More With the Birthdays...

Last night, we had B's birthday party at the house. Neve rmind the fact that he turned 7 back at the beginning of January. Between the end of Christmas, New Years, and my starting a new job, we just didn't get the party planned until now. Slacker parents? Why yes!

Several months ago, J made the comment that maybe we could do a 'home theater' thing upstairs for B's birthday, and he could have a bunch of friends over to watch a movie and have cake, etc. That idea stuck, so J spent the last week setting up our upstairs "playroom" to be a theater for kiddos.

This is the 'screen' for the movie. It is quite possibly the only sheet I have ever / will ever iron in my life. Those things are a PAIN.

Here we have the kid-friendly set up. Lots of beanbags, soft floor, and sofa room for them to hang out and watch the movie.

 The main attraction - a projector we borrowed from a friend for the movie. Note the presence of lots of speakers. The box in the background is a new subwoofer. Let's just say there was some SERIOUS base action going on.

Another view. The red thing on the right side of the screen? That is affectionately known as the BART in our house. For the adults out there, that stands for Big Ass Red Thing. It was large enough last night to accomodate at least 4 little ones very comfortable. J and I have both spent many nights on it when the kiddos were still in cribs and we were trying to get them to sleep. It's very comfy and amorphous and I keep trying to get rid of it, but I'm too sentimental about it, apparently.

Instead of the traditional goody bags, we did balloons with candy bars tied to the bottom to keep the balloons from floating away. We've actually found this works just fine and doesn't make any parents hate us for giving away loud noisemakers...

So the party itself went ok. Apparently 10 kiddos between the ages of 5-9 don't have much in the way of an attention span. I think B was the only one who watched the movie all the way through. It seems like everyone had a good time, though. And it's over, thank goodness. J and I tested out the sound system last night with Moulin Rouge...I'm thinking our next large purchase might have to be a projector.

Ahhhhh.

What a great couple of days. There was (of course) lots of food and lots of connecting with friends and family. The kiddos played with their cousins for two or three straight days, and I'm pretty sure I had too much fun for it to be legal. Ah well. What's a holiday for, after all.

Saturday, I made a last minute decision to run my12 miler that morning instead of waiting until Sunday afternoon. I hit the river trail about 10:15am, and the rain started around 11:30. Unfortunately, I was still two miles from my car when it starting coming down in earnest. Fortunately, we all know I'm not made of sugar, so I managed to finish the run without melting. It was actually kind of peaceful - a slow, gentle rain in 60 degree weather. I got 7 miles in before I called it quits. Hm. 7 miles does not equal the 12 I was supposed to do.

So Sunday afternoon, I finished the 5 miles that the rain aborted. When I reviewed my running log, I discovered that, barring injury or sickness in the next few days, I will have more than 60 miles for this month. I've not logged that many monthly miles since January of 2010, and that makes me a little paranoid - that was the month I managed to screw up my knee. That was the wonderful injury that derailed serious exercise in general for about 6 months; not a fun time.

The Fayetteville half marathon is in just under two weeks. At this point, I'm not 100% ready, but I'm pretty sure I can knock out that run without killing myself. And as a bonus, there are lots of friends running that one with me, so it's going to be a blast, sore quads and all.

Recap

Only one way to sum up this weekend: food. And more food. 

We ate really well this weekend. And hung out with friends and family. And enjoyed the first cold front that came through, finally giving the A/C a break. I made my first batch of homemade cinnamon rolls, which turned out very yummy. Not to mention sweet enough to send you into insulin shock.

Then came the rest of the weekend: chicken fried steak with gravy and mashed taters, grilled chicken with several yummy sides and homemade ice cream, breakfast parfait, and a semi-sushi lunch (rice bowls with sushi toppings, rather than rolls or nigiri; lazy (wo)man's sushi). This is what our weekend was made of.

Therefore...on Saturday afternoon, I churned through a 7 mile run. The temperature was in the low 80s, which felt amazingly nice after months of 90-100 degree temps. I held about a 10:20 per mile pace, which made me very happy.

