The aftermath

We ventured out Tuesday morning to survey the damage. There wasn't much of it. I saw potted plants and signs blown over and a few friends had flooding in their basement, but nothing too unusual. Leesburg was fine. By that time, the wind had died down and it rained a little bit more. By Tuesday evening it was cold and just dripping, and by Wednesday morning it had even stopped that. It's still cold and cloudy, though. Really, if I hadn't known the hurricane was coming, I just would have thought we'd had a heavy rainstorm.

I know not everyone had it so well.

Fall!

Today is a red-letter day. I might even write it in red pen on my calendar.

It finally got cool!

It's been so hot for so long. We didn't really have much winter or spring here, and it started getting up into the 80s in March. It's been in the upper nineties or hundreds most days all summer, and suitably humid. Jenny takes pity on us and we go melt by her wading pool. I really do like summer, usually, but this year I am just done.

But today, as I was mentioning, it was clear and sunny and actually felt cool, and I was glad I took a blazer to church with me. We had the windows open all afternoon. Meg napped well.

I celebrated by making a very nice risotto for dinner. I put in sweet onions and sage and some cooked butternut squash. We had butternut squash risotto in Scotland, so it feels special. I made lots, since if you're going to stand and stir something for an hour there better be leftovers!

YAY FALL!

The white ice skates of happiness

Of all things, the thrift store had a pair of little ice skates this morning! They're white with red edging and a double blade and are about two sizes too big for Meg, which in my opinion is just about perfect: she might get to wear them for two winters. I already have a pair of white ice skates which I haven't used since Meg came along. Now we can both go.

There's a rink in Ashburn which has free admission for the three-and-under crowd. Skate rentals are usually $4. According to my calculations, since we've both got skates now, we can both get in for $8. I think her 20%-off-$7.50 skates are going to earn their keep very quickly.

I love finding treasures.

Fourth of July doings

Small-town fourths of July are a lot of fun, and they do them right in northern Virginia. We started by walking (!) over to the parade down King Street. It had the usual floats from the police, fire department, cub scouts, and Corvette clubs, plus a few from political campaigns. We noticed the same thing as Veith - some cheering for Romney's float, and dead silence for President Obama's! They also had some Celtic dancers, who were unfortunately not dancing, and some Bolivian folk dancers, who were. Meg contemplated their masks and headdresses and referred to them as "the monster dancers" for the rest of the day. I think the best one was Heritage High School's marching band. The bass drummer bringing up the rear danced all the way down the street. He was just having a great time.

That evening we joined my sister and her in-laws at the Purcellville fireworks. Their pre-show music was a swing band, a real live swing band run by a friend's father - fabulous. I actually got to dance with my husband. So cool. It was extremely muggy out and nearly a hundred degrees, but so worth it. I didn't quite talk him into practicing any aerials, though, because we saw some old friends were about to catch up with them.

Some other friends came over and told our group that they were predicting hail that evening. My immediate reaction was that they were talking crazy talk, but then the MC made an an announcement that a storm was blowing up, so they were going to start the fireworks a little early and recommended everyone go back to their cars to watch in case it started pouring.

We sat on the hood as they shot them off quickly. A cool breeze hit, bringing the temperature to very pleasant levels, and clouds started boiling over the horizon. Lightning strikes lit up the sky. Between the natural and human fireworks, Meg may never see a more dramatic display. I don't think she appreciated it properly. :-) The main storm passed to the south of us and never did pour. Or hail. It just gave us great fireworks.

Happy summer

Happy summer! Yesterday was The Day, and here in Leesburg it celebrated by getting up to 97. Meg and I had a few errands to run in the morning, and for the afternoon we holed up in our lovely, air-conditioned apartment and watched Sleeping Beauty and The Incredibles.

I felt like we should celebrate Midsummer's Eve and Midsummer's Day. It didn't really happen, except for fixing nice dinners. For Midsummer's Eve we had guacamole sliders, and then last night
I tried this amazing ginger-peach chicken in a soy-sauce base - I used fresh peaches and it was excellent. The recipe called for baking it half of forever, but I think it would be nicer crock-potted or maybe grilled with the sauce prepared stovetop. Or something.

Some of our young mamas from church really miss the company of weekly Bible study, so we're getting together once a week to go out and about and do something fun. Next week we're going to the Brunswick train museum. Today, we're supposed to walk on the W&OD Trail and have a picnic after, but seeing as it's supposed to be 97 again, I'm not sure how that's going to work. But if anyone is interested in joining us for future expeditions, let me know.

Anybody do anything especially summery?

Any guesses?

Why do you suppose the words "Barnacled worship" were written on a piece of paper in our library book?

Now taking scenarios. :-)

No shoes. No shoes at ALL.

I don't think I've got the hang of retail therapy. Meg and I go out shopping for something specific, don't find it, keep hunting till we're both tired and crabby, either don't buy anything or, worse, get something necessary and boring like canned tomatoes -- and then we come home all cranky.

I live in Leesburg. We have an outlet mall. There are even helpful and sensible sales associates at their shoe stores. So how can there be no shoes at the outlet mall?? Truly, a mystery of life. I think my real problem is that my fashion consultant lives a third of the continent away, and I need to wait and go shopping with her. Love ya, sis.

