Hot and dry. Hot and wet. Typical August weather.

I am reminding myself not to complain about the 100-degree temperatures. I am reminding myself not to complain about the rain. We have had a lot of both..... and I'm trying to remember all the cold snaps we had last Dec. and Jan., when I was wishing for summer to begin.

So, summer it is, with over 100 degrees for days on end, and if it isn't broiling outside, it's storming with rain and thunder and parts of the city are flooding. Same city streets that flood each and every time. Will anyone ever fix that problem?

We spent a few days up at the lake cottage this past week. Hot up there as well, with the lake water as warm as a hot bath. Not that I went into the water, but my husband did. I still can't get myself to "jump in the lake," as that old saying goes. The water is much too deep around our bulkhead (over 15 - 20 feet at least) and I can't see the bottom--- both of which just scare me to pieces.

Our neighbor up at the lake had her garage sale on Saturday, and her moving truck will be there at the end of this week. By the time we go up to the lake again, the new neighbor will have moved in. Oh goodie to that. Neither my husband nor I are thrilled with the new buyer. We were hoping for an older, retired, quiet couple to buy G's house. A fifty-something-year-old man bought that house.... his wife has passed away, and he's raising his pre-teen daughter. The man is a drinker... one of those obnoxious drinkers, sad to say, for the daughter's sake. Not someone that we want to be friendly with. So we'll just wait and see how it goes.

While we're waiting and seeing.... we went to Lowe's and bought some pink and red oleander bushes... my husband planted them along the fence on our side that runs around G's property. She had gates installed near the back of her property on both sides of that fence... one gate leading to our backyard, the other leading to the neighbor's backyard on the other side. Now, with this new buyer being in G's house, we didn't want to have this open-gate invitation..... so we planted the biggest oleander right smack in front of that gate, on our property. We thought of buying a big lock to secure the gate, then throwing the key into the lake..... but it isn't our fence. So the oleanders will have to do. Oleanders grow very fast and thick, so it shouldn't take long for them to grow up and obscure that fence, and, most importanly-- the gate.

While we were at the lake, the moving truck arrived with the furniture from my grandmother's house. The rattan sofa is now in the little TV room, and the two rattan chairs are in the living room. I originally had all three rattan pieces together in the TV room, but the two side-chairs just looked nicer in the living room with the other sofas in there.... and the two not-matching chairs look better in the TV room with my grandmother's sofa. Somehow, it all works and both rooms look just great, as if it was meant to look that way all along.

Also in that shipment was the little step-stool from my grandmother's kitchen....... I could have cried when I saw that stool. I can't even count how many hours I spent sitting on that stool when I was younger. The stool has two pull-down steps, so when I was really little, I could sit on the second step (as a chair) and use the stool-stop as a table. I would color for hours, or play with my paper dolls, and when my grandmother made her homemade macaroni, she would give me a piece of dough to play with on that little stool. The top of the stool still has a cut-mark in the vinyl top, where the knife went through it--- she had mistakenly given me a knife with a sharp edge instead of a butter knife. Everyone in the family spent hours sitting on that stool, since it was always set in front of the chimney next to my grandmother's stove...... we would all sit there and talk to Grandma and Aunt Dolly and watch them cook.

Our friends K and B came up to the lake yesterday.... K bringing her granddaughter with her as well. Both K and B sat on that little step-stool for a while--- it's right in the kitchen at the end of the island....... and they said that it was a delightful place to perch. It's amazing to me, to see that stool in my life again........... I started out in this world with that stool in my grandmother's kitchen, and I know when it's my time to leave this planet, that little white and silver stool will be in my kitchen, no matter where we're living. It is totally an emotional, sentimental little piece of nostalgia.

I called my Aunt Dolly while we were up at the lake...... she's in Florida now. I told her that the furniture arrived and all was well-- she had been worried that something would be damaged. When she answered the phone, I asked her to guess where I was sitting. In Grandpa's chair? (That was her guess......... probably because when Grandpa was alive, no one else ever sat in his chair.) I told Aunt Dolly that I was sitting on my little stool...... and both of us choked up and it was all I could do not to cry.

An inexpensive little stool........ and it means the world to me. Go figure.