Third Run

Run #3 down!

It’s only been a couple of weeks or so since the half marathon, and already my body has returned to pre-training hermit mode. Running the meager 2.5 miles I just returned from felt like a challenge and a half. The main thing missing was motivation. When you run when you want to, the motivation is there. Either because you splurged and got a pizza (and ate the whole thing…) that week or because you’re training for something. While my new project does take away excuses, it does not necessarily replace them with motivation.

The run I chose today was a bit hilly and one I hated during marathon training. On the hills I just imagine everyone I pass cheering me on and saying, you’re almost to the top, don’t stop! It’s cheesy, but helpful!

One reason for the lack of motivation today stems from the lack of sleep last night. As a birthday surprise The Professor took me away to camp for a night in a nice park an hour from the city. It’s been about a year since we camped last and were both unable to get used to the hard ground and did not sleep at all. (The Professor means well but does not always plan in detail. Among things left at home was my sleeping bag and food. This did not stop him from surprising me with breakfast in bed tent of doughnut holes and tea, boiled in bowls for lack of mugs.) Fast forward to a powernap this afternoon in my big, comfy bed and I hit the road for my third day of running!

Let's Talk About My Bag

There is a lot of excitement and news and moving and packing and things to tell. But for just one moment, let's talk about my bag. My new bag. My beautiful handbag given to me by my sister, The HPP, over the weekend as a thank you.

While two people technically hosted this shower, myself and my sister's sister-in-law (say that ten times fast) one was really in name only, and that was not me. It appears my sister noticed this unbalanced hosting and provided me with an extra thank you gift. I was completely shocked, as well as happy she did so in private.

The Love of Sisters

Before revealing my beautiful bag, back-stories are necessary. I have yet to discuss Easter and the fabulous time The Professor and I had with the beautiful, 8-month pregnant HPP and her husband. During this time we went into small town Georgia (and when I say small town, I sincerely mean it is a village) and ducked into a cute shop featuring many, many Vera Bradley items.

Java Blue

 Up until last year I was not so much a Miss Bradley fan. However, my mother-in-law gave me the large duffel in Java Blue. I fell in love with Java Blue and received many more items at my three, (yes, count 'em) three bridal showers. So when we came across the Vera Bradley collections I did not turn away as in the past. And I fell in love, as many do I'm sure, with a new bag. I swooned and I'm awwww'ed and I sadly explained that we simply could not afford for me to frivolously purchase this bag, even though it was me personified into a handbag (don't judge.) So I walked away.

Fast forward to that evening when my sister put a plan in place. She called my mother-in-law and asked her the name of the store. Not knowing, my mother-in-law then drove to the shop and picked up a business card, telling my sister this info. The HPP then called the proprietor of said shop, described to her where this bag was (picture this, she had the woman stand at the front of the shop by the doors and told her about how many paces to go in which direction!) and send it to her, so she could wrap it and give it to me as a gift. What a fantastic sister this blessed little Defunct Curator has!

I opened it and could not believe it, there was the Boardwalk Handheld in the Sittin' in a Tree pattern! The photos do not do it justice. It glimmers and displays love birds, one of my FAVORITE design elements in anything. The silver pattern is taken from the original Sittin' in a Tree:

I'll admit, this pattern in its original colors is also quite amazing. Upon further searching I found this tea for two set, and MUST.HAVE.IT.

Unfortunately, I'm on a bit of a spending freeze until we get settled in D.C. But then, this beauty shall be mine!

Storage Unit Tease

Today is was hot. Well, for me. Having lived in England for a while and not having a “normal” summer experience, today was the hottest temperatures I’ve experience since 2009. For serious. So I celebrated by being completely lazy and taking the boat out while trying to remember how to wear a bikini.

I was not completely lazy as The Professor and I made the sad trip to visit our storage unit. Our “temporary” living situation is getting less and less temporary and sifting through my suitcase on the floor (filled with the same 15 or so outfits I’ve had for almost two years now) is losing it’s appeal (wait, it was never appealing to start with.)

