The water at the pool was not quite as refreshing today as it has been the last few days. "I felt like I needed a bar of soap in there," one neighbor told us as he toweled off. We nodded and sighed in solidarity.
It looks like the heatwave has finally caught up with our 15,000 gallons, and it's going to be a long summer.
Then there was that time your a/c stopped working in the middle of a terrible heatwave. You did your best not to panic, even though it was Saturday of a holiday weekend, and your HVAC guy, a nice fellow with a small business, was closed until Monday and wasn't answering his emergency line either.
So you left a message and went to the pool, hoping that shutting the cooling system off for a while and then flipping the circuit breaker (like your HVAC guy always suggests) would do the trick when you got back. But upon your return, the indoor temperature was climbing, and no amount of flipping or button-pushing seemed to work.
So, you went out to examine the recalcitrant unit yourself. It was silent, but then you heard that click and whine that usually means the fan is going to start spinning-- only it didn't. And you looked around frantically for a stick, miraculously finding one (the only stick out there) of the perfect length and diameter. Then you stuck it through the grate and gave those blades a little push, like an old aviator cranking the propeller on her plane.
And lo! It worked. And the unit began to run.
For now.
Yesterday, we changed from our pajamas into our bathing suits and wore them for the rest of the day. We went swimming, dried off, swam some more, pulled on ball caps, tank tops, and shorts to go run errands, and then came back and jumped back in the water. We were a little sunburnt when rumbles of an early evening thunderstorm finally kept us out of the creek for good, and we ate dinner fresh out of the shower, some of us with wet hair.
As the darkness gathered, it was still drizzling; otherwise, I might just have run out into the yard to catch fireflies. As it was, we ate pie and ice cream and then went upstairs to our too-hot bedrooms and fell asleep anyway, under just the sheet.
To beat the heat this afternoon, we decided to try out those stand-up paddle boards that came with our vacation rental. They were pulled up into the woods above the little sandy beach about a quarter mile from the house, so we hiked over there, launched them, and sit-paddled around the point to our calm little cove where we could perfect our stand-up technique.
The dogs were, of course, thrilled, especially Rosie, who never left the water once the SUPs arrived. Lucy must have remembered her brief kayaking excursions on Lake Champlain three summers ago because she waded into the water and stepped aboard as soon as I drew near enough. For the most part, she was a good passenger, sitting tall and still and leaning on my legs when I stood. We did have a few capsizes, but they were mainly because the other dogs distracted one or the other of us.
We were able to paddle over to get a close look at a heron and a rail as they waded on the shore, and Lucy appreciated that, especially when the heron squawked raucously and flew away. After a couple of hours, we paddled back around to the beach, with Lucy as a lookout the whole way. "We like your dog!" shouted the kids on the dock across the cove as we paddled by.
"Thanks!" I shouted back. "I like her, too!"
Lucy took off barking after something on the creek as we sat on the shady back patio this morning. Closer examination revealed a blue heron wading about 20 feet away, utterly unthreatened by the three dogs paddling its way. Once they got closer, the prehistoric bird spread its wings once, and the dogs did a U-turn, returning to us.
Despite predictions otherwise, the weather has stayed cool, breezy, and fair for July in this part of the world, and that encounter was enough to convince me to put on my suit and jump off the end of the dock. Lucy was at first very perturbed, whining her away around the perimeter of the deck. Once Bill jumped in, too, she could no longer stay up there, and she flung herself into the creek and swam around, making sure we weren't drowning, before she returned to the shore.
Soon, Heidi and Emily were in the water, too, and at one point, all seven of us were splashing and floating in the salty water. A couple of herons swooped by every now and then, maybe annoyed that we were disturbing their fishing or maybe congratulating us for such a good idea.
"Look! There's a little crab!" Emily pointed as we explored the dock of our vacation rental yesterday. We are in Kilmarnock, on the Northern Neck of Virginia, staying at the "beach house" on the property of a cidery.
Everything has conspired so far to make this a nearly perfect vacation. The dogs can run free without fear of cars, and the house is newly renovated with a fabulous view. The weather has been uncharacteristically gorgeous for July in Virginia. We have SUPs and kayaks we can use to explore Dividing Creek, the Rappahannock River, and the Chesapeake Bay beyond. And then? There are those crabs.
When we were in our late teens and early twenties, my brother, sister, and I lived in Virginia Beach. Gary, an old friend of the family who lived there, too, taught us how to crab with a string, a sinker, a chicken neck, and a net. We spent many afternoons up to our waists in the back bay by the boat launch at Seashore State Park, tossing out chicken necks, waiting for a little tug on the line, gently pulling it in, and then scooping the crabs up with a net.
Today, after exploring the town, we bought ourselves some crab lines, chicken legs, and a net before heading back to the house. "Make sure you have a jar of peanut butter," laughed the property owner, "if you expect to feed yourselves on the crabs down there!"
But almost immediately after dropping the first baited line from the dock, I pulled up a little Sally, but she was way below the 5-inch limit. As we crabbed, the dogs were mesmerized: watching us tossing chicken into the water and retrieving these scuttling, prehistoric creatures with snapping claws seemed almost more than they could fathom.
In the end? We caught three unfortunate six-inch jimmies, which I steamed with our shrimp dinner. It was a small catch, but we have more chicken legs and there's always tomorrow.
I didn't realize how much I had been dreading this day.
The arrival of July 1, 2024, means I am officially retired from Arlington Public Schools. Colleagues who have retired before me warned that I would lose access to everything in my school drives and email, essentially my life's work, and I have taken time to copy and download anything I could.
Still, when I got up this morning, I wondered what it would be like to try to log in and be rejected and excluded from an organization I had been part of for half my life. Even more than that, losing those documents, files, and correspondence seemed like an intellectual property issue, and I was considering approaching the union about it.
But it didn't happen! For now, I can still access my school email, my old Canvas courses, my Google Drive, and my PD portal. I have been removed from some functions and groups, so those privileges don't seem accidental.
Everything about retirement so far has seemed like letting go of things, and as anxious as I am to start moving toward something new, it's really hard to give up so much so fast. Luckily? Fortune has pumped the brakes a little today.
