Last week my cousin Ginny from northern California flew into my area. Her plane landed around 9:30 on Tuesday night and twelve hours later we were in the van and on our way to Wisconsin to visit our cousin Debbi. We didn't dawdle on the road because Debbi is a half-year resident of Washington Island and we had a ferry to catch. We pulled up to the ferry dock a half-hour before the last ferry, making it onto the third-to-last ferry of the day. I was amused by the benches on the ferry dock, warped by decades of bottoms.

Washington Island is beautiful, peaceful and mostly a dead zone for cell phone and WiFi signals. I didn't even bother to take my laptop with me. I occasionally picked up a Sprint signal on my phone, but Ginny was out of luck with her AT&T phone, except for one tiny strip of sand on the east side of Detroit Harbor.

The first night we were there, we ate supper on Debbi's back deck overlooking the water. We talked the sun down and the moon up.

The mosquitoes chased us indoors, but we ventured back out later to look at the stars. It was amazing! There is very little light pollution and there were so many stars visible - not to mention the Milky Way. I haven't seen such a vivid night sky since my childhood in Colorado.

Ginny and I enjoyed exploring the island while Debbi was working at her bookstore. We visited Schoolhouse Beach which is covered with smooth limestone rocks instead of sand.

We looked at old headstones at the Washington Township Cemetery.

We admired the two Barn Quilts on the island.

And of course we did a little bit of geocaching.

On our second day there, Debbi had set up a private wine & art class with multi-media artist Cindy Wunsch.

 That's Debbi, Ginny and me with our paintings. They  still needed to have resin applied to them when we left, so they will be mailed to us. Mine is based on a view I saw when I went with Debbi on her morning walk with her dogs.

Our third day on the island, Debbi took us to Nelsen's where we were inducted into the Bitters Club by downing a shot of Angostura Aromatic Bitters.

It tasted pretty nasty... reminded me of Vick's cough syrup from my childhood. But I downed it like a badass and earned my membership card.

We did a lot more and saw a lot more, including a visit to a lavender farm.

I will post later about the Stavkirke and the lighthouses and a couple of cool things we saw from Debbi's deck. Right now, I need to sign off, feed Boo and get ready for water aerobics. It'll feel good to be back in the water after the many hours I've spent in the van the past week. My routine should be getting back to normal starting tomorrow... for a little while...

Life has been mostly quiet and mostly slow the past couple of weeks. I am grateful for that because I've been miserable with joint pain. It's been so hot and humid, with pop-up thunder and lightning storms; perfect weather for arthritis flare-ups. I've  been moving slowly or not at all, reading a lot of books, taking pain pills, napping, icing my knees, falling asleep with the heating pad under my back (no lectures, please -- I got one with automatic shut-off so I could fall asleep without worrying), picking raspberries and running errands when I could, making jam, writing letters, doing laundry... my usual boring life. I like having a boring life; the times life has gotten exciting has almost always involved stress, expenses, property damage and health issues.

Today wasn't as hot or humid and it didn't rain, so I am feeling better. No pain pills were needed at all today -- not even a Tylenol! I was able to get out and run some errands without moaning and groaning every time I got in or out of the van. This is a vast improvement. Now if I could just stop clenching my teeth... I realized I'd started doing that again when my molars started hurting on one side. I'm making a conscious effort to stop, but I usually only think about it when those teeth start hurting because I'm doing it again. Sigh. It's not as annoying as the eye twitch I usually get when I'm feeling stressed, so I've got that going for me.

Tuesday night my cousin is flying in from California. I've been trying to prepare for her visit and I mostly just need to do a little sweeping and dusting to finish up. I haven't stressed out too much about the house because on Wednesday morning my cousin and I are leaving for Washington Island, Wisconsin to visit another cousin for a few days. This will involve driving my van onto a ferry which will be a new and somewhat frightening experience for me. I want to come home the long way, across the Upper Peninsula and the Straits of Mackinac which will involve driving across the Mackinac bridge - another frightening prospect. But I'm still working on facing my fears and trying to overcome them... at least in the moment. If we make good time across the U.P., we might stay overnight in Traverse City. If the bridge completely unnerves me, we might stop in Mackinaw City. I just hope we don't poop out somewhere in the middle of the wilderness of the U.P. My knowledge of the U.P. is based solely on the movie Escanaba In Da Moonlight and the stage play Escanaba In Love both written by actor Jeff Daniels. I have a feeling the reality might be a little more normal (but I hope not too normal).

Joyouswind has been taking two accelerated classes online this summer through Ball State University. They are the first of ten classes (I think) she needs to complete her second Master's Degree. She took the final exams last weekend and she got an A in both classes. Woohoo! Proud mama here!

