I spent a very nice weekend up in Connecticut, arriving home last night with much less fanfare than with which I left D.C. (The trip north Thursday involved one mis-set alarm clock, one turned-off alarm clock, two missed trains, two train tickets, a track power outage up and down the Eastern seaboard, a cab ride, a missed flight, mismatched sandals not discovered until the airport, and a very helpful and sympathetic Southwest Airlines who didn’t charge me extra when they could have easily done so).

As noted in the last post I got to spend some time with old friends, eat Connecticut pizza, and see the family.

I did some knitting and some reading. I watched some videos. I sat in the sun, lazily drinking iced tea. I bought some new clothes. I played Scrabble.

Lest you think me too indolent, I did do a bit of work:

I washed my car.

(Okay, you’re right, that may not actually qualify as work when it’s 95 degrees and you have to turn the hose on…)

But, seriously, I did help the folks work on clearing Gramma’s property of old debris and filling a dumpster of stuff deemed unwantable by anyone. The dumpster was filled, but the yard wasn’t yet empty when I left. Mum and Dad did more work today.

Three members of my family managed puncture wounds over the weekend. (Gramma avoided injury, but I’m still waiting to hear if Josh had some weird sympathy injury out in California.) Interestingly, the two of us whose injuries involved stepping on rusty nails got off scot free. Poor Mum did not, though, as the tree she was helping to cut down apparently took offense and tried to defend itself by attacking her. If you’ve never seen a hawthorn tree’s prickers, they are as long as some needles I’ve had at the doctor’s office. Seriously nasty piece of work. And you thought it hurt when you accidentally pricked yourself with one rose thorn. Try imagining those after an engorgio spell and having a whole limb of them fall on you. Nasty piece of work. Luckily Mum seemed to be sporting only an ugly bruise and welt and was back in the garden by the time I left. She’s a tough cookie.

Today went as well as the first day back after a nice time away could go. No fires to put out. Time to sit and talk at lunch with friends. And also to discuss Wicked with a friend who also just finished reading it. And an ice cream cone tonight to wash down the first day back in the routine.

Vacation is already just a dream of how spring transitioned into summer. Luckily I have about four dozen bug bites to prove that it really did happen. I won’t be able to forget as long as they keep itching. And with Shakespeare in the woods scheduled for this weekend, it seems unlikely I’ll be bite-free for a good while yet.