A Reprieve

I spent the whole week working (60+ hours so far...) and trying to resign myself to the fact that we would be in session and debating the appropriations bill we've been writing all day Saturday and Sunday. The combo of working until 11 pm or midnight two days in a row and no light at the end of the tunnel left me on the verge of tears most of Thursday. Then, suddenly, the light reappeared! They pulled our bill from the schedule! I am sitting here in cutoffs instead of on the House floor in a suit! Praise the Lord!

(Have I ever mentioned that the unpredictability of the schedule is the thing I hate most about my job? It is. This week is an absolute case in point.)

This was already supposed to be the first free weekend of the entire summer (we even put off Harry Potter--again--in order to have a weekend of nothing), but the sudden reprieve from work has made this weekend feel sort of magical. I woke up with a raging post-work headache, and even that hasn't put a damper on things. We've already done so many lovely things (though we have not, incidentally, laid on the hammock outside, since it is seriously a million degrees outside, but that is how today feels), like:

* Sleeping in until 10. Jason also had a crazy week, what with four African presidents in town (he complained that he had ceased being a policy person and become an event planner), so we fell asleep early last night and racked up double-digit hours of sleep. Awe.some.

* Going to the farmer's market for the first time in weeks. I love how much the market changes after even a week's absence, from greens and strawberries to peaches and piles and piles of tomatoes.

* Roasting some of those tomatoes for this. I think Andrea linked it on her blog, what, four, five years ago? I'm finally getting around to it. Between the market and our garden, we have our own pile of tomatoes to work through. Yay!

* Sewing projects in the cool basement. Mom dug me out of my sewing backlog when she was last here, and it turns out I don't hate sewing after all! Thinking about hemming a couple of skirts and giving them new life, hmm.

* Trying out this restaurant. So happy we didn't have to cancel our reservations. It's been far too long since it's been just Jason and me on a weekend, and even longer since we wandered in to DC for dinner.

* Painting my toenails, changing the sheets, going to the groc, cutting new flowers for the kitchen, mopping the kitchen floor, and sitting on the couch with a book--all things I didn't think would happen until mid-August.

See? Such a nice day. And there's this lovely little rumor going around that, rather than staying in session an extra week in August (I will quit), we may just give into our exhaustion and start recess immediately once the debt ceiling crisis is finally fixed. I'm not holding my breath, but still...

Sad.

The worst part of this summer (and that is saying a lot, since tonight is the first night all week when I got home while it was still light outside...or still the same day...) is that Steven, Amy, and Hudson have moved to North Carolina. Boo. I have vacillated between resignation and despair since they told us in mid-May. I am so sad to lose these dear friends of ours--not only are the Kings some of our closest friends here friendship-wise, but until Tuesday they have literally been our closest friends. Like, same zip code. Five minutes away (which, in this area, means practically next door). Call them at 11:30 p.m. when you have to go the emergency room. I hated changing their address in our list today. We will SO miss them.

We have had a long summer of goodbye, between the last book club, the last dinner with the Gambills, the last Sunday school class and all. Luckily they are coming to Idaho with us for Labor Day (yay!), so I can just pretend they went on a long vacation...for now...

A Grown-Up Party

Amy turned 30 last week (finally!), so we celebrated in style by throwing her a fancy-dinner-surprise party last Saturday night. Mmm, it was so perfect--weather was delightful (as opposed to the heat dome we're living under now), the table looked just as I imagined it should, the yard looked just right, the food was delicious, and Amy, of course, was the belle of the ball.


Our menu included:

• Grilled-peach pork loin
• Mint-sugared fruit salad
• Rosemary roasted potatoes
• Green beans with cherry tomatoes
• Tomato and peach salad
• Broccoli salad
• Rolls
• Mint iced tea
• White cake with peach buttercream frosting
  

So delish.




All the girls pitched in to the point where I felt like I had the lightest load to carry. Jason and I basically set up the lights (memories of wedding time!) and watched it all come together!




Being in our thirties is surprisingly nice, and it seemed appropriate to celebrate Amy's milestone with a grown-up, fancy dinner--with her grown-up, fancy friends. :)

Fishing

I am overwhelmed with the urge to go fishing. My coworker Laurel just got back from a float trip on the Middle Fork, and when she was telling me about how she caught so many fish she had to take a few hours off to give herself a break, I wanted to whimper. Any commercial for Nature Valley granola bars (particularly the one where the couple is watching the sun rise on the mountain side) makes me sigh.

I want to stand in the middle of a stream where it is perfectly quiet except for the sound of the water and feel my heartbeat slow to the rhythm of my fly rod moving back and forth, back and forth, "Missy's-my-name, and-fishing's-my-game." I want to not move from that place until it is time to go back and sit by the fire and drink hot chocolate and watch the stars come up. I want to be still, even if I don't catch a single fish.

