125 - saturday

guess what?

in FOUR DAYS, the looooongest deployment in the history of ever will be over, and this guy gets to come home to me and all the crap I moved into his house while he was gone.

still one of my favorite pics of us. paris, 2003. high school! babies! 

isn't he handsome?! I am so excited. I am so so so so so freaking excited.

124 - friday

I weeded the front beds and backyard today. the backyard was a jungle. until we landscape it, I see no point in frequent weeding: pulling the weeds just makes room for new ones to grow. so, I've been mowing (cringe) some of the weeds and keeping up with the ones that sprout up around the few things we do have planted. this morning I tended to the area around the plantings and also pulled up the really big stuff. two and a half hours later, the yard looks better but my back is absolutely torched. my lower back/butt/hamstrings are going to feel great on my 6- and 13-mile runs this weekend. not.

check out this little guy that I found in one of the front beds! stick bug!!

 evolution is amazing. what a bizarre looking critter! 

I'm pretty sure stick bugs didn't evolve to blend in with my candystriped gardening gloves, though, so I put it back where I found it.

I wish all my garden pests looked more like cool stick insects and less like giant bloodthirsty spiders. although, a quick wiki search reveals I probably should have offed the stick bug, or put it to work in the weed-riddled backyard instead of on my snapdragons. they eat plants! (they also have sex for the longest amount of time of all the insects. you go, glen coco.)

123 - thursday

I stood at my front door tonight like an excited puppy, waiting for a GIANT thunderstorm to blow through so I could do my hill workout. once things finally seemed to be letting up, I made a run for it (ha ha ha). outfit: check. shoes: check. ipod: check. I've had too many runs where my garmin dies a few miles in (because I'm lazy and always forget to charge it), so lately I've been diligent about checking battery level before I head out. tonight was no different. battery was at 83%. garmin: check. go time.

hello, giant thunderstorm

I wore this really ugly but really bright orange shirt to make sure no cars hit me, since the thunderhead was blocking the sunset and it was pretty dark out there (and yet I still brought my sunglasses? sometimes I make no sense to me). I had a close encounter with a car driving way too fast yesterday. I was running along the shoulder and yet the jerk still made a point of honking at me as he sped by. so rude. what I'm saying is...visibility was key tonight. 

the workout was 1.5 mile warmup, 4 hill repeats with jogging back to start, 1.5 mile cooldown. easy peasy. the thunderstorm had cooled off the air and taken away some of the humidity, and I felt like I was flying during my warmup. about a mile in, I glanced down to check my pace and see if I needed to pull back, but all I saw was a blank screen. my stupid garmin was dead.

no pace or distance data for this girl! womp, womp. 

the hill I ran is steeper towards the top than at the bottom, so I focused on keeping good form during the repeats. high knees, elbows in, shoulders relaxed, slight forward lean, making sure my knees/ankles didn't go flying across the midline. all that good stuff. I can't help but be annoyed about my garmin. I have no idea why the battery crashed, and I was really looking forward to my data. drill workouts (tempo runs, track intervals, hill repeats) are my favorite to monitor over a marathon training cycle, because I like seeing how I've improved week to week. but now, I'm almost a month into this cycle without a baseline hill workout. not cool, garmin. 

anyone know what could make the battery die suddenly? I don't want this to happen again! 

122 - wednesday

hey t, guess what I learned how to do today?

it took an inordinate amount of lawn mower wrangling/straddling/hugging to take this picture. thank me later. 

turns out it was just stuck shut. all fixed, just in time for you to come home and mow the lawn! six more days!

