I've had these certain fantasies or ideals throughout my life. I'm not sure where they came from, but through talks with my sister I've discovered she has some of the same. It must have been through a series of events in our childhood that made us kindred in this way. Or maybe it's just genetics because we're sisters.
In any case, I've always had this fantasy... (I'm pretty sure it stems from watching Dirty Dancing and the like.) When we have kids I dream of being the type of people to have a vacation home on a lake... it doesn't have to be anything extravagant; in fact, the cheaper and more quaint the better. Rustic, even. I want to have somewhere that, during the summer months, I pack up the kids and the dogs and we live at the lake house and Adam comes up on the weekends and joins us (because somebody has to bring home the bacon while I take care of the kids, duh!). During the week we build sandcastles and swim and tan and read books and do puzzles and play Monopoly and grill out and sleep on the enclosed screen porch and climb trees and take hikes and ride bikes and go out on paddle boats and listen to music and make new friends and I sit out on the porch drinking iced tea and crocheting something or reading a book while I'm nursing the youngest baby and watch them play in the dirt and make mudpies and I don't care how dirty they are because they're having so much fun.
It's been on my mind a lot lately. I guess because that's something I wish I could have done growing up and something I really would have enjoyed and I think anybody would enjoy. I don't even have kids yet and I'm already worried about them having a real childhood. I want my kids to be kids. Anyway, enough fantasyland! I can picture the cabin in my head already. :)
Right now Adam and I are zipping along the Kennedy expressway doing 70mph. It's only three minutes to the circle, but that's not really a surprise as it's 9:15 on a Sunday evening. It’s kind of a freaky sensation to feel the car lurching and floating and accelerating while I’m busy focusing on this bright computer screen.
I took the laptop with me because I thought I could work on my 365 pictures and videos while we were driving and kill two birds with one stone. That way, when I get home, I only have to upload the pictures and I’m done. That sort of worked; editing the photos isn’t working as well because of the jerking around, and I can’t really tell what color things are on this screen when it jitters. It will have to wait until I get home.
Adam just informed me, “I kind of got stuck in this lane. I have no idea where it’s going!” The Dan Ryan construction is different every time we go into the city, so I could only shrug. I don’t really care; we’ll get home when we get home. He just groaned “UGH, do you smell that White Castle?!” I had to inform him it’s not White Castle, it’s Chicago’s famous Maxwell Street Polish. The aroma of mustard and grilled onions hangs over the expressway like a fog when you come out of the circle. It’s either mouth-watering or nauseating; today it does kind of smell delicious.
118/365, at the baseball game:
I got to finish my book, Fire Along the Sky by Sara Donati while I was at the game yesterday. I love, love, LOVE her as an author. It really feels like I’m THERE with the characters, like I’m another person living in Paradise with them, dealing with the things they deal with. She’s just really a master at what she does. There’s another book after that one in the Wilderness series, but I’m not sure if it’s done yet. I have horrible fears of “Oh my God. What if she was to DIE before finishing the series?! Could I even handle that!?” I feel like the characters actually existed. I told Adam so many of the characters are so wise and always know exactly the right thing to say/do (of course) but then it dawned on me that the author is also that wise—because she’s the one writing what they say. It makes me jealous. And also makes me want to move to the middle of frickin’ nowhere.
This morning, now that Adam had to sit out a game, we got up late (AGAIN) and then worked in the yard. It was supposed to be warm, so I wore a bikini top and a pair of my favorite workout shorts and a bandana and we finally got a lot of our railroad tie project done. FINALLY. We bought the supplies (mulch, weed paper, railroad ties, nails, etc) back in the fall. I didn’t want to see all of it sit around for months, but sit it did. We’ve had piles of bags of mulch in the backyard since September or something silly like that. Finally today we got some of the railroad tie beds done and then I put down the mulch.
119/365, posing with a truck I spied for Adam's dad:
Before:
After:
OMG. Listening to this “Home Again” pet recovery system on the radio is just obnoxious, especially with the “Reunited and it feels so good” song at the end. I mean, it’s great your pet is back. But… seriously? Now it has adam singing it out loud. GREAT!
I've seriously been neglecting this blog! I wish I could say I've been keeping up with my other blogs, but I haven't. I've been so busy that I haven't been doing much online outside of checking the people I read and doing my 365s.
I'm still doing my 365 photo project over at Flickr. You can find all of my pictures here. I can't believe I'm already up to day 117!
I've decided to try a new project using YouTube. I'm mimicking the 365 Flickr project in that I'm going to be taking a short video clip of myself every day. I'm not planning on it being anything exciting and instead very much Day In The Life. I'm working my way toward being a web celeb, gosh! :) You can check out my videos (all two of them!) below:
There's not a whole lot of new things to report about in my life. I got Adam to join a baseball league, so most of our summer weekends are going to be taken up with that (I hope!). I haven't been able to attend any more births as a doula--I've been on call a few times, but have mostly been too busy/unable to be on call. We're down to 1 car and it's going to be extra hard to volunteer now.