Clearly I am in need of an August.

Wizarding Fun

I am not at the midnight showing of the final Harry Potter movie tonight. I want to be, but, as Casey so eloquently put it, "I am not 16 anymore...or, really, I have a job now." My coworkers will certainly thank me tomorrow for not coming in with two hours of sleep under my belt, but, well, I'm still a little sad.



To make up for the fact that we literally can't figure out when we're going to see the movie (!!!), we had a little wizarding fun last weekend to get ourselves prepared. We went over to Kevin and Missy's to watch Deathly Hallows Part One, and Missy put together a spread worthy of the Three Broomsticks--pumpkin pasties, Fizzing Whizbies, cockroach clusters, Polyjuice Potion, and of course, Bertie's Every Flavor Beans.




And we donned lightening bolt scars. And Missy wore her wizarding robes (never wished so much that I'd swiped that Oxford robe that we wore to the dining hall). And I almost brought my Nimbus 2000 but Jason said he wouldn't come if I did that. Good times had by all (even Jason, believe it or not).

Boom!

I have this picture (which, of course, is not digital and therefore not postable) from nine years ago of Jason and me watching fireworks on the National Mall. We are there with a crowd of new friends, we had just met a week or two before, and it was the first time we had gone downtown for the fireworks. It was also the last time, until this year.


Luckily, this year we didn't have to stake out a spot in the scorching heat for hours or walk home afterward (that year, 2002, it was 96 degrees outside when Krystal, Amanda (who was visiting), and I got home at midnight. Um, yikes.). This time we had connections. This time we got invited to watch the fireworks on the balcony outside the Secretary of Interior's office, with Secretary Salazar and a hundred or so "close friends." MJ got to come too, which made it even more fun. After months of feeling fizzled out, it was nice to have something pleasant come of all this work!


The fireworks were AMAZING! We were literally right there--they were going off in our faces, and we could feel them in our throats. When the finale started, we felt pinned to the wall, as though we were being shot at. It was unbelievably awesome. That is definitely how I like to do the downtown fireworks!

Friends for the Fourth

Patrick, Kim, and Katie--Jason's good friends from his grad school days--joined us for the Fourth this year, along with Katie's boyfriend James. Such fun. These guys have always made me feel so welcome and part of the gang, and I absolutely love spending time with them.


We spent Saturday in DC at Eastern Market and hanging out at the Smithsonian Folklife Festival, before our water ran out and we needed ice cream desperately and came home. The basement was nice and cool, and we watched The Young Victoria before eating dinner and taking a nighttime tour of the monuments.


Sunday we went to church and then had brunch at the Carlyle before packing up a picnic and staking out a lawn seat at Wolf Trap for Mamma Mia! Loved it. By the end there was singing and dancing in the grass as well as on stage.


Most of the crew had to leave early Monday morning to get back up to New England in time for work, but we squeezed out every minute we could. We're already looking forward to the next time!

Lately

Yowzahs. Are we ever behind on the blog or what? Here we are tapping on the door of July, and I still feel like we're in mid-May somewhere, imagining all the things we are going to do with our summer weekends and evenings. Today? Today we know what we are doing with each and every weekend--we are having friends in town, watching the fireworks at the Department of the Interior, going to book club, making butterbeer for a Harry Potter 7 Part 1 viewing party, celebrating birthdays, saying goodbye to the Kings and squeezing in every last drop of time with them that we can, taking our bill to the floor, and then finally, finally glorying in the reward that is August recess.

Lately we've:
* Finally, finally gone to see Wicked, which we loved. Loved-loved.


* Enjoyed a visit from George and Lynda, where we:
...ate fondue...


...took an afternoon cruise on the Potomac...


...had lunch in the dining room at the State Department...


...and celebrated the very good news that Lynda, who recently had two surgeries after doctors found cancer, just got her lab results back which indicated that there is NO cancer there anymore! Such an answer to prayer! The doctor still wanted to do chemo just to make sure it never comes back, so she started that this week.

* Found baby bunnies in our garden. I feel very uncomfortable about this. They are uber-adorable and so tiny and new...but rabbits like to devour vegetable gardens and are roundly considered pests around here. Eek.


* Got blackberries in our CSA this week and made awesome blackberry pancakes.

* Worked. A lot. I'm starting to feel unreasonably envious of people with normal jobs. We are tired all the time. Even during recess (this week) I feel like I am about to start a race when I step out of my car to go into the office--a race between my too-long to-do list and the limited hours in the day. I went to a stress management seminar specifically for LDs yesterday, and when people had to start sharing about what stresses them out, the room got palpably tense. Our appropriations bill is scheduled to start moving through the process next week, and oh, I can't wait until it is done and I can see if there really is life on the other side...

