The Summer Adventures of the Last PA Mermaid

Things have been wayyyyy too serious around here lately, and I've been stressing. The water is out at our house, possibly for as long as a week, while we arrange repairs. The fall semester begins very shortly and work has been, and WILL be, crazy-busy for a while.

I just got a new computer last week and not only does everything I touch look and behave differently, but I've been agonizing over the migration (from iPhoto to Photos) of my huge honkin' just-shy-of-2-terabytes hard drive containing my hefty photo library. And there are a few other things I can't really talk about, family things, that have been weighing on my mind.

So it was definitely time to get outside and clear the cobwebs out! The afternoon looked to be decent, so my husband and I took off for a little pond we know up in the hills where things are a bit cooler. We packed our chairs, a cooler, a couple of daysacks, and our swim fins, and away we went.

Above is a photo I took of my feet in my swim fins just before I jumped into the (quite chilly) water. We swam back and forth and hung out in the middle of the pond for a while, then swam back to the edge of the water, where I washed my hair with the one tablespoon of shampoo I had left in my swim bag. One free hair wash per customer; such a little thing, but so important to this girl without running water!

And then we dried off, grabbed our stuff, and walked over to the other side of the pond, where there are a few picnic tables under the shade of some trees. That's where we spent the remainder of the afternoon. Only two other groups of people came while we were there, a man and woman bicycling, and a woman playing fetch with her retriever.

Huge tadpoles swam around the edges. We may have spotted a turtle in the middle of the pond. We saw and heard the cackles of a kingfisher, which is a very good sign. Some butterflies, mostly monarchs and red-spotted purples, cruised around sampling the wildflowers.

The sky had been overcast earlier where we live, with a threat of showers, but up on the mountain, it cleared out and got lovely and breezy and significantly more comfortable. What a fine day, and a great break for us; the best of what a summer afternoon ought to be!

The soundtrack song: Seals and Crofts, with Summer Breeze.

Here are some additional mermaid-related blips:
The Last Pennsylvania Mermaid
The Little Mermaid
Ariel's Dilemma
Under the Sea Mermaid Show