121 - tuesday

do you ever think you've told someone something, but when you mention it to them down the road they have no idea what you're talking about? I do it to t more often than I care to admit. I remember something I need to tell him, I have the conversation in my mind, and the message doesn't get conveyed until I'm so annoyed with him for not remembering (a thing I never told him). how great am I?

this morning (wednesday) I got an e-mail from my mom, wondering if I was ok because I didn't post on the blog yesterday. wait, I didn't? (also, really mom, that's your only litmus test for whether or not I'm still alive and well? but I digress.) I took the pictures, I drafted the post in my head, and then I...oh yeah, got majorly distracted thinking about how AWESOME it would be to live in a house that was one part ina garten's cooking barn, one part amazing living/entertaining space complete with state of the art gym. more bedrooms upstairs. a short walk to the beach. "my kitchen counter is 18 feet long so that my assistant and I can work side by side without bumping into each other." yadda yadda yadda. this is the third time I've attempted to write this post.

alas. apparently the technology for "if you think it, it will write itself" is still a few years out, so my blog post never made it to the internet. oops.

it's now after 7:30pm on wednesday, and I keep getting distracted by ina garten's cooking barn. ohmygaaaahhhhhhh. before this gets any more out of hand: THIS is what I did yesterday.

I hung up pictures in the guest bathroom. ta-da!

black and white and red (...all over. badump-chh! newspaper riddle, anyone?). nautical accents to remind us of home sweet new england. red lantern from the army-navy surplus in newport, seagrass candle (I HATE scented candles, but this one will never get lit and adds a very subtle scent to the room. at least it's not a god-awful yankee candle abomination) from a well-wishing neighbor at my going away party, and the pictures.

I took these pictures on new year's day in 2006. I had spent the fall semester off from college. I was starting at brown in a few weeks, and the living at home with my parents and working full-time without any friends to hang out with in the area was starting to get under my skin. the first day of 2006 was unusually warm, so I took my beloved slr down to point judith and walked alone around the deserted fishing town, snapping pictures. these are two of my favorites from that day. 

nothing special. but they're mine, and I love them.

(and I think they would look equally badass in ina garten's cooking barn's bathroom, too.)

120 - monday

last night, when my stomach issues had mostly resolved and I was feeling a little better but angry about my failed attempt to exercise, I decided to do the next best thing to getting my sweat on: bake chocolate chip oatmeal cookies. because NOT running 8 miles definitely earns you the right to butter, sugar, and chocolate chips.

a true lady never confesses the number of cookies she's shoveled down her pie-hole, but it was more than one and I still had more than two dozen left over.

I knew they had to go. I sent a text to one of t's friends who works on base, hoping she'd be able to pawn the extras off on her coworkers. no response from her, so I had more than one for breakfast this morning. and another one after lunch.

but this afternoon, said friend's husband sent me a text asking if he could borrow t's truck. I had found my in. boys love cookies - there's no way he could say no! he came over to get the truck, and I met him at the door with these. he feigned mock resistance, but I could tell that he was happy to walk away with a big bag of cookies.

sayonara, delicious treats! true story: I kept the half dozen in the mini-bag for myself. 

now that the sweet craving has been satisfied but the cookies are out of the house, I can get back to eating the real food in my fridge (two whole heads of romaine lettuce. guess what I'm having for lunch the rest of the week). 

sweet success! 

119 - sunday

I woke up at 3am feeling pretty junky (that's the edited description) and spent the whole morning trying to decide if sleeping on the bathroom floor was better than sleeping in the bed.

8 mile run? cancelled. church? the thought of blow-drying my hair and smiling at other nice ladies without vomiting on someone only increased my nausea. cancelled. lie on the couch in my pj's, sipping gatorade and watching final stage the tour de france? okay.

in the fine state of georgia, lots of things don't happen on sundays.

 sunday means no delicious chicken sandwiches with a side of waffle fries and lemonade.

sunday means no booze for sale.

but you know what I learned the hard way today? I learned that sunday means that, even after your gut-wrenching morning ends and you feel ok by evening and get dressed and pack a waterbottle and drive 15 minutes to the gym to get your scheduled 8-mile run in (on the treadmill, ugh!), the gym is CLOSED. because now you live in the deep south, and everything down here comes to a standstill, just because sunday is for praying. 

