Well, I certainly didn't expect to be writing about an attempted political assassination this weekend, but here we are. That was... not good. I certainly understand the desire to see Trump go away, but not like that. Violence begets violence, and with the country already seemingly a tinder box, sparks are the last thing we need. We got a pretty big one last night, and it sounds like we came within a few centimeters of a full-on explosion. Early reports indicate there was only a single gunman with ambiguous political views (a registered Republican who recently donated a small amount of money to a progressive organization), and hopefully people treat it as such, and the temperature has a chance to drop. We shall see. I've certainly gone to sleep with less anxiety about the state of our union than I did last night.
In other, more personal news, we had our first "normal" weekend of the summer here at the G & G household. Immediately after school ended,* we went to the PNW, then we came back, took the kids to camp, and then flew out to FLA. When we got back, we (well, S) picked up the kids from camp, and then my brother and sister-in-law and their two kids came out to visit.** They left Friday evening, so this weekend was the first time in a month with everybody home, just us, for an extended period of time.
*Technically, we left before school ended and the kids missed the last few days, because we had a couple days canceled due to snow, and the district didn't build in any snow days during the year, for some reason, so they got tacked on at the end.
**It was a very nice visit, and it made me sad they don't live closer, so that we could see them more often.
It was a pretty good weekend, I suppose (aside from the small sprinkling of existential dread about our democracy). Lil' S2 went to a birthday party on Saturday afternoon, and it was apparently kinda weird. It was for a kid we had never met -- never even heard Lil' S2 mention before -- and he got a paper invitation handed to him in class, old-school style. (It might have been the type of thing where this kid just invited the entire class.) Then, for some reason, it was at a Dave & Buster's about a half-hour drive from our neighborhood, even though there is a Dave & Buster's less than a mile up the street. Once I learned all that, I angled for S to take him instead of me, which she did, because she wanted to do some school work (she's taking some legal studies classes at night), so she dropped him off and then read in the car while he was at the party.
I took Lil' S1 for a long walk -- or rather, I went for a long walk and Lil' S1 joined me for the first portion of it.* We've been trying to get him to go for walks more frequently, to move more, in general, to not have such a sedentary lifestyle, and sometimes he's open to it, and sometimes he isn't. One thing we tried, which I think we will stick with, is we extended device-free time from one hour to one and a half hours, with the exception that you can use a device for that extra half-hour, if you are exercising during it. He loves listening podcasts, and hates giving up his device, so maybe this will actually work.
*He agreed to do two miles, but he turned back after 0.6 miles insisting that we had actually walked a mile already and that my app tracking the distance was wrong. On the way back he did "get lost," however, which added about a quarter-mile to his distance. So, he probably walked about 1.5 miles, which isn't terrible, I suppose.
The problem with walking right now, however, is that it is damn hot. This weekend it was in the low 90s, and that was a reprieve from the high 90s we got in the middle of the week. Then tomorrow we get right back to it with a high of 98, and then on Tuesday, triple digits, 101. That's when it's too hot to do anything but sit inside with the air conditioner going full blast. Thankfully, our house doesn't actually get too hot. I mean, it does, but it takes a little while to get there. We usually run the AC at night, and then by morning we can turn it off and not turn it back on until mid-afternoon.
Also, thankfully, we renewed our pool membership for the summer. We went today for the first time this year, and it was quite refreshing. I was kinda thinking maybe we made a mistake by joining again, since we couldn't even use it for the first month it was open, but then we went today with some of our friends, and we saw a bunch of our other friends there, and it was like Oh, yeah, that's right, this is fun. It's one of those "third places" that are becoming less and less common.
They have a basketball hoop there, so my friend RT and I were playing against Lil' S2 and his buddy during break time.* The rules were that the adults could only shoot from behind the three-point arc, and combined, we were, I'm gonna say, 4-for-30. I don't know what happened. I used to be half-decent at shooting a basketball. Actually, I know exactly what happened, I got old and got arthritis in my shooting shoulder.
*Every 45 minutes they make all the kids get out of the pool and take a 15-minute break. I guess, it's pretty standard, but I don't remember that being the convention when I was a kid. Maybe it's a regional thing, or maybe it was introduced sometime after 1989, or maybe it was that way when I was a kid too, and I just don't remember. Any of those is possible.
A downside of going to the pool, however, is that I seem to be getting sunburned every time I go now, just a little bit. Like, I'll have one spot on me a few square-inches that I clearly missed with the sunscreen. I think it is also because of my arthritic shoulder. I don't have the flexibility to reach all the places on my body I used to be able to reach. S usually does my back, but I guess I'll have to have her start doing my neck and sides and shoulders as well now. I'm hesitant to do that, however, because then she's going to tell me to just where a shirt, and I don't want to where a shirt at the pool. The whole point is to feel the sun against your skin. Also, I don't like the aesthetic. One of the other dads at our pool always wears a long-sleeve swim shirt and a huge wide-brim hat, and, I dunno, it's just not the most flattering look in the world. The practicality of not having to worry about sunscreen might win out someday, but I'm not ready for that stage of my life yet.
Until next time...
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