continue working where I left off yesterday weeding and trimming in the front of the house but I saw a s_ _ _ _ slithering around there yesterday as I went to grab for a weed and that put a quick stop to THAT. I think that little sucker is living in my pachysandra on that side of the house because that is the second time I have seen one of those, eewwwww eewwwww creepy, things in that area in the past week. Maybe someone who does not have an aversion to those creepy things, like Ellen, would like to come to my house sometime and poke through my pachysandra and remove that wriggling thing to another domicile far far away. Like maybe take it for a little walk on the other side of the field? Oh geeeezzz, just the though of picking up one of those creatures...........nauseousness.

Damon is getting ready for his ascent up Mt. Rainier. It all sounds pretty scary to me, but that is just because I am his mother. How great it will feel to reach the top, though. What an accomplishment. A real "high"!

Last night our breakfast club went out for pizza and then to see "The Devil Wears Prada". Great movie, great company. It was fun to get together with everyone but it doesn't make me want to get back to school yet. I still have too many things I want to get done this summer. The summer will NEVER be long enough. Remember how loooooong summer used to seem when you were a child? It stretched out into so many lazy days that I actually remember getting bored. I guess those days are gone!

A Working Weekend

Paul and I spent all day yesterday working and working and working and working. Paul was doing some work on the porch. Apparently this type of work requires one to use some pretty strong language.....lots of it. The best thing for me to do when he is doing THAT kind of job is to keep my mouth closed and find something to do away from the scene of the crime.

I decided it would be best if I retreated to my new flower bed (gladly) and take some time to decide where to place my new plants. That is a fun job. It was quiet and peaceful and I could pretty much ignore all the Paul noises. My little piece of heaven.

It took lots of hard work, grunting, heating pads and aspirin, but in 3 months I have gone from this tangled mess of thorny wild rose bushes..............

.........to this, the beginning of a decent flower garden. It was HARD work for this old gal. I did so much digging and hauling plants and pulling up roots and watering and planting that by the end of the day yesterday every joint in my poor body was screaming for mercy. I was slimy. I was dirty. I was hot. I was sweaty. But it all felt so good. Mission almost accomplished.

It was such a high at the end of the day to see a beautiful butterfly dancing on my bee balm. It didn't take long for it to be discovered. Today I went back to my favorite hardware store and bought some plants to fill the remaining empty spots. I just need to spread some mulch, another hot and dirty job, and then this project will be done, except for the growing. But there are many more projects waiting in the wings for me. Thank goodness.

Going home for a little bit.

I woke up to an overcast and dreary day this morning. I thought it would be a good day to take a trip to the Falls Village Flower Farm. I found some great plants. They have so many that I have a hard time stopping. When I was finished I took a drive through town (which takes all of 16 seconds) and snapped a few pictures of the bustling metropolis. Here is busy Main Street.


It used to be so active with two grocery stores, a post office, a plumbing shop, two banks, a garage and a fabric shop. Now there is NOTHING. They are all gone.

View of Main Street looking towards Bornemann's old house. It seems I remember that there used to be sidewalks on both sides of the road. It looks like they are gone now.

The old Methodist Church where I have some really happy and special memories. The church is now a book store. It is very sad to go inside because it looks nothing like a church anymore. What was once a beautiful and peaceful place is now unkempt and slovenly. After I zipped through the business district I continued on to the "suburbs".

Be still my heart........it's the Mosquito Path!

View of the old Misty Meadow barn. It certainly doesn't look like it did when the little Frueh family owned it. Things have changed..........a lot.

Another view of the old farm. Right under those trees is where I used to very pathetically ice skate in my ballet costume. This also is where our car broke down on the way to my "surprise" birthday party that turned out not to be a surprise.

Our own Frueh Family Farm on the Mosquito Path. It is so wet that I don't think anyone has been able to even think about mowing it this summer. It needs a good haircut! I could hardly stand still to take this picture, the mosquitoes were bombarding me. The Mosquito Path was truly living up to it's name today.

When I got home I started to lay out some of the shade plants I bought in preparation for planting them but then the rains came. Back inside to do a rainy day activity.........like more shelf paper in my cupboards. I found out that I can actually get more items in my utensil drawer if I just toss everything in willy-nilly like I usually do instead of organizing it all in a neat manner. Why do I even bother trying to clean up the clutter????????