I swear, just when I think I've got a handle on the social norms of this place, they come back and smack me straight across my yankee face. 

118 - saturday

the checkout boy at the grocery store tonight asked me if I was "waiting for someone." what, someone else inside the store to swoop in and put my purchases in context? er, no, just me tonight. but thanks for calling my solo status out, kid.

I think he might have asked me because what I bought looks like it belongs to a twenty-something male bachelor.

apparently a girl buying beer + milk + pb + tp is the female equivalent of a man walking up to the checkout counter with a box of tampons. who knew?

117 - friday

I'm not a very adventurous cook. I'll make the same thing a dozen times and a dozen ways to perfect it (cakes! cookies!), but I rarely try making something totally new, even if it's just a new flavor combination on an old tried-and-true staple, if I've never had it before. I'm an adventurous restaurant diner, though. I'll try almost* anything if someone else is preparing it for me. but where making the investment in ingredients and time and the potential for dinner to suck if I don't like my new taste experiment are concerned, I am conservative.

back when t was home (and he will be again SO SOON! TWELVE DAYS!!!) and I was a semi-regular presence in the house, we used to make risotto on friday nights. this spring, when t was gone and I was back in providence, I spent several saturday nights at my mom's making risotto for her. these were weekly rituals I looked forward to. I love risotto. I don't really like pasta, so risotto is my go-to carbo-loading food when I'm in training. because it takes so much time, it's perfectly suited to weekend evening, labor-of-love cooking.

I made risotto tonight. but I took a HUGE (for me) cooking risk and went all-in on a flavor profile that, I have to admit, had me skeptical even as I stood over the pot, adding stock and stirring diligently: broccoli. here's the recipe, peppered excessively with my unsolicited opinions.

broccoli risotto
(adapted, barely, from the new york times)

• 6c stock, such as chicken or vegetable (I used a combination of beef and chicken, because I had leftover beef stock to use up in the fridge. I use organic, sodium-free stock, so depending on what you're using you might need to season your risotto with much more or less salt)
• 2T extra virgin olive oil (I'm inexplicably all out of olive oil, so I used 1T canola + 1T butter. mmm, butter.)
• 1c chopped onion
• 1 1/2 c arborio rice
• 1 clove garlic, minced
• 1/2 c dry white wine at room temperature ($3 mini-box of grocery store pinot grigio ftw!)
• 1 lb broccoli (2 good-size stalks - don't buy just the crowns! - I know it sounds like a lot of trees, but it works. trust me), stems peeled and cut into small dice, florets thinly sliced (I think they look like MRI brain slices. maybe I've been watching too much house)
• 1/2 c. freshly grated parmesan cheese (or if you're me, the shredded shit you bought at the grocery store almost two months ago that you've convinced yourself is still good)
• 2T fresh italian parsley, minced (I have an irrational, incontrovertible hatred of parsley. I think it sucks and is unnecessary and included frequently where it doesn't belong. so I left it out.)
• salt and black pepper to taste

side note: lots of risotto recipes say to simmer the stock on the stove in a separate saucepan, adding it by the ladleful to the rice as it cooks. I think that's a crock of shit. I've made a lot of near-perfect risotto (and my mom says it's better than my professional chef brother's risotto, but she might just be egging me on), and on the few occasions that I've dirtied the extra pan, it's come out no differently. my mom heats up the stock by the half-cupful in the microwave before adding it to her risottos, but even this is too much effort for me. straight out of the box into the pot is how I roll. the stock I use comes in cartons that I store in my room-temperature pantry; I see no defensible reason to heat it up and no discernible difference in results.

how indignant am I tonight? eesh.

