Let There Be Light

It's been difficult to blog lately, especially with my laptop out of commission. I have to use my kids' desktop computer and it's not as comfortable (I can't lie on the couch with the monitor on my knees). But I won't be complaining much longer as Brian is dutifully checking out laptops for me. He has a gorgeous one from work with keys that light up in the dark.

I ain't getting that one.

We've also been busy here changing up the house a bit. We finished painting the basement. And by we I mean Brian. We covered the dark, 1970's wood paneling with white paint on three walls, and deep red on the fourth. I'd post pictures but alas this computer doesn't do pictures and my laptop...well, you know the story. Oh, and on the ceiling we put the muslin and it looks just so cool; very industrial, hip, NY loft feel. That's the closest we'll ever come to being hip.

Plus, I've upped the mileage on my runs which takes a lot more time. A friend of mine who just started running said it's like a part-time job. And it is! Last week, I ran along Kelly Drive in Philadelphia. It's a beautiful run and very flat (key!). I wanted to see how many miles I could do and I did 7 and 1/2 miles which took 75 minutes. Add to that the time it took to drive down and back and we're close to 2 hours. And then there's stretching, showering...it adds up.

I'm upping my mileage in the hopes of running the Broad Street Run this year in Philly. It's a 10 mile run down Broad Street (hence the name). My brother and 2 of my nieces are running. I just found out that my rehearsal that day will be late enough so theoretically I could do the run. My only problem is how do I get from the bottom of Broad Street to the Arden.

And don't tell me to run it.

In addition to all that, we've decided to take some trees down in our yard. We are getting a service to do it since we need them to get rid of the stumps. They are taking down four trees in all: two are dead, and two are just really in our way. They've just finished removing the trees and sunlight is streaming in our kitchen windows and it's glorious. I may just have to find curtains.

And, not to worry, we still have plenty of trees in our yard. And we still have lots of yard.

The big yard almost prevented us from buying the house. I really liked the layout of the house and the three bathrooms (one on each floor). But when we checked out the yard, Brian gave me that 'I don't know' look and said, "It's an awfully big yard to mow." But euphoric at the thought of all those bathrooms, I let my bladder do the talking and shouted, "I'll mow!"

Brian agreed. I'd hoped he'd forget about my promise but he didn't. He didn't even care that I had never mowed a lawn before. So we bought a lawn mower and I started mowing and almost immediately broke the mower by running over the cover of the water line in yard.

So we got another mower and I tried it again. Oh yeah, you can guess what happened...mowed over the damn thing again and there went the second mower. I'm that old dog you can't teach new tricks to I guess.

Even though Brian wasn't too happy, I'm still mowing the lawn. Just not that part of the lawn.

But there was a silver lining to ruining two lawn mowers. We hadn't met our neighbors yet and they were all sitting around the Chef's pool watching this entire debacle. Finally, taking pity on us they invited us over for a swim and a beer. And we've been hanging out with them ever since.

Of course now I'm going to have to introduce you to my neighbors. And, they want me to; we sat around on a Friday night thinking up "aliases" for everyone on the block. But I'll save that for another post. Gotta run! (pun intended).