Golden Brown

I've lived in this house for seven years. We have a field behind us, which is kind of a blessing for this girl who grew up in the country and really, really doesn't belong in suburbia (really is an understatement--just ask my neighbors).

For the first time since I've lived here, the farmer planted winter wheat. It's been wonderful. It was green in the winter when everything was brown and as everything turned green in the spring, it turned a beautiful shade of gold. When the wind would blow, it would wave and honestly, I would be so happy if he planted only winter wheat for the rest of forever. I much prefer this to corn because when there's corn, I spend every night thinking, "OH GOD WHAT IF THERE'S SOMETHING IN THE CORN FIELD WHEN I GO OUTSIDE IN THE DARK AND IT COMES RUNNING OUT AND EATS ME?!?!" I am not exaggerating.

Anyway, my own issues aside, I knew that the wheat would be gone soon because such is the life of winter wheat. I wanted to get a nice photo of the boys before it was harvested, so I took them outside at golden hour and spent about another hour trying to get a shot where both kids were smiling and looking at the camera. Poor Luke, my good picture taker, lost his smile near the end after smiling brilliantly only to hear that Tommy was, of course, not looking at the camera or was glaring at the camera. Oh, Tommy.

I finally got it, though. And just a few days later, the wheat was harvested and now we have an empty field (which is still much preferable to corn because, again, I know nothing lurks within the dark).



Happy 4th of July from Snoopy and our boys!

Two Wheels

Luke learned to ride his bike with no training wheels. It happened suddenly, as these things do. One day he asked to take his training wheels off. We told him he could try, figuring we'd put them back on at the end of the night. He took off shakily across the grass. To our surprise and joy, he balanced for about five feet before he fell. He got back on again and again, going further each time before we let him try the sidewalk.

It wasn't the TV bike riding moment I'd always envisioned, where I would hold on to the back of the bike, then let go before he knew it and watch him ride away without him realizing he was doing it all on his own.

Instead, he yelled at me to let go of his bike because he was ready to go without me. Only, I wasn't ready to let go.


Now he rides like he never even had training wheels. He took one really bad spill where there's a patch of gravel. He had gravel in his arms, legs, even his mouth. I walked him crying into the house, washed out his cuts and scrapes with hydrogen peroxide, picked out the gravel, bandaged him up and as soon as I was finished, he sniffed away the tears and said, "Can I get back on my bike?"

There's a lot of lessons to learn in two little wheels.

Summer Update

I'm a really bad blogger. I was going to share more beach photos, but I realized I did that last time I blogged. Not that it matters because it's not like I have a wide audience of people that I need to keep entertained with my twice a month blog posts. Still, we have done other things than go to the beach.

I've sat at the optometrist office again.

That was fun. Diagnosis: my corneas are still jerks. I have at least four more weeks left in glasses and no eye makeup. While I know there are plenty of people who wear glasses all the time, I am not one of those people. Glasses are not what I am used to, thus this has been hard for me--especially in the summer. I'm ready to have my contacts back and hopefully when I see the doctor in four weeks, I'll get the all clear.

Tommy discovered that he loves salt and vinegar chips. Thanks to my migraine meds altering my taste buds, I've made this discovery as well. Salt and vinegar for all!


We all discovered that the grocery store has a tractor, which is confusing and entertaining.


We had a picnic lunch to celebrate my mom's birthday and Tommy put a flower in her hair.



And, of course, there's the beach, where we secretly wish we could live and dance in the waves

and fly kites



Not pictured: Luke learned to ride his bike without training wheels and I learned to maintain a sub-10 minute mile for five straight miles. Now if only Tommy would learn to SLEEP, we'd all be set. Oh, and our local Dairy Queen now serves Orange Julius. Huzzah! How has your summer been?

Beach Boys

We kind of love the beach. I love looking back through my blog at beach posts of days of yore. Like our first beach trip last summer (I'm happy we made it much sooner this year!). Though not our beach, two summers ago, we spent some time in the salty waters of the ocean in Salem, MA. Pregnant at the beach with Tommy. Or Luke at the beach when he was only 18 months old (picture me clutching my chest).

