Weekend help and other twitterings

Pictures are worth a thousand words, they say. It would be difficult for readers to imagine my weekend helpers without a photo or two (see below). Seems like the yearlings around the place are always there when the work starts, especially watering and painting.

I don't know how much help either Kea or Lefty are, but they mean well.

Fence painting is just about completed, at least the most dramatic part. There'll be a lot of touching up. I noticed Friday night that painting in the heat of the afternoon sun is not good.

Seems the paint was sweating as much as I was. It left its pale yellow perspiration film along the boards, so that has involved some cover-ups.

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We've made it through one day of intense heat, though it wasn't easy. After almost dozing off on the couch while watching Olympic badminton (it wasn't the badminton; it was the heat; badminton is actually pretty exciting), I asked Bill, who was dozing on the other couch, what he planned to do for the afternoon.

He suggested a hike to find a geocache up on a mountain next to Schweitzer. He said it would involve a chairlift ride and/or a hike along a ridge. Neither sounded appealing to me. He tried the ploy of suggesting there'd be a nice breeze up there, but I wasn't buying.

So, I thought for a while and decided the best place to be was in the air-conditioned car, heading toward Bonners Ferry and the Boundary Trading Co. grocery store. I had sealed the deal earlier in the day with Grace's grandma Carrie that, indeed, Grace and I would keep up the cookie competition at the Bonner County Fair. Her mom Jenny and I started that a couple of years ago, and Type A Jenny usually baked the better cookies.

I told Carrie we'd keep it simple this year and stick to the chocolate-chip cookie category. We'll break Grace in easy; then maybe next year, we'll elevate the competition to the "assortment of three kinds of cookies."

Anyway, I needed chips and some eggs and some air conditioning. Before leaving, I knew Bill was still considering that hike on top of Schweitzer, but before leaving, I also learned that when Kea and I were doing our morning watering, Bill's hiking boots were sitting on a chair on the deck.

To let me know of my oversight and overspray with the hose nozzle, he asked if I knew anything about that one hiking boot full of water sitting on that chair on the deck.

"I don't know about one hiking boot out there," I said. "There were two sitting there earlier."

"Well, one was dry and one is wet," he informed me. Bill has a little milder way of chastisement than his barking wife. Bill also fore-went the hike to Schweitzer, put on some different footgear and tried to do a couple of things in the outside oven while I headed to Bonners Ferry.

I picked up my mother along the way, and she thoroughly enjoyed the ride, especially the "fresh" huckleberry shake from the Elmira Store on the return trip. "Fresh" means you get both the huckleberry ice cream and a big gob of fresh huckleberries. I settled for chocolate, but the young man preparing my shake did a little experimentation with extra fudge sauce. Mighty good!

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We sweat through the rest of the evening with alternating sessions of nodding off and additiona sessions outside sweating some more. Later, I enjoyed watching the lady from Romania take charge of the women's marathon and eventually take the gold.

I wanted to watch Michael Phelps win his eighth gold medal, but that turned into another dream. I'd have to read about it later, but I did wake up long enough to watch the 41-year-old lady win her silver medal.

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Just heard from my niece Laura, who participated in that wacky relay from Spokane to Sandpoint. She's a tired puppy this morning after jogging/walking from the fish hatchery on Lakeshore Drive to Sandpoint's Memorial Field in the height of the heat.

She said the whole idea was a great one and that the organizers were very nice, but the event definitely needs some honing, like inclusion of first aid stations, better signage so women wouldn't be running down I-90 and possibly a different date to avoid the dangerous heat. She says she's gonna stay near the water today.

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I haven't heard the details of the dressage show my sisters are attending on that hot hillside south of Spokane, except that two of Laurie's rides are in mid-afternoon when those temps have to be above 100 degrees. I'm wondering if they're allowing the riders to remove their hunt coats for the tests.

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I have heard from my brother Jim via his new blog www.footlaunchedfreeflyinfool.blogspot.com. He arrived yesterday at Lakeview, Ore., site of the National hang-gliding championships, and he saw a cumulous cloud or two along the way. So, in his most recent post, he gives a tutorial on those cumulous clouds and why a hang glider might want to avoid getting enveloped within them. So, check it out.

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Gosh, I've gotten windy today. Wish the scene outside would do the same, but that ain't gonna happen. We're expecting higher temps today. Bill and I are going to keep it simple tonight and go to the Festival with no lawnchairs, no blankets, just ourselves and hope we find a seat in the grandstands where we can sweat with all the other classical music lovers.

Happy Sunday. Stay cool.