What Was I Thinking?

Over the weekend, I got it into my head to run the 32nd annual "Four on the Fifth" road race in Chester, Connecticut. Matt and I thought it was a great idea, at first. And then we saw the weather report: heat advisory for the state, 90s all week, humidity, you get the picture. The news showed pics of people headed to the beach, the pool, the cooling centers... Matt wisely expressed doubt, and when I insisted, he admitted his fear that I would collapse of heat stroke.

I figured it would be fine at 10:oo am in the morning. It wasn't supposed to hit 90 until at least 11:00. Foolishly, I didn't really pay close attention to the humidity (which I never really understand anyway), but I did see that the number posted on weather.com was lower than the humidity in Minnesota yesterday, when my friend Robert ran (and finished - kudos, RC!) his first half-marathon. So despite his forewarning that running in this heat was hard, last night I decided to go ahead with it. I ran the Reindeer 5K in 19 degree weather, and I had run 4-5 miles a couple times this year; I could do this. What the hell, right?

What the hell was right. My husband wisely opted out in favor of a trip to the-greatest-ever-pizza-filled Brooklyn. I was sweating before I even started running the first half-mile, which was all in the sun. Then, there was the well-known fact that this road race is difficult: well-known to everyone but me. After the sun-filled first half mile, there was a mile and a half uphill (the elevation map was posted on line...). And, even after hydrating last night and all day, I've had a headache ever since the race finished.

But, Chester is a beautiful little town, which my mom and I had never visited before. On the main street, there are lovely 19th century mill buildings converted to shops and restaurants; a band played for the spectators, and the local coffee shop, The Villager, sold freshly squeezed lemonade and iced hazelnut coffee, my mother's favorite. All along the route, families hooked up their sprinklers and hoses to cool us down when we ran by. Little children cheered us on and held their hands out for high fives. Teenage volunteers passed out water cups every half mile or so. And best of all, I finished, not with the best of times (47:25), but considering it was my longest race so far and I never stopped jogging on those hellish hills, I was satisfied.

I'm here in Connecticut every 4th of July. I thought maybe I could do this every year, thinking that maybe it won't be as hot next year and that Matt and I can train for the hills a little bit, which I should do anyway. But then I met a older man who ran the first 30 of these races; he told me that most years, it's hotter.

I think next time I hear that there's a heat advisory on the way, I'll head for the neighbor's pool instead.

*photo credit: my mom

Happy Birthday, Matt!

A Visit Home to Connecticut

My mom thinks that I don't think of her home in Connecticut as my home because I didn't grow up there, and in fact, I've never really lived there, outside of a couple of weeks of college vacation. I don't think of Wallingford as my hometown but I do feel like I am at home when I am at my mom's. She's wrong because I think she confuses the idea of a hometown with truly being at home. It's home because I sleep well there and because I wake up to coffee made for me. It's home because my old toys and books are there, carted lovingly over the years from home to home. But of course, most importantly, my mom's house is Wallingford is home because my mom is there.

My mom and I have routines when I visit, which I think are part of her routine when she's alone, too. We scope out yard sales and consignment shops for bargains; we head to Macy's but skip the rest of the mall. We make coffee and sit outside and look at her garden. We walk around her neighborhood to look for what houses are for sale or we walk the trail at a nearby park. We drive to Wesleyan to check out the changes since I graduated. We visit my grandmother for more coffee. It's routine, possibly bordering on ritual or tradition, and I look forward to each one because my normal routine in Minnesota is hectic and filled with people and kids and work and noise and meetings.

As I get older, I find myself building my own rituals that mirror my mother's. After I found my mom watching Sunday Morning on CBS at the unheard of hour at 8:00 am, I got hooked. I started waking up a little earlier every Sunday and watching it as I read my newspaper and drank coffee. I've tried to carve out more summer time vacation at my own house, planting flowers and tomatoes and enjoying just being home. I scope out the yard sales here, wake up early almost every day to have a little time to myself before the day slips away, and, most obviously, make coffee with milk (not nearly as much as my mom and my sister) every chance I can get.

A Day at the Flea Market

My mom wanted to spend the day at a flea market, Elephant's Trunk, about an hour away from her house. I was all for it even though I have a house full of unpacked boxes back home in Minnesota. My mother, husband, sister, brother, and sister-in-law piled into two cars and headed off for New Milford. We got there kind of late, and, in fact, some dealers were already packing up to go, but there were plenty of interesting things to see.

