Death and All of His Friends

This weekend I took myself to my parents’ home for our monthly visit. The highlight would be seeing my cousin’s youngest daughter perform in my high school’s musical. I arrived in the J late Friday and was relaxing with Jan when my cousin called. There was an accident. The musical had been postponed. A girl, a senior, was dead.

2011: Here I Come!

As I gear up for a crazy new year celebration {most likely spent recovering from some weird strain of the flu on a couch or mattress on a floor} I’ve been thinking a lot about resolutions and goals for the coming year.  Since MB moved to CA, it’s been really easy for me to fall into a pattern of hoping and dreaming about what the next steps are going to look like in our life as the aperture is WIDE open because of our new life style.  I can dream big.

I quickly realized, though, that making lots of plans based on dreams for the near future is a bit silly and has left me feeling out of control and salty.  As I browsed my all but neglected twitter feed, I ran into the always inspirational lululemon, who was touting the goal of one of their employees; homegirl is going to run an ultra marathon next year.

Everyone take a deep breath.  I will NOT be running an ultra marathon.  What I DID decide from that extreme runner’s piece, though is that I need to start setting goals not planning on dreams.  Lucky for me the ever helpful lululemon has some tools to help me start setting goals for the year of the rabbit.

go ahead, admit it.  you missed our faces.

Home coming

This week, I rented a car and drove myself to Pittsburgh.  I was going home.

 

As I was driving away, with the city sky line in my rearview mirror, I got to thinking of home as kind of a funny concept.

Blazing Autumn

Autumn is, by far, my favorite season.  Like so many other bloggers who are writing now, I love the sweaters, jeans and riding bots {which I don’t own — pout} pumpkin spice lattes, beautiful colors, sunshine afternoons and cool evenings.  I also love the imminent change that’s in the air.  I associate the autumn with beginning a new school year which is fun and exciting and there is so much promise for the year.

I was worried when my husband moved us to California that I would miss that change, miss the cool air and that there would be something completely out of whack.  Turns out I had nothing to worry about.

Greetings from California

I sure do wish you were here.

photos below by my ever talented hband

Because, frankly, if you were here it’d be so much easier to catch you up on the last {gulp} 3 weeks of my life.

MB and I are doing really great.  We’ve fallen into this really awesome, surreal rhythm of life on both coasts.  It feels really natural to catch a plane, spend a weekend, work remotely, have a  lot of sexy dates and then go back to the separate parts of our life.  10 more months of east coast living and then I become a CA girl.

In the meantime, I completeld the Disney Wine and Dine half marathon with the support of MSheed and Ms. R in Orlando.

I also got a really cool new opportunity at work that pretty much everyone and their mother needs to know about.  But we’ll get to that.

I miss you all — I’ve been creeping on you via the internet, don’t worry.

Are you excited about fall?  I’m ready for the change!

What are you doing for Halloween?

So Long Sweet Summer

O.M.G.

How is it September?!  How did I go from almost sweltering and dying in 100 (!!!) degree heat this summer to leaving for work this morning wrapped tightly in my sweater cursing my inability to dress for the weather?

How is it that I’m attending and running my last wedding of the 2010 summer?! Never mind my last wedding ever.  But that’s a different story.

How is that my fall half marathon, the Disney Food & Wine half marathon is now only mere weeks away instead of the months and months that laid between me and 13.1 miles in the fall?

How did summer come, bring so much joy and then rush out again, taking my husband to a place that is perpetually early summer?

Don’t get me wrong; I love autumn.  Lovely colors, pumpkin spice lattes, navy blue abundance, etc.  It just all happened so fast.

Are you have a hard time dealing with the change of season?  Like the kind where you hate every blog template on wordpress and you continually feel compelled to change it, hurting your and your readers’ brain? {that was me apologizing, btw}

Selling the Goat

Since MB moved to CA our friends and family have been doing an amazing job making sure that we don’t throw ourselves into our respective bodies of water as a result of the sadness and melancholy that can result from a long distance marriage. Of particular note are our local friends who every night make sure I have a dinner date and every weekend make sure I have play dates and other activities planned so I don’t go completely insane.

This of course is so welcome and wonderful, to the point where I remind myself to take some time for me; it’s a lovely spot to be in: having so much playtime that I actually have to schedule my me time.

Part of my schedule me time has turned into a play date with one of my favs, Anna. Anna and I are aspiring yogis and now attend weekly hour long yoga sessions at Lululemon. Lululemon. I love you. Call me.

At last week’s class the instructor talked about the need to sell the goat. The story went a little like this.

May the First

Today is a beautiful morning, the first of May.  I got up early for a Saturday {6:30} so I could upload my pictures from the last 2 MONTHS and put some blog posts together before we  head to Johnstown to early celebrate Mothers Day and late celebrate Christmas {long story, I’ll get there}.  So after my peanut butter bagel was toasted I plopped down to be told by the mac that the files {my pictures} were not supported and could not be uploaded.  Let it be known that I HATE when bloggers who go on hiatus do this, but here’s the basic run down of things I’ve been up to that I wanted to show you:

Career Exploration and Real Life

I’m not, again, going to lament how much I’ve missed blogging and in turn all of you.  I am going to say one thing and then we’re moving on.

HI!

Ok, glad we got that out of the way.

Disappointment

This afternoon, I sat down with every single intention of knocking out some really amazing literary stylings.  Give everyone the low down on the goings on of the last month.

But then I made dinner.

And put a casserole in an oven that wasn’t turned on.

And then, like Erin, I got sucked into The Real Housewives of NY.  Talk about an hour of my life I won’t ever get back.

And I cleaned, and I sort of paid attention to some of my clients and I sort got our lives together for another crazy week.

But I didn’t do anything 100%.

Which disappoints me.

And while we’re on the subject…