And on Monday, a group of us walked the river trail and hiked up the woods trail to Emerald Park. Despite growing up here, I'd never been to Emerald Park, what a beautiful view. The air was incredibly clear, and the river was gorgeous. It was a great Monday afternoon, and I think we sufficiently wore the kiddos out with our hilly 3 mile jaunt.

And here we are at Tuesday, a short week, and a long list of things to do. Now I just need to get organized. Quit laughing, it's theoretically possible...  Theoretically.

Home Again, Home Again - For a Few Days

We finally made it back home last night about 10:00. I was actually a little concerned that I'd sleep for 3 hours, wake up around 1am and not be able to go back to sleep, but that was completely NOT the case. I went to sleep around 10:30 and didn't wake up for good until around 7:30 this morning. I feel surprisingly great, considering how much traveling I did yesterday.

So today I have to hit the ground running. I leave on Wednesday morning to head to Mobile for a tennis tournament, and J and the fam will join me there on Friday. That means there's a lot of packing and a lot of laundry to be done in the next few days (although the laundry is just my stuff; J took care of everything else). I think my mom's gonna help me out with the kiddo packing, thank goodness. So I've just got to figure out what all needs to go to the beach, and what all I need to take for my tennis tournament. Beach towels, sweaty socks, and tennis rackets - oh my!

The trip back yesterday was ok; there were a few bumps here and there (both in air and not in air), but in the grand scheme of things, we made it back to LR on time, and with all of our luggage with us and intact. So all in all, a successful trip. I've hardly even glanced at the pictures yet, but once I get some done I'll put them up.

I've got a few more substantive posts rolling around, but they're gonna have to wait. I've got laundry to finish, 10 more days worth of packing to do, and just a few other things to take care of. But at least the rest of the trips are driving, instead of flying. That makes for much easier packing. And holy cow, I came back to a totally neat, clean  house. J and the kiddos put a lot of work into making sure the house was in great shape. Man, it is very good to be home. 

Perspectives

Many moons ago (ok, mid 1990s), I was a sophomore at the UA up in Fayetteville. J was a freshman at Texas A&M (we don't talk much about those dark days), and it was at least a 9 hour drive from Fayetteville, AR to College Station, TX. We were doing the long distance thing, and that meant that we were putting significant miles on our cars every few weeks.

A few months into that school year, we decided that rather than one of us driving 9 hours one way, we'd meet halfway in Dallas. J had relatives there who were more than happy to host us, so we made a plan to meet there one weekend.

Now, I grew up in the Little Rock area, and had never really driven anywhere other than in small cities at that point in my life. The idea of driving to Dallas and negotiating my way through the city was a bit nerve wracking, but it was either that or drive 9 hours, so it wasn't that hard of a decision. J gave me directions, and one Friday afternoon after classes, I set out from Fayetteville to make the drive.

Unfortunately, I didn't think about the fact that I would be getting into Dallas around rush hour. And I'm not sure I'd ever driven in rush hour traffic in a "big city" before that time (pretty sure I hadn't). And it just so happened to rain right about the time I got into town. And I was driving west as the sun came out after the storm, so I could barely see a damn thing on the road because the sun's reflection from water on the road and the steam made for miserable driving conditions. And despite J's directions, I never saw the exit I was looking for. So I kept driving. And driving. And driving.

Finally, I gave up. I was on the highway I was supposed to be on, but I hadn't found the exit I was supposed to take, and it felt like I'd been driving forever. I decided to take the next exit I saw, find a phone somewhere, and call. Assuming I had the number to his relatives' house somewhere in my car. Which I'm pretty sure I didn't...but I at least had some names.

I think.

I was in a pretty stressed state at this point in the trip, as you can imagine, and I was less than prepared for things to go wrong. Welcome to young adulthood, right?

So anyway, I took the next exit I came to. As I was pulling up to the stoplight at the end of the exit ramp, I glanced in my rear view mirror. Holy shit. There was J, gesturing to me to turn right at the end of the ramp, and then follow him. Thank God. 10 minutes later, we were at his relatives' house.

