it’s a jungle in there

Laundry day. Here, it was yesterday.

I’ve been doing laundry about once a week since we’ve been here, which means I have about two bins full of dirty clothes between the two of us. I shouldn’t complain; the laundry room is just down the hall and free to use. All I need to do is provide soap, time and elbow grease.

However, there is a little wrinkle (haha, no pun intended) in my laundry routine. I hang all, and I mean ALL, my workout clothes to dry. The high heat from the dryer breaks down the elastic–I read that somewhere. I did this at home, too, but I always did smaller loads throughout the week, so I never had more than about seven or eight items to hang at any one time.

Well. This laundry-once-a-week-thing transforms my bathroom into what looks like a cramped running goods store. Or a jungle of brightly colored dry-fit wear.

Twenty-five items total hung in my bathroom yesterday.

Sports bras: 8

Shorts: 6

Shirts: 6

Long-sleeve shirts: 2

Yoga shorts: 2

Running capris: 1

ONE of the above items was a “regular” article of clothing; a part-cashmere top I wore to church last weekend. (I have a phobia of drying ANYTHING that might ruin, shrink or otherwise become less nice because of the dryer. I will say, however, now that I’ve lost a few pounds, I’ve been throwing things in the dryer right and left! It’s so freeing…)

On a side note, I didn’t actually wear eight sports bras in one week; I picked up a few more the other day since the last couple times I had to do laundry out of necessity (as in I had nothing left to wear for my workouts)!

I ended up scoring some great deals at Marshalls–two sports bras, a pair of Nike running capri pants for fall and a pair of New Balance yoga shorts for $60! The running capris at Dick’s are typically $60 alone, so I was pretty stoked.

ANYWAY…

…it really was pretty jungle-like in there for awhile! And that didn’t include any of Andrew’s shorts (he’s started running again in the mornings), which I hung up in his bathroom. I guess I should be thankful he hasn’t hung up any of his clothes in his closet (they remain in the Rubbermaid tub and duffle they arrived in) so I have thirty-odd extra hangers at any given time…

happy birthday, carolyn

We celebrated Carolyn’s birthday (which is actually today) on the Fourth due to scheduling conflicts. How could just a handful of people be so busy we couldn’t spare a random Wednesday night? I don’t know, either.

Anyway, we had a birthday dinner for her at Andrew’s parents’ house. The kid-Layers are all going to P. F. Chang’s for another celebratory dinner tonight–bring on the lettuce wraps!

Ben and Andrew’s dad dressed alike. It was cute. And the tablecloth zipped onto the table (around the pole for the umbrella)–how neat!

Note my reddish lips–not sure how I feel about it yet. A post on new makeup colors will be coming soon. (I know you’re all waiting with baited breath.)

You can’t see them very well, but Carolyn’s candles were animal-print striped. She was a fan.

Presents! (You’d think it was Abigail’s birthday with all the pink around…)

Showing off some of her new goodies. Grandma did well with the purse 🙂

After presents, a walk in the woods and a quick game of KanJam, we headed down to the creek in the back of the yard for a fire.

Abigail with her “horsey.”

Andrew’s mom had gotten a couple boxes of sparklers on her last trip to Indiana (selling fireworks is illegal in New York).

We roasted marshmallows for s’mores. I’m not a big marshmallow fan, but roast ’em and mix ’em with chocolate and I’m in!

The girls and Andrew started having fun with the sparklers and the camera. Andrew’s a pretty good amateur photographer, so he was able to adjust the camera settings to get some really great shots.

Next, they thought it would be an awesome picture to get their names written with the sparklers. It took a couple tries to get the timing right…

If only her name were Carol…

The gazillionth try was a winner!

Thankfully, my name is a bit shorter, so it didn’t take too long to get an OK shot.

If you can believe it, this picture took TEN SECONDS to shoot. Seriously, the shutter was open for that long and we had enough time to write our names and actually move in the shot, which you can see above.

