2010 Week 26

Does this mean that we’re halfway through the year already?  Yikes.

And don’t think it hasn’t crossed my mind that I might be off by a week here or there… What if I get to December and I’m on week 60 or something?  Will you all play along please?

Our week has been super-swell and ordinary.  I really appreciated your comments on my post in which I gushed on about Michigan and happiness.  I always struggle with how much of my thoughts to publish here… I mean, it is an archive of our lives in some ways, but the publicness of sharing it with the entire interwebs means that sometimes I leave out feelings and just go about describing what happened or how to do something.  In a lot of ways, this is good.  When I first started blogging (5 blogs and 4 years ago), I ranted and raved about this and that which annoyed me.  And this served a purpose – blowing off steam – but I can’t believe it was fun to read, and it may have actually fueled my annoyances rather than letting them go.  I’ve found that focusing on writing about good and happy things makes me aware and in search of other good and happy things.  In as much as this is a journal of our lives and reference for our memories, I don’t really want to create negative, unhappy memories anyways.

In other ways, though, I wonder if I should share more.  I find that I am drawn to read blogs with personality, stories, and maybe even the occasional over-share.  I wonder if not sharing some of our aggravations, struggles, and messes makes the blog too one-sided and showy.  I wonder if mentioning only the happy things is a little like bloggy bragging?  And I certainly don’t want to be a bloggy bragger.  That sounds obnoxious. Possibly even more obnoxious than a bloggy complainer.  Anyways, just a few thoughts that have been rattling around in my brain lately… I’ve love to hear how other bloggers feel about balancing your actual, real thoughts with the publicness of interweb diaries.

Moving on.
Pictures from our life this week.

Our little Boo was stung by a bee.  (Little Boo is our nickname for her when she looks small or pathetic – as you can see below, she’s mastered the pathetic look.  It comes from my brother’s nickname for Jezebel, Jezzybear, which changed to Jezeboo sometime around Halloween last year, and has kind of stuck.  I also call her JBoo on occasion.  Like JWoww, but cooler, since I don’t actually understand Jersey Shore at all.  I tried watching it one time and it made my head hurt.  And this is coming from someone who watched Flavor of Love, Seasons 1 & 2, followed by I love New York, and even a few episodes of Real Chance of Love, so you know that the crappy reality tv is not beyond me.  Although, probably I should not admit actually watching that crap.  Hmm.).

Anyways, bees. Jezzy was digging underneath one of our flowery bushes while I was weeding nearby, and she let out a high-pitched whimper and ran over to lay under my legs.  She stayed there for a while.  Later, we discovered that half of her face had swelled up… presumably from a bee sting.  She was making extra-pathetic faces after the sting, but returned to normal crazy Jezzy mode less than an hour after the attack.

Jason had off last Friday, so we snuck up to Grand Rapids for the day (I think Grand Rapids is the second largest city in MI – Detroit is the largest, obvs).  Jason was super-excited about the trip because it meant that he could have his beloved Chipotle for lunch (his major complaint about localsmallcity is that there’s no Chipotle).  I was excited to go shopping (my major complaint about localsmallcity is that the shopping is crap.  I have a theory that small town Michigan is where trends go to die.  As in, retailers sell us the crap that didn’t sell anywhere else, hoping that we won’t know any better.  Truthfully, though, I’ve been spoiled – after living a mere 10 minutes away from the Mall of America, shopping here just can’t really compare.).  We also ate at the Grand Rapids Brewing Company, since Jason’s homebrew hobby requires us to search out breweries every where we go.

This week we picked our first pepper from the garden.  It was so so tasty.  Yum!  We’ve got another green pepper growing, as well as a half dozen jalepenos, and it looks like some of our other pepper plants will be following suit soon.

I also harvested some mint and made mint iced tea.  Yum.  I just brewed a bunch of tea, and threw a bunch of mint and some sugar in as it was cooling and let it sit a while.  Then I poured my concoction over ice.  Delish.  I’ve also been really into smoothies lately – just blend equal parts yogurt, juice, and frozen fruit.

We, like most of the country, had a pretty hot start to this week.  Wednesday, though, we finally caught a break as storms came through and cooled us down a bit.  This was good for all of us – except Barley.  He’s terrified of storms and during the storms, he pants, shakes, and tries to fit into tiny enclosed spaces (guess he did not get the memo that he’s 75 lbs of muscle).  This week, I tried to make him feel better by building him a tent – I draped a blanket over the arm of our couch.  He hung out in his fort until the storm passed, and I think? it helped.  If nothing else, it at least stopped him from getting wrapped up in electrical cords as he attempted to burrow under the bottom shelf of my desk… which is exactly 6″ off the ground.

And that was our week, in a nutshell.  We’re looking forward to watching the World Cup finals with friends this weekend, and I’m hoping we’ll be able to wrap up some projects around the house (like that pesky 1/2 bath that hasn’t finished itself).  What are your plans?