1. heat the oil over the low side of medium heat in a large stockpot. if using oil + butter, wait for the butter to foam and melt completely. (I use a 5qt enameled cast-iron dutch oven that I love because it conducts heat so evenly that I can get away with medium-low heat. you're looking for an even simmer throughout the duration of cooking; adjust accordingly.) 
2. add onions and saute until translucent but not browned, about 3-5 minutes. stir often.
3. add rice and garlic together; stir well to coat rice in oil. rice will turn translucent with a white bead in the center of the grain and begin to crackle, and the garlic will become fragrant. add wine slowly and stir continuously until almost all the liquid has been absorbed.
4. add stock by the half-cupful, waiting between additions until almost all the liquid has been absorbed, stirring frequently but not constantly. after ten minutes or so, add the diced broccoli stems - you should have about two cups. fold the diced broccoli into the rice. you may have to add extra stock with this step, as the broccoli significantly increases the volume of stuff in the pot. you'll also now have to stir more frequently, because the raw broccoli is more prone to stick to the bottom of the pot than the oil-, wine-, and broth-drunk rice grains. after another ten-ish minutes, add the broccoli florets. by now you have a lot of stuff in the pot, and folding them in will be tricky. you'll definitely have to add more stock, and taste the rice - it should be almost done. 
5. when the rice is tender and creamy-looking but still toothsome, add a final half cupful of stock and remove the pan from the heat. adjust seasonings. stir in parmesan and let rest a few minutes. give a final stir before serving with extra parmesan cheese and a glass of however much terrible boxed grocery store wine is left over.

BOOM. pleasantly pleasant broccoli risotto.

I didn't let it rest long enough because I was hungry. all that extra stock had been absorbed by the time I was halfway through eating.

this recipe makes A LOT of food. even if t were home, we would have still had plenty of leftovers.

  another dinner + two lunches

maybe I should try new stuff more often? admittedly, this had a high probability of success since I am a broccoli FIEND, but I was still wary about the final product of what looked in the pot like italian stir-fry. I'm glad I took the chance.

*raw oysters. I won't eat raw oysters. I don't care if brad pitt shucks them for me. I ate my first ones ever two weeks ago in RI, and they were the real deal, (allegedly) some of the best ones you can get. I had two and they tasted like eating giant ocean boogers. so gross/never again.

116 - thursday

my southern education has begun.

I bought t a groupon subscription to garden & gun a few months ago (ok, so I bought it for me AND for him, let's be honest), and have been eagerly awaiting it's arrival ever since. this plus the promised subscription to southern living that my mom is giving us (right, mom? right?) means I'll have two trusted guides to all things life in the deep south. is it so wrong to be so excited about a magazine subscription?

115 - wednesday

when I was a kid, we had a cherry tree in the front yard. I get a little woozy about heights these days, but back then I loved climbing trees. my brother and our neighbors and I used to spend so much time in and around that tree, dangling way too far out on branches, trying to pick the cherries that even the squirrels weren't sure-footed enough to grab. in all my years of loving fresh, sweet cherries, I've never seen siamese twin cherries until today.

I just finished reading cutting for stone two days ago. I stole the book out from under my mom when I was visiting; she claims she was "in the middle of reading it," but she started it when she was on vacation in puerto rico - in FEBRUARY - and still was barely a third of the way through. I figured I'd take it, devour it (I have a voracious appetite for good books), and send it back before she noticed it was gone.

she noticed. sorry, mom!

anyway, the book's protagonists are siamese twins whose conjoinment (not a word? now it's a word) is separated shortly after they're born. since my mother is a slow reader of books but a regular reader of my blog, I won't ruin the book by offering any further details. but I will say that my conjoined cherries today seemed timely given the story I've just finished.

in case you're wondering: one stem, two pits.

