What... Happened?

Remember that time about oh, two days ago, when Kalyn and I went canoeing with her sister and some friends?

Well folks, somewhere in the midst of boat-toppling yoga moves and rope swinging, Kalyn and I managed to basically beat ourselves up.

my nicely-swollen, unbendable fingers

kalyn's hail spot bruises

Kalyn's got an issue with one of her fingers, too, and my legs have a couple of bruises that I didn't notice until today. We're a mess.

Haha.
It's only early evening now, and Sydni's passed out already. She went swimming for the day at Mindi's, and didn't even last for five minutes once we got in the car. We had a couple of minutes of promising time awake when we got home, but my poor girl is tired.

It feels like a long week... yeeesh.
Thankfully, tomorrow's Wednesday (:

xo | cmd

Perfection.

It's Monday.
She's back.

my little world.

She is my perfection.
That's all I needed for today.
Happy Monday ♥.

xo | cmd

Cabrew Season Is Upon Us!

Rob and I planned on a trip to church, perhaps lunch afterwards, followed by a day of relaxation.

And then I got this:

welllllll.. okay, fine (:

Really, no begging needed. Rob was still in mellow mode, so he wasn't disappointed to stay back, especially when Kalyn, Jess and Brittany rolled into the driveway in Brittany's drop-top SUV to pick me up. Hah...

Off we were to meet up with Kelsey and her husband Ben at Scenic River. We checked in, grabbed our gear and paired up into our boats for the day.

hear us roar!

This is all too much of a flashback to mid-September 2011 when Kalyn, Becky, Brittany and the other Jess joined us for a canoe trip during what may as well had been a drought. This was a big improvement, both in weather and agenda, and there were no complaints.

We tied down about 15 minutes in along to eat lunch and check out a tiny waterfall spouting out of the hillside.

nature proving God's creative hand!

kalyn!

so.. refreshing!  

waterfall selfies. duh... ;)

Back on the water, about another hour into the experience, Kalyn and I started feeling brave. This meant that we'd reached a point of bravery that convinced us it was a good idea to do yoga in the middle of a canoe. Together.

the abridged version.

^ There were about 25 or so pictures of various stages of our yogi dedication happening - or more like not happening - on the canoe. In our defense, we did actually manage to get all the way up into those headstands at least once each before toppling over and/or out of the boat. ;)

kalyn. me. jess. kelsey. brittany.

I also failed to bring an actual camera for the outing. No good there. My last-minute preparedness was pretty weak today; I realized as soon as I took my shorts off that my bathing suit bottom was inside out. Clearly there was no time for camera-hunting. Haha. My phone battery [a spare of course also forgotten] managed to barely survive the entire outing, but it did its job for a little while.

brittany. jess. kelsey. ben.
hi guys!

There are no pictures of us stopping off at the rope swings. *Sad.
There are no pictures of Kalyn and I getting left in the dust when the other two boats paddled off down river, only to find ourselves making a handful of new friends out of the fellow floaters. *Silver Lining.

There are also no pictures of us in what I'll just call the aftermath of the day: sun-kissed [or beaten, depending on who you ask], exhausted, mildly inebriated and donning the hairdo's of drowned rats. *Probably a good thing.

We decided our last stop of the day would be for food, so we settled on Hahana Beach. Our scraggly water-logged selves fit right in with the sand and sweat-covered volleyball players, and with patio dining at our disposal, we settled in for some grub. Rob joined us, only to leave a short while later just before the sky busted open in one of those angry-looking rainstorms.

We're all home now, cleaned up and ready to call this one a good Sunday. (:
Two weekends in a row on water? I'm not mad. ♥

xo | cmd

Night Owlin'

We're doing pretty well on the whole laying low thing so far.

Today was a day of rolling out of bed when we darn well felt like, staying in PJ's until the early afternoon, and taking our sweet time on everything else after that.

I took to running some errands, which were done at such a leisurely pace that I was almost convinced that they were fun instead of being done out of necessity. Rob lazed around a bit until I got home, at which point he did his deeds for the day by mowing the lawn and weed eating.

Like I said, not too much to report from the bulk of the day.

We decided to get out of the house for the evening. It's funny that we can't seem to sit still even when we try, but I will admit there is an entirely different vibe in the air whenever our missions are crafted out of sponenaeity, rather than extensive orchestration involving like, 15 people.