Meg's room makeover

Meg and I have spent the last few days redoing her room. The furniture is all catch-as-catch can and it's just a mess. Her nursery in Richmond was darling with pink and chocolate, but the decor didn't actually fit her room here. Now I'm going with white, gold, and hot pink, with leopard-spotted accents. So far I've changed out her art from pale pink to leopard mats, and Bismarck of course is there looking gold and stately. I think she needs another shelf, a toy bin, a grown-up sized chair, a kid-sized chair, and maybe a shelf and a little table. We've spent the last few days combing the thrift stores, consignment stores, Craigslist, Wal-Mart, Target, and the grocery store for suitable furniture and whatnots. 

The grocery store was actually for groceries, though I'd have bought a truly fabulous shelf there if they'd had one. They didn't. But I discovered Wegman's carries mead. !!!

Ahem. Today we went to the Blue Ridge Hospice thrift store in Purcellville, which was actually pretty thrilling. I'd never been before, though people keep recommending it. I see why. They had a copy of The Ordinary Princess for a quarter - do you have any idea how rare those are?? -- and some ruby glass teacups, which I was strong and did not buy because I had an armful of toddler, toddler jacket, and tiny rocking chair.

Yes, they had furniture for Meg's room! The rocking chair is homemade and the wood is unfinished, so I brought it home and spent the afternoon sanding it and hammering the nails in properly. Meg spent the rest of the afternoon carrying it around, putting stuffed animals in it, and climbing on it to see over the counter. I think I'll paint it white, or possibly gold. I am not going to do like a previous owner of something I saw today, and embellish it with leopard duct tape. Just, no.

Then this evening I bought a leather Moroccan ottoman (pouf! pouf!) off Amazon. An ottoman isn't technically a grown-up seat, but it's close. And I've been wanting one for a year. It'll be cute in there, and when we get tired of leopards and hot pink, it'll be cute somewhere else.

Housekeeping

Last night I broke it to Jonathan that we need to buy a house so I can paint it hot pink and turquoise. He took the news bravely.

The warm weather went away, and the cold winds blew away all the pretty tree blooms. No, seriously. We're passed daffodils into tulips and Leesburg is leafing forth bravely, and then we had some cold windy days and I swear it smelled like snow this morning. We did get a sprinkle of rain, but it's not quite freezing yet.

So I made soup. This is butter sauteed carrots, celery, and red onion with leftover black-eyed peas, parsley, and a flour and milk roux. It was pretty good, except I should have sauteed the vegetables longer up front. They were, shall we say, "crisp-tender," and I prefer my vegetables cooked to within an inch of their squishy little lives.* They look good in the bowl, though.

*Unless they're supposed to be browned and crunchy, of course.

Tonight we're excited to go see A Midsummer Night's Dream at PHC. I don't think I've gotten to see any Eden Troupe productions since Cyrano de Bergerac in fall of 2006. Yikes. Well, it was that visit that led Jonathan to start emailing and eventually marry me, so no complaints there. :-) I do not anticipate MND to be quite that earth-shaking. But I can't wait to see if they're still recycling those costumes we made for Much Ado and Macbeth. Ha.

No beach for me

It's kind of an itch: the Beach Itch. It turns up pretty regularly, but it's especially bad in February and March. I NEED TO GO TO THE BEACH. Living in Richmond, it was great - we were only an hour from a reasonable facsimile of a beach and it was often pretty pleasant at odd times of the year. So Friday afternoons after Jonathan got off class, we'd leap into the car and go do our thing in Williamsburg. We blew bubbles and made grass boats and had a bucket of sand toys.

Leesburg... is less beachful. You have to go through the DC octopus even to get to the bay, and of course then further to the ocean. I mapped it and from here it's only about 4 1/3 hours to Chincoteague (traffic cooperating), which would be quite do-able for an overnight. I found one hotel deal for $65 a night this weekend. We could go! We could go!  Only we have long-standing plans this weekend, and actually for the next million or so upcoming weekends. By then it'll be into expensive tourist season. Sigh.

It isn't snowing

This winter has been incredibly mild in Northern Virginia. Meg has her daddy's old snowsuit, and since we live across the street from a nice sledding hill, a friend lent us a sled. We almost got to use it once, but then Meg took a nap and the window of opportunity slammed shut. That sled has spent the whole time lollygagging behind the couch (except, of course, when someone pulls it out to stomp over the wireless router play Boat with). The weather held. The crocuses came up. The daffodils came up.  The tulips started opening. I predicted dire late-spring snowstorms to ruin all the fruit crops.

Then Monday, we came out of the grocery store to find.... SNOW! We went straight home and had a lovely Mary Poppins-filled indoors day while it fell.

But it melted as soon as it landed. Our sledding hill never got a whisper of white. And today it's 66 degrees out and the daffodils are as cheerful as ever. On purpose.

I'm simply not prepared for this sort of weather. Maybe it'll snow on everybody's Easter dresses.

Red rocks

We went adventuring on Saturday and discovered Red Rock Wilderness Overlook.

It's a small wilderness, but then we have a small girl. But it does have trees, streams, bridges, unpaved trails, steep cliffs with actual rocks showing, and even access to the Potomac!

Now that is exciting.

February isn't really its best and brightest. A few wild roses and clumps of grass and moss were just starting to sprout. The river bottom was all grayish and sandy, kind of blasted-heath looking. I think it gets flooded and not much ever grows down there. The woods are probably prettier in summer.

But did I mention it has real trees, hills, streams, bridges, and access to the Potomac??

I think we'll go back soon.