Family Weekend

'Still settling back into life here after a few days with family.  Dad's birthday and the annual family reunion fell on the same day this year, and his two sisters also spent the night at the house Sunday and were able to stay through lunch Monday, making this visit home especially memorable.  Dad cooked their grandmother's risotto--his best batch of it yet, we all agreed--and his just-picked tomatoes and cucumbers made a perfect side-salad.  'A special meal and sweet way for the siblings' visit to end.  Mom, Dad, and I opted for the Olympics over seemingly-ceaseless election-related-news-coverage in the evenings, I finished reading Judy Blume's latest book Monday night and began Bill Bryson's take on Australia in the wee hours of Tuesday morning, and too soon--

--I was back at the bus station, greeting its resident cat and waiting to board to come back here. 

Assuming Aunt Laurie's health remains good, I will be looking out the bus windows at Pennsylvania countryside again next week already for a visit with her and the rest of my family. 

This summer has been miserably hot and humid, but it's one that has found me both getting somewhere with my running finally and reuniting with family, so those are two Summer 2016 things that I will remember fondly. 

June Ends and July Begins

Disgustingly hot and humid days have set in, and I grouse about them before and after each run and walk, but they've been so beautiful too.  A neighbor's Hollyhocks are blooming, all in shades of pink and white, and I dodge the bumblebees zipping around them as I return to the apartment every day.  One blissful 72° afternoon found me in the kitchen baking pumpkin-dark chocolate chip-chia seed muffins after catching a few minutes of nutritionist Joy Bauer's program on PBS that reminded me to eat more pumpkin, but other than the muffins and Saturday's made-late-at-night pie, it's been a no-bake summer so far.  

It's becoming a no-sit-still summer too, between the walks and the runs.  I'm plodding on with my return to the "Couch to 5K" learn-to-run plan and began Week 3 (of 9) this afternoon:  I can now comfortably run three minutes straight.  :)  By the end of next week, I'll have completed Week 4, which means. . .five minutes straight, and Week 5 ends with a 2-mile (or twenty-minute) run.  Progress, then!  I stopped mid-Week 5 in 2010, so the most I learned to run without stopping was eight minutes.  Even during the five-or-so 5k races and two half marathons I finished years ago, I couldn't run longer than eight minutes without stopping to walk before running again, so my being determined to do this thing properly this time, and to take my time with it, and to honor the learning process and the races and myself in this way has been a huge shift in perspective.  I like that it's hard.  I like that there's an ongoing learning involved in this.  I like that it makes me appreciate my body and good health all the more.  I like that it doesn't really come naturally to me but that there's something about it that has brought me back to it time after time since high school.  Running has always appealed to me so much, but I've never stuck with it.  The day I completed that first eight-minute run of Week 5 in 2010, I sent my parents a letter that mentioned it.  "Eight minutes straight!  I'm finally a runner!"  But then I didn't finish the last four weeks of the program.  Who knows.  It is one of the "Val, Val, Val" things that bothers me most, my slacking-off and not pushing myself with this, and I'm determined to become disciplined--or maybe, now, to remain disciplined--about this.  The challenge is good for me in so many ways, and dragging myself out into the humidity every other day for these runs is making this summer both so hard and so rich.  

On the Shores of Lake Erie

Mike and I returned from our anniversary weekend away last night:  A day and night in Erie, PA and a day and night at his parents' home.  Perfect little getaway for us right now.  A month has passed since Mike's dad died, and the sounds of the seagulls and the tides were balms for the soul Friday. 

Ice-cold water--some snow was still mounded under the shade of trees--but restorative for us, nonetheless.

I didn't notice until I uploaded the photo below from my camera that the word "Hope" is clearly written in the sand here. 

Mike said he had noticed at the time that there was something drawn in the sand, but he hadn't paid any real attention to it.  Hope, I tell you!  That's at least as sweet as all my found hearts. 

The last time I'd visited Lake Erie, I was about thirteen years old.  The beach and woods bordering it are just as I remember. 

This time, though, instead of making the trip with my dad's older sisters, I was with my husband--

--and instead of spending a humid summer day giggling as my aunts teased me about having crushes on lifeguards, I was using my husband as a windbreak as I huddled for warmth against him on a log.  It was really too chilly for bare legs and bare feet, but that's what beaches are for, and the comfort of sand and waves against my skin was worth every second of mind-numbing FREEZING COLD.  :)

Ducks--Mike's favorite--and seagulls paddled before us, and to hear the gulls later outside our hotel room too was just bliss to me.  ♥  Although we were only staying for a night, we allowed ourselves the one-bedroom hotel suite that offered balconies and a rare-to-us bit of luxury.  I figured we deserved to treat ourselves a bit, and so we did.  

Saturday evening, we were greeted at my in-laws' home by their gorgeous-eyed cat--

--and equally striking spring flowers. 

A rock wall is a "must" for my dream home and Mike has known this for ages, but it didn't occur to him for the longest time to mention that oops, oh, that's right, his parents have one out in the corner of their backyard.  Methinks this is the same lack of attention to detail that made him oops, see that someone had written something in the sand in front of us but not care enough to read it.  Gah.  :)  My mother-in-law's flowers looked heavenly in front of the rocks, making it hard to decide if it was the shore or the cat or the wall that counted as Today's Charming Thing. 

The rock wall may have won.  ♥

More beauty on my in-laws' back porch--

--and inside their home, an adorable picture of Mr. Mike from a less recent beach trip.  :)  My all-time favorite photo of him, I think. 

And yes, after Anniversary Cupcake Fail, Mike did, indeed, get his Krispy Kreme doughnuts over the weekend.  The bee-topped one was mine. 

A lovely getaway, and a couple more days off to get caught up here at home.  I'm redoing our bathroom and requesting permission from the landlord to paint our bedroom.  ("Dare to dream.")  And in the next few weeks, we will be visiting both Mike's family and mine, and I will get more interstate driving experience, so as sad as this past month has been, there is more to look forward to on the horizon.  

♥

Mike and the Potter's Cat

There is a pottery studio in our neighborhood with a beautiful resident cat. Mike often peeks through the studio's front door on his way to work to catch a glimpse of the cat, and the cat seems to love the extra attention. It rolls around on its back on the paper-covered studio tables to look at Mike upside-down and prances over to the door to sniff his hand through the mail slot. Mike's always at work while the studio's open, so he hasn't gotten to meet the cat's owners, but this past Christmas, he talked about buying his tortoiseshell friend a present and just slipping it through the door. And one morning as he packed his bag for work, I caught a glimpse of gifts and a note to the shop's owner in his backpack:

I have wanted to take a class at this studio since I first saw it, so one of these days, Mike is sure to get the chance to do more than pet his pretty walk-to-work friend through the mail slot. And if there weren't a landlord-enforced one-pet-maximum policy at our apartment, he would be sure to beg me to bring home not just a finished pottery piece but also his "other" cat. ♥