Ironically enough, we did wind up running with a crowd just shy of 15 people, at least that's how it felt. We hadn't been to OTR in a while, so we opted for that.

out on the town with this guy ;)
love.. love.. love him.

Naturally, that means I'm usually on my own in a mass of derpy dudes; Carolina wasn't available tonight so I was left on a solo mission to keep up with the rowdies. It wasn't hard. These goonies aren't strangers. (:

carolina... where are you.. haha..

take 2.

[*sings the rembrandt's song from friends*]

Oy. Haha.

love you, aweesome nerd ♥

l-o-v-e. y-o-u.

That's a wrap on our sponetaneous little Saturday!
These night owls need to rise n' shine tomorrow for church.
G'Nite!

xo | cmd

'Cuz Baby, You're a Fiiiiiiiirewoooooork! [Sings!]

It's no secret that we've run ourselves ragged over the past few weekends. I wouldn't trade any of that time, but with another weekend in our hands, we decided to plan on no plan, which is actually way more our style as it is. We made a resolve as we parted ways in the driveway that if we did anything for the weekend, it would be by chance.

Work was about as calm as we could expect any Friday to be; I was very much looking forward to an evening of relaxing and just hanging out with Rob. We of course spend a lot of time around each other, but sometimes we don't realize we need to just be together.

There's no better way to do that than an uplanned trip out for sushi.
And, where we live, there's no better place to go than Mango Tree.

our reaction to our resolve to "not do anything"
... haha.. love him.

He's the best man I could imagine sitting beside me in life; I'm not one for bushy bouquets of flowers every day, and I've never fully trusted anyone who thinks spending money is a viable substitution for quality time. Even with the means to approach it, he's nowhere near that danger zone. That... that is what I love.

... and i love you too!

Ok, who are we kidding. We're sick of each other. We just wanted FOOD.
[That's totally a joke, btw. Expect for the food part. That's not a joke ;) .. ]

spring rolls & crab rangoon = pre-sushi workout ;)

YUMMMMM!
The sushi, as always, was grade A and gone in no time. We paid our bill, left with full bellies and buckled up for the short drive home. As we were turning out of the restaurant, the sky in the distance exploded with fireworks. We had no idea what it was all about, and could only estimate their origin as the huge church on Newtown Road. Either way, we pulled into the drive of one of the closed businesses near Hahana and sat silently together watching what turned out to be at least a half hour's worth of fireworks. This wasn't a dinky little show!

fireworks!

I caught some of the action on camera..

There ya have it. Tonight's schedule has nothing else on it, and I am completely fine with that. We need a weekend in for a change. See ya tomorrow!

xo | cmd

Succulents, Take 2 | Bluegrass Bandstand

Today was a good day!

Elisa and I started it off with a lunch hour trip to Findlay Market. We've decided this will be a standard practice now, at least once monthly, if we can swing it. We rarely get out of the office for a full hour, so we figured if we were gonna do it, we would do it.

Okay, so again our staged rebellion was actually driven moreso by my story about how Rob & I fed our venus fly trap a bug last night; she decided she wanted one for the office, and I thought it'd be fun to have one back here at my desk, too.


pretty lil babies!!

I couldn't decide between two of those little beauties, so I just bought both, thinking I'd keep one for the office and give one to Rob as a present since he was thoroughly entertained by mine yesterday.

Elisa got a couple succulents and a venus; we're obsessed. Hah.

elisa's succulents

tiny traps in their car seat ;)

We of course ate some food while we were there, before hopping back in the car right before the rain started pelting down again. We got lucky. Back at the office, Elisa managed to find an unfortunate bug clinging to a wall, and did what Rob and I did yesterday - fed them to her plant. Haha. It's going to be the office version of The Hunger Games for the little bugs that keep buzzing around our desks.

After work, it was home for a quick change, then right back out the door down to Washington Park for the Bluegrass Bandstand. Kalyn was working with the Mt. Carmel Brewery team, and it wasn't long before we had the whole group there.

bluegrass bandstand

brought this guy (:

love him!

Of course Eli's BBQ made an appearance, but StreetPops showed up and brought a little cool-down to the party, too.  

what before picture?