As it turns out, he'd given me the wrong name for the exit I was supposed to take, so I would never have actually found the right exit. He got into Dallas before I did, figured out he'd given me the wrong exit name, turned around and driven to the exit just before the correct one to watch for me. He'd been sitting at that on-ramp for over TWO HOURS before I finally drove by. I just happened to take the correct exit, which was amazingly lucky. I could easily have taken the one before, and God only knows what would have happened then.

The rest of that weekend was just as surreal as the arrival in Dallas. I was unused to cities that required 5-lane freeway trips to get places, kids 5 years younger than I who acted 10 years older, and the fast pace life that J's relatives lived. It was completely foreign to anything I'd ever lived. His relatives' house was huge, immaculate, beautiful, and just one of hundreds of others just like it. I couldn't imagine having anything like that, and I distinctly remember being intimidated as hell. J's cousins and relatives were all much more sophisticated than I, and living all sorts of interesting lives that I couldn't fathom living.

This past Sunday night, we all gathered at that same house in Dallas, with the same relatives. Except this time, it wasn't a bunch of 20-somethings looking for their path in life. This time, the house held 12 kids under the age of 10, and 12 adults (cousins, spouses, aunts, uncles, etc.) who hardly remember what life before kiddos was like - or who those people were, so many years ago. The house was comfortable, buzzing, and busy with folks living full lives. We all have a few (ok, some of us have more than a few) gray hairs, wrinkles, and scars that life has given us. And a bit more confidence than we might have had 15 or so years ago. Or maybe we're just too busy trying to live our lives to worry about some of the stuff we used to worry about.

Either way, the contrast between my first (nearly disastrous) visit to Dallas and this most recent one was very sharp. I know there are some advantages to youth, but I'm very happy to be at this place in my life. I might occasionally miss some of the things the me of yesterday had, but I would never want to go back to that time. The lessons learned in the interim have been too valuable.

And I sorta like being able to hold my own in Dallas traffic, too. Don't let the Arkansas plates fool you, asshole Dallas drivers. I can cut you off with the best of 'em...

Heavy

Warning, this one is on the heavy side. I need to write it out, but it's more for me than anything else.


I was very fortunate to grow up in one house. When I was two years old, my parents moved from LR to NLR, and we stayed in the NLR house until after I got married and moved to Houston.

Sometime after we moved to Houston, my parents decided to sell the NLR house and move to Maumelle. I never saw the NLR house while it was on the market or after it sold; J and I simply got directions to the new house during one trip home from H-town. It was more than a little odd to need directions to my parents' house, lemme tell you.

Right after they moved, I started hearing about some friends that were helping my parents move in, Patty and Gib. My parents had known them for a while from their social circle, but had never been particularly close; however, P&G's house was less than a mile from their new one. P had apparently come over and helped my mom get her kitchen organized, which meant only one thing: she had to be amazing. My mom's kitchen is her domain, and she can cook like nobody's business. If she let someone else help her set it up? That person had to be pretty awesome.

Over the last ten years or so, P&G have become a fixture in my parent's lives, and vice versa. They have a routine dinner date Friday nights, usually followed by a raucous, low buy-in poker game. J and I have played several times, and we usually end up just shaking our heads at the "strategy" employed in the game. There are always jokes about who's paying for breakfast the next morning (sometimes that actually happens, too), and the smack talking is prolific.

G is one of those incredibly loud mouthed individuals that sometimes makes you wonder how on earth he survived to this point in his life without someone opening fire on him. On the flip side, any time you ever need anything - be it caramel popcorn, questionable baked desserts, a pond pump (go figure), or a helping hand, he's there. A loud-mouthed, extremely kind-hearted individual. It was very common for me to be over at my parents house for about half an hour and have him stop by with a batch of cinnamon rolls that he'd bought for a fundraiser - not because he wanted them, but because he was supporting someone he cared about. He was a regular, and a very generous soul.

On Saturday, while our crew was all in Vegas, G had a heart attack while working in his yard. He spent hours each day doing this, so it wasn't out of the ordinary, but he'd been  having some indications that maybe he should get his heart checked out. He didn't.

His memorial service is this afternoon. It's been an odd and hard thing to think about this week. He wasn't a daily part of my life, but definitely of my parents' life. These are some of their best friends, and one is suddenly gone. A very gregarious, loud, integral part of their lives.

