A good wind-down to summer

We spent this past weekend at my parents' house in E., about 25 minutes away from our house. It's just out in the country enough to not quite see one's neighbors and for us, it became the perfect staycation. They have a beautiful home, a "real grown-ups house", as my one friend put it. You know, the kind you can have once you've put in quite a few years of working and have earned and deserved such a place. I've definitely mentioned it before, I know. Penny especially likes that she gets to run around free and get delightfully filthy in the creek and pond nearby. Truly, she comes out all wet and bedraggled with reeds sticking to her. Then she sleeps the sleep of the tired puppy, looking like a discarded stuffed animal that some child left behind, all flopped and still. Now, home in her dog house, she's still pretty quiet:

(She's getting a haircut in a few days; I know right now she looks like the stand-in for Sandy from Annie.)

I didn't get any pictures, but you can get the gist of a lot of relaxing both outside and in, great meals, and, particularly yesterday, getting into a great book (The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon) as we sat on the screened-in porch, listening to the rain.

Now that we're home, I have to deal with a clogged drain that has not yet responded to industrial strength Draino. Next, the snake.... I may have pictures of that. To end the post on a good note, I must point out there's something incredibly satisfying to me seeing my laundry on the line, blowing in the wind: