Brrrr

It got cold today. Not just a little cool, but cold, windy, and wet. We even had some sleet, even though the weathermen were saying it was only well north of us. It was chilly in the house this morning, but we were all moving around and didn't feel it so much. Then I had errands to run, then bustling around putting stuff away and making lunch. I didn't really feel it until I went to sit down here at the computer (and instantly got a cat in my lap) and found my mouse hand getting very COLD.

So, once the cat left me, ON went the heat. First time of the season.

I covered up more of the garden than I had initially planned, because several of the peppers and tomatoes still have so much produce on them. I picked another 13 hot peppers today, plus some green tomatoes (the ones that had at least a tiny bit of red/pink on them).

What's for Dinner

It's been a cold, dreary day today. M says that we have skipped fall, but we haven't. If it were sunny, we would be enjoying the low-to-mid 50's of today, but combined with rain, it is just plain yucky.

The house was chilly, so what better than to crank up the oven and cook. Actually soup might be better, but we just finished taco soup and M dislikes soup in any form. So, dinner was:

roast chicken

roasted potatoes

green beans

garlic bread (yeah, so we probably didn't need another starch, but it looked good at the store)

apple pie

The house smells delicious now. I can't wait for my pie!

Pathfinding in Old Town

A and I took a walk around Old Town today, for work on his pathfinding merit badge. He had a blank map of the area and had to mark all the streets and alleys as well as a bunch of different types of places from churches to sandwich shops to car repair shops and the fire station. It was a truly lovely day for a walk - not too hot and not too cool. And the people at the welcome center were very helpful, providing us with a map, website info and a local history page.

In about an hour A got the small map all filled out and a few questions answered from the police station. He's still got to fill out the county map in a 3 mile radius from the Scout Troop meeting site.

Rain, rain everywhere....

except in the house! 2.5 inches and fairly hard at times, but no rain in either the basement or the garage. Maybe I can actually hope this time that we are done with flooding. We did take measures to correct both problems - new siding along the basement and silicone caulking there too. And a rain barrel to divert rain away from the foundation to the garage. Bonus that we have a supply of water for the blueberries for when its not raining.

More ice than snow

I woke up this morning to the sound of D telling the kids that, yes, in fact, school was cancelled - in spite of the fact that there was only about 1/4 inch of snow. There was barely any snow on the yard where I had raked and none on our driveway and nothing that we could see or feel on the road in front of the house. However, no school due to "icy conditions". We thought it a bit silly.

Later in the morning, we walked down to a friends house to look at the ice on the lake. Not so much ice as yesterday, she said, but still quite a bit for our area. We amused ourselves for a while throwing sticks and rocks out onto the ice to see if we could break it. Mostly not. We did crack some right near the edge and see that it was only 1/2 inch or so thick. Lots of warnings to the kids about not going out on the ice! There was some ice in an old rowboat on shore that got up to about 2" thick - its been plenty cold here.

On our walk we did find several patches of ice on the roads, even after noon when we were walking back home. And the radio kept announcing icy patches and accidents all over the metro area, so I suppose it really was a good idea that school was cancelled. D's poker night was cancelled too, as the roads were still bad near the host's house.

Since it never broke freezing (I think we hit a high of 26), a reasonable amount of the snow is still around, and I'm afraid that there will still be icy patches on the road tomorrow. I guess I'll hear tomorrow since D and M have to head out early for magnet interviews and testing in the morning.

Snow?

Well, yes, technically I think it is snowing now, not just sleet or "wintery mix", but it is a very light snowfall. It does not appear to us that school will be out tomorrow, but I suppose we won't really know until morning.

The weathermen have been playing up this storm for days now, with it slowly getting less and less predicted snowfall. As late as 2 pm today, the prediction was for it to snow for 7-8 hours. We have had off and on snow/sleet/winter mix since about 3 pm today, but the actual predicted snow has really just started. It will probably snow until about midnight. It has started sticking on the deck and on the holly leaves so far. I can't see much more than that (and the steps are starting to get icy).

Earlier today I predicted we wouldn't have school tomorrow, but because of ice, not snow. Now I think we will, but if not, I still think it will be for icy roads. Time will tell...

Back to School

Today was back to school day, hooray. OK, the hooray was just from me. I was glad to get a little peace and quiet in the house today, just me and the cats. And since it was COLD today, the cats were inside virtually all day - periodically they would venture briefly out and come dashing back in. Bus time temps were in the upper teens, with wind chills around 7F. Brrr!

