I totally get why Nora was mad at Tim on Tuesday, and the
reasons she has for not wanting Tim to hang out with Michael, Rowen, and me;
but dumping on him for going to our riding lesson when that’s something that
his parents paid for in advance for the entire summer session is taking her
demands at least a step or two too far.
To be fair, I only heard about her rant from Tim during our second
riverside chat in two nights; but it didn’t sound like he was embellishing the
story very much or even putting a spin on it that made him look better.
Their latest fight didn’t happen until this afternoon, and
since we’d had a really good morning riding the trails and then going for a
swim with Ethan and Ehlana after getting home again; the contrast between fun
and misery was something that made things worse between Tim and Nora – at least
from his perspective.
We don’t need to re-hash the details of what we talked about
tonight, but while Tim has been in trouble with Nora lots of times while they’ve
dated; he’s sure that this time is different and much more serious. I’m a bit conflicted about the situation
because I know he’s upset and having a tough time; but this is also
strengthening our friendship – all four of us.
That’s actually one of the differences from other fights they’ve had;
and another is that it doesn’t sound as if he’s trying to charm or joke his way
back into Nora’s good graces. Tim didn’t
have any answers to his problems when we split up tonight and he and Rowen
again left Michael and I alone on the dock so we could have some alone time;
other than that he’s sure that he won’t give in and accept a ban on hanging out
with us. Since they both seem to be
drawing that line in the sand; the drama is likely to continue for a while.
Let’s move away from that story for a minute, and I’ll cover
the rest of my daily report. Michael
came over for Tai Chi and breakfast again; and he’ll probably do that for the
rest of the riding lesson mornings this summer.
Ethan especially likes having him around; and he and Ehlana both kept
Michael entertained while we ate and cleaned up. Rowen and Tim came over with time to spare
before we needed to hit the road for the ranch, so they sat at the kitchen
table with the twins and joined the chat in progress while Michael, Violet, and
I finished our work. Violet drove us out
to the ranch again, and we had Christie and Cody Carter leading our lesson and
trail ride today. That made all of the
girls and boys in our group happy, including about half of the kids and tweens
who had crushes on Pamela and John’s youngest daughter and son.
Christie finished high school a year ago, but isn’t going to
college like most of her classmates and friends are. She is traveling and working with other horse
experts during the off-season at the ranch; mostly because her passion is trick
riding; and she wants to train specialty horses. That is really going to be a cool job; and
it’ll be great for the Ridge
River Ranch reputation
too. Cody’s starting his senior year, and
though he doesn’t talk about it with us; I know from Pamela that he’s planning
on going to college after graduating – just as his older brother and sister
did. Kyle Landry has the most-popular
senior title locked up this year – especially if our football team has another
great season; but Cody will probably take over the hottest guy designation from
Jake. The big difference for that from
last year is that Cody has never had any serious girlfriends while Stephanie had
Jake off the market early.
I don’t want to think about back-to-school tonight, and that
little blurb went off on a little side-trail; so let’s get back to the update.
The trail ride was a blast, and I really loved the little
break we had where Christie showed us a few new tricks she was learning while
we were giving the horses a rest and water.
As I already mentioned, Michael and Tim stayed with us for the swim with
Ethan and Ehlana after we got back to my house; and we played for nearly a half
hour before Michael needed to run home to finish cleaning up and getting ready
to help out at the Inn and Tim went home for lunch.
Rowen stayed, and after having our noon meal on the back
porch with Mom, Violet, and Alicia; we spent most of the afternoon playing with
Ethan and Ehlana. We took them for a
bike ride around town, including a tour of the construction sites and a short
visit with Uncle Mark and Aunt Grace.
After that, we met up with Michael and played at the park for an hour;
stopped at the Emporium for ice cream; and then went for another swim before he
needed to get back to the Inn and we went inside to help Mom with making
dinner.
The food was ready by the time Dad got home from the office;
and Rowen and I had to eat quickly so we could get to our baseball practice
early – as requested by Carolyn so we could put in a little extra time to get
ready for our big game against Palmer’s Panthers on Saturday.
Coach Sarah is just as competitive as her daughter, but
Carolyn manages to get her friends and teammates working harder than her mother
would push us. I don’t know how the game
will go against the Panthers, but we couldn’t possibly be more prepared than we
are right now. I really would like to
win this game too, and don’t mind tougher practices; but not everyone on our
team was having fun; so we may need to lighten up a bit if they’re getting too
stressed about trying to keep up with the better players like Carolyn and
Jenny.
Rowen and I needed to hop in the river again after we got
back from our practice, and we took Ethan and Ehlana in with us again. There was time to play with them in the back
yard too until Mom wanted to dunk them in the tub before getting them ready for
bed. We helped her with that, and then
Michael and Tim came over in time to do the bedtime story and snack with
us. Once Ethan and Ehlana were tucked in
for the night, we went outside for another long, lazy swim; and then we sat on
the dock again and talked until a bit after eleven o’clock. Michael needed to go home and get some sleep
because he was helping out at the Inn both at breakfast and lunch; but we
wanted to have a little more alone time than we’d had yesterday; and it was
eleven-thirty before we reluctantly shared one last goodnight kiss – or maybe
two or three of them. ;^)
Violet and Dillon were somewhere else tonight, and Mom and
Dad had gone to bed already by then; so I came straight up to my room, got
changed, and have been working on my computer since climbing into bed with
Mandy. I haven’t even had very many
chats in other languages this summer, but tonight I had two internet chat
friends check in with me while I was online; and spent nearly an hour in total
talking to them in two different languages while doing some family business
work and my usual nightly computing.
There was also an email from Dawn asking me what I was doing for the
first weekend of August; and a couple of email answers from notes I’d sent out
last night that brought me up-to-date on some of the action going on around the
Proctor, Johnson, and McEwan families.
Rowen and I are both working tomorrow morning before taking
the afternoon off to play with Michael – and possibly with Tim too if there is
no major change for him with Nora by then.
Since there’s more rain in the forecast heading into the weekend, I may
switch my office work time and mow the lawn in the morning instead if it looks
like our morning yard work might get rained out on Saturday. Hopefully rain won’t get in the way of our
ball game; but I guess if we do get stuck with rain on a Saturday it’s better
to have it on a weekend when we don’t have any major fun plans. Considering how bad the forecasts have been
this summer even a couple of days out, though, we’ll just wait and see how it
turns out.
I’ve been working and chatting longer than I should have
after not even getting started until nearly midnight, so I’m going to put my
computer away and get some sleep now while I can.
Until next time, this is Magi Master Cassie Proctor; logging
out!
