Cruising, Cars, Camps, & Catharsis
I remember back when I used to count each week of quarantine. Now, I’ve totally lost count, but it looks like we’re in week 17 right now (I had to look it up). No one could have ever predicted this mess. but yet, here we are trying to make the most out of something very bad. Trying to make lemons out of lemonade. However you want to frame it, this whole thing just completely sucks. Needless to say, wallowing in sorrows is not something that I have any intention of doing, so we continue to live our life as healthy and as safely as we can, while maximizing our time together and trying to get creative with activities while many are restricted.
In June, I was able to take a quick work trip to Raleigh for a virtual event with media and consultants. There were about five of my colleagues together in the office, socially distanced, but we were able to achieve an extremely successful event. This took a lot of planning and it was great to see it come to fruition. I was able to see two of the Triple B’s, Becky and Heather, for dinner at Heather and Cam’s house one evening. It was so great to see my dear friends and connect.
Brayden was able to visit with three of her best friends (Ash, Maddie, and Annie) for a picnic outdoors. In addition, the four of us spent one Saturday having quite the adventure riding bikes. We decided we would ride our bikes on the rail trail after parking at one of the light rail stations. Unbeknownst to us, the rail trail did not extend as far south as we had thought it did, so we ended up riding our bikes for about three and a half miles on the sidewalk of a very busy street before we finally got to the rail trail. Once on it, it was awesome sightseeing and people watching. We stopped off for some ice cream at Jeni’s and had a beer at Sycamore Brewery. Now that we know where it starts, we definitely plan on doing it again. It was so much fun! We did have Terry and Fran over for dinner to our house one night, and the neighborhood ladies crew spent the day at Tonya’s house lounging by the pool and relaxing. It was very needed to just enjoy each other’s company and decompress.
The last day of school was on Tuesday, June 9th. What a semester it has been! Brayden’s middle school gave her the option of a pass or withdrawal grade for each of her courses (as did Hanleigh’s), with the exception of her 9th grade math course, which was a numerical grade. For that class, she was able to choose whether she wanted to keep the same grade she had before the pandemic hit, or if she wanted to try to improve her grade. While she continued to do her school work throughout the pandemic, she already had an A going into it, so she just kept that grade. Who knows what this fall will look like. I think they’re still trying to decide. Only time will tell.
In other news, we finally received our new car. She’s a beauty. Although, I have no idea how to use half of the technology features that it has. I honestly need Trent to sit me down in the driveway for a couple hours and talk me through everything. It’s a bit overwhelming, but the car is super nice. I really do love it! I was able to get an appointment with my hair stylist, which was so great to get rid of all that gray hair that had grown in over the past few months. I hadn’t had my hair done in six months! Hanleigh had her dress rehearsal for her hip hop recital, we spent an afternoon at the Whitewater Center on ropes courses and went paddle boarding with Myers. The next day, we had lunch with the Dunlaps at Suffolk Punch and then walked to Jeni’s ice cream. It was so awesome hanging out with Kendall, Andrew, Owen, and Max.
Thank goodness that the YMCA camps have been open. Hanleigh’s first week was at a Visual Art and Ceramics camp that had a global theme. She created pottery of certain landmarks around the world like the pyramids, toriis, etc. Mimi celebrated her 91st birthday and we dropped off some homemade chocolate and cream cheese icing cupcakes to her outside of where she lives. It was great to see her for a few minutes, but we are looking forward to celebrating so many birthdays and other milestones once this pandemic is behind us. Hanleigh had her hip hop recital where she danced to Will Smith’s song “Miami” and she did a great job. Her dance company did an amazing job carefully planning out the safety procedures for the recital. Normally, this is a huge event that takes place at Ovens Auditorium, which is a very large performing arts hall. Instead, they had it in the parking lot of where her classes are. It was very well orchestrated and executed.
For Father’s Day, all of the neighborhood wives arranged for the husbands to play a round of golf together and hang out for the afternoon. They did this the day before Father’s Day and had that absolute blast. They are already planning on doing something like that again in August. The girls planned a scavenger hunt for Trent as a way to lead him to his gifts. Hanleigh made him a very sweet note and Brayden made him a coupon book, similar to the one I received for Mother’s Day. I gave him a very comprehensive cleaning kit for the car as well as a make-your-own-seltzer kit. We had lunch with Trent’s parents as well.
My company organized a real fun health challenge since everyone is working from home these days. It was called a 100-mile century ride where you formed teams of up to five people and had to cumulatively ride 100 miles on your bikes as a team. Our team decided to post photos of us on our internal social media portal with various themes throughout the week: ’90s grunge, beach/Hawaiian, ’80s, ’70s/disco, formal/fancy, and corporate. We went all out and had an absolute blast participating. There also was an award for most spirit. I’m gonna go out on a limb here an say that our team won! As part of the challenge, when Trent was playing golf with the guys, I took the girls on an 11-mile bike ride, where at one point we rode our bikes through the Chick-fil-A drive-thru to get lunch. It was so much fun and the girls did great!!!
We wrapped the month up with an awesome trip to Isle of Palms. None of us have been there before and Trent’s parents joined us. We enjoyed lots of outdoor dining, time at the pool and the beach, and Trent and I even got a in a couple morning runs. It was so cathartic to breathe in that salty air.