Category Archives: summertime

spring into summer

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I always have the best intentions to regularly update this space, and then I finally get around to writing and look back and realize I haven’t been here since March.

So what have I been up to since then? All the things I usually am. The kiddo has gone from her school year activities of band, soccer, and theater to her summer activities of Driver’s Ed (how??), band (always band), and art camp. Work has been busy and I have been active with running (sort of), knitting (probably need a whole post about that), and Weight Watchers. I have been pretty consistently on the WW app yet have only lost about 5 lbs in 2 months…menopause is a bitch.

We saw ‘Six’ at the Fisher, the kiddo had a spectacular run in ‘Hello Dolly’, we got a bond at the local pool club, and I got braces.

And I turned 50.

I started a whole solipsistic post about that and didn’t finish it (you’re welcome). I know age is just a number, but I really do feel a sea change about this particular number. I know I can’t just entirely retire in this decade, but I have been able to begin the process of evaluating where I am investing my time and energy and more importantly, why. During this decade, I hope to be more thoughtful about that and begin to swing away from doing things for other people and more for myself. Less because I ‘have’ to and more because I ‘want’ to. And when that’s not possible, to give myself grace in how I approach those things. For example – can I quit my job? No. Do I sometimes dream about retirement? Yes. But when I stop and think about it – I really like my job and even in retirement I don’t plan on giving up work altogether unless I’m forced to. So is it my job itself that I dream of giving up, or the mental stress and pressure I put on myself ABOUT my job that I can reconsider? It’s more about shifting the narrative about what I’m doing and why I’m doing it. I work because I love being able to financially support myself, my home, and my daughter. I work because I really love the people I work with and am interested in the job I do. I GET to work. However, I also love who I am without work. I have no interest in being promoted, making more money, hustling, changing jobs, or advancing myself in any way other than showing up and doing a solid, ethical job at what I’m responsible for – but putting work on an equal footing with my family, my home, and MYSELF. Not letting it usurp other things I love and need, and take up more space than it should – and this decade, that is enough.

Same with my health. Would I love to lose 20 lbs and be the same weight I was ten years ago? Yep. Am I willing to put the work into doing that? Probably not. Am I tracking and using WW just for the weight loss and how I look? No. I feel better when I consider what I am putting into my body and have goals about the kind of foods I am eating, about drinking less wine, drinking more water. And running. Would I love to set a half-marathon PR that crushes what I could do ten years ago? Yes, but I don’t run because I am trying to do that (or even think that’s really possible). I am not doing these things to flog myself into being something I’m not. I run because I feel better when I move my body and I know that these things give me a greater ability to grow old gracefully in a healthy and happy way.

So those are the big things. In other news, it’s summertime here in SE MI and I’m looking forward to a relaxing evening at home with Brandon and then a busier day tomorrow. The Girl Scout troop (yes my kiddo and her friends are still hanging in there with Girl Scouts) and accompanying mom troop are all headed to Cincinnati on Sunday for a couple of days hanging out in a sprawling, historic AirBNB Victorian, cooking for each other, shopping, eating, and visiting King’s Island. Ten years ago the thought of these 2-3 days would have given me hives. Now – I’ve known these women since our kids were in second grade and they’re my mom tribe. They’re the women I text when I have questions about marching band or something happening at the high school. We are who we turn to when the school is on lockdown because of a threat investigation (which has happened no fewer than 8 times this year). So while this probably isn’t the ideal way I would spend my vacation days, I no longer have any anxiety about it – I’ll load up my books and knitting and they’ll know that I’ll be the first to go to bed and no one cares.

I do have plans for a knitting post and a Favorite Things post – I have lots of little fun conspicuous consumption items that I’ve found and have been enjoying. Whether those posts come in June, July, August or beyond – I make no promises. But be well in the meantime!

the post that wasn’t

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It’s entirely emblematic of recent days around here that I laboriously typed out a long post about our very busy weekend and WordPress ate it.