I did my good deeds by driving the kids down to wait for the bus, and then inviting into the car the others who were also waiting. I did venture outside this afternoon to blow off the driveway and the deck and do a little raking - all because the weatherman says there might be snow later this week. Of course, I've probably jinxed our chances, now that I'm ready for it, but its so much nicer to roll snowballs when there isn't all that pinestraw and sticks in the snow. We'll be watching the weather closely...

The first cold snap

Brrr. The weatherman just says "unseasonably cool", but when the high for the day barely hit 50, to go along with rain/mist and wind, I say 'brrrr'.

I had the fun of taking M to his walkathon this morning, not realizing just how cold that upper 40s was going to feel. I'll tell you, it felt COLD. I had grabbed a scarf this morning, but left it in the car, thinking, "naw, I won't need it". After standing outside for 10 minutes, I went back and grabbed it.

M managed to get in 3 miles and lunch before it really started raining. It was misting off and on for the 3 miles, but not badly - and he had a hoodie. But once it started actually raining, we decided to head back home. Not nearly as many kids showed up this year - not sure if it was the weather or other activities or their new system. In the past, they've given the kids forms and asked them to collect money for walking. This year, they wanted us to provide names and addresses and they were going to send out letters. Well, I wasn't about to provide friends and neighbors addresses - I really dislike getting those sorts of money requests in the mail. I know that many of the people who sponsored M in the past gave him $2 - $5 and would probably do so again (but wouldn't likely respond to a form letter). He raised $200 mostly in this manner last year. So far this year $40 (just from us and my mom). He didn't like that they were stressing the form letter fundraising, and discouraging the in-person.

The house had been staying nicely near 70 during the day, dropping a bit at night, but not bad. But after several days of rain and cooler weather, today's 50 didn't do anything to heat up the house, but rather let it keep cooling down. When I realized at one point that the reason I was cold was that the house was down to 61, I caved and turned on the heat. And reset the programming to winter temps, so that the furnace wasn't trying to heat us up to 80.

The furnace is running again right now, which feels rather nice. I decided that if its cold enough for the furnace, its cold enough for flannel sheets! So it should be a bit warmer when I climb in bed tonight - and then in the morning the heat will turn itself on at 8 - so nice to have warm air blowing when I get up...

Enough already with the rain!

If there is an antonym to drought, then that seems to be what we are experiencing currently. We had 4 inches on Monday (and more water seeping into the basement). Then I spent Wednesday worrying that we would get yet more water in the house. Luckily, it was a slow steady rain of only about an inch total all day, so we stayed dry inside. But I got to dry off wet cats a number of times. Yet more rain today, but again, mostly slow and misty - and with the wet cats again. I'm so glad that wet cats don't smell like wet dogs! They don't particularly smell at all different, its just not so pleasant to have wet fur in your lap.

They say we might see the sun tomorrow. Hooray! And an even better chance of sun over the weekend.

Fall is here

How can I tell fall is here?

Yesterday I had a cat on my lap at least 5 different times, for a minimum of 30 minutes each time. (Why yes, I did get a lot of reading done yesterday.) Both cats had their turns, and I didn't have to pick them up any of those times.

We had lentils for dinner yesterday (it just feels too hot for them much of the summer).

M started wearing a pajama shirt to bed. - long sleeved even

Taking the shortcut through the woods in my sandals got too many bits of leaves in the sandals.

I've started thinking of pies.

No attic fan or ceiling fan at night - that would be too cold.

Pounce has been spending all night in the bed with us.

I'm enjoying the fall weather. I hope it lasts a while longer!

No more rain.

Hooray. All we got was 0.1 inch of rain last night, even though they were predicting more storms. We even saw the sun today. What a pleasant surprise, after days of cloud and drizzle.

Even better, the basement did not get any more wet, perhaps even dried out a bit. Of course, it is still a big mess, with things all pulled away from the wall and no carpet next to the wall. But still, no squishy spots is a GOOD thing.

It was very strange having the day off school, what with the very nice weather out. We kept hearing on the radio about roads being closed in other parts of town. My mom went out today and reported no problems along her route. The paper did say that one of our rivers was supposed to crest mid day today, at 21 something feet, with 11 feet being flood stage and 20 feet being major flooding. I'm gad we're not along any of the rivers.

Back to school tomorrow. I'm sure I'll be confused about what day it is for the rest of the week, though, after this day off.

Where's Noah when you need him?

We're flooding here - in more than one sense. It has rained here more in the last week than I think it has it forever (at least the 10 years we've been here). They are saying that some parts of the metro area have gotten over 15 inches in the last week. I've lost track of our totals, but it was 3.5 inches today, with more expected overnight.