We brought our smiles... 

kalyn. kelsey. cori. brittany.

And this other super tall guy brought his super tall guy-ness..

thumbs up from kelsey

All in all not a bad night! Friends, bluegrass, BBQ and brew - No complaints here!  

 

G'Nite!

 

xo | cmd

Slow Down, Self.

The flurry [and that is an understatement] of the past couple of days admittedly took a toll on me.

I count myself as being insanely blessed with family, friends and pretty much everything and everyone else that/who exists in my little world. The weekend was filled to the brim with all of those things, and inevitably some amount of strife to go along with it.

The truth of it is, I lost myself a little in the blur of the past five full days. I rant a tired spiel about how work is just. so. craaaaazy, and that by the time the day gives me back my home life, I'm still spinning around in laundry, cooking, cleaning, tending to my daughter, feeding the dogs and whatever miscellaneous tasks exist to accessorize the life of a working... woman.

My parents were here over the weekend, which by default meant cramming as much activity as humanly possibly into a 48-hour window, friends visited, we visited friends, there were 2 trips to the lake, and an unwelcome slew of harassing contact from someone we at this point still tolerate, but who's proven to many of us that priorities can in fact include "proving a point" and "bullying people," even in adulthood. Don't worry, that last thing's been addressed and handed off to a bunch of uni's, so I'll spare that can of horseflies for another millenia, if you don't mind. We're thinking happy thoughts, today.

I have issues with delegation. That's not a secret.
It's not that I am just that confident in my multi-tasking abilities; rather, I struggle with this strange guilt whenever I put onto the shoulders of others the things that I feel I should be able to handle on my own. I've been working on this issue since I was old enough to recognize it.... I'm 20 years in, at least and still working.

It boiled down to a combination of comments made yesterday and a stalling moment of clarity that hit me today as we were standing on the boardwalk at volleyball. It is Wednesday after all. My first priority tonight was to park my car in a well-lit, self-preserving parking spot, in hopes of avoiding any parking lot mishaps like the one from this time last week. The sun was out, there wasn't a drop of that forecasted rain in sight, and Hahana was stuffed to the gills with smiling, summer-clad people.

[Sidenote: SUMMER. YESSSSSSSSSS!]

Anyway, Rob showed up at HB just as we were finishing the last of a 3-set match. Kalyn arrived shortly after, following a last-minute, unavoidable work function. It was kind of an off-day for all of us.. haha. I don't know that I've ever seen that many people at HB on Wednesday; it became a bottleneck of people trying to traverse the boardwalk between courts and the main building that we soon decided wasn't worth waiting out.

But.... as I stood there in a swarming crowd of probably 200 people, I took a deep breath and just exhaled. I did it again, and then one more time. I could't pinpoint the last time I'd actually done that, and all at once I felt as though I'd been unclipped from whatever tension-mounted spring I'd been wrapped around. The sun felt warmer, the noise around me faded a little, and I was able to really focus, for the first time in a few days, on one single thing, which at that time was the four people right in front of me. I paired this with the comment Rob made yesterday:

"I feel like you've been in a mood, or something, over the last couple days. You're on a short fuse. Are you happy?"

Whoa.

Slow.
Down,
Self.

To answer that: YES. I am happy. There are always more things in life that I wouldn't mind having, but my immediate list of needs is more than satisfied, and there's no room to complain: God. family. friends. job. comfortable living. purpose. ✓✓✓✓✓✓, and then ✓ again for whatever else I missed there.

This isn't the first, and I'm sure won't be the last time this happens to me, either, but I'm human and I don't always have the acute peripheral vision I want in separating the whirlwind of daily life from my own personal balance. I stood there on the boardwalk tonight and felt as though I'd seriously been deaf for the past 5 days and was just then regaining the ability to hear and process anything. Weird is a pretty fair description of that sensation.

Really, this is more of a memento to my future self, for the next time I find myself in some uncharted moment of lucidity. Right now, I'm home on the couch with my toes curled up around a sherpa blanket and my head against the shoulder of my best friend. Whereas volleyball typically carries us into the double-digit night hours, tonight ended early and I'm okay with that.

I needed to slow down.
Check. ✓

See you tomorrow (:

xo | cmd