this is a lot of traveling for a homebody

Last Thursday I went down the shore.  

I was there until Sunday, when I stopped at home to unpack and repack my suitcase for a work trip on Monday morning.  The work trip took me to the Pocono Mountains, and I took advantage of some beautiful hiking trails before and after my seminars.

  The scenery was quite the juxtaposition from the conference, which was at an African themed resort.

I got home on Friday night, and tomorrow morning I leave for a girls trip to Washington D.C. with my mom and sister.  We get back on Thursday and then I round out the month of travel with one more long weekend down the shore.

And then I will come home and never leave again because I am a girl who likes to be home, and after this month, I've almost forgotten my address.

Although I'll admit these trips have been pretty fun, and I've covered all the bases.  Beach, mountains, city, and African safari.  

If only I could arrange to have these views and that gorilla statue at my house.

i've learned my lesson

Due to a surplus of vacation days that have to be used by the end of the month, I had off on Thursday and Friday, so I took advantage of the long weekend and my in-laws' empty beach house and took off Thursday morning for a few days down the shore. 

It was glorious.  I read five books, took a million walks, and ate cheese and crackers for every meal.  

The beach was so breezy that I wore my sweatshirt three out of four days, and on Saturday I even traded in my shorts for a pair of capris.

And that's where I went wrong.

Like a total beach novice, I did not put sunscreen on my lower legs, ankles, and feet because I foolishly figured since 80% of them were covered, I'd be fine.

I was not fine.

After I finished my book, I took a little snooze, and when I woke up my lower legs were burning with the heat of a thousand suns.

I could almost see the heat emanating from them.

I am not kidding when I say I think you could've cracked an egg on my shin and fried it.

When I got back to the house I put on a generous application of aloe and some cold compresses, which is a routine I've repeated regularly over the last 24 hours.  The pain is decreasing but I still can't really get a shoe on, so that's going to make my fancy work conference tomorrow very interesting.

My sister has a twitter account where she posts songs that correspond to her current situation.  

They always make me laugh, so I figured I'd give it a try for my current situation.

Maybe Rod could send me some aloe.

at least my hair looks fantastic

After a full weekend, I went to bed at 11:00 on Sunday night and slept the sleep of angels until I was awakened by an unbelievable noise at 1:14 a.m.  My startled brain obviously jumped to the worst conclusion.  My eyes blinked wide open and I laid there in complete fear for three seconds before I said to Matt, “Did you hear that?”

“Yes, I did,” he said.

Since he’s never one to volunteer any extra information or thoughts, even in the face of a middle-of-the-night terror, I pressed him, “Well, what do you think it sounded like?”

“I think it sounded like someone breaking into our house,” he said very matter of factly.

Let me pause and say I don’t know why someone would break into a house where the owner has an NRA – LIFETIME MEMBER bumper sticker on his F-150 in the driveway, but I don't pretend to understand the thoughts of a burglar.

With that, Matt slid out of bed and prepared to canvas the house, while naturally I stayed under the covers with the numbers 9-1-1 typed into my phone so I could hit the call button immediately if I heard a ruckus.

Matt tiptoed around the second floor, and then I heard the stairs creak as he went downstairs.

He returned a few minutes later and said, “Well, I didn’t see anything.”

“Nothing?!” I said.  “You checked all the doors and windows?  You’re sure?  I can’t just go back to sleep now.  Something made that noise and I have to know what it was.”

“I really don’t know what it could’ve been,” Matt said, “Unless it was your shower thing again.”

He opened the bathroom door, and lo and behold, it was the indeed my shower thing again. 

On the positive side, at least I know Matt is man who doesn’t balk in fear at checking on things that go bump in the night.

However, the heavy duty shower shelf I bought after the April "incident" apparently isn't all that heavy duty after all.  I either need to find some industrial suction cups or an alternate plan to contain my beauty products, because if I don't, that shower caddy is going to get even heavier when I add the hair dye I'm going to need to cover the grays I'm getting from all of these imagined break ins!

keep up the good work, june

Well, the only thing that could've made this weekend better is if it was three days.

Oh wait, thanks to an excess of vacation days that have to be used by the end of the month, it was.

On Friday my sister, my aunt, my cousin, and her baby came over for lunch.  After lunch my sister and I got pedicures and then wandered Target.  I got home just in time to find Matt in the kitchen making homemade pizza, so all in all Saturday and Sunday had a tough act to follow.

On Saturday morning I drank my coffee on the back porch and then we spent the day doing chores and running errands.  Then Matt and I settled in to enjoy the gorgeous evening on the back patio and ended up sitting there for SIX HOURS.  We sat down at 5:00 and didn't come in until 11, and I am not kidding when I say I came incredibly close to bringing my pillow outside and sleeping there.

However, we'd spent the better part of the day finishing our backyard chicken coop and moving a fake hawk statue around the yard to keep the bunnies away from eating the plants in our gardens and I didn't want the neighbors to think we'd completely lost our minds.

Sunday was rainy, but I got to visit Annabelle and made it back home before the worst of the storms arrived.

We sat on the back porch (are you sensing a theme here?) and watched the rain.  There's something you have to love about a summer thunderstorm, and the skies cleared up just in time for a Sunday night walk.

June, so far, so good.

time to buy stock in centrum silver

Matt leaves for the office every morning at 6:30 and typically gets home around 6:00 in the evening. He walks in that door at 6:00 looking every bit as spiffy and pressed and put together as he did when he walked out eleven and a half hours earlier.

I, on the other hand, leave for the office around 8 and by 11:30 my hair is flat, my makeup doesn't look nearly as good as I thought it did when I applied it three hours earlier, and I've gotten a run in my stockings.

I'm very conflicted about the issue of stockings because I know they're so 1993, but I cannot bring myself to put my bare feet in my high heels.

However, when Matt came home from work on Thursday night he didn't look like his normal spiffy self and I could immediately tell that something was wrong.

He walked into the kitchen and solemnly announced his hardship.

He had a stiff neck.

Dinner was just about ready so he VERY GINGERLY took his seat at the table.  He went to great lengths to bring fork all the way up his mouth so as to not bend his neck even a tiny bit, and even had to drink out of a straw.  Halfway through his pork chop there was a noise in the backyard and he turned slowly at his waist and looked off into the yard and said, "What's all that ruckus out there?"

And just like that I felt like my life fast forward about 60 years.

I was sympathetic to Matt's neck pain but when he started dramatically singing an original piece entitled "The Pain, The Suffering, The Agony" his histrionics made me laugh and even he could not keep a straight face.  He threw in a few musical terms and then we started talking about our musical pasts.

He played the saxophone for a few years and I was in the grade school choir.

And believe it or not I remembered quite a few songs from those grade school years, including but not limited to "One Small Step" and "Turn the Lights On!" COMPLETE WITH HAND MOTIONS.

I also remembered every word to a Latin song we sang in second grade at First Holy Communion, which is amazing to me because for the life of my I can't remember to buy milk at the store or the password to my email account, but I know every word to Jubilate Deo Omnis Terra Servite Domino in Laetitia from 20 years ago.

I performed a few grade school choir classics as we loaded the dishwasher.  The motions to One Small Step involved some foot stomping, and I think I stomped a bit too enthusiastically because I'm sorry to say my left foot has not been the same since Thursday night.

On the upside, my internal stockings conflict may be resolved because I think there might be an orthopedic boot in my future.