I remembered some plastic drawers left in our storage unit before the move to England. It’s always a downer to drive down the road, open a large metal door, and stare at all your belongings. They aren’t even all mine. Half of my stuff is in that cold cell. The rest is in New York where many things have been in storage for almost 8 years now. Beautiful things.

The door goes up with a bang and you desperately want to take everything out to a safer place. A home. An actual existence. Oh, and you see the rat poop on the ground and the steam rising from the not-temperature-controlled space and you remember what a bitch it will be when that day actually comes.

It’s always a tease. Hello my things. I’m sorry you can’t come with me. All you nice, new wedding presents will be used one day. I hope.

For Love of the Weekend: Total Win; Total Fail.

This weekend was a curious little creature. It was long, as The Professor and I both took off on Friday. It was sunny and warm, with temperatures reaching 78 sizzling degrees (for us Northern girls, them's beach temperatures.) There was also a mix of ups and downs, making this past weekend a true example of convergence.

First, my job search claimed another fatality (besides that of my soul.) My baby toe was crushed in a door as I ran to answer my interviewer's phone call, which was twenty minutes early, thus my failure at being prepared (total fail). Although I screamed obscenities and writhed in severe pain, I rallied to answer the phone with a cheerful "Good morning!" After my hour spent in preparation, my nervous twitching, and my balmy palms, the call actually informed me that due to extreme business, my interview would have to be pushed back six hours (fail.)*

Rearranging my day, I did my weekly weigh-in and discovered I had lost 5% of my body weight, an initial goal (total win!) Which was followed by me leaving the house commenting, "I'm sure I can get around the grocery store, how bad can this pinky toe thing be anyway. It's just a pinky toe!" Total fail. My sad, pathetic self wallowed around in the local grocery, limping here, throwing my body there. Apparently the pinky toe is quite important in functioning, and balancing, and, you know, standing upright. People looked worried for me, like I had escaped some sort of caretaker.

Saturday I have deemed hide-away-day due to The Professor and I lying to anyone who asked and saying we had busy, busy and important plans for Saturday and could not attend any number of social engagements. This is because we are tired. We've been gone almost every weekend. And we drive three hours on the week days. Every day. So we spent a lazy day around the house (total win!) Well, I mostly limped around and ever so slowly cleaned (total fail) while I made sad, puppy faces, whining too much which resulted in The Professor enjoying taking care of me a bit (total win!)

When one lives in the middle of nowhere, one prepares for a day of errands like a soldier might prepare for battle. You need to rev yourself up. Play loud music. Pretend the car ride is actually fun. The hour long car ride. The hour it takes to get from your personless plot of land to the oh-so-over-populated 10 mile long stretch of horrifying plazas. After church and lunch we had only two tasks at hand. Get The Professor's car washed as we had a free coupon and go to Pet Smart. But first we had to get gas. Being adorably anal, The Professor demanded I hand over any trash from under my seat of the car (where's a girl supposed to shove her granola bar wrappers?) and he threw them away.

After what seemed like an entire lifetime we made all the necessary u-turns and plaza short cuts to come to the car wash but, EPIC FAIL NUMBER 1: The Professor accidentally threw away the coupon with my garbage. The decision: to trash dive or to not trash dive? I am not proud of us for this. But this was an exterior AND interior car wash, with buff and shine! Who can pass up a free buff and shine just because in the twenty minutes it took you to cross the highway someone could have thrown God-knows-what on top of your beloved coupon? We spent another twenty minutes returning. The Professor braved the public rubbish bin and produced the slightly dampened coupon (which I refused to touch.)

After the car wash (total win!) we completed our PetSmart run, with me pushing a shopping cart just to keep up appearances and not unseemly limp around, thus scaring all the small children. The task at hand: pick out a new collar for our beloved dog. EPIC FAIL NUMBER 2: After returning home (another entire hour in the car, during which we had to stop and get iced tea because that's how long the drive was) and painstakingly removing all pup's tags and putting them on the new collar, we discover the collar is much too large for our petite pup. Oh the horror. The Professor's face goes into melt-down mode. We must return next weekend and repeat the entire experience (except, I hope, for the bin diving.) During a slight (sort of massive) hissy-fit, The Professor rolled his ankle and is at this point also limping like a pathetic broken toy.