I came back from Vegas already thinking of how incredibly grateful and fortunate I am for my friends and family. I have some of the best people in my life that I could ever hope for, and I can't imagine losing any of them. I can't imagine such a big part of life suddenly disappearing, even though the possibility is always there.

We're going to be spending a lot of time with friends and family this summer on various trips, and I'm reminded to not take this time flippantly or for granted. Life is not always going to be as kind and generous as it is right now.

Drink the Good Wine

I made the drive from LR to Houston on Sunday night, one of the last of these drives. I'm cleaning out my office this week, saying goodbye to some folks, and sort of wrapping up my time here. It's really sad in many ways, even though I'm looking forward to the summer with the kiddos. I've been at the firm for over seven years now, long enough to go from being childless to having two kiddos in school. I sincerely loved this job, and the folks I worked with. It's hard to say goodbye, even though I know it's the right decision.

Anyway, in the frantic hour or so before I left the house Sunday afternoon, I downloaded a couple of podcasts to listen to on the trip. On of them was a short running "Intervals" podcast entitled "Drink the Good Wine." The gist of it, of course, was to encourage the listener to not wait for the fabled special occasion to open a good bottle of wine. Instead, let the good wine help make the occasion special. Live life while you can, make regular occasions special when you can. I love this idea, and it reminded me of our pizza party recently.

On Memorial Day, we had about 20 people at our house for homemade pizzas. There's a connection to wine here, I promise, just stick with me. It was a terrific day, even though I woke up at 5:30 that morning and couldn't go back to sleep for thinking about all the stuff I needed to do. We make our pizzas from scratch: dough, pizza sauce, toppings, pretty much all of it. And I thoroughly enjoy making them, even though it wears my ass out.

In all, I made 8 pizzas that Monday: A Greek pizza, a Brisket pizza (J's brainstorm), a Margarita, a tropical (pineapple, Canadian bacon, shrimp), 2 kiddo friendly pizzas, and two supreme style pizzas. We made the pizzas around lunchtime, with a cooler of beer and some wine to ease the conversation. There were family members, friends that might as well be family, friends who are still getting comfortable with our craziness, and I'm not sure how many kiddos running around our house. I think it's safe to say that it was one of our better gatherings.

When the last of the pizzas came out of the oven, I grabbed a few slices and looked around to refill my wine. Ugh. Out of white wine. Pizza party fail. Unwilling to switch to beer or red wine, I wandered back to the wine fridge to see if I'd overlooked a bottle. Nope. No regular white...but there was a good bottle of sparkling that I'd bought a while back. You know - for special occasions. 

Hmmmm...wonder if anyone else would be interested...

For some reason, it seemed like that bottle was the fitting end to a fantastic gathering. Most people took a little, even though champagne at 3pm after homemade pizza is a bit out of the ordinary. It reminded me how much I enjoy the luxury of planning these gatherings, cooking good food, and watching people enjoy themselves. It is such a wonderful expansion and enrichment to my life.

And really, how lucky am I to have such a wonderful group of people in my life? What better time to break out a good bottle of champagne? The occasion wasn't fancy for any particular reason, just good family and friends getting together. But really, what occasion is more special than that?

Can't Argue With That

I've mentioned elsewhere that I do not like to shop. It's just not something I've ever really enjoyed. It probably stems from being too damn short in a world of tall people. Probably also has something to do with the fact that when I was in the teen years, when how you look is so important, I felt like nothing looked good on me. It wasn't as bad as I thought it was, but I was certainly not one of the cute skinny girls during the time when that counts for so damn much.

Anyway.

I don't like to shop. My shopping trips consist of knowing what I need, going directly to the store I think is most likely to have that item, determining within 5 minutes whether they have it in my size, and either trying on and purchasing said item or moving on to the next likely store. I don't shop sales because my size is so rarely available and usually picked over. Really, I don't need floral patterned Capri pants - who the hell thinks they look good on short folk anyway? My legs are short enough without that kind of help, thank you very much.