I was GOING to tell you all about band camp pickup on Friday night, the kiddo’s birthday celebrations over the weekend, and a houseworky Sunday, all of which made me feel like I didn’t actually get a weekend at all.

There was going to be some gripping content about the horrors of band camp laundry when band camp was subjected to downpours and leaky teepees (yep) as sleeping quarters. You were going to be thrilled by rumors of bed bugs in the boys teepee! And the story of the kid who rolled down the hill with a bass drum! Not to mention the star of our tale, an exhausted teenager who ate next to nothing all week because the food was terrible and not vegetarian, slept the whole way home but rose again the next day to celebrate her birthday properly!

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I was also going to tell you that I picked up two books at the library and have been plowing through them but I wasn’t going to tell you much about them because I’m saving that for a dedicated book post.

There was also going to be a teaser about the week ahead which is another corker, full of work stuff and kiddo stuff. Including two band performances (one at the first home football game!) and FRESHMAN ORIENTATION (how is this even possible?!) And a teenager and a mom who are completely tired out and cranky and not ready at all for the challenges of what’s ahead! It’s like Frodo and Sam with the ring! Except not!

There was also some stuff about us making candles, but I am also going to have to save that for a dedicated post because it’s now late, I have to finish this, I have to schedule it to publish sometime tomorrow, and I have to go to bed because as you may have already guessed, I am emotionally unprepared for another week to roll around.

I hope you are all well and that your week starts out with a bang and not a whimper like mine. xoxo

recently (summer 2022)

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Summer 2022 – gradually coming out of a pandemic mindset, feeling more normal (although it’s a new normal).

We didn’t take a long vacation this year. The kiddo’s schedule was not the ‘mellow sleeping in until noon’ that we had expected – she starts high school in the fall, and had a long musical arts camp at Blue Lake, she took a high school credit course online, and her high school marching band had 2-3x weekly rehearsals and sectionals. So while it wasn’t the full onslaught of the spring track & field plus theater, it was still a lot of chauffeuring and sitting-in-the-car-knitting while I waited for her. Oddly, these are some of my favorite times and memories from this summer…I am valuing them because it’s not long now until she starts to drive, and will be more independent with her activities. (*sniff*)

Brandon’s sister came to visit for a weekend in July, and we enjoyed our downtown Founders’ Festival and the local 5k color run. Brandon has been at the skateboard park with the Old Bros club every weekend, and he & I went back to our fave restaurant Lucy & the Wolf in Northville for a date for the first time since the pandemic. I’ve been splitting my days between working from home, and going into the office 1-2x a week. I’ve read lots of books, listened to some great podcasts, run not as many miles as I’d like, finished a Night Owl cross-stitch, watched some great documentaries and Stranger Things 4 and spent an inordinate amount of time with the Tour de France (JONAS VINGEGAARD!!!!).

We did take a long weekend in New Orleans in June to celebrate school being out. It was ridiculously hot and in retrospect, a somewhat odd place to take a thirteen-year old. (Her first assessment is that it was dirty. LOL) But I love NOLA, the architecture and the history, and we tried to soak that in despite the 100+ degree swamp temps. We lounged in Jackson Square, went to the aquarium, went to Marie Laveau’s voodoo shop, had the kid’s fortune read, took an open top bus tour of the city (and got rained on), we ate tons of amazing food, and we ventured outside the city for a swamp tour and met Elvis Jr, an enormous alligator. We took a Dark History walking tour and learned all sorts of macabre tidbits, I found a knitting shop in the French Quarter (Quarter Stitch), and we visited a vintage book store (Crescent City Books). We fit a lot in during our time there.

Summer isn’t over yet but the kid has a week of band camp and then school starts before Labor Day on the 29th. It’s not long now. The only thing to do is enjoy it! We have a pool pass for the month of August, I’m looking forward to back to school shopping and the first home football game & band halftime show (which happens even before school starts), and lots of front porch knitting & reading with a glass of wine.