114 - tuesday

in the two years since I started running seriously, I've completed four 5k's, three half marathons, and two marathons. last may, I ran my last long run before the seattle rock n' roll marathon: 20 miles in jamestown, rhode island. I ran in worn-down, broken shoes that were too tight, and the swelling of my feet from the deadly combo of heat (it was over 80 degrees that day) and mileage (20 is a lot of miles, yo), caused this to happen. and then the second toenail on my left foot fell off. since those initial injuries, my poor piggies haven't been right.

during the marathon last june, the big toe on my left foot became bruised. not on the nail itself, but deep within the nailbed. I had a black bruise on the toe, and when I pressed on it pain radiated up through the nail. it was gross. when the nail grew out, it was partially healthy. big toenails are big. the right side grew out like normal. but the left side, near the bruised part, grew out but wasn't connected to anything underneath. eventually, I lost my whole big toenail.

how gross is this getting? I know. I'm sorry.

so last summer, I spent days poolside and beaching and whatnot, all while proudly rocking 8.5 toenails (the left second toe was re-injured in the marathon) and hoping no one would notice my frankenstein feet.

flash forward to THIS summer when I was finally able to get my first pedicure in over a year. maybe in 18 months, maybe in two years. I don't remember my last pedicure. yes, the loss of my hard-earned callouses on the bottom of my feet means I now get blisters when I run. but LOOK! I have TEN toenails, all of them healthy. 

happy piggies

if this post weirds you out, I'm sorry. I know the toenail injuries are an inevitable part of marathon training, and I'll probably lose one again in the coming months of training and racing. I just had to document them while they were all there and so pretty.

113 - monday

a wolf in sheep's clothes.

I made myself dinner tonight (no surprise there) and the plan for the meal was healthy (again, no surprise). chicken breast with balsamic roasted brussels sprouts. simple enough. at the last minute, I decided to add carbs in the form of garlicky white bean (cannellini) mash, a side that I'd seen with increased frequency in a bunch of magazines and online food blogs. beans are a low-fat, complex carb that add fiber and protein instantly to any meal. chicken, beans, and brussels sprouts - still healthy! right?

white bean mash
1 clove of garlic, minced
1 can (15oz) cannellini beans, rinsed well and drained
1/4 c olive oil
salt and pepper to taste

I read the recipe and thought: no way does the mash take 1/4 c. of olive oil. that's a LOT of  extra calories (like, more than 400 extra calories). so I put roughly 2 tbs. olive oil into the pan, sauteed the garlic, and then added the beans. as soon as I started mashing them, the oil disappeared. gone. the beans absorbed the oil so quickly that they started to burn, so I took the pan off the heat and moved the beans to a bowl so I could finish mashing. by the time I had achieved a mashed potato-like consistency, they were super dry and sticking to the spoon.

in the end, I wound up adding two additional tablespoons of butter to the mash. for those of you playing along at home: 4 tbs (2 of oil, 2 of butter) = 1/4 c. on top of the staggering amount of oil, I used a full-sodium can of beans (I almost ALWAYS use low-sodium beans, I don't know why this can was full strength). and seasoned the chicken with salt and pepper. and seasoned the brussels sprouts with salt and pepper.

was the mash delicious? yes. oh yes. but it also took my otherwise low-fat, healthy dinner and turned it into a fatty, caloric sodium-fest. lesson learned!

112 - sunday

this is how I feel lately. trapped and pinned.

what, you didn't really think I liked movies that much, did you?

I have a lot to be thankful for. I'm healthy, I'm safe, I'm loved, and I'm happy. I am genuinely happy with where I am in life and the shape my life is taking.

but I have a very active and very creative mind, which makes an as-of-late unsuccessful job hunt really hard to bear. I don't like to feel idle, but lately I do. I know I'll find something and the feeling will pass. but for now, this is how it feels.

