Not already …

Somewhere in the last week, I’ve turned around and have more summer behind me than is left before me.  How did that happen? I mean, all I did was clean my house, work 2 weeks in the nursery, paint Natalie’s playroom, visit my parents for a week, clean my house again, celebrate our 4th anniversary, celebrate my husband’s birthday, head down to see my in-laws and you mean to tell me that I only have 2 weeks of break left?  Oy!

I have to say that I thoroughly enjoyed the part of summer that has already passed.  Some of the things that have happened that were fairly unpleasant to think about actually taught me a lot about God’s blessings around me.  For instance, the cancelled flight from Dallas to Wichita that made a one hour layover into a five hour layover, if you had told me the week before that it was going to happen, I would have refused to get on the plane here in Durham.  But turns out, I have an extremely good natured child.  And although I’m not entirely sure how much she can understand (although I know it’s a lot) she seems to take it all in.  How many 18 month olds do you know who didn’t fuss, not once, during a 12 hour traveling day?  The only time she fussed was during landing in Wichita – it was a little bumpy and seemed faster than usual and seemed to hurt her ears a little.  But really?  My daughter is such a blessing – a reflection of simplicity, patience and joy.  She must have gotten that from her father. 

I have also ventured into another cooking adventure: scratch-made Southwestern fare.  Up until this past weekend my adventures in Southwestern food involved canned sauces and packaged cheese.  We had some friends over on Sunday evening for dinner and I decided that the occasion called for scratch-made enchiladas.  After roasting my own tomatillos, chiles, and other things for salsa (including smoking poblanos), making my own filling, and buying and grating my own cheese, I’m going to call my platter of chicken enchiladas with tomatillo salsa a grand success.  It was 95% Tyler Florence’s recipe but added a couple of spices and 2 other kinds of preparing chiles to the salsa, also adjusted the filling recipe a bit.  Nonetheless, it was delicious.  I’ll definitely make that again.  Plus, leftover filling makes great quesadillas the next day!

I am going to miss the summer – taking my daughter swimming every day, cooking and baking with her (chocolate chip and butter cookies), watching TV with her, reading, playing, and so on.  But I am already anticipating the fall, the new group of kids that will be coming to me for another 180 school days, what the class’ personality will be like and what they will learn, and what I will learn from them.  I love the cyclical nature of my job … I do the same thing every year but it starts, and it ends, and the pieces of it are so different.  I wouldn’t want to do anything else.

I am also starting to seriously love running.  Each run is a building block on something I hope to do in November that will be, for me, an ultimate athletic goal.  So very excited about it.  My legs are getting used to it, my lungs are getting used to it, and well, the heat?  Hopefully it won’t get any worse.  I hope.  Something about the breathing, the pounding feet, the music in my ears, it’s great.  I don’t like the sweating part.  It smells.  But the rest of it – the rest of it is great.