How could I possibly rescue such a failure of a weekend? The answer: BRINNER! Apparently not wanting anything our kitchen had to offer, I produced (using all of The Professor's gram's cottage pantry) pancakes, scrambled eggs, and fortune cookies. Our spirits brightening, we limp-danced around the kitchen to some favorite music, remembering how blessed we are and how beautiful the love of the weekend can be.

*I know jinxes are not real, but I'd rather not test it out. Thus I probably won't discuss my job interview until I hear something. Better safe than unemployed.

For Love of the Weekend: Cottage Shelter

I love animals. I have three of my very own (well, I share them with The Professor.) Today has been a surreal experience with a stray dog and a possibly dying baby squirrel (let the choirs of awwwwwww’s began.)

Early this morning my dog went absolutely crazy for seemingly no reason. As I’ve said before, this has been going on at all hours of the day and night, specifically the night, and we’re determined that a homeless dog nests itself outside our bedroom window and whines. We’ve even found the nest of leaves. But we’ve never captured the dog. Our plan was always to find it, take its tag, and report its unfavorable activities to its owner. Of course, we never thought its owner would be an awesome example of a human being, since they didn’t let their dog indoors on the coldest winter night in Georgia (read: 22 degrees Fahrenheit.)

This morning, as The Professor enjoyed a lay in, I spotted the white dog from our porch window as our dog once again went completely ape shit. I ran outside, sans shoes, and discerned that the pooch was quite amenable to being friendly. While my dog hopped around excitedly, I ran back and forth between the house and the yard getting things like a collar (as, it turned out, the dog had none,) some shoes, and dog treats to trick it into trusting me. Eventually, with the help of a sleepy Professor, we collared and leashed the dog, and led it into the very large dog pen that is conveniently located on our grounds (for the sake of the 5 dogs owned by The Professor’s parents.)

This dog is ad-ooooooooooor-able. It is also very, very, very dirty. I can not even tell you how many times I’ve washed my hands due to the many, many ticks I’ve pulled from its fur. It has apparently fallen in love with me, and demands constant attention and is very snuggly. With The Professor it cowers and always acts afraid. We have thus determined that it has been abused by a man. It also limps slightly, has not been neutered, and there are no signs that it has ever been brought to a vet or properly cared for.

After printing up flyers and canvassing the lake, which was sort of a fun way to see our neighbors’ little cottages, we met a man who informed us that the county road close to our cottage is a common dumping ground for unwanted pets. He said not to get our hopes up that we will find an owner.

Thus we put the word out that unless someone contacts us from the flyers in the next few days, we have a dog up for adoption. I hate the idea of dropping him off at a shelter (although we’ll research and make sure it’s not one that puts animals down.) We’re just hoping that through our network of family and friends, someone will want to bring him into their home.

As I played fetch with him (who we call, new puppy,) I heard a horrible squealing noise and witnessed our adventure cat leaping from a tree top with something in its mouth. Low and behold, he had stolen a baby squirrel from its mother and nest. Freaking-A. Getting him to drop it was oh so fun, as was keeping all the animals away as I ran inside once again, this time to google what the hell to do with a baby squirrel. Apparently you are never to touch them as they have parasites and other nasty things. So we followed the instructions of the internet (thank you, oh internet,) and put it inside a box, under a tree in hopes the mother will come in the next 1-5 hours to reclaim it. Whoa is me, and our furry household, it’s been quite a day.

*This is not our photo of a baby squirrel. We would never touch a baby squirrel because we believe in the power of google.