111 - saturday

sometimes marathon training really sucks. it takes up a lot of time and serious dedication. four long months of training hard, eating right, and pushing through mental and physical fatigue boils down to just a few hours on a saturday morning, and then, suddenly, it's over.

but sometimes, it's great. I love the way I feel when I'm making sure I get a lot of sleep and eat right. I love a good night at the bar, but I also love waking up feeling clear and ready to rock my run before the sun comes up. and I've now run two marathons that pushed me to my physical and mental limits, and despite the pain, nothing beats the ecstasy of crossing the finish line.

marathon training just officially kicked off last week, and I'm already in a slump. I'm back in georgia and after a few great runs back in rhode island where it was cool and dry and I could get away with 10:30am, needing to wake up before the sun in order to get out while the temps are below unsafe but well above tolerable has lost its appeal. I thought my new running shoes would help, but they aren't. this morning I set my alarm for very early - 5:20am - so that I could meet the local running club for their weekly group run. I had five miles to get through and was excited about finally making it to one of their workouts. but last night, I was engrossed in my book and didn't fall asleep until nearly midnight. I woke up after 8 this morning. I don't even remember snoozing/shutting off my alarm. I didn't make it out for my run today, and I'm not happy about it.

so tonight, I'm getting back on track. I had a big salad for dinner. I had three glasses of water. and I'm in bed before 9:30pm, watching pretty woman.

greatest movie ever

it's supposed to be a beautiful morning, and I can't wait to get out and run. 

110 - friday

I saw the final harry potter movie today.

last night I went and saw part one of the movie, and today I returned to the theater to see part two. alone both times, because I'm cool like that. the theater was full of crazy people last night. there were easily over 200 people in costumes standing in a line that wrapped all throughout the lobby and snaked out the door into the parking lot. I'm told the costume contest started at 10am, a full FOURTEEN hours before the new movie premiered. that's a really freaking long time to hang out at the movie theater. the theater was running a special offer where for $15, you could see part one at 9pm and part two at midnight, in 3D. for someone who never even read the books and has a hard time staying awake past 10pm, that seemed a little intense, so I decided to just come back during the day, figuring the theater would be mostly empty because people would be at work.

people were not at work. I struggled to find an empty seat. I am not exaggerating.

and yes, really, I never read the books. I read the first one when I was a junior in high school to see what all the fuss was about. at the time, my younger sister (very younger sister) was totally engrossed in the series, and all my friends had read them in elementary and middle school. but I came late to that party and decided I was too old and too cool for books that my kid sister was into; after the first book, I never picked one up again. once the movies started coming out there was no reason for me to read the books. all of which means I walked into the theater this afternoon with no idea how it would end.

I won't give anything away, but: it was awesome.

109 - thursday

t and I both love to cook. today I made his grandmother's recipe for roasted vidalia onions. we live about 40 miles northwest of vidalia, and the sweet onions for which it is known are georgia's state vegetable. they practically give them away at the grocery store this time of year (25 cents a pound!! a POUND!) and I bought two last week. this recipe is especially dear to t because his grandmother passed away in may. I'm glad I had the chance to give it a test run before he gets home, when we can enjoy the sweet and tangy roasted onions together.

I used a little less butter and a little more beef stock than the recipe called for. they came out delicious. these babies for dinner tomorrow night alongside panko-crusted pork chops? I think yes.

finished product! 

108 - wednesday

today I bit the bullet and finally did something I've needed to do since may: I bought new running shoes. my old pair had almost 500 miles on them - all of my training for boston and the other smaller races I've done in the past 6 months. I've been moaning and complaining about how expensive they are and how mizuno changed the fit on the newest incarnation of the model I wear. I was full of excuses not to buy. whine whine whine.

except, I never actually tried the new model on. until today. and I love the way they fit. I've never handed over so much money so eagerly. so all my whining was totally unfounded. surprised? me either.

old, broken down wave rider 13's on the floor. brand spanking new 14's in the spotlight. it's love.