I hope everyone is enjoying their season. All the best from our house to yours. xo

a long short week

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As expected this week has been a doozy, even if I wasn’t at work for 2 days. I don’t know why it has taken me so long to realize that sometimes a nice normal 40-hour workweek can be far easier than an abbreviated 3-day workweek full of “life stuff”.

The camp dropoff went well and I won’t see or hear from Miss L for over a week. She has entered the stage where she wanted no pictures taken and the sooner I left and stopped cramping her style, the better, ha. I hope she has a great time and meets a lot of nice kids. She’s been a trooper during this last year and a half and she deserves a summer of fun and friends. I already miss her, though, and am thinking about her all the time.

Upon arrival home in Suburban Elysia I was greeted by a storm cell of intense magnitude. It swept through my area with torrential rains, high straight-line winds, and hail. There were loud booms, pops, and cracks and when the rain and gale abated the damage was shocking. Trees uprooted, downed lines and branches, and flooding.

thankfully missed the neighbor’s house by inches

We are still without power in my neighborhood. Which I could look at and be super annoyed by. Instead, I’m choosing to be grateful that I had no property damage; that no one was hurt in the storm; and that it is cool at night and we are perfectly comfortable with no A/C and the windows open.

I am, however, entirely sick of the racket of generators all the time (we don’t have one – YET).

lunch break at a park near my office

The power outage at the home office pushed up my return to my actual office. We are still hybrid, so the office isn’t full, but I did see lots of familiar faces. Everyone looks perky and tanned and fit, as though they experienced major glow-up during isolation. By contrast, I trailed in pale, puffy and unwashed with a bad attitude and very little sleep from the generator racket all night. But I had French press coffee and was able to do my work and recharge all my devices. I’m trying to look for silver linings.

So I’m limping into the homestretch of the week. I’ve survived but not thrived. And that’s okay.

silver lining

post-solstice

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Miss L and I are finishing up a week of vacation with my mom in northern Michigan. It’s been raining quite steadily for the last day or so, so the beach plans were scotched. We happily pivoted to retail therapy in Glen Arbor, Leland, and Traverse City. I was planning on a long run this morning but the heavy rain has pretty much dispensed with that idea (I’m dedicated but not THAT dedicated).

The three of us are fully vaccinated but it was still a bit of a shock to see the tourist crowds, mostly unmasked, thronging the shops and restaurants. It will take awhile for us to feel fully comfortable and remind ourselves that it’s okay for us to take our masks off and get a bit of normalcy.

I’m still working from home but we will be reverting back to a hybrid schedule in early July. I’m not sure how many days a week I’ll be in the office but I think I’m going to start with 2 and see how that goes. Luckily, my team is small, and my boss is very flexible – she trusts me to make my own decisions for whatever works best for me, my family, and my workload.

I’ve been ramping up my running miles but am still way behind my typical YTD. I’ve also been knitting and cross-stitching, reading and watching lots of vlogs but those all deserve their own separate posts, I think.

Until next time, I hope you are well and safe and returning to a bit of normalcy wherever you are, and have access to vaccines if you want them. It’s still raining here in northern Michigan but we will make the best of it!

another week / august end

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So it’s been another week. A pattern of storms bounced us from high temps earlier this week to a Saturday morning that feels almost autumnal. Everything enjoyed the heavy rains, including Bunter the yard rabbit who sat out in the downpour almost all Wednesday morning.

Bunter is the little brown lump in the lower left.

There are a few bright red leaves on the admittedly stressed maples in the front yard. I’ve been reading up a storm and my home office was peaceful and productive this week except when I had Skype calls and then the jokesters I live with would try to entertain me.

