Tiny Tuesday : : Lavender

The sky is white hot, the birds have disappeared; even the lizards, creatures of the desert, seem to be in hiding as the thermometer climbs above 100 degrees. One is ill-advised to go out in the heat of the day, but fortunately, it does cool off at night and the mornings are beautiful. Ozzie and I did a quick march around Spring Lake this morning at 7am, and upon our return I sat under the arbor with the newspaper and a glass of iced coffee.

I was actually cold when we met my "Italian" niece, Annie and her daughter Emma for lunch at Willi's Wine Bar and  were seated directly over the air conditioning. Dana, Peter and Will joined us at one of our favorite restaurants anywhere, and we all tucked into an amazing array of "small plates" while we caught up. As sometimes happens with a large group and a lot of plates, we got several that we didn't recall ordering, but the boys were happy to polish off the lobster and cheese skillet, the duck pot stickers, and the extra crab tacos. 

Having arrived from Torino just last night, Annie and Emma were pleased that they had slept until 6am and seemed remarkably free of jet lag. They are on their way to Sea Ranch for a week, but will stop for the night next week on their way to Southern California for the summer, and we will seem down there in August. How good it was of them to plan some time with us, and how grateful I am for our  family. They restore my faith in humanity whenever I'm starting to feel like the wheels are coming off our civilized society. I put a picture of us in the extras.

With the heat wave in force, the power keeps going out, and every time the power goes out, we are reminded how many appliances/devices/machines/even our well stop working. Just a brief interruption necessitates resetting things. I just had a brief moment of panic when I couldn't reconnect to the internet, but all seems to be well now, and I am reminded that this is very much a first world problem.

 It wouldn't hurt to take it as a warning that, despite being one of the wealthiest nations in the world, we might be heading in the other direction as the income gap widens....How long can you keep concentrating a growing majority of the wealth in the top 2% of the population?