I also should confess that part of my hesitation to buy stemmed from the fact that the new 14's were only available in hot pink/white or dark grey/purple. not to be a diva, but I've always had bright turquoise shoes. and with a few narrow exceptions, I've always raced in black and turquoise outfits. I wasn't ready to welcome a new color scheme into my life. I almost bought brooks (knowing they wouldn't fit my instep) merely to accommodate my look. so on top of my other hesitations there was that. 

so. imagine my surprise when I found out that the running store in town had the 14's in the brand new, backordered everywhere online, exact color I wanted! WIN. I took them for a test run almost as soon as I got those beauties home. wearing coordinating colors, of course. 

hi. I'm michaela. my clothes match my shoes and I don't care how much you judge me. I look cute. 

just the right treat to jumpstart my motivation for marathon training! savannah, here I come!

bonus post for my girl rk

my friend rickie is a little terrorist committed to making sure my blog posts go up in a timely manner.

hi, rickie! in case you missed it, I blogged my whole weekend vacation just for you. that didn't seem like enough, so this next part is just for you. it's a brief photo montage, beginning with this picture of my entire blog readership (+ mom. hi mom!)

me, t, and rickie girl at the bar in february

us with a cow at the campus farmer's market last fall! laughing so hard because the cow smooooooooshed her face into mine.

happy, rickaroo? I miss your face!

107 - tuesday

home is a funny concept. 

I grew up in this beautiful place, surrounded by a family who loves me. I spent so many days standing at the kitchen sink, admiring the way the bright chartreuse rhododendron leaves stacked against blue-violet hydrangea blooms, against juniper green and the deep shock of crimson on the japanese maple. gorgeous today, but beautiful in all four distinct seasons. 

but I haven't lived here in years, so is it still home? t used to get so exasperated with me when I lived in providence and would say I was "going home" or "home now" and he couldn't keep track of which "home" I was referring to. of course, home is this place - and it always will be. this will always be where I come from.

this evening, I got on a plane and flew home to georgia for the first time ever. it's all I could think about on the flight. I've visited so many times, and I've driven down twice (the most recent time being my move). but I was never coming home. this time, all my things are here. nothing about this is a visit. this is where I live now. this is home. 

last summer. the crepe myrtle looks less like an exploding firecracker this year.

106 - monday

lest we forget that this weekend was NOT a contest to see how many hours of pooltime or how many pounds of lobster I could get, but was, in fact, all about my bro's birthday: sunday night we went out to fancy pants dinner, monday night we went to fancy pants dinner, AND I made a bad ass ice cream cake that took three days to construct. I'm not sure my brother has ever had a more protracted (or awesome) birthdaystravaganza.

 driving us to the beach for dinner in his brand new jeep!

 matunuck oyster bar for lobster #3 birthday dinner #2. awkward lean because we're on very high bar stools. 

matunuck sunset 

after dinner, we headed home for ice cream cake. I'm an unreasonable perfectionist when it comes to baking, so I was disappointed in the final product. the cake parts were too dry, there was too much cake, and putting the whole thing together frozen meant the cake was still kind of frozen when we ate it. and it took three days to make. next time, if the bro wants ice cream cake, it's coming from the freezer case at the grocery store. fudgy the whale has that market cornered.

oh well, it still looked good! happy birthday, brother!

105 - sunday

friday night, my brother had a "bonfire" (in the grill) with my sister's boyfriend. manly. then he decided he wished to sleep outside, so he dragged his futon from the garage out onto the patio. I admit to feeling a little judgy about it, but it turns out that south beach and las vegas and all those fancy places have daybeds next to their pools for a reason: THEY'RE AWESOME. napping all day in the gorgeous weather, next to the pool? yes, please. 

 we have an extra umbrella for the patio table. extra umbrella for the poolside daybed, I mean. 

or, you know, for bringing in the pool. portable shade.  

 the pup approves of the daybed. it's the ideal combination of his favorite things: being in bed + being outside + sleeping + staying on top of the chipmunks' comings and goings. plus, it's low enough that his little wiener dog legs can easily propel him up or down off the thing. 

while my brother was smart enough to snooze in the shade, I accidentally took a two hour nap in the pool without reapplying sunscreen (I KNOW) and so now I have a horrendous sunburned stripe down the middle of my body. not on the sides, not on the back, just on the stripe of me that wasn't in the water. classy.