Brandon keeps asking if I want to hang this up anywhere and I think he’s only half-kidding…

School starts on Monday and no one is happy about it. Teachers are stressed and I have enormous sympathy for them. Parents are stressed because the instructions, schedules, and learning platforms seem confusing, and in some cases have only just been released / received at the end of last week. Miss L is not best pleased although I’ve tried to get her excited through a concerted effort to clean and reorganize her desk in her room, creating a dedicated space for learning, and school shopping for supplies that she may not need right away. We had a joint session doing our day planners together with some fun stickers, marking off the holidays and days off we know about. We’ll all just have to do our best and give each other lots of grace.

I’ve been knitting a lot and am excited to say that I am about to embark on SLEEVES for the Pink Memories sweater!

Very poor quality picture of a crinkly pre-blocked mess of a WIP – but it will soon have SLEEVES!

And the Log Cabin blanket that is now a several-years-old WIP continues to meander along at its own pace, mostly for mindless television knitting as it’s just garter stitch, garter stitch, and more garter stitch. Someday I will decide it’s done and bind it off and start a new blanket but I have a lot of rows left in me for this one, I think.

I hope you are well on this Saturday wherever you are – I have no plans except to at some point wander out into the yard and put up the birdfeeders that were raided last night and left on the ground empty, no doubt by our yard raccoon or a squirrel gang. Maybe a nap later.

Be well and enjoy. xo

Reminder! 🙂

three things august

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Inspired by Steph.

Three Things I Like about August

  1. The sound of cicadas in the trees
  2. It’s my daughter’s birth month
  3. The feeling of anticipation for September, the feeling of summer growing mature and ripening.

Three Things I Dislike about August

  1. The feeling that it’s the “last” celebration of the summer season
  2. The heat; my God, the heat
  3. Summer running is the wooooorst.

Three Goals for the Rest of August

  1. Tackle unpleasant tasks as they come rather than procrastinating
  2. Enjoy the luxury of quarantime with Brandon and Miss L before their fall routines begin again
  3. Continue strength training weekly and food tracking daily.

Three Things I Thought I’d Use More This Year

  1. My car
  2. My office building
  3. The library

Three Things I Never Thought I’d Use As Much This Year

  1. My spare bedroom (now my home office)
  2. My Kindle (I have an ancient Kindle that I’m constantly planning to replace but with Covid and our library shutdown, almost ALL of my reading has been on that trusty old wheezy Kindle)
  3. Prayer

Three Things I’m Into Right Now

  1. Auditing my recurring finances
  2. ‘Phoebe Reads a Mystery’ podcast
  3. ‘Unsolved Mysteries’ reboot on Netflix

Three Favorite Fruits

  1. Peaches
  2. Pineapple
  3. Red seedless grapes

Three Foods I’ve Survived On in Corona Summer (I’ve been on Weight Watchers…)

  1. Cottage Cheese and pineapple
  2. Rice cakes
  3. Sugar free pudding

hey it’s august

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I don’t really know what happened to the last few weeks but hey it’s August!

We had our summer trip up north and it was just what we needed. Our intent was to avoid tourist crowds, stay safe, and just visit my parents. So no shopping or eating out. Instead, we socially distanced on the beach, we hiked, hit up the A&W for cold & creamy root beer, and we spent time with my parents. We visited baby llamas and I bought yarn and thought wistfully about uninterrupted knitting time. And I worked. We came home, and I worked much more, and then Brandon had a death in his extended family, and we had his close family come to stay for a few days for the Arrangements. In the meantime I was working even more than much more and when I finally lifted up my head this morning here it is. August.

I’m really hoping for a few restful days in a row now. I haven’t been working my Weight Watchers plan as strenuously as I should, and I haven’t run or done any strength training in almost 3 weeks. If you’ve gotten the message that work has been very busy then you are correct! and I find lately that working from home is making it difficult for me to compartmentalize and keep things separated. The upside is that I don’t have a commute, and in the beginning of the work from home I felt that work / life balance was a lot easier with that extra time. Now, though, tasks and projects that I’d be able to turn off at 5 o’clock and not ruminate on until the next morning at the office now live just down the hall. It’s easy to stay online and keep working much longer than I would normally or fit in something else before bedtime or during the evening.

