Weedy Post

 This week was hot and dry with triple digit temperatures more than twice, but somehow the weeds kept growing, while our vast backyard grass keeps looking crispy-er. The weeds always know when I am away from home, because they grow fastest when I'm gone. During my recent 3 week absence, for example, an alarming quantity of thick noxious weeds popped up all around the borders of our front yard and driveway. I sacrificed body and soul to pull those evil thick tormentors: on Monday, I sweated and weeded for over two and a half hours. That massive effort thrashed my muscles after my 3 week vacation from yardwork, and I was sore for the rest of the week.

Cue the battle cry!

For me, this week was an interesting limbo-land of adjusting back to regular summer life after my time away from home. My time away was such a wonderful change of pace that nothing I did when I got home felt normal or mundane. I was insanely productive because I felt so gung-ho about all of my normal activities! If you ask me, that's what a vacation is supposed to do! I still felt pretty tired because I never sleep as well when I'm away from my very own bed, but all other systems were inspired and motivated. I felt so good, I went all out on various projects for the first half of the week and then hit a wall and felt so exhausted by Thursday and Friday. 

Jeff had one of his bouts with his autonomic nervous system condition this week, where his vagus nerve got inflamed or irritated. As usual, the symptoms ran up and down the vagus nerve line: Jeff felt off on Saturday (July 11th), and things really got started with a migraine on Sunday, then progressed to dizzy vertigo on Monday and Tuesday, moving into gastric discomfort on Tuesday evening and Wednesday before it reached his lower digestive tract and finally subsided on Friday. 

Jeff felt ok enough to run with the XC team on Monday, but then barely made it through his shower and breakfast after that. He didn't manage to run again until Thursday. A Google search showed that migraines are very connected to dysautonomia, and only the standard migraine coping methods apply. So there's nothing new or special about any of this. It probably wasn't triggered by anything. There's no telling how long it will take to go away. Cue all the hopeless helpless feelings of dealing with a chronic condition. It was such a relief when Jeff felt better on Friday! This condition is so crazy, because the negative symptoms come on pretty quickly and then leave about as suddenly as they came. Once it was over, I felt extra happy to have my REAL husband back, because I miss him when he's not feeling well, since he's not himself. He felt good enough to run the road race we signed up for this weekend!

On Saturday, we ran the Shoreline 10k in the Tri Cities, and like every 10k, it was another doozy. I felt my accumulated not great sleep while I ran that grueling race. But I still managed to run the course 26 seconds faster than I did last year! My friend Liz beat me by 90 seconds, even though she was coming off of a 6 month long injury and only started running a month ago! That was humbling! But I was happy for her and also happy with my effort. Here are our results:

Jeff: 39:30

Jay 41:15

Shaina 45:12

Rose 56:21 (8.5 minutes faster than last year! Iron supplement for the win!)

Amber ran the 2 mile in 16:00

We got Krispy Kreme donuts afterwards and watched the video of Josh Kerr breaking the world record in the mile on Jeff's phone while we ate sweet sugary donuts in the shop.

It seems like our blackberries have been on the verge of ripening for longer than usual. I keep trying to pick some, but only a few have been sweet and ripe. 

Of course, all of the red berries are unripe blackberries, so we have a bit more time to wait. We're about to finish our last jar of jam that I made last year, so I'm ready for the berries to be ripe!

I "only" have four articles of clothing from REI, but I felt like a brand ambassador wearing the logo top and bottom one day this week.

A very red sunset on Thursday night--it fit the fiery heat that was blazing out there.

Our unruly blackberries dominated my photography this week, haha. I kept trying to pick sweet berries and failing!

On Friday I realized that I had not taken a single picture of my family, so I snuck around and took one picture per kid, doing whatever they were doing at that moment. Jay was on his phone.

Rose was on her phone, holding up a mattress while Amber vacuumed the basement. (That's Jeff in the background--he moves his computer to the basement every summer so he can stay cool.)

I caught Amber as she went upstairs to put the vacuum away.

Rose, Amber, and I tried on my old prom dress from 2003. It was quite snug, it smelled funny, and it was shorter and SO much itchier than I remember it being.

Shoreline 10k post race picture! We couldn't find two of our other teammates who also raced, so we took a quick selfie before heading off to DONUTS. That's my tenacious, FAST friend Liz and her daughter Bethany on the far left.

Our dozen: Bethany came with us and it was so helpful having a 6th person to share the dozen donuts. Usually when it's just the 5 of us, those last 2 donuts are much disputed. Krispy Kreme makes a decadent apple fritter.

Rose and I bought race t-shirts from the trunk of the race director's car right before we left.

Jay grew out his facial hair for 3 weeks to see how long it would get. I gave him a haircut this morning and he shaved so he can be clean cut for FSY this week.

Pre-family prayer selfie!