The craft hour

I was on vacation last week. It was somewhat involuntary--a couple of the guys at work wanted to take the week off, and one of the others wanted to take half the week off, and since there are only five of us, it was decided to just close the office. But even though I didn't choose to take that week off, it turned out well. Bob and I decided to go down to Bennett Spring State Park, where we honeymooned almost 27 years ago, and which we consider kind of "our" place.

We thought we'd avoid the weekends and go down for Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday nights. Bob had a house closing on Friday, and through a sequence of events he couldn't get the proceeds until Monday, and he wanted to be sure that the check got in the bank and distributed, and checks written, before we left town. We ended up waiting around all day, and didn't get the check until after 3:00, then ran around town to various banks and the post office, and didn't get out of town until about 5:30. But once we did, it seemed the farther away we got, the more relaxed we were.

The park itself was sold out of cabin and motel room space, but I had gotten a room at a small resort just outside the park entrance. It wasn't fancy, but it was clean, and we had a nice big room with a kitchenette at the end--not that we cooked anything, but it's always nice to have a refrigerator anyway.

Bob would set the alarm and get up at 5:00 or 5:30, and go out to fish at first light while I stayed in bed, then he'd come back around 8:00 and we'd go to breakfast, maybe go to the store for provisions or the tackle shop for some of his esoteric things, then he'd fish for awhile again and I'd sit on the bank in a chair I'd brought and read or knit. One day it was too hot to fish, so we drove in to Springfield and saw "Terminator 3."

It was a lovely, relaxing time. We saw a deer one evening in the park, and one night while he was fishing and I was sitting on the bank talking to another woman whose husband was also fishing, I saw an otter walk out of the weeds and slide back into the water. And I saw a bluebird--possibly the first one I've ever seen in the wild.

The fishing wasn't too great--they'd gotten a lot of rain (as we did at home, too), and the stream was muddy in places, which I guess the trout don't like. But Bob caught two trout on dry flies one evening, which is pretty difficult to do, apparently. We walked up to the trout hatchery the last night and fed the fish, one of my favorite things to do there. They have the big breeder fish in a special area, and they have machines (like bubblegum machines) with trout chow in them for a quarter. These fish are so used to being fed by hand that you could probably pet them, although I didn't try.

So, we got home Thursday evening, unpacked and got settled in, and then on Friday we went out to John's in the late afternoon for an Independence Day picnic and fireworks. We stopped on the way to buy fireworks, and I even bought some--some sparklers and smoke bombs and a package of little lady finger firecrackers--so I kind of got into the spirit more than I usually do.

I took my knitting--a pair of socks--and John's cousin's wife (Kelly, who also went to Mexico with us last year) brought her handwork, too--she makes stained glass and bead suncatchers--so I sat and knitted and she and her daughter, Paige, made gorgeous suncatchers for me, John's wife Leslie, and Linda, one of the other guests. Someone (John's brother?) came by and said, "What is this, the craft hour?" And I guess it was.

Then on Saturday when Bob left the house to go run errands, the garage door broke. I was in the house, so I didn't see what happened, but one of the springs broke, and the cable broke, and Bob had to fix it enough so that he could raise it manually and stand there holding it while I drove my car out of the garage. He's having someone come out today to fix it.

And then . . . we were down in the basement that evening and Bob looked up and said, "What's that on the ceiling?" He got up on a chair to touch the ceiling, and the spot was mildew, and it was wet, and it was right underneath the refrigerator.

It had been leaking for awhile, a long while, apparently, and the floor underneath the refrigerator is in pretty bad condition. He's currently drying it out with a fan and he'll have someone come in to check it and see what we need to do to fix it, whether we can get by with some kind of plywood patch or whether the floor will have to be torn out, and whether we need to get a new refrigerator. Fun!

So since he was up virtually all night working on various home repairs, he didn't go to yet another Independence Day event: my annual family reunion. It's held in Sedalia, about an hour and a half away, and since the weekend of the fourth is traditionally just about the hottest weekend of the year, I always dread going. But it turned out to be not nearly as hot as we had anticipated, and it was nice to sit under the trees and talk with the relatives that I only see once a year.

There was some confusion over which shelter house we were supposed to be occupying, so I did quite a bit of walking back and forth across the park, and ended up getting really hot really early, and also giving myself a blister since I was wearing sandals that weren't very good for walking, but once I cooled down, it was fine.

I took my knitting yesterday, too, and received a lot of compliments on the socks. The self-patterning yarn is pretty impressive, everyone is always amazed. Another craft hour.