a springtime favorite not to be forgotten

Meet the helicopters 

{also known as maple seeds}

Anytime I see these things blown about & lying on the sidewalk, my inner childhood is awakened & memories fly back of helicopter races between my father & me. Somehow I will be forever mesmerized by the way those things spiral as they glide through the air. One of nature's best toys. 

Which in my current life equals me running around finding the perfect helicopter to race my husband with on the way to get a cupcake from the neighborhood bakery... It has happened a few times. I am not ashamed.

remember the time... {vol. IV}

I mean really, can tulips be any more beautiful? Such simplicity & no thorns to speak of, truly the best flower out there, or so I think anyway ;)

{lately}

+ husmate told me before he went to bed one night that he had a "fun" surprise for me in his lunch container, & little ole me, hoping the fun surprise would be some sort of chocolate dessert item, unzipped it to find around 30 barely used ziplocs from all the turkey wraps he took to work {& all I heard was snickering coming from our bedroom?}. That, sir, was NOT the fun surprise I was hoping for. I think you owe me a cookie. 

+ we discovered just how incredible it is to start our runs from Gravelly Point Park & run towards the District? We ran until we reached the Arlington Memorial Bridge & looked to our right & spotted our memorial friends, Washington & Lincoln, from across the river. I don't know if our views while running could get any better... & to top it off, we turned around in time to throw the frisbee at the park as the planes took off over our heads & the sun set around us. Terrific end to a weekday. 

+ we started quoting Gus & Shawn on the reg from Psych? Personal favorite: when they mock Simon Baker on The Mentalist. Truly some of the hardest laughter & quickest one-liners we've had in this beauty of a marriage. It's even funnier when our friends, Emily & Josh, join along. You know that's right.

+ we came across our favorite Old Town pup to date, the ever curious Fenway, who got so easily distracted during her walk with her owner that they got separated by a quarter of a mile. I suppose I can understand what the distraction was: a bright orange ball lodged in the rocks of the Oronocco Bay Park is totally more important to pay attention to than one's owner. But I hope I never forget that Fenway's hilarious owner called her from afar, yelling, "Come here ya, idiot!" in a lighthearted voice & Fenway looked up with a look of "Oh! Whoops. I'm coming! I'm coming!" and bounded on to catch up with her. Now that's a true understanding between master & dog right there. 


{auld lang syne}

+ husmate delivered that awesome proposal? Yeah, you still have a reserve of brownie points from it. ;)

+ when late April would mean chaco weather, shorts season, & the occasional sunburned nose? We aren't quite there yet, but honestly I can handle long sleeve t-shirts, jeans, & fleece pullovers this late in the game so long as the triple digit degree days are limited. I drink too little of water & have too thick of wavy/curly hair to enjoy the weather that is overly hot & humid summer days.

a weekend of flora + fauna

It's fiiiiinally spring around here, & simply put, it. is. glorious. Husmate & I spent the majority of our weekend trying to catch the cherry blossoms blooming around the tidal basin {with about a zillion other people}, but wouldn'tyaknowit, they just aren't ready yet. So while the much coveted blooms thwarted our plans, we found a few other things to take their place, like the Baltimore National Aquarium residents, long walks across the Arlington Memorial Bridge to the Mall & Georgetown, & cupcakes at Baked + Wired. Here's a few of the things we discovered this weekend:

+ We came across the coolest fish at the aquarium: the Seven Spot Archerfish, which can spit water up to 3 meters at an insect in a low hanging tree to knock it into the water & eat it. Seriously an incredible thing to watch, especially amongst an audience of elementary-aged kids :)

+ A dolphin show at age 24 is just as awesome as a dolphin show at 13. & getting splashed by a dolphin? Hilarious. 

