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!