In other news, like many other school districts, ours is currently grappling with the “right way” to start up again in the fall. As a result everyone is coming to realize that there is no “right way”. One surrounding district after another is declaring fully remote start. We were initially told that our reopening would be aligned with the “phase” Michigan is in – “phases” being based on the number of Covid cases among other things – but although we are technically in a phase that would allow us a hybrid start (part virtual / part in-person with masks, reduced class sizes and staggered attendance days to allow for more distancing) it now seems almost certain that we’ll be fully remote again. I guess the good thing about this is that the decision has been made for me, which reduces the amount of internal debate and agonizing over a set of completely imperfect choices. From a health and safety perspective, this is the right choice, I think; but from a social, educational, and personal development perspective, I really feel for all the kids who are getting shortchanged by circumstances out of their control. Everyone’s doing the best they can and I don’t think there are right answers but it’s a bummer either way.

Reminder: Show Us Your Books next Tuesday!

 

 

weekend edition

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Happy weekend, all!

June was a quiet month on the blog but very busy IRL.

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We celebrated my 47th birthday and Miss L finished her very strange 6th grade year.  I now have a 7th grader – I can barely believe it. Although it seems that the kiddos may be able to go back to school in the fall, nothing is certain right now, and even if they do, it will surely look different than it does now.

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I’m still working from home and feeling blessed that my company is being very cautious about bringing everyone back. Miss L’s camps were cancelled this summer and it’s so nice not to have to worry about rearranging all of our schedules to accommodate for her summer care – although the weeks when she is home feel just as busy in the summertime as they did when she was doing virtual school. While I am an introvert, and happy to be at home for large swathes of time without social contact (in this way, self-isolation was no problem for me whatsoever), Miss L is extroverted and I think all kids need social stimulation, interests, and friendships. She and Brandon have bonded over their mutual enjoyment of old kung fu movies and skateboarding, so there are regular visits to the local skate park, but during the weeks we try to make sure she sees her friends from school and get out into the neighborhood. It’s been a balancing act to do this in a responsible, socially distanced way but I think most of her friends’ parents are simpatico on this, and Miss L has been happy to have more bandwidth with a few of her friends and some neighborhood friends at both her dad’s house and mine.

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I have been doing Weight Watchers for about a month now and am thrilled to report that I’ve lost 8 lbs. I still have a bit to go before I get back to what I thought I was before the pandemic, and another 10+ to go before I am finally at my goal weight, but the program is working for me and I am feeling really good on it. In addition to seeing the scale move a little bit in the right direction every week, I’m drinking way more water than I used to, and my skin looks much better. I am strictly limiting refined sugar, processed foods, and alcohol, and I am less bloated, my clothes feel better. I’m taking supplements and sleeping like a baby, and have more energy all around – I haven’t felt a mid-afternoon crash into sluggishness since I started the plan. The plan I’ve picked meshes well with the way we eat anyway, and feels more like a reminder / education about making good choices with food and movement. So here’s to the next month on it and hopefully more loss.

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I went a little crazy signing us up for virtual running events but Brandon and I are having a lot of fun getting our miles in and tracking our progress. The big one, you’ll remember, is the Mitten Run – 160 virtual miles from Oscoda to Empire (across the upper half of the lower peninsula, for you non-Michiganders) and I also signed us up for the Michigan Harvest Challenge, which is a different harvest-themed run per month through October. We’re also doing the virtual Fishtown 5k, which is a fundraiser for historic Leland, and the virtual Crim 10-miler in August. Whew! It’s a lot of running and so far we haven’t made it out of Farmington for our runs, but the Harvest Challenge offers suggested Strava routes up north for the various events so maybe one month we’ll get crazy and drive up north to do one.

