Day Off

Last week was a looooooooong and exhausting week in the Simpson office. I won't go into detail, but let's just say that this is NOT a good time for our chief of staff to begin a five week stint on jury duty. Can't the District of Columbia see that we are already doing our civic duty? Apparently not. So, seeing as Congress is in recess this week, I took the day off.

Days off used to be so fun, but ever since we bought a house (happy one year anniversary, house!), they end up filled with all the spill-over projects that we didn't get done over the weekend. Today, for example, I had to go buy new, larger tomato cages, as our garden looks like a tomato jungle. (By the way, re-caging tomato plants is so not fun.) It turns out that the combination of a lot of sunshine and a lot of rain makes tomatoes grow. A lot. Remember when the tomato plants looked like this? Well, check out the 'maters now:

For the record, I'm excited about the whole garden (well, except the arugula, which we cannot eat fast enough. Note to self: Do NOT plant arugula next year, it is NOT good for every meal.). The zucchini is lovely and overtaking the yard (it's so gargantuan, Jason is starting to get nervous), little bell peppers are hanging on the plant, and the beans are thriving. But the truth is that I'm really in it for the tomatoes. We had our first tomato harvest (of one) last night, and it was deelish. I'm pretty excited to be buried in tomatoes in August.

In other news, Jason returned Saturday from China. I will pester him until he blogs, but for now here are some pictures. And, after nagging my mom via email for five days, there are adorable new pictures of Troy up as well. This is my favorite. Dad, who had a run in with the mules and had to have surgery on his bicep last week, is getting pretty good at the one-armed baby rocking.

Baby Troy

I shamelessly stole this picture from Shaanti's blog. She posted a few others, if you care to visit. Troy is the sweetest thing, isn't he? I can't wait to see him with his eyes opened!

Enter Troy

Aunt Shaanti called this morning to let me know she was on her way to the hospital to meet her first nephew. I'd begged her to send me pictures as soon as possible, and she actually went back to get her camera after she forgot it on her way out the door. Thanks! Troy Dylan McAfee made his way into the world at about 8:15 a.m. mountain time. She sent me a phone pic of beautiful baby Troy, with his full head of dark hair and "Jenny's lips." He is absolutely gorgeous. I'll post pictures soon.

I'm sad to think of how big he will be (he's an itty bitty 6 lb 8 oz guy right now) by the time I get to meet him in August. I love my nephews!

Bodleian Reminiscence

Wheeeee! This weekend, Julie, my dear friend from the days of the Land of Eng, dropped by for a visit...for the first time in six years! Last time we saw each other she had just graduated from college and I was giving tours of the Capitol. Now she is a fancy-pants lawyer, and I am...still giving tours of the Capitol. (Okay, that's not completely true, I'm not sure you'd want a Missy Tour these days, I'm a bit rusty.) Needless to say, she brought her scrapbook from Oxford, and I laughed so hard when I realized that the first three or so pages of our scrapbooks were basically identical. And that's nothing to having the exact same pictures all the way through the book. Yeah, we spent a lot of time together there.

Jason, Jules and I slept in after a late-night pick-up and Dulles, then checked out Operation Spy at the Spy Museum. Then we met up with other "local" (aka within about a tank of gas) Oxford folks for dinner. We started at 6 at Mama Ayesha's, then regrouped at our place for strawberry shortcake and tea, and finally closed the door on the last guests at 12:45 a.m...and THEN Jules and Andrea (who stayed over) and I were up until at least after 2. Apparently that is what I do with these people--talk until late at night about very real things.

I don't need to reiterate what I said here and here and here and here about how I feel about getting together with Oxford friends. Let's just say that while I was getting the tea on, I looked over and saw the other six of them gathered around the counter, laughing about pictures in Julie's scrapbook, and it made me very happy. I don't mind being the Monica Gellar of the group if it gets me moments like that.

Jason, Laura's husband John, and Zack's girlfriend Kristina were good sports, as it turned into a major trip down memory lane. We ended the night by plugging in the VCR and watching a home movie I made back in 2000. There were some really funny moments (Vic, Ryan, Mike, and Josh as the Backstreet Boys...Zack's vacuum games...Andrea and Jesse dressed up as Keble College mascots), and some really horrid ones as well (apparently we felt the need to fill the TV void in our lives by doing skits...what?...and please tell me at what point in the semester we all just let ourselves go? We looked rough!). When we left the room after that last all-nighter together, we thought it was goodbye, but last night we had the promise of "the next time."

A Diatribe

Just for the record, I want to point out that it is inappropriate to send your Congressman any of the following:

• Emails with links to YouTube videos;
• Emails peppered with swear words in capital letters; and
• Emails peppered with MISSPELLED swear words in capital letters.

I have been suspecting for the past year or so that email is not the wunderkind we once thought it was, but after arriving at work this morning to 400 emails from mean people cussing out my boss for not drilling for oil in the U.S. (he, of course, supports said drilling), it is official: email sucks. Being able to jot off a one-sentence email and then click "send" within the space of 30 seconds of irrational anger is not good for society.

Please do me a favor. If you ever feel the need to contact your Congressman (and I am not discouraging you from doing so), sit yourself down and write a letter with good old-fashioned paper and pen, then take the time to fold it, address an envelope, and lick a stamp. In doing so, you may actually think through what you are writing, and our country may be a better place as a result.