Okay, see, that wasn't so hard! At the rate we've been going here, you would think writing on the blog is a daunting task! Perhaps July will offer us a fresh start. (ha.)

Of Ferries and Starbucks and Tea on the High

Once upon a time we went on vacation.

And then, unfortunately, we came home...where work immediately started spinning out of control, we had no groceries for days, we couldn't fall asleep at night or wake up in the morning, and it took me nearly a month just to look through our pictures on the computer to figure out what to tell you about.

It was worth it, though, I promise.

We’re not really sure why we decided to go to Seattle/the Pacific Northwest on our vacation this year, except that it turns out we have a lot of good friends there—one in particular, Krystal, who we suddenly realized we must. go. see. before she moves to Portugal for the foreseeable future (where, of course, we will have to go see her again). Plus, I had this inexplicable desire to rehabilitate Seattle in the eyes of Jason, who wasn’t terribly impressed when we spent a few hours there a few years ago (understandably. It was cold, we parked in a sketchy neighborhood, and let’s face it, we were there for a funeral).

Seattle in June was much more fun, though honestly we didn’t spend much time actually in Seattle. We had breakfast with my K-12 friend Janae and her two youngest (and kicked ourselves for forgetting to take pictures), had coffee at a Starbucks conception store, where they don’t dress in green and do serve wine, and then walked around the pier area for a few minutes before catching a ferry to Bainbridge Island.

Let me pause for just a moment to say a word about Krystal, who is one of my favorite people in the whole world. Since this blog is all post-marriage, you don’t get to know her very well, but she played the very significant role in my life of being the friend in my life when I met Jason. In fact, she met Jason first—and when she decided we needed to go to the Starbucks conception store because she thought it would be a good story for Jason to tell later, I laughed out loud, because she was spot on. She joined us on vacation, and we had such a good time (and laughed a lot). I feel so lucky to be her friend I could just pinch myself.

Anyway, on Bainbridge Island the most dramatic section of our vacation started when we got in the car after lunch, right on time according to our schedule that said it would take 90 minutes to get the ferry to Victoria, BC…and the GPS announced that it would take two hours. I feel like that story is probably better in person, but let’s just say that Jason still twitches and jumps into sprinting position every time he hears a ferry horn blow.

We did make it to Victoria as planned, where the weather was delightful and we stayed in a great suite with its own kitchen and made elaborate breakfasts every morning (dragon fruit was on the menu, just because).

We spent a good part of the first full day at Buchart Gardens, which was absolutely lovely—spring has come really late to the Northwest, so while it was 95 degrees here, the tulips were still out in the gardens and we were perfectly comfortable in jeans. So nice. That night we ate at a fantastic French restaurant, Bon Rouge, where everything was perfect.

Thursday dawned a little cloudy, but we still rented bikes and took a ride along the coast, and by the time we got to our turnaround point the sun was out again. Such a nice way to spend the morning.

Thursday afternoon was my highlight—High Tea at the Empress Hotel. Everyone who knew we were going to Victoria said that I of all people had to do this one thing there, so we did. I think both Jason and I were very glad to have Krystal with us—she and I could get delighted together, and he could enjoy his tea and scones…and sleep…in peace.

Our nice walk back to the hotel involved peeking into a few pubs to see how the Canucks hockey game in the Stanley Cup play-offs was progressing (not good) and an attempt to find some other weird fruit for breakfast the next day (we settled on...chocolate croissants).

Friday we ferried back to Port Angelos and drove down to drop Krystal back off at the ferry to Seattle, then drove south to Olympia, where we got to see Telfer, Andrea, and Cate again and meet Baby Jane. See what a fun week of hanging out with friends we had? We love to eat out with Telfer and Andrea, who love food like we do and have introduced us to some of our best restaurant experiences, and Acqua Via didn’t disappoint. The next morning Andrea took us to their fabulous farmer’s market, for coffee (where Jason, of course, told all about the Starbucks concept store), and for a walk along the waterfront. In the afternoon Andrea took me to one of her favorite shops, Compass Rose. I've been wishing they had a DC outpost ever since. We had such a good time with them, as always.

The only downside to a trip to the west coast is the horrific time change, accompanied, of course, by a red eye flight. We got back at about 10 am Sunday morning and went promptly to bed until 4 pm. I honestly think it is harder to adjust to this change than flying home from Europe.

I notice as I read back here that I’ve used the word “nice” to describe a lot of things on this trip, and, looking back, that seems about perfect. It was a vacation for drinking hot beverages, walking slowly, and enjoying really great conversation, which is just what we needed.