Those are the shrieking....frogs?

Out here in the forest where we now reside, the sounds of nature are one of the things we have come to love most. Many are the evenings where hubs and I will go out and sit on the deck and listen to the varied birds and the rustling of squirrels and all the other delightful noises that are there for the taking.

One of the joys of summer out here, however, has also become the frog song.

This has only grown more vociferous thanks to the maybe-someday-they'll-finish pool.

In fact, said frogs have become so abundant in number (at least I assume there are more, and not just one or two incredibly loud and obnoxious gentlemen) that we've taken to using a white noise machine for sleeping. Because while it's rather nice and soothing when on the deck with an adult beverage, it's considerably less so when trying to sleep and being rendered incapable of same because of the noise.

Of course, there are still nights (like tonight) where the frog party gets so loud and ridiculous at 2 a.m. that I am rendered incapable of further sleep and must, instead, drag myself down to the sofa (so as to avoid waking hubby with my annoyed tossing and turning) where I try - with the assistance of coffee - to convince myself that nature is beautiful and I'm grateful to experience it. 

Pool? What pool?

Pool installation shenanigans continue apace. Will there actually ever be more than a big concrete hole in my hard surrounded by mud for the dogs to drag in with them after every venture outside?

Jury's still out.

The pool peeps did come by on Saturday (after having assured me LAST week that they'd be there working all week and we were absolutely on track for a pool party to bid farewell to eldest prior to college move in.) (They did not show up all week. Until Saturday. I can kinda get it. The weather was hot. There were the dumb fires in Canadia making our air bad. SO yeah, I wouldn't want to be outside working either. BUT...would it kill you to send an email? A text? Smoke signal?)

Anyway, they dug up more space to put pipes in around the pool so now it's muddy with bonus ditches to fall in or jump over.

Yay, I guess?

I would have thought (hahahahaaaaa) that they'd be back Monday to finish the plumbing or something. But alas, no. Will they come today? Seems unlikely. Tomorrow is likely right out as it's saying there'll be thunderstorms all day. Which leaves us where?

No idea.

(Or maybe the thunderstorms are today? I know I saw rain later this afternoon in the forecast.) (It really doesn't matter. The TL;DR is that they aren't finishing my pool and I'm grumpy about it. Especially since eldest keeps giving me long looks as if I contrived to taunt him with a pool he won't get to use. But then, he seems to find every opportunity to make things my fault these days. Because mini-adult, I guess. I don't know. It's super fun.

If only I could blow off my annoyance by taking a nice, refreshing swim.

At the risk of being a Luddite

As we're prepping eldest for college, I find myself more and more annoyed by the current trend toward putting everything online -- and only online.

Basically, I miss paper.

Eldest is struggling with being nervous about this big change (not unwarranted - it's a big change!) and as I've been pondering the situation and trying to help him navigate, I can only think back to how things were when I was heading off myself.

What I remember most? The HUGE packets of information that I was sent. Schedules of orientation week activities. Maps. Rules. Suggestions. Checklists. All on paper. So I could get to them easily and highlight them or check them off etc.

And most of that information (probably all of it) is available. But it's in an email sent to his college email account and then you have to find the link and click it and then scroll and then click and...by the time you find it, you can say "aha"...and then if you need it again, you have to do allll that discovery over again.

It's so much more overwhelming. I'm overwhelmed and I'm not the one who really needs the information. Is it any wonder that he's struggling?

I'm tempted to start wholesale printing things, except that he's going to have to figure out how to navigate it all, since this seems to be the way of the world. But honestly, paper is underrated.

We'll get through it. 40 days until move in - he chose the bright and early 8 a.m. move in time (I suspect, since he procrastinated and then had a hard time finding which portal to log into and how to do it blah blah blah that's all that was left. But it's fine. I'd already reserved a hotel for the night before, so we're good there.)

It's fine. It's all going to be fine.

If I say it enough, will it be true?

Serpent! Serrrr...pent!*

One of the surprising parts of putting in a pool, is the need for said pool to need "watering" for like 28 days while the gunnite cures. There's science behind it, which is actually kind of cool to read about it, but it's a whole "who knew?" situation for me.

Regardless, we've been dutifully watering the pool as recommended by our pool installer.

