Yesterday was a very chill day with fam and a mostly normal Friday routine. I’m on holiday but they still have work and kids that go to school and activities to manage.

In the morning I had a fair amount of time to walk and think and then when Rebecca hit her stopping point with work we took to the neighborhood streets to do more walking and catching up.

She took the afternoon off and we met up with our other friend at her house on Lake Travis. Technically, she explained, their house is on a wide channel of the river that forms the lake, but the channel is so wide, it doesn’t resemble a river at all. It’s an incredible view from their back patio and we sat and had a drink and just talked.

Then the three of us went to this place called “The Reserve” which is also on the “lake”, which is kind of like a resort/local club/pool with restaurants and a bar and pools for kids and adults and a lazy river. We walked the lazy river for a couple of hours, with more drinks when the bar opened up. With school back in session the place was practically deserted. Apparently this is the last weekend it will be open which seems incredible to me. It’s still so, so hot.. if I had a membership I would keep going there well into the fall. But I guess these temps are atypical this time of year even for Texas.

I got pretty tipsy by the time we were wrapping up the session at the pool and was just coasting with whatever was planned next. That turned out to be dinner back at the house with the kids and more chill conversation on the back patio after the sun went down.

There were no clouds and the sky was so clear. Both Saturn and Jupiter were in view but no Orion’s Belt or dipper I could see There was very little moon so there were more starts visible and being this south of town it’s approaching the darkness possible as you drive west in Nebraska. There’s the faint glow of a band across the sky and I know, it’s the light from clusters of stars We can’t see. You have to be so many miles away from civilization with no moon and clear skies, like in the Badlands, to see those stars.

To see a sky that is more stars than sky. The light of some of those stars are only echoes of light that used to exist. In the time it takes to travel to our eyes, the star may have met it’s last day. It’s such a wild thing to think about. And the perspective of that can shift your thinking. I know it changes mine.

I went to bed fairly early again, exhausted from the long day of relaxation and conversation. My head was actually pounding and I was afraid the pain of it would spill over into my sleep and the next day. Today, I’m going to try for a little less drinking and a little more of everything else. 🙂

XOXO, ❤️

~Miss SugarCookie