lessen the distance between us

I had a v. lazy first day of vacation...but not the laziest of days I've had here before, so I'll take it. I slept in a little bit, then showered, made some iced coffee, and went into town to pick up [censored] since he'd taken a vehicle into town to leave there. Then I spent the late morning / early afternoon hours messing around with my laptop, planner, journal, etc - I'm trying to come up with an adequate system to track my notes, photos, memories, etc. while I'm here, and that requires trying to structure data that is completely unstructured.

But eventually I stopped staring at screens and attempted to help [censored] with one of the projects that we're trying to accomplish this weekend - we're trying to protect the old cave (root cellar) in our yard so that it lasts another few decades, but none of us have even been in it in forever and so needed to examine it before coming up with a game plan. [censored] did all the (literal) heavy lifting by beating back the weeds and pulling up the rotted plywood and former door that covered the entrance, then going in and pulling out the interior door as well (in much better condition, but had fallen off the hinges). The cave is actually in surprisingly decent shape inside, although I certainly wouldn't trust my life to it in a tornado - and there were no snakes or skunks, just a whole flurry of spiders.

So we examined the cave, then went into the lumber yard and bought some mortar to test out our mortaring skills (and I bought some work gloves to protect my delicate city hands). We didn't get around to mortaring, though - instead we drove around and looked at properties and generally gossipped about the local surroundings.

Then we came home - supper was calling, and it was delish. My dad made pulled pork in his smoker, and my mom contributed baked potatoes, layered lettuce, and five cup salad, and it was all super tasty. After that, we were all pretty low energy and the tv signal wasn't coming in due to heat/storms...so I sat outside and journaled for a bit, then retreated to my room. And now it's time for bed - goodnight!