Naked and Afraid - 3 Days, SOLO

The unthinkable has happened. The never-before-experienced, awe-inspiring incredibleness of it nearly renders me speechless. I have spent the past three days alone. Unaccompanied by a husband or children. That's right: I was all by myself on Sunday, Monday, AND Tuesday.

Here's the background: Jen is on vacation this week and I definitely could not take time off from work to stay home with the boys. Jason's schedule is more forgiving with this kind of thing so he said "Maybe I'll take the boys to Long Island for a few days instead of just sticking around here." I told him it would be cruel to joke about something like that. I'd have the house to myself? He claimed to be serious.

For several days I daydreamed about the coming silence. I would not be responsible for anything or anyone! No diapers! No baths! No unsatisfactory meals or laundry! I could leave the house at the drop of a hat! Like, instantaneously could decide to leave the house and then do it!! This kind of freedom has not been mine in more than 5 years. Sure, Jason and I have had a night or two away, but to be home and alone for more than 2 hours? Not since before Ashton was born, no sir.

So Jason pulled out of the driveway on Sunday morning at 7:45 am, small hands waved out of both windows and I did not know whether to laugh or cry. I wasn't exactly naked and my house is in the suburbs, but I was afraid! Of spending two nights by myself AND of wasting even a single minute of this newfound freedom.

First things first. I drove into the city and met Katie (hi Katie!) in the North End for a walk. She lives there currently, I used to. Sniff. We ducked into a cafe for iced coffees and were barely inside the door when we hit the end of the line. Normally, I simply do not have time for lines. They make my throat close up - I have lost the ability to ever wait patiently in a line because either Jen's meter is running (so to speak), I'm inconveniencing someone, or the longer I am standing there waiting, the more time until I get home. Most moms understand that time is never at a bigger premium than when you have small kids. There is always someplace else to be besides in that line wasting precious minutes.

But today there was not! The word "rush" did not apply to me on this gorgeous morning. So we meandered all around the North End and I got to look back on what an awesome time I had in my 20's (how fitting, haha). Such a fun place to live, seriously. I even made Katie take my picture in front of my old apartment building (125 Salem #11! Woot!).

This was my home when I met so many of my friends and when Jason and I started dating. When I had plenty of time to exercise and go out and shop and do whatever I wanted. It was me for me back then.

Katie and I had a lovely catchup, I enjoyed every minute of it! When we said goodbye around 12:15 pm I was right on schedule (don't think I didn't have one! I had even packed myself a lunch) and tackled all my errands. After my morning of fun, sadly it was time to get ready for them to come home. Yes that's right. I calculated I had about 56 hours left. 16 of those I planned to sleep, 18 more at work including the commute, which left 22. I started to cook.

Cook? HELL yes. I had the chance to actually get ahead on the zillion meals coming my way once school starts. I seized it. Ashton has breakfast in the car 3 days a week when we commute together, so I wanted to get prepared for that as well as stock the freezer. I had picked a bunch of new recipes with all the healthy things, like zucchini, sweet potato, flaxseed meal, almond flour, yogurt, kale and even quinoa. Things that even required me to get out my food processor (which has been in its box since we got married. I've always been very deterred by all the parts and cleaning - too much time. But currently I had plenty of it!). My kitchen looked like this or worse for the better part of the three days.

I made 7 things, all freezable: 

SMOOTHIES

COOKIE DOUGH

BAKED ZITI AND MEAT SAUCE

MINI MEATLOAVES (meatloafs?)

MUFFINS

 MEXICAN CHICKEN (later to be served with rice)

and

CHEESY CHICKEN AND BROCCOLI PASTA

Phew! The freezer was FULL. Side note, isn't this a crazy long carrot??

Those went in the muffins. Anyway, I was BUSY! What else did I do. In no particular order, besides all the cooking, I washed my hair, I went and sat with the designer at Home Depot for our built in cabinets and at Ethan Allen for our new table (next project alert!), I scrubbed my wedding rings (so much gunk!), and spent some time on my eyebrows. The entire house was cleaned and vacuumed. Extra wine happened, more so on Sunday night so I could fall asleep in a big quiet house without imagining someone breaking in to murder me. And of course on Monday and Tuesday I had to work. 

While I was slaving away, the boys were at the beach or jumping in the pool.

