This Is Not A Balloon

Sugar Bowl Hero

In a klutzy explosion of my body, I dropped a jar onto the sugar bowl from four feet up. Miraculously, the handle is the only part that broke. I did not, however, feel this markedly calm about it when it happened. When someone else breaks something, I am completely cool about it. And every once in awhile when I break something, I'm just as calm, but typically when I break something, I am a complete and utter wreck. And we're not talking just sort of cross. We're talking tragically sad and extremely mad at myself. For example:

Me: (wailing) I hate everything! I'm a horrible, terrible person! 

Him: It's okay!

Me: (still wailing) It's not! I'm an idiot! I hate sugar bowls! I hate cabinets! I break everything!

Him: It's okay!

Me: (still not over it) It's BRRROOOOOKKKENNNN!

Him: It's just the handle. Just one handle. It's okay! I'll fix it!

Me: (starting to kind of get over it) But we can't fix it! It's broken!

Him: Let's glue it.

Me: (a little skeptical and sniffly but nevertheless getting out the glue from the cabinet) Okay.

Him: (gluing it) See? It's going to be great.

Me: (needing reassurance) It will?

Him: (happy to assure me) Yes.

Me: It looks better already. 

Him: The glue dries white. See? It will look even better than before!

Me: (sniffing one last sniff, just for good measure) It does look (sniff) nice. You're (sniff) nice.

And he then proceeded to hold the handle on the sugar bowl for 31 minutes. 

Yes, 31 minutes, folks. 

31 minutes! 

Because the bottle of glue said it should be held in place for 30 minutes.

Because a rubberband wasn't good enough.

Because he wanted it to dry exactly right. 

Because I was sad. 

Because he's my sugar bowl hero. 

It Came, It Went, It's Here

We knew it.

We spent 101 smashing days sweating our pants off, lolling about languidly, considering cantaloupe to be an actual dinner, crunching sand under our bare feet, tracking sand into the house and into the beds and tub and into the slats between the floorboards. We spent 101 days worrying less, cooking less, wearing less, (wishing we were) working less, and forgetting what soup tasted like. We spent 101 days reading more, eating outside more, drinking (ahem) way more, and grilling things we weren't even sure could be grilled. We floated through adventures, sweated through shirts, dried ourselves off in the sun and in front of whirring fans, and ate weekend lunches until 4:00 (at which point we started planning dinner).

We bought too much at the farmers markets, wishing the farmers a good week, offering them hope for rain, and walking wobbily home with bags full of everything we couldn't possibly pass up. We flip-flopped and swimsuited, we got awkward tan lines in silly places, and we picked way more berries than would fit in the freezer. We contemplated canning but settled on just eating it all so that the kitchen wouldn't get any hotter. We took showers in necessary excess, danced to our favorite records hundreds of times, ate corn three times a day, and then whined about our bellyaches with smiles on our faces. We invented ice cream flavors and cocktails that no one else ever thought of, walked everywhere, did entire jigsaw puzzles in one sitting, paid a quarter for the largest zucchini the world had ever seen, and plotted dreams that would carry us into the next summer.

And we knew that it would end. It tends to do that, you know. It's always bittersweet, and even downright sad. But this year? I feel better about it than ever. It's not necessarily because that lovely, heart-shaped summer held its own fair share of low points that I was anxious to escape -- because it did -- but because, right now, I am curled up in the living room, listening to the end-of-summer winds creak and blow frantically outside and feeling like, for the first time since childhood, I really did do everything I wanted to do this summer. (Well, okay, nearly everything. As you may have noticed, I've not kept up with any of you, my dear readers. This I do truly regret!). Genuine apologies aside, I'll now ask myself to compile a summer checklist: Adventures? Check! Projects? Check! Eat all the tomatoes? Check!

See? I did it all! Honestly, though? It was a summer I would do all over again in an instant. It helps, I think, that I had a splendidly incredible, excited, eager, happy, and adventuresome partner through it all. Perhaps it's the Eagle Scout in him, but Andy tends to really love all the seasons and, well, the world tends to make him really happy, which I admire endlessly. All that, and, well, have you noticed that it's going to now be FALL? Fall! Which might just be (dare I say it!) a better season than summer. The sweaters, the apples, the coolness, the crunchiness, the air, the pumpkins, the hot drinks, the scarves, the soup, for crying out loud. The soup! 

Summer, thank you. Autumn, it's finally your turn! New adventures are being born!

(Soup and other autumnal adventures are now officially beginning. Stay tuned, friends. Stay tuned.)

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