Behind Infinity

And I can see New York from where I’m sitting!
This is all really surreal and crazy for me.

I loved my first plane ride. I’m on a layover right now, and in about an hour I’ll board my next flight to Washington DC. Of course, I took pictures from the plane. They’re probably nothing special, for people who have done this before, but I just couldn’t stop looking out the window for the whole flight.

I love the patchwork farms. I love the lakes, with docks all around, like stitches holding the shores together.

it was such a perfect day for flying, I feel so lucky that it was so beautiful my first time in the sky! all clear skies and puffy clouds below. They cast shadows on the ground. It was amazing to see.

The sky…so blue….

A horse farm! I’ve always had a knack for spotting these wherever I go.

And here’s the NY skyline, as we landed in New Jersey.

Anyhow, those are my plane pictures. More fun to come.

I took this photo on my morning commute a few days ago. It’s my neighbor’s corn.

I love that my neighbor has corn. I love that I live in this place where there are cows and fields and fireflies. When the road beneath my tires turns from pavement to dirt and the scenery becomes mostly barns and fields and old farmhouses, my heart fills with joy and peace because this place is a deep, deep part of who I am and it’s where I’ll always belong and I love everything about it, even when the manure spreader just went through and everything smells like cow.

But next week, I’m leaving.

I’m flying on a jet plane for the first time everin my life. I’m going to Virginia, where I will be attending a conference for work (CFUnited 2010 — a web developers’ conference) and then vacationing. I’ll be gone for 10 days, which is the longest I’ve been gone since moving here. And it’s the longest vacation I’ve ever taken all by myself.

This is my great uncle Ray, who is pretty awesome. I’ll be spending a few days with him. He plans to take me all around Washington DC and we’ll probably also go down to Monticello and University of Virginia. After that I’m heading to Roanoke to hang out with my lovely friend Marion and her husband and two darling sons for a few days.

I can’t wait to learn stuff at the conference, luxuriate at the posh resort, explore DC and Virginia, and spend time with wonderful people. I can’t wait to have a good chunk of time off….it’s been years since I’ve taken more than the odd weekend.

But whenever I think all of this, I realize how very long 10 days actually is, and I get this lump of panic in my throat, because while I’m gone…

…my tomatoes will FINALLY be large and red and I won’t be here to pick them,

…and this cheesy little booger will be doing all of these cute things that I’ll miss and he’ll probably forget my name,

…and THIS cheesy little booger will probably think I’ve stopped loving him.

I think about all of this and literally start feeling sick and then I have to tell myself that when I get back, there will STILL be tomatoes in my garden, and Jamison will still do cute things, and Max will forgive me for abandoning him. And then it’s mostly okay, until I panic all over again the next time I remember that next week I’ll be leaving on a jet plane and i won’t be back for ten days.

In theory, I like the idea of travelling the world. I just wish I could do it and be home in time for evening chores. Since I can’t, I’ll suck it up long enough for a nice vacation.

But I’d have never made it an entire semester. So that’s the real reason I never went to Greece or Rome, and why I’ll probably never go to grad school unless it’s within commuting distance. It’s a big beautiful world, but I’m happy here.

Some girlfriends and i have developed a habit of getting together as often as possible for the purpose of consuming massive amounts of really good food and booze. this past week we had mexican food night. it was insanely great. so I took a lot of food pictures.

This is my homemade salsa. with some chips. and stephenie’s sangria. the sangria was pretty amazing.

Stephenie and Emily, puttin food on the grill. specifically: tequila lime chicken, corn on the cob, and pineapple.

Here’s Julie, lookin all gorgeous as she sips her sangria and contemplates something very deep that stephenie was saying.

here’s the chicken. If it looks amazing, that’s probably because it was.

quinoa. and chicken. and grilled corn on the cob. and chips. and grilled pineapple. I was skeptical about the merits of grilling pineapple. then i tasted it. and it was even better than plain raw pineapple.

So after dinner Emily got out her Vitamix blender and made margaritas. I gotta say, having a friend with a professional quality blender is pretty great. These margaritas were even better than an Applebees or Friday’s margarita.

THIS.

This is fried ice cream. Stephenie made it. It was incredible.
Absolutely. incredible.

that’s why Julie is so enthusiastic.

Hello, lovely.

Almost gone

Anyhow….I’m kind of hungry now….

July is here, and with it, vegetables have come.

These are last week’s peas.
They were so, so amazing. The snow peas were crisp and tender. The snap peas were buttery and delicious.
(Next year, I will plant two or three times as many snap peas as I did this year.)

And this. I spent the better part of an hour yesterday morning, picking things. The beans are producing like mad. Dad and I picked a good 12 lbs of them on Thursday night and I got another 3 lbs yesterday. we’ve had them 3 times already this week and shared some with friends and there are still more in the refrigerator.

Also, I got my first cucumbers and squash this week. I cannot put into words how thrilling I think it is to pull back a thick, furry leaf canopy and find a fat little gourd hidden underneath. I realize that later in the season when the squash plants are producing four or five full-grown vegetables a day, my enthusiasm will probably be replaced by something like dread. But for now, I <3 my zucchini.

All of the bell pepper plants have adorable baby peppers on them. The red peppers, which start out green, are just starting to show the faintest streaks of red. Every last tomato plant has branches and branches full of green tomatoes. Romas and beefsteaks and cherries and big boys and about 6 other different varieties that I forget. I wish they would start turning red already! Maybe this week.

I don’t know if I’ll ever get over how amazing it is to put plants in the ground and have food appear 45 or so days later.

Max just wanted to say hello.
I love this boy and I’m getting really excited about his future. He’s 4 this year and has been a bit of a late bloomer growth-wise, so up until now I have not been serious about working with him. Now that he is starting to fill out and has a longer attention span, we are having fun together. I’ll share more about his training in a future post, sometime soon.