Yesterday, we made our first beach trip of the season. It was much-awaited by two little boys, the bigger who could not believe that we had to wait until after Tommy's nap. Lucky for him, Tommy woke up stupid early as always and thus, went down for a nap early. First we went for barbecue, where Luke ate an adult-sized pulled pork sandwich. My kid, the carnivore. Not that a full stomach stopped him from climbing a sand dune seven times in a row!

Tommy grew more fearless between this summer and last. He was unafraid to dash into the water, which meant someone had to be on him at all times (this is kind of the norm for Tommy, anyway). He was undaunted, though. He would lose his balance, go under, come up spluttering and laughing, and go back for more.


And, of course, Grandma and Grandpa were more than willing to swing him around to his little heart's content.


Although the temperature passed the 90s, it was the picture perfect beach day. Blue skies, puffy white clouds. We couldn't ask for better beach weather.


We like to get to the beach in the afternoon and stay later. It starts to cool down. People start to clear out and leave for dinner. You get to watch the sun sink lower into the horizon. It makes for the perfect way to end a day.


And the best thing about the beach? The shortest person in this house is so tired that he's still sleeping. Shh....

{splash}

Since my rant about Summer 2012 being a jerk, it's gotten a little nicer. I am still shaking my fist at it a bit, especially when I have to wear my stupid glasses everywhere, but I'm dealing.

We've had some great moments. Today, we met friends at the splash pad. The boys ran, played, jumped and splashed for a few hours straight.



They had so much fun. I love these summer days now that we're slowly but surely settling into routines. Or into a lack of routine some days, but that's okay. Tomorrow morning, I'm meeting friends for a trail run, followed by pancakes for breakfast (it's obvious why we run). Tomorrow after Tommy's nap, we're going to get BBQ for dinner, then head to the beach.

Yeah, Summer 2012, you might just be okay after all... even if I do have to spend you in glasses.

Rocky Road

Summer 2012 has been a little bumpy. Last week was not the happy first week of summer I thought it'd be. Luke acted out a lot. Every day. I know a lot of it was transition. He missed preschool and his all of his friends at preschool. Shane wasn't on summer break yet. There are some other things going on that just made me stressed and sad, but I knew it would get better because hey, SUMMER.

And then out of nowhere, my car started making a funny noise. That funny noise led to my car needing new brakes. New brakes are expensive. The next day, I woke up with bright red eyes. I've been struggling with this off and on. It tends to happen to me seasonally. I have seasonal allergies and occasionally, seasonal allergies plus my contacts will become a bad combination. No big deal. However, after a great trail run with Barb (fortunately, summer 2012 hasn't been all bad), my eyes just kept getting redder, to the point where I knew I needed to see an opthamologist. Fortunately, they were able to get me in that afternoon. I wasn't concerned about pink eye. Although my eyes were pink, I've had pink eye enough times to know the symptoms and I had none of them. No itching or any of the other gross stuff associated with pink eye, which I will refrain from listing here. But as I soon found out, pink eye is a jerk and can actually spread to your cornea, in which case it will not present with the normal symptoms of pink eye. Since it didn't present with the normal symptoms, I was all, It'll clear up quickly, right? HAHA, no, because this is the summer of 2012. Recovery means 8 weeks of steroid eye drops and 8 weeks of no contacts and no eye makeup. This is super, because I have one pair of functional glasses that is about four years and four prescriptions ago, which meant that I needed to order new glasses, as well as prescription sunglasses because it is summer and I need to be able to SEE. I also need to be able to figure out how to run in my glasses, so that will be a barrel of laughs.

Anyway, because I am not made of money, the fraud department at Chase was actually concerned at all my expenditures this week and contacted me. No, sadly, all that money on brakes and glasses was me, but thanks for having my back, Chase. The end result of all of this is that in two days, I completely spent what we'd budgeted for our anniversary getaway next weekend. After a short cry, in which my eyes turned completely demon red again, I realized that it would not be happening. In the five and a half years that we've had kids, we've had exactly one overnight. Because that's been our choice as parents, I've been completely okay with that. However, I was really, really looking forward to next weekend. We'll make the best of it--we always do--but it's still been a little rough.

