19 Aug 2005 (Saturday)
Not surprisingly, I’m the first person here at the lake. But I am a little
early. It’s nice, because for so many years I was almost always late.
There aren’t a lot of people here, but more than a few. It feels fairly warm
for this time in the morning. At least I guess it is--I’m not usually here at
this time in the morning.
They’re here! At least some of them. As it’s become something of a tradition
for Lorien, Mindy and I to write our diaries at the same time, that’s what we’
re doing. The people here are Greg, Mindy’s dad; Ima, Mindy’s mom; Bobbie,
Mindy’s oldest younger brother; Raidon, Mindy’s youngest brother; Mindy;
Lorien; and Flower, who is a good friend of Lorien’s and Mindy’s.
I’ll do as Lorien does, and say this is written later. The mutual diary
writing didn’t last very long as there were things to do.
I’d met them all before except for Flower. E seemed just a little shy at
first, but quickly warmed up. Lorien greeted me first with a hug and a peck,
and Mindy gave me a nice hug. I even got a hug from Ima, and a warm welcome
from the rest of Mindy’s family, although Flower was polite but shy. Perfectly
understandable.
Ima said that Yvette and family, or at least some of them, might be late. Greg
amended that to be will be late.
For some reason, Lorien was very wound up. E told me about es apartment,
Fernando, plans for college, Becky, es mom and dad, all at once. Lorien seems
more outgoing and self-confident than a year ago, and more open. The
confidence is less outward, and more inward.
Mindy resembles Ima more and more, both physically and in personality. They
both seem oriented toward making others comfortable. Mindy seems more
comfortable with emself, but doesn’t seem to have changed much except to have
matured even more. I don’t necessarily believe in reincarnation, but if there
is such a thing as an old soul, Mindy is one of them.
Flower and Bobbie are cute together. They apparently have both gotten a lot of
teasing about a 13-year-old and a 12-year-old boyfriend and girlfriend
vacationing together. But as I said to Greg, the best place for a son or
daughter to be when with a sother is around Mom and Dad. E agreed. Their
relationship really seems more like what you might expect of someone younger
than older. Bobbie does seem a little more self-confident than e did before.
E certainly has grown. In some ways Bobbie and Flower almost act like older
brother-younger sister.
Lorien being next to water naturally meant e had to get in it. So some of us
went swimming, specifically Lorien, Mindy, Flower, Greg, Bobbie and Raidon.
Ima passed, saying e thought the water looked dirty.
And naturally we played Lorien’s favorite water game, and had a piggy back
fight. Lorien rode me while Mindy rode Greg, but their familial closeness led
to our defeat. Mindy and I did defeat Flower and Bobbie, but we had a size
advantage (as Lorien put it, we were bigger on the bottom, and smaller on top).
As we were splashing each other, Yvette and family showed up. This was Yvette,
es current sother Tim, es son Allen and Allen’s friend Sid, es daughter Vickie,
and youngest son Josh. Dan, es oldest son, didn’t come, but I believe lives
out of the area. Their greeting felt rather odd to me. Yvette seemed very
focused on Tim, who virtually ignored me. Allen was nice and Sid, who I just
met, gave me a respectful greeting;
Vickie seemed somewhat preoccupied; Josh was more focused on getting in the
water than anything else. E and Raidon act like great friends, more so than
Josh and Bobbie, even though the latter are closer in age. I suspect it’s
something like Josh having a younger brother.
I shot several photos and got at least some of everyone, although Tim seemed to
have little patience with the camera. That’s not uncommon with some adults.
But with him I got the impression that there exists very little e’s comfortable
with. I suspect es idea of heaven would be a comfortable, worn easy chair e
would never have to get out of, a big screen TV, and someone to bring him a
cold beer at any time, day or night. At this moment, that person is Yvette.
I thought we would have lunch at the lake, but they decided to eat at a Mexican
food place that was about 10 miles away. It wasn’t fancy by any means, but the
food was good. We ate well after usual lunch time, so we were the only
customers there except for three young men, who seemed to draw the attention of
our four young women.
I also thought Allen and I were going to drum some bellydancing rhythms so that
Lorien, Mindy, Flower and possibly others could bellydance. It was something
we had talked about doing for a while, but with changes in plans we ran out of
time, and Allen didn’t bring a drum in any case. I hope we still have a chance
to do it, but with all that’s planned I don’t know when, or even if, that will
happen. But we still had a great time.
Unfortunately, I had to leave to go to work. I arranged it ahead of time so
that I could go in later, but I almost wish I had just taken the day off. But
I will be seeing my friends again, hopefully on both Wednesday and Thursday.
If all goes according to plan, we’ll be going to a birthday party for Clara on
Wednesday, who is the daughter of Vickie’s friend Dolly. Clara actually turns
one next Friday, but apparently Wednesday works out better for the party. I
definitely look forward to seeing everyone, and hopefully Lorien, Mindy and I
will have time to visit without a crowd. We have ideas for some projects we
can work on together.
Copyright 2006 by The Loveshade Family
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Harmony