Lucky for me, J likes to shop. And often finds good deals on stuff in my size, and knows me well enough to usually pick things I like. So every now and then, a package shows up on the front door that holds fun stuff for me. Like today, for example.  Exhibit A contained two items for me - a very cute top and a bathing suit.

Yes, you read that right. A bathing suit. There is precedent here. A few years ago he picked out a bathing suit online that ended up working great. The dude shops much better than I do and usually manages to save money in the process. Plus I don't have to brave the damn department store. That's a win/win.

So before everyone got home today, I tried the stuff on.  The top fit perfectly. I already know that's going to Vegas with us in a few weeks and will probably be completely worn out by the time summer is over.

Then the bathing suit. The top worked great. The bottom, I wasn't as enamored with. It felt kind of ... skimpy. The first thing I thought was that maybe I needed a bigger size, but I wasn't sure that would solve the issue. I needed a second opinion. When J got home, I tried it on again to make sure my first assessment (bathing suit does not work) was the correct one.

As I walked out of the bathroom to show it off, Alyssa looked up and asked "Mommy, what is that? Is that a bathing suit?" I told her it was, and asked her what she thought. At first she said she liked it, and J hadn't really made up his mind. But after I had made a few turns in front of the two of them, Alyssa looked at me and said, "Mommy? I don't think I like it. Your booty is hanging out."

Thanks Alyssa girl. THAT was the kind of assessment I was looking for. And back to the store it goes.  I'll try again in another day or two when the trauma has worn off.

Routine? What Routine?

It's been a busy week. Wait, back up. Can I really say that with a straight face? I mean, I haven't had work deadlines, I haven't been chained to the computer, I haven't billed any hours, I haven't produced any work product. At. All.

But what I have done? Is many hours of yard work. And many loads of laundry. And baked a couple (multiple!) batches of cookies, with another new recipe in the near future. I've played tennis while the sun was up, I've played Words with Friends at strange times during the day. I've got a huge load of stuff to take to Goodwill, and the house isn't too far from being ready for folks to come over. In fact, we had some friends stop by last night, and I was able to bring them into the kitchen/den without batting an eye. Progress, baby.

I've picked the kids up early from school, and I haven't felt quite as scattered as I have in the past. I won't say I'm approaching the "O" word quite yet (that's organized for those of you with your minds in the gutter), but there's a bit of hope there.

So yeah. It's been a really busy week. And just like a normal workweek, it's 4:30 on Friday and I love the feeling of the week winding to a close. There's a ton of fun stuff to look forward to this weekend, and while I'd love to be sipping a glass of wine right now, J and I have a mixed doubles match later tonight (we're playing a tournament together - hopefully we won't kill each other). I'm gonna guess he wouldn't be too happy with a partner that showed up sloshed, although there ARE some folks out there who play better with a beer or two.  But I digress.

Mixed doubles tournament, baseball/tball, annual Memorial day BBQ at J's house on Sunday, relatives and friends in town, Riverfest and fireworks, homemade pizza with friends on Monday - yup. It's gonna be a great weekend. See you on the flip side, if not before.

Another year...

Well, even if I'm not there, it's nice to know I'm missed.  This excellent birthday surprise showed up in my office an hour ago.  Thanks babe, looking forward to seeing you soon...

Bullet (and Other Assorted) Madness

So, in bullet form, here is the craziness that was this weekend.  If you don't make it through to the end?  I don't blame you. 

