Thursday

It's been a lovely week. Thanksgiving got spread out for us this year, with three separate events with different segments of our families -- Sunday, Wednesday and then Thursday. I am all in favor of extending celebrations. We got to really enjoy being at each place, rather than watching the clock and rushing to the next stop. Plus, stuffing your face once a day for three days is much more pleasant than stuffing your face three times in one day.

I spent all of Thursday evening reading this month's book-club book, "The Man Who Was Thursday," by G.K. Chesterton. (Be careful reading reviews of this book -- spoilers are rampant.) It is brilliant -- smart and witty and thrilling. A few chapters in I already was thinking it was one of the best books I'd ever read, and it only got better. It's nothing I would have picked up on my own, so I'm really glad I was pushed into it. I'm also glad I had to buy it (none of the libraries had it) because I will be reading it again, maybe even before book club. It will definitely make for interesting discussion; I'm still trying to wrap my head around it.

Yesterday morning Mom and Dad kept the kids and I got to go running with Matt for the first time since I don't even know when. It was an especially nice treat because he was supposed to have to work that morning but at the last minute that got canceled. The weather could not have been more perfect. We ran his usual route, a trail from our house to the reservoir and back.

Last night we went to Sallie and Steven's, near Greensboro, where we also got to see Todd and Rhonda for, I think, the first time since last Thanksgiving, which is crazy. It's well-documented that I love that crowd, in any combination.

Today we got our Christmas tree and decorated the house, all four of us napped for a couple of luxurious hours, Evan got the hang of climbing down the stairs, and Matt made his amazing chili for dinner. And there's still one more day before Monday. I hope you've had a great Thanksgiving break, too. I love this time of year!

Zzzzz

I just realized I forgot to link to Kate's Preservation in Pink blog featuring Claire (modeling half of the adorable flamingo outfit Kate gave her). She outgrew the pants within a couple of months, but she wore the shirt just last week. Weird, but good, since it's short-sleeve weather again.

This weekend has been full of some much-needed rest. I didn't realize how behind I had fallen on sleep. I think it started with Claire abruptly refusing to eat any solids a couple of days last week (I still don't know why -- maybe teething? She doesn't have any teeth yet), which meant she was hungry during the night so I was up and nursing a lot.

Friday afternoon I had a hard run and then didn't eat much for dinner that night and stayed up much too late. Saturday morning I was so tired and hungry that I felt sick and didn't feel like eating, which exacerbated the problem. All day I tried to force down food and every couple of hours I took a nap. Thank goodness it was a weekend and Matt was here to handle Claire.

I went to sleep at 7:30 last night and slept 14 straight hours -- until 9:30 a.m. today! Huge props to Matt the Phenomenal Man for making that possible. I really don't know if I've ever slept that long before. Not in recent history, that's for sure. This morning I was still a little weak but I felt better and better as the day went on. We had a house showing this afternoon that seemed to go well, fingers crossed, and by evening I felt good enough to go triple-couponing with Claire while Matt relished the Duke game.

I never had a fever, so I don't know if I had a little bug or if it's really possible to feel that bad just from general weariness. Either way, at least it was short-lived.

In summary, I was sickly, now I'm whiny. And now I'm off to read in bed with Matt. I love being in the middle of a good book ("On Agate Hill," Lee Smith).

Please stick

So much for blogging during the afternoon nap ... Claire ended up snoozing while I strolled her around Harris Teeter after lunch, and there wasn't much sleep left in her once we got home. Which was OK, since my empty to-do list meant I didn't need that time to myself. And really, is there a better way to spend an afternoon than on the floor with a belly-laughing baby?

Supposedly it's going to snow/ice around here tonight and this weekend. I'll believe it when I see it, but I really hope we get something of substance. So far it's just very, very cold. But Matt grilled burgers for us anyway. I wonder how many other people in Moore County cooked out tonight? I love Matt. And I love burgers.

