Tomato Update

The flowers are actual vegetables now! Wooo hooo! We'll be rolling in baby tomatoes before we know it!

The stress of running

So, I got through the 1/2 almost two months ago... And honestly, I have run, maybe 4 miles since then- and not even 4 miles in one session, 4 miles total. So, you can understand my stress about an impending 10k race next weekend. If anyone wants to watch as I stumble my way through, fighting mental and physical demons the entire way, come to Cape Elizabeth Maine. I hear the views are beautiful. Maybe the views, my iPod and a bunch of Gu will keep me going. Needless to say, I am going to try for a 4 mile run this weekend. Fingers crossed...

Disappearing Adverbs

This weekend, my Aunt Gail, brought to my attention the plight of the disappearing adverb. I hadn't noticed and I could possibly be the worst offender. Here are a couple of my most often mis-used phrases:

• Fly safe
• Drive slow

The disappearing adverb reminded me of an article I just read about how the capital letter at the beginning of sentences might be a thing of the past. I have searched again for this article and can't find it, but it makes sense to me. As I type this post, my fingers have to work extra hard just to get the capital letters at the beginning of sentences. why not just keep typing? why reach for that "shift" key? I think in general it will be at least two generations before we completely lose the capital letter, but don't say I didn't warn you... So, the question on the table is: who's job is it to change grammar and writing? It's the job of the people. If we hadn't taken it into our own hands centuries ago, we would still be speaking old English and the language of Shakespeare. Would not thoughst be difficult to comprehend?

Reunion Weekend

So, for the past 23 years my mom's family (all 7 kids plus cousins) have gotten together to celebrate being a family with our annual family reunion at Anderson Lodge in Cougar, Washington. In total we end up having around 50 people from the ages of 86 to -1(aka: still in the belly) make the trek to Cougar every year to enjoy food, family, games, and tons of conversation.

It's a wonderful way to keep in touch, even if people can't go every year, at least we know that there will always be that first weekend in August, or newly announced 2-3rd Monday-Tuesday in July where we can get together and make sure we don't miss a beat in each others lives. (Not everyone has a blog, or likes to shout to the world their daily rants- although, I don't know why!)

In any case, this year, as it was Shane's first year- he skipped out last year because of a bachelor party in Chicago- during our talent show (yes, you heard that right) he had to name every person in attendance. And he did it- all 40 aunts, uncles, cousins, 2nd cousins, 1st cousins once removed, he managed to remember every one's names... I am so lucky to have found someone that would 1. go to the reunion, 2. make an effort to meet everyone, 3. get up in front of a large group of new people and name everyone in the room with 100% accuracy! I may be the luckiest girl in the world...

We have blossoms!

I believe I have written about our wonderful tomato plants Shane has managed to grow on our back porch. If I haven't I apologize, as they are a very big part of our lives. They take a lot of time and attention- constant moving, in and out of the sun, and rain (as we seem to love nasty afternoon thunder and sheeting rain storms here in Boston).

We were at the reunion last weekend and were a little startled to hear from Aunt Patty and Uncle Matt that both of their tomato plants already had blossoms on them... You can imagine the panic that ran through our veins when we looked at each other and realized not one of our 6 tomato children had blossoms on them yet! We quickly interrogated Patty and Matt and learned that they had planted their tomatoes at least 2 weeks before we did. So, our panic subsided, at least for two more weeks. To our surprise and utter joy, we came home last night to find two of our beautiful tomato plants had flowers. And to prove it, of course, we took a picture!

LanaghanLeepalooza

As many of you know cousin Megan and Alex got married last weekend. This beautiful wedding was held at St. Mary's Cathedral in downtown Portland, Or. Megan graciously asked me to be a bridesmaid when they were out here last summer on their East Coast trip, and it's been loads of fun. The wedding went off without a hitch. I didn't do a very good job getting pictures taken, as there were SOOO many people taking pictures. But I will share a few of the ones I have from the Rehearsal and reception (held at the Melody Ballroom). It was a huge family affair, and great fun to see some old family friends. It is very exciting to see two such wonderful people find each other and start a life together, they have such support from their family and faith, I expect to see great things from these two!

Our New Tent

Shane and I have been talking about the need for our own tent for a while, so when LLBean sent a perfectly timed email announcing a sale on tents, we jumped at the chance to have a star gazing tent. We haven't used it yet, but hope to, once it stops raining in Maine! We did learn how to set it up over the weekend of the 4th, just haven't slept in it yet. Baby steps...

Being Sick

For anyone that's called me in the past 6 weeks you know that since I finished my 1/2 marathon I have been sick. It started the evening of the marathon with a scratchy voice, I sounded like I had been smoking a pack a day for about 25 years and I quickly attributed it to over use. I mean, I had never run a 1/2 marathon before. Of course I was going to have some side affects. A week later I was still scratchy and a nice cough had developed. Then we went to Alaska and I thought I just needed some more sleep and was excited to get that on vacation. It didn't help. I was sleeping between 8-10 hours a night, not running, keeping things low- key, and yet still I was congested, coughing, unable to sleep through the night. After coming home from Maine last weekend I decided enough was enough. I am tired of coughing and blowing and the deep scratchy voice I have developed. I went into the doc. She gave me a higher version of Sudafed, told me to take it twice a day for two days and if I didn't get better she would give me amoxicillin. I took the Sudafed for two days, proceeded to get worse and now have started taking my daily dose of Amoxicillin. Do you know what a daily dose of Amoxicillin is these days? It's two pills three times a day!!! DUDE, that's a lot of meds. This had better work!