So, this morning, in my jammies and without my glasses, I shuffled down the deck stairs to the spigot to turn on the water to the sprinkler that sits in the bottom of said pool, and as I reached for the knob, something poked it's head up and then back down behind the wall that separates the space under the deck from our patio.

It's a little knee-height wall.

And...I might have freaked out a little.

But I hurried back upstairs, telling myself, "Maybe it was a rat."

Now, I'll be honest. A rat isn't better. I know that. You know that. Everyone knows that. But I did not want it to be a snake.

When hubs came down, I said, "Can you go down and look and see what poked its head up when I turned the water on?"

And he's all, "We get a lot of skinks."

Friends, I can tell the difference between a skink and...well, anything. Skinks are tiny. They are not scary.

So he's gesturing to me through the window and finally, I go out on the deck as he's going down the stairs and, having woken up a bit more I am now wearing my glasses, so I lean over and look down and before I can point the damn black snake is already in the process of crawling over the wall.

So I shriek, "Snake!" Because terror. Even as I'm trying to tell myself that it's a good kind of snake to have. They're good. They're not dangerous. They're not scary. It's not even that big. 

And I run back inside. Where I proceed to not-quite-panic.

Hubs comes back in while I'm trying to not curl up in a ball on the floor saying, "It's okay." over and over and he asks, "Do you want me to move it?"

"No. He's good. He's fine."

And ...yeah. All true. But also? Whyyyyyy?

Why do snakes exist? Surely there are other choices God could have made?

Anyway. It's about time to go turn the water on for the next round of pool watering and...I don't want to.

*spot the quote

(It's from the Disney Alice in Wonderland. No one was going to spot that.)

Back in my day...

We're at the 54 day mark before eldest heads off to college and, as it's also Prime days at Amazon, Big Brother seems to know that they should inundate me with all the ads for college dorm necessities.

Boy, it's a lot.

And also...I'm so confused.

Back in my day (and yeah yeah, I'm old), I packed up my clothes, bedding, my shelf stereo with CD player AND cassette capability, my state of the art desktop computer running Windows 3.1 and I was good to go. Oh, and an answering machine. I really think that's all I took. There might have been a framed photo or two.

Now?

Everyone apparently neeeeeds a mattress topper. And the numbers and varieties that are available are mind numbing. Memory foam. Gel. Cooling. Cooper infused. Set up like a bottom sheet to elastic all the way around. Just a rectangle that sits on top. Down filled. Two inches. Four inches. 

Just...it's baffling.

Also suggested are rolling carts. Skinny drawer collections (some with casters, some without). All manner of over-the-door hanging organizing things. "Safes" that are lockable boxes, basically, that hook to your bed to also be a desk type thing. Fans. (Oh my word, the fans.) And Fan stands that hook to the bed. Charging stations. Rugs. Removable wallpaper.

Honestly, if you can think of something that could possibly go into a college dorm room, I guarantee there are at least sixteen people selling them as "essentials that you'll regret not having."

I've asked eldest which, if any, of these things he needs and/or wants and he just shrugs. Which...maybe that's good? But I suspect what will really happen is we'll get ready to pack the car and he'll realize that he doesn't have anything he actually needs and so we'll be trying to navigate WalMart or Target (or both) when we get down to school. (And I mean, fine. If that's what we gotta do, that's what we gotta do.) Of course, this is the same kid who, when I was reminding him to go in and reserve his move in time and talking about logistics, looked at me completely confused and said, "Wait. Why are you going to be there?"

So there's that.

(*To be fair, hubby's parents put him on a plane and said bon chance. So I know there are families that do that. But...I am not that mom. At least not for freshman year.)

Diving In

The newest adventure here in the Sleepy Demesne is the addition of a swimming pool.

It's been on the list since we moved here but what with one thing and another, we didn't get serious about it until we'd finalized all the plans for Dad's addition. In fact, originally, we'd planned that Dad's place would be done by Christmas and then the pool last spring. 

But the county bureaucracy had other plans. Dad's place took a full year beyond what we'd imagined, necessitating the pool getting bumped. Then the pool hit permit issues (because the county is stupid) and so they only just started on it.

Still, as it stands right now, we have a lovely big hole in the back yard full of rebar and gravel and pipes, awaiting, I believe, an inspection before the next step. (The next step, I believe, is the gunnite.)

What's been fascinating is finding out how long it takes to actually have a pool put in.