Nights like tonight are my favorite: good books fresh from the library, an overflow of good food and drinks, and a soundly sleeping baby. Reading for hours at opposite ends of a couch is one of our favorite ways to spend an evening, but for some reason it rarely happens except on vacation.

So Matt's read and loved the first two books of a series by Swedish author Stieg Larsson. I guess there were supposed to be 10 books in the series, but it's turned out to be a trilogy because only three were written before Larsson died a few years ago. The third book, "The Girl Who Kicked the Hornets' Nest," isn't scheduled for publication in the United States until this summer, but a few days ago Matt was at the library and was surprised to discover it there on the shelf.

He asked the librarian how that was possible. Turns out the head librarian for that branch is also a big fan of the series and couldn't wait for summer, so he special-ordered this book from a British publisher. Matt's probably one of the first people in the state to read this book -- at least without ordering it from Amazon.co.uk or something similar (why do good Christmas gift ideas wait until the end of January to occur to me?). Anyway, I thought it was pretty cool how that worked out, and lucky for Matt.

Slightly related: Anne Tyler has a new book that I can't wait to get my hands on. I'm so glad so many of my favorite authors are so prolific!

I keep walking outside and we're getting the slightest bit of accumulation on the deck. I had planned to have an open house at this condo tomorrow afternoon, but I'm guessing that will have to be postponed. No big deal except I hate to have wasted the advertising. C'est la vie.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow!

Chill

What a wonderful, restful Saturday. Low-key errands and household straightening, Turkey Trot skippage, and round after round of great food since 5 p.m. -- Amanda's onion rings, Christy's cheesy potatoes, grilled pork tenderloin and keylime pie. Also lots of TV bumming -- more of "The Prisoner," what we hadn't watched of the NBC Thursday night lineup, and an "Arrested Development" disk. I am so relaxed right now.

I complain about the cold but I love this time of year, the Thanksgiving-through-New Year's weeks. Breaks from work or school, extended time with family and friends, good-food overload ... so great. Matt's birthday is coming up in a couple of weeks and I think we're going to go to the beach for a weekend to celebrate that too. (Although, as I've already mentioned, we don't have to leave town to skip working out, overeat and generally be lazy.)

I've been talking about joining Meg's book club forever and December's going to be the month I finally do it. They're reading "Olive Kitteridge," which I read this summer and liked a lot. (So much that I then read two of Elizabeth Strout's previous novels, but they weren't as good.) I also want to read their November selection, "The Help."

Meg usually keeps me informed of what the group's reading and they don't always strike my fancy (unabridged "Les Miserables") but I guess part of the point of book clubs is to read books you wouldn't have otherwise but will be glad you did. Although I will always maintain that not all classics deserve to be classics ("Moby Dick"). "In literature as in love, we are astonished at what is chosen by others." - Andre Maurois

OK, off to bed we go.

Adjusting

The baby is asleep, the house is relatively clean and the editing site is down for maintenance until 5 p.m., so this is as good a time as any to re-emerge in the blog world.

As recently as yesterday it was impossible to think I'd ever again have the free time for luxuries like blogging. (Until all our kids are away at college, anyway.) Not to be melodramatic. But Claire alternated crying and nursing from 9 p.m. to 5 a.m. Sunday night/Monday (yesterday) morning, then mostly stopped crying but continued to fight sleep until 1 p.m. yesterday, at which point we both crashed hard. I did get a shower but that was all I accomplished yesterday. She was back to her fairly normal three-hour stretches last night so we both feel a lot saner today.

For me, I think the hardest thing about having a baby (at this point) is not being able to plan my schedule very well. I realize we're not even three weeks into this and it will be vastly improved in a matter of weeks or months. But it's frustrating to feel like every day is subject to the whims of her sleeping/eating schedule -- it's almost impossible to make even simple plans, like meeting someone for coffee or lunch, which is one of the main things I want to do. And if planning a lunch date is tricky, a week at the beach (or better yet, a long weekend with just Matt and me) seems almost impossible to pull off. All in good time, right?