+  For any & all who think that Georgetown Cupcake is the best thing in the world, you are wrongggg. Baked + Wired, another Georgetown bakery, is without a doubt SO much better {& bigger proportions, too- in fact, two people could share one & should for calorie reasons...} than anything I've tried at Georgetown Cupcake. & as usual, husmate & I preferred each other's choice over our own. We tried the Red Velvet & the Pretty Bitchin' {chocolate cake with crunchy peanut butter icing & the closest thing I've come to Muddy's Bake Shop's Tomboy in Memphis}, and both were delicious.

+ FYI that whole "don't take naps after 3" thing is definitely true, considering that both of us took a late afternoon nap yesterday & neither one of us really slept last night. Never before have I been so wide awake at husmate's alarm at 4:45 am. Just call us the Zombie Berrys.

And for any of you who haven't seen in the past month or so, we'll be saying RIP to Google Reader come July. I finally bit the bullet and switched over to Bloglovin' & you can follow me and all your other blogs there! And for those of you who think I'm talking in gibberish, Bloglovin' (and Google Reader) are sites that pull the recent posts from the blogs you follow & compile them onto one site so you don't have to hop around all day to a zillion other pages. Pretty handy if I do say so myself.

& in case you missed it last week:

a sunrise at arlington

uva crush

married life observations

a melodramatic moment

the fifth day of spring {by title only}

Dearest Mother Nature,

This past week I've had a case of the bloggin' blues {as noted by the lack of interesting content around here}, and I blame it wholeheartedly on the weather. I mean, I get it. Last year we were all up in arms because we never even had a semblance of a winter, so I think these days you're just trying to prove your point that you were giving us a pass. As an uprooted Southerner, I am grateful for the lack of snow this past season, but throwing in a few inches this late in the game is a bit cruel. I have a bad case of cabin fever, and I desperately need to find WARM sunlight and blissful spring days STAT. I don't really feel like I'm asking for much, just traditional March weather. And as it's almost April, I think it's high time to give in to our wishes. I know for a fact that my body is craving some Vitamin D, so I'm hoping your little temper tantrum of a late winter snow is out of your system and that we can go back to being friends. I'll even settle for 50 degree temperatures so long as there's sun.

>>>> Your friend,

                      Kat

P.S. As if my ramblings could be any more persistent {or more random}, I hope those few lines from James Merrill's "The Broken Home" (Always that same old story--/Father Time and Mother Earth/A marriage on the rocks) hasn't caused you much trauma. As in I hope the fact that Merrill used you as a metaphor for his parents' messy divorce isn't causing you pain in the form of late March snow... I'm here for ya, sista. That husband of time is with you, too {even though he causes you to change constantly to keep up your longstanding marriage}. On second thought, if you've been fighting back against the grains of ticking time to immortalize one moment, I forgive you for this looming chill. But let's mimic the feminist independence movement and gain some confidence in that field, k?

letters of the nonsensical variety

Dear Postman, at first I started to think you had forgotten about my J. Crew jeans when my package was noticeably absent, but you greatly impressed me by stuffing them into my little apartment mailbox instead. You, sir, deserve a gold star in packing efficiency and should probably hold a seminar on how to properly pack a carry-on so as best to avoid airline charges. Dear Mr. Huxley, I know I praised you in high school for a job well done on Brave New World, but really, job well done. After recently reading it again, I still freak out about the world to come. But don't worry, I shall bring God and Shakespeare with me. Probably more God than Shakespeare though (I gotta be honest). Dear Sarah, thanks for reassuring me after I read BNW that I was just feeling the "the weight" on my shoulders, and that this too will pass. Dear Modern Family, thank you for understanding what I meant about parents & kids being friends when Claire asked Haley on a date. You get me every time. I especially loved the analogy: "Raising a kid is like sending a rocket ship to the moon. You spend the early years in constant contact and then one day, around the teenage years, they go around the dark side and they're gone. All you can do is wait for that faint signal that says they're coming back." Hey parents, I'm baaaaackkk! Dear weather, you befuddle me. Yesterday was delightfully cool. Perfect running conditions. Dare I say it, spring weather-like? Today, we're getting our first "real" snow of the season. In March. Are you hormonal? Let's work on that. Dear first week back of running, I both love and hate you. Thank you for reminding me that I am woefully out of shape. When a woman three times my age zoomed past me on the trail, I finally got it. Dear husmate, your enthusiasm for learning something new is quite possibly the cutest thing. ever. When your books came in the mail the other day, you would have thought it was Christmas morning. I can't wait to see you really get into your new skill. :) Also, Michael Buble is the cheesiest. I apologize that my Avett/Mumford love makes me skeptical of your acceptance of Buble. Let's work on that, shall we?