Much, much longer than I thought. In my little brain, it was dig a hole, fill with water. (basically)

As it stands right now, end of July/early August is the estimated inaugural swim. Ah well, given that it's our pool, we don't have to close it at Labor Day, so we should still have plenty of swimming this season. Although eldest is a little miffed that he'll get about two weeks with it before he leaves for college.

Speaking of eldest and the pool - we just finalized the interior coating color and tile and coping pavers etc and the boy has IDEAS. Honestly, I think he cares more about it than I do - which is relatively hilarious to me. Because of same, we actually drove out to Sterling yesterday to a showroom so we could put samples next to eachother and get a good idea of what they looked like in person vs. on a computer screen.

But now it's set, so there's that.

And some day soonish(?) I am looking forward to long, long floats in my pool.

Tales from the Mower

One of my little joys in life is mowing the lawn.

I realize this is weird and many view this as a chore, but I find it rather relaxing and enjoyable mostly. (Unless it's been raining for weeks on end and it's more knocking down a jungle than mowing. Or when it's ninety billion degrees and so humid it ought to be raining.)

Here in the demesne, most of what we have is forest (for which I am grateful. I don't think there's a person alive who would enjoy mowing 10 acres.) But we have a reasonably sized front and back yard, plus septic field that needs regular mowing. (And by regular, I mean every few weeks, not the regimented weekly demanded by an HOA. Because we have no HOA, and for that I am also grateful.)

Sometimes, I use our electric walk-behind mower. Sometimes I use the riding mower. It just depends on what I'm in the mood for. (And all the time, hubby says to me, "Why are you mowing? We have teenagers!" and I have to remind him that I enjoy it and I certainly would rather do it myself than try to coerce either of them to do it because they both hate it and it's an exercise in hard core parenting to make it happen. Just not worth it when I'm happy to do it myself.)

T'other day, after Noah finally launched his ark and the rains stopped, I decided it was beyond past time to do a run over the yard and, seeing how high it had gotten, opted for the rider. I was happily driving away, reveling in the sights and smells of fresh-cut grass and letting my mind be soothed by the steady back and forth, back and forth, when I heard a noise that seemed a little off. I stopped the mower and got off to look and...I had cut the Internet cable.

Because of course I did.

Since we moved here, it's always been an exercise in making sure we didn't cut it, because for whatever reason, it was only partially buried (or so I thought) - and it always popped up above ground near a front yard tree. I have deep thoughts about the choices made in running the cable, but we've lived her four years and never had an issue. So I thought I knew what I was about.

Turns out, all the rain and the scrabbling dogs and Murphy, I guess, all conspired to have the cable pop up a little more than usual in a different spot (or the new belt on the riding mower made better suction for the blades than I was used to) and *boom* cut cord.

Fan. Tastic.

It took very little time for the men of the house to boil out of the doors like angry ants to see what happened because they'd lost the Internet - life blood of the technology slaves.

I finished up what I was mowing and came in to call Verizon.

That went about as well as you'd imagine - calling an ISP is always such a joy - and they'd have someone right out...in two days. 

You would have thought I told the boys that we were moving to Walden Pond for the summer.

Still. We survived. And the Verizon guy came out and, looking at the cut wire, muttered "What the f* did they do." Then he turned scarlet and apologized profusely. But I was cool with it, because we've had similar thoughts about the partially buried cable.

Except it turns out it's not partially buried at all. It's completely un-buried. Just strung across the yard begging to be cut. We were all immediately amazed that we'd managed not to cut the thing in the four years we've lived here because it isn't just the tree area where it could have been accomplished. Regardless, he pulled it up, strung a new, temporary line, and we were back in business.

Cut to two weeks later, and on Saturday, they showed up to bury us a new line. This time, whoever they sent actually had a brain and, on consultation, went wide of the tree and its root system so it could be buried the whole way from street-side box to house connection. Imagine that! 

I believe, at this point, it's not actually connected as the temporary cable continues to live atop the lawn - hubby says there's a whole testing process that they'll do at some point this week to ensure that the switch over is seamless.

Since it resulted in a properly buried cable, I'm seeing it as a win. But my men folk are all still a little salty about the whole debacle anyway. Maybe I'll make them mow once or twice just to remind them that it could have been them wreaking havoc instead of me.

But probably not. Because I really do like to mow.