That said, it's summer. There's sunshine and no 8th graders. I can't complain about that. Yesterday, we took the boys mini golfing. It was so much fun.


Tommy actually used the club to hit the ball, although he eventually got tired of it and just started placing his ball in the hole.
He was also a huge fan of intentionally sending his ball into water traps.


And Luke got a hole in one!



So, the road has been a little rocky. That's okay, because it's summer and in the rocky road, there is bound to be marshmallows.

slumped

At this time of year, I actually watch my posture decline. My shoulders slump inward and I pitch forward like I'm walking up a hill, with my head cast down. It's awful. I hate to be dramatic, but this time of year is difficult. I know what you're thinking--I'm a teacher. I get summer off. I should be dancing around, casting trails of confetti behind me as I celebrate. And I will, soon enough, but the weeks leading up to that are difficult. The kids are crazy. 8th graders go through their own version of senioritis. They figure out that punishments aren't as effective because they're heading to the high school next year. Hey, what can we really do when they won't be back in the fall? I mean, we can hold over a punishment for really serious infractions, but most of them aren't serious. Instead they're just upsetting on a minor level. Disrespectful. Frustrating. They stop doing work. They stop listening. They're immature and not quite capable of making rational decisions, so when you ask why they didn't turn in their homework, they might respond by flipping you off behind your back or being outright rude in response. Plus, the end of the year brings about standardized test results. These come with disappointments and pride. I had kids pass the test this year WHO HAVE NEVER PASSED IT and oh yes, I am proud of them. Then I had kids pull a low score when I know they could do better, when I know they must've just screwed around and not taken it seriously at all. That's a hard pill to swallow and it's hard to hold your shoulders up straight when thinking about this.

On top of this work-related slump, I've been going through a running slump. I'm not sure why. I've been having a difficult time acclimating to the warmer weather. I'm tired, just plain tired. I'm adjusting to the new migraine meds. Whatever the reason, I just haven't been feeling it. I've been feeling it so little that I've been needing to take an obscene amount of walk breaks, like before I even reach a mile. What is THAT garbage? Every time I'd go out, I'd think, "Okay, this is going to be different. This is going to be like it used to be." And then before I knew it, I'd be gasping for breath, even though I was running slower than I used to run and then I'd be walking and fighting back tears and angrily cursing myself. It's been frustrating, to say the least.

Last night, I went to bed early. I started to feel the beginnings of a migraine. The temperature dropped by about twenty degrees, which tends to bring on a headache. I had a run planned in the morning before work, so I didn't want to mess around. I took the new medicine my doctor prescribed and was passed out in bed by 8pm. I woke up at 1 and still had a migraine. I knew that if I had even an inkling of a migraine, I couldn't risk a run in the morning. I couldn't risk pushing myself over the edge. I woke up at a little after 4 and felt great. The medicine worked and I felt so peaceful. My alarm went off at 4:30 and I got up, dressed, stretched and headed out the door. It's so grey and quiet at this hour of the morning. I did a two minute warm up walk in the first mile... I'm sometimes really bad about warm up walks. I know they're important, but I usually just want to jump right in. This morning, I just enjoyed easing into it. And then at .2, I started a slow, easy run. I kept thinking, "I don't want to over think this. I know I just started, but this feels really good." It did. It felt right, for the first time in a long time. I hit the mile marker and smiled, because I didn't want to stop. I kept going. I had to stop briefly, for about 20 seconds, at 3 miles because of traffic and I panicked that I wouldn't be able to start again, but I did and kept going until I had to stop again for traffic after 6 miles. My middle 3 miles were all sub-10 minute miles. Every time I'd finish a mile and my watch would flash the average pace, I was in disbelief. I didn't feel like I was pushing that hard and yet, I was able to keep going, something I hadn't been able to do at a much slower pace just a few runs ago.
I finished so happy. I needed this. I took a quick shower, threw my hair into two wet braids because I didn't have time to dry it, and headed off to deal with a bunch of crazy 8th graders. In spite of this, I was smiling.


Because, here's the great thing about slumps... they don't last forever. They can't. What pushes you down must eventually let up--or you eventually find a way to push it up.