The other major adjustment for me is that I'm so used to being around people almost all the time and it's weird to suddenly be spending all day basically alone in a quiet house. I'm so glad Matt's usually able to come home for lunch, and also very lucky that I can edit from home -- although I'm doing that only in bits and pieces, as it's hard to use the computer when I'm feeding, changing or just holding Claire. I think part of the reason I feel kind of cooped-up is that I haven't attempted to run yet -- but I'm planning to give it a go on Thursday (the three-week mark).

Don't get me wrong -- I'm so thankful to be able to stay home with Claire. I can't imagine having a six-week maternity leave that was already half over and knowing that in a few weeks someone else would be with her all day so I could sit in an office doing a job I probably didn't even like that much.

The astounding amount of time she spends nursing has been kind of nice in that it forces me to sit back and chill out. There's always laundry to be folded or kitchen counters to be wiped down or two-week-old emails to respond to, but there's really not a lot you can accomplish with a baby attached to you (and this baby likes to take her time with a meal). I've gotten a lot of reading done lately, and Matt and I have discovered "Mad Men" -- which I immediately loved -- and sometimes it's nice just to lean back my head and close my eyes while she eats.

Sorry not to include updated pictures with this post. Poor Claire is going to feel really neglected some day when she realizes all her friends have hundreds of photos documenting their early days and she has just a couple dozen. We are so bad at pulling out the camera, but to be fair, she's not doing anything monumental just yet. We'll try to force ourselves to get better about taking pictures as she gets older. Meanwhile, assorted friends and family (grandparents, mostly) are vigilantly taking up the slack.

I'm going to end here because Joy and Linda are coming over with dinner and I want to run to the store to get ingredients for Granny's banana pudding -- Joy's favorite (mine, too). By the way, if you haven't yet met Claire and want to witness her sweetness in person, we're now welcoming visitors, so let us know when you'd like to come!

Weekend update

Sunday, for the first time in my life, I completely forgot about the time change! I knew it was coming and even tried to justify a weekend-long beach party to celebrate it, but Saturday night we babysat Riley so from about 6 p.m. on we didn't leave the house or watch TV or sit at a computer or do anything else that might have reminded us, and at bedtime adjusting our clocks didn't even cross our mind.

Sunday morning we woke up with (we thought) plenty of time to cook a bull's eye/bacon-egg-and-cheese sandwich hybrid that Matt had been wanting to try. As we lazily lay there thinking about food and loving the fact that fresh air was blowing in through open windows, Matt suddenly realized it wasn't 9:30 a.m. but 10:30 a.m.

Oops! No church for us. Instead it was a Stephen Davey morning, supplemented with strawberries and coffee and Matt's creation. (I like this from a website with some of his sermons: "In an age where many are expounding on life and illustrating with Scripture, Stephen is committed to expounding on Scripture and illustrating with life.")

Afterward we read on the porch for a while and then went over to Stephen's to watch the Carolina-Duke game and enjoy an all-afternoon-into-the-evening cookout.

It was a perfect day. I even slipped a "Beat Duke" pin onto Riley for a few minutes until Matt and Stephen noticed and threw a fit.

While throwing the football I jammed my left ring finger and couldn't get my wedding band off before the swelling was too bad. A few minutes later Matt jammed the same finger but did get his ring off before it swelled. And then a few minutes later he probably broke his toe. This is why God created shoes.

His finger looks terrible but his toe feels much worse -- I don't know when he'll be able to run again. He did say it was better today, though, so maybe it will turn out to just be jammed too.These pictures don't do the swelling and bruising justice, but trust me, in real life they look pretty gross. Especially Matt's.

It's melting

It would have been impossible to justify another snow day, but Matt and I did allow ourselves a delayed start to work this morning, based on the fact that everything left over from yesterday refroze last night, making the roads treacherous in spots. When we got to work we were greeted by slippery steps, frozen plants and icicles over the front stoop -- but thanks to the rising temperatures, blue skies and brilliant sunshine, everything white and frozen is living on borrowed time.
It's amazing how much good one unexpected day of bumming can do in terms of rejuvenation.

