Too Much

I'm very busy trying to stay sane in a crazy world. So Very Busy.

My current approach to life is to spend every minute of my spare time distracting myself with wine, music, preferably live, nature hikes, leisurely road trips, camping, chasing sunsets, taking pictures every step of the way. When you spend a lot of time driving through the nooks and crannies of America while taking a break from news, social media and all the noise, it's a little easier to forget how completely fucked up our little republic has become. For a little while, at least.

Since my last post, we have added these adventures in a frenzy of escapist, late, late mid life crises:

* drove to Nashville for a concert with family (Tedeschi Trucks Band)

* flew to San Antonio for business, fun and music  (Dueling Pianos)

* flew to Boca Raton FL for business, drove to the Gulf for a concert, (JJ Grey), to visit family and flew back from Tampa

* drove the camper, bikes and kayaks to St. Augustine for a truck camper rally with camping and hiking stops in Kentucky, Georgia and a stop to visit old best friends in Indiana

* moved our son into a condo in Chicago for his new job

* drove the camper to Chattanooga TN for a concert in a cavern, (JJ Grey) then hiked waterfall trails all the way home through Tennessee and Kentucky

*spent father's day at the lake shore in Chicago watching our kids and their significant others win a co-ed beach volleyball tournament

* spent an evening at a local Swedish Days festival concert with family and friends

*sweltered through a two day Aurora IL Blues Festival in record heat and humidity (Sonny Landreth, Samantha Fish, Elle King, Toronzo Cannon)

*drove to central Illinois to camp along the Illinois River, see live blues (Big Dog Mercer), watch barges go by and almost kill the dog from heat stroke

*camped our way through Wisconsin to the Upper Peninsula of Michigan, camping along Lake Superior where we hiked and biked and swatted biting flies for four glorious days.

And we are not done yet.

We have a big summer concert in Chicago this week with family and friends, ( KT Tunstall, Better than Ezra and Bare Naked Ladies ), a blues festival in Rockford IL (Toronzo Cannon) and a concert with the kids at Wrigley Field (JJ Grey and Blackberry Smoke) in August. We are trying to find a weekend to get away to camp the dunes along the Michigan shores of Lake Michigan.

We have more trips to go this summer: one to camp in Minnesota in July, and a solo trip to Delaware to to see my family and go to a concert  (Trombone Shorty). Also in this time period, my husband has taken five additional business trips to Florida plus a trip to Rhode Island for work. I can't imagine the pace he keeps. I'm having trouble with my own.

I keep snapping pictures neurotically, obsessively. Everything. Scenery, weather, nature, people, towns, whatever I see with my eyes I snap with my camera. My phone ran out of memory sometime after 10,500 pictures. I backed up and deleted pictures for hours yesterday, enough for a while. I can only delete some of them from my phone, because it comforts me to scroll through the last few years, visually stimming, escaping, remembering.

These things. In no particular order.

It's been lovely, a wonderful distraction from all the mayhem. We are exhausted. But in a good way.


Hope your summers are filled with lovely distractions too.

xo

Hello, It's Me...

Two posts in 2017. I wanted to be sure there was a least one for 2018 :)

So. Winter always gets under my skin, and getting creakier and achier has me internalizing. A month long cold got on my last nerve. Crazed hot flashing and disturbed sleep have me half insane. I'm hanging in though, holding on tight to my sense of humor and my family, making myself reconnect and go out with my friends, which is hard to do, but I'm glad I'm doing it.  Hubby and I are playing lots of cards, gin mostly, taking little trips, and going to concerts - I'm pretty sure live music is the best antidepressant I've ever had. I'm listening to lots of music while I do my chores and cook -.  Tedeschi Trucks, Doyle Bramhall II, JJ Gray and Mofro and M83 are on my current playlist.

This year, I set small goals, no resolutions. My mantra is Be Here Now. No forwards or backwards fretting. Easier said than done, as I'm a natural born worrier. So, I'm trying to cook more, eat healthy foods, drink more tea and less alcohol, organize my life a bit better, declutter, and mostly try to let go of lots of things both material and mental. Results are mixed.

Impossibly huge puzzles are a good distraction, and lots of Netflix. Godless blew me away, almost as good as Deadwood. Stranger Things, Ozark, The Crown and Mindhunter were riveting.  Watch them if you can.

Attention span for old favorite activities like blogging, camera photography or reading is elusive. I do snap pictures on my phone constantly though. Obsessively. Trying to capture it all so I don't forget these moments. I have 9,278 pictures on my phone and will run out of memory soon if I don't do something about my digital hoard.

Since I have no decent words to make sense of much of anything, I will stop writing now and share with you 0.2 percent of my iphone pictures.

Because Puppies.  Florida School Service Dog Foster Pups :)

Didn't know at the time, but the last collegiate competition for us - so glad I went

Very cold but lovely day at the beach in Gulf Shores Alabama

2000 piece puzzle I finished for the new year, excellent distraction

A long chilly walk in the park with sculptures

My favorite tree in the park

My favorite boulder along the Fox River edge

A Thanksgiving walk in the woods with our girl

This tree got a hug

Holidays were warm and cozy and flew past.

The last 22 hour Florida road trip home from school - new school travel time is thankfully under 3 hours

A long renovation, but good riddance to the big old unused spa tub, hello lovely shower built for a tall man :)

This 2000 piece puzzle is going to break my spirit and my neck

20 years here and just discovered Chicago Riverwalk - the city is even more stunning than we knew

Especially at night....

...except for the Rump Tower self-aggrandizing monolith 

My bursitis and the weather let us walk for miles, all the way to Lake Michigan and back, thank you

Enough with the snow please 

That's it for now. Thanks for visiting.
Wishing you a kind and peaceful 2018, filled with lovely photo opportunities.

xo