• Friday night, work late, can't get back to AR, stayed in Houston.  Made crucial error of having some red wine with my friend M on Friday night.
• Saturday morning, start the drive about 7:30 and realize red wine from the night before is about to cause a migraine.  Great.
• Saturday afternoon, get in about 2:30, eat pizza J has warmed up for me, and crash on the couch with A for the next 4 hours watching movies, hoping headache will eventually give up.
• Saturday night, get up, make dinner, have a nerf war (parents v. kids - I think parents won).  Still trying unsuccessfully to kill the migraine.  Note to self:  shrieking and running around in a nerf war may be fun, but is not good for killing headache.
• Late Saturday night, realize that the weather really is going to get bad on Sunday with much snow, and start to stress about getting back to Houston.  Headache gets exponentially worse.  Write whiny blog post.
• Sometime in the middle of the night:  get up and take medicine for the headache from hell.
• Sunday morning, lie in bed as long as possible, wishing head would just go ahead and explode instead of punishing me for something I didn't do.  Ok, maybe I did do it, but I didn't overdo it!  Stupid red wine...
• Sunday morning, finally get up.  Take more medicine and pound two cups of coffee in rapid succession.  After being awake for an hour or so, headache finally abates and I can actually start thinking clearly again.
• Shit. 
• 11am Sunday Morning, T-minus 2.5 hours until birthday time:  The list of things to do is incredibly long, I don't have time to do them, I'm woefully unprepared for B's birthday party that afternoon, I'm not packed, it's going to snow, we don't have milk, we haven't wrapped any packages, and I can't make up my damned mind about whether to fly or drive.  At least mother nature took care of one of those things for me...
• Sunday afternoon:  party is a success, but everyone beats a hasty exit to avoid the snow that has started.  Everyone except us, of course.  Leave the party at 4:00pm, get caught in the major snow, don't get home until after 6.  Get frightened by the number of idiots on the road who have no business being out there.  Seriously - the group of guys pushing the pickup up the hill at Camp Robinson, using bits of chain wrapped around the tires (not tire chains - just lengths of chain that were tied on the tires) and running around barefoot really took the cake.  Flight that I had booked for 6pm doesn't even come close to happening. 
• Sunday night, stress levels achieve nearly record heights.  Feeling like the slacker of the group for not being in the office all weekend like the rest of the team has, but priority went to my boy's birthday party.  I made the right decision, but that doesn't mean that it didn't cause stress.  Hello rock, meet hard place.
• Realize I'm going to have to take a 6:30am flight out of LR Monday morning, which means leaving the house around 4:30am (roads totally covered in snow, not going to be a fast trip).  Bundle kids up around 9pm, take them to my parent's house to spend the night so they don't have to get up crazy early and make the possibly treacherous drive to the airport with J and I.  Spend several minutes cussing my lack of preparation as I get them packed - one kid has only one glove (J went through the entire entry way closet - where the hell do gloves go to die, anwyay??), there are no scarves, they only have snow boots 'cause my mom bought them some, and they really have no clothing that is great for playing in the snow.  HUGE parenting fail. 
• Sunday morning, get up well before it's light out, get dressed, get out to the airport, wait for the flight that was delayed an hour, and finally get down to Houston around 10:30 this morning.  THANK GOD that weekend is over. 

So, here we are today.  Enough with moaning and complaining of the weekend, right? As one of my coworkers said last week, I just need to put my big girl panties on and suck it up.  I'm in Houston for the week, most of January in fact, and that's just life right now.  So deal.  And I will - this time, without the red wine.

100 Miles from Memphis

One of the stories that came back from the Vegas boys' trip several weeks ago had to do with Sheryl Crow - or rather, Sheryl Crow's doppelganger.  According to J, the look-alike and her entourage were wandering Vegas casinos, trying to convince people to "hang out" (whatever that meant) with Sheryl Crow. When the group approached J at a blackjack table, he called BS and asked them about Crow's hometown of Kennett, located in the bootheel of Missouri. Well, actually, he forgot the name of Kennett and asked about Sikeston, a town about an hour from there, but that didn't matter - the blank looks he got told him everything he needed to know. He did say the doppelganger looked enough like Sheryl to make him do a double take, but the Canadian accent pretty much sealed the deal. A little while later, he saw the entourage getting into an elevator with several college-age looking boys, who apparently expected to get to meet Sheryl Crow. Good luck with that, boys.

******

J was familiar with the small southeastern Missouri towns because I have a great deal of family in that area. A large number of my family members live in Kennett, a town with a population of less than 11,000. The bootheel is home to some fantastic farmland, a lot of flatness, wonderful people, and some of the biggest mosquitoes I've ever seen (with northeastern Arkansas possibly the only exception). One of my parents grew up in Kennett, many aunts, uncles, cousins, and other assorted relatives live or lived there while they were alive, the graveyards there have familiar family names, and the town is still alive with memories for my family.