Boo has been a naughty dog twice in the past week, above and beyond his usual obnoxiousness. I tell him to go to time out and he picks up a toy and saunters into his kennel. I put a blanket over his kennel for a few minutes and he doesn't make a sound. When I pull the blanket off the kennel, he's sprawled out with his toy taking a nap. When I unlock the kennel, he shoots me a look, stretches and lays back down refusing to come out. The dog has an abundance of attitude to make up for his lack of remorse. He's also taken to going out of his way to sneeze on my feet. I suppose I shouldn't be complaining at his summer misbehavior and just be grateful the long winter is over and I don't have to shove my feet into snow boots and tramp through three feet of snow in my nightgown to fetch him from the middle of the yard at 2 AM because he refuses to come inside and go to bed. I know those nights will be back in a few months and I'm not looking forward to them.

I got to use my field guide to mushrooms the other day. Brett found a weird looking, slimy yellow mushroom growing under the pine tree in our yard. The underside was spongy looking instead of ribbed. It was a Chicken Fat Mushroom (also known as American Slippery Jack, scientific name Suillus Americanus) which only grows under Eastern White Pine trees.

I found this photo online. The one in our yard was slimier, more yellow, and had big brown moldy looking spots on it. Very icky looking, but not as nasty as the stinkhorn mushroom I found in our yard one summer.

So that's been my life lately. I probably won't take my laptop with me to the island since there's not much in the way of internet or cell phone coverage there. The only reason I'm even thinking about it is so I can upload photos from my camera while I'm there. I don't think it will be worth the bother.

Be good, peeps; I'll catch up with you in a week or so.

It's a rainy morning and I had a hard time falling asleep last night, so I'm being lazy for a few minutes, sitting on the couch eating a homemade cherry poptart and poking around on Facebook and Xanga. I suppose I can catch you up on the holiday weekend, even though Bookmark61 has already posted his sunset photos and murisopsis has posted her fireworks photos. Who can ever get enough of sunsets and fireworks?

Our party went well. We made it a geocaching event, so there were a few people there whom we didn't know. They all seemed to have a good time and several of them went off at some point and grabbed a few of the caches around the village. I had been on my feet all day and I was in a lot of pain with my feet and my back. I sneaked off when nobody was looking and went upstairs to lie down for a few minutes, then changed into long pants because the evening had cooled off quite a bit. As I was coming back downstairs, one of my knees decided it was going to suddenly join my feet and back in the pain party, so I stopped in the kitchen and took a pain pill before going back out to my guests. That's probably why I forgot about the door prizes. Oops. That's okay... the geocaching ones will be easy to use or give away and the others have been packed away with the rest of the party stuff.

We set up our yard the same way every July 3rd. Three tables across the front of the house to hold the potluck dishes, two tables along the driveway to hold buns, condiments, plates, cups, tableware, napkins, and a five gallon cooler of ice water. A child's plastic wading pool nearby filled with cans of pop and lots of ice. A roof-sized tarp strung up at the corner of the house to keep sun, rain and ants off guests who don't like those things falling on them. Lights and decorations and lawn chairs scattered around the front yard. The side lot is for parking and volleyball. Putting up and taking down the volleyball net is a major project. The backyard is set up for croquet and there are little wooden quart-sized containers left next to the raspberry patch in case anyone wants to pick berries to take home with them. I deliberately didn't pick on Thursday or Friday so there would be plenty of berries for our guests.

 

Around 10:00 PM we start handing out glow necklaces to all our guests and somewhere around 10:30 the fireworks show begins. I was using a new camera this year and had to figure out the timing for the fireworks shots. This camera is faster than my old one, so the first few shots were just to learn the timing. Here are a few of my favorite fireworks photos from this year's show:

 

 

And then there was the finale, where the booms were so loud they pounded through my chest. I love that feeling when it's fireworks or drums. Not so much any other thing I can think of.

 

There's an American flag in fireworks that ends the show every year. It's one that is not shot into the air, but along wires strung between two poles at the far end of the field. I remember standing in the street to see it one year. I haven't bothered since, but once the flag explodes into being and fades away, the show is over. There is a huge, drunken roar from the thousands of people on the field and in yards throughout the village and then the big exodus begins, moving several thousand vehicles out of a village of 800 or so residents. It takes a while, but not as long as the more popular show at Silver Beach on the 4th. You might have heard about that one this year. If not, CLICK THIS LINK to read about it.