My mom is usually on the look out for American pottery from the 1900s-1960s or jewelry, and my sister likes to look at "old stuff" like jewelry, records, and music memorabilia. My brother and his wife checked out the books, picking out a 1980s era College Algebra textbook and a discounted hardback novel. Matt, my husband, looked at wooden cigar boxes but didn't like the prices on any he saw; plus he's a little more committed to reducing our possessions than I am. I was looking for wall art and smart relics of pop culture, like pins and posters and coasters.

Although the sun was hot that day, we wandered the aisles, marveling at the prices on the toys we used to play with. Every time we asked about the price of something, the dealer would give us a spiel on why it was valuable even if it seemed like junk. Still, my mom and I found some bargains: she bought 2 Hitchcock chairs for $15 a piece and I found a set of eight 1950s Double-Cola posters to frame in my new kitchen ---

Woods Hole, Massachusetts

I love the ocean, so visiting Cape Cod is always a welcome change from Minnesota. One great spot to visit is Woods Hole, which is a small village at the tip of the elbow of Cape Cod. It's part of Falmouth, the town where my father lives. When I was younger, I had a summer job out here at the Marine Biological Laboratory. I worked in the Embryology labs: I fed drosophila, broke a lot of lab glassware, fetched mail, and made photocopies.

Now I just go to Woods Hole for a cup of coffee and a nice walk or bike ride. On Sunday, we took a walk through town, starting, of course, with an iced latte from Coffee Obsession, my dad's coffee shop of choice in town. We walked down Water Street to a little park with access to a small beach, where we let the dogs run and swim for a bit.

There are docks here for the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institute and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and my dad likes to tell me that the big boat he traveled on across the Atlantic when he was a teenager was parked at these docks.

We headed past the small aquarium where the seals are never out anymore (growing up, they were always there) and headed out to the dock where the fishing boats come in.



I've come here hundreds of times, and I've never seen a boat unloading fish before. On this day, there was a boat filled with conch and a boat filled with sea bass and scup:



After a little gift shop browsing near the drawbridge, we headed home to hit the beach. I love to find perfect spots like Woods Hole (you know my list, Terlingua, Moab...), so having one that I can come back to again and again is something I truly appreciate.

24 Hours in Central New York

Matt and I spent just about 24 hours in North Syracuse, New York visiting his mom this weekend. In that short amount of time, we packed in a pretty good tour of the area. We started at Angotti's for dinner, where Matt ordered the same meal he's been ordering for years: eggplant parmigiana. I had something I have been craving for months, pizza from the east coast:



Matt's family has been going to Angotti's for decades now ever since his uncle found a review of the restaurant in the newspaper. The owners and the staff seem to recognize them each time, and more than once we've run into people Matt and his family know. The hallway entrance is covered with restaurant reviews, Syracuse University memorabilia, and photos of famous people, like Tony Bennett, coming in for some Italian food. I usually resist loving things that other people gush about (e.g., the Beatles or Van Morrison), but I can't help it: I'm hooked, too.

After dinner, we headed out to Onondaga Lake, where there are miles of recreation trails. We just walked for a little while and made plans to come back the next day to ride our bikes. I was pleasantly surprised how many people were out and about both that evening and the next morning. People were rollerblading, shuffle boarding, biking, fishing, picnicking, rowing, and walking...



Hopefully, the amount of activity around the lake will help support efforts to clean it up as it remains seriously polluted.

On Saturday, we addressed another one of my food cravings. In Minnesota, I just can't seem to get a decent salami sub. In Massachusetts, I grew up with Greek pizza shops where you could get grinders piled high with provolone and Genoa salami, toasted in the pizza oven, and drizzled with olive oil. In Minnesota, we have Subway and other chains, but I can't seem to find a good grinder anywhere. In Syracuse, Matt and I turn to Wegmans (yes, the supermarket). I know it isn't a mom & pop sub shop, but I can get this:


After we had lunch, we joined some friends of Matt's mother on a boat trip up the Oneida River to Oneida Lake. I hadn't been on a powerboat in a long time, and I always forget how big the lakes in upstate New York are.



A pretty cool pause on the trip was Lock E23. I can't say I've ever been through a lock before. For those of you who might not know, a lock is a device that allows boats to pass through an area of a river or canal where there is a change in water level. After you enter the lock, the large doors close, and the water level is either lowered or raised depending on the direction you are going. The lock we passed through moved about 7 feet, and I was intrigued by the little tiny plants and the tiny, mostly dead, scorpion-looking bugs clinging to the lock walls. I don't one hundred percent understand when and where a lock is necessary, so I'll refer you to wikipedia if you need more info!