Snowed in!

Today's to-do list:

- Wake up in the middle of the night to see if it snowed as predicted
- Turn off the alarm clock and sleep in
- Cook breakfast
- Drink 12 cups of coffee with Matt
- Make snow cream
- Watch the inauguration
- Reschedule tomorrow morning's house showings
- Reschedule tonight's dinner with Granny and Granddaddy
- Do a little editing
- Make a "Love Actually" onesie for an Etsy buyer
- Start a new book
- Go for a short run in the snow
- Fall asleep on the couch during the Duke-State game

Monday, Monday

I have a lingering cold that's driving me crazy! It started rolling in on Thursday and was in full force by Friday. I seriously never get sick -- and I know a cold doesn't count as sick -- but I'm ready for this to go away. My throat hurts, my nose is raw, my head feels like it's floating somewhere way above my body. Matt's being really sympathetic considering that the way I feel is essentially the way he felt (because of allergies) every day of his life until he started taking five medicines a day last year.

Matt's birthday was Saturday and we just kept it low-key with dinners Friday and Saturday. Jacob was pushing hard for a surprise party but I would have been sleeping on the couch for a month. Every year I love Matt's birthday because it makes me feel young for the next nine months.

Besides that, we had a really relaxing weekend -- movies, football, final Christmas decorating, church, books borrowed from the community college with our shiny new free library cards. Qualifying was as simple as showing our driver's licenses. The college library's hours are better than the Southern Pines library's, as is the selection -- we have free access to 47 other community colleges' collections. We got an enthusiastic tour from the librarian and free oranges from the library director. There's free wi-fi, a reading room and an art gallery. Plus, it's only about 10 minutes from our house.

I'm getting close to checking off No. 3, "For all of 2008, send a snail-mail birthday card to everyone I love." When I was making my 101-things list I almost wrote that as "an on-time snail-mail birthday card" but thank goodness I didn't. If you have a November birthday and I didn't get to see you last month, your card is in the mail today. If your birthday was months ago and you haven't received a card, please let me know ASAP so I can send it out. And I'm sorry for any oversights. I've done my best this year but I bet some people have slipped through the cracks.

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Riley picture of the day

The post with a whole lot of labels

I am having a harder-than-usual time getting back into the swing of things after last week's vacation. Monday and Tuesday were so crazy trying to catch up on everything. Today was better but I guess Matt and I didn't sleep that well last night so we were both tired all day.

At 4 p.m. I came home to run before going to Mom and Dad's for dinner at 6:30. As soon as I got home I changed into running clothes but then crawled into bed and for a pre-run cat nap. An hour and a half later Matt came home and I was drooling on the pillow. I told myself I could still get a run in -- I'd just lie there for 15 more minutes, then run to Mom and Dad's (only a few miles) and get there at 6:30. Great idea. I fell back asleep.

Forty-five minutes later I woke back up and threw on regular clothes and we jumped in the car. For someone who claims to love running so much, I sure do spend a lot of time making excuses to not do it. Anyway, the sleep got rid of my headache and I needed that.

Dinner was awesome -- grilled marinated chicken, a fruit salad, lots of garden vegetables, two homemade dressings/butters, yeast rolls, Mom's famous blackberry cobbler, sweet tea and IBC root beer. Delish. After dinner we took our coffee to the porch just in time for it to start raining. There is hardly anything better than being on a porch swing under a tin roof with a cup of good coffee and three of your favorite people in the world during a summer rain.

The only thing about a tin roof is, it makes it hard to hear what people are saying, so after a few minutes we went back inside. Then Mom gave me a foot massage with some great foot lotion she got on clearance at Lowe's of all places. Then I did her feet, then Matt's. Very, very relaxing all around.

It's a good thing I did get a nap this afternoon because we're not going to get any sleep until Matt finishes a library book that's due tomorrow. It could be awhile.

