Backyard Envy

After our whirlwind day on Saturday, our Sunday plans mostly involved some grocery shopping and hanging out at home. As I was browsing the sale flyers (I am my mother's daughter after all) Sunday morning, I commented to Carrie that Target had all kinds of patio furniture on sale. Her response was something along the lines of "Yeah, okay, we'll just move our kitchen table out of the way and turn the kitchen into a patio."

Fast forward to the afternoon, which we spent listening to several of our neighbors enjoying Mother's Day cook-outs on their backyard patios. And then despite earlier trips to Pathmark and Trader Joe's, we found that we didn't have all the ingredients for a brownie recipe we wanted to try, so I went to Pathmark again. Somehow, the potato chips on sale were the last straw of backyard envy, and I resolved that we should do this thing.

So I got home from the store, declared to my amused wife that we were gonna make a patio, and then set about bewildering the cats by moving the table and chairs. Fortunately we've moved and cleaned things enough lately that the cats didn't seem to interpret this as a sign that we were packing up to leave them for a week, which is usually their concern.

At last, behold our patio!

We ate some chips, sipped our sodas, enjoyed our corn dogs for dinner, and topped it off with ice cream bars. Food tastes better on a stick, am I right?

Our patio even included an adjacent "lawn", aka a plastic container of cat grass, of which the cats have eaten very little.

Cricket and Piccadilly pretty much just figured we'd set up our seats to watch the birds outside, just like them.

We haven't gotten around to moving the table back yet, so tonight we also enjoyed our salad and gnocchi in the "great outdoors" of our backyard. What can I say, we're crazy people. Someday we'll have a house and a yard and a patio, but at least for now we're able to crack ourselves up making a fake version!

Blogging Fail

I keep staring at my blog reader and seeing our last post here fade further and further into the past.  It finally switched to "two months."  First the excuse was honeymoon preparation, and then the honeymoon itself, and then... who even knows.  One thing led to another thing, and blogging fell by the wayside.  And now it feels like there should be something monumental to say to get back on the blogging wagon.  But after several weeks of resolving to blog again soon, I guess it really comes down to just doing it. 

Since we last blogged:
*We spent two weeks in Greece and London
*We visited my family in Massachusetts
*We went camping upstate with my college friends
*We rented bikes on Governor's Island
*We rearranged the living room, including purchasing a new bookshelf
*We went to the shore a few times, and tried a new ice cream place
*We (especially Becky) worked way too much
*We pondered life changes, like jobs and apartments and schools, obsessively
*Probably a lot of other not blog worthy events

So, we're all caught up, right? 

Ha.

My mom asked for some honeymoon stories, so hopefully we'll get back to a few of those.

The blogging drought has been accompanied by a picture taking drought.  I'm sure there are a few, but Becky has her camera with her while she's lamey-cake working right now, so I'll give you a few Greece pictures in case you forgot what we look like:

 And this is the two of us plus my college roommates swimming upstate two weeks ago:

Hopefully some of you are still out there, and hopefully it won't be two months until you see us again!

Summer's ending

In some oddly pessamistic way, my summer is really short. I don't really consider it summer until it gets warm enough to swim in the ocean and the kids I work with finish school, which pretty much means the end of June. But now I find myself prematurely declaring summer over when Becky's summer hours end and her kids start coming back for the fall, despite the fact that NYC public school kids still have three weeks left.

And once again, I don't feel ready for the season change. I'm never ready for the heat of summer to start, and now I'm not ready for it to go. The past week or so I've started to notice the sun setting as I finish a late visit for work. Soon those late visits will end in total darkness, and after that dusk will be falling even on the miraculous days I make it out on time.

But even with a few weeks technically left, I'm happy to reflect that it has been a really nice summer. We've taken small steps into doing more fun stuff, eating better, keeping our house cleaner, and generally being a bit more like the people we want to be. Theoretically that was the theme when Becky started this blog, but I think only a small portion of it has really been reflected here. I'm always preaching to clients to recognize and celebrate the small positive changes, because that tends to be how positive change realistically comes. In my own life though, its still easy to get caught up in the vegetables I didn't eat yet, the weight I didn't lose yet, the dishes that are still sitting in the sink, and the money I didn't save.

And now of course I want to rest on my laurels and enjoy the rest of the summer at the beach and camping and eating outdoors. But instead its time to focus furiously on planning for the next steps.