dreaming of a hot summer's day

I never thought I would get to a point that I would admit to wanting to see & experience the sun so much that I even miss its hot summer days. If you know me, you know that I am a fair-skinned freckled girl, my make-up is one color hue off from white (aka porcelain, ivory, or 01), & I don't tan, I burn. That being said, even I am sick of this cold, dreary, & wet winter and would rather worry about dehydration than wearing enough layers to shake off the constant shivering (I'm from the South, can't help it that I'm a wimp).

This weather makes me long for the weekend husband & I spent in NYC last summer. So here goes a trip down memory lane to help remind me of what sun looks like:

Summary:

+ It's a good thing I don't live in NYC as I would probably spend all my time eating at Chelsea Market, as evidenced by a fourth of these pictures showing its yummy food. I wish I could say those were the only pictures of food I took there, but I can't lie either. Womp womp...

+ I wish that we had had time to walk the whole Central Park. My nerdy self tells me that it would revel in all the beauty of Frederick Law Olmsted's design (which also makes me want to reread The Devil in the White City. Nerd alert). My cabin fever tells me it just wants to see grass and trees and flowers and warmth. Either way the desire to trek all over that park right now is pretty great.

+ I really miss being able to throw my chacos on & wear them with anything in my summer wardrobe, dresses/skirts included. No shame, only fame guys. Now that I'm married, I can partially blame it on my adventurous husband (but it's not really his fault).

+ That Highline Park is pretty dang neat. Totally suggest walking on it the next time you're in NYC.

+ We walked the Brooklyn Bridge (because who doesn't love a bridge merrily designed in gothic architecture?), but as the majority of the bridge was covered in scaffolding along the whole walk, there wasn't much to take a picture of...

+ Even DC was shining beautifully in the sun that weekend. We took that picture as we walked back from Union Station after our horrifically long trip back in a Megabus (New Jersey turnpike, anyone? Yuck). 

Ah, sun... get back in my life.

random musings for a friday

Imagine sitting in something only a tinge more comfortable than this for two months. Yeah...

+ Husmate got an email yesterday from Petco telling us that we have $13 to spend from the Petco Pals 5% back rewards program on a dog that we no longer have. Awesome....

+ In other news, the couch we ordered last month and were told would be here by February 4th is going to be delivered today! Hallelujah! I mean you can only sit in a Victorian chair for so long before it's just not comfortable anymore. Plus, it almost makes you feel like you're in a perpetual wall squat. And who really wants that? Did I mention that we have three flights of stairs and low hall ceilings? Yeahhhhhh... I can't wait to see the Pottery Barn delivery men work through that. But hey, they're professionals. No need to worry, right?

+ Husmate & I were minorly disappointed in the Downton Abbey season finale. I mean, really? What a Christmas Day downer, Brits... So to boost some of my spirit of sadness annoyance I have recently started watching Parks & Recreation on Netflix. I gotta admit, I'm surprised by how much I like it. And since husmate & I are still in our West Wing stage (who doesn't love that show??), I am patiently waiting for Rob Lowe to appear in Parks & Rec so I can imagine that this is just another part of Sam Seaborn's resume. I know, I'm weird.

+ Is it spring yet? Ready for these cold days whose temperatures appear to be below freezing due to the lovely accompaniment of the wind to go away. It's hard to motivate myself to go run along a river when it's all feels-like-24 outside. Blah. So here's my compromise, if the wind agrees to disappear, I'll agree to embrace the 30's and merrily run along the river. Do we have a deal mother nature? Please?