When Matt and I got married he didn't even like to read. Or so he thought, because all he'd ever read was required stuff from English classes year after year, most of which he didn't like. But we spent a week in the Bahamas for our honeymoon, and three weeks later another week at the beach in Roatan ...


(speaking of Roatan, look what I discovered online -- of course I'm the girl with a Coke in her hand ... but Roatan is a story for another day) ... and all that time on the beach plus in airports/airplanes persuaded him to visit the library with me.

His wallet now holds membership cards to not one, not two, but three local library systems, and he's as likely as I am to suggest spending an evening reading on the porch. I didn't know when we married that he would acquire a taste for reading and coffee and football in the first five years, but I'm not complaining.

Party on the porch

I feel like we've practically gotten our money's worth out of our porch just in the past week! These spring evenings sure are the prime time to hang out with friends or a book and a glass of wine. It is so gratifying to hear all the bugs trying to get to you but running into the screen instead.

Last night we were going to have people over and cook out but since we were a little burger-and-hot-dog'd out, as well as lazy, we ordered pizza instead. All night, nothing made me laugh harder than when London discovered that spinning in circles makes you dizzy. And after that, nothing anyone did or said could make her stop. Please observe:



I know that's a long video, but it's all worth watching except maybe the last 30 seconds.

It's been a great weekend for chilling out. Friday night Bill scored us free tickets to a wine-tasting fundraiser (which was overcrowded but I am not going to complain about free wine and food), and then we went to the Jefferson Inn for a little while. Yesterday Christy was in town and Lauren and I got to have lunch with her while Matt cleaned the grill, made the treadmill stop squeaking and bought the stuff to stain/seal our deck. Which I'm sure we'll get around to soon.

This morning the Kirby crew went to the early service at Gran and Gramps' church to hear Gramps sing two songs with the so-called Medicare Quartet (it was Senior Citizens Day throughout Southern Baptist land, I think). After our church Matt played golf with the boys while I made a new Etsy frame on the porch and talked myself out of running. (I know it's perfect running weather, but a pint of strawberries and whipped cream and I just weren't feeling it today.)

When Matt got home I talked him out of running too. We've been out here on the porch ever since. I love it.

They call me mellow yellow

Today is the second Sunday in a row that Matt's played basketball at 7:30 a.m. with a group of guys. I love having all this time before church to read the paper, drink coffee, blog, ponder and unload the dishwasher. I could run if I wanted to, but I don't want to. It's going to be 70 degrees today so I'll run while Matt's watching the State game, but for now I'm just chilling in my robe and red slippers, adding to my iTunes the two awesome CD's Amanda made for me last night.

Amanda's custom-made mixes are a small thing that brings me great happiness. She a) can totally nail what songs I'm going to love and b) shares my nostalgia for MANY undeniably mediocre songs that I love because they bring me back. Amanda never presents me with a CD that doesn't rock my world.

The latest batch features mellow hits -- think Lily Allen, Corinne Bailey Ray, Jack Johnson. Three weeks ago it was the best of hip hop -- think Akon, Beyonce, Lady Sovereign. Together they represent the awesome playlist she put together for our trip to visit Lib a few months ago. Getting my hands on those songs was No. 95 on my list, so thanks doubly, babe!

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I'll be the first to admit that I'm spoiled about sleep. Most weeks there's only one or two days that we need to be at the office before 9 a.m. (Matt's usually there earlier than that anyway, but I'm not.) So our alarm is set for 7:30 a.m., which means we can stay up until 11 p.m. or so and still get a really good night's sleep. This is a very natural sleep schedule for me and the fact that it works with our jobs is another relatively minor thing for which I'm very grateful.

There have been only a few periods in my life in which I lived like an early-riser. The first was during my senior year of high school, when I was maybe a little too dedicated to track and went to the gym every morning at 5:30 to run before school. The next was the year between college graduation and getting married, when I worked at an afternoon newspaper, had to be there between 7 and 7:30 a.m. and lived 30 minutes away.

