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Eating Lately: More greens than I should (my GI doctor told me to lay off ’em, but I can’t help myself) and equal weights of fresh produce and popcicles/ice cream. Apparently, I seem to go through cycles—some days, all I want is to eat me some chicken, veggies, and fruit, and other days all I want is burgers, shakes, and homemade chocolate chip cookies. Good thing I lost all the weight I was planning to BEFORE summer hit, right?
Watching Lately: Seasons 1-6 of Big Bang Theory on DVD and a chick flick about every other day. I tried getting into The Bachelorette a few weeks back (just so I had something to talk about with people who actually watch current shows), but gave up after two or three episodes. I just couldn’t take it anymore.
Doing Lately: More days than not for the past week, I’ve been trekking over to our garden and trying to get on top of the mass of weeds that threatens weekly to overtake all our plants. And although I come home with stained palms and dirty fingernails (because I’ve always avoided wearing gardening gloves if I can help it), I have still found a strange satisfaction from my daily efforts in the dirt. Tonight, Matt and I are planning a “boring date” to the garden to hopefully finish up the rest of the heavy-duty weeding so we’ll just have to worry about rough maintenance from this time forward.
Growing Lately: Our beans (pictured below) are growing like mad and have produced tiny, mauve-colored buds in just the past week. A few of our tomato plants also have little green tomatoes, and we have one single tiny green pepper on one of our six plants. We have eaten a total of 5 strawberries from our own garden, and our potato plants look like a massive carpet of green lace. We’re still waiting for the watermelon, cantaloupe, and cucumber plants to start doing something. I swear they’re hardly bigger than they were a month ago. And the way the corn is sprouting up, you’d think it was a competition or something.
Photographing Lately: a bridal session last weekend, our trip to Minnetonka Caves yesterday, and random locations around where my photography class is held. I’m also shooting my first wedding tomorrow (eek!) and am more than a bit apprehensive about the whole thing.
Reading Lately: The second book in the Divergent series. A book by The Minimalists called Minimalism: Live a Meaningful Life. All the magazines that are finally getting forwarded from our old address.
Unpacking Lately: Honestly? Not much. After the initial frenzy of the first week of moving here, when I was motivated to find everything I really needed, I haven’t really touched the boxes still lying in every room of the house. Perhaps it’s a sign that I could just get rid of a lot of them?
Running Lately: Most weeks, I run just over ten miles a week (3 sessions X 3.5 miles/apiece), which, although it’s significantly less than what I was doing to prepare for my half, has been a pretty good “maintenance” plan for me. Today I inadvertently found myself right in the middle of a race while out on my morning run, inconveniently running against the tide of racers. Many course officials kept telling me to turn around, and I even came across a cousin of mine, who I had no idea would be up in Logan for the race. (It was one of those moments where you’re both (literally) running away from each other, looking over your shoulders, and waving and shouting at each other.) Small world.
Basically, life lately has been a combination of ease and voluntary work (mostly photography-related, although I did suffer through a teaching conference in Ogden last week). Some days I find myself with a lot more motivation to be “productive” than other days, but all in all, I’m enjoying the chance to pursue things I don’t normally have time to during the school year.
Sometimes I wish I had more motivation to do stuff all the time, but I think a lesson I really need to learn is just how to be tranquil and at ease and enjoy relaxing–I’ve realized recently I have a problem with enjoying “lazy leisure” (such as watching movies or just sitting around not doing much of anything), and I want to be better at enjoying ALL my leisure time.
Is that weird? Do you ever have a hard time relaxing and enjoying leisure time too?