Went out to dinner with a group of people tonight. The kid's old pediatrician was there again. Had a very loooooong talk with him. Long but very interesting. I found out lots about him that I didn't know before. You can learn so much by listening and not talking!

The wonderfulness of mid summer

You can tell we are in the middle of summer. Things are starting to bloom. I have plenty of flowers to cut to fill my vases and my vegetables are having a mini population explosion. Two days ago there was nothing and now here are my zucchini and cukes.


The cukes are huge and I can't keep up with the zucchini. I picked these two to use for bread and there is still another even bigger. And Paul came home from the office tonight with a bag from a client and guess what was in it..........zucchini from her garden! Does anyone have any good zucchini recipes??? Or any good ideas for something to do with gigantic cucumbers??

I've been feeding my tomato plants. This is the first year I have ever done that and they look really healthy and have so many nice looking green tomatoes. I know it is too good to be true. It won't be long before they are struck with a disgusting fungus or that even more disgusting horn worm.

Another hot and muggy day. A few rumblings of thunder tonight with a little rain, but nothing big. Paul and I went on a date to Home Depot tonight. Wow. We needed to look for a paddle fan for the new porch. Such a decision. We found one we liked but we don't know if it is the right size. We're not sure how big this thing has to be. There sure were some u_g_l_y fans. There were some that had paddles that looked like palm fronds that were as big as a boat. We didn't make a decision but came home to think about it for awhile. I'm not one to make quick decisions. I always want to think about it while Paul wants to decide NOW.

Out with the bad (weeds) and in with the good (plants)

I am SO tired of pulling weeds. I spent most of yesterday and half of today pulling weeds in my vegetable garden. It's a hot job. It's a filthy dirty job. The horse flies and deer flies seem to know just where I am and delight in harassing me. I had the biggest gol-danged one chasing me the other day while I was pushing a heavy wheelbarrow loaded with weeds. You have never seen anyone run and dump their wheelbarrow load of stuff as fast as I did, swatting at the fly with one hand and trying to steer an unruly and wobbly wheelbarrow with the other. It was a sight for the comic books.

Yesterday afternoon I drove to the Goshen Hardware store to buy some plants for my new garden. This is just a little hardware store in the middle of nowhere but they have a surprisingly large variety of perennials to choose from. They are all really healthy looking and big. I bought 12 plants but that doesn't even begin to fill up the space I have in the new garden. But now I belong to the "100 Club" at the hardware store because I bought at least $100.00 worth of plants so anything I buy now I will get a 10% discount. I'm trying to keep to a lavender, pink and white theme in the garden. I'm also looking at things that attract butterflies and humming birds, since this garden can be seen from both the pool and the house and I find watching the butterflies and hummingbirds is so relaxing.

The librarian at school gave me a thank you gift certificate at a flower nursery at the end of the year. The thought of wandering around the nursery and picking out plants and not having to pay for them was so exciting it gave me goose bumps. I drove up there today and there was a big sign out front "Closed For The Season". Well, heck. How could they do that? This is the summer season and I'm still planting. I guess I will have to wait until their next "season", whenever that will be.

I think I will go back to the hardware store tomorrow and take advantage of my membership in the 100 Club. Then I think I might go to the Falls Village Flower Farm to buy some hostas and maybe I can force myself to buy something else. They are quite expensive there but their plants are so big and mature and healthy and lovely. It's hard to know when to stop.

Ssssssssteam heat................

Really hot hot and very humid today. I tried to weed the vegetable garden but today was not a day to be outside in the sun. I couldn't stand it. I had to come in. It wasn't much better inside. I tried washing the dining room floor where they installed the french door yesterday but it was so humid that my knees got slimy from kneeling on the wet floor as I washed it and I started sliding all over.

I spent the rest of the day cleaning kitchen cupboards. Hate that job. I thought it was time to give my cupboards a lift with new shelf paper. They have had the same shelf paper since the day we moved in 28 years ago. I am also trying to minimalize my life a bit. I have waaaaaaay too much "stuff". There is far too much stuff in my cupboards. I am REALLY embarrassed to say this but I found canned goods that had expired in 1998! There were lots of things to throw out. I was afraid that someday a guest would come into my house, open up a can of food and kill themselves with it.