Another was about two years ago, when I was training for the Pinehurst Triathlon and went to the gym most mornings to swim laps before work. And the final was last year, when Katie and I were training for the Myrtle Beach Marathon and did our weekly long runs every Sunday morning before early (8:30) church. It was NEVER pleasant to crawl out of bed for that -- freezing cold plus crack-of-dawn early plus 18 miles -- but it was worth it for the time with Katie. And to finally knock out a marathon.

It's interesting that a commitment to physical activity motivated most of these early mornings, since I really dislike morning workouts. They aren't without appeal -- they save time, jump-start your metabolism, make you feel productive and free up the rest of your day. But I doubt they'll ever have a permanent place in my daily routine.

The biggest issue is that I have to be fully awake before I start a workout or else I'll wind up with a crazy headache in the afternoon. A Coke sometimes cures it, but that cancels out part of the run. I'm usually fine if I have to drive to the gym or to meet a running partner, but if I try to wake up and walk out my front door for a run, it never ends well.

I am happy

I'm sitting on our couch with my feet propped on the ottoman, bundled in layers of pajamas, a robe and a sweatshirt blanket. My second cup of great coffee is within reach and there's more in the pot. I just ate the last of Granny's scrumptious fruit salad.

Matt's on his way to the State game with his guys. The house is quiet and clean and warm and sunshine is streaming through the blinds.

I'm going to sit here for a couple of hours and knock out most of the Alabama story, and then I'm going to take a break to eat some of Mom's turkey soup. I'll start cooking something delicious for dinner in the crockpot, and then I'm going to do some touch-up painting on our end tables while I listen to bad country music, and then I'm going to have a long run.

After a hot shower I'll get back in my pajamas and return to this spot on the couch and try to finish "Slaughterhouse-Five" before Matt gets home.

Happy me.

Sleepy

This weekend has been utterly unrestful but a lot of fun.

Friday night all of us worked late to get a house under contract and when it finally did we had drinks to celebrate. Later that night I went to a lingerie/slumber party for Katie, who got married on Saturday. She was absolutely radiant -- a really beautiful bride. The setting, the back yard of her family's lake house, was gorgeous too.



That night we went to Carrie and Jacob's to watch the UFC fight, although I actually watched very little of it (for the first two hours I was avoiding looking at the television, and I fell asleep for the last hour). I got less sleep Friday and Saturday nights combined than I usually try to get in one normal night (eight). I don't even know the last time I went to bed around 2 a.m. two nights in a row.

This morning all I wanted to do was sleep in but I had to help with nursery for early church. I survived, although I couldn't form words very well and kept dropping things (not babies), and then I slept all afternoon.

I don't know when I became such a sleep wimp. All through college I averaged maybe five or six hours of sleep a night and just thought of myself as someone who was able to push through the exhaustion.

Even the year after college, when I was working in Dunn, I remember one time when Lib came to spend the night with me and she and Matt and I stayed up until 4 a.m. talking, and then I woke up two hours later and went to work and was fine. I don't think I could do that now. Or if I did, it would take me a week to recover.

Nevertheless, I fight bedtime every night, just like I did when I was 8. If I'm in the middle of something, it kills me to just drop it and go to bed. I'd much rather make some cookies and coffee and stay up until it's finished.

In fact, this may sound strange, but going to sleep in accordance with someone else's schedule is one of the hardest things about married life for me. I'm still not used to it. But I am a big believer in going to bed at the same time, so we do.

Re-evaluation

This morning I had an epiphany, which was: I do not need to be training for another marathon right now.

I was driving all over town, dropping off keys, picking up contracts, taking down signs, collecting checks. Every five seconds my phone rang, and twice it died in the middle of a conversation because I have talked all the life out of my battery and it no longer holds much of a charge. I was making a to-do list on a Subway napkin, but little snippets of to-dos kept crossing my mind and then disappearing before I could add them. I understood the saying "... like a chicken with his head cut off."