Driving through downtown Kennett is very much like stepping back in time - the storefronts are dusty, the lettering is outdated, and the world has very much moved on from this area. We were on our way to St. Louis several months ago and stopped at a restaurant along the main drag for lunch. We were the obvious outsiders; everyone else exchanged greetings and handshakes as they came and went, with a lot of generational mingling. It very much had a small town feel, reminding you that there are still towns where no one is a stranger. At the same time, this small town in rural Missouri is home to a Grammy winning musician, and unless I'm mistaken I have an aunt who sings (or at least sang) with her in the church choir. Sometimes the world feels very small.

******

The first time I remember hearing Sheryl Crow on the radio, I was early  in my college years. I was driving from Fayetteville to Little Rock, down Highway 71, just south of Drake Field (used to be "The Airport" but XNA has taken over that role now) when the song "All I Wanna Do" came on the radio. It's rare for me to remember a detail like that. J can remember almost every movie he's ever seen, what year it was, what grade he was in, what theater he was in, strange details like that. He's sort of freaky sometimes; me, not so much. For whatever reason, though, I clearly remember rolling down the windows, cranking up the radio in my old Civic, and loving that song.

******

As I was running my three miler this morning, I listened to Crow's new album "100 Miles from Memphis." My brother-in-law recommended this album several weeks ago, and I finally remembered to download it last night. I queued it up in my Shuffle today to help my run, and while it doesn't contain the best rhythms for running fast, it was terrific for mind wandering. The album reminded me of several artists as I made my way through the songs - Tony Joe White (musician out of Louisiana, wrote "Rainy Night in Georgia"), Janis Joplin, some Elvis, and maybe a little Cash here and there. The rhythms and bluesy sounds reminded me of the many summertime family reunions I dearly loved when I was growing up. The feel of the album reminded me of these extended family members, where I came from, and the different places that I call "home" in this world. Even though I've never lived in the bootheel of Missouri, my roots are there, my history is there, and a large part of my family is still there. So for me at least, Crow's album was reminiscent of my memories of - and connections to - Kennett, a town about 100 miles from Memphis.

Reminders

I woke up in a bad mood this morning - craptacular is probably a good work for it. Not for any particular reason, I'm not really sure what triggered it. J and I slogged through some morning chores (breakfast for the kiddos, cleaning up the kitchen, taking out the recycling), and I was less than pleasant to be around. My kids, knowing that I get irritable when I don't eat, told me I should eat something. Great.

After visiting the recycling center, the boy child wanted to have a lunchtime picnic at a nearby lake. My first inclination was to say no, but I didn't really have a good reason. It was time for lunch, and J and I didn't have a better idea, so we agreed.

We put together some sandwiches, drinks, chips and cookies at the house, and headed out to the lake. It has finally started cooling off here in central Arkansas, and the air today feels comfortable, making a picnic sound better than the hellish outing it would have been 2 weeks ago. We settled in at a picnic table at a local lake, everyone happily munching their sandwiches, the kiddos very content with their chips and juice boxes.

Sitting at the lake, you could tell that the light has made the shift from "high summer" to "early fall" around here, softening the shadows and giving the sky darker shades of blue that remind you of your childhood fall afternoons. The humidity has eased a bit, and the air was easy to breathe. I reminded myself once again that this - this afternoon, this picnic lunch, this time with the family and kids - was why J and I moved back to this area. We left a large, economically thriving city with a ton of culture and diversity, and I know many of our friends thought we were nuts.

But this. This is why we left that city. This lazy afternoon where we didn't have to drive 30 minutes to get to a nice lake. This clean, breathable air that reminds you only that fall is on the way, and is not reminiscent of industry and landfills. This environment where I don't feel I need to be the hoverparent, and where in fact that is out of the ordinary. Where I can lose sight of the kiddos for a few minutes and not feel worry and panic descend on me immediately. These things have such value to me.

After spending a couple of hours at the lake, the kiddos playing with some friends, J and I enjoying a talk with some other parents who have become friends, I finally shook the funk I woke up with. Sometimes I just need to remind myself that I'm exactly where I need to be right now. This is the life I live, and I'm so lucky that it is the life I want to live.