LIFE LATELY

I apologize in advance if this post has no sense of cohesion whatsoever. I am planning for this one to be a brief scrapbooking session made up of photos from my iphone album and thoughts from my mind's miscellaneous box.

A couple of business items to start:

1. I love podcasts and I am so grateful to the internet world for the deep and diverse world of them. Recently, I have discovered a couple recently that I think are worth sharing. One of them is Serial, a new podcast from the creators of This American Life. I am more gripped by the unfolding of this investigative journalism into a particular case, than I have been for any recent television show. The other is Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day podcast. The other day, the word was 'tankini', which I knew, but what I did not know was the backstory for the word, 'bikini', which was explained in that 2 min segment (they are all about 2-3 min long) for tankini. Fascinating. 

2. This song. 

3. That photo up there is from Sunday morning- I adore these boys and so does Sloane. They were all in the middle of playing when they were asked to step off the playmat for a moment by adults needing to move things around, and so they stood to the side, waiting, and I said, 'hey look over here!' so that I could snap a picture and those are the faces they gave me. 

This weekend was full of accomplishments - one of them being that I ran my second Rugged Maniac race, the second being that I made a fire pit ! (rest assured, more on the fire pit later).  During the first five minutes of the race (similar to the first five minutes of the first time I ran the race back in May, and come to think of it, similar to the first five minutes of any time that I run), I thought to myself, why am I doing this again? And then the adrenaline kicked in and the first obstacle was in front of us and then I was having a blast. I almost didn't run due to a wonky foot situation but it all worked out and it felt wonderful to realize I had gotten stronger from the last time. 

On Friday though, before the race and while I was feeling sorry for myself regarding aforementioned foot injury and a tiring week, I self-administered the following things: 1) a trip to the wine store with Sloane for a wine tasting and a gorgeous bottle of Malbec, 2) a dinner of butternut squash soup, Gouda cheese, grapes and wine, 3) an hour of finally finishing up the book I was reading. 

Sloane took this picture! She said she wanted to take a photo of us. 

Sloane can get into the car by herself...almost.  Her efforts are inspiring.  And a family photo from the state fair, for good measure! This is towards the end, when we were covered in sweat and melted ice cream, the way all days at the state fair should end.

I have been making a lot of hash lately.  Squash has been shimmying their way to the big bins at the grocery stores and so I have made some sort of hash about three times already this week in various combinations having to do with butternut squash - pear - chorizo - sweet potato - breakfast sausage - kale - red onion - pepper, etc.  You would think a picture of hash would make perfect sense here but all I have is a photo of some glorious steaks before Ken put them on the grill, so here you go! I love it when that man grills.

And finally, a moment to acknowledge the amazing thing that is Sloane and Rusty.  She bosses him around, hugs his tail, his ear, his body, anything she can get her hands on, gets freaked out when he runs in her direction barking at the top of his lungs, spits bacon down to him when she thinks we're not looking, always makes sure he has water and food in his bowl, warns him not to eat her stuffed animals while she is gone, berates him in the same tone and manner we do,  and always wants to be the one that gives him his treats. 

And there we have it! I don't know how else to end this except to say I've been doing a poor job of getting enough sleep so I'm going to go give that another try and I'll be back, don't you worry.