I was tired and I was fighting the cold that's been lingering all week. I started to note that I needed to call Katie to schedule tomorrow's 14-mile run, in accordance with the marathon training plan. Then I thought, why in the world am I doing that?

We work a lot of weekends, so Saturdays spent sleeping in with Matt, then hanging out with him, are precious to me. Waking up at 6 a.m. then running for two hours then eating oatmeal while reading the newspaper alone then crawling, sweaty, back into bed just isn't the same. I do not intend to do that every weekend between now and November just so I can prove something to myself.

There is no way to train for a marathon without logging a heck of a lot of hours and miles every week. As in, I might as well get a part-time job. In my busyness-infested life, a new time-consuming goal is the last thing I need.

It took me about three minutes this morning to think the above thoughts and decide, yeah, I absolutely am taking a pass on this one. Quality of life for me, right now, does not mean a personal record in the marathon.

I love the lake

I had no idea I would love the lake so much. Christy, thank you again for having us!

I didn't get a picture of one of my favorite things about the lake: the mini-farmer's market three houses down, where tomatoes, squash, watermelon, corn and other deliciousness were sold on the honor system.

La-di-dah

"Rest is not idleness, and to lie sometimes on the grass under trees on a summer's day, listening to the murmur of the water, or watching the clouds float across the sky, is by no means a waste of time." - John Lubbock

Once in a while Matt and I stock up on snack food and library books and pretend to be out of town. We don't do work, think about work or even work out. We don't get dressed up or leave the house. We screen our calls and order pizza and drink milkshakes. We stay up late, sleep in and then take afternoon naps.

I can understand if you think this sounds unbearably boring.

But we're in the middle of such a weekend right now, and it feels fantastic. I am so relaxed. I did venture out this morning to go to a baby shower for Grace with Mom and Amanda. And tomorrow we'll be busy celebrating our dads (lunch with mine, golf with his). But we're still managing to squeeze in some long chunks of de-stressification.

Times like this are one of the things I expect to REALLY miss when we have children. I hope our future babies' grandparents, great-grandparents, aunts and uncles are as eager to babysit as we think they will be ...

Procrastinating

I can't believe it's Day 3 of vacation already. I love this group because they are sooo low-key. It's 8 a.m. and some people have already been on the beach for half an hour. One guy has been in the hot tub since 6 a.m. Matt and three others are playing golf.

At any moment you could have an urge to nap in a hammock, read on a deck, hang out in the hot tub, float in the pool, snack in front of the TV, have an intelligent conversation, lie on the beach, smoke a cigar, play bocce ball, play basketball, play beer pong, play pool, play a board game, do a puzzle, bicycle to a coffee shop, walk the dogs, go running, or go shopping and someone would probably join you.

I think Matt and I are going to leave here on Friday, which is our anniversary, and go somewhere nearby (Williamsburg? Norfolk? Ocracoke?) for a long weekend. As much fun as this week is, there are 17 people here -- and we're sleeping on an air mattress about a foot from another couple -- not exactly the ideal setting for a quiet celebration of five (married) years so far with the best person I know.


I am behind on an article I'm supposed to be writing for class, so I'm going to work on that now. Isn't it funny how even things you love can start to feel like work when they have deadlines attached?

Rest

I love days like today. For about eight hours now Matt and I have been sprawled on the couch, alternately reading, talking and watching TV. Since leaving his Mimi's surprise 80th-birthday party at lunchtime, we have gotten up and out only to pick up Subway (for me) and Chinese (for him) and strawberries, which I am now eating with whipped cream.

I ordered a new pair of running shoes from eBay. (The sole is separating from the rest of the left shoe in my current pair. They should have been retired long ago.) I have not answered the phone except for Amanda, who I always feel like talking to. I ran three loads of laundry but plan not to fold the clean clothes until tomorrow. I loitered on MySpace. All of this was fueled by a seemingly bottomless supply of sweet tea left over from the party.

It has been raining all day and I am very cozy on the couch. Thank God for rest.