Enough with the Breading

Last night I had a familiar experience, well two familiar experiences. First I had an entire meal, three items, all cooked casserole style and all topped with cheese and breading of some sort. I have been reassured time and time again that this is Southern cooking. Truthfully I have had Southern cooking like this, but I’ve also had modern, fresh, and delicious Southern cooking. Second, I spent an entire evening with The Professor’s younger friends, the ones looking to buy an RV and travel the world, or whatever.

A little after noon we got a call from Miss RV asking if they could come over for dinner, and she would cook. Apparently they have a deadbeat sleeping on their couch and they needed a break. We agreed and set a time of 7pm, she called back and said it would be more like 5:30. The menu consisted of chicken casserole, (made with chicken in a can) which had crumbled Ritz crackers as its breading, broccoli casserole which reminded me that even broccoli when prepared a certain way could actually stop your heart, and green bean casserole (although I never remembered seeing an actual green bean). There was also chicken gravy in a can which was heated over my stove while still in the can.

I don’t want to sound snooty, or critical, or judgey, but I guess am a bit judgey. Once everything was cooked and served up, it all looked the same. Everything had breading on the top. Everything had a cream-of-blank filling, mixed with cheese and mayo.
To top it off Miss RV got drunk on our booze. We had said we’d have the drinks, because we already had some alcohol in the house and with the little notice we got there was little time to go to the store (because we live in the middle of nowhere). In total we had some nice bottles of wine given to us at our wedding, some whiskey, some scotch, some vodka, and some mixers.

Before I got a chance to offer, she asked for some wine. Then during a conversation she found out I had Bailys and asked me to make her a drink. “But you still have some wine, do you want me to wait?” was my reply. She responded, “Oh, I’ll just chug this down.” Which she then proceeded to do. After the Bailys drink, she made a vodka drink, then another. Then finished the bottle of wine as we sat down to eat. None of this bothered me, she is young, she is having a good time. C’est la vie. But then she got up from the table, fumbled around in our wine area, and came back with an opened bottle of our wedding wine, with the card still taped to it, and proceeded to water it down with ice cubes and drink it down. Appalled.

Oh, and at one point she asked how much older than her I was, when I responded she said surprised, “wow, I thought you were much older than that.” Awesome.

For Love of the Weekend

This past weekend The Professor and I were determined to do something, anything, other than our rut of late (read: him, videogames; me, cross stitching.) So we created a best of both worlds weekend. Meaning, we had the best of the country, followed by the best of the city.

Saturday we planned to go hiking at the park closest to the cottage. We were late, however, given that our dog had a tick (gross, gross, gross) which she got from our awesome woods. Fantastic. After calling the in-laws, calling the vet, calling the in-laws again, and calling the vet again, we had successfully extracted half of the tick, been reassured twice that it should be OK and just to watch the dog. Then we went hiking. Which, by the way, was glorious. Oh, and at night we had a wheel barrel competition. That means we each took turns being the wheel barrel to see who could go the farthest. Yep, that’s romance in the boondocks.

Sunday we met up with the in-laws who had gotten us all tickets to The Blue Man Group in downtown Atlanta. Awesome day. I got to go into a city, walk around, smell that awesome city air, and see some percussion-based performance art. Afterwards we went to a funky neighborhood, found a fancy pub, and had delicious northern food (pierogis) and German beer. Life is good.

Sunday, however, was a long day, followed by the longest.night.ever.

Down the Lake (yes, you can use such expressions when living in the middle of nowhere where streets are irrelevant) there have been some new dogs which do not adhere to the traditional I’ll-stand-at-my-property-line-barking-while-you-stand-at-your-property-line-barking inter-dog communication. They routinely stride into our yard. This annoys our aggressive dog to no end. Last night was no different and every 45 minutes to an hour throughout the entire night our dog went ape-shit. This meant The Professor was outside, then inside, then outside, all night. We both woke up cranky, but unfortunately for him, he had to go to work.

This reminded me of one, very important thing. We are not ready to have babies. It also reminded me that I won a bet as to how many times the in-laws would make comments about the aforementioned babies during our day out on Sunday. Three times.