So, for someone itching to get to the ocean all the time, Syracuse turned out to be a perfect place for a break. I didn't expect to spend so much time on or near the lakes, but once again, like I said last summer, it's important to realize what perfect spots there are right where you forget to look for them.

Summer Travels

Well, Matt and I have been feeling kind of cranky because we don't have any exotic destinations planned for this summer. We didn't take any trips over the holidays in 2008, but we did take a big trip to Hawaii in March. That should satisfy most normal people, but I always want more adventure. Alas, there will be no super adventure this summer.

Instead, we are spending time with family and friends. I'm pretty frank with everyone: I don't believe visiting family is the same as vacation. But this year, I spent nearly a year away from the east coast, and I've missed it.

First we are DRIVING with TWO DOGS to Massachusetts and Connecticut to see my family. Driving with the pooches will surely provide some interesting tales to tell, and if it doesn't, all the creatures great and small at my mom's house (3 cats and 3 dogs with my sister and me in town) will surely inspire.

Then (after DRIVING back to Minnesota with TWO DOGS), we are flying to Walt Disney World in Orlando to see Matt's mom and family. Matt's cousin planned the trip and asked for all of us to consider joining her and her family. Now, I haven't been to Disney World since I was 12, and while I am definitely intrigued, I am always a little unsure of traveling in large groups. But, my long simmering desire to return to Journey to Imagination, the Land of Tomorrow, the Pirates of the Caribbean ride, and the Mexican restaurant at Epcot (as well as see family, of course) won out! I'll be stepping on that light-up floor piano and making hand shapes in that needle table before you know it. I have some Disney nostalgia, and seeing how things have or have not changed since the 80s will be fascinating, I'm sure. I'm curious if Land of Tomorrow (or Tomorrow Land?) has changed...

And finally, we are heading out to Portland to see some dear friends who have just recently had a baby! Hopefully, some of my other college compatriots will join us. I've never been to Oregon, but I am thrilled to see D.Baby and knock another state off my list.

So, the summer isn't poised to be full of exotic adventures, and we will definitely be staying state side, but as I write this out, I feel a little guilty for whining and a lot more grateful for the time we'll have to get away from school for a little while, be home, and see the people we miss so much.

An Impromptu Chocolate Cake

On Saturday, I realized suddenly that I couldn't remember ever baking a cake from scratch. I was sure that it would be quite an undertaking, and I thought about making a list of things I'd like to cook someday, a list like my friend Theresa posted on her blog. Later that night, when Matt was out playing frisbee golf with our friend Nate, I was feeling a little restless, and I did not want to do laundry or sort clutter or read a book. I'd had a productive day that included washing the walls, cleaning the kitchen, my own round of frisbee golf, and a three mile jog, so I didn't want to do any work... but I still wanted a little project.

On a whim, I started surfing the Betty Crocker website, thinking I might find an interesting cake recipe, but I was surprised to find out that most of their recipes called for using Betty Crocker cake mix as a base.... Of course they do.

As I searched a little more, I realized that a basic yellow cake recipe actually is pretty basic. It just calls for a few ingredients that I probably could have predicted on my own: flour, baking powder, salt, sugar, shortening or oil, eggs, milk, and vanilla. In fact, everything I needed was already in my kitchen. I found a similarly simple chocolate frosting recipe (confectionery sugar, cocoa, butter, evaporated milk, and vanilla), so I sent Matt to the store for what I was missing for the frosting, and I was on my way.

Even though the recipe and the ingredients were simple, I was still under the impression that this would be complicated. But it wasn't. I didn't even need my KitchenAid mixer. It was easy, and when I tasted my cake batter, I knew it was right.

When I tasted my frosting, I knew that was right, too - but something else happened. In an instant, I felt myself back in my childhood, and I remembered right there my mom's homemade cakes and frosting. I never went around thinking my mom made cakes from scratch when we were kids, but as soon as I tasted that frosting, I knew she did. Maybe I didn't ever even realize what she was doing.

Such a simple little decision I made yesterday, and two great things happened. I realized (once again) that once you just get yourself started, most tasks aren't as daunting as they feel when they are squatting for weeks on end on your to do lists... an important reminder for a master procrastinator.

And, I remembered something great about my mom. I don't have as crystal clear of a memory of my childhood as I wish, but today one taste of homemade chocolate frosting made me remember and realize again how lucky I am.