Next, Andrew experimented with the fire. Here it is taken in an automatic shot:

Here is another shot taken with a VERY short (1/300th of a second) shutter speed:

VERY different. I’m excited to carve some time out and peruse the photography books I have so I can take great photos like Andrew. (How cheesy does that sound?!)

Remember those marshmallows? I may have overdone it in the s’mores department…

I’m holding my hands out because they are covered in chocolate and marshmallows, and apparently some chocolate missed my mouth…

sweet land of liberty

Happy Fourth, everyone.

As I was watching the fireworks last night in East Aurora with Andrew and his parents (and about a gazillion other people gathered at Hamlin Park in the village), I got to thinking about our country. And freedom. And the military. And about all the other things I think about on Memorial Day, Veteran’s Day and the Fourth.

I come from a line of military members; my father was in the Navy and both my grandfathers served in World War II. I went into the Air Force, and while the nasty thought that “I didn’t do anything because I didn’t deploy” haunts me more than it should, I do feel a great deal of pride for my service, and theirs.

I think about how amazing our country is and how important it is to protect it. About how young people these days don’t seem to realize that. My heart swells with pride when announcers at festivals and baseball fields and priests and pastors in churches call out veterans and ask them to stand up and be recognized. I think about my dad, coming home from work each day in his khaki uniform. About his flight suit. I think about how grateful I am that he was never truly in harms’ way (that I know of, unlike so many others then and now) and how I was too young to remember him being gone.

We were enjoying the montage of patriotic songs typically played during fireworks presentations and Toby Keith’s “Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue” song came on. I leaned over to Andrew and told him that whenever I hear that song I get goosebumps. And then I realized that other people, people who don’t have a personal connection to the military, might not have the same reaction.

(Case in point: Before the fireworks, a couple voice clips of past presidents saying noteworthy things was played and it ended with a clip of Obama, which brought some cheering and clapping from some around us. Yes, we are in the great DEMOCRATIC state of New York…)

Anyway, in case you aren’t familiar with the song, here are the lyrics:

American girls and American guys, will always stand up and salute.
We’ll always recognize, when we see ol’ glory flying,
There’s a lot of men dead,
So we can sleep in peace at night when we lay down our heads.
My daddy served in the army where he lost his right eye,
But he flew a flag out in our yard ’til the day that he died.
He wanted my mother, my brother, my sister and me.
To grow up and live happy in the land of the free.

Now this nation that I love is fallin’ under attack.
A mighty sucker-punch came flying in from somewhere in the back.
Soon as we could see clearly through our big black eye,
Man, we lit up your world like the fourth of July.

Hey, Uncle Sam put your name at the top of his list,
And the Statue of Liberty started shaking her fist.
And the eagle will fly and it’s gonna be hell,
When you hear Mother Freedom start ringing her bell.
And it’ll feel like the whole wide world is raining down on you.
Ah, brought to you, courtesy of the red, white and blue.

Instrumental break.

Oh, justice will be served and the battle will rage:
This big dog will fight when you rattle his cage.
An’ you’ll be sorry that you messed with the U.S. of A.
‘Cos we’ll put a boot in your ass, it’s the American way.

Oh, oh.
Of the red, white and blue.
Oh, hey, oh.
Of my Red, White and Blue.

This songs makes me want to fly an F-16 over Iraq dropping bombs. Yes, it does.

But seriously, what do people who have never personally experienced the sacrifice that comes from serving in the military (either themselves or a loved one) feel on these holidays? Yes, I’m sure most red-blooded Americans feel some sort of gratitude for “people in the military.” I think about this, every May, July and September (and sometimes in December, too). I wonder if these noteworthy days are just as noteworthy to “civilians.” They probably aren’t, and that’s OK. Part of what makes our country great is freedom, and that includes the freedom NOT to serve in the military (something I wish were different, but that’s another blog post altogether…).

So anyway, happy fourth to all my brothers and sisters out there who wear or have worn the uniform, and their families, who know the daily sacrifices their loved ones, and they themselves, make. And happy fourth to those who don’t know sacrifice like that; it’s because of people like me, my dad, Heather and Silas, Susy’s husband, all my ROTC classmates, and myriad others that you don’t have to.