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I hope you are all well and safe and healthy. xoxo

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late summer

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Miss L and I were up north for several days last week visiting my awesome parents and had a lovely time on the beach. My folks are wonderful and we love spending time with them and the extra benefit is we can fish and enjoy Lake Michigan and the Sleeping Bear while we’re there, too. We spent lots of time outside in the sun getting brown and bug-bit, we ate ice cream and had dinner at Dinghy’s in Frankfort, we visited Fishtown (where I was supposed to run a fundraising 5k in July, but due to the timing of a scheduled trip to Cedar Point with my brother’s family, I had to scratch. I feel sad that I didn’t get that t-shirt. But next year).
The water levels are very high and we watched a small boy drop his fishing line in the channel and pull out fat fish as the tourist crowds milled past. And we had breakfast at the local eatery in the village where friends of my folks were providing live music – they’re a married duo with a guitar and a flute and they did music for beautiful and popular children’s book called “Paddle to the Sea”. I will confess to getting a little misty at some of their songs invoking Paddle’s journey via the Great Lakes and eventually to the Atlantic Ocean.
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I read three books – my Charles Manson beach read, which ended up feeling a little scattered and not satisfying, “The Immortalists” by Chloe Benjamin which I read quickly but also did not enjoy, and a book by the daughter of the BTK serial killer which only stood out to me because of all the times she mentioned Arby’s and Taco Bell. I’d be a serial killer, too, if that’s all I ate. (I’m a grump with my summer reading, I guess, but just wait til I post my thoughts on the book I’m reading NOW – “My Lovely Wife” by Samantha Downing, which may be the most grump-inducing of all).

It all went too fast, as it always does. Still, I managed to do some productive things done besides reading – I had a work conference call AND I pounded out 8 miles on the Betsie Valley trail to fulfill my “long run” obligations. It felt better than the 8 miles Brandon and I did last weekend at Kensington, which was an excruciating miserable slog.
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And yes, for anyone keeping track, I’m still running. I mean, I’m not running *well*, but I’m doggedly logging the miles. I’ve gained weight, I am very slow and lazy, and I don’t feel good about my times. I’m running for the finish line, not the finish time, which makes me embarrassed to tell people that I run, because if the person I tell is another runner, they inevitably ask about my paces, and I have to tell them that my average pace (which used to be between 9 / 9:30 per training mile and under 9 for race miles) is now a solid sub-12 minute mile (barely) for training runs and between 10 & 11 for race miles. And I know what other runners think, because I used to think the exact same thing, which is are you really running if you’re running 11 and 12’s? I hate to say that because it sounds so condescending and snotty now but runners care about their times and now because I’m a slow runner, there are no more gleeful post-run or pre-run selfies to smear all over social media because I know I can be modestly proud of my finish time.
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As previously mentioned, Brandon and I are running the Crim 10-mile in Flint next week and are going up for a romantic (haha) evening in a hotel the night before so we don’t have to get up at 4 AM to drive there and pick up our packets. (I booked our room on Expedia and received an email confirmation “CONGRATULATIONS YOU’RE GOING TO FLINT” which, if you’ve ever been to Flint, is hard to view as anything other than cutting sarcasm on Expedia’s part.)

I’m a little concerned as my last run had to be cut short because of shin pain. I’m very leery of any kind of shin pain because of the terrible shin splints I had several years ago, which resulted in a stress fracture that cut short my fast running days, which will likely never return. Brandon and I are planning another long run this weekend so I’m going to lay off until then, wear my compression sleeve, and hopefully see improvement. I made it through a half marathon training cycle in February and March without shin issues so that’s something I’m clinging to.
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Anyway, that’s the update from late summer here in suburban Elysia, where the days are fading in some ways and brightening in others, and the roads smell like sun-baked fields and a few tired, dusty leaves are beginning an early drift to earth. This time of year will always invoke a pleasant melancholy that is pure nostalgia for my childhood days when I knew summer was growing old and back-to-school clothes and pencils were right around the corner.

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