They went fishing, ate ice cream twice a day, and didn't take a bath the entire time. Primarily because they never changed out of their bathing suits. They rolled in last night around 8 pm, bubbling and smiling and so excited to tell me all about it. I hadn't really missed them (sorry not sorry, haha) until that moment when they filled the house back up with their chattering and stomping feet. I was glad they were home :)

Naturally Jason was exhausted but they had had such a great few days together I suggested he make this an annual tradition. Looking forward to an end of August "boys' weekend away" will keep me going all year, you have no idea. Only 362 more days ;)

Another year, another blueberry

As the years tick by on this blog, I'm noticing I basically do the same post roughly every 365 days. There are the school posts, the holiday posts, the vacation posts, the woeful winter posts, etc. At this point I could say to myself, hmmm, what month is it? August? And it is a virtual certainty that, besides Ashton's birthday, there's a blueberry picking post in the archives. Yep.

2013 - working hard to fill up the container ;)

2014 - carrying a sweaty baby

2015 - carrying a sweaty toddler

2016 (no longer carrying anyone [choke, sob] - Ashton's smile though, that's something.)

So there we were at Honeypot Hill, again, picking blueberries, again. By the way, with Jackson and Adrian too, again. 

Same activity, different year ;) Honestly nothing happened except we had a super fun day- Honeypot has animals, a great farm stand, a tunnel maze and also a huge hedge maze, which we went into and I admit I started to panic because we couldn't get out! And we could not cut through because the hedges were lined with fencing. We kept looping and looping and finally found an emergency exit. I'm serious. The sign actually said "Emergency Exit". So if you're into that kind of terror, go try it. 

Alex ate his weight in blueberries the second we got to the field. I mean he was shoveling them in at an alarming rate.

I was helping him in the beginning but it was no use. My crop was decimated as soon as I dropped them in his carton. 

Ashton was much more fastidious and after all these years picking, finally grasped the concept of only the big ones and only the blue ones. 

Action shots from the 20 minutes this took:

VICTORIOUS!

Celebratory picnic lunch:

Followed by a trip to Wayland Town Beach to cool off with a swim. Not a bad day :) I tell you, I should rename this blog "My life as a cruise ship director". SO MANY ACTIVITIES! NEVERENDING ACTIVITIES! Come, embark! Our current passengers only complain about the snacks, which I have pledged to improve upon. Join us and please, call me Skipper.

Ahoy.

Summer Vacay 2016

There's been a quite a delay here on this post! We usually take the third or fourth week in July for our family vacation and this year was no exception! However, the house we have rented on Block Island for the past couple of years was not available, plus we just renovated our kitchen which was a sizable chunk of change, so we played it easy. Instead of BI (like in 2013, 2014 and 2015), we headed to Long Island for a week with Grandma, Grandpa, Uncle Chris, Aunt Lizzie and Cousin Owen (aka Jason's family - I mean, they're my family too...you know what I'm saying).

Of course the weather was beautiful and we fell into our vacation routine straight away. Breakfast, pack up the lunches and the car, head to the beach, come home and go in the pool. Whilst floating, agonize over the most important decision of the day which was always "What should I drink right now?" Once that was behind us, the rest of the evening sailed on by.

Ahhh it was perfect. Jason and I got out to do some shopping and on the last night we got all dressed up and went out for dinner. Other than that, I think we were in our bathing suits the whole time!

Here is the part where I cringe though. I use Dropbox religiously and uploaded half of my pictures (ahem, like 200) and then once they were "up", I deleted those 200 photos from my phone to make room for more. (And yes, I deleted the deleted folder.) This is the story of my life. Turns out the Dropbox upload never completed, and I couldn't restart it because I had already deleted the pictures with no way to recover them. So I only have pictures from the second half of the week :( I took some of Jason's though, and here is how things went in general. A week full of wet bathing suits, sunscreen, sand, water, turtles, minnows, fishing, crabs, snails, swimming and shirtless dinners (uh, the kids). Per usual, no award winners, but that's my life haha. Except maybe this thread on Alex's first time boogie-boarding! I die.

[the wave totally flipped him over right after that but he still came out smiling!]

Liz told me one day that there was a (deceased) turtle stuck in the lattice under the deck. Apparently it had tried to crawl through but had gotten stuck and had been there almost a week. I was beside myself, I just kept saying how bad I felt for it and finally, because I could not stop thinking about it, sent Jason in to get the body. Well he poked it and IT MOVED!! It was alive!! We gave it some water and I tried to feed it some lettuce (not interested) and Ashton and Owen had a quick play with it before we set it off into the woods.

I was so happy, I can't even tell you. To be stuck in some lattice, unable to free yourself? What a way to go.

Moving on, in no particular order and not needing an explanation like the turtle picture did. the rest!

How was your week, Alex?

Sailing home :) See you next year, summer vacation!!