Quick update:

Head out to Flickr for uploads from our cameras. We're off for some liquid apps...

Well, just weeks after proclaiming proudly to Nick that I had found a cure to black toenails—the plague of running seasons years past—I up and un-do all of my preventative measures:

Mostly, I've started running again.

And, I blame it completely on this doohickey that makes me want to run every day, to keep outdoing my last run, even if it means jogging in 90° heat and seeing black spots in my field of vision. I am addicted. Nike+ is my new best friend.



I came in from my run last night with a shoe that looked like it could be the set for a CSI episode and I said wryly to Nick that I guess that blister wasn't ready to go running without a bandage yet. He asked unbelievably how I couldn't have felt that, that I should have had a voice in my head saying, "Stop running, you're hurt." I had to chuckle. You don't go from a couch potato to a gym rat without learning how to ignore pain.

Still, I was back out there again today, cursing the sun for coming out and beating down on me while my shirt felt 2 pounds heavier sopping wet with my sweat and actually wishing—and I can't even believe this crossed my mind—that it was a little bit cooler, that the humidity was less, and wishing for fall, when I can really put on some mileage and display some speed without that pasty thickness coating my tongue and fluid clogging my airways.

I got the doodad from Nick's Mom for Christmas, and, sadly, it lay dormant for months while I struggled to find my will to exercise after so much post surgery lazy time. Finally, Nick hounding me to use it (knowing I would love it once I started using it), I plugged it in that first time and I've been hooked ever since. I've run more in the last two weeks than I have in almost all of the summer before that—and isn't that a disgusting little tidbit? It's crazy. If you're a runner, you need this.

Nick thinks I should share with my internet audience:



It should be perfect for my birthday present at the end of this month—a trip to The Keys. Nice, short, and quite conducive to humidity. I went to Jean last night with a picture I had printed of Meg Ryan, grimacing as I handed it to her, knowing I had just become the sort of salon-goer that I hate. I did make it clear that I didn't expect to look like the actress when it was all said and done, I only wanted her hair.

After months, nay, years, of blow-drying this puppy straight day after day, it's rather nice scrunching in some gel and calling it done. I feel spoiled.

She's making something with sweet corn, and of course she has this clever little trick to get the kernels off the cob—and I couldn't help but remember the hot summer days of my youth. I grew up on a "farmette", not a full-fledged farm, but definitely out in the country and perfect for a dreamer's soul. To this day, even though I have only lived "in town" since I've been out of high school, I cannot imagine how some people survive childhood in the suburbs. Obviously it is done, but I just don't understand how it works. Where is the quiet time? Where do you play "ice cream shop" or "school" if not in the stale shed? Where do you sneak away and strip off your clothes to run naked through the field at dusk?

The field that butted up to the eastern portion of our lawn belonged to a kindly widower around my father's age. His youngest daughter was in my grade and we were best buds growing up, and we used to get into all sorts of trouble playing in her attic which was completely spooky and the coolest place to pretend. The farmer was always very generous with his crop and gave us carte blanch to harvest as much as we desired—green beans, peas, and sweet corn. Most of my father's large chest freezer is homegrown fare, and rarely does anything enter that isn't frozen in Zip-loc or wrapped in white butcher paper. It gets you spoiled growing up that way. Nothing ever tastes quite as fresh, and I just about embarrassed the pants off of my college roommate the first time I had seen store-bought ground beef—it looked so different...like hundreds of tiny worms!

Our neighbor would invite Dad into the corn field while he was operating the combine, and fill the back of his pickup with ears and ears and ears of corn. We would separate a few of them off the pile to eat in the upcoming days, but after that, it was time to freeze. Charlie and I were assigned the task of husking, sitting with our feet dangling off the end of the truck bed and not realizing in the slightest that our "city-kid" friends didn't do this every summer.

Our light would be fading by the time we finished, and me and my brother, gritty and tired, would wander into the house, where the rest of the process was taking place. We didn't have air conditioning in our house until much later, so you must appreciate a hot, humid Midwestern night, a small kitchen, extra bodies, and boiling water—conditions that last for hours. It was sticky work, and you felt the sweat dripping down the small of your back and down your legs.

My dad had taken a 4-inch square of wood and pounded a sturdy nail all the way through the center, so that it stood erect when the piece of wood was inverted. Mounting the cob on the nail, he would apply a corn stripper. I loved watching it—and partly because my role in all of it was done by this time, I'll grant you—but also because I would imagine myself to be my namesake, the girl my mother had so deeply loved when she was a child, living off of the banks of Plum Creek...living off of the land...working hard with your family and feeling that good kind of tired that just seems to make the world a nicer place to be.