[this is true love]

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My dear, beloved, kick-ass friends were married today. I have no words to describe how happy I am for them, and how absolutely BEAUTIFUL they look.

I am honored to call you both my friends.

Here's to you on your special day.

Aloha,

xoxo

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My brother and his family (his wife is Vox-er Jean) came east for vacation in July. I got to go see them for an afternoon in a park.

My nephew, Frank, showing one of his many talents. He also plays piano, trumpet, and is taking up trombone.

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My neice, Sarah. Jean blogged about her pretty purple hair last month. This is what it looked like after too much exposure to the sun and chlorine. I love it like this!

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Nephew #2, Logan. We look like twins in our matching JMU windbreakers. It was raining like crazy which is why we also look like drowned rats.

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The twins, Langdon & Trevor. This is one of the very few moments they were both stationary and together long enough to get a picture.

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My brother & Jean...

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We celebrated my brother's birthday while we were all together. TODAY is his actual birthday. Happy birthday, Kev! Frank made the origami flowers on the cake.

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The highlight of the day was the recycled tire playground. It was awesome! So many fun things...

A giant fish piano...

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Lots of swings and things to climb on...

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But the best part was a zip line. Everyone rode it, even the babies. It was a hoot.

My niece, Marin.

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Even though it looks like my brother is doing a lot of helping, it was just the timing of the photo. The twins both rode it all by themselves a bunch of times.

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Finally, two videos for your viewing pleasure. The first is called "Frank Goes Flying". Things got a bit rambunctious on the tire swing. Please notice my teeny tiny niece and nephew down in the center of the tires. Also please notice my much bigger and stronger older niece and nephew on the corners of the swing. Please notice the violence with which Frank goes flying. Oh yes, people got hurt, we just didn't get those on tape...

Frank goes flying

And last, my personal favorite. We managed to convince my mom to try the zip line. Hee hee. Sorry, mom. You know I love you!

Mom zips two feet

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yay dumb ass new rules just got passed for part time people so I'm being forced to work on the days I have classes so it's either you work and dont go to school or go to school and dont work.. yay... I swear one day I'll have my revenge on that store.. buy them out and then burn it to the ground 

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Did you go to summer camp? What is your favorite memory/story? If you didn't go to camp, do you feel like you missed out?
Submitted by chris.

I went to summer camp in 1975, at Myuna Bay. I seemed to be there a long time. I spent some time in the hospital there, can't remember why.  My dog was bitten by a brown snake while I was there as well. I remember getting a letter from mum telling me about it. He made a full recovery.

I remember it being a lot of fun. There was a lot of trying to sneak into the boys cabins after dark and a lot of boys trying to sneak into the girls showers. Much giggling and a bit of bitching as well.

Here I am throwing a boomerang. This is not something we do a lot of here in australia. Just in case you have visions of us doing it as a national sport or anything. Check out all those white socks. I'm sure the reason I have varicose veins is because of the elastic I wore to keep those socks up. I think our group here were called the Cormorants.

Boomerang

And here are the teachers. They look like a pretty funky group. My teacher is top left. She had a romance with the guy bottom left. The older lady with the glasses was the nurse who looked after me in hospital.

Teachers

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Hooray, I saw him again today!

The Clearwing Hummingbird Moth. I first read of them in a nature magazine (Birds and Blooms, possibly?). Ooo, I thought, that is something I would love to see! A moth the size of a hummingbird! Wings zipping so fast you cannot even see them.

It was probably 5 years before I saw one. Then I was out pulling weeds in my butterfly bushes.....zzzzz...zzzzzzz....I heard a hummingbird. I looked. Nope. No hummingbird! IT WAS HEEM! IT WAS DE MOTHRA!!! :DDDD

How I love to see, in real life, fascintating things that I have read about!

That was 2 years ago. I did not see anymore CHMs. Until about two weeks ago!!!! YAY!....there's another leetle dewd in my gardens. This guy is quite a bit smaller than the first one I saw. But, he is as impressive as ever. He was out happily doing his moth thing tonight while I was watering flowers! Thanks for stopping by, little dewd! :D

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Photos from the North Carolina Museum of Natural Science Museum website   www.naturalsciences.org

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I made these shortbread cookies today, along with the bar variety.  Scooping them off the cookie sheet, I had the weird feeling that I was being stared at by two dozen mutant alien boobies.

Well, what do they look like to YOU?  Hooray for food porn...