On Saturday, Brett and I worked to get all the party stuff taken down and put away. Well, most of the decorations. We left the tarp and the lights and decorations up for one more day, but there were plenty of things that needed to be put away. Brett worked outside all day and I worked inside, taking care of leftover food and emptying and repacking the storage boxes. We were both so exhausted we kept falling asleep every time we sat down, so it was slow going. Luckily, we still had another day to finish the work and we weren't in a big rush to get it done anyway. That evening we decided to go out and watch the sunset. Since our usual places for sunset watching (the bluff above the lake, and the piers at Silver Beach and Tiscornia Beach) would be packed with people waiting for the St. Joseph fireworks show to start, we went to a quiet little beach overlook in Stevensville called Glenlord Beach Park. The bluff has eroded there and the beach is no longer safely accessible, so they built a wooden viewing platform. We discovered that just standing at the picket fence blocking access to the steep descent to the beach gave us the best view of the sunset. There was a haze on the horizon, so the sunset was kind of a dud, but it was a mostly peaceful few moments as we watched boats headed south away from the masses of humanity...

 

... or north to watch the fireworks from the water.

I could hear a lot of noise, muted by distance, from the direction of Silver Beach and commented that the crowds were getting rowdy in St. Joe. Little did I know! I found out the next day just how rowdy it got and I am so grateful we learned after one attempt years ago to avoid St. Joseph on the 4th of July.

We stayed at Glenlord Beach long enough to watch the sun disappear into the haze.

Going...

Going...

Gone.

Then we went home and ate leftover hamburgers and ice cream. Sunday was spent finishing up the party cleanup. We were still exhausted, but both of us managed to stay awake most of the day. We're almost recovered now. Yesterday I returned the tables we rented and Brett hauled the party boxes down to the basement, so our 24th Annual 3rd of July Party is officially over.

And life goes on; a little older,  a little wearier, hopefully a little wiser, and our "Avoid St. Joseph on the 4th of July" rule of thumb bolstered.

1. A sunny day
2. A cool breeze
3. Hanging out with my daughter 

4. Dogs
5. All my nieces and nephews
6. A field of flowers 

7. Deciding how to spend an amazon.com gift card
8. Classic rock from the 70s
9. Reflections in water

10. Finding a real letter in my mailbox
11. Homemade jam
12. Lighthouses

13. A mocha moolatte from Dairy Queen
14. National parks
15. A road trip with my husband

16. The smell of Johnson’s Baby Lotion
17. A funny movie
18. My mother’s smile

19. A good mystery novel
20. Geocaching
21. A dirty car

22. Freshly shampooed hair
23. French Impressionist paintings
24. GeoWoodstock

25. Blues guitar
26. A good pair of sneakers
27. Kitschy roadside attractions

28. A good night’s sleep
29. Air conditioning
30. A beautiful sunset

31. Warm chocolate chip cookies
32. Christmas cards
33. Gerbera daisies

34. Hot tubs
35. Fireflies
36. Fruit that grows in our backyard

37. Double canasta
38. Spaghetti
39. Mountains

40. A clear night
41. 3-ply toilet paper
42. Old family photos

43. Getting a package in the mail
44. The African Queen
45. Memories of Sunday drives with my dad

46. Dimples
47. Lactose free milk
48. My mom's peace rose

49. Bubbles
50. Baby giggles
51. Covered bridges

52. Waterproof hiking boots
53. Hot pink toenails
54.   Professional fireworks

55. Books by J.R.R. Tolkien
56. Giving gifts
57.   Wine & Canvas

58. Stores with creaky wooden floors
59. Taking off my bra at the end of the day
60. Walking in woods

61. George Clooney
62. A full gas tank
63. My mother’s poems

64. A day spent with a friend
65. James Burke
66. Round barns

67. Facing a fear (and surviving)
68. Free books on Kindle
69. Old cemeteries

70. Unexpected adventures
71. The Princess Bride
72. Pathtags

73. My husband’s compassion
74. Boo’s excitement over a new toy
75. Green leaves against a blue sky

76. Things that glow in the dark
77. Farmland
78. My Panama Jack bicycle

79. Red pears, white flesh peaches, red seedless grapes
80. Crossing things off my to-do list
81. Silly selfies

82. $40 in my wallet
83. Strawberry shortcake
84. Autumn

85. Garden fresh tomatoes
86. Glow sticks
87. Tree fungus

88. Seeing my van at the end of a hike
89. GPS technology
90. Seeing my daughter shine

91. Escape the room games
92. Homemade bread
93. Route 66

94. Lava lamps
95. Vintage Mason jars
96. That feeling when I know I just took a perfect photo

97. Reading my old blog posts
98. Messiah sing-alongs

99. Old buildings

100. How easy it was to come up with 100 things that make me happy

What makes you happy?