End of diatribe. Or, to quote Dwight Shrute, "Reshun."

Strawberry Hunting

Ah, summer. It's possible that I have never loved you more. I love sunny breakfasts on the deck and coaxing to life the flowers I planted in the early morning before it got too humid to breathe. I love sunscreen and the way it protects my whole body, except that one strip of skin on my lower back that I ignorantly assumed was covered by my shirt. I love dusky weekend walks, ice cream cone in hand, and fireflies winking greetings to me.

And I love strawberries. Check out this lovely pile of red beauties. After church yesterday, we participated in the "pick your own" ritual we've tried to embrace over the past few years. I'm getting more serious about it these days, threatening to freeze bags of green beans and can tomatoes. Wild. It turns out that Strawberry picking is not really that fun. But strawberries are really tasty. We actually froze a bunch of these berries--we have six little strawberry plants in our garden, so we'll depend on them for fresh strawberries this summer.

We had a wonderful weekend of...weekend-ness. I miss it already. On Friday we ate puttanesca at a candle-lit table outside in Shirlington (it is the summer of seeing how many times I can eat puttanesca al fresco) and walked around the neighborhood, marveling at how much it has changed since we spent our weekends there with SMC. It was lovely, really. And I engaged in some hard-core weeding on Saturday--who knew that weeding could be, well, almost enjoyable when it is your own flower bed? I certainly would not have believed it 18 years ago when I was pulling pigweed out of my parents' strawberry patch. We ended Saturday night with a low-key viewing of "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade" in the cool basement, waiting for a batch of brownies to bake. Why, oh why do I have to be at work today?

Summer

We have a rather long list of things we want to do this summer, including:

* lots of bike riding

* strawberry picking

* yard sale-ing

* going to the beach

Today we will be doing...none of the above. The heat index is 105 F, and when we got home from the farmers market this morning we actually dreaded getting out of the air-conditioned car. So, goodbye, weeding the flower beds and reading on the deck! Hello, any project that puts us in the cool basement.

Yesterday Jason returned from Geneva, where he attended a conference of countries involved in the Dafur peace process. We are awesome (read: not awesome) at planning work trips at the same time. Meanwhile, I ate leftover cashew chicken curry three nights in a row and watched tornado warnings on the news. We have an intern in our office from Scotland, and on Wednesday, when our emergency ennuciators went off with tornado warnings, he said, "This country is so exciting!" I wish I had a quote book, I can tell it's going to be a funny summer.

Anyway, our garden is looking lovely, even though the cucumber leaves are drooping in the heat and the birds have found the one red strawberry. One of my favorite summer smells is the way my hands smell like tomato plant after I pick tomatoes, so I braved the heat to get a picture of our five tomato plants. I intend to be smelling tomato plant on my hands a lot!

I planted five zucchini seeds with the intent of thinning them down to one nice hardy plant, which would provide plenty of zucchini for a family of two, but the three that sprouted are so beautiful that I just couldn't stand to pull two of them out. So if you like zucchini, just come to the roadside stand on 5th Rd sometime mid-July. Otherwise, expect to find a bag of zucchini tied to the handle of your front door...

Getting Ready for Troy

While Jason headed to Ohio to celebrate Grammy's birthday with the rest of the Small family, I flew even farther west to do some work and celebrate the coming arrival of Nephew Number Two. Casey and Kim were in town for a wedding over Memorial Day weekend, so on Monday we had a BBQ, played a rousing game of croquet, and all sat around watching Cole be adorable.

On Tuesday night Shaanti, Kim, and I hosted a gi-normous baby shower for Jenny, who looks like the cutest girl who ever swallowed a beach ball. Just three more weeks or so before Troy makes his debut! It was supposed to be out in Shaanti's yard, but about two hours before things got underway, the sky literally began to fall. Mom and I actually sat in the car for a few minutes, afraid to go out in the downpour. But after moving Shaanti's living room furniture around and drying off stacks of chairs and tables, the shower was great fun, and we felt sort of proud of ourselves for pulling it off.
And, um, I LOVE nephews. I know it's not possible, but Cole gets cuter every time I see him. Not only does he now say things like, "Mimi, come play" (go ahead, try to turn down that command), but he had his first mule ride on Friday and announced (with a little prompting from Papa), "I'm a buckeroo!" It will be so fun to have a soft, brand-new baby Troy AND a bouncing Cole at the same time!
It was a great week--the only thing missing was Jason. :( I got to spend a little time with friends like Alison and Laura and her family, and, even with all the work and a day-trip to Twin Falls, I enjoyed laid-back family time. Dad and I went out to the driving range to kick off my summer project of learning how to golf, and we went over to Jenny and Chad's to check out Troy's new room in all its utter cuteness. Yay.

Wedding on the Farm

Rob and Taiya's Wedding
Originally uploaded by jmsmall2005.

Last Saturday we drove out west to Saranam Farm to participate in Rob and Taiya's wedding. It was the first Quaker-style wedding we'd ever attended, and it was beautiful, simple, and very personal. How fun to celebrate with them on the top of the hill as they exchanged vows! We were very satisfied to watch Rob and Taiya, who have a lovely relationship, seal the deal, so to speak.

(But my favorite was when the bride, in her wedding dress, hopped the fence to join us at the reception!)