FRIDAY

Up and running.  Since the cleaning lady isn't coming until Mon., and our daughter and granddaughters are coming this evening, we're the cleaning crew.  Got most of it done, then we went off on our appointed rounds -- Susan shopping and running errands and me to Sanderson for my twice weekly weight work.  Grabbed a Newk's salad on the way home, and we finished our cleaning after lunch.  Time for some R&R while watching Euro soccer. Susan had a meeting, and while I was resting, we had an unexpected, severe thunderstorm ... something like a 20-30% chance of rain, and we had high winds, thunder and lightning, and torrential rain for an hour or more.  Scared me at points -- reminded me that the night before we closed on this house 26 yrs. ago there was a severe storm that resulted in a big limb from an oak on the east side of the house falling on the corner of the house.  All was well, other than the umbrella on the patio furniture getting caught by a wind gust and being lifted out, turning over the patio table, and breaking a couple of little bowls of Susan's. 

The girls made it fine despite having to drive in some of the bad weather ... and just in time for Katie to head to the reunion.  Since the rain stopped, I grilled burgers for dinner.  We watched a movie with the girls, read to them, and tucked them in.  We soon followed.  We awoke around midnight to the sound of our older child coming home ... for the first time in many moons.  Speaking of that, I should mention the shock and incongruity of the cold, cruel realization that we have a child who graduated from high school 20 years ago.  Of course, a glimpse in the mirror and/or some simple math would make that totally (as the kids say today) congruent.  Still ....