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I've always been more emotional than I would like. I feel intensely. Well, everything in my life tends to be on an intense level so it goes hand in hand. My happy is enough to make me tear up with the beauty and wonder of it all. My sad is like an everflowing fountain. I wish that sometimes I could turn these intensities off, but as I've aged I have realized that in many ways I'm lucky. I am thankful. I care (maybe too much sometimes) I am moved. I am full of love for the people in my life. So if the downside is a lot of extra tears that make me feel exhausted the next day, well so be it.

Things that make me cry:

• various family situations like my brother crying when I leave (then I cry), giving a talk at my in-law's 50th anniversary party about how wonderful they are, my sister when she was dealing with her crappy now-ex husband, etc.
  
• Good good good books. Most recently reading a book of one of my writing colleagues about a child growing up after her unborn sister and her father die within two weeks of her sixth birthday. Oh my I bawled, alone (Joe has been up in VT for work) at midnight all over my Kindle.
• Dr. Who episodes have made me cry lately. Poor lonely doctor! All the women in his life have to leave him!
• Other shows make me cry. Battlestar Galactica. Sex in the City. Anything with sappy wrenching relationship issues make me bawl like a baby. Love stories. Unrequited love. Lost love.  Hell, the movie Titanic flattened me...not because it was particularly good but because of the wrenching, the losing, the depth of connection ripped away. The English Patient--god I can barely watch it it just wrecks me so much.
  
• Feeling inadequate or unwanted/needed makes me cry. This may happen more often than people who know me might guess. Stupid, but true.
  
• Phone conversations with old friends, reminiscing about various events. Sometimes I feel so moved that I know
  

  Sweet lover kitty
  people, such incredible, wonderful people, that I'm moved to tears. 
• the fact that if I only pay the minimum (which is a crapload of $$ let me tell you) on my student loans, I won't be finished until I am 65. Kid you not. And I owe FAR LESS than most students graduating today.
• Sometimes watching moving sporting events or award ceremonies...speeches at the Academy Awards, etc. I can't help but feeling intensely when I see other people feeling intensely.
  
• Thinking about how my Romeo is getting old. He's 14 in October. I know that cats can live to 18-20 now but he's starting to behave differently. Nothing dramatic, just more old cat, like how he doesn't run for his cat treats as quickly or energetically as he used to. He's my closest, dearest friend who has been with me for pretty much my entire adult life. I can't bear the thought of being without him. If I even think about it, like now, I start bawling like a baby.
  
• My jobs have made me cry. In better ways now than in my youth (god, I've had some horrific bosses who have made me cry) but for me it all boils down to the connections I have with people. I want to excel. I want to succeed. Mostly now that is the case, but when I fail it does hit me hard. But more often than not, it's when people I have become connected to leave my immediate sphere. Or when I am the one that leaves. When I left my last job, which was, truly, one of the best jobs with one of the best bosses (who also recently left the company) that I have ever had, I shed many tears. I did some cool things with that company but more importantly, I did them because I had the chance to work with wonderful people who helped me and gave me opportunities in which to best help them.

Gah, that's enough for now. How much crying do you think I should do??

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Respecting you was pretty nice while it lasted.

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Let me say here officially that I am NOT going to work out again until Monday.

For the past 6 weeks I have been running 6 days a week training for a 5K, and lifting weights 3 days a week, and we aren't talking about little pink Barbie weights either, we're talking SERIOUS Iron.

I woke up this morning with the full intention of going over to my gym and hitting it again, but my body said to me,

"Bitch, just think about getting out of this bed and I'll make you fall off that treadmill, then you'll have the BAD kind of rug-burn; now lay the hell down and have a donut or something sugary and chill out!!"

So I listened to my body and had a bowl of Lucky Charms for breakfast instead of my usual protein shake and egg whites. OMG I think that was the best damn bowl of cereal on the PLANET!! I swear they put Crack in Lucky Charms...I felt like running around in circles for about two hours after eating that...must have been all the sugar. *(No wonder my kids act like wild monkeys!)

I will admit, I've been feeling the Burnout coming since Monday but I've been ignoring it and pressing on. This is NOT a good thing. My body is TIRED. I look in the mirror and can TELL that I'm about to hit major BURNOUT as far as the workouts go.

SO- I'm taking a couple of days off. I'm not going to go crazy on the food thing, because I know that would set me back WEEKS of hard work, but I do plan on eating something else besides the same old chicken, brown rice, steamed veggies, protein shake diet I've been eating for the past 6 weeks.

Then on Monday it's right back to the Grindstone. I've got 6 weeks left in my Body For Life Challenge and I'm planning on increasing my running time and speed as well as my weights next week, so I need to rest up before all of that.

So have a good weekend everybody. I'm going to lay around on my getting smaller by the day ass and catch up on the TIVO, have some ice cream and barbecue and hit it all again starting Monday.

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