I had to go pick M up from school (from his robotics practice) after school today and I was honestly concerned that the river might cause a problem - it didn't, but it was higher than I've ever seen it. It appeared to be inches from the bottom of the bridge.

When I went down to the garage to get some ravioli for dinner, I discovered water in the garage. Not just a little bit, but at least a half inch, well into the garage. Then we found water in the basement too. M got deputized to watch dinner while D and I started cleaning up.

After dinner, we managed to borrow a wet vac from a friend and tried to suck up the water, but finally decided that the carpet needed to go. We removed about 4 feet wide by 10 feet long section of carpet from the exterior wall. One pice was so heavy that we had to drag it out the side door. We found that the best way to dry things up was sopping it up with a towel, wringing out the towel and repeating.

The garage has stayed mostly dry, but the towels in the basement still seem to be sopping up more water. We'll wring them out once more before bed. As well as empty the dehumidifier, which will be working nonstop for weeks, I'm sure.

We're not sure if the water is coming in through the wall, under the door, or up through cracks in the floor. Initially we thought maybe it was through the floor, but now the wet seems to be more at the wall and less at the crack.

It is a huge mess.

Meanwhile, evidently the water is continuing the rise in the rivers - they've cancelled school for tomorrow, citing public safety. We've heard of several roads being impassable. So far I haven't heard of any roads in our county washing out, although there are some in the area. One county even had their water treatment facility flood, so they are without any water. At last count there have also been 5 deaths due to the flooding. When I hear that, suddenly my wet basement doesn't seem quite so bad. It's bad all over.

Feeling like Fall

Today has been the first day to really feel like fall, not just late summer. It was cool and drizzly this morning. Then it stopped dripping, but never really warmed up - I think it topped out at about 74. I wore a long sleeve shirt over my t-shirt most of the day. So, when it came time to think about dinner, I thought warm food thoughts. Of course, since I hadn't known it was going to be cool today, I hadn't planned a fall type meal. Truth be told, I hadn't really planned any meal for tonight - that is frequently a problem by the end of the week. Thinking over what I have on hand (and what A's friend who spent the evening (and now the night) might like), I decided on chili. Luckily it turns out that A's friend does like chili. So chili and cornbread it was.

Unfortunately, M, who last winter had gotten to the point of eating the chili, not happily, but eating it - decided not to eat it tonight. So, he ate about 4 bites of the chili and his cornbread and then decided he'd rather go hungry. His choice.

Another early fall day

Today really felt like fall.  Albeit a rather cloudy, muggy fall day.  I'm not sure the temp ever got over 70 today, and although it was supposed to be partly cloudy, my description would be completely cloudy.  Still, it was cool and pleasant.  I baked banana bread and granola this afternoon - and the kitchen didn't feel particularly warm.  The windows were open all day - and will be open all night.

Tomorrow looks like it might be a little warmer, upper 70s and partly sunny.  I hope so - it sounds delightful.

Fall in August?

Not that I'm complaining, but its positively odd the weather we're having.  It was only 60 degrees outside when I got up this morning, after 8 am.  So, presumably the low was even lower, perhaps even the 57 that the thermometer records as its lowest low (since I last reset it a month or two ago).  If it was 57 last night, it would match the record low for the date, set in 1930!

Mid August is much more commonly lows in the mid to upper 70s in my recollection, though the paper says that the average low is 69.  And the high today was only supposed to be 84 - I'm not sure it even hit that.  I was wearing long pants all afternoon and even in the sun, wandering through a parking lot it wasn't bad.

Tonight its supposed to get down to 62, so another very pleasant night with the windows open and the fan on.  And a cool house in the morning.  I love this weather - I hope it lasts!

Defrosting the freezer

Note to self:  do not think that just because it is only supposed to get to 85 (and only late in the afternoon) that it would be a good day to defrost the freezer.  It's NOT!  It was incredibly humid today.  I was really hot and sweaty feeling, even with my hands in the freezer this morning.  That 75-79 degrees felt like over 90.  And it was a bear to try to dry off the freezer - it kept condensing from the air.

But, now it is all nice and frost-free again.  And, even better, I don't have items dive bombing me when I try to put something else in there.  I had to throw out a single serve Indian dinner that evidently escaped the freezer 2 days ago and had sat on the floor for at least 36 hours.

Side benefits of cooler weather

Yes, we're still having unseasonably cool weather - NOT that I'm complaining.  Nosiree, not complaining here.  I'm enjoying it.  No AC again for a few days now and M keeps trying to steal my slippers.  He's grown out of his and his feet are now as big as mine - and soon to be bigger I'm sure.

