weekend recap, august 5

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So my mom is here for a visit, which is just delightful, although she's been sick, which is not. It's forced us to sit and rest though, and I think that's been good for everybody.  

Cal finished up his sailing camp on Friday, and I'll tell you more about that later this week. Neel and I went down to the Nauticus where the camp was held and got to watch the kids in an epic water battle, which was great fun. Cal wore is Tennessee Vols shirt in honor of my mom's arrival, but he was totally soaked by the end of the day and had to change!

We really followed my mom's lead on Saturday and took it super-easy. Ferocious thunderstorms and pounding rain all afternoon helped. Mom and Cal watched movies and I (inspired by Christine) cleaned off my desktop. I have some new projects in the works and I have to figure out a way to make space for them and fit everything in before my head explodes. Seriously. That desktop clean off is counting as my drawer clean out for like the next week, I feel so good about what I got accomplished. It felt great to trash some of the the things that had been weighing on my karma for a few years now. Old projects that will never again see the light of day! I feel brighter already! Now I just have to remember where I organized everything and we'll be good to go.

Let's face it. Sunday was pretty lazy too!

I made lemonade. We sliced peaches. A batch to eat and a batch for pie.  

I've been looking around and doing research for a place for me and Neel start to meet with a personal trainer. We did this together many years ago when he was in graduate school and really loved it, and we want to get back to it as a way to do something both together and for ourselves. I don't really want to talk about this much, but I'm feeling quite desperate to be stronger and more fit. I've found lots of options here in town, but couldn't bring myself to pull the trigger and contact one. Nothing felt right. Yesterday, in the midst of checking out some options for renting canoes, Neel discovered that our local university (literally four blocks from our house) has phenomenal facilities, much less expensive than any gym, they offer classes and personal training, and now we're all signed up. Also, we can rent canoes too! It felt like a bit of a breakthrough.

Because it's summer (even though it feels, quite gloriously like mid-fall), we cooked out for dinner, and afterwards everyone felt the need to get out of the house. (Hopefully Ama is on the mend.) We grabbed gelato at Strawberry Fields  (Local folks, if you haven't been here, it's a MUST TRY in Ghent. The gelato is divine!) and headed to one of my favorite spots in town, East Beach. You may remember when my friend Jean and I hit the Homearama here last fall. We skipped the houses and headed straight for the still-warm sand. Managed to catch it right at sunset. Not a bad way to end the weekend.

Not bad at all.

weekend recap, july 29 edition

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All that fun I said I was going to have? Eh. Look. It wasn't all bad, in fact parts of it were pretty lovely, but I'm not going to lie and say that my weekend was all great either.

Things started out spectacularly. And I mean that. I had an awesome meeting with my photography group (much diminished this week, summer does that). We came up with some exciting ideas that had my mind racing and my pencil scribbling madly in my notebook. I'm really feeling that I need to sit down with Theresa and gather my thoughts. Does she have that calming influence on you too?

Friday night we went to an outdoor viewing of Casablanca and I'll tell you all about that tomorrow. It was great. 

Things went down hill on Saturday.  

I don't know what exactly to say about this except I'm feeling a little blue. I got to the grocery store so depressed that all we seem to do is clean, and grocery shop, and I just couldn't take it anymore. I got Neel and Callum their lunches and came home.  We cleaned. We took Callum to his hitting lesson and went back to the grocery store. We came home, and I made gazpacho (more on that next week). That part was good.

We got up Sunday, grabbed breakfast and went to the beach. That part was good too.  

So see? Not all bad at all. St. Germain? Good. Gazpacho? Really good. Some of the things I have coming down the pike? Really, really good.  

Maybe it's the mid-summer blahs, and maybe something deeper, but I'm all for keeping it real around here. Somethings it's not all flowers and sunshine.  

My mom comes this week. Nothing cheers me up like a little company. I don't mean to be a downer, certainly, and things are fine really. But if I'm feeling a little weepy in the produce section, shouldn't I tell you about that part too?