Welcome to The Barn.

That's where our young friend Miss C is right now.... up in her room above the barn, reading Pride and Prejudice. C drove up here to spend a few days with us..... so nice to see her again, after so many months. She is 20 years old now, no longer the little girl that I met when she was in the second grade. But she's still our own Miss C, and just as sweet as she always was.

When we lived in Clear Lake, C was in and out of our house all the time.... but we're two hours away up here, plus she's in college in Galveston now anyway, so even if we were still in the old neighborhood, we wouldn't be seeing her as much as we did when she lived on the other side of the bayou in our subdivision.

One of C's favorite movies is "Pride and Prejudice." She knows all the dialogue by heart... she has seen the film so many times. So as she's reading the book (she found it on my shelf of classics and I told her to take it-- I can always find myself another copy) she is reciting the lines and telling me "That's exactly what they say in the movie." My cousin F had sent me a DVD of that film last year, so C and I are going to watch it together tomorrow night.

We had homemade pizza for dinner tonight..... each of us topping our own individual dough with different sauces and cheeses and meats and vegetables. Lots of fun to make..... my husband made it easy by cooking up the meats while C and I went into town to look around the local resale shops.

Tomorrow morning starts with a walk, as did this morning..... I've been walking with two friends up the road here... we get out as soon as it gets light-- much cooler in the morning than after dinner-time, as we had been doing. Up the road we go, up the hills, down the hills, following the winding road to the main highway, and then we turn around and do the same thing back towards home. We've talked to neighbors, fed apples to B's horse, got fresh-grown okra from another neighbor, and seen countless cardinals as they fly from tree to tree up near one of the hills. C is going to set her alarm in her room and she'll be here at the house bright and early and ready to walk with us..... and then she and I will get ready for another day of exploring around town for a while before we come back to watch Pride and Prejudice. I am imagining watching the movie with C as she recites all the dialogue along with the actors.

It's been super-hot, over 100 degrees, still no rain.... same old story with the weather. By three o'clock in the afternoon, you feel like you've been in an oven for twelve hours and there's just no escaping the heat. The chickens stay in the shade, sometimes coming up on the porch if there's a breeze blowing there that they might miss if they stay underneath the bushes. This has been the summer of the never-ending heat wave.... the summer of a drought that shows no mercy.