Men do not like it at all when women periodically throw out food, do they? It really bugs them. Something about the waste. I was in the grocery store the other day and I saw a couple hovering over the salad dressing section picking up random bottles, looking at them and then putting them down. The woman finally picked up a bottle that she wanted and handed it to her husband. He looked at it and said, "Sorry, no. Do you know that I have been looking at this same bottle in the cupboard for 8 months now. I finally got sick of looking at it the other day and threw it away. You wasted the last bottle. We're not buying another one." She took one last look at it, put it back on the shelf and slowly shuffled down the aisle to peruse another section of the store. Sound familiar??

But anyway, I only had time to do 3 shelves. Standing with your head stuck in a cupboard while fighting with Martha Stewart's Contact Paper on a 95 degree day is NOT pleasant. What I was able to do looks great. I got rid of so much stuff that my shelves almost look empty. I even was able to take Paul's gigantic collection of teas and honey and ginger off the counter, where I have to work around it every day, and put it away in it's own spot in the cupboard.

The carpenters left today. Their job is complete and done very well. The rest is up to us do-it-yourselfers. Or rather, up to Paul, because I don't think this is a project that husband and wife can work on together peacefully. At least not THIS husband and wife. Paul is going to put the windows in (they should be here in 3-5 weeks), then we will do the walls and trim and do the floor. Hopefully it will be done by winter. It is so big. I always thought that once the children leave home you need a smaller space, but that is not true. Once the grandchildren come along you find that what you have is suddenly too small. I know we will really use our new space.

Today was hot hot hot and sticky sticky sticky. Was there anywhere in the country that wasn't hot today? One more day of this and then we will have a little relief. I spent most of the day driving back and forth to the dentist. I had an appointment this morning for a cleaning. He also saw a tiny spot that he wanted to fill and said to make an appointment to come back. The first appointment they had was October. Unless, she said, I wanted to come back at 1:00 today. They had had a cancellation. I really didn't want to put it off until October so I schlepped back to the dental torture chamber at 1:00. But the best thing about today was that Rudy put our french doors in.........



Oh my......I love them. I have a few, just a few, views to show you. The pictures aren't perfect because everything around the doors is unfinished. There is still LOTS of work to do. But you can get a general idea............

View from the inside. I am going to LOVE this!!

Welcome to my porch!!!!

From the outside looking in.........

.......and again from the outside looking in.

Several months ago I bought two new candle holders especially for my new porch. I said I would not use them until I could put them on my new porch. My porch is far from finished but I just couldn't resist tonight. I had to light one and add a little ambience to my new addition.

You've come a long way, baby!

The summer before Damon's senior year at Taft he spent a week at a soccer camp in the woods of Maine working on his soccer skills in the hopes of making the varsity soccer team, a difficult thing to do at Taft. Fall came, try-outs came and Damon did not make the varsity team. Damon, whose motto is "Life is 10% of what happens to you and 90% of how you react to it", always makes lemonade out of lemons. He joined the Drama Club and soon found he was dressed in John Travolta's whites and dancing to "Ah ah ah.......stayin' alive, stayin' alive", a song that will evermore bring a smile to my heart.



Always looking on the bright side, Damon said, "Why would I want to sit around in a locker room with a bunch of half-naked guys when I could be dancing around the stage with a bunch of good looking girls?"!

Damon surprised us all. This boy who had never danced before danced the part like it was made for him. He was faaaaaahbulous dahling. And he discovered that he really really enjoyed it. He loved it. His heart was in it. Even when he was down with mono he kept dancing.

He put his dancing aside when he went off to college but last year he took the time to take some dancing classes at the Arthur Murray studios in Chicago. When he went to Seattle he continued and found that his love for dancing was still there. This weekend he danced in the Arthur Murray Dance-O-Rama competition in Costa Mesa, Ca. And...........I am so proud of him.......he won first prize in his division for his Tango solo. Way to go, Damon. He worked so hard to prepare and it all paid off.

It was a pretty glitzy affair. Held at the Hilton. One of the judges was a choreographer last year for Dancing With the Stars. Last night they had a dinner for all the participants. Dress was tuxedos and ball gowns. Satin dinner napkins. Dancing afterwards.......real ballroom dancing....not the jumping up and down and randomly swinging the arms kind of dancing. This is all so perfect for the little guy who used to beg to wear his vest, suit jacket and tie to school all the time when he was in first grade. I hope you are having the time of your life, Damon.