The slippers and cats sitting in laps and such are expected benefits of the cool weather.  The unexpected was making granola tonight.  When I can open the windows by 8 pm, I don't mind running the oven for 45 minutes.  So we have fresh homemade granola with our sun-dried blueberries in it.  They are mostly blueberries we U-picked, not our own, but they are still home dried.  I can't wait to have some for breakfast tomorrow morning!  Probably with fresh blueberries on top too, just to be decadent.

Cool Weather coming to an end?

So far July has been much cooler than June was.  June got awfully hot, awfully early - multiple upper 90s days in a row.  Whereas, the last week or so, possibly as long as almost 2 weeks (I haven't really been keeping track, but its been an unusually long while for July) has been delightfully cool - days in the low to mid 80s, nights in the mid to upper 60s - and NO AC for almost a week.  

Yep, today the AC kicked in for a few hours, starting just before dinner.  I think it has been at least since last Monday since it was last on.  Amazing!  The new attic fan is more powerful and the weather has been so cool at night.  I even had to put a second quilt on the bed (just for my feet) over the weekend to keep warm.  (Also D was gone that night - out at Webelos encampment with A, so not there to help keep my feet warm.)

Well, now looking at weather.com, it says that maybe we'll be staying in the 80s for another week or so, whereas when I looked this afternoon it was saying some of the days were headed for the 90s.  The weather outlook is changing - seemingly hourly!  Quite frustrating when we are trying to plan a day to go to Six Flags.  We'd really like a day without rain, or at least with only a short rain.  But when the weather reports change so frequently its hard to know until the morning of what will happen.  And even then, its not so predictable.  One day last week, I happened to be looking at the hourly forecast and saw that it was 5% chance of rain - well, it rained (and HARD) during that hour.  Humph.

I guess we just have to wait and see.  Oh, and enjoy what cool weather we do get.  Attic fan is going at the moment and the house is quite pleasant.  Shadow is enjoying it too, sitting in my lap more than usual for the summer.

 

Taking Advantage of some cooler weather

We're having some lovely cool nights this week (and somewhat cooler days, only low 90s not mid to upper 90s).  So, with the lovely new attic fan, we've been cooling the house down quite nicely.  This morning the house was nice and cool at 68 degrees!

So, while the outdoors was a cool 67 (but rising) I decided to get cracking.  First up was blackberry picking at the elementary school.  My mom and I headed over there and picked probably 3 cups each.  Not a lot, but they are good - and the big ones are still ripening, so we should be able to pick a few more times still.

Then it was home for breakfast and since it was still relatively cool, I mowed the front lawn.  Meanwhile D had attacked the back yard with round-up.  Again.  We've let our back yard turn into somewhat of a jungle, helped by all the rain we've gotten this spring.  It is time to take it back.  Due to generous helpings of poison ivy mixed in, we have to take it a bit slow - and much of the vegetation requires 2 sprayings of round-up.  But already we can see a bit more ground and we have a wide path to the wood pile again.

It's supposed to be cool again tonight, getting down to 65 they say.  We've already had the attic fan on for almost 3 hours and the house is delightfully cool.  And, the house stayed pleasant today without needing the AC.  Yay!

Heat and Swim meets

It's been hot, hot, hot here.  85 by 10 am and it just got hotter.  I think the high was 94 today and it is still 77 at 11 pm.  It's going to be even hotter tomorrow - 97 or 98 is the prediction.  That is just way too hot for mid June.

I think it was somewhere in the low 90s last night too - and of course we were out in the heat at a swim meet.  Otherwise known as an event where the kids swim a bit and generally stay cool and the adults sweat... a LOT - or at least last night we did.  I know I drank at least 3 16 oz bottles of water and probably more like 4 1/2.  

It was a good meet last night though, even though our team lost (even though we beat a team that beat them - just depends on which of your swimmers show up each night, often).  A's strokes are looking better.  I didn't see any problems with his breast stroke and his freestyle looked much better (just a little like slow motion).  I peeked at the results after the meet and it looked like A finally will get some best time ribbons.  I think that getting the strokes technically correct is the first step to getting faster.  A had 2 sessions this week with an older swimmer to work on his strokes and I think it is paying off.  He was massively unhappy about the lessons, though, because he thought kids were going to make fun of him for needing/getting help.  I think the only person who would (did) was M - unfortunately.  We had to have a chat with M about that.  

M also got some more best times, despite missing practice all week for robotics camp.  He really could use the practice to work on stamina though - his strokes look really nice, but (except for breast stroke) he is clearly loosing steam on the second lap - he'll keep up or ahead of another kid on the first lap and then slowly fall behind after the turn.

We have another week of practice next week (and